Gazing into the heart’s absurdity: So Much Heart by Drew Buxton
Written by Joseph Edwin Haeger
The cover for Drew Buxton’s debut collection of stories So Much Heart (out now from With an X Books) is a treat. It’s a smattering of bold, cartoonish elements that range from fighting chickens to a big orca to a bare butt on a smartphone to a few other seemingly unrelated drawings. These are all disparate elements that don’t share any theme until you start reading the book. Each of these separate drawings are important touchpoints found in the included stories. On top of giving us a preview of what’s to come, the art style does a great job of prepping us for the underpinnings of what Buxton has written: these stories have cartoonish elements while still having fully realized connections to our reality. It feels funky to say it like that because it sounds contradictory, but it’s this juxtaposition between the two that compels us to read on, carrying us through the stories and making them both unique and engaging.
The collection opens with “Lexapro,” which follows a couple of guys in an OCD Center. This is a temporary overnight facility where people struggling with different variations of obsessive-compulsive disorder can go for help. It has a staff to support patients through their journey and the main objective for a lot of the individuals staying here is to create a profile on a dating app and then try to have conversations with people of the opposite sex. This feels like an odd approach to exposure therapy to me, but it goes back to that mixture of reality and the absurd if only a light sprinkling of it.
Later, in “Monticello,” an elementary school student is supplying the entire staff with drugs. On a normal day, the teachers are nodding off, giving their students an abundance of freedom, or trying to find Dessie, the student, to acquire more drugs. It is an outrageous premise, but the moment we’re living in the world, it all feels so natural and normal. The superintendent drops in for a visit and we see how Dessie tries to work with all the teachers to pull their acts together for the smallest window of time to avoid the school being completely shut down.
Another story, “Tilikum Gets Loose” follows a guy who works at SeaWorld as one of the modest ice cream scoopers at a snack stand. This story takes place shortly after Blackfish (a documentary exposing SeaWorld) came out, so his girlfriend has the movie playing on repeat at home whenever he’s there. There’s a low-lying tension between the couple, but nothing that’s too straining on their relationship. One night, they see on the news a vehicle careens off a bridge and falls into the river below. Then the suspect—Cassie, an old friend who’s now presumed dead—shows up unexpectedly at the couple’s door. She claims there’s fifty grand in the trunk of the car, and if the guy can retrieve it, she’ll give him ten. This leads him to trying to find scuba gear, which sounds simple but, once you start trying to figure out the logistics, is far harder than it seems.
These stories—and, all the stories in So Much Heart—focus on down and out people, but what’s frustrating is we, as the readers—and a lot of time, the characters themselves—know exactly what they need to do to get themselves out of their bind. It’s like we’re forced to witness a series of self-fulfilling prophecies where the solutions are all within arm’s reach. At the same time, the obstacles that the characters need to overcome are bigger than we can see from an external perspective; for these characters to truly overcome their issues, they must do some heavy internal work. Some blockers look easy to get around from our point of view, but putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, and the situations are an impossibility. And I think that’s what’s so heart-wrenching about it all: the end is right there, but the solutions are so unobtainable they might as well be on another planet, basically showing us a study of futility.
Another way to think about the stories is how they’re so true to reality and I think the problems really would block 90% of people. It’s easy to say we need scuba gear, but would I really be able to track it down, and even if I did, would I then know how to use it? Would I have the foresight to know what to do with D.B. Cooper’s $200,000 if I found it in the middle of the woods? The reader in me says “Yes, of course,” but the human being living in our world realizes that I’m no better equipped than these characters. And this is what I mean when I say it’s cartoonish while being true to reality. These are seemingly outrageous situations, but the way the characters respond to them is authentic to life, which creates emotional connections we can latch onto while also giving us characters we can sincerely root for.
So Much Heart
By Drew Buxton
Published by With an X Books
154pgs
Paperback: 979-8987478721| July 2023 | $15.99
Joseph Edwin Haeger is the author of the experimental memoir Learn to Swim (University of Hell Press, 2015) and the novella, Bardo (Thirty West Publishing, 2023.) He writes fiction, essays, poetry, and screenplays. As a litmus test, he tells people his favorite movie is Face/Off, but there’s a part of him that’s afraid it’s true. He lives in the Inland PNW.