Visit Vadimville

I recommend Vadimville, A Collection of Original Stories by Richard Vadim.  The collection's 300 pages of twenty short stories is sure to have something you'll enjoy for any occasion, whether your taste runs to science fiction, mystery, humor, strange tales or simple, sweet and spot on relationship stories.  

A special delight introducing the work as a collection is the cover art by the author.  Hand drawn and colored classic cars, monsters and heroes, holding hands with a girl....A true indicator of the mood found within, there is something of the comic book and something of a school boy's doodles.  The stories are so true a recollection of boyhood, surely the author remains that "boy at heart", even with his aging hard-of-hearing pals in "What D'Ya Say?"

The residual feeling after a reading is definitely optimistic and upbeat, like the cover, where even the monster is laughing, notwithstanding the grave headstones in the churchyard on the back cover.  Like a youthful comic fan's or gamer's  perspective on life, the dangers in the world are deftly handled as a game, and the flip side is also true:  the game, the sport, feels like war, and therein lies the thrill of risk when it's your turn.  The dangers arise in morally ambivalent businessmen bearing the stomach churning pressures to increase profit, relentlessly pressing into service the individual talent they need, as in "Code" and "CorrectAll"; or from institutions threatening personal autonomy and substituting for family caregiving, as in "Peas in a Pod". Danger can also be inscrutably blameless, natural and environmental, rising and subsiding as suddenly as weather, but nevertheless testing a lone human's wits in a crisis, as in "Prey"; or the  predation on children by a trusted representative of adult institutional authority as in "Dark Onion".  The heroes of these stories are young and old, male and female, funny, smart and kind,  loners but ready friends.

Here are so many heart felt and truly rendered relationships, one knows the author must be a lover.  Many of the stories' adventures unwind around a centerpiece of first love.  In the murder mystery "Dark Onion", the young hero becomes the suspect and is disdained by the new girl with whom he is infatuated.  "The Betrothal" is a short charming remembrance of young love's distress on parting, with a punchline.  The students' flirtation and ultimate investigation of the mysterious "Dorchester House" has a Tom-and-Becky feel, even down to the page-turning edge-of-your-seat exploration of dark closets with long buried threatening secrets.  In the background in "Code" is the computer programmer's refuge in his private happiness with his girlfriend then wife, which lends to the double meaning of the title:  code writing, code breaking and the unresolved social question of the code of ethics or honor which governs the new young computer gods.  Even youth's love for his refurbished classic car serves up atmosphere in the noir styled "Convertible".  

As fondly as these first loves are rendered, my favorite pairing is in "Peas in a Pod", where an old man and a boy meet up on a hiking trail and cagily conceal from each other who they are and where they are going, while forging a family in the course of their wilderness adventure.

Vadimville's title and chapter organization propose a "ville"; the stories and their characters are  "residents" in a community, perhaps referring to the experience common to writers that their inventions take on lives of their own and are companions in the telling--that the author is merely a medium, a scribe for characters in where they will go.  

One headstrong character is the smallest, "Teeny Tiny Tina".  In perfectly consistent tone of simplicity and innocence a tiny doll tells her girl the history of unfortunate accidents and crimes in her new home. Vadim captures the voices of childhood and parenting precisely. The doll's tale is chilling in its guilelessness, and a super choice for Halloween or strange tales readalouds.

The town metaphor suits in another sense.  In any community, one favors repeat acquaintance with some inhabitants over others. I have beloved favorites in "the ville", but  just as in the office, school, or politics, there may be a few who vex on first meeting but ultimately reveal some redeeming quality, and leave you, on reflection, chuckling fondly.  A few of the stories lead off with or play off an oft repeated quotation (like Sea Spicer's page, you are thinking?) or familiar character from Sunday matinees about 60 years ago.   I think this partly reflects the oeuvre ofVadimville's romantic memory, but also reflects something akin to Raymond Chandler's "rejection of pretentiousness" (from Tom Williams's Raymond Chandler:  Writing The Big Sleep).  Chandler finally preferred writing what was considered "pulp fiction" because of the freedom, and noted, "do [Americans] not see the strong element of burlesque in my kind of writing?  Or is it only the intellectuals who miss that? ...There is a strong element of fantasy in the mystery story; there is in any kind of writing that moves within an accepted formula.  The mystery writer's material is melodrama..." (Tom Williams's Raymond Chandler:  Writing the Big Sleep, c. 2014,www.aurumpress.co.uk)

For burlesque, I refer readers to Vadimville's selections adapted from Vadim's stage plays "The 4-Sided Triangle" and "Love, Lost and Found", as well as the detective mystery's wink at Shakespeare in "A Glooming Peace".  These would make entertaining mystery dinner theatre indeed; I have to confess there is one sly and so subtle line in "Love, Lost and Found", that I laugh out loud every time I read it.  Dorky of me but we all know the healthful value of laughing out loud!  And "What D'Ya Say" is funny like an old-timey variety show skit--two old buddies put up with each other's hearing loss, but sure aren't diminished in physical strength or their talent as pleasant company.

An edgy favorite of mine is the compelling sci-fi opener "A Case of Unmistaken Identity",  where the protagonist has to decide whether to end his double life, having been cuckolded by his own double--from one of those multiple universes about which the physicists tell us?  That is the unresolved mystery.   I find it irresistible to be realistically put in the place of both men's lives once they have to accept what they experience without understanding how and why.  

And that after all is the human condition, is it not.  Meanwhile we step up to bat, fall in love, make friends who become family, teach children, escape limiting futures for the freedom of God's country.  For teaching children, the selection "Solid Foundation" is an example of the best home schooling.  For everyone, welcome to Vadimville, and enjoy your visit.