The Last Man Standing - Softcover

Chambers, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932511201 ISBN 13: 9780932511201

Publisher: Fiction Collective 2, 1990

First, the voice of my father. First, the rasping death rattle of his voice calling me. His voice everywhere, surrounding. Each way I turn, his voice equally there, calling my name. Boy, rattled the voice. Boy. I start in each direction to go to him, but I hear the voice everywhere so I stand still. Boy, says the voice, its rattle thinning, hollowing. A thick fogbank rolling in over the water, father's figure rising from it. Father's figure draped in blue, a blue gown, his face swollen and bruised. A smear of yellow on his chest, a badge of yellow pulsing in the blue fabric. I rush into the water, shouting his name. Father! Just as I am about to dive and swim to him, he holds up his hand, commanding me to stop. I stand waist-deep in the freezing water. Murder, he says. I am murder. Is he saying murder, or mother? I can't be sure. Boy, Father says. I am put to death. No, I shout. No! The figure continues to rise, to swell as a corpse might after days in the water. It points at me. Boy, it commands. Find the one. Punish. Father! I shout, as the figure loses its structure, collapses into the rolling fogbank. Above the whispering I hear one last word. Sign, the deathsound says. Sign.

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From Publishers Weekly:

An oversexed executive dreams of eternal virility and wakes up with leukemia. An older man manages to save himself from drowning, only to discover, upon reaching the beach, that the ocean has stolen his bathing suit and his pride. The subject of Friedman's ( The Polygamist ) stories, for the most part, is the passing of time and its disintegrating implications--the indignity of aging, the decay of the body and the mind, the inevitability of death. His characters are acutely attuned to their mortality, adopting various emotional, aesthetic and material methods to alleviate their fear of dying: the narrator in "A Dead Cousin" surrounds himself with beautiful art; the pathological yuppies in "Did You Know Gorky? Pollock? Kline?" fill the emptiness of their lives with a constant flow of new possessions. Friedman deftly relates the small vicissitudes of these lives with broader existential themes. Unfortunately, his incisive perceptions are sometimes dulled by flat, self-conscious language and simplistic allegorical imagery. Overall, however, Friedman is a compassionate writer with a keen apprehension of the mutability of the human condition.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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