The Puget News

Ryan Boudinot began the evening by pointing by pointing out a cartoon representation of himself that someone at “The Stranger” had drawn to accompany a short piece he’d written for this week’s issue. Laughing at the image in the article, he held up a separate book with Kim Jong-Il’s famous visage smiling on the cover, noting the startling likeness. “What an unfortunate representation,” was all I could think. He really looks nothing like the dictator. At least he can laugh at himself and his fledgling fame.

Before I get into what Ryan read, or what his work is like, there are several reasons I wanted to go see him read last night:

• Boudinot is the childhood friend of a friend, so you know, we’re almost friends by proxy. I thought that there might be post-reading beers involved. Guess what? There were…
• We both worked for Amazon.com. In fact, he’s now back as a DVD editor.
• We’ve met briefly a couple times in the past.
• A book with the title “The Littlest Hitler.” Come on. Admit it. It sounds fun.

I am happy to report that “The Littlest Hitler” is indeed fun, a little topsy turvy and occasionally over the top, but a quick read with a few really well-done gems. Over beers afterwards, one of Ryan’s high school teachers referred to the stories as “nihilistic.” On that point, we generally agree. Even Ryan stated that his intent was to take things as far as possible with each of the stories, to get around the need for subtlety. It’s a nice trick when it works but it does occasionally feel like it was instead the easier, more comical thing to do, rather than the correct thing.

With all of that said, I smiled a lot reading this book. Perhaps I’m more twisted than I’d like to admit. I love axe-wielding cannibalistic mothers, children dressed for school as “Hitler” and “Anne Frank”, and career day with mass murdering fathers. It’s indulgent to be sure, but it’s funny.
By far, my favorite piece is the story “On Sex and Relationships”, which you can read for free online. It’s about that strange time in a couple’s co-existence where they start getting out of sync with mutual friends, people they once felt close to. It’s a volatile “make or break” moment where they realize that they’ve given up much of their self-interest for a relationship they are beginning to doubt.

“We’re thinking about it,” Katherine said, avoiding eye contact with me. If she had looked at me while saying it, the statement would have meant one thing. When you say, “We’re thinking about it” and smile and look into each other’s eyes, it means you intend to reproduce. When you look straight ahead and avoid eye contact with your lover it means the topic is a point of contention. I wanted to have a kid, she didn’t, that was our story, and sure I blamed the abortion for it. We’d even resisted getting officially married, ostensibly in protest that gay people couldn’t get married, but mostly because the ceremony and psychological transformations involved really freaked us out.

I highly recommend that you check out that story. If you enjoy it, there’s a good chance that you’ll also enjoy many of the other stories in the book.