Reviewed by Danielle Alexander

Gary Amdahl’s impressive debut story collection Visigoth articulates the lyrical qualities of masculine anger and violence. For this reason, readers may be tempted to assume that the book, beneath its arresting language, amounts to a simplistic celebration of men and ungovernable rage. However, doing so would be a mistake. The collection is a nuanced exploration of American masculinity—in terms of labor, politics, sports, the frontier spirit (however attenuated), and liberalism—as well as a subtle commentary on the ways masculinity has been romanticized in American literature. Ultimately the collection addresses questions of justice, and is less about rage than outrage.

Amdahl’s protagonists are aware of being both seduced and undermined by their own violent emotions and acts. In the title story, Neale, a college hockey player, is painfully conscious of his own persona and its limits, but instead of drawing back he plunges into it more deeply. College hockey players “tend toward the bully and the dumbbell; as for myself, yes, and yes again, Christ, yes, all that and more. I had all my teeth until this time last year, at which high-water mark they exploded from my gums like tiny enameled angels, bursting in a rain of blood heavenward, released at last from this pit of woe, my mouth.” This “pit of woe” gets him into trouble with his girlfriend, other players, and almost everyone else. But Neale can’t (or won’t) shut up. His crazy-articulate prose drives him apart from everything and everyone and, through this separation, gives his personality shape and meaning. Language is a bludgeon with which he smashes the trite, the dishonest, the petty.

If the author had made the mistake of taking his own superheated lyricism too seriously, it might have rendered these stories pompous and dishonest (qualities actively despised by his characters). Amdahl avoids this by weaving into his prose an ironic awareness (often present in the dialogue) of the inadequacies of language and, perhaps, of how other American fiction writers have dealt with these issues. Certain exchanges seem to parody mid-twentieth-century minimalists like Raymond Carver. For example, a fight with the girlfriend, again, from “Visigoth”:

‘Get out.’

‘Why did you do this?’

Suddenly my brain let go and I had much to say. ‘I have no time for this quotidian busywork!’ I shouted. ‘Round-table exchanges of reasonable views and compromise and balanced diets and designated drivers—you want sanity and routine, find a farmer! I’m crazy! I’m a star! I’m out of my mind! I’m tired of the virulent smugness of these people and their struggles to reconcile check registers with bank statements!’

‘You what? You what what what? ” She was up and at me.”