the curious grammar of Ohio

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 27, 2004, at 11:25 AM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> Needs looked into indeed!  Since I've been reading Appalachia-based
> novels
> lately (because they're good, first, and because I'm looking for
> representations of dialect, second), I'll make a point of getting this
> book
> and reading it over Winter break.  Thanks for the tip!

two other takes on the book, neither of which mentions dialect or
grammar:

New York Times, July 4, 2004, Sunday Book Review, Books in Brief
THE SMALLEST PEOPLE ALIVE
  By Keith Banner.
  Carnegie Mellon University, paper, $16.95.
  It's hard to make a pedophile sympathetic, but Keith Banner manages to
do it in one of the stories in ''The Smallest People Alive,'' his
uneven new collection. Set in a Midwest of trailer parks, convenience
stores and homophobia, these 13 stories look unflinchingly at the fear
and desire of being misunderstood, whether through the eyes of a
pedophile, a gay teenager or a single mother. In ''The Doll the Fire
Made,'' the best man at his former lover's wedding makes a pass at the
bride's 14-year-old son. The 23-year-old ambulance worker in ''Where
You Live'' sexually pursues the teenage suicide-attempt victim he
saved. In ''Holding Hands for Safety,'' a gay teenager in love with his
cousin questions whether or not to turn him in for the murder he
committed. However wrenching the subject matter, Banner's
straightforward prose is funny and his characters are deadpan in their
self-deprecation and their often futile searches for redemption. These
are people ignored, not so much living outside the mainstream as
overlooked by it.
  JENIFER BERMAN


 From Publishers Weekly (on the Amazon site)
Banner's first collection (following his 1999 novel The Life I Lead)
sears and surprises. His stories, mainly set in Ohio and Tennessee,
read like small revelations, perhaps because they focus on people
usually ignored in gay fiction—rural, low-income, overweight, largely
uneducated folks with dead-end or thankless jobs; they might call
themselves "white trash," but Banner gives them a dark and fragile
dignity. Two developmentally disabled gay men living in a group home
are given a secret wedding in "The Wedding of Tom to Tom" after their
caregivers look past the constant, against-the-rules coupling to see
their deep bond. In the disturbing "Holding Hands for Safety," the
overweight narrator's gorgeous cousin has just murdered his 10-year-old
"borderline retarded" half-sister. The boys kiss, and the narrator
relishes Trent's sudden vulnerability: "he needed someone to love him
right after he told.... He knew that I would not tell no one because I
wanted him so bad, and that makes me feel trashy but also full of hope
again because it will only be me and him who know." Banner demands—and
gets—empathy for these often unappealing characters. Their voices are
direct and heartbreakingly honest, and Banner's use of imagery
brilliantly echoes the low-rent surroundings (fried mushrooms in a fast
food restaurant are described as "floating like little severed heads in
a hot black lake"). In the O. Henry–winning title story, two characters
epitomize Banner's world with queasy, tender precision: "Two queers...
in rural Ohio, one slightly obese, the other skinny tight-lipped,
wanting to escape but not knowing how."