A Review of Banjo Grease,
by Dennis Must
Creative Arts Book Company, 2000

In his debut collection of short stories, "Banjo Grease," Dennis Must chronicles the daily grind, the familial relationships, and the dysfunction of life in a small blue-collar town. His characters are uneducated and often crass, his narrators are refreshingly straightfoward and honest, and the whole bunch of them are often humorous in a down-home sort of way. You just can't help but like them - most of them anyway.

The collection is loosely held together by the character of Westley Daugherty, a young man growing up in the town of Hebron, Pennsylvania, whose voice becomes the reader's comfort zone as we meet him again and again throughout the book. We follow him through ten of the sixteen stories, as he chronicles the experiences of his life, always focusing on various members of his family. Must's greatest strength lies in his talent for description and he uses it to define his characters and their surroundings in a way that gives us the truth of their lives before they utter a single word. In the title story, "Banjo Grease", young Westley tells us about his Aunt Min:

"Like the lid of a can, the trailer door slowly opened. A sweet and stale odor rose out of its aperture. Min suddenly appeared, her henna shoe-polished hair curled in scraps of toilet paper with metal rollers the size of silverdollar wrappers. Her rouged cheeks, splotched and smeared, sinking in towards her mouth - upper and lower dentures back in a jar at bedside, soaking."

With his sensitivity to detail, an inherent understanding of his characters, and a conversational style that is infused with the basic motions of every day existence, Must makes us intimate with this working-class society which he obviously has a great affection for. Here, we are introduced to Buddy Hart and his Uncle in "Say Hello to Stanley," arguably the best short story in the collection:

"Buddy Hart hauled the Hammond B-3 in a two-wheel trailer hitched to his father's Willys sedan. The family thought Uncle Stanley's talent as a barrel-house pianist had by some mysterious route passed down to Bud. And the miracle became even more fortuitous when Stanley lost two of his fingers in the cutting mill along with his gig."

Most of the stories are not feel-good pieces. These folks live difficult, confused lives. There are dreams unfulfilled, marriages in trouble, death to deal with, family members to be ashamed of. It's the stuff that life is made of, and yet, Must's characters are as unique as they are universal. That's part of what makes them so successful.

"Banjo Grease" is a hearty and satisfying glimpse into the heart of americana. Individually, these short stories are good; as a collection, they emerge as a fine artistic achievement.

Copyright © 2001 Fanoula Sevastos All Rights Reserved