The Droughtthelitpub.com

I stumbled over this little gem a few days ago, and the nice folks at The Lit Pub were kind enough to send me a PDF of Miles Harvey’s wonderful chapbook, and I’m so glad they did. Miles Harvey is playing way above everyone else with this story: a barber, a weatherman, and the woman who comes between them. Oh, yes, and it hasn’t rained in a very long time.

This is billed as  neo-fabulists/surrealists  writing, and I couldn’t disagree more. For me it seems like the Coen brothers writing, almost, and that’s a high compliment. Maybe that’s fabulist or surreal, I’ve never been one to judge. It isn’t even that surreal, when you think about it, as nothing falls from the sky, and no one gets oddly run over by something terrible.

Someone does die. That’s for sure.

The weatherman has come to town to help our narrator at his television station predict the weather, and as weathermen usually do, he tells us what we need to know and what might happen. But he can’t bring rain to the small little town.

Harvey writes with a smooth twang, with the beat of a fiddle, and never breaks stride over details and the weatherman, well, our narrator is clearly in awe of him. I love how the weatherman tries to better deal the television station and then doubles back with hat in hand. Or even, how the barber’s wife is the one who really brings business to the shop.

In thirty some odd pages Harvey makes me believe that these people are more real than real, almost within reach. Our narrator is reliable, and even a little bit jealous of the swaggering charm of the weatherman, especially when he captures the heart of the barber’s wife. This story never seemed weird, and didn’t resemble a talking dog. All this is to say, it wasn’t surreal.