Fiction Review: The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney

The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney. Columbus, OH, FORTHCOMING with Two Dollar Radio. 242 pages. $18.95, paperback. 

Many may fantasize about writing the Great American Novel, never working a nine-to-five job, and having constant unprotected sex without producing a child, but Kevin, the protagonist in The Red-Headed Pilgrim, fails in all of these respects. As a nervous, existentialist virgin who allows the possibility of sex to motivate all of his decisions, little of Kevin’s journey is new; he is a heterosexual white man hoping to achieve enlightenment by never working more than eighteen hours a week and entertaining every half-baked, drug-induced plan he cooks up. His privilege, ideologies, and frequent use of shrooms protect him from a meaningless reality that is always encroaching. 

In spite of his protagonist’s played out traits, Maloney finds a way to make his story and his perspective new. He posits fresh and disturbing concepts, like the idea that our “bones…are the seeds of our future skeletons.” Essential to his wit and insightfulness is the retrospective self-awareness he employs. Maloney satirizes the idolized nomadic lifestyle of the aspiring artist by filling Kevin with high-minded ideals and then sending him back and forth across the nation to follow women who typically reject him. Maloney often had me cackling. In describing his crying newborn daughter Zoe, Kevin says “She didn’t speak English. Probably she didn’t want to be born and I screwed everything up by having sex with her mom.” This idea encapsulates young Kevin; he projects his nihilism onto everyone and inadvertently develops empathy. 

Despite his efforts to avoid the mundane and the meaningless, Kevin often finds himself “cleaning liquid shit out of Zoe’s forearm crevices.” Once Zoe comes into his life, no amount of “praying without ceasing” can offer him greater meaning than she can. In The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Maloney envisions a hilarious reality in which we must give up on our dreams to care for those we love and begrudgingly find meaning along the way.

—Daniel Marcantuono, MAR

The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney will be released January 24, 2023. Preorder now at twodollarradio (dot) com. 

Featured Writer: Leila Chatti

At 7:30pm EST, on Thursday, October 13th, poet Leila Chatti will read her work in Prout Chapel as part of the 2022 Prout Chapel Reading Series, hosted by Bowling Green State University. 

Through her collection Deluge, Leila Chatti chronicles her experience with illness, uncontrollable bleeding referred to as “flooding,” surgery, and remission through explorations of narratives of religious punishment, womanhood, shame, and oscillations of doubt and faith. Fittingly, Chatti’s poems are preoccupied with the grand scope of existence, as we are suspended by our pain and grief between the infinities before birth and after death. “Indeed, one day I will return to God, as it is to Him that I belong.” she writes in her poem “Testimony,” continuing “Indeed, this was part of the Message and the Message was received. / I do not speak for God and He does not speak to me. / This an (arrangement/estrangement). / When asked my religion I answer surrender.” Despite their scope, Chatti roots these poems squarely in the body, allowing worldly pain to evidence the divine; in “Mary in the Waiting Room at the Gynecologist’s office,” she writes “In my hand, an empty cup. / Mary crosses / her legs, fingers the slender / chain around her neck. / She rubs her thumb against / the pendant’s tiny face, his miniature / arms permanently splayed.” Leila Chatti’s poems are as candid as they are intense, and as excruciating in their origins as they are compassionate at their hearts. You absolutely must pick up her work.

—Samuel Burt, MAR

Leila Chatti was born in 1990 in Oakland, California. Among her many achievements, she was selected as winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award. Chatti has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and fellowships and scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and more. Her debut full-length collection Deluge was published by Copper Canyon in 2020, and you can find her work in The New York Times Magazine, POETRY, The Nation, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the Consulting Poetry Editor at the Raleigh Review and lives and teaches in the Midwest.

(Biographical info and poems courtesy of leilachatti dot com)

Poetry Review: A Cluster of Noisy Planets

A Cluster of Noisy Planets by Charles Rafferty. Rochester, NY, BOA Editions, Ltd. 2001, 80 pages. $17.00, paperback.

A Cluster of Noisy Planets by Charles Rafferty is an account of the melancholic passing of time, expressed through lovely observations of our world. Reading these prose poems aloud, one can sense the soft drumming of Rafferty’s carefully constructed sentences. He is a true syntactical master at work: the rhythm—generated with simple commas and full stops—magnifies the tender, slow beauty of this close attention. Not only do these words, spoken aloud, create intimacy, they create quiet. One poem from the collection that comes to mind is named, “The Satin Lining of the Casket Reminds Me of a Jewelry Box,” in which the speaker addresses the odd objects that are often buried with the dead; yet, as peculiar as the subject of this poem may sound, the last two sentences are magnificent in their scope and beautification of the mundane: “We pack them in like we’re burying pharaohs, like there’s a pyramid of grief above them. And there is—only smaller, and made of dirt, in a land that won’t stop raining” (Rafferty 17). This short quote, two of the many wonderful sentences from this collection, recalls another aspect of this poetry collection worth mentioning: the role of objects and monuments. Rafferty fixates on the various artifacts which have withstood time, such as the Great Pyramids of Giza, The Roman Colosseum, and the Moon. Above all, these prose poems show the ongoing, continual movements of the human imagination, exemplified by an excellent poet who writes these love letters from his corner of the world.

—Lucas Clark, MAR

Why We Chose It: ”On The Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing”

On the Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing, by Drew Calvin McCutchen, was selected for publication this spring and published in Mid-American Review Vol. XLI.

On the Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing is a magical story about dreams, community, and the human experience. Readers follow one girl who, for no fault of her own, is unable to join in a dream shared by the entire town each day at 4pm. The story follows her as she attempts to navigate this lonely existence, disconnected from her peers’ reality, reaching for connection by painting them as they dream. The strengths of this piece are its voice, the clear imagery of the town, and the originality of the plot. In its exploration of one character who finds herself living at odds with her community, this story draws influence from folklore, but though it may remind us of some fairy tales we grew up hearing, this story, reminiscent of folk horror, ramps up its tension to an explosive ending that’s as original as it is hard to forget. 

—Samuel Burt and Chloe McConnell, MAR

Book Review: I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom

I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom, edited by Shelly Oria. San Francisco, California: McSweeney’s, 2022. 480 pages. $21.99, paperback.

In the months since SCOTUS’s overturning of Roe v. Wade it’s been incredibly difficult to feel like the voices of women and gender minorities are being listened to. While it’s easy to feel completely powerless, I’ve managed to take comfort in the ways I’ve seen individuals, communities, and creators work to take care of and empower those most affected. I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom, edited by Shelley Oria, has been one of those sources of power and comfort. This book does exactly what needs to be done right now; it gives marginalized people a place to talk about their decisions, bodies, and lives as if they are important (because they are). The anthology consists of the work of 28 creators and includes works of fiction, poetry, photography, creative nonfiction, plays, and even a comic. The collection was done in collaboration with and works to financially support the The Brigid Alliance, a long-standing organization that helps people access abortion care and travel funds in underserved areas.

One of the many great strengths of this book is that it refuses to limit the narrative of reproductive justice to one kind of story. So often conversations around this topic work to solely center able-bodied cis straight white women who need an abortion because of specific circumstances. Not only is this narrative reductive, it’s offensive and extremely harmful to those who are most vulnerable. This anthology gives the microphone to BIPOC, queer, and disabled artists who work to show an honest and complicated range of experiences. I’m grateful to Mcsweeney’s for giving this book a platform and grateful to all of these creators for their stories in such a violent time. There is something important to be gained from each and every one of the pieces in this anthology. I hope you all go get this book and/or request it at your local library.

—Gen Greer, MAR