Squabble, and Other Stories by John Holman

First published: 1990

Type of work: Short stories

Type of plot: Naturalism

Time of work: Late twentieth century

Locale: United States

Principal Characters:

• Sarah, an ambitious African American professional woman
• Aaron, an out-of-work geography professor who becomes a bartender
• Dennis, an old friend of Aaron from high school who is a factory foreman

The Stories

Squabble, and Other Stories is the first collection of John Holman’s short fiction. The title story is about a young professor who loses his teaching job because of budget cutbacks and ends up tending bar at a dive where customers have to be searched for weapons before being allowed to enter. He meets an assortment of unusual characters, including a vivacious young woman with whom he contemplates having a love affair. The point of the story seems to be that upward mobility for African Americans is fraught with danger.

In “Peso Street,” another young intellectual type is thrown in with a group of unusual characters at a house party. Some of the characters seem to have underworld connections. They talk about a recent funeral that degenerated into a brawl. The very pointlessness of the story seems to underline the alienation of the characters involved.

In “Presence,” two young black friends are working on a car at their apartment complex. A young white truck driver tries to make friends with them by bringing a six-pack of beer. He tells them a story of a violent family feud. The two friends feel uncomfortable with his “presence” and obviously wish he would go away. The story symbolizes the difficulties blacks and whites have relating to one another, even when they have the best intentions.

In “I and I,” three young men are delivering cocaine to various dealers in the state of Mississippi. They stay high on alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. They pick up a couple of young local women and stage an impromptu party in a deserted house. All three men seem to realize that they are trapped in a trade that will inevitably lead to prison or death. The story reflects the fatalism of many modern African American men.

“On Earth” is the story of a sensitive young man who leaves home because he realizes that his parents have gotten old, and he cannot bear to see them die. He ends up going to college in another city and renting a furnished room from a tough-minded landlady who shares the house with her daughter and young grandson. The young hero becomes a part of this family, but his landlady suddenly dies of a stroke and he realizes that he will soon have to move on again. The story illustrates the omnipresence of death and suffering “on earth.”

“Scuff” is one of Holman’s stories that contrast upwardly mobile African Americans with African Americans who seem doomed to remain ignorant, impoverished, and confined to the ghetto. Sarah, a smart, ambitious young professional, is saddled with an irresponsible younger brother who camps in her apartment, eats all of her food, breaks her possessions, and refuses to look for a job. In the meantime, she is carrying on a hopeless affair with her boss, who is married.

In “The Story of Art History,” a young college professor visits a shopping mall and is accused of stealing some junk jewelry. Even though a body search proves that he is innocent, he is asked to leave the mall. This is the only overt incident of racial discrimination in Holman’s stories. The young professor goes to visit some friends and dances with a pretty coed who is majoring in art history, but his whole day has been darkened by his humiliating experience.

“Yard Lights, Water, and Wink” is an impressionistic story about the long-term relationship between a young woman and an old man. His renegade attitude toward life has inspired her to retain her individuality as she is exposed to the homogenizing influence of higher education. The story symbolizes the relationship between modern African Americans and their indomitable ancestors who survived slavery, poverty, and repression to make a better life possible for future generations.

“I Did That” is composed of six very brief memoirs of a man’s childhood. He seems to have been exceptionally sensitive, lonely, and in need of love. The six episodes convey an expressionistic picture of the segregated neighborhood in which he grew up and the type of people who lived there.

“Pimp” is another story that contrasts an upwardly mobile African American with one who seems doomed to failure because of race and environment. A young woman who is headed for college meets a former childhood sweetheart after he has been away for six years. He drags her into an unsavory adventure that makes her painfully aware of how incompatible they have become.

“Monroe’s Wedding” is yet another story that contrasts middle-class and lower-class African Americans. A middle-aged, divorced, lonely college graduate who is building a profitable gardening business is coerced by an improvident employee to be the best man at the employee’s upcoming wedding. While shopping for a wedding gift, the best man impulsively invites an attractive white saleswoman to attend the wedding with him. She seems tempted to accept but then declines. He thinks about her afterward, wishing he could get to know her better and realizing that her feelings were similar to his. The story symbolizes the evolving relations between blacks and whites in the South.

All of Holman’s stories belong unmistakably to the minimalist school. The common denominator of minimalist fiction is that it puts the reader in the position of being a combination of voyeur and eavesdropper. The relation of the reader to the story is similar to that of the viewer to many French “New Wave” films. No effort is made to orient the reader or viewer regarding the background to the story. The reader of a minimalist story is forced to do a lot of guesswork because he or she usually is dropped right into the middle of the story, with the author never bothering to introduce the characters or perhaps even failing to mention where the story takes place.

The Characters

Holman does not mention that his principal characters are African Americans, perhaps because white authors do not think it necessary to mention that their characters are white. The racial identity of Holman’s characters, along with much other factual information, has to be deduced from what the reader can see and hear.

Minimalism is effective because it forces the reader to grope for clues to understand what is going on. This forces active participation and ideally engages and absorbs the reader in the action of the story, even if the story does not contain any intensely dramatic events. Minimalism is also a sort of hyperrealism: It rarely deals with spectacular events, because such events are the exception rather than the rule in life and hence are unrealistic.

It is not common practice for minimalist authors to highlight their themes and meanings. These too have to be deduced from what the reader sees, hears, and vicariously experiences. Minimalist authors frequently are accused of writing mere “slices of life” or “vignettes,” terms that used to be anathema in critical circles but have lost some of their sting with the appearance of such fine minimalist writers as Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, and Holman.

It is significant—and amusing—that reviews of Holman’s Squabble, and Other Stories offered many different interpretations of the author’s themes and meanings. It seems as though readers are free to make an independent assessment of what Holman is trying to communicate, which is probably exactly the way Holman wanted it. He is not dealing specifically with the problems of racism and segregation. The best description of his goal in these short and often cryptic stories is that he is trying to paint a living picture of contemporary reality without being obvious in communicating a message. He leaves it up to readers to make moral judgments. All of his stories seem to say, “This is what life is like for African Americans in the South in the last decade of the twentieth century.”

That life seems to have improved since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s but still involves segregation and deprivation. There are opportunities for economic advancement, but upwardly mobile African Americans may feel unwelcome in a predominantly white middle-class milieu and at the same time cut off from their own social roots. Racism is no longer blatant but still is omnipresent. The subtlety of racial prejudice that exists in the “new” South is appropriately conveyed by the subtlety that characterizes Holman’s short stories. Many African Americans, like Americans in general, feel alienated and bewildered by the accelerating changes taking place in contemporary America. They are victims of what author Alvin Toffler termed “future shock.”

Critical Context

Most criticism of Holman’s stories has been favorable, although some critics have expressed antipathy toward his minimalist style. In her review of Squabble, and Other Stories in The New York Times Book Review, fiction writer Margot Mifflin, obviously a member of the antiminimalist camp, complained that Holman sounded too derivative. Her only praise went to the story “Yard Lights, Water, and Wink,” which she called “an astonishing departure from a plodding impressionism into a perfect explosion of expressionism.” She expressed the hope that Holman would write more such stories if he would “stop echoing his teachers’ voices and find his own.”

Holman actually took writing courses with two of the most famous minimalist short-story writers, Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme. The resemblance between Holman’s and Carver’s stories is particularly striking; Holman even has a wry humor that strongly resembles Carver’s. Holman’s humorous attitude toward the perplexities of modern life is a feature often singled out by critics who have discussed his stories. Although it is undeniable that Holman often “echoes his teachers’ voices,” it is a moot question whether he should abandon minimalism, since he has demonstrated such mastery of its techniques that he might be considered Carver’s natural successor.

Bibliography

Barth, John. “A Few Words About Minimalism.” The New York Times Book Review, December 28, 1986, 1. This article makes it easy to understand the heated controversy concerning minimalist fiction. An understanding of minimalism is indispensable to an understanding of Holman’s stories. Barth is definitely not a minimalist himself but displays an open-minded attitude in his discussion.

Carver, Raymond. Where I’m Calling From. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988. Carver, who died in 1988, was the foremost minimalist writer of his time and had a powerful influence on Holman’s literary career. Reading Carver is essential to understanding minimalism in contemporary American fiction, just as understanding minimalism is essential to understanding Holman’s work.

Cecil, Vicki. Review of Squabble, and Other Stories, by John Holman. Library Journal 115 (May 15, 1990): 94. Holman’s stories receive enthusiastic commendation for their sense of humor and generally realistic portrayal of contemporary young African Americans. Cecil is one of few critics to call attention to Holman’s compassionate attitude toward social misfits.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Scribner, 1966. Two early Hemingway stories, “The Killers” and “Hills Like White Elephants,” are among the earliest examples of American minimalism. Reading them is indispensable to understanding the aims and methods of contemporary minimalists such as Carver and Holman.

Hempel, Amy. “Young Blacks in the ’New’ South.” Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 5, 1990, 13. Hempel analyzes each of the stories included in Squabble, and Other Stories. Her main focus is the influence of Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme.

Kirkus Reviews. Review of Squabble, and Other Stories, by John Holman. 58 (March 15, 1990): 365. The reviewer displays a prejudice against minimalism in general and describes the stories as “unfinished” and “anorexic” while conceding that Holman has considerable talent.

Lemon, Lee. Review of Squabble, and Other Stories, by John Holman. Prairie Schooner 65 (Summer, 1991): 129. Lemon believes that all of Holman’s stories have to do with “gamesmanship” and “makeshift survival strategies” that have evolved from traditional African American tactics for surviving in a hostile environment.

Mifflin, Margot. Review of Squabble, and Other Stories, by John Holman. The New York Times Book Review, July 22, 1990, 20. Mifflin’s review is unusual in its strongly negative attitude toward Holman’s literary style. She thinks that the common denominator of his stories is the “existential impotence” of his African American characters.

Nelson, E. S. Review of Squabble, and Other Stories, by John Holman. Choice 28 (November, 1990): 484. This enthusiastic reviewer praises Holman’s “ironic gentleness” and “remarkable subtlety.”