Charles Yu’s collection of eleven stories
reads like a sort of Postcards from the Edge of Reality. Third Class Superhero
is a bunch of pithy, poignant, and sometimes funny stories that explore both
fantasies and alternate realities, none of which are so removed that they don’t
speak to contemporary readers. Yu’s world of superheroes, intergalactic travel,
and far out cybergames is populated with people like ourselves; people who are
lonely, disappointed, frustrated and confused. These are very much the
characters of short stories. Yu’s work is the lonely voice for a new
millennium.       

The book is presented with a
collage of lurid cartoons on the cover, suggesting something of the superficial
nature of the comic book. But the frame in the top right corner (think American
Splendour’s Harvey Pekar) is a clue: the nervous, balding character
typifies the existential angst explored in these stories, the search for
meaning in a world reduced to slogans, soundbites, and formulae.

Yu gives himself the freedom to
explore realities such as time travel, space travel, classes for aspiring
superheroes, reality shows and depersonalization. Characters think in terms of
definitions and caricatures, always pitted against problems of love and
meaning. More than once there’s a Carveresque ending, with someone confronting
an existential void  pleading that there’s got to be more. A theme throughout
the book is the male character who shares a close relationship with his mother,
brought to a moving conclusion in the final story.

The title story is one of pathos.
Nathan is an aspiring superhero with a major problem: "Moisture Man doesn’t
exactly strike fear into the hearts of the wicked". You’ve got to feel for
a superhero whose only weapon is to absorb two gallons of moisture from the
atmosphere and then discharge it. Having the options of a stream or gentle mist
doesn’t help much either. A chance to short circuit the normal superhero
apprenticeship places Nathan in a moral dilemma. Through the aging, alcoholic
and disabled neighbor Henry, readers are given a moral counterpoint as Nathan
considers his choices. Altogether a much told tale, but Yu’s skill in wrapping
the story up in fantastical mode allows us to reflect anew on moral
consequences.             

A story called 32.05864491%
is a meditation on the theme of ‘maybe’. The unreliability of language is not a
new idea by any means, but Yu pushes the boat out further by giving this vague
word the precise definition, in terms of the science of emotional statistics, of 
32.05864491% . This device is used to explore Janine and Ivan’s relationship,
and in the end boils down to the fact that they might or might not get together.
Although this event takes place in a billion parallel universes, and with a
defined ratio of yes/no outcomes, this Janine and this Ivan have no idea how
things will turn out. The story ends with the everyday scenario of the phone
ringing, and Janine waiting to see who it is.   

In the final story Autobiographical
raw material unsuitable for the mining of fiction, Yu contradicts the story’s
title by providing a series of poignant vignettes highly suitable for the
mining of fiction. In this story Yu comes as close to writing a straightforward
narrative as he gets. He brings the themes of his previous stories together,
exploring the narrator’s relationship with his mother, mortality and death, the
conflict between the allure of dreams and the prosaic nature of life.  

Yu’s approach is playful,
imaginative and fresh. Despite the range of devices employed, there is no sense
of artifice with this collection. Rather, there is the sense of writer deeply
engaged with his craft. Yu is a convincing writer who easily persuades us to
suspend disbelief, but who never takes this for granted. Even the most
outlandish events contain a narrative truth. Ezra Pound exhorted poets to "make
it new". Yu has taken that advice to heart, showing that new themes, new
narrative structures and new language can breathe life into universal stories
of love, despair, hope, and death.

© 2006 Tony O’Brien

Tony O’Brien is a short story
writer and lecturer in mental health nursing at the University of Auckland, New
Zealand: a.obrien@auckland.ac.nz

Categories: Fiction