Weapon in Heaven
David Bulley
Dandelion Books, Arizona
141 pp. $14.95
On
the back flap of David Bulley’s debut novel, Weapon in Heaven, a synoptic
blurb says that Eddy Licklighter, the book’s protagonist, “is a contemporary
version of the Biblical Job.” Not entirely true. Licklighter is more of an
anti-Job or Job’s pissed off semi-evil twin. No piety in the face of
catastrophe here. He wants payback.
The
novel begins with Eddy acting the part of woodsman sparing that tree, when he
refuses to use his chainsaw on a Maine pine “older than the country.” He
refuses not out of any inborn naturalist streak or sudden Sierra Club urge but
because God tells him to. Yes, that God.
When
he is rewarded for his attentiveness to divine whim by having his wife and
daughter taken from him in a house fire, he becomes understandably miffed at the
Almighty, dubbing the big h Him “a dirty fucker.” Eddy also responds
with a number of acts that could in no way be described as “God-fearing”:
including painting the aforementioned epithet in five-foot-tall red letters on
every church in Millinocket.
The
blasphemous message is enough to attract Paul (a minister in flight from
authorities for some extracurricular activity with a precocious sixteen-year-old
boy) to the charms of Millinocket—especially the charms of the highway rest
stop where homosexuals are rumored to congregate. Paul has his own reasons for
hating God, the prime reason being the repressed urges God has quite
inconveniently placed in Paul’s psyche and body. The remainder of the book
deals with Paul’s struggle with his gender orientation, Eddy’s plan to murder
God, and God’s plan to purify and torture Eddy by killing those around him while
simultaneously imbuing him with an invulnerability second to only
Superman. Job was never this unassailed.
In
Weapon in Heaven, the characters are small town and so is the prose
style. There’s an aw-shucks-ness here that some readers will love and others
will shun. People who eat up Raymond Carver and Wallace Stegner will enjoy Eddy
Licklighter’s story immensely, while fans of Pynchon and Joyce might be better
off looking elsewhere for a summer read. Bulley’s minimalist approach lapses
into near dialect even in the narrative descriptions but it suits the story well
... for the most part.
One
can forgive the occasional “fella” for “fellow” and some of the other
drawl aspects, but one has to draw the line at repeated incorrect non-dialogue
use of “lay”/“lie” and the substitution of “of” for “have.”
(Example: He could of gone to the store. It’s “have.”).
Dialogue is open season, but the writer who strays too far from MOR grammar
without a real-world, non-omniscient narrator to blame mistakes on is leaving
himself/herself open to legitimate accusations of literary misprision and gross
editorial negligence.
In
the area of design, the cover is unfortunate to say the least, screaming a kind
of 1993 web graphics halation. Not attractive or particularly professional. Too
few eyes, and more pointedly, too few professional editorial eyes went into the
printing of this book and it shows now and then. Not quite often enough to
fatally disrupt the rich plot or the exceedingly strong character portrayal, but
enough to irritate and potentially alienate anyone with an English degree or a
working knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style. Bulley also shows an
ever-so-slight tendency to overwork his physical actions at times, often
including utterly unnecessary points B and C on the way from A to D. In good
literature, the unspoken often involves the reader more substantially than the
obvious. Bulley understands this for the most part and—as this is his
debut—will no doubt learn to trust the reader more in subsequent works and cut
to the chase, as it were.
It
is a testament to the strength of the story that I felt somewhat disappointed at
the clipped denouement that makes up the conclusion of the story of Eddy
Licklighter’s disagreement with God. I kept wishing for some more protracted
view of the consequences involved, but what is a reader to do when faced with a
desire to know what happens beyond the end of a good story? With his deft
control of plot and character, David Bulley leaves the reader wanting more. Two
slaps on the wrist, however, for editorial
misconduct.
–CAW–
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