“Holiday Inn” Rave Reviews!
Rave Review, November 1, 2009, STAR TRIBUNE
Home for the holiday
Goofy sidekicks help shift Kling’s latest collection into high gear.
By CURT BROWN, Star Tribune
Last update: October 31, 2009
There’s Otto with the freshly replaced kneecaps, who picks up our ice-fishing storyteller hitchhiking near Bemidji and shares an eelpout recipe on a herky-jerky ride. Then there’s Gary, the “albino turtle” of a kid in a full body cast sprawled in the next bed at the Shriners’ Hospital.
Freight-train-hopping Easy Bob, with his penchant for practical jokes, rides along on a boxcar to Seattle. And don’t forget Ted, the Dutch clown who gingerly walks into the Minnesota State Fair and casts a suspicious eye toward the towering fiberglass gopher guarding the entrance.
The sidekicks are the strength of Kevin Kling’s “Holiday Inn,” his second stab at putting his delicious spoken stories down on the written page.
Kling is front and center in his 21 stories, which are sometimes touching, sometimes hilarious and often both. When he bounces his adventures off the likes of Otto, Gary and Easy Bob, it adds to the richness of the narratives. Throw in the uncles, grandparents, siblings and Mom and Dad, and it’s just as delightful as his earlier book, “The Dog Says How.”
This collection is loosely structured around a year’s worth of holidays. The title comes from a Bing Crosby flick that the Klings would doze in front of after big holiday meals. “We especially enjoyed the old black-and-white movies, mostly because those were the only two colors our TV set got,” he writes.
Kling has developed a cult following as a playwright, public radio commentator and actor. The pride of Osseo and Gustavus Adolphus College, he now travels from Australia to Tennessee to Seattle, spinning his yarns. Locally, he puts on an annual holiday show and performs at the summer Fringe Festival.
He dedicates this book to his mother, Dora Dysart Kling. Here’s a sampling that reflects the flavor and pacing of Kling’s prose, culled from his Easter offering, “The Bunny”:
” … Dad scoops me up, then my brother, runs us out to the car, sits us in the back seat next to my sister Laura, climbs in front, looks at his watch, rolls down the window, and. …
“Honk, honk.
” ‘Gol-dangit, Dora.’
“Honk.
” ‘Gol-dangit.’
“Dad’s in a hurry because our church is in town, we’re running late, and it takes over forty-five minutes to get there in time for the service. My mother is in the kitchen, frantically putting on the potatoes, putting in the Easter ham, setting the timer (honk, honk), making sure the dinner will be piping hot and ready just as we pull in after Sunday School (honk). She quickly checks herself in the mirror, jiggles the handle on the toilet (honk), and emerges through the front door — I’d swear on a stack of children’s storybook Bibles — the most absolutely beautiful mom in the world, the stained apron wrapped around her waist that shows to Dad she’s worked right up to the last minute. She stands a moment, a statue, unties the apron string, and lets the apron drop, then deliberately moseys over to the car, climbs in front, shoots my dad a look and … we’re in third gear by the end of the driveway.”
It’s the start of one of many wild rides in Kling’s new book. Buckle up and enjoy the journey.
Star Tribune reporter Curt Brown is the author of “So Terrible a Storm,” a nonfiction account of a 1905 gale on Lake Superior.
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Amy Goetzman, MinnPost.com, also raves!
Kevin Kling spins a year’s worth of family holiday tales
By Amy Goetzman | Published Thu, Nov 12 2009 9:19 am
Kevin Kling has been telling stories — on the radio and on the stage, in plays and in film — for about 30 years, not counting all the years before that when he was listening and practicing and gearing up to become a professional storyteller. But he didn’t feel that he was a real writer until his first book of stories, “The Dog Says How,” came out in 2007.
“Now I feel like I have really arrived, like I’m part of this great community of Minnesota authors, and now I can go up to these folks that I’ve admired for so long and look ’em in the eye. It’s a totally different feeling, being in print,” he said from his home in Minneapolis.
His new collection, “Holiday Inn” (Borealis Books), is a string of tales, tall and true, spun out across a year of holidays, which means we get a longer look at the quirks and adventures of Kling’s family. Unlike the families of many a memoirist, the Kling clan doesn’t mind being the subject of his work; these are a people who revere storytelling, and they’ll gladly help him corroborate what sounds like a whopper, or even refine it.
“Family will say, ‘We need more here, I don’t think you got that right.’ They’re pretty savvy to the fact that I’m gonna stretch things, but it’s all based in real stories. They’ll come to a storytelling and back me up on it. People will say, ‘That can’t be true!’ and there’s my mom, nodding her head,” he said.
In one piece, Kling revisits the several months he spent in the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital as a young boy. He was born with a congenital birth defect that gave him a short left arm, missing a wrist and thumb, and he needed surgery. So his parents, without warning or explanation, dropped him off for an extended stay at what turned out to be surgery plus recovery in a Lord of Flies-like children’s ward.
“Your parents couldn’t visit for at least the first month, because the theory was if they saw you, they’d remember you,” said Kling, marveling at the outdated health-care model. “My mom, early on, had a really hard time with that story. She says, ‘One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was drop you off at that hospital,’ and she didn’t like it that when I told the story at first, it seemed like I was just abandoned by her and my dad. So I added a part where she cried as she left and said, ‘Mom, is that enough?’ And she said yeah.”
That’s one way putting it in print is different: No more refinements allowed. “The ethereal world of storytelling is that you’re either there or you’re not. There’s a beautiful sense of event about it, it could only happen at that moment,” he said. “But there’s something about having the stories in a book that makes them lasting, and I wanted, once I was gone, for them not to go with me.”
Kling’s work has become warmer, more resonant, and cleaner over the years. His audience includes a large number of junior-high and high-school students, he says. While the other storytellers they might hear on the radio, such as the essayists on NPR’s “This American Life,” might tell tales of their own generation, with a bitter twist, Kling’s work is sweeter, funnier, and lets them in on the secrets of their parents’ generation.
“When I was growing up, there were guys like Bill Cosby, storytellers I just loved, and now for some kids, I get to be that character. I’m letting them in on this world that was their parents’ world, a world that is both familiar and different,” he says. “I learned that it is really important to write down what you know and what others know, things about your time and other times, and that your ancestors are really, really important.
“We seem so isolated now. We’re so crowded but we’re all in front of screens, and when do we get to feel a sense of belonging? It’s so important that we belong to a family or group or community, and stories can unite us. Last night I was out with some buddies and they told the funniest stuff, and I know it’ll sift in. I’ll be out somewhere and hear something, or I’ll read something in the paper, or I’ll read a book and it will spark a memory of my own. It’s an ongoing process. I really love it when a buddy of mine tells a story and I laugh my head off. That’s part of the process. It’s a pretty good job.”
