Working Without a Laugh Track

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.

These 12 short stories are among the most original, uproariously funny,
bittersweet, and true to life that I have read in many years. From Bill,
who has trouble giving a sperm count, to obstetrician Dr. Smith,
performing dull midwifery, we meet a whole host of engaging characters
who live out their lives and worry as we do. And their problem, like
ours, is chiefly “sex.” Not sex as an act of pleasure but as a state
of mind. The failure to “get enough” is as worrisome as the failure
to perform more than once a week; having to submit (as part of the
male’s responsibility to ease world overpopulation) to a vasectomy is
a vast trial of the ego; when the dream of an extramarital affair comes
true, the experience can be traumatic and deflating. Such is Stenson’s
fictional world—chiefly the world of prenatal classes, delivery rooms,
and urologists’ offices (with, now and then, a coffee shop or motel
room where the same sexual concerns dominate: inadequacy, premature
impotency, longing after the unattainable).

And throughout the whole we laugh at Bill, and Jim, and Dr. Smith, and
at ourselves—at our fears and foibles—for Stenson is first and
foremost a humorist. From pure burlesque to subtle satire, we are
treated to a superb performance. And there is irony and some pathos as
well; but, more importantly, there is a respect, even reverence, for
life which makes one go away happy from the reading—and that is this
book’s unusual quality. Stenson has matured as an artist and as an
observer of life. This book deserves to be widely read.