One-Minute Book Reviews: A novel that challenges the rules and takes a chance

“Way West”
Wyn Cooper, Concord ePress, 2022.

Wyn Cooper is known as a writer of short stories, essays, reviews and five books of poetry. Behind this seemingly stable career lies an artist willing to take a chance. More importantly, Cooper is the guy who, when asked by Sheryl Crow if she could use his poem “Fun” in one of her songs, said yes — and saw it top the charts in 1994 as “All I Wanna Do”. It’s this side of Cooper that has jumped at the chance to publish “Way Out West,” a lively, unorthodox novel that’s … well, way out. Everything in the book defies the unspoken rules of novel writing—except for the masterful intelligence of Cooper’s prose, which makes readers trust him so completely that they ignore all the impossibilities on the pages they’re turning and attribute their occasional confusion. the eagerness with which they are reading.
“Way Out West” opens in December 1983 with a portrait of Tyler Dutton, a film technician and stuntman who has drunkenly climbed one of Deep Creek’s mountains by moonlight. From this beautifully described point of view, he somehow falls and slides down the mountain and is walking along a road at night when he is struck by Robin Stanley, a beautiful woman who has moved to Baker, Nevada, in order to recover from addiction. from drugs. . Robin brings Tyler over to her house and the next day, over cups of Irish coffee, discovers that she’s the city girl she’s been waiting for all her life. (“He knew she was a city girl when he put her in the truck last night, one hand on his crotch.”) Thus begins an unlikely romance, lubricated by constant drinking, but, with one near-fatal exception, without drugs. Lending the plot structure is the movie Tyler has left making—an end-of-the-earth-as-we-know-it B-movie being filmed on the Utah salt flats and at the Nevada National Security Site , with a final scene in Paolo Soler’s visionary Arizona town of Arcosanti. As the novel begins, the film is only half-filmed; and distressed by Tyler’s loss, the principal sends him a letter asking him to return with double his salary. Tyler is still considering this the next day when the producer, Hal Lockhart, pulls up to Robin’s house in a stretch limousine, informs Tyler that the director has died of a heart attack, and offers him the job. Tyler agrees, and the book moves from set to set, ending in Mercury, Nevada (“where the bombs are”).
The cinematic action is reflected in Cooper’s cinematic organization. The story proceeds in a series of scenes, sometimes with flashbacks, often with sharp or confrontational dialogue, but with little exposition. The scenery is similar: Cooper’s chosen Western landscape is, in a larger world, the stage for Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars nuclear tests. Although the cinematic emphasis successfully leads readers into what for a few pages promises to be a spy story, the sets themselves sometimes move in ways that defy geographic accuracy, especially on conversation-filled car rides along highways located on the wrong side of the Nevada. – Utah border. But as with similar scenes in the movies, the “feel” is more important than the accuracy: it’s the driving and the conversations that are fun. And Cooper’s scenes are fun. Many are comical, especially those featuring bartender Sonny and his oppressive mother, or the sex-obsessed Hal Lockhart. The untitled film, like the romance, progresses quite well under Tyler’s direction, despite the looming threat of nuclear explosions. How will it all end? Fortunately? Tragically? (There’s plenty of reason to think so, since at least one of the two characters who die is killed.) Readers wonder, but Cooper defies all expectations of the novelistic standard by taking the boldest chance of all on his final page.