Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories (P.S.) [Paperback]

This debut collection is welcome relief from the usual workshopped-to-death, navel-gazing, interior short stories that seem so prevalent in the U.S. Fountain likes to take his characters to parts of the world not particularly welcoming to Americans and put them in challenging situations. For example, he has a particular interest in Haiti (which he's visited approximately thirty times), and it forms the backdrop for three of the stories.

In "Reve Haitien" (originally published in Harper's), a chess-playing Organization of American States observer in Haiti following Aristide's 2004 departure agrees to help a charismatic guerilla member. The plot involves smuggling paintings by Haitian masters to Miami in exchange for cash the guerillas can use to buy arms. The story shares themes with several others in the collection, as the Westerner comes to sympathize with the oppressed native and tried to help. (The main point of interest in the story for me was the paintings, many of which were by artists whom my granparents collected in the '60s. One minor snag in the plotline is that the paintings are described as being rolled up and hidden in a dufflebag, but most of the paintings by these artists in my grandparents' collection are on solid chipboard and rather harder to convey.)

"The Good Ones Are Already Taken" takes place in North Carolina, but also references Haiti, as a young soldier's wife eagerly awaits the return of her Special Forces husband from Operation Uphold Democracy (1994-95). The husband returns home greatly affected by his interaction with the Haitian spirit world, forcing the wife to work hard to understand. The material is somewhat over the top, but Fountain manages to make it work for the most part. "Bouki and the Cocaine" (first published in Zoetrope and available freely online) is a pretty straightforward story about some poor fishermen whose civic attempts to interdict the local cocaine traffic result only in the local police profiting. In an Robin Hood-style operation, they decide to steal one more load and use a Port-au-Prince contact to help the community. The finale is somewhat predictable, but enjoyable in the manner of an Elmore Leonard caper.

In "Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera", a graduate ornithology student is swept up by FARC guerillas in Columbia and must survive as a hostage for half a year. Over the course of this time (which seems to be circa 1999), he gets to know the guerillas and comes to understand their struggle -- only to have the carpet jerked out from under him at the end. Originally published in Zoetrope (and available for free at their web site), it's a fairly solid piece, if a little too precious toward the end. "Asian Tiger" (also published in Zoetrope and available freely online) is my favorite of the collection. Here we meet a divorced pro golfer of the lowest tier, reduced to playing obscure, fourth-rate tournaments. After appearing the "Myanmar Peace and Enlightened Leadership Cup", he is made a lucrative offer he can't really refuse (for the sake of his daughters' college fund). Through his naive eyes, the Burmese junta takes on an even more bizarre visage, as he accompanies generals on foursomes involving shady American oilmen, a spook, and Japanese suits.

It's out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the next story (which first appeared in The Paris Review), "The Lion's Mouth", visits war-ravaged Sierra Leone. A female American aid worker hustles to improve the lives of a tiny few, while also getting sexually entangled with a diamond dealer. The topic of "blood diamonds" has been well-covered elsewhere, and this story does little to add to the topic. It's also the third story in the book to involve some manner of smuggling, and while the portrait of the various rebels, UN peacekeepers, and shady operatives is keen, the story itself is entirely predictable. The title story is a series of five vignettes in which the author recounts his fascination with Che Guevara and his encounters with several people who may have known him. It's rather aimless in comparison to the rest of the collection and didn't do much for me. "Fantasy for Eleven Fingers" is somewhat of an outlier as well, taking place in the music world of 19th-century Vienna, and following the strange story of the titular piano composition. It does an effective job of capturing the time and place, and there's a decent-enough story there, but it's so different from the rest of the collection that its inclusion is somewhat jarring.

On the whole, this is definitely a collection worth dipping into, but perhaps not as vital as some of the more enthusiastic reviews make out. One theme that is worth highlighting as particularly important is Fountain's representation of travel as privelege. In most of the stories, Americans "visit" the third world by choice and are able to leave, while those who live there suffer onward (and get exploited by Western business interests). I'll definitely keep an eye out for his Fountain's next work.