YOUTHFUL DESIRES by Darrell Reimer

(Darrell Reimer also blogs as "whiskeyprajer.blogspot.com)

Remember “The Naked City?” The beginning and ending was always “there are ten million stories in the Naked City -- and this was just one of them.” Well, on Lulu.com in the lit and fiction category there are 10659 books so far -- and counting. So how on earth is a poor reader supposed to know where to start? Surely a person can’t be expected to make good choices on the basis of self-designed covers and first pages.

Always happy to be of service, I offer you this modest recommendation, a review. It’s what a blogger should do. But in the interest of the sort of transparency that the Bush administration avoids, I should say that I know Darrell Reimer. Only from his blogs, though, and his comments on other blogs. And, of course, he says very flattering things about MY POD Lulu.com productions. Anyway, he has a FINE book cover for “Youthful Desires,” his book, which was done by a friend who really is an artist.

Print-on-Demand (that’s what POD stands for) is a new development that means a person doesn’t have to wait around for a publisher to get a book into print. BUT it is only PRINT on demand -- not PUBLISH on demand, so one must either contract with a company to get the publicity out or depend upon friends and word-of-mouth. There is a good deal of prejudice out there against print-on-demand, because of the association with vanity presses -- quality has nothing to do with it, the author simply pays to have the book made. With Lulu.com the author doesn’t even have to pay -- just have enough computer skills to post the manuscript like a blog. Suddenly ANYONE can have a book out there for people to buy -- IF they know to buy it.

Other prejudices intrude. If I told you I just read a smashingly good anthology of short stories written by a “Canadian Mennonite preacher’s kid” you’d sigh. You’d say, “I never figured you for a person who read that Christian lit stuff.” We all know that Canadians are sort of mild-mannered and unarmed. Mennonites -- um, are those the ones with horses? And preacher’s kids who went to Bible School for college -- oh, well. Either holy terrors or mealy-mouthed little prigs, right?

Okay. Try this one. A house-husband who cooks in a creperie and used to be the vocalist for a rock band. Happily married. Knows about the basic drugs and the youth culture...

Forget all that. Stereotypes don’t apply here. These stories sting with contemporary dilemmas, ache with love broken by culture, tickle with small comforts. His short stories are not dashed off in incoherent moments of self-indulgence, but worked out over decades with much reflection and support from his “cobbers” as he terms his fellow writers. (He lists them on his blog and there I am, though I’m an old lady who was once a Unitarian minister and I don’t even know what a “cobber” IS! I mean, aside from other writers.) These seven stories were cherry-picked from those written over decades: dated 1991, ‘92, ‘93, 2001, 2000, 2002, and 2005.

The first, “Footnote to a Bread Recipe” (1991) is about sweet and innocent first love for a boy in a rural place where the old maiden ladies bake rich buns for him to take home to his sweetheart -- a gypsy girl who works for a lawyer! Her grandmother comes and sweeps her back into that life, displacing the boy into a cross-continent working drift until he ends up in a houseboat, gently rocking, with a new girl friend. But he can’t stop thinking about the bread baked by those old maiden ladies.

The second story, “Kissing Einstein” (1992) is about a child caught between warring parents and finding solace in a poster that refuses to just stay stuck to the wall.

The title story “Youthful Desires” (2000) explores the trade-off between lustful love and faithful friendship and hinges on a vision or trope or metaphor that has been preoccupying me ever since. These college people are on a complex campus that includes a monastery. The protagonist can see through a window into a large room, maybe a gymnasium. He (and his buddy sees it, too, so it’s not a hallucination -- maybe a folie a deux) sees what appears to be “flying nuns” in that room, wearing old-fashioned black robes and veils, seemingly dancing or doing some kind of Eastern judo, right off the floor and flingiing each other back and forth. What does it mean? Why is it so compelling? He goes over to find out who they are and asks the monk who comes to the door, but the monk, puzzled, says there are no nuns there. You’ll just have to read it to form your own opinion.

“The Spirit of ‘76” (2002) is about the hell-on-earth we all read about in Dear Abby. “Mike Mentzer, R.I.P.” (2001) is about the weight-lifting community and their great hero, whose death plunges them into sorrow. Darrell’s gift is both his empathy for ordinary guys in tough trade-offs and his grip on the big problems that theologians take on. In my opinion, that’s the heart of ministry AND the heart of literature: “Where do we come from? Where are we going? What must we do to be saved?”

Go to Lulu.com. Type in “Darrell Reimer” and/or “Youthful Desires.” If you’re entirely broke, return some bottles or something so you can at least download it through the library’s computer. I mean, this is not a book for rich people or stuck-up people. It’s about how to get by in a tough world.