His title essay, “My Life of Crime,” opens the book. Gore had me convulsing with glee right away. The crimes the author revisits in this essay are along the lines of childish pranks. He describes how he battled the boredom of living in suburban New Jersey by playing practical jokes.
He would call in pizza orders to be delivered to the neighbor across the way. Gore would order multiple pizzas from different places and he would watch from behind curtains as the poor neighbor got increasingly flabbergasted with each successive delivery.
A wee bit childish and immature, he was in college when he did this, but I laughed. What makes this essay hilarious? Gore eventually is busted because some of those pizza shops had Caller ID and although we might smile at his initial prankster routine the real humor happens when they finally catch him doing it.
That sense of profound boredom drives some of the action. In the essay “Jury Duty” he’s hanging around a court building waiting to see if he will get called to serve on a jury and he’s exquisitely bored: “time took on an almost palpable quality, like a thick, gooey sauce.”
These moments of lethargy are interspersed with seconds of sheer adrenaline drenched terror. Gore was living in New York City and he describes when two guys were getting ready to mug him in the lobby of his apartment building. He manages to escape. After that he feels like “the whole social contract of the city had crumbled for me. I distrusted everyone.”
He moved back to New Jersey for a few years but the allure of New York was irresistible. Upon his return he fell in love, got married, and adopted a magical cat. In the final essay of the book, the novella length “Appendix,” he recounts one of the finest cat rescue stories ever as they rescued a kitten they called Luna.
“Appendix” reveals what it felt like as Gore was getting submerged in a medical treatment experience with his alternating periods of lethargy then brief instances of paranoia and dread. In this same essay he also admits to the abject fear they were feeling when Luna the cat got mortally ill then had a bizarrely amazing recovery.
The author strews gleaming descriptions of people he encounters throughout these essays. There’s wit, pathos, keen observations, a collection to savor.
Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Saturday at 7 a.m. and on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www.wyso.org/programs/book-nook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
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