Reviewed by Keith Cadieux
“Clever” seems to be a ubiquitous term in reviews of C.P. Boyko’s second story collection Psychology and Other Stories. I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but the stories contained here really are very clever. They are also self-aware, cynical, insightful, and quite funny.
Boyko’s debut collection Blackouts (published in 2008 under the name Craig Boyko) received a fair amount of praise and established Boyko as a promising comic writer. The debut was lauded for its humor but also Boyko’s considerable talent with establishing a nuanced and differentiated voice for each story in the collection. Psychology and Other Stories has this same quality, making good on the promises made in that first collection.
Now for the clever cynicism: there is no story in the collection called “Psychology.” There is also no cohesive connection between any of the six stories, other than that they all deal in a broad sense with some facet of psychology. In the first story, “Reaction-Formation,” Boyko writes “literature is not about story but about character – and by character one means the intricate machinations of the individual psychology.” Is Boyko’s conceit, then, that psychology is all about story – stories that we and psychological professionals tell ourselves when all that is really at play are machinations?
Bokyo’s insights and criticisms into psychology as a profession are biting, but never disrespectful. In the opening story again, a psychologist arranges his office so that patients are forced to look him in the eye during sessions. When he is moved to a different office where this configuration is no longer possible, he puts up a photograph of himself for his patients to look at while they relate their issues. In “Paddling an Iceberg,” Jim Bird has been left by his wife, which he attributes to her over-reliance on self-help books. In response, Bird writes a self-help book about how to undo the damage of self-help books, which becomes a bestseller and turns Bird into a celebrated self-help guru. “The Inner Life” follows a depressed scholar looking to write a detailed account of Freud’s extensive (and likely heavily addicted) use of cocaine.
A running theme here is that the diagnoses, thought processes, and ultimate conclusions of psychology are carried out, interpreted, and decided by flawed human minds which are subject to all the same neuroses and disorders outside of which psychology, as a discipline, attempts to stand and judge. The final story in the collection, “The Blood-Brain Barrier,” is told partly through court transcripts in a murder trial and the expert witness, Dr. Strickland, admits that psychology is not a science, that its results are not often repeatable or applicable to multiple subjects, but he raises a compelling argument in favor of his discipline:
Let me tell you, there is more wisdom, and compassion, and insight in one good case study of one unique and troubled person than in any number of tables of figures added up and smoothed over by mathematical frippery.
Worth noting, though, is that Dr. Strickland is perhaps not the most ethical psychologist and the offender in whose defense he is speaking is in no way innocent. This shows Boyko’s control over subtlety and his talent as a writer of nuance.
The biggest mistake of any proponent or practitioner of psychology (and any reader of this collection) is to assume that there is an easy answer. And in expressing this concept, Boyko refuses to give any easy answers, if indeed he provides any at all. He is also very aware of this refusal. Provided by Biblioasis with the review copy of the book is a short interview with Boyko, wherein he effectively dodges every question.
This playful self-awareness pops up in a few different places throughout the collection, perhaps most prominently in the “Notes on Sources,” in which Boyko simply asserts that he is “hop[ing] to escape accusations of plagiarism.” Each story begins with an epigraph and also contains paraphrasings of complex psychological concepts, so a list of sources is certainly warranted here. But this brief section is not only for those interested in following up with Boyko’s source material. There are brief commentaries on favourite passages and more of the subtle yet cynical humor that populates the stories. The last note of the book reads,
The citations to the works of Jim Bird ––and Barton Q. Barnard––are fictional. Jim Bird and Barton Q. Barnard are fictional.
So, of course, are all the characters in this book; so, for that matter, am I.
This “I” voice also appears briefly at the end of “Paddling an Iceberg,” remarking that “I want to end this story on a positive note” and then continuing for a couple pages of philosophizing. Are readers meant to maintain the strict separation between the author and speaker of a work and imagine a fictional compiler/editor, or take this as Boyko’s own voice? There is no easy answer to this question. And that’s the point.
Despite its humor and Boyko’s considerable skill with voice, nuance, and indeed intricate and intriguing plots, this collection may not satisfy all readers. Psychology and Other Stories wears its metatextuality on its sleeve; it’s a book that is aware of and enjoying the fact that it is a book. Books are a recurring theme throughout the stories, either in their prevalence or marked absence. Boyko is clearly having fun with both literary and psychological tropes, both of which have an interesting fixation on Freud. But the humor here will appeal to the cynical and those who enjoy sarcasm and subtle digs. For all its comic sensibility, there are no laugh out loud moments. There are complex concepts discussed but also at work throughout the fiction and the fixation on psychological tendencies, neuroses, and diagnoses may prove tiresome for certain readers.
In this particular case, Psychology and Other Stories tickled my cynicism just right.
Biblioasis | 304 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1926845500
‘Psychology and Other Stories’ by C.P. Boyko
Book Reviews
“Clever” seems to be a ubiquitous term in reviews of C.P. Boyko’s second story collection Psychology and Other Stories. I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but the stories contained here really are very clever. They are also self-aware, cynical, insightful, and quite funny.
Boyko’s debut collection Blackouts (published in 2008 under the name Craig Boyko) received a fair amount of praise and established Boyko as a promising comic writer. The debut was lauded for its humor but also Boyko’s considerable talent with establishing a nuanced and differentiated voice for each story in the collection. Psychology and Other Stories has this same quality, making good on the promises made in that first collection.
Now for the clever cynicism: there is no story in the collection called “Psychology.” There is also no cohesive connection between any of the six stories, other than that they all deal in a broad sense with some facet of psychology. In the first story, “Reaction-Formation,” Boyko writes “literature is not about story but about character – and by character one means the intricate machinations of the individual psychology.” Is Boyko’s conceit, then, that psychology is all about story – stories that we and psychological professionals tell ourselves when all that is really at play are machinations?
Bokyo’s insights and criticisms into psychology as a profession are biting, but never disrespectful. In the opening story again, a psychologist arranges his office so that patients are forced to look him in the eye during sessions. When he is moved to a different office where this configuration is no longer possible, he puts up a photograph of himself for his patients to look at while they relate their issues. In “Paddling an Iceberg,” Jim Bird has been left by his wife, which he attributes to her over-reliance on self-help books. In response, Bird writes a self-help book about how to undo the damage of self-help books, which becomes a bestseller and turns Bird into a celebrated self-help guru. “The Inner Life” follows a depressed scholar looking to write a detailed account of Freud’s extensive (and likely heavily addicted) use of cocaine.
A running theme here is that the diagnoses, thought processes, and ultimate conclusions of psychology are carried out, interpreted, and decided by flawed human minds which are subject to all the same neuroses and disorders outside of which psychology, as a discipline, attempts to stand and judge. The final story in the collection, “The Blood-Brain Barrier,” is told partly through court transcripts in a murder trial and the expert witness, Dr. Strickland, admits that psychology is not a science, that its results are not often repeatable or applicable to multiple subjects, but he raises a compelling argument in favor of his discipline:
Let me tell you, there is more wisdom, and compassion, and insight in one good case study of one unique and troubled person than in any number of tables of figures added up and smoothed over by mathematical frippery.
Worth noting, though, is that Dr. Strickland is perhaps not the most ethical psychologist and the offender in whose defense he is speaking is in no way innocent. This shows Boyko’s control over subtlety and his talent as a writer of nuance.
The biggest mistake of any proponent or practitioner of psychology (and any reader of this collection) is to assume that there is an easy answer. And in expressing this concept, Boyko refuses to give any easy answers, if indeed he provides any at all. He is also very aware of this refusal. Provided by Biblioasis with the review copy of the book is a short interview with Boyko, wherein he effectively dodges every question.
This playful self-awareness pops up in a few different places throughout the collection, perhaps most prominently in the “Notes on Sources,” in which Boyko simply asserts that he is “hop[ing] to escape accusations of plagiarism.” Each story begins with an epigraph and also contains paraphrasings of complex psychological concepts, so a list of sources is certainly warranted here. But this brief section is not only for those interested in following up with Boyko’s source material. There are brief commentaries on favourite passages and more of the subtle yet cynical humor that populates the stories. The last note of the book reads,
The citations to the works of Jim Bird ––and Barton Q. Barnard––are fictional. Jim Bird and Barton Q. Barnard are fictional.
So, of course, are all the characters in this book; so, for that matter, am I.
This “I” voice also appears briefly at the end of “Paddling an Iceberg,” remarking that “I want to end this story on a positive note” and then continuing for a couple pages of philosophizing. Are readers meant to maintain the strict separation between the author and speaker of a work and imagine a fictional compiler/editor, or take this as Boyko’s own voice? There is no easy answer to this question. And that’s the point.
Despite its humor and Boyko’s considerable skill with voice, nuance, and indeed intricate and intriguing plots, this collection may not satisfy all readers. Psychology and Other Stories wears its metatextuality on its sleeve; it’s a book that is aware of and enjoying the fact that it is a book. Books are a recurring theme throughout the stories, either in their prevalence or marked absence. Boyko is clearly having fun with both literary and psychological tropes, both of which have an interesting fixation on Freud. But the humor here will appeal to the cynical and those who enjoy sarcasm and subtle digs. For all its comic sensibility, there are no laugh out loud moments. There are complex concepts discussed but also at work throughout the fiction and the fixation on psychological tendencies, neuroses, and diagnoses may prove tiresome for certain readers.
In this particular case, Psychology and Other Stories tickled my cynicism just right.
Biblioasis | 304 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1926845500