yeah man

I thoroughly enjoyed taking this on a business trip I didn’t want to go on.


Since Goodreads idiotically won’t let me attach a pic, enjoy this excerpt of a sandwich maker from the eponymous short story. Punctuation, spacing errors etc. are mine, not the author’s.

_______ excerpt___________

The sandwich maker grabs a mixing bowl.


He fills it with ingredients from the sandwich station.


Turkey.
Arugula.
Red onion.
Poached cherry tomatoes.
Fresh mozzarella.
Pesto.


Plus all of the hate, poison, and death he can transmit through his hands, eyes, and heart. *Please— please feel my hate*, he thinks.


He moves the ingredients around in the bowl.


Fingering the cold bullshit.


Not wearing gloves.


He never wears gloves.


‘Hey, put some gloves on, fuckface,’ says the chef, coming up from downstairs holding a bunch of ingredients.

____ end excerpt ______


That “fingering the cold bullshit” line makes me laugh so much. I think of it whenever I’m performing a repetitive, make-work task for my job (which is a lot).

Not sure what it was, but I already disliked Nicky.

Something about him seemed bad.

He was an asshole, yes, true, but beyond that.

He was an artist of an asshole.

A master.

Someone about whom later assholes would say, 'He's the reason I got into being an asshole.'

On the wall he hung a T-shirt with Pac-Man on it, mouth open, going toward a dollar sign.

Let me put it that way.

The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories is a collection of working-class, counterculture, slice-of-life prose that tickled my senses because I've been there -- on the front lines, slinging consumer goods.

Sam Pink focuses on what it means to be a blue-collar worker in America (although that's not all). Whether he's dealing in cones from the side of a truck or advice in some back alley with the rats, this collection gets surprisingly deep, funny, and sad. While the stories are self-contained, they often refer to one another, making for an even more cohesive read. This is pure Sam Pink gold. I don't want to spoil any of it. Just read it. I got it in dead tree form and as an audiobook, and both versions are good. I highly recommend either.

dude doesn't miss

Haven't read anything from Sam since I was 19, so I was interested to see how I would come back to it.

Bottom line: Sam definitely has a cult on here that will inflate ratings, so he's not for everyone even if he averages like a 4.06. But this is good stuff. More of the same, but noticeably more mature and with a better ear for dialogue.

Majority of the stories here are like Sam's older stuff. Lone, but personable and quick-to-make-friends protagonist works some dead end manual jobs and copes with some existential anxiety rendered with surreal, gory imagery.

What I noticed in this collection, though, is a greater focus on other characters. I'm down for this. Old books felt 100% like you were trapped in Sam's head, and everyone else felt like some kind of ghost or non-thought. It was pretty claustrophobic. But here, stories like the alley one (which the top review here is acting like is the worst story in the collection, even though it's absolutely not) treat Sam's condition, rightly, like something endured by the masses. There's solidarity between him and the two kids stuck in the alley. They're not just props anymore. The Florida factory story is big on this too.

Best story, for sure, is Blue Victoria. It's Sam's style, but it's fully dramatic and character driven. There is real suspense and pathos and energy exchanged between the characters. The ending was also the most I've read him tap into emotion. You could accuse it of being melodramatic, but I think Sam's style, and its place among the more flippant stories here, lets me buy it. I would love to see Blue Victoria as a short film or play.

That said, the Michigan section that closes feels a bit weaker. The first story there is actually the worst one in the collection. The one about the dog also didn't grip me that much. The wedding story that closes is funny, and filled with a lot of good observations, but it goes on forever and then ends super abruptly. Felt like Sam wasn't sure how to wrap up there.

But that's forgivable. The peaks here are really high. Wasn't expecting to enjoy the Ice Cream Man as much as I did. My favourite Sam now for sure.