The Tao of Humiliation

March 31, 2014
Poet, essayist, and fiction writer Upton's (The Guide to the Flying Island) stories are playful, full of clever allusions that are deftly presented. Often these references seem to be the inspirations for the stories themselves, or for entertaining riffs within them. "Beyond The Yellow Wallpaper" springs from the early feminist story and ends with references to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titles like "The Swan Princess," "La Belle Dame Sans Professeur," and "The Last Satyr" all overtly display their literary roots. Even the stories with more conventional plots have literature as a context or touchstone: in the wake of a cancer scare, Shana, the heroine of the moving story "Bashful," lists all the serious books she had once intended to read. Several pieces in the book are under 10 pages, and not so much plot-driven as high-concept. "Let Go" features a first-person narrator stressing over the fact that he has to fire someone for the very first time. Upton's story openings tend to be vivid; they're great hooks. The title story begins, "The guy with stringy hair was staring, which made Everett even more nervous, as if something was going on under the table with the guy." This is a smart and highly entertaining book.

Starred review from April 15, 2014
Masterful stories by a writer of great lyrical gifts. Upton focuses on personal relationships, especially the immediacy and estrangement that emerge from the intensity of family life. The first story, "The Ideal Reader," blends fact and fantasy as the narrator presents herself as the biographer of Malcolm Alfred Kulkins, a fictional literary lion and supposed friend of Truman Capote and other glitterati. Mysteriously, Kulkins had published almost nothing during the last 17 years of his life, a period dating from the suicide of Seyla Treat, one of his former lovers, with whom he had a daughter, Flame. The biographer ultimately learns that talent is passed across generations when she intuits that some priceless material supposedly left by Kulkins might have been forged by Flame instead. "The Tao of Humiliation" (which one character within the story mishears as the "cow" of humiliation) introduces us to Barry, Everett and Lucas, three men on a retreat in the woods who are forced to confront some unsavory moments of their pasts--and in their farcical misadventures, they don't seem to have learned from their mistakes. One of the best stories is the wryly comic "You Know You've Made It When They Hate You." Here, a community-theater drama critic continually savages the performances of Molly Crane, a hapless local actress, but by the end of the story, they literally find themselves in hot water when they share a hot tub, and she realizes that she's "as miserable at being a wife as she was at being an actress." Upton specializes in ending her stories with epiphanies that can be searing in their poignancy. These 17 tales explore personal and familial relationships with both pathos and humor--and all are well worth reading.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 15, 2014

This story collection by poet, novelist, and critic Upton takes its title from one of several winningly off-kilter stories set at a motivational rural retreat aimed toward breaking down the ego as a precursor to building it up. Upton elicits tremendous sympathy on the part of the reader for these and other characters facing existential crises, often with great aplomb, such as the actress seeking the root of her sudden bout of stage fright in "The Undressed Mirror" and the former student recalling her cad of a lit professor in "La Belle Dame Sans Professeur," a take-off on Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" aimed at the theory-driven academic who ultimately fails to honor the work itself. VERDICT These well-imagined stories bear the mark of the poet in the best sense, and the reader will not soon forget them. They proceed by indirection, with elements that cohere only after the fact and open up further surprises upon rereading.--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2014
A woman relives the memory of a disturbing day while studying a photo taken by her father. The last satyr on earth foresees his painful future reflected in a swimming pool. An actress, mourning her mother, loses her ability to complete her lines. These are just three of the fascinating characters who confront and confound readers in this collection of 17 stories. Upton, award-winning poet and literary critic, shows her mastery of the short form. She draws her unforgettable characters with decisiveness, using voice, point of view, and a variety of narrators. Many of the stories are very funny. Irony, satire, the gift of the apt phrase, and the occasional slapstick scene will delight readers. The strongest of her considerable talents is the ability to create emotional resonance with lightness of touch through changes of mood and in situations of loss, humiliation, insight, and betrayal. This entertaining collection will appeal to fans of a variety of literary authors, such as Grace Paley, Edith Pearlman, and Louis Nordan.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)