Hell Is Other People
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About the Book
The most common and universal problem of life never changes--things are not always what they appear to be." This is the first sentence of the initial short story entitled "Hell Is Other People." It introduces one of the eternal problems of the human condition. Humanity´s perennial struggle to understand lived experience produces literature. And yet how many readers have fully responded to the crisis of contemporary existence that has acquired particular cogency in our post-industrial culture? "Hell Is Other People" communicates the quality of the absurd in keeping with the deeper concerns of the American literary canon. Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner and Richard Wright make up the tradition that informs this remarkable book. All who value the past, and who have come to know the pathos and duplicity of life in our time, will deeply appreciate the inner workings of this timeless world.
Book Review:
Much like industrial music uses post-modern sampling to manipulate the sounds of the bygone Machine Age, Pittsburgher Michael Uhrin’s writing is a cogent example of “industrial literature.” The short stories in his collection Hell Is Other People all relate to the gloriously wealthy industrial era of Pittsburgh—yet employ the postmodern conceit of “sampling” a title from Jean-Paul Sartre and incorporating influences from other prominent 20th century Industrial Age authors. Faulkner and Dreiser are mentioned on the back cover, but the surreal and melancholy nature of some of Uhrin’s stories, fraught with social commentary, could just as easily suggest Poe or even Vonnegut.
Not to be tackily classist, Uhrin’s various tales include a spectrum of protagonists both rich and poor, smart andsimple, cultured and boorish. All set in western Pennsylvania, most involve some sort of troubled individual who either ultimately finds hope or a final humiliation among the decay of Pittsburgh’s manufacturing might. Because many of the stories are rather short, Uhrin focuses on character analysis and background description rather than any far-reaching plot, and for the most part, this formula works well.
In the course of this collection, we meet Tony, a tortured returnee from World War II who can’t get the Nazi concentration camp horrors out of his head and pays the highest price. We meet Emily, a widow defending her rural homestead against the encroachment of yuppie real estate developers.
There’s Mr. Dobresczech, the immigrant laborer, who loses his hand in a mill accident, and Billy Toricht, a beer-drinking, car-stealing loser from the down-and-out area of Duquesne. These imagined individuals populate the world of Uhrin’s mid-20th century Pittsburgh, from the mill towns of Homestead, Duquesne and Braddock to the upscale homes and book club intelligentsia of Squirrel Hill and Edgewood.
The predicaments in which these characters find themselves are usually absorbing; the details of their fictitious names are illuminating. Uhrin calls the embattle Russian husband “Mr. Pravda” (a legacy of the Communist era?) and an ex-con who fins gainful employment in a McKeesport factor “J. Capek” (perhaps a robotic reference to Karel Capek’s R.R.R.?). Not to meniton the poor little rich girl whose vast are inheritance is carried off by a fast-talking, amorous Frenchman. Her name? Frances McMammon” (not Mellon).
Such a theory, however would be disproven by Uhrin’s brief but powerful essay “Boulevard of the Allies” in which Pittsburgh itself is the character. It unfolds a sweeping panorama of the dusty churches and shady parks and stately cemeteries where the retired, elderly penionners spend the remainder of their aimless lives, while their wives continue making the weekly shopping trek Downtown on the PAT bus.
Here Uhrin elevates the status of Pittsburgh’s industrial era to near heroic proportions, speaking of the “great me