Book Review – Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed: Stories by Robert Freeman Wexler

Author: Robert Freeman Wexler
Cover Artist: Tim Robinson
Publisher: Electric Velocipede
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2008

Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed: Stories by Robert Freeman Wexler is not a book, it’s a chapbook. I’m not particularly fond of chapbooks, but this is a method of selling short stories that has been embraced by various small press units, contests and others as a way to circulate stories that otherwise might go unnoticed.

This particular chapbook is offered by Electric Velocipede (Spilt Milk Press publishing company). They did a nice job in selecting paper—it’s thick, hefty stuff, with a good stapling job so you don’t have to worry about the pages falling out. The print of the stories is sharp. The titles and subtitles are a weird font and look as though the laser is running out of ink. Because they are all this way (including the cover page) I am assuming it is a characteristic of the font itself, and not a cheap printing job. I still don’t like it, but I think it was done that way on purpose, for effect.

Now then, on to the introduction. The introduction is done by Zoran Zivkovic. He does a nice job of letting the reader know that the work is…experimental without calling it that, but he does rag on the status quo of big company publishing. I think perhaps his words would have been better spent telling me why I should want to read Robert Wexler’s stories—other than the fact that a big company would never have published them. If nothing else, his rant is passionate. Luckily the end matter of the chapbook shows that most of these stories were already published in other venues before making their way into this chapbook so there is a sense that these stories are indeed, quality. The back matter also let me know there was at least one original story.

On to the stories…or general thoughts thereof. These are rather experimental works in that they don’t follow a standard story with discernible plots. The stories are somewhat poetic—the language flows well, the descriptions are good without being stifling. The point, for me, was often lost inside the great literary points that were being made. It was often difficult to tell whether the story teller was in a dream state or a waking one; The Tales of the Golden Legend, for example, was told partly from the viewpoint of a loaf of bread. When the bread wasn’t the main teller, a man who understood the words of bread was center stage. An interesting concept to be sure.

Valley of the Falling Clouds is a bit of a romance, but more of a journey of finding a place and returning to it and being able to find it. Suspension, on the other hand, appears to be a tale of a fat man watching life go by, enjoying snippets of it, but mostly not wanting to participate.

As you might guess, the stories are fraught with many meanings, most of which probably depend upon your own life experiences and viewpoints. Suspension was first published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud—I can see the other stories fitting in there too. Much of the work reminds me of looking at a painting and imagining the lives of the people you see there. Because a painting doesn’t move, you have to give special attention to each flower—it has to take on meaning, become a symbol, the very color has to represent something. The works in this chapbook are literary in that the life of an ordinary man is examined and the weirdness and possible color within is shown. The stories are somewhat Poe-like; dream-state without being horror.

All in all, these are not my type of story. Call me a traditionalist, call me boring, but I prefer stories to have a plot, and I have no desire to wade through the ordinary man’s life. Luckily there is room for both—and the writing is good, such that if you like speculative literary works, these stories might be for you.

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