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The Blondes of Wisconsin: Stories

2023; Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America; Volume: 68; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/23300841.68.3.15

2330-0841

John Radziłowski,

American Sports and Literature

The Blondes of Wisconsin is the latest collection of stories by Wisconsin author Anthony Bukoski, one of the foremost Polish American writers. Bukoski's stories are set in and around the declining industrial port city of Superior, Wisconsin. Although not all of his stories are directly set in Superior, all revolve around the city and its dying Polish community. For Bukoski's characters, Superior is the only place that is really real. His characters encounter the world as a set of concentric circles beginning in Superior. Nearby communities like Duluth are recognizable and somewhat familiar. The next circle, extending to the state of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes, becomes more indistinct; places even further out such as Poland float in a mythic haze.This current collection differs from some of Bukoski's earlier collections in that most of the stories are linked to a single character, the aging and unsuccessful boxer Eddie “the Bronko” Bronkowski. Bronkowski's father was a Polish cavalryman who charged German tanks and managed to survive. The reappearance of the mythic cavalry charge in Bukoski's stories will doubtless irritate many readers, but the author is writing a form of magic realism in which the distance between Krojanty in 1939 and Superior in the not-quite present renders anything happening in the former locale as mythology. The larger point is that all of Bukoski's characters, without exception, are failures—the cavalry charge is just one reminder. Even Eddie's relative who appears to be a successful insurance salesman on closer examination appears to have faked his success for the benefit of his family. Their failure and brokenness, however, renders them all the more human. Regardless of how often they fail, they persist. Bronkowski's mental condition deteriorates due to receiving far too many blows to the head, yet in the title story he ends gaining the grudging respect of a troupe of blonde female fighters who stage fights against drunks in dive bars across rural Wisconsin.Superior and rural Wisconsin are as much characters as Eddie Bronkowski and the stories based around Bronkowski (some of which feature him as a secondary character) set in Wisconsin work together beautifully. There are occasional off notes, however, such as the opening story “Tributaries” in which an old Polish man from Superior wanders into a Holocaust memorial service at a Duluth synagogue. Its plea for Polish Jewish comity seems a bit contrived but the piece first appeared in Tikkun, so perhaps the author was merely trying to appeal to its readership. Likewise, “The Eve of the First” is a peculiar mash-up of a doomed romance set in a town on the (maybe) Polish-German border in August 1939 reminiscent of the work of Horst Bienek or Paweł Huelle. (These two pieces are only tenuously connected to the stories about Bronkowski.)Blondes of Wisconsin demonstrates that the creative vein Bukoski first mined in Children of Strangers can still unearth treasures. Against a bleak post-industrial backdrop, the stubborn, broken Polish Americans who feature in his stories persist and in spite of every setback continue to exude a transcendent hope.