A KEEN WRITERLY EYE ON THE LAST RESORT: Key West Story
Review by Anne Carlisle
"Imagine a literary heaven, a place where good writers
gather posthumously for their due and drinks." I fell in love at first
sight as I read the fabulous opening line of Rick Skwiot's gem of a book, KEY
WEST STORY (Antaeus, 2012). Rick seems to be talking to me, writer to writer. As someone who
came to Key West on vacation in 1983, stayed on and became a local writer, I never tire of hearing about the
unique place our island -- a three-mile rock that is part sweat lodge, part
bordello, and part literary salon -- holds in the minds and hearts of other
writers.
But, after arriving in Key West, many a would-be Hemingway
never gets out of the bars. One day the writer fades away or is lost at
sea;someone will say he moved to Mexico
or Montana. Will the writer in this book follow the path of least resistance or
will he get his mojo back?
There's a story on every street corner, and Rick's
characters, carved with the master's scalpel, prove the point. Con (short for
Constantine) is "shackled" to
his writing and ambivalent about
his marriage-minded girlfriends: Cat, a gun-toting writing student; and Eva, a Polish beauty in
search of a green card. He narrowly
escapes getting shot, seeks refuge at Schooner's
Wharf Bar (he knows he can get served without shoes, shirt, or a wallet), and
is befriended by 40-year-old Nick Adams,
a mysterious, dark-haired
stranger with a pontificating manner and a boat named Pilar.
The reincarnate Hemingway
is tonic for the jaded writer who has "lost his compass."
Whether Nick is ghost, delusion, or literary trope doesn't matter; he appears in a richly comic context. It's Hemingway Days, and there's fecal
material in the water off the beaches.
Nick offers an adventure to Con,
and off they go to Cuba, where the dangerous gig is smuggling a Cuban naval
officer and his charts of a Spanish wreck out of a decaying country and away
from its blank-faced people. The
officer's sister Aurora is the mermaid of Con's dreams, and she predicts he
will return. The last part of the book is set up for Con's choice. Will he make
up with Cat, oblige Eva, or return
to Aurora? Is his internal compass aligned
?
Readers who know Caoeso in their bones (or would like to)
should not miss KEY WEST STORY, a rare treat of a read. Though not a guidebook,
it points toward the southernmost town in America as it is and always has been,
a writer's true north.
