The Suffering of Lesser Mammals by Greg Sanders (review)

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Reviewed by:

• The Suffering of Lesser Mammals by Greg Sanders
• Edward M. Bury (bio)

the suffering of lesser mammals
Greg Sanders
Owl Canyon Press
https://www.owlcanyonpress.com/product-page/the-suffering-of-lesser-mammals
152 pages; Print, $18.95

Everything driven by the creative process—be it music, dance, the visual arts, or another expression of skill, perspective, belief, or beauty—can benefit by those who sometimes flex the boundaries and challenge convention in order to establish themselves as a ground-breaker. A proverbial crack to the foundation of a creative genre helps to keep all types of art advancing and open to new interpretations, and potentially new audiences.

The thirteen short stories that comprise The Suffering of Lesser Mammals clearly demonstrate that author Greg Sanders purposefully intended to deviate from the normal by sauntering down the avenue of the quizzical, the absurd, the unbelievable, and at times, the truly bizarre. Sanders employs recognized elements of short fiction—conflict, plot, character development—but deftly infuses creative elements that reveal his clear and purposeful mandate to transcend the expected or the normal. In fact, the front cover of the book displays an astronaut adrift in a life raft, the paddle having floated to the back cover; the image, which portends the story "A Blintz on Ross 128b," is unquestionably apt.

In some stories, Sanders introduces the unconventional element early in the work; for example, two paragraphs into the first story, "A History of Cars," we learn that a significant number of people who read a 1978 graphic nonfiction work "came to believe that the first fully functional automobile chugged along during the rule of King James I, and that workable prototypes had been [End Page 82] built as early as the reign of Canute the Great." (For those unfamiliar with this British ruler, the prototype would have been developed around 1016.)

While in "The Fate of Mathematicians," a tale about Max Tischler, a university professor who reconnects romantically with a woman colleague from his graduate school years, a macabre scene takes place near the end of the story. Our protagonist faces the prospect of a grisly death after being tossed into the hopper of a refuse truck by burly, laughing garbage men after complaining about the noise emanating during their rounds; while this unfolds, neighbors and passersby ignore Tischler's cries for help. After his eventual escape from the hopper, Tischler stumbles to the door of his apartment building while the garbage men observe, "their eyes ablaze with pure joy, a happiness unburdened and full of delight. He was their catharsis for the week."

This practice of varying the debut of the unusual or bizarre sidesteps any contention that Sanders relies entirely on the wholly fabricated or totally incomprehensible to structure his fiction. Within The Suffering of Lesser Mammals, stories explore themes that range from confusion, nonconformity, and disillusionment to optimism, hope, and the evolution of mankind.

Sanders writes relatively compact stories, many set in or around his home base of New York City, where his primary occupation centers on working as a technical writer. Characters interact on subway platforms, in the East Village, in "the heart of Brooklyn," in Yonkers and in a town upstate; yet, there's not a profound or dominant metro New York impact: the city is not presented as overshadowing the plot through stereotypical encounters with colorful native characters or affected by the collective massiveness of the five boroughs; and, within the collection, the reader can ascertain that the plot and characters in some stories were created by someone who has an acute and comprehensive understanding of applied and industrial sciences.

This is especially true in "Beta," which chronicles a pivotal development in the life of George, a tech executive at a firm called the Consortium. George is leading development of something called the Multivariate Predictive Engine (MPE), an algorithm of sorts designed "to illuminate the inner workings of that temporal system we call reality." Between coping with a fatal accident involving his daughter's boyfriend and managing the proposed rollout of the MPE, George engages in a quarrel with Tagrin, a slovenly computer engineer colleague who somehow employs the technology to cause the daughter...