8/14/2019 Review of The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure by Jack Pendarvis

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The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure: Curious Stories  by Jack PendarvisMacAdam/Cage198 pp., Hardcover, $21.00 November 2005

ISBN 1-559692-128-5

By Tim W. Brown

The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure: Curious Stories by Jack Pendarvis is awonderfully funny book. Ranging from the incisively satirical to the fantastically goofy,each story is a little comic gem.

The laugh track in the reader’s mind starts immediately with a mock proposal to a comic book publisher describing a superhero character, Sex Devil, who embodies every youngnerd’s dream of growing up and exacting revenge on his high school tormentors. Through

an accidental chemical spill in his lap, Sex Devil’s genitals become amazingly powerful,and he turns the tables on a former bully by seducing his cheerleader girlfriend, then hedumps her when she becomes too attached to his sexual prowess. The earnest tone of thewriter’s missive, that of an aspiring writer who is clueless about publishing methods andmarkets, is hilarious.

This same tone recurs in several stories in which Pendarvis explores the humor involvedwhen a neophyte thinking “How hard can this be?” attempts to become a writer. In “SoThis Is Writing” Episodes One and Two, as well as the piece from which the book’s titleis drawn, self-deluded would-be writers follow the path that popular culture suggests theytake to become successful, published authors. They attend conferences, schmooze with

semi-famous writers, and drink lots of alcohol. As expected, hardly any writing ever getsdone. Far from ridiculing his subjects, however, Pendarvis clearly sympathizes with their hopes and dreams, and he treats their misguided aspirations with respect.

A more knowing tone infuses two other satirical pieces on the writer’s plight. “Our Spring Catalog” (which originally appeared in Chelsea) takes the form of publisher catalog copy produced by a cynical junior employee. About the novel The Sighing of theStones she writes, “A boy and girl grope innocently toward first love against the backdropof an Oklahoma farming community where a lot of cattle mutilations are taking place.Who cares?” (p. 48) The final piece, “About the Contributors,” makes fun of the inflated biographies that appear in literary magazines. “Eugenia Eugenia,” states her bio (echoesof Lyn Lifshin?), “has published two hundred and forty volumes of poetry. Her work hasappeared in a million literary journals and forty-six thousand anthologies, including Pardon My Nuts and Kitty-Cats are Coming .” (p. 185) Reading between the lines, thereader discerns some very real criticism of certain trends infecting publishing today.Indeed, this collection stands in opposition to publishing’s number one fault, at least inmy view: a prejudice against comedic writing.

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8/14/2019 Review of The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure by Jack Pendarvis

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 Not every story is about writing aspirants. (If this book has a flaw, it would be over-reliance on this plot device.) “The Pipe” is an engaging story depicting two men, asecurity guard and a paramedic, assigned to safeguard a radio disk jockey spending arecord-breaking forty-six days buried underground as a publicity stunt. The DJ’s only presence in the story is via a plastic pipe sticking out of the ground, his sole source of 

oxygen. Taking the form of a day-by-day narrative consisting of forty-six parts, the storydescribes the two men passing time in every imaginable way: drinking, playing cards,smoking marijuana, blowing marijuana smoke down the pipe, cavorting with women, andspeculating about the man buried beneath their feet. The men get to know one another almost too well. The paramedic is the alpha male who bullies his partner; the securityguard is a loner prone to baring his soul to the pipe when the paramedic is AWOL. As thestory proceeds, the reader is left wondering whether, in killing time, the men will killeach other or their neglect will kill the DJ.

“The Pipe” offers another corrective to contemporary letters – inclusion of working class protagonists, who have largely disappeared from fiction. Pendarvis reveals his own

opinion on this matter in “Our Spring Catalog,” in which he has his copywriter say of  AGood Family, “Delia Moon had it all: riches, glamour, wit and erudition. But suddenlyher Park Avenue world came crashing down around her ears. I bet you never read a book like this before! It’s about the horrible pain and turmoil of being rich and white…. Kirkus

 Reviews is going to eat this shit up.” (p. 49)

The title story, really a novella due to its eighty-plus-page length, “The Mysterious Secretof the Valuable Treasure,” combines the comedic and working class impulses. To fill hisunemployed days Willie Dobbs decides to write a history of his small town, SouthPreston, naively believing that his book (and a plethora of adjectives) will bring himmoney and fame. Each of the twenty-five chapters begins with a stock description of some piddly local landmark or quirky resident but quickly devolves into another episodewherein Dobbs laments his sorry fate, which includes lack of money, a wife who doesn’tunderstand him, and in-laws who doubt his sanity.

Apart from its humor, this story is notable for how Pendarvis undercuts current literarytheory, which asserts that writing is more about the writer’s biases than the topic under discussion. It’s as if the author asks, “If we’re reporting more about the making of historythan history itself, why not go whole hog?” His character Dobbs does something more profound than he could ever know.

In the best tradition of comic literature, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure

 pokes ample fun at human foibles. Yet there is a constant presence of empathy rather thanthe bitterness normally associated with comedic and satiric fiction. Moreover, the author dazzles by approaching each story with a different voice and style that add welcomevariety to the typically constrained short story format.

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