Thomas Hubbard reviews Larry Crist's "Alibi for the Scapegoat"

Alibi for the Scapegoat
Poems & Stories by Larry Christ

ISBN 979-8-4514264-3-2
Avtograf Press,
Chelyabinsk, Russia
Contact: larrycrist13@gmail.com

Available from Amazon online

2021, paperback, 255 pages, $15.00

Alibis for the living
A review by Thomas Hubbard

 We all want to be understood. It’s a basic human need, transcending differences of race, geography, sexual orientation, even religion or lack thereof. We want people to understand why we do what we do, why we love those we love, why we make the decisions we make, why we are the way we are.

Unconsciously or deliberately, we manage our appearance, our speech, information we include or exclude, and our actions of the moment, in order to shape how others understand us . . . and to provide alibi for any aspect they might find unseemly. Larry Crist’s new collection of autobiographical poems and short stories, Alibi for the Scapegoat, exemplifies pursuit of this human need most eloquently. His conversationally-acerbic writing style fits the reality in which he grew up.

Larry Crist’s acerbic writing style fits the reality in which he grew up.

Crist gives us seven views of himself; seven sections of poems, reminiscences, and short stories loosely organized around seven aspects of the life he has lived or imagined. The opening section focuses on would-be actors, writers, and hangers-on, often hanging out afternoons and evenings in bars. Their desultory conversations evince frustration, ennui, and wry humor. The short story, “Reunion,” (pg.31) establishes the section’s mood.

 Crist begins by describing the scene:

They waited tables and ran the bar . . . and we were always in restaurants or bars, theatrical pit stops, and they—the actor / waiter was easy to spot: well-groomed, articulate: ON. Introducing themselves in an upbeat breezy manner, a joke or suggestion. They knew you by your company, your clothes and conversation, the ubiquitous actorbag; you couldn’t be more naked unless you were naked. Eventually everyone came to New York, as had Robertson and me. You could pass through every town and city on earth and wouldn’t see half of who you might see just hanging around the corners of 8th & 42nd Street. Which was close to where we began drinking that day, Saint Paddy’s Day, making up for the past ten years.

Having set the stage, Crist begins the action: As they wait for his lady friend Ursula to join them, he and his friend Rick Robertson order another pitcher of beer and continue discussing, reminiscing and laughing about the minor roles in obscure theatrical productions they’ve played over the years.

 Further into the conversation, Robertson, explaining why he failed to show up for a recent audition, announces that he’s given up acting and begun writing screenplays instead. “The story I was working on is based in part on this cane. Did I show you this cane?” Ursula arrives and sits beside Crist as Robertson, who has no need of a cane, is showing Crist how the cane’s head is also a flask for liquor, and the tip has a hidden dagger.

 The trio continues bantering, extolling the virtues of New York City, and drinking through the afternoon until the waiter brings their bill. Surprised at the amount they owe, the three drunkenly conspire to “dash” without paying. Ursula will go to the restroom, Crist and Robertson will leave separately. They meet outside only to discover Robertson has left his cane so they have to return, embarrassed, and cough up the cash.

In the book’s second section, Crist focuses on his early childhood in California’s wine country and later in San Francisco. His family was still together, until his dad became a “hippie” and money became tight. He recounts a fourth-grade school outing to San Francisco during the Summer of Love, and he tells us about “The Adventures of Bullet and Speed,” a pair of pre-puberty crime fighters complete with homemade costumes. He was Bullet.

In the short story, “The Creek,” Crist and his mom move into a real house in Mill Valley, with his granddaddy, and he begins the fifth grade as an educational underachiever with ADD (Attention-deficit / hyperactivity Disorder), but with new friends and a creek to explore. And the creek runs through a rather long tunnel: Adventure!

The third section finds Crist dealing pot in high school, with an attitude and a probation officer. But he also has a brand-new stepfather, Frank. In the short story, “Restitution,” Frank informs Crist that his “granddaddy” has died and left him $10,000. All but $18.75 of the inheritance, however, is absorbed by fines and restitution for Crist’s juvie offenses and a stay in “the Hall,” followed by time in a “boy’s ranch.” To end the story, Crist writes, “He left the room and I returned to rolling my future.”

The poem, “High school,” (pg.93) reviews Crist’s high school years. It begins:

We lived in parking lots off scrapes of notice
Stepping in and out of daddy’s cars—
greasers, stoners, hoods, jocks, ra-ras . . .
back seat parties, windows tight
swirling colored clouds, sucking back green
and gray smoke . . .

It ends:

Gas fifty cents a gallon, cigarettes fifty cents a pack
cars cobbled together with bailing wire, cars
we drove too fast like we had somewhere to be
Cars like us that could die anytime.

Two more short stories, “Beans” and “Trampoline,” plus several explicative poems, round out the section, completing Crist’s accounting for his chaotic high school years.

Overall, the fourth section is a Larry Crist paean to Seattle, opening with a hilarious poem, “When idols call.” Bukowski drops in for a visit, asking for a beer. Crist sucker punches Bukowski and kicks him out, to find the front yard full of famous dead poets and authors, each of whom he showers with disrespect before chasing everybody away in the manner of an irritable teenage curmudgeon.

Not far into the section we find the poem, “Entering Seattle.” In it, Crist and a friend have driven up from Northern California. Reading through the piece, we come upon the exquisite lines: “. . . We come up over the ridge / where Seattle spreads out like a picnic in a storm / It looks like it always does / only it is new to us. My wipers keep time / to a Nirvana song.” Such an image makes this poem a keeper. Crist touches poetically on Seattle street names in one poem, a proposed suicide prevention net under the Aurora Bridge in another, then pedestrian traffic around Green Lake, on Aurora Avenue North Ave., followed by a down-and-outer in a thrift store purchasing a plastic cello that has only one string. Then he presents an old Seattle favorite, his poem “Tuba Man.” It further immortalizes the well-known Seattle street musician who used to sit on a chair in stadium parking lots, playing his tuba before events. Tuba man was murdered by a group of teenagers in 2008.

For the second piece in section 5, “Endless Bounty,” Crist switches into third person with a beautifully wistful short story. A man, Harvey, returns to the seaside town of his childhood to find it in decline. The fishing boat that had provided a living for his father and grandfather is renamed, belonging to a new owner. Familiar businesses in old buildings have disappeared, buildings and all.

 The poem, “Summer in Philly 1985,” has as its possible central image a poor neighborhood on a hot day, where “The Good Humor Man circles like a vulture.” The focus of this section is on depression—of individuals, businesses, institutions, cities—perhaps reality itself.

Section 5 gives us three pieces about transportation, “No one can tell you are drunk on the train;” then “Broken bus,” about a full bus broken down besides Highway 101 on a very hot day; and then “Onboard the #52,” where the next passenger to board after Crist is Death himself. After Crist reaches his stop and dismounts, the last sentence in the poem, and indeed in the section, is “The sound it makes pulling away is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

 Section 6 (pg.199) amounts to only one long poem tracing the development of television as his family experienced it: “TV: The Lost years.” It begins,

TVs were big boxy affairs
immovable monoliths
cupboards of fake wood veneer
dials and knobs
you had to touch
an antenna mounted
on chimney or roof

 . . .

I imagined Nielsen
that rating’s guy
looking in to see
who was still there . . .

Crist describes his mother, a teacher then, grading papers in front of the television, and himself, “He watches and doesn’t watch / Both parents in the room / are enough for him,” and his father, “Husband / father—squints through ancient / horn-rims. A green sheen across his chin / reclining in an armchair.” He describes television content of the time, “Radio’s vulgar paradigm reborn / The 22 minute sit-com, the 44 minute drama / another soap sponsored seque / to get you through the day . . .” And he touches on what was lost with the advent of TV, “Life was quieter—before tv / You could hear crickets and / frogs—the geese by the pond / rain pelt the roof . . .” Later he touches on the programming then available for kids,

Beside Captain Kangaroo, there isn’t much
or kids. Those preschool days were idyllic times
waking early to the jingle of the Captain’s keys, him
always please to see me—such steadfast company
The Captain leaning in upon Dutch doors with his Dutch
boy cut, speaking to me like i was a regular person . . .

 This marathon poem goes on to recount real happenings alongside commercials of the time, and it comments on changes in society and upon Crist’s awareness of them. It continues in this manner as Crist gradually becomes disillusioned with tv, and after one final relapse during a hospital stay, he concludes about tv, “. . . its golden age is gone / our frequencies have shifted / abandoned sets collect / The repairmen have long since retired. . . .” 

The poem, “Pair of pistols,” opens section 7, beginning with the line, “My mother keeps a pair of pistols / One by her bedstead / the other, atop a tall bookcase.” Crist explains that one of the guns was his father’s and the other his maternal grandfather’s. He expresses intense dislike for both deceased men. The poem’s end mentions their legacy of foreboding, picturing the weapons they left behind (pg.217): 

Both [men] silent for decades
haunting us at leisure
while these lethal extensions linger
Their chambers cold, empty, a faint
scent of oil, a full magazine ready
a box of bullets close by

It is followed by “Final Purchase,” a short story about a man named Milo (who has Alzheimer’s). He buys a pistol and one bullet and goes home. Later in the section is a poem, “Auntie Evelyn,” about an old, once-tall woman shrunken by osteoporosis, Crist’s late great aunt. Her husband of 42 years drives away in his Lincoln Continental with her best friend and two suitcases, leaving a note: “See my lawyer.”

The sadness continues through a few more grim poems and memories to the end of the book. Crist has gifted us with a collection of journeyman-quality writings, some quite beautiful, all observations on a world barely fit for human occupancy. Duane Kirby Jensen’s wistfully curious cover art supports the mood and helps to make this book a valuable addition to any serious writer’s library. It’s perhaps a sad book for some readers—full of wry, grim humor about an often unfriendly world. Read it and weep. Or laugh. Or both?

Thomas Hubbard, a retired writing instructor and spoken word performer, wrote features for various newspapers and magazines during the 1980s, then authored Nail and other hardworking poems, Year of the Dragon Press, 1994; Junkyard Dogz (also available on audio CD); and Injunz, a chapbook; also Poems for my people (Foothills Publishing, 2011). He designed and published Children Remember Their Fathers (an anthology), and books by seven other authors. His book reviews have appeared in Square Lake, Raven Chronicles, New Pages and The Cartier Street Review. Publication credits include poems in Yellow Medicine Review (spring 2010), I Was Indian, ed. Susan Deer Cloud (Foothills Publishing, 2010), and Florida Review; and short stories in Red Ink andYellow Medicine Review.