Making Sense of Kevin Canty

Samantha McDaniel

November 7, 2016

Kevin Goodan

Kevin Canty

Making Sense of Canty

        Kevin Canty makes one consider life from a different perspective, while they are reading his book of short stories “A Stranger in This World.”  He takes characters that everyone can relate to and then gives them everyday lives and common problems.  It was almost as if his characters were based off biographies of real people, who were experiencing this roller coaster of life with all the many ups and downs. ^[a] Never having been exposed to realistic fiction, it was surprising how intriguing the stories were. ^[b] The characters have jobs they do not enjoy and cannot escape, issues in their marriages,   and some of them have disabilities^[c].  He puts a different spin on each story by developing characters that are all different ages and even opposite genders.

In “Pretty Judy,” the main character Paul, a boy of 15, is a teenager who is experiencing the effects of his changing hormones and “needs.” Paul goes to visit    Judy, a mentally handicapped girl, and has an intimate relation with her.  He thought he could have a future with her, but as readers we know that this is in fact lust.  After their moment, she just stares at the wall blankly repeating “pretty Judy” and doesn’t have a reaction to an experience that is usually so cherished and personal.  One can assume as if it is her way of coping to get out of her own head for however long just to act normal after it is all said and done.  This is relatable to reality because we all have those moments where we are trying to differentiate love from something else.                       For some love is a form of control or a type of abuse; in this story, it is lust^[d].

         Canty builds interesting character^[e]s; while giving the reader no backstory he   can create an alternate universe.  “Moonbeams and Aspirin” is a story everyone can relate  to in one way or another.  Problems within a marriage makes a couple go back to someplace they remember as paradise, only to find out that the reality is far from the way they pictured it.  This is something we all do; we remember something or some place as the best and hype ourselves up when we get it again, only to be disappointed when it isn’t as good as we had remembered it to be.  This story makes you think about the people you spend time with the most.  Margaret and Lockhart have a love-hate relationship but as they spend time together someplace they remembered it to be much better than it was.  

A blind man named Wilson walks into the bar and leads them to think about the good parts of life.  Canty introduces a little bit of his humor, by making it sound like     a joke. Faced with the reality of a blind man, being more optimistic than them, they offer to make his life a little bit better by offering to let him drive.  To me, this was also part of the joke.  Who in their right minds would let a blind man drive?

In my opinion, his most successful short story in A Stranger in this World was “Safety^[f].”  Marian is the mother of two-year old Will, who was experiencing postpartum depression. She knows subconsciously that she shouldn’t be experiencing these horrendous thoughts and feelings about her child. ^[g] Canty even expresses how she feels in the language that he uses in this story.  “With her index finger she slits the plastic where it stretches over his open mouth” (Canty 104).  While she wanted her child to live, she was upset with him for ruining her phone call.  Obviously a two-year old doesn’t yet realize that she is on the phone and now would not be a good time to play with a plastic bag^[h], but Marion only feels regret immediately after hitting him.  She often refers to her child as a bastard throughout this story, thinks badly of herself, and has many undesirable thoughts about her husband. “When this winter started she was happily married” (P.105) This makes us think that he isn’t coping well with her illness or that he doesn’t even know she is sick.  Her mind continues to go on a tangent, dreaming of these different scenarios. For instance, her husband cheating on her because of her “bitchy voice”, when someone is returning her child from playing in the street.