THE COMPLETE DOWN AND OUT IN SEATTLE AND TACOMA SERIES

In Stockwell’s three connected novellas, a man stumbles through addiction, recovery, and the countercultural scene of 1990s Washington.

The epigraphs of the first two novellas collected here come from Irvine Welsh and Charles Bukowski; like these writers, Stockwell is concerned with those down on their luck. In these stories, he traces the wobbly arc of Jack, a “microcosm of Generation X” who is “addicted to everything.” When he is first introduced, Jack is 28 years old and living in a psychiatric institution after losing his mother, his primary support system. The first novella, Sleeping in the Daytime, largely traces the period following his release from the institution, including his time in a halfway house rooming with a schizophrenic Vietnam War veteran who never showers and working up the courage to ask out the barista at the local coffee shop he frequents. The narrative includes regular flashbacks to Jack’s past, including his physically abusive relationship with his older brother (“Besides the sporadic 911 calls, occasional attempted knifings, and regular baseball bat duels, things had actually been pretty good between Laurence and Jack back then”) and his attempts to “liberat[e] his mind from Mormon indoctrination.” The second novella, Courting Mediocrity, fills in more of Jack’s backstory, focusing mainly on his first institutionalization at age 18 and how he met most of his crew of friends/fellow drug dealers and abusers. It also charts Jack’s brief stint in Utah, where he turns 30 and finds employment at a Taco Bell. (Jack finds some relief in this stability, but it does not last long.) There is more redemption in the final novella, Squattingin the Shadow of an Ant, which tracks Jack’s path down to Seattle and the most stable of his major relationships. Throughout, Stockwell balances the hard-edged, Gen X tone with more wistful reflections on a time lost. This comes through most strongly in the final few chapters, as Seattle morphs into its present form. Though occasionally repetitive, there is enough life and truth in the prose to keep the reader afloat, even as Jack repeatedly falls into the same destructive patterns.

A gritty, heartfelt journey through the recent past.