THE PURE PRODUCE by John Kessel Tor 0-312-86117-6 381pp/$24.95/December 19977

John Kessel's collection The Pure Product opens with the story, "Some Like It Cold," set in the same universe as his novel Corrupting Dr. Nice. As with the novel, and several other stories in this collection, "Some Like It Cold" is a tribute to the films Hollywood used to make. While all of these stories are well written and Kessel's affection for Hollywood of a bygone era is clear, some of the stories work better than others.

Appearing in this collection for the first time, "Faustfeathers," Kessel's retelling of the legend of Johann Faust's story in the form of a Marx Brothers comedy does not work as well, or as humorously as could be wished. On the other hand, the final story in the book, Sidewise Award Honorable Mention "The Miracle of Ivar Avenue," is a serious examination of the possible murder of film director Preston Sturgiss.

Even stories which don't deal directly with Hollywood have taken on some of Hollywood's trappings. "The Einstein Express" reads as if it were a re-working of Howard Hawks's "Bringing Up Baby" (1938) and has the same frantic energy the Hawks movie has.

Although a number of the stories deal with Hollywood and the images, both cinematic and otherwise, that Hollywood produces, other stories are set far from the realm of cinema. Some, such as "Herman Melville, Space Opera Virtuoso" or "The Franchise" deal with alternate histories in an intelligent and straight-forward manner, without attempting to inject humor which would be out of place in the stories. "Herman Melville" posits that the author was born a century later than he actually was and got his break in writing in the pages of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories in 1928, filling a role which was filled by E.E. "Doc" Smith. "The Franchise" deals with a world in which George Bush became a major league pitcher who attempts to face down his rival on the ballfield: Fidel Castro.

In his afterword, Kessel refers to the two poems in the collection, "Reading Lesson" and "Mr. Hyde Visits the Home of Dt. Jekyll" as an indulgence and I would have to agree with him. The afterword brings up another point I would like to make about The Pure Product. One of the nice things about short story collections is the author commenting on the genesis of his ideas. Unfortunately, this is not something Kessel has decided to do in The Pure Product. He explains that this book was originally going to be a re-issue of his first collection, Meeting in Infinity (Arkham House), but his editor convinced him to add other stories and drop some of the original stories, resulting in the current collection.

Kessel's first short story was published in 1978. Despite several short stories and two solo novels since then, he still seems to remain a relative unknown. His novels are both of high quality and most of his fiction matches. The Pure Product gives a good example of Kessel when he is at his finest.

Some Like it Cold	The Franchise
Herman Melville: Space Opera Virtuoso	The Pure Product
Buddha Nostril Bird	Man
A Clean Escape	Mr. Hyde Visits the Home of Dt. Jekyll
Invaders	Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine
Reading Lesson	Buffalo
The Lecturer	Not Responsible! Park and Lock It!
The Einstrein Express	Gulliver at Home
Faustfeathers: A Comedy	The Miracle of Ivar Avenue
Animals

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