The Human Case by David Barringer
The Human Case, David Barringer’s second story collection (after 2000’s The Leap & Other Mistakes) , expands upon his direct, condensed, and simplistic style, maintaining the oft-depth rarely seen in story collections three times the size of this slim 97 page volume. These stories are at times capable of the witted tongue of Amy Hempel, at times delivering the domestic absurdity of Aimee Bender, but always uniquely David Barringer in the amalgamation of styles and narrative voices so obviously a part of this great writer’s psyche. The argument could be made that Barringer himself is the human in the case depicted in the collection’s title story.
In the astonishing title story, famous philosophers are attributed to literally building a case into which a human being is placed, their methods infused with, and standing as a testament to, these thinkers’ definitive marks on the world of philosophy. Nietzsche, for example, worries that the human may begin to attack himself simply because he’s there. Similarly to the philosophers’ comments upon this unnamed human are the potential comments upon Barringer by readers and critics. The human is Barringer, the case is the collection.
Many of the stories in this collection are infused with the level of depth as the title story, however there are also plenty of stories which either take pride in simple clever concepts (“Belongings” is a series of vignettes from the perspective of various household and personal items), or savor in extracting humor from more fleshed-out concepts. Take, for example, the great story “The Vampires” in which the logical integration of vampires into a non-vampire culture is quite seriously examined:
The insurance industry gets to work and discovers, much to their pride, that insurance matrices are remarkably flexible and can accommodate several of the trickier consequences of immortality. (pg. 16-17)
The collection, though strong from cover to cover, is strongest with its character-driven narratives. “The Daughter’s Illness” and “Caring” both stand testament to Barringer’s ability to develop his characters over very few pages, enough to elicit genuine emotion from the reader. The former story follows the illegitimate daughter of a dictator as she is examined by an awestruck daughter. In one powerful scene, the narration declares “Her heart withdrew from his instruments, sinking deeper into her body’s darkness, giving nothing away” (pg. 39). The latter story follows an EMT in Detroit, building to climax involving the narrator trying to save the life of a man when everything about the situation declares that the man should not remain alive. Earlier in the story, foreshadowing this moment, the narrator offers poignant wisdom: “You do this job to help people. You survive by forgetting” (pg. 48).
The stories of The Human Case are each symbols representing a world lacking the superfluous fluff so often a part of capital-L Literature. They are brief tales, distilled down to a digestible essence, the Cliffs Notes of the human condition, containing only what one needs in order to smile and remain astonished for days.
David Barringer. The Human Case: Stories. Brainpan Publishing, 2002. $10.99, paper, ISBN: 1-59109-448-8.
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