Jungle Wedding: Stories

Clark makes his literary entrance with 13 explosively dramatic stories, several of which appeared in magazines such as Playboy and GQ, involving characters who are desperate to break free of the numbing detritus of the American culture-scape. Because the lives of these characters often rely upon technology (and voyeurism), they frequently act through computers and cameras. In the ambitious ""Public Burning,"" a cynical anthropology graduate student posing as a landlord monitors the extramarital affairs and generational strife occurring beneath one ""average"" suburban roof--in imitation of Michael Apted and Saturday Night Live--until both familial and property destruction fall within the range of his hidden camera. A shared nihilistic core, combined with a dependence for comic leverage on their own maddening likelihood, makes some of these tales too jarring for their own good. In ""At Last, the Ark,"" a rental car breakdown disrupts a precariously suited couple's ""trip to intimacy"" in the desert, only to leave them at the mercy of an Old Testament-sized storm. Clark delivers his news of doomsday in a dry tone verging on parched, humorous but also frightening. Elsewhere, Clark's facility with dialogue keeps his narratives in motion, as in the title story, which merges a cameraman's assignment to film a wealthy couple's wedding in the middle of a tropical forest with a discovery of his own darker impulses. Although Clark's desire to portray his characters as malfunctioning robots sometimes hides the pathos of their stories, the collection generally pulses with frenetic energy of its own. (Nov.)