Bang Crunch.

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Montreal author Neil Smith’s short stories were published in leading literary journals, including The Fiddlehead and The Antigonish Review. Such credits are the sign of a contender. The appearance of his story “Green Fluorescent Protein” in Oberon Press’s Coming Attractions ’04 means that he may be one of the important authors nurtured by that annual. The fact that the Russian periodical Inostrannaya Literatura translated and printed that work indicates that Smith may be a phenomenon. That assertion is supported by his ability to bring a breezy credibility to the most bizarre premise. “Extremities” is a series of vignettes that alternately follow a pair of calfskin gloves and an American astronaut’s severed foot. The latter recounts its fate with profane wit. It compares its previous existence with a transsexual’s existential dilemma: “Men who don’t want their pricks. Well, I was born in the wrong body, too. He was a prick and I didn’t want him.” He showcases his wit in “The B9ers,” which is also the name of a support group for benign tumour sufferers. One of its members is Tutsi, a woman who hands out oat bran muffins to prostitutes, giving them what they do not really need, “a little fibre.” Lampooning “political correctness” is like shooting fish in a barrel; the reader is served gourmet seafood.

The classic Montreal writers are articulate representatives of their anglophone or francophone cultures. Since this storyteller translates for Radio-Canada and has a Québécois male companion, he can be intercultural. This enables him to credibly recreate the environment of a French-speaking actor whose unusual mentoring project, “Jaybird,” is also the story’s title. The creator of strange protagonists has no problem adopting a French-Canadian authorial persona—you guess the author. Neil Smith’s audacity enables him to write humorous and compelling fiction that wins an eager audience.