BOOK REVIEW : A Collector’s Item for the Destitute

Louder Than Words: 22 Authors Donate New Stories to Benefit Share Our Strength’s Fight Against Hunger, Homelessness and Illiteracy edited by William Shore (Vintage Books: $9.95.; 335 pages.)

Two things to get out of the way:

* You don’t have to buy this book simply because the writers have donated their stories and the publisher will donate all proceeds from “Louder Than Words” to the hungry, homeless and illiterate. The money that comes from selling short stories could be equaled in half a minute by a society matron in a good mood.

* The fact that the last story in this collection is written by Carolyn See is an honor for me but probably an embarrassment to the collection--more about that later.

The idea was good but simple. Ask 22 writers to think about the homeless, the hungry. Then . . . have them turn in a story. The editor was, generally speaking, inspired in his choice of writers. Taken across the board, these names represent some of the most thoughtful and original work being done in America today. But with the exception of elegant household words like Anne Tyler, Louise Erdrich and Joyce Carol Oates, the reputations of all the others are still forming . Madison Smartt Bell, Mona Simpson and Ethan Canin all have their rabid fans, their career watchers. Each one of these 22 has bet his or her life on changing the world through words. Each one of these 22 stories will have a unique linchpin place in 22 separate bodies of work.

These stories are uneven, and sometimes almost distressingly original. The writers have taken the cliche that “the homeless are just like us” and made it true. The homeless are us--that’s scary. Both Richard Russo and Lee K. Abbott tell stories of men pitched out of their domestic lives. In the Russo story, a young guy takes a sock at his wife and the next minute his in-laws have bought him a plane ticket to nowhere.

Michael Dorris, who has written so movingly before about Native Americans, has produced a goofy love-comedy about a young Indian brave trying to get into the good graces of his prospective mother-in-law’s family. Anyone who has ever railed against “the patriarchy” will have to read this story with a smile. Matriarchies apparently were no picnic either, and young bachelors had to go through hell to get a roof over their heads.

Francine Prose, in “Cimarron,” writes of one of those pregnant women we sometimes see on the 6 p.m. news. Her husband has been killed in Beirut. Our military adventuring leaves one homeless wife and one set of children for every married man killed.

There are so many great stories here. In “Victory,” Mona Simpson draws a group of “successful” people who have left their poverty-stricken hometown. They have got their money now, but they have lost their homes. And Madison Smartt Bell (what a writer!) follows a released convict as he scours the New York City underworld for an addicted girlfriend.

My favorite story here is “workers to attention please,” a 1,500-word masterpiece by Jay Neugeborgn, the kind of story other writers gnash their teeth with envy for . . . and I had good reason to gnash, because “Don’t Ever Get Daunted,” my own story, is overwritten, disorganized and has no structure. It’s about my father, in the Depression, cocky and handsome, and so broke that he had to steal food. No matter how awkwardly written, “that one goes out to my dad,” as Los Lobos say. And all these stories go out, not to make money, but to get the reader to ponder, to dream, to open their eyes about what’s happening in this country.