Johnson’s short stories keep readers satiated

Esquire recently published a short story by Bret Anthony Johnston. Under the title, the subhead refers to the Iowa Writers' Workshop alum's “upcoming novel ‘The Unaccompanied.'”

“The Unaccompanied” has been “upcoming” for quite a while. The “International Literary Quarterly” published an intriguing excerpt from the book in February 2008 (it's available online). In February of this year, “The Aviary Online” published an interview with Johnston in which he says “The Unaccompanied” will be finished by the end of the year.

But that doesn't mean Johnston hasn't offered up new things for folks to read since his acclaimed 2005 short story collection, “Corpus Christi.”

For this review, I read the short stories “Encounters with Unexpected Animals,” published in March in “Esquire,” and “Soldier of Fortune,” which originally appeared in “Glimmer Train” and then in the 2011 edition of “The Best American Short Stories.” I also read “Danny Way and the Gift of Fear,” a non-fiction piece that first appeared in “Men's Journal” and then in the 2011 edition of “The Best American Sports Writing.”

Both short stories center on young women who have an air of potential sexual danger, as well as the fraught relationships between fathers and sons. In “Soldier of Fortune,” Johnston layers observation and rumor and delivers that trickiest of things - a surprise that seems obvious in retrospect. In “Encounters with Unexpected Animals,” he explores the fine line between a father's desire to protect his son and the man's unacknowledged desire and jealousy. Both stories are top notch.

“Danny Way” is about a shockingly gifted and driven skateboarder. Johnston uses his storytelling prowess to construct the piece in ways that far exceed the usual athlete-focused profile. The piece ends with a bravura passage in which Johnston compares his subject to a varied collection of geniuses: “Think Picasso, Hemingway, Dvorak. Think Laird Hamilton, Chuck Yeager. And, yes, think Tyson. Consider the likelihood that these men don't possess qualities the rest of us lack, but instead have within them intense voids, empty and expansive chambers of possibility.”

These short works certainly made me eager for the possibilities represented by “The Unaccompanied” - whenever it arrives.