Banjo Grease

by Dennis Must

Overview

But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from. —William Faulkner, Light in August

There is an inexplicable gravity in a small town. It can be read and enjoyed like a favorite book for most of its inhabitants. Comforting are its streets and institutions, its wedding and obituary announcements. Banjo Grease is about life and death in a mill town where at each epiphany and rite of passage, the narrator yields a ration of innocence. Characters portray class as a marker as strong as race and gender, and distrust that they will ever escape in their lifetimes. Faulkner uses the term “eager fatalism.” These stories’ cumulative effect asks: When exchanging naivete for worldliness, what is lost in denying one’s past?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597090353
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	11/19/2019
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Dennis Mustis the author of three novels: Brother Carnival (Red Hen Press, November 2018), The World’s Smallest Bible (Red Hen Press, March 2014), and Hush Now, Don’t Explain (Coffeetown Press, October 2014), as well as three short story collections: Going Dark (Coffeetown Press, 2016), Oh, Don’t Ask Why (Red Hen Press, 2007), and Banjo Grease (Creative Arts Book Company, 2000). He won the 2014 Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award for Hush Now, Don’t Explain, and The World’s Smallest Bible was a 2014 USA Best Book Award Finalist in the Literary Fiction category. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway and he has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

http://www.dennismust.com/index.html

Read an Excerpt

From “Say Hello to Stanley”

The day Buddy ceased playing for the Rollerdrome all the regulars sat on the skate floor, the mirror ball chasing magenta, heliotrope, indigo and mustard-yellow lights circling the grand hanger in darkness, mechanical fireflies all on permanent tethers . . . It was the strangest melancholic night, almost masochistic for Buddy and the crowd. Some of the rollers had been attending regularly for the six years Buddy'd been playing. It wasn't the skating so much as his cherubic face, his boyish laughter, and his Chet Baker's girl-voice ballads that kept them coming back.

He was moving onto the big time now. No more sweat effluvium wafting up the skate floor, the silly mechanical pas de deux, the skate-dancing charades, the maestros who only chose to dance alone. Forty-year-old women with hair freshly dyed and sculpted up like an Eiffel tower, their sequined skate costumes causing the colored lights to swirl on their derrieres like the mirror ball on the ceiling. Or the men with pompadour-hair and cigarette packs—Lucky Strikes, mostly—rolled up in their T-shirt sleeves, tight trousers held up by plastic belts, doing those leaps into the air to the beat of Buddy’s sweet music, lost in their odeons, barbers and telephone clerks by days, stars in the Rollerdrome orbit at night—Oh, God, he wouldn’t miss them . . .

They wanted Buddy to sing to them. He had this “wish board” up in his booth that controlled every light on the floor, the speed of the mirror ball, the speaker system. Buddy Hart, the Master of the mise en scene, the Harlin County Artaud, the Rollerdrome wizard. Tonight they wanted Chet Baker.

The giant mirror-faced moon he ratcheted down to a drug-induced revolution, the thousand shards of light-illuminated flies with mirror backs, all the colors of a dreamer’s rainbow, and the B-3 began to drone, in the lower register, a reedy vibrato. Buddy wasn't Jimmy Smith no more. Instead a lachrymose idol. Up there in the booth hovering over them. Long mournful ommmmmms.

As if he wanted to purge them with a colonic of sadness. The audience watched the flies circle the wall and the floors. Like some kind of star calliope jar they were inside, except lying on the floor looking up at the hangar steel-trussed heavens. Christ, it was strange out there on Route I-27 on the outskirts of Niles, a dink copper-refinery town, its sulfurous odor hanging over the valley like a scrim. The skaters with their red-and-white yarn pom-poms on the toes of their skate-shoes parked forlornly alongside them.

Table of Contents

  1  Escape
     14  Chrysalis
     25  Big Whitey
    38  Say Hello to Stanley
     54  Horace
     65  Day Laborer
     78  The Scar
     93  Popeye's Dead
    108  Passing Through Ambridge
    124  Banjo Grease
    140  The Aviary
    143  The Pruner
    146  White Shoulders
    154  Nolde's Sun
    166  Cloth
    174  Oh, Josephine

What People are Saying About This

Mark Wisniewski

Graced by quicksilvery dialogue and sure-footed prose, Banjo Grease offers refreshing boldness: Dennis Must refuses to re-observe the familiar anterooms of fiction, embracing troubled characters with an understanding that allows them to show their heart. (Mark Wisniewski, author of Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman)

Kate Gale

These stories float through the reader like frozen images. Each one fits into the others unevenly as jagged glass. This is the essence of great fiction at the end of the century; Ray Carver and Thom Jones plowed into some stupendous force that whips along with a tilted wild energy. These are stories men will love for the railroads, the old cars, the grandfathers who are ex-cons, and women will love for the huddled desires, for the way each story tears at the shreds of love and leaves remains flapping that are somehow remnants worth having. (Kate Gale, Poet and Editor of Red Hen Press, Palmdale, California)

Editorial Reviews

"These stories float through the reader like frozen images. Each one fits into the others unevenly as jagged glass. This is the essence of great fiction at the end of the century; Ray Carver and Thom Jones plowed into some stupendous force that whips along with a tilted wild energy."
—Kate Gale, author of Goldilocks Zone

"Dennis Must’s first collection of short stories is no ordinary debut but the mature work of a fully accomplished literary artist. Moreover, his originality, his deep irreverence, and his compassion for working-class men and women . . . Strivers and seekers of dreams, signal him as an inspired author in a new American grain—a visionary, poet, and realist"
—Tom Jenks, editor (with Raymond Carver) of American Short Story Masterpieces

"Dennis Must’s stunning collection Banjo Grease is just what one hopes for: a series of intriguing, interlocking stories whose cumulative force goes beyond the sum of its parts."
—Geoffrey Clark, author of Jackdog Summer, What the Moon Said, and Rabbit Fever

From the Publisher

2019-09-02
Short stories that explore forlorn lives in Middle America.

Originally published in 2000, this is a reissue of Must's (Brother Carnival, 2018, etc.) first collection of short stories, 16 mostly linked tales primarily set in the small, "suffocating," eastern Pennsylvania town of Hebron, outside of Erie, during the 1960s. This is mill, refinery, pottery, and railroad country. Most of the stories focus on the Daugherty family: two brothers, Westley and Jim; their parents, Margaret and Joe, who live in a "place of marital barrenness"; and assorted relatives. Sex is a prominent theme, usually presented in rather perverse, juvenile ways. As the character who's working as a gigolo in "Day Laborer" says, "There are times when depravity beckons each of us down." Copulation scenes abound, as do references to genitals, usually in colorful language—"Her pussy's drier than an Okie dust bowl." It gets rather tiresome. The title story deals with Westley visiting his Aunt Min and Uncle George, who run the Skyline Drive-in near Hebron. His uncle recounts the time his wife accidentally used banjo grease instead of Vaseline as a sexual lubricant—"I felt like she had taken a blowtorch to my pecker." The next morning, Westley and George canvass the parking lot picking up condoms, ladies' undergarments, and dollar bills. "Popeye's Dead," a reference to Jim's penis, seems to owe something to Joyce's "Araby." The young brothers visit a local bazaar, and Jim experiences firsthand the midway sideshow's tawdry world of women. "Big Whitey" is an incisive tale about a young man who gets a job at a White Castle in New York City. "Nolde's Sun," which references the German-Dutch painter, is a grim story about the accidental death of 3-year-old Ben when the Daughertys were visiting family friends. People adrift trying to escape their pasts.

For the most part, disappointing, off-putting works played in a minor key.

Kirkus Reviews

Dennis Must understands the pull and promise of the places we call home. These are tough and tender stories about people who don't ask for much-and frequently get a little less. And yet Must has an eye for the small pleasures and sustaining hopes that shine through our darkest days. —Author of Perfect Agreement, Mother of God, and A Narrow Time

Michael Downing

  “Dennis Must’s first collection of short stories is no ordinary debut, but the mature work of a fully accomplished literary artist.  Moreover, his originality, his deep irreverence, and his compassion for working-class men and women, parents and children, strivers and seekers of dreams, signal him as an inspired author in a new American grain-a visionary, poet and realist...”               -editor (with Raymond Carver) of American Short Story Masterpieces; Narrative Magazine, 2002.

Tom Jenks

“Dennis Must’s stunning collection BANJO GREASE is just what one hopes for: a series of intriguing, interlocking stories whose cumulative force goes far beyond the sum of its parts. There remain many possible variations on the theme of initiation, and Must touches on most in a way that invites favorable comparison with Hemingway, Twain, and Sherwood Anderson.”               -author of several books including Jackdog Summer, Wedding in October, Schooling the Spirit, Rabbit Fever, and All The Way Home.

Geoffrey Clark

These assorted tales are Faulknerian, robust, sometimes ribald, sometimes wise, endlessly celebratory and calming. Always, almost, we hear a mitigant echo of profoundest sorrow, reminding us of purpose.—Mandrake Poetry Review

David Castleman