What Matters Most

Guest Editor James McPherson opens this issue of Ploughshares with a warm introduction. His essay moves deftly from storms in Iowa to America's fascination with Barack Obama toward an explanation of the term "neighboring," a word bespeaking the altruism of farmers and writers alike. Like all good introductions, McPherson's simple, brief and eloquent passage sets the tone for the rest of the issue. He writes, "If there is a common thread in the stories here, I think it must be the communal effort to gain perspective on the highly complex areas of our fuzzy and fragmented American reality."

Indeed, Ryan Berg's nonfiction piece, "Lady Fingers" leads the charge. This is a candid tale of a man working as a social worker in a home for troubled girls. An alternate title might have been "True Confessions of a Social Worker," as we learn as much about Berg's violent, suffering crack-addicted transvestite client as we learn about Berg, his own fears, his own suffering over the apparent aimlessness of his life. Berg admits, "I hadn't a clue why I wanted to work with marginalized youth in foster care and neither did the residents." To his credit, Berg never preaches or sentimentalizes, never makes categorical claims about middle-class guilt or racial oppression. His true story has the simple, piercing impact of a young man confessing to not knowing what's right, to seeing the failures of the system without any idea for solution. The essay ends abruptly and unresolved, an accurate reflection the way life is for most people--changing suddenly, continually unresolved. Berg's heartfelt honesty is, in itself, a good step toward a solution.

On a lighter note, Mark Brazaitis's "The Incurables" tells of Adam "Drew" Drewshevksy, a.k.a. Dickie DeLong, the "Prince of Porn." The story's tone is sharp and irreverent--"Drew didn't tell Barry he had herpes, which no medicine he'd taken and no diet he'd tried had prevented from erupting every couple of weeks like chicken pox of the penis." As Drew struggles to reclaim his damaged career, the story rotates swiftly from bar to mental institution to therapist's office to an empty football stadium at night. It is here that Drew is finally able to reclaim his lost innocence through a cathartic adolescent-like sexual experience. "The Incurables" is a touching black comedy that reveals the pitfalls of pornography, a genre that relies so heavily on the deceptive appearance of things.

In "Ostracon" Alex Rose tells a brilliant story in pieces, snapshots of fact and anecdote that, once pieced together, create a sum far greater than its parts. The story opens with Katya, a Russian Jewish immigrant, looking for her glasses. Over time we learn that this is not merely a case of forgetfulness, but that Katya's mind is slowly deteriorating from Alzheimer's. Rose punctuates the small, touching passages of Katya's worried fumbling with nueroscientific facts, the etymology of words like synapse, the biological appearance of Alzheimer's--"nerve fibers were gnarled and pasty, synapses were clogged with proteins like a grimy sink drain," and brief, searing passages in which Katya's husband Joe finds irrefutable evidence of her dementia. Also woven through the story are scenes of construction workers in their home. The evident hole in the ceiling, the exposed wires, and the damage to the roof all serve as memorable symbols for a brain's gradual inability to function.

In a story of male bravado that evokes great rural writers like Jim Harrison and Larry McMurtry, Steven Schwartz tells the remarkable story of a man who lends his land to psychopaths. In "Bless Everybody," Charlie is in his mid-sixties and has a deep love for two things: his land and his ex-wife. He defines himself by his interest in protecting both. But when he lets a seemingly benign young couple stay in his unused shed, and when that couple go on to commit harmful and atrocious acts, Charlie must step in to defend his land and the animals that roam it. Charlie is a classic hero, from his pride to his love for country to his weakness for women. The story follows a well-known pattern, that of the wise, older man called out of retirement and thrust violently into action again. But Charlie is so likeable, and the landscape so beautiful, that it is wonderful to have him back among the violent and the damned.