The Philosopher Stories by Jerry Levy

Karl Pringle, the luckless misfit at the centre of Jerry Levy’s collection of linked short fiction, The Philosopher Stories, is someone most of us can identify with, regardless of (or maybe because of) the fact that he is often deceitful, sometimes deluded, and pretty much always mired in a sinkhole of self-pity. The collection chronicles Karl’s life from boyhood to early manhood and kicks off with “Family Life,” in which we learn that Karl is the sole offspring of Roma immigrants from Hungary and that his parents fled to Canada to escape racist persecution.

From the beginning, Karl’s origins set him apart. Significantly, Karl confesses that he’s always felt like an outsider, someone who wants desperately to belong but has no idea how to make it happen. To compensate for his social awkwardness and status as an outcast, he makes up stories about himself, as a child telling people he’s from a distant star system called the Pleiades. This tall tale is just the first of Karl’s many ruses to collapse embarrassingly in the face of reality.

Significantly, Karl confesses that he’s always felt like an outsider, someone who wants desperately to belong but has no idea how to make it happen.

Karl grows up drawn to abstractions and speculative thinking and eventually enrolls in the Philosophy program at the University of Toronto. The study of high concepts and expansive questions about existence suits Karl well because it provides distance from social intimacy and the minutiae of daily life. But his studies come to an untimely end when a quarrel with his thesis supervisor (who accuses him of “mucking around” in graduate school for the last six years) escalates to blows (“One Punch”).

The study of high concepts and expansive questions about existence suits Karl well because it provides distance from social intimacy and the minutiae of daily life. But his studies come to an untimely end when a quarrel with his thesis supervisor (who accuses him of “mucking around” in graduate school for the last six years) escalates to blows (“One Punch”).

In the stories that follow, Karl, expelled from university, unemployed, adrift, and living in a ramshackle apartment above a butcher in Toronto’s Kensington Market, plots ways to solve his financial problems and somehow live up to his self-proclaimed image as a philosophical genius and Übermensch in a world that pays him little heed, that is until he violates its rules governing appropriate public behaviour. Throughout the volume, Karl tries to offset his failures with schemes aimed at bringing in money and/or putting a shine on his tarnished self-image. These include ransacking the city’s little free libraries for books that he can sell for personal profit (“The Book Sale”), plundering the writings of a dead drug user and presenting them to the world as his own (“The Story Thief”), and taking a break from the stress of the city and moving to the countryside, where for a time he lives in a cave and survives on chickens stolen from a nearby farm (“Rejection”). But his schemes inevitably misfire and drive poor Karl to more angst and soul-searching.

Levy’s previous collection, The Quantum Theory of Love and Madness, displayed his skill at creating far-fetched scenarios and carrying them through to surprising conclusions that, more often than not, leave his hapless hero’s life and ego in tatters. The Philosopher Stories aims for similar effect, though here the comedy is occasionally undercut ever so slightly by a bittersweet edge, giving these stories more depth and nuance.

The Philosopher Stories, written in a breezy conversational style that goes down easily and carries the reader along, highlights human weakness and folly in a highly entertaining manner. We do not admire Karl Pringle, not by a long stretch. But do we like him? Given the chance, would we willingly spend time with him should we encounter him in real life? Not likely. He’s selfish, impulsive, conniving and frequently the author of his own undoing. But despite this, there can be no disputing the fact that Jerry Levy has written a volume of raucously engaging short fiction that will leave you pondering life’s important questions.

…here the comedy is occasionally undercut ever so slightly by a bittersweet edge, giving these stories more depth and nuance.

Jerry Levy‘s first collection of stories, Urban Legend, came out with Thistledown Press in 2013. In 2020, his second collection, The Quantum Theory of Love and Madness, was published by Guernica Editions. His stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, and the UK. He lives in Toronto.

Publisher: Guernica Editions (May 1, 2024)
Paperback 5″ x 8″ | 220 pages
ISBN: 9781771838757

Ian Colford

Website

Ian Colford’s short fiction has appeared in many literary publications, in print and online. His work has been shortlisted for the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Journey Prize, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and others. His latest novel, The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard, was the winner of the 2022 Guernica Prize and was published by Guernica Editions in 2023. He lives in Halifax.