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Reviews
Rating: Five Stars
Dignity is a difficult word to define because it has
different meanings depending upon the situation. If I had
to define it in one word, for Emmett Bishop of 'Simple
Treasures' by Alan Chin, it would be harmony.
Emmett is dying and he's lost everything—his wife,
his health, and his desire to live; but when Emmett loses
harmony with himself and all that is around him, he loses
his dignity. Fortunately for Emmett, Simple comes into his
life with a solution that enables Emmett to regain his
self respect.
As in all of his books, Alan Chin's characters are
wonderfully flawed, each one holding the possibility of
being an entire story within themselves. In this case, his
main character, Simple, is the epitome of all things that
appear complex, but in essence are not. Simple is just
that–simple, not as in simple minded, but he's simply
uncomplicated. Besides adding mystery to his personality,
Simple's loss of memory also makes him less complicated
because he has no past; he lives only in the present.
Using his Shoshone beliefs, gentle persuasion and his
unwavering humility, he convinces Emmett and his grandson,
Jude, that life is far less complicated than they're
making it, and by their own actions, are diminishing
themselves more than anyone else ever could.
Comparing Emmett and Simple's grandfather is a good
way of tying the two together not only for the reader, but
for Simple as well. It shows how Simple is able to
understand Emmett by what he can remember of his
grandfather. It also enhances the relationship between
Simple and his grandfather, enabling him to work out some
of his own conflict. Emmett's influence on Simple is
almost as profound as Simple's is on him. By helping
Emmett restore harmony in his life, he also helps Simple
find greater peace in his own life.
Jude, Emmett's
grandson, is a sad, lonely man, aching for love. He knows
he's different and instead of hiding it, flaunts it like a
weapon against those who should be loving and accepting
but aren't, i.e., his father, Lance, who exemplifies what
happens when ego overtakes pride. Simple is a great
influence on Jude's life not only physically, but
emotionally and spiritually. They fill each other's need
for companionship bringing greater peace to both of their
lives.
'Simple Pleasures' is written in Alan Chin's distinctly
descriptive, lyrical style, with strong characters and
stronger ideals. He even throws in a mini-lesson in fly
fishing and falconry. If your reading tastes lean toward a
good story with more of an intellectual and spiritual
bend, then this book may well be one you'll appreciate.
Review by Lena Grey September 08, 2011
Top 10 Reviewer
Rating: Five Stars
Only the mediocre artist is always at his best – this is
why we rightly judge an artist on the body of his work
rather than on a single sample – we may just have gotten
the wrong sample, that particular book when the writer’s
aim surpassed his reach. It happens, but only to the true
artist.
I’m happy to say that this time the goal was not
beyond the artist’s reach. Simple Treasures couldn’t be a
more fitting title for this offering from one of the best
writers in the arena today, Alan Chin – because this is
indeed a treasure, though writing this good is never
really as simple as it looks. Here, as in his best work
(but no, of course, not every time) the author goes beyond
the confines of writing and enters the realm of art, and
his genre is made the richer for it. As both a writer and
a reader, I came away from this tale feeling that my
experience—of life, of literature - had been greatly
enhanced.
The title character, Simple, is a Shoshone. He has
just been released from a mental hospital, where he has
been abused essentially for the crime of being different.
He is offered a job by Lance Bishop in the town of Saint
George, Utah. Bishop’s father, Emmett, is an irascible
drunk who has driven away every other caregiver – but in
fact, Lance wants his father kept drunk. He plans to have
his father committed and take control of the ranch, which
he means to sell to developers. At first, Emmett rejects
Simple’s overtures as well, but he soon recognizes a
kindred spirit. There is a romance, too, between Simple
and Emmett’s gothic-gay grandson, Jude.
Emmett is dying of cancer, and the ever present
vultures roosting atop the barn provide a Greek-chorus
reminder of imminent death. It was his wife’s death that
sent Emmett into this long, downward spiral of grief and
self-pity. Simple’s memory is dead, too—or as he himself
explains it, his memory gets flushed clean each night. And
Lance is dead to the pleasures of life or the soul. Even
Jude is infected, convinced that for him there is no Life
for him here, in this town--that Life exists elsewhere, in
San Francisco to which he plans to escape.
But that is only the story as told by the words. The
real story is written between the lines, and it is about
nothing less than the encroachment of death, and the
reaffirming of life, through love, through dignity, and
the oneness of all existence. A man becomes a memory, a
falcon becomes a man, and love bridges the illusory abyss
that separates us one from the other. And how magically
the author weaves his story, painting indelible pictures
from nothing more, it seems, than mere wisps of smoke.
Deep in the human body—yours, mine, everybody’s—there is
just one soul that we all share, as if we’re just tiny
pieces of the same puzzle…That’s why we’re here in the
first place, to make our sliver of the soul shine
like the sun.
Chin doesn’t write erotica, but it would be a colder heart
than mine that wouldn’t melt sharing Jude and Simple’s
“first date” – fishing in Bitter Creek.
Simple’s pole jerked toward the water. “Jesus, I’ve got
one.” He hauled the pole back to set the hook.
“Give him line,” Jude said. “Play him.”
Simple leaned out over the water, retrieving line.
With a wicked giggle, Jude shoved Simple, who tumbled into
the water and was swept downstream, still holding the rod
high over the water. Laughing, Jude ripped off his hat and
boots and flung himself into the water. He was swept
along, fighting his way toward Simple.
They met in the swirling water and pumped their legs until
they stood in the shallows. They shared a sensual hug and
kiss. When they broke apart, Simple held up a trout…
Simple sets out to help Emmett transcend his looming death
by restoring his dignity and by transferring his spirit
into the body of a falcon, and the story climaxes in a
stunning ceremony in which man and falcon battle for
supremacy while Simple dances and chants himself into an
exhausted stupor.
Simple began to dance again. His feet stomped the ground
with the same rhythm that Emmett had pounded out with his
cane. He chanted and his voice grew in volume…the wind
died. Everything went silent—even the crickets hushed—as
if the universe were holding its breath. A minute later,
the bird shrieked. In the distance, the sound of the wind
drifting through the trees grew into a steady pulse, like
the slow beating of a heart.
The author occasionally slips into the habit of repeating
words where a different word would work better—and
although I’m not generally in favor of censorship, I think
the writing world would be better for having the word
“then” banned from usage by all penmen. And he has
developed a tendency to slide into melodrama, which is
simply not his forte. Happily, that is minimal here.
Never mind. This is a stunningly beautiful literary
effort. In the end, I cannot tell you if the story is a
good or a bad one – those are intellectual considerations,
but this is not a story told from or to the intellect, it
is told from the heart. As Simple tells the old man, Some
things can’t be talked about. Words only confuse it.
Reviewer: Victor Banis, author of Longhorns and the
Deadly Mystery series
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Excerpt
In the faint flush of predawn, a
Kenworth sixteen-wheeler topped a ridge, forty miles east of
Saint George, Utah. With only a half load to hinder it, the
rig barreled along the interstate at twenty miles an hour
over the speed limit. The driver hoped to make Las Vegas in
time for breakfast. The truck rumbled on, unrelenting.
Simple rode shotgun, staring at a dusting of lights
that looked like a pocketful of stars cast across a vast and
lonely mesa. The iridescent specks reminded him of
flickering candles at a funeral, although he had no memory
of ever attending one, and he wondered if that metaphor was
some ominous sign of what lay waiting for him in Saint
George.
He had stayed awake all night, too excited to sleep.
His eyes burned, and his mouth felt parched. He wanted a
drink, but his water bottle was stashed deep in the backpack
that rested on the floorboard, between his feet. Outside,
the crowns of cottonwoods, tinged pink with the coming dawn,
appeared to be pasted upon a gunmetal-gray landscape. With
his peripheral vision, he saw the rearview mirror reflect
beams of pale orange light that now chased him across the
mesa.
The driver, Dale McNally, a high-school dropout with
rough manners and rougher speech, couldn’t keep his eyes
open any longer. His eyelids drifted toward his cheeks at
about the same rate as the Kenworth swerved off the highway.
When the right front tire gouged into the skim of gravel on
the highway shoulder, Simple grabbed McNally’s thigh and
shook it. McNally’s eyes popped open, blinked. He eased the
rig back onto the blacktop.
McNally had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows,
showing the thick, ropy muscles of his forearms. He wore a
cowboy hat with a rattlesnake-skin band. The dashboard's
lights cast an eerie glimmer across his face, and a thatch
of dark hair spread out below his hat, covering his ears and
hanging over his frayed collar.
“Christ sakes,” McNally barked, “I picked you up so’s
you could keep me awake. Help me out here, boy.”
That happened often. Simple was twenty-five years
old—a stoic ranch-hand life had made him look closer to
thirty—but even men his own age, like McNally, called him
boy, son, or kid.
“How?” Simple asked, suspiciously.
“I didn’t mean that. You made yourself perfectly clear
about that.”
Simple relaxed.
“Talk to me. Do somersaults on the hood if you have
to; just keep me awake.”
Simple cracked his passenger window an inch, enough
for a frosty breeze to whistle through the cab. He stared
out the windshield, silent as a stone, trying to think of
something to say.
“Someone should invent an electrical device for
drivers to wear under their hats,” Simple said, “to zap
their balls whenever they get drowsy. It could trigger from
the change in blood pressure at the temples when the eyelids
start to fall.”
Dale snarled, “Don’t be talkin’ about my balls if you
ain’t goin’ to do anything ’bout ’em.”
Simple changed the subject, babbling on about the city
lights mirroring the stars on the horizon. The hypnotic
cadence of his voice made McNally yawn, a
mouth-stretched-wide-open yawn, that pulled his eyes off the
road for a dangerously long time. His eyelids became heavy
again, drifted to half-mast, then closed altogether. His
head leaned forward, and the Kenworth wandered into the
oncoming lane.
Headlights from a tour bus illuminated the cab like a
prolonged flash of lightning. The light triggered a memory
in Simple’s head. Blinding light, someone grabs a handful of
Simple’s hair and yanks his head back while four men wearing
white scrubs hold his arms and legs. He fights with all his
will, but they overpower him. A voice bellows in his head,
“Get his pants down.” Clothes are ripped away. The orderly
holding his hair positions himself between Simple’s naked
legs. Simple hears the echo of harsh laughter.
Simple shook the image from his head. He grabbed
McNally’s thigh again and barked, not really a word, but
rather a harsh warning.
McNally’s eyes flew open and he jerked the wheel to
the right. The Kenworth swerved back into its lane, and
McNally struggled to keep it from careening out of control.
“I’m telling you, boy, you got to help me. Talk to me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what an Indian boy like you is runnin’ from.”
“I ain’t running from; I’m running to.” One of
Simple’s clearest childhood memories was constantly sneaking
away from home with a library book under his arm. He felt
the need to read alone, so that his family and the other
kids wouldn’t tease him. Reading was not what boys did on
the reservation. But he did. He had a favorite hideaway, in
the cool shade of cottonwoods near the creek, where he would
read the days away in the company of Twain, Hemingway,
London, and Melville. But late in the afternoons, he would
hear a door slam, and his mother’s voice calling the family
to dinner. Then he would run, lickety-split, back to the
house. All too often, by the time Simple had rushed to the
kitchen, his grandfather was slathering the last ear of corn
with butter, saying, “Too late, bookworm.” Simple would
stare forlornly at the empty serving dish. Although Simple
had few memories left, he suspected that he had been running
all his life, that he was still running, as fast as
possible, trying to claim that last ear of sweet corn.
“Shit,” Dale spat. “Even a knuckle scraper like me can
see that you’re fresh out of prison. All your clothes still
have the K-Mart tags.”
Simple lifted his arm and saw a price tag dangling
from his cuff. He ripped it away and searched for a place to
trash it.
Dale said, “Toss it out the window.”
Simple stuffed the tag in his shirt pocket. “I don’t
remember much, only that they had me locked up. Not prison,
some kind of clinic, but I have a job waiting for me in
Saint George—” Simple pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt
pocket, unfolded it, and read by the light of the dashboard,
“—working for Lance Bishop.”
“Why do they call you Simple?”
“My grandfather named me that to always remind me that
a warrior’s life is filled with simple treasures.”
“Could be worse,” Dale scoffed. “Be thankful he didn’t
name you after Buttface Canyon, Nevada.”
“Sing me a song,” Simple said. “That will keep you
awake.”
“I only know hymns, from when my mama took me to
church.”
“Works for me.”
Nodding, McNally cleared his throat and bellowed,
“‘Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed
for me’.”
Dale’s whiskey-tenor voice soared over the engine’s
growl. The tune was uncomplicated, with trilling and
mournful notes, resembling both music and a sorrowful cry.
It reminded Simple of a Shoshone death chant that his
grandfather sang the day Simple’s parents died. He loved the
way the long, flowing vowels tumbled from McNally’s lips,
like a river meandering through a forest. Simple heard each
tone and also the slices of silence separating the notes. It
sounded stark and sometimes discordant, yet staggeringly
beautiful.
In the gritty bedroom of a rundown trailer house, an alarm
clock buzzed. Jude Elder’s head swiveled on a pillow, his
body folded into a fetal position. He came awake and looked
around the room, confused. He cleared his congested throat
and banged the alarm off.
He flipped on a bedside lamp, squinted. Rings adorned
his lower lip, nose, eyebrow, and a half-dozen crawled up
one ear. His mascara was ghoulishly smudged. He rolled off
the bed, stepped over a pile of laundry, and staggered to
the doorway. As he opened the door, light from the hallway
lamp revealed dozens of angry red scars crisscrossing Jude’s
torso and belly.
His head hurt too much to think. He focused all his
attention on not falling over.
He tottered to the shower and turned on the water. As
steam rose, he stepped in, grabbed his dick, and began to
masturbate—eyes closed, mouth ajar. Soon his hips bucked and
his mouth twisted into a look of quasi-sexual pain. He
opened his eyes and they rolled back. He groaned.
Moments later, with both his hands covering his face,
he began to sob.
He lifted a razor blade from the soap dish and sliced
two lines across his chest. Blood trickled over his pasty
torso as tears streamed down his cheeks.
A few minutes later, Jude ambled down the hallway into
his choky little kitchen. He had wrapped a towel around his
waist, bandages covering his fresh wounds. He opened the
refrigerator and snatched a Budweiser longneck, twisting the
cap off and downing half. He seized a prescription bottle
and shook the few remaining pills into his palm, knocking
them back and washing them down with more beer. He tossed
the two empty bottles into a sink filled with dirty dishes.
Jude grabbed another Bud from the fridge and cracked it
open.
In the bedroom, Jude sifted through the pile of soiled
clothes. He stepped into a pair of boxer shorts, his only
pair of jeans, socks, and cowboy boots. He lifted a white
shirt from the pile, sniffed the underarms, and tossed it
aside. He picked up another, sniffed, tossed it. The third
and last he didn’t bother to sniff. He laced his arms into
the sleeves and buttoned it up.
He jerked a roach from an ashtray beside the bed,
fired it up, inhaled, and downed more beer. He took another
hit, then strolled back to the bathroom to reapply his eye
makeup. In the mirror, he only looked at his eyes as he
painted his mask. He couldn’t bear to see the rest of his
face or the scars at the base of his neck.
On his way to the front door, Jude lifted a ring of
keys off a plate on the kitchen table, then he stopped in
front of a mynah bird chained to a perch beside the door. He
snatched a food carton and shoveled seeds into the bird’s
bowl.
“Loser! Loser!” the bird cawed.
“Now you sound like my dad, shithead,” Jude said.
“Loser!”
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