Book 6: Birds of America

Birds of America
Lorrie Moore

Usually short story collections have ups and downs, but most do have a general level of quality, with a few stories rising above to enchant and a few being, well, less than memorable. Given my previous experiences with Lorrie Moore, I expected Birds of America to present a group of witty and endearing gems; what I got, however, was almost precisely the opposite: a group of disjointed, cloying, and boring stories with only one that seemed to justify the time put into reading it, let alone the rest of the collection. Don't be fooled by the abstract, too-long title, for "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" is a moving tale of a parent's worst plight, and its impersonal manner transcends the plane of pretentious litfic experimentation on which it is built, becoming instead a universal exploration of pain and suffering, an oasis of meaning in a desert bereft of entertainment or, sadly, plot. This story has plot, and characterization, in spades, and almost- but only almost- makes one look more fondly upon the author. Unfortunately, the majority of the stories in this collection, while having their moments, meander along pointlessly until reaching a noncommittal ending that really has nothing to do with the preceding story. It's possible to read these as portraits, and while yes, they are in a sense rich and layered, they fail to captivate; these are still lives, not moving images, and one cannot blame readers for simply wishing that Moore would get on with it already. Too much in here bows to the litfic intelligentsia, appearing to work in profound subtlety but being instead almost unbearably boring. There are moments, of course, where Moore displays her searing ability to peer into the depths of the human soul, but these are quickly swallowed by the boredom that plagues each of these stores. Likewise, both "Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People" and "Charades" each come very close to being meaningful, before eventually wandering off into the same meaningless, but critically beloved, territory of utter pandering. Lorrie Moore is, I believe, capable of much more than she shows in Birds of America, but the collection sags under the weight of its own assumed importance and never becomes, well, interesting.

Grade: C-