Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (& other stories)

Only in a Gary Britson story do references to Finnegan’s Wake and the operas of Wagner stand alongside mentions of Hee Haw and The Three Stooges. In other stories, zombies eat at restaurant salad bars and young women communicate with fellow riders on public transit via slogans on T-shirts. He wields humor and satire like a butcher’s cleaver, taking apart objects of his derision with deft, entertaining whacks. For any surface misanthropy found in his stories, Gary Britson’s fiction is fundamentally about the hope of the underdog, the optimism of the overlooked, and the innocence of the partially sane.