Gordon Weaver, Last Stands

Literary Review, Fall, 2004 by Derek Alger

Gordon Weaver, Last Stands. Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2004.

Gordon Weaver's recent story collection, Last Stands, captures all the emotion and conflict of individuals in specific situations without ever relinquishing the question and mystery of time; that what happens before in a life is always integral to a character's emotional state in the present, regardless of future prospects.

Weaver, known for writing mostly about middle-age, middle class men, expands his scope in Last Stands, with his characters including professors, ne'er do wells, drifters, criminals, psychics, and bartenders. In considering Weaver's work--four novels and nine previous story collections--it is next to impossible to neatly label his writing, except, perhaps, to note a never-ending, recurring, preoccupation with time itself.

Last Stands, or final stands, stages sought and sometimes found as new beginnings, are at the center of the dilemmas that Weaver's protagonists confront. There is always conflict in the present, but with a master's touch, Weaver tells realistic stories in which the action and feelings of his characters are always predicated on the experiences of the past.

Conflict, contradictory emotions, standing at the precipice of frustration and isolation, most of Weaver's characters face harsh realizations that come from unavoidable self-honesty, whether forced upon one by circumstances and other people, or both.

And yet, Weaver's fictional creations greet such challenges with dignity and grace in the recognition that one day leads to the next, and so on, and so on, until the end, the eventual reality of one's own mortality.

"Learst's Last Stand" tells the story of a Vietnam vet on the run, not from anything specific, but himself, searching for a home. He stops in a motel outside Tucson, and makes his way to the local bar where he begins to find camaraderie with the older folks who frequent the establishment.

Learst spends another night in town, hitting the bar again, and Skippy, the bartender, again greets him like a regular. Slowly, Learst begins to feel he belongs, joining "the gang" for brunch at a nearby pancake house, and even renting a place in the local trailer park, but still with no intention of staying.

The interaction of Learst with Skippy, and Ed Jones, the owner of the trailer park, is genuine within a frozen moment of time, where nothing especially is expected, simply an unspoken "we're all in this together." That is, until Learst is forced to face the reality that nothing lasts forever, and learns a painful but valuable lesson, out of which he finds serenity in his last stand, which indeed is a new beginning.

The first story, in the collection, "Looking for Lost Eden," is about an English professor and his family--wife and two daughters--preparing to move from a university in Mississippi to one in Oregon. While packing up a truck, the professor remembers his childhood move from Illinois to Milwaukee, and how frightening he found the realization that "nothing in life lasts." But from this childhood epiphany, sustained through his adult years, the professor recognizes what he must rush after and catch as he continues his journey into the future.

In "A Dialogue," the story is just that, a dialogue between two men, one fifty-six, the other thirty, in a car on the way to a job. Gruber, the older man, picks up Mikey while it is "still pitch dark out" in bad weather where "the only sounds in the car are the sticky sound of tires on the wet concrete." During the drive, the two men discuss their respective lives until a shocking ending negates time and possibility, and intensifies all worries and concerns of the everyday.

Weaver subtly concentrates on the theme of time in "White Elephant," relating the history of a building, from its beginnings as a grocery store opened by a hopeful Greek couple in 1930, and followed by a subsequent series of taverns and bars. The story centers on Ray Neely, Jr., age 30, whose life is paralleled by the bar he opens, beginning with high expectations, followed by routine, and then the ultimate end of an era, of dreams never fulfilled, but a somber recognition that life goes on, even if it is merely the continuation of the same cycle, and a White Elephant remains just that, a White Elephant.

The stories "Psychic Friends" and "The Emancipation of Hoytie Rademacher" both deal with men heading down the final stretch of life, with many regrets and few prospects. Neither protagonist is a particularly sympathetic figure, yet with Weaver's deft touch, each story evokes compassion for such lost and struggling souls.

In "Elder's Revenge," attending a high school reunion proves that you can go home again, but it will never be the same and moments of the past recaptured in the present may have a completely different, unintentional, unexpected outcome.

The stories "Dirt" and "What Should I Do in Illyria?," both recount events in the present, while providing a comprehensive background of the relationships which give significant depth and meaning to what is happening in the now. Weaver recounts the funeral of a man's mother in "Dirt," depicting the personal details of a common event, such as how the assistant pastor "half-knelt at the end of the open grave and picked up some of the moist, light brown clay in his fingers" and how earlier an assistant at the funeral home "removed my mother's glasses and jewelry and closed the casket."