George Singleton: Read This Now

Before I lived in Chicago, I lived in northwestern Pennsylvania.  Before that, I lived (briefly) in the pinkie finger of Michigan.  And before THAT, I lived for 15 years in Kentucky. 

If you pull out a map, you might be like, Hmm.  Haven’t really strayed too far from the Great Lakes region lately, have you?  No, I haven’t. 

But I think I’m truly a Kentuckian at heart.  Every time I go back, it just seems like I’m supposed to be there.  Don’t tell my family, though, because they already beg me to move back to Lexington all the time, and if I were to actually do that, I think I’d get sick of it really quickly and not love Kentucky anymore.  So I’ll stick to living in Chicago and going home on a regular basis.

Anyway.

What was I saying?  Oh.  So, I stopped at Powell’s Bookstore in Hyde Park some months ago.  Powell’s is a small chain of bookstores that, somehow, has the ability to sell regular ol’ books for half or a third or a quarter of the original price.  Most of the books look new, and there are some real steals in there, so don’t ask me how they do it. 

I picked up five or so books for about twenty bucks, including a book of short stories by George Singleton, These People Are Us.  The reviews (you know how they take words or phrases from reviews and stick them in quotes on the back cover?) said that the stories were really funny, and the book cost five dollars,  so into the basket it went.

Well, I found something magical that day.

If you enjoy humor even a little bit, and especially if you’re from the South, please, please, PLEASE read George Singleton’s work.  He is a master of the human condition, particularly humans who are average Joes just trying to get along in life without causing too much trouble.  His protagonists are almost always men, roughly in their late thirties, nearly always married to strong, sensible women or at least dealing with the heartbreak that comes from losing a strong, sensible woman.  They have manual-labor jobs and enjoy a drink or two.  They all live in the same area of South Carolina, where racism is still rampant (though Singleton’s characters are happy to crack the heads of anyone who’s okay with it).  They don’t see themselves as particularly smart, but they work hard and just try to make sure everything turns out all right.

So far I’ve finished two of Singleton’s short-story collections (These People Are Us and Drowning in Gruel), started a third (The Half-Mammals of Dixie), and devoured a novel (Work Shirts for Mad Men).  I cleaned out Powell’s entire Singleton collection and plan to supplement the rest on my Kindle.

These books make me so happy that I plan on giving all my hard copies away, so that I can share that happiness appropriately.  They are nothing short of perfect.  Please go out and read some Singleton immediately.  Thank you.