Editorial Content for Creative Types and Other Stories

If there’s a literary equivalent of a utility infielder, Tom Bissell’s multifaceted resume could qualify him for that status. From journalism to criticism to writing for video games, Bissell has demonstrated his talent in a variety of genres. Now, with CREATIVE TYPES, his edgy, witty and utterly contemporary second collection, he’s returned to that form for the first time since his 2005 book, GOD LIVES IN ST. PETERSBURG.

While conceding, in a recent Publishers Weekly profile, that short fiction is “a thing that is guaranteed not to make you money,” Bissell quickly noted that it’s “always the place where I go when I have time, when I need to recharge myself, when I need to remind myself that I actually like writing.” The seven stories that compose CREATIVE TYPES manifest a kind of playful energy that reflects his delight in being able to return to the form.

Bissell has an affinity for structures that pit two characters against each other, allowing him to examine how they behave under stress. That technique is displayed in stories like the one that opens the book, “A Bridge Under Water.” In it, an unnamed couple who have been married for three-and-a-half days and are expecting a child in six months find themselves in Rome, already experiencing the conflict the woman fears will prove fatal to their marriage. She entertains the “brief, horrified thought that maybe couples in newly dead marriages got along in a way akin to the cheerfulness of people about to kill themselves,” just before the tension in their relationship between his atheism and her desire to raise their child as a Jew --- “the formalities of which she knew almost nothing about” --- explodes on a visit to the city’s largest synagogue.

"The pleasure of Bissell’s stories lies less in any epiphanies or tidy endings than in the way he consistently evokes the experience of painful, humorous, awkward and very human moments."

“Punishment” is a similarly friction-fueled story. A decade after a childhood in Upper Michigan in which they collaborated to inflict “punishment” on hapless fellow students at their Catholic middle school, Mark, assistant to the editor in chief of a “prestigious, respectfully unread tabloid-sized book review,” and Steve, a chemical engineer in Houston, reunite when Steve and his girlfriend Danielle arrive for a weekend visit to New York City. Steve, a homophobic, anabolic, steroid-consuming thug with a “cryogen-filled heart,” remains little changed from their boyhood days, exacerbating the shame Mark already harbors at his complicity in their past misdeeds.

In a collection that has its share of funny moments, some of the most hilarious are found in “The Hack.” The story is rooted in the 2014 hacker attack on Sony Pictures’ computer system that exposed an embarrassing trove of emails and confidential documents, reportedly in retaliation for Seth Rogen and James Franco’s controversial comedy, The Interview, about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Both Franco, who’s hosting “Saturday Night Live,” and Rogen are characters in the story (Bissell co-wrote a nonfiction book, THE DISASTER ARTIST, the film version of which Franco directed), and most of its action revolves around whether Sony will allow Franco to include a joke about the hack in his opening monologue. Anyone who’s seen a Franco/Rogen film will appreciate the appropriateness of the story’s absurd, but perfectly inevitable, climax.

This might be the only short story collection by an American writer with two stories set in Tallinn, Estonia. The more compelling is “The Fifth Category.” Its atypical protagonist is John Yoo, the Bush administration Justice Department attorney who authored the infamous memos relied upon to justify torture in the war on terrorism following 9/11.

Flying home from a conference in Tallinn where he delivers a talk defending his legal advice, after which he was “beginning to feel both ghostly and loathed here, less a man than an unpleasant idea,” Yoo undergoes a terrifying experience worthy of “The Twilight Zone” or a Stephen King story, one that’s juxtaposed with his rumination over his actions and the notoriety that flowed from them.

The collection’s title story teeters on the border between farce and pathos. In it, Brenna and Reuben, who live in Los Angeles, hire Haley, an escort, for an evening they hope will reinvigorate a sex life that’s foundered after the birth of their son. Both spouses consider themselves “creative types” --- she’s the executive producer of a reality television show who works 70-hour weeks, while he’s a failed writer who “was lucky if he worked a “seventy-hour year.” As the evening proceeds from one uncomfortable moment to the next, Haley shares the experiences that led to her current employment, including the poignant story of the friend who accompanied her from Moon Lake, Florida, to Hollywood, and her own experience as a “creative type” --- on the “amateur porn circuit.”

The pleasure of Bissell’s stories lies less in any epiphanies or tidy endings than in the way he consistently evokes the experience of painful, humorous, awkward and very human moments. Most of the stories in CREATIVE TYPES are very much of this time, so there’s some doubt if readers 20 years from now will appreciate all of its allusions and sly humor. But in these strange days, Bissell’s fiction is certain to make many feel right at home.