"Orientation and Other Stories" by Daniel Orozco

I feel short stories should try to bring to the surface great truths and great experiences, but not necessarily big ones. Which is to say I do not think they should try to over reach their short form and try to describe big worlds with big happenings. Like the stories of Raymond Carver, and even today with writers such as Wells Tower and ZZ Packer, they can be profound, funny, enlightening and disturbing, but always within the grasp of the readers frame of mind, and should be able to be read in one, sometimes two sittings (although one is ideal, any story over 30 pages I split into a few reading sessions). I do not like overly complex short stories that much, even though I do think they are the best medium to experiment with different. I don’t mind that the story is complex, so much as the format of the story itself. The stories of Barthelme and Barth and other post-modern writers seem rather gimmicky to me, and lack the profound spirit in the basic, yet more rewarding short story format.  While Orientations and Other Stories has a few gems in it, it sadly falls short of being great due to the sometimes-hokey story formatting. The First story here, the title story, may be the best one, and is, honestly, one of my favorite stories I have read in a few months. It is written as a speech to a new employee at an office, and the person speaking seems to have the knowledge of the intimate, sometimes disturbing details of the workers’ life, such as who loves who, what male hides out in the girls bathroom, and which one is an infamous serial killer. It manages to be funny, sad, and scary at the same time and is indicative of people’s need to connect and societies indifference to that need. The other great story, Only Connect” is about three separate perceptions of a robbery homicide, from the victim, the shooters, and a witness. It leaves the reader feeling confused, in a good way, about who to blame, since we know all of the characters and what brought them to this moments. It ultimately represents the importance of looking at situations, no mater how ugly, and trying to see all perspectives. While these tow represent the high points of this collection, one story, Officers Weep”, more representative of what this collection is. It shows the weird and sad details of the life of a select few police officers in the form of police reports. It is a bland, goofy, ineffective attempt at doing a George Saunders like story, who, while post-modern, can actually be humorous and present great ideas about modern life. While “Officers Weep” represents a low point in the book, a lot of the stories are simply forgettable, harmless and under 30 pages. I do recommend it for the two really good stories, and you will like it more than me if you like post-modern flash fiction, which is what this book would be categorized as, which kept me from giving it a perfect score.

Rating: 4/5