The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

June 26, 2023
Singleton (Between Wrecks) delivers an offbeat collection filled with Southern eccentrics. Doug, the narrator of “Cock Rescue,” doesn’t much like his sister-in-law, Frankie, a “pre-literary agent,” who hustles writers by sending their manuscripts to agents in exchange for a fee. Meanwhile, Doug’s wife, Emma, has just started her own new pursuit, a rooster sanctuary called Cock Rescue. Emma’s first patron, a MAGA hat–wearing, booze-toting individual, has the wrong idea, however, and shows up “penis out,” prompting Doug to scare him off with a chicken deboner. In “The Arbitrary Schemes of Naming Humans,” a 30-something man named Coast, after the soap his promiscuous mother used after sex, hoping to avoid getting pregnant, attributes the name to his tendency to drift from one job and relationship to another. Quarles, the narrator of “Proofs of Purchase,” prematurely inherits a series of worthless items from his father, a former drug counselor who has dementia. His father’s legacy also catches up with Quarles at the local bar and bait shop, where he chats with one of his father’s clients. Things get tense when the man claims Quarles’s father ratted him out to his parol officer for drug use. Singleton lights up the colorful and odd situations with wit and verve. Southern fiction fans will have a blast.

Starred review from July 15, 2023
Legendary South Carolina absurdist Singleton weighs in with another rollicking collection--17 quick-paced, chatty, funny stories. Singleton's protagonists--often overeducated, tempest-tossed white guys working bizarre jobs that are "nonprofit" in one way or several--have often been called "eccentrics," but one joy of inhabiting his satiric vision is the constantly reoccurring thought that despite their flaws (impulsiveness, a predilection for drink, a little larceny in the heart, a sense of justice that can get out of hand), the South might be better off if these guys were nearer the middle of it. In "Dispensers," a man who collects and saws down and sells graffitied old wooden desktops stops off with his wife at a Georgia diner, where they meet and have their faith restored a little by the grizzled old men of VAGINA: Veterans Against Guns in North America. "Echoes" features doting but hapless grandfather Big Les Tolbert, who takes his way-too-worldly, cyber-dependent grandson on a quixotic, impromptu, and doomed expedition to see the ocean at Myrtle Beach. In "Protecting Witnesses and Witnessing Protection," a husband--detoxing in spouse-forced exile in the boondocks--wakes to find a vintage tractor in his driveway...which turns out to provide a surprising path to a community of fellow sufferers. Again and again, Singleton focuses on the accidental burdens conferred on us by names--whether of people, businesses, do-gooding organizations, professions--and shows us characters doing a frantic dance around their sense that there's a destiny in what you're called. This turns out to be a great way of dramatizing, as Singleton wants to here, the effort well-meaning people expend to make peace with who and what and where they are. The stories don't always have destinations, but one of the fundamental laws of Singleton's invented world is that destinations are way overrated. Nobody complains that a carnival isn't tautly plotted; you just plunk down your dime and wait for wonders. A Southern original adds to his gallery of Southern originals.

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