What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology

Rating:
Summary: It's About Time
Review: For anyone who loves fiction and has struggled with weight (or not) this is a wonderful, insightful book. The stories are funny, sad, and real. I'm so glad someone had the guts to put together this collection. The book makes you realize that it isn't fat that's obscene, it's America's gluttonous hyped obsession with perfection and "skin deep" body image. (My only complaint is that I wish the book had been fatter.)

Rating:
Summary: From The Oswegonian (by myself)
Review: My first thoughts were "Bad timing, Ira."
Publishing a "fat fiction anthology" right now might seem tantamount to endorsing al-Qaeda, with Dr. Phil's new diet book dominating store shelves and airwaves and with an unprecedented number of local and regional news stories doing "lose-weight-or-die" features as well. (When a potential customer calls up "What Are You Looking At?" on Amazon.com, they are offered a "package deal-order it along with Dr. Phil's diet book and get $11 off.)
It's exactly what Oswego professor Ira Sukrungruang has done, though-and it's selling well. Critical and reader response to "What Are You Looking At?: The First Fat Fiction Anthology" has been good since its September 9 release, says Sukrungruang, who will speak about the book on October 2 at River's End Books in Oswego.
Perhaps it's because with story after story on the news networks bemoaning the health risks of obesity and hour after hour of talk show dedicated to people wanting to "get fit," some overweight people are just saying "Sweet living Lord, I need a little reinforcement here!"
At any rate, the collection itself is what merits review, more than the stories themselves, which have largely been culled from other sources. Sukrungruang says that "fat has been kind of an obsession" for he and his co-editor Donna Jarrell, both of whom characterize themselves as having grown up fat. "It's what we lived with," Sukrungruang says.
A variety of writers ranging from Ray Carver and Tobias Wolff to Sukrungruang and his wife, a fellow Oswego professor and poet, contributed to the anthology; even the oldest of the stories are very contemporary. Sukrungruang says that while he was at first shocked to find how much material was available on the topic, he later ended up leaving a lot of good work on the cutting room floor.
So much so, in fact, that he and Jarrell have signed with Harvest Books to follow up "What Are You Looking At?" with a second volume-this one dedicated entirely to personal experience essays that revolve around being fat.
It was a chore to find an agent to represent them, Sukrungruang says, because anthologies are rarely profitable for agents. Once they found someone to bring their work to potential publishers, though, it took only a few weeks to find the book a home at Harvest. The largest buyer of the book is also the nation's largest bookstore chain, Barnes & Noble, where students reported seeing the book a couple of weeks before its September 9 release date.
The anthology itself is a great blend of touching and humorous stories, blending the established writers and the "staples" of fat fiction with relative unknowns and gems found in the rough. They are told from a variety of perspectives and, for someone who has been thin (often not just "average," but actually "too thin") for most of my life, it's an interesting way to see through the eyes of the folks who catch a lot of ridicule in an image-conscious society like ours.

Rating:
Summary: Too many suffering characters
Review: The blurb at the top of the jacket says, "Here is fat in all its glory and grandeur - a large-hearted celebration of the human spirit and each individual's unique value, regardless of size."

But it isn't. I was hoping for some proud, in-your-face fat people who believed in themselves. But nearly all the fat characters in this story collection are miserable, and some are tragic. The only contented one is a cat.

Some of the stories are marvelously written. Junot Diaz' "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" paints an amazingly colorful picture of the culture of young Dominicans in New Jersey. And Rhoda Stamell's "Love for a Fat Man," set in a public health clinic in poverty-stricken Detroit, is one of the few stories where people change in positive ways. But several others, including S.L. Wisenberg's "Big Ruthie Imagines Sex Without Pain," present people with too much self-hatred to identify with or enjoy.

Perhaps I was looking for something that doesn't exist. I'm not heavy myself. I regard overweight as a health condition, not a character flaw. I have a chronic condition myself, multiple sclerosis. But unlike overweight people, I get sympathy for my problem, not blame. I interviewed several overweight people for my book, "The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness" (Hunter House 2002). Even though some of them are very fit aerobics instructors, most have a lot of self-doubt. I don't know if society put it there, or if there's something else about being heavy that hurts your self-esteem. Anyway, the protagonists in these stories are mostly damaged.

It's worth reading, though. There are more poems than stories. I very much liked J.L. Haddaway's "When Fat Girls Dream." I think this book could start a lot of valuable discussion about weight and society's attitude towards it.

David Spero RN, author of "The Art of Getting Well." Write "david at davidsperorn.com"