A construction worker takes up with the pregnant daughter of an acquaintance and finds he doesn't control the relationship as much as he thinks he does . . .
A couple searches for a lost dog along the beach because the dog is more important than their relationship . . .
A drunken man picks up a girl hitchhiker and remembers what it once felt like to have feelings for someone else . . . What does it mean to be male in a world in which old borders no longer exist? How can a man have a relationship if he doesn't even know who he is—and what better way to find out than by committing to a woman? Snapping Lines brings familiar and new stories together in a collection that explores the lives of loners searching for love. Jack Lopez writes about people who have adopted a stoical indifference to a world in which they always seem to find themselves on the losing end. These stories explore Latino male identity and the forces that shape it: friends, family, and lovers; culture, place, and relationships. They focus on men— often workingmen in the building trades— who construct their lives through their work and live in perpetual limbo because they don't know who they are. Men who stumble onto the relationships they need almost by accident. Men who try to control their relationships but fail. Written in spare, electric language and energized by memorable scenes, these stories enlighten as much as they entertain. When you have read Snapping Lines, you will come to see the faces of strangers in new and familiar ways.
About the Author, Jack Lopez
Jack Lopez is also the author of Cholos & Surfers: A Latino Family Album. His writings have appeared in numerous anthologies and in such publications as The Massachusetts Review, Blue Mesa Review, and Quarterly West. He currently teaches creative writing at California State University, Northridge.
paper: 0-8165-2076-3 The author of Cholos & Surfers (not reviewed) sends a Latino flicker along the nerves in these 12 stories set largely in the Southwest and southern California. Lopez (Creative Writing/California State Univ., Northridge) mostly takes as his protagonists young Anglo-Mexicans, coming of age in a world without borders, who ask themselves, "Who am I?" After stealing a white Porsche for a joyride down the Coast Highway, young Tony (in "Easy Time") prepares to go into jail for 30 days. His uncle and others teach him how to box and defend himself, while Tony measures these rites of passage against those of his buddies doing "hard" federal time. The more sophisticated hero of "In the South" is Raymond, formerly Ramón, who takes his adulterous wife down to Baja California for a fancy vacation. A drowned woman's corpse becomes a symbol of his marriage: Raymond's beautiful wife is dead to him, despite her willingness to maintain their shattered union. "My Grandfather's Eye" is pink, a symbol of blood-soaked wisdom to grandson Rey, who is trying to find some way to beat the Vietnam draft Rich, moody Chicano adagios, building more on detail than story.
