The stories appear to have been arranged in chronological order from innocence to experience as you will find in a myriad of books about growing up, such as James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (1916), Alice Monroe’s Lives of Girls and Women (1971) and Angelo Loukakis’s Messenger (1992). However, in TURMOIL the point of view alternates between a variety of first and third person narrators. As a consequence, we never clearly see the individual paths of the characters, but in glimpses, we are able to view the development of Burke as he orchestrates his vision for this book.
In a recent email to me, Burke says candidly of TURMOIL and the slow, torturous process of putting his book together, “Some of these stories are 25 years old. All have been rewritten more times than I care to think about. ‘Turmoil’ the story, for instance, sixty drafts at least, two versions published over the last ten years (3rdversion the one in the book—by ‘version’ I mean the mechanics of the writing tinkered with, sentence structure, punctuation, small changes in the language etc). All the stories in the book were published previously, at least once for each. Some stories under different titles (as ‘Demented’, formerly ‘Forget Me Not’. ‘Dog Days’ formerly ‘Sterl’).
The cover of the book depicts a bleak, overcast Manhattan from the Hudson River. The cover was chosen by an Adelaide Books editor in reference to the collection’s excellent first story ‘I Remember Buddy’ in which a young boy Eddie, recalls a visit to Yankee Stadium to meet the baseball legend Mickey Mantle before a game.
In a recent interview in Adelaide Magazine (see the link below), Burke writes of the inspiration for the book’s title, “At the time of selecting a title for my story collection, I viewed my tale ‘Turmoil’ as the strongest of the bunch. (I have since changed my view to ‘Buddies’). ‘Turmoil’ not only the strongest story, as I thought, at the time of selection, but the title itself, the word, applicable, I believed and still believe, to the emotional states found in many of the stories.
“Not the adolescent angst of ‘Turmoil’ the story, but each story with its own sort of TURMOIL, and thus the word itself, I thought, and think, an apt general description of the overall tenor of the collection. Also the story ‘Turmoil’—a tale of adolescence, as I have said, occupies a central position in the collection, making it a sort of link between preceding stories of childhood themes and the proceeding stories of adult themes. A centrality that, to me, of significance, and leading further reason to make use of the title.”
The story ‘Turmoil’ is a third person narrative centred on Leno Decensi, a nasty young thug who is being investigated by the local police for driving a car over a golfing green. Burke displays great skill in creating his portrait of Leno and seamlessly advances the plot through his credible use of dialogue, his usual pepper spray of similes, and an apt, sensational climax.
The short stories primarily focus on a small group of young guys who grow up in an anonymous small town in America, perhaps in Massachusetts, where Burke lived as a child and young adult. The blurb on the back cover suggests that, “These are, mostly inspired by the real events which happened between early 60’s and late 80’s of the last century.”
To Burke, the setting is “mostly inconsequential”- the town and the characters he describes in TURMOILcould be any small town in America, “The setting of stories are of small town or even of neighbourhood life; I guess you could say small lives’ as well, people caught in the matrix of provincial thinking and living—limited by their environment instead of enlarged.
“The story ‘The Saboteurs’ is somewhat of an exception in being more “cosmopolitan” than other tales, in that the characters have a larger view of the world and life in general—or at least a more intellectual-based view, than that of the “townies” featured elsewhere.” ‘Theatre’, a satirical story about Billy Murphy, a self-obsessed aspiring writer, is another example of a character hoping to break out of a limited rustic mode.
Burke’s goal is to universalise his setting and characters to enable his readers to reimagine their own communities and experiences: “My hope is that people will recognize themselves, their friends, their family, in the characterizations of the book, and are able to relate their experiences to the environment of the fictional framework those characters exist in as “characters.”
The best of these “townie” stories, include the previously mentioned title piece ‘Turmoil’, ‘Pistol’ about Louis who wakes up and can’t remember where he has parked his father’s car the night before, and perhaps the best story in the collection, ‘Buddies’.
‘Buddies’ has a lighter, more spontaneous feel to it than most of the collection. It is told from the point of view of Kell, aged 21, who travels through Florida with his friends Leno and Louie to make a buck through seasonal or short-term work. The blokes have no other ambition but to fuel their lifestyles- thru drink or perhaps magic mushrooms. They work as orange pickers,
McDonald's flippers and later in installing refrigerator units. The theme of being on the road and open to new experiences is reflected in the lively but fragmented structure of the storyline. The reader never knows what lies ahead.
Some of Burke’s other memorable short stories include his exploration of aberrant or dysfunctional behaviour. In ‘Dog Days’ the main character ‘Sterl’ believes that the devil resides in his stomach and he asks various friends how to “shut him up”. In ‘House Call’ a chronic drunk justifies her use of the bottle.
In ‘Demented’ an old woman suffers from Alzheimer’s, and according to her daughter Edna, she “no longer knows if she were getting out of bed to start a new day or getting ready for sleep,” forgets to dress herself and at home, asks the same questions over and over. The really “demented” behaviour perhaps is exhibited by the old woman’s children- who heartlessly shunt her around to spurn the responsibility of having to care for her longterm.
‘Lean Pork Chops’ is a third person account of Raymond P. Peck who suspects his wife Irene is cheating on him. The sick mayhem of his mind is daubed in paranoid brush strokes by Burke as Raymond walks as if “he were moving underwater” to confront his missus.
Burke says of the story, “The portrait of the murderer I took from a newspaper story, embellishing it into the demented, jealous obsession of Peck who, by anyone’s description of insanity, is more than a few cards short of a full deck.
“A story, by the way, in which I have attempted to use language to mirror or illustrate the guy’s irrational processes. As in the repetitiveness—“He knew they knew. Knew they knew he knew. Knew it for a fact. Knew it like he knew his daughter’s age. An attempt, as I’ve written, to get inside the guy’s head and reflect his disturbed state.”
Burke’s writing is clear, highly accessible and typically written in a realist style. He loves describing in detail his characters, including their clothes & shoes and also the shape of their bodies & heads.
Burke reflects on this fascination and how it contributes to his overall intent, “In ‘Turmoil’ Leno, on his drive into town, looks out the car window at cattails sticking up out of a swamp: later, he will feel the cattail, in the form of a club, a cop’s baton, a nightstick, against the side of his head. The doctor of ‘House Call’ walks “hunched, as if weighted down by his head” meaning being full of himself, as, subsequently, the narrative shows him to be. The interrelatedness, you see, of the description to the story—to events unfolding or happening in story-time. Meaning, that there are no mistakes.
“Everything in the story is there because it is supposed to be there—belongs there. Everything in the story, every story, is related to everything else in the universe of the story—the world created, by language, of the alternate reality offered within the tale, every tale. Nothing left to chance, you see. No randomness within the matrix. And if a false note heard, in description or comment or whatever, it is because that description, comment, or whatever, does not fit, is out of place, in the matter—of a different substance perhaps, or, I don’t know.”
Burke first published his poetry in book form when he was 58. In the Adelaide Magazine interview linked below, he says he failed beforehand to see his life experiences as relevant subjects to write about: “Until I found my subject matter I remained blocked. Not knowing I had a vein of gold to mine; thinking I was “nobody,” who had done little—certainly nothing worth writing about, I failed to understand the value of my life experience, such as it was, and is. Failed to see the quotidian and so called “common” experience—where mostly the nature of mine, could be as interesting or glamorous or adventurous, as any celebrated life, of movie star fame, idol, hero, etc., through the writing. The writing itself creates the interest, the drama, if you will, of any life, no matter what circumstances lived under.”
TURMOIL is a carefully crafted collection of short stories. It is a coming of age story aching to be continued.
Purchase the book here: https://adelaidebooks.org/collections/short-stories/products/turmoil-and-other-stories
Read an interview of Burke on Adelaide Magazine here: https://adelaidemagazine.org/2020/11/20/wayne-f-burke-author-of-turmoil-other-stories/
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