FIRST FICTION

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The Mysterious Secret of the

Valuable Treasure

Stories

Jack Pendarvis

MacAdam/Cage: 188 pp., $21

YOU have to admire a story collection that kicks off with a page or two of “advance praise” for a nonexistent book. To quote: “ ‘So Twines the Grape’ combines heart-stopping suspense, jaw-dropping plot twists and bowel-emptying shocks with spleen-ripping style, skull-pulping characterizations and spine-crushing lyricism.” Similarly, Jack Pendarvis, in this stridently goofy debut, has a way with overstatement. His stories are attention-grabbing little riffs, micro-fictions that gleefully indulge in a well-defined (if repetitive) set of predilections: Small-town eccentrics, job seekers and full-on wackos (often with writerly aspirations) teem in these pages, struggling to make contact -- however tenuous and ill-advised -- with reality.

The nameless scribe of “Sex Devil” writes an impassioned pitch to a comic book publisher, trying to sell the idea of a superhero who discovers that “his genital region now has amazing powers.” The similarly anonymous letter writer of “Attention Johnny America! Please Read!” is anxious for the world to know that he’s a victim of mistaken identity and rough treatment at the hands of a beloved crime-fighting crusader. “Our Spring Catalog” reprises the faux encomiums at the start of the collection in the form of book-catalog copy cranked out by a desk jockey who’s losing his marbles: “A boy and girl grope innocently toward first love against the backdrop of an Oklahoma farming community where a lot of cattle mutilations are taking place. Who cares?”

So self-referential are Pendarvis’ concerns -- and his humor so achingly broad -- that one begins to wonder, indeed, who cares? You read these curios -- part McSweeney’s and part Mad magazine -- with a mixture of exasperation, groans and giggle fits. But if you occasionally wish that Pendarvis might direct his corrosive powers toward presidents and CEOs rather than harmless cranks, the title story comes close to wiping away all reservations. Here, Pendarvis’ wackiness dovetails into the saga of Willie Dobbs, a would-be historian (read “crazy person”) searching for ghosts and buried treasure and suffering major fallout at the hands of his family and the law: It’s nothing less than heartwarming, soul-thumping and, at its best, brain-emulsifying.

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Gary Benchley,

Rock Star

Paul Ford

Plume: 294 pp., $14 paper

NEAR the start of this comic romp through the world of indie rock, Gary Benchley -- East Village slacker, temp worker, erstwhile guitarist in a high school garage band called Gobbler’s Knob -- confronts one of the unshakable verities of making one’s way in life: “It turns out that this is a terrible time to rock, but a terrific time for data entry.”

Undeterred, Gary sets about assembling Schizopolis, the aptly named band that, he believes, will catapult him to the top: He recruits a gay friend to play keyboards, racially profiles a black guy on the street to play bass and dragoons a buxom anarchist whose drumming sounds “like a trash truck driving off a cliff.” For some reason, this motley and largely incompetent quartet soon gets mixed up with a shady producer, manager and label, gigging around New York, recording a debut album (“Dancing About Architecture”) and laboring to, as Gary puts it, “accentuate the rock, and mitigate the suck.”

Paul Ford originally serialized this tale under Benchley’s blogging byline at TheMorningNews.org -- winning for Gary a legion of fans who’d never heard a Schizopolis song yet assumed that they were the real deal. (The New York Times, meanwhile, invited Gary to share his candid insights into the alternative life with the print crowd.) As a storyteller, Ford combines the acrobatic melodicism of, say, Pixies songwriter Frank Black with the in-your-face cheekiness of the joke-punk quartet the Dead Milkmen, creating for Gary and Schizopolis a trajectory as ridiculous as it is hilariously real. The practice-room aura is cranked up to 11 as every page reverberates with references to the likes of Cat Power, Galaxie 500 and Death Cab for Cutie, while the in-jokes pummel you in double time: For instance, “Train” -- a modern-rock band -- becomes Gary’s all-purpose adjective for a bummer. Meanwhile, Schizopolis’ T-shirts, we learn, are made “by little slave children with tiny fingers.” The sweatshop- and torture-free ones, it turns out, just cost too much.

Eventually, Gary learns the hard way that the music business, even at the indie level, is all about “self-aggrandizing jerks who backstab.” It’s the bitter lesson that underpins this salute to all those brave or clueless enough to live their indie-rock dreams.