Pete Stevens' Tomorrow Music: A Book Review

Before reviewing Tomorrow Music by Pete Stevens, I need to fully disclose that Pete is a former student of mine. True, he was a student of mine over ten years ago. We’ve remained in touch here and there, but largely not. To some extent, Twitter has brought us into more contact than we have been in a long time. It was through Twitter that I’d learned that Map Literary had awarded him the Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Prize for his Tomorrow Music manuscript. I subsequently purchased the book, read it, and am now reviewing it.

The chapbook itself is beautifully published with great care taken by the designers and editors over at Map Literary. It’s a thin book (tall, too… both adjectives that also accurately describe Pete). In total it is 37 pages, not unusual for a chapbook, but don’t let the length fool you. It’s pages are packed with some stunning wordsmithing, but also substance. And it’s the substance with which I am most pleased.

I remember one of the last times I saw Pete, we were in a train station in Flint, MI. Like many there that morning, we were on our way to Chicago for the AWP conference. Pete was very excited about going. For myself, I was lukewarm about it. I don’t care much for that whole scene and, the two times I attended an AWP, I ended up feeling lonely, even while surrounded by thousands of writers. I would later learn that Pete went on to pursue an MFA in fiction writing.

I’m also lukewarm about the whole MFA scene. I don’t want to paint in broad strokes, but I’m going to make bold to paint some generalizations. I’m not certain how significant MFA programs have been in the advancement of literature. I’m fairly old school when it comes to literature and, for me, that which I call literature has to be after something. It must be in pursuit of some Truth. It’s not just style and artifice, but the style is serving to support some greater substance, some greater truth.

I will admit that much (but not all) of what I see coming out of MFA programs seems to be artifice over art. Style is king, even if that style supports little actual substance. Experimentation is co-king but, again, the experiment is for experiment’s sake. MFA programs are churning out what I would call “creative writers” but not always “writers.” For myself, when I read a story, I think, “Could I teach this in my lit course?” Usually the answer is no. Most I could teach in my fiction writing course because, for would-be writers, there’s always something to learn about craft from any published writing. As to the substance of what I find in much of what passes for a short story… well, I think of Gertrude Stein and her saying, “There’s no there there.”

When I think of literary writers, I think of people fascinated with life and trying to say something about it. They are students of life. Their means for saying something about it is writing… so the writing serves the purpose of ruminating on or commenting upon some aspect of the human condition. Literary fiction writers, for me, lie to tell the Truth. The human condition comes first, and the writing serves it. 

It strikes me that in much MFA writing the writing is the thing by itself. The writing serves the writing. When I strip away the shiny artifice of the story’s style and craft… well, I find little there. They are like a fireworks display -- beautiful, fleeting, and with no resonance. So, like a fireworks display, not lasting (try to remember the details of any fireworks display you’ve attended. You might remember the people or events that happened, but you don’t remember the display itself. They blend together in your mind with all the other fireworks you’ve seen. That’s kind of the feel I get from a lot of MFA writing). It’s fleeting and without resonance, and so I don’t need much of it in my life, in the same way that I’m good with about one fireworks display a year.

I think the issue is that in the end, you can't teach somebody to have something to say. They either have something to say or they don't. And so, the MFA professor is left teaching what can be taught... style and experimentation. Craft. But the crafting of what?

But, this could just be the kind of MFA writing that I find myself exposed to through certain venues rather than be indicative of everything that comes out of such programs. I don't know...

This is all a very long way of saying that it was with trepidation that I started to read Pete’s book. I knew that he was drawn to the AWP/MFA scene. That’s not all bad, but I’ve seen many with something to say forget to say it once they are sucked into the world of style over substance, artifice over art. I knew I was going to be impressed with Pete’s wordsmithing (and I was!) but I worried that it might just be another fireworks display.

I can say this much, and I don’t say it lightly… I could teach Pete’s stories not only in my fiction writing course, but in my literature course.

Pete Steven’s Tomorrow Music contains just two short stories, but they are developed and earn their space. The first, “Inventory of a Collapse” tells the story of Sara and James. It is a story about relationships and it deals well with expectation versus experience/dreams versus reality. It is wonderfully written, broken up into vignettes that involve the couple in various stages of their relationship… and might even represent alternate realities of what they could have been. What is at the heart of it is two people bringing their own expectations to the table and how something that starts in promise runs the high risk of being twisted into something like a drowning.

In the following passage, you can experience Stevens’ prowess with words and sentences and style, but the last line also hints at that dream versus reality theme that he explores so well:

“At the foot of a mountain we found our cave, our home. We cleared the brush with broad strokes and you laughed at the growth of my beard. We talked about cocoons and how to swaddle. We talked about bottles and when to feed. You said we were like bears in a den, that all we needed was our cub. Your belly was so swollen I wondered if it might burst. At night I wrote in a journal so I could show you the steps that we took, how we learned and how we settled. You said you never wanted to leave and our roots began to take hold. This was before the cries under the moonlight, before little Quinn, before we knew what we had.”

The dream? Living like no other couple… an existence of sucking the marrow from life.

The reality? All of those other couples with babies… they aren’t choosing to live a mundane life. The fragile child’s existence needs the mundane.

Later in the story, in another vignette, Sara invites a hitman to brunch. The man is dismissive of James and downright sexual with Sara. For a minute here, my believability trigger went off. I thought, “What are you doing here, Pete… you’re going too far.” But, then, I realized… the hitman is a metaphor. He’s a symbol. It’s something I don’t see a lot of in much contemporary writing… the use of symbol. The hitman stands for the hitman that is baked into every relationship. Every relationship contains within it the future misunderstanding, betrayal, or indifference that could kill it. Whether or not that’s what Stevens meant, it’s there. There’s there there.

The second story in the collection is by far my favorite, entitled: “Oral History of the Lansing Motors Second Annual Truck Touch (as Transcribed by Lisa Poole, Assistant Manager)”

It is a tour de force in the exploration of our preoccupation with material things over the deeper things of life. Six people stand at a car dealership with their hand on a brand-new truck. The winner of the truck is the last person still touching the truck. They get ten-minute breaks every two hours but otherwise must keep their hand on the truck.

The story is wonderfully told through each person’s point-of-view. Quincy, for instance, works at a Taco Bell, but dreams of selling the truck to help fund the production of his screenplay. He tells us:

“Any project needs funding, grease. My production is no different. And my eyes are still open, my legs aren’t sore. Twenty hours have passed with my hand on this truck. I’ve worked twenty-hour shifts at a twenty-four-hour Taco Bell. I’m the John Wick of this bitch, can’t be fazed. Better realize and take notice. This is the impetus, my origin story, and everyone here has killed my dog. They’re trying to steal my car.”

The story is artfully and entertainingly told, but also has much to say about a society driven by the pursuit of material things. Even in the passage above we see how material goods turn fellow human beings into adversaries… something to compete against rather than to love. At one point Sofia catches  Derrick popping with his free hand what she guesses is some kind of upper for staying awake. She asks of him, “Don’t you think we should play by the rules?” He defends himself without acknowledging his drugs by saying, “My hand hasn’t left the truck.” Like so often happens in a capitalist society, the rule breakers aren’t punished, and even the judge of the Truck Touch contest defends Derrick’s innocence. 

Stevens’ story is a microcosm representation of our capitalist society and shows how its values can turn us into terrible human beings unless we somehow discover what’s truly important.

Tomorrow Music was a true pleasure, and you can purchase your own copy: here.

Jeff Vande Zande is an English professor at Delta College in Michigan. His latest collection, The Neighborhood Division: Stories, is now out through Whistling Shade Press and available: here.