Stuff I Read: Tuxedo Junction by Thom Carnell

For the better part of the last decade, Thom Carnell has put out stellar independent fiction, both in his horror/action series, No Flesh Shall Be Spared, and his series of short story anthologies. His latest compilation, Tuxedo Junction, is no exception as he uses short-form storytelling to experiment with varying styles and a wide range of concepts. There’s something for everyone, whether you fancy hard-boiled detectives, scenes from the outbreak of a zombie virus, or if you’ve ever wondered what Apocalypse Now would look like, retold as a Christmas tale.

It is worth noting here that the author is a friend of mine. That said, he puts out a ton of quality work.

Tuxedo Junction by Thom Carnell

With Tuxedo Junction, Carnell completes a trilogy of pulpy short fiction anthologies (along with Moonlight Serenades and A String of Pearls) that he began in the aftermath of his mother’s death, an event he expounds upon in the first of this series. The stories themselves are a well-balanced potpourri of subject matter, both new and from his archive, accompanied by a brief introduction that frames where he was in his life when he wrote it. It’s a feature that played prominently in Moonlight Serenades but was mostly absent in A String of Pearls. Either by accident or design the author becomes a character, a tour guide through his own rambunctious imagination. Like any compilation of art, be it stories, music, or paintings, some hit the individual observer harder than others. Personally, I found Dancin’ Days, The Heart of Christmas, and The Midas Gift the strongest stories of this bunch. All the pieces presented here are enjoyable, though, and the fact that there are so many genres represented without feeling scattershot shows Carnell’s impressive range as a storyteller.

Taken on its own, Tuxedo Junction is a solid collection of tales, individually short enough to read while on the bus or in the bathroom. Shen you take it as part of a larger meta-narrative, the trilogy walks us through the author dealing with grief and the loss of a loved one. In Moonlight Serenades, death is often cruel, violent, senseless, and painful. It is gratuitous, and pointedly so. By Tuxedo Junction, though, death is portrayed as something beautiful, and the end of life is a sacred part of the journey we take as humans. Death is a way to master one’s suffering (Making Plans). Death is the reward for a life well-lived (The Midas Gift). And the afterlife can be used to bring peace to the living (San Jacinto).

The collection is strong, and while I enjoyed the centerpieces of the previous iterations (Clown Town from Moonlight Serenades and Song of the Dragon from A String of Pearls) more than the centerpiece of this one (The Heart of Christmas), Thom Carnell’s mastery of story is fully flexed in this collection as he seems to have completed his journey through grief. You would kick yourself for missing out.

Pros: Wide range of tales that appeal to varied tastes; conclusion of an ingenious meta-narrative.

Cons: Centerpiece is strong, but not the best story in the book, in my opinion.

Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars