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Reality bites
Short-story whiz Elizabeth Crane returns with a new book and a healthy love for reality TV.
If you Google author Elizabeth Crane, the third item that pops up is the official Fear Factor website. It seems Crane was a contestant at some point, an assertion she vehemently denies. She does, however, cop to a slight obsession with reality television—she’s a big enough fan of Project Runway to do a spot-on Heidi Klum impression. But to witness the fruit of that mania, all one needs to do is read her newest collection of short stories, You Must Be This Happy to Enter (Punk Planet, $14.95).
The narrator of the first story, “My Life Is Awesome! And Great!,” convinces herself that being a reality TV contestant is the key to an awesome and great life. In “Betty the Zombie,” the titular undead housewife moves into a house full of women needing (televised) counseling. But if reality television is the medium, Crane’s message is that happiness is a messy business.
“What I have come to learn is that being happy isn’t this fixed thing where you are like, Okay I’m happy now. Now I have this thing and I’m happy. Now I worked through my problems and I am happy,” says Crane, speaking on the phone from her Ukrainian Village apartment. “You can experience lots of things at the same time, and I think that is what these characters are dealing with.”
Crane’s stories are refreshing for their sincere approach to the pursuit of happiness, and the lies people tell themselves to appear content. In “Donovan’s Closet,” a woman finds temporary satisfaction in her boyfriend’s lemon-scented closet. Betty the Zombie’s turn on reality TV helps her work out her marriage issues enough to warrant her own spin-off show.
“Denial has always been interesting to me, because you have to have a certain amount of it to function in the world,” Crane says. “There is some rough stuff out there. But you have to show up.”
And her characters do show up, despite the calamities they face or the weirdness that seeps into their lives. In the title story, the protagonist is jailed for being too happy. But it’s in the final story, “Promise,” that we encounter the emotional core of the book. It’s a sweet, but not saccharine, letter written to a hypothetical child about what he can expect from his parents. It homes in on the colossal fears that loom over parents, but does so with a wit and humor that, by the end, manifests an uneasy peace with the prospect of beginning a life.
For those familiar with Crane’s work, the above will come as no surprise. In her two previous volumes of short stories—the 2002 hit collection When the Messenger Is Hot, and 2005’s underrated All This Heavenly Glory—Crane has shaped a unique voice in fiction, one that is almost bold in its sincerity, despite employing a playful style that delves deeply into pop culture, and veers off into magical realism. Crane is clearly at home with short fiction—“I consider it kind of my mission to bring back the short story”—a form that is often seen as publishing poison by the large houses, due to modest sales. That’s one reason Crane left the large house Little, Brown, which published her previous two collections, for Chicago indie imprint Punk Planet Books.
“I was a little disappointed with the way things went on my second book,” she says. “I think I got a little bit lost in the shuffle of the big corporation there.”
Now at home with Punk Planet, she’ll be hard to miss: Her stories shine with energy, humor and ingenuity. Happiness might not be a place where people reside permanently, but Crane has delivered a little slice of it for readers to enjoy.
Crane reads from You Must Be This Happy to Enter Thursday 7 at Quimby’s.
