Scar Vegas: And Other Stories

A striking panoply of voices and settings that nevertheless emanate from a singular, daring conscience, this gathering of 10 tales from O. Henry and Pushcart Prize-author Paine reveals an abiding concern for the subjugated spirit's slim hopes for subverting oppressive social or political regimes. In ""General Markman's Last Stand,"" a Marine hero endures the violent reverence of his enlistees as he bravely moves toward certain humiliation on his last day of service. Paine visits disparate lands and contorts countless dialects in his focus on the menace of colonization . One tale, set in a Myanmar tavern, concerns a hotel real estate developer's anecdote about razing a pristine Balinese forest. Another assumes the voice of a 16-year-old Providence, R.I., skateboard punk on his way to the '96 Portland Anarchist Convention (""Nobody is really clear on when the Anarchist Convention is going to start..."") with some strained but affecting present-tense colloquy. Paine's rendering of the rhythms of Eastern European speech and political sentiment is particularly poignant and sharp in the excellent ""Ceausescu's Cat,"" where Romanian twin brothers--one a poet, one a thief--bridle against oppression in their divergent ways. But warning also comes in the form of the comeuppance tale. In ""Will You Say Something, Monsieur Eliot?"" and the equally savage ""A Predictable Nightmare on the Eve of the Stock Market Breaking 6,000,"" a conquering, strutting executive is forced to face mortal physical danger and personal despair. Paine is concerned with institutional and political arrogance and ignorance, and with the meek, inarticulate travelers shuffling along the peripheries of the callous states erected by the ruling minority. He is everywhere updating the ""superfluous man"" (part Melville, part Conrad, part Mailer even): misshapen, ungraceful men and women groping for a clue of divinity manifest in the form of even a qualified liberty. In spare, seasoned prose, Paine portrays this invisible, searching majority and honors their often doomed hopes with the dignity they seek. (Jan.)