Is this it? The Way Life Should Be is great, if a bit depressing BY SAM PFEIFLE

Do you know Ari Meil? We’re working on a couple of projects together, actually. Oh, you are, too? That’s not surprising. Meil’s got his hand in all manner of Portland projects, from publishing Portland’s first "Best of" books through his Warren Machine publishing company (see "Our Fair City," July 23, 2004, by Mark Griffin) to taking over the reins of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance’s Maine in Print to mucking around with John Eder and getting him all worked up over a creative economy incubator. For somebody with so many balls in the air, though, you won’t find a single person who’s had bad dealings with him, and, like Mark Curdo and his Beautiful Locals, he does seem to have a penchant for coming up with great ideas you can’t believe no one’s thought of yet.

His newest great idea is The Way Life Should Be, a collection of short stories by "contemporary Maine writers," that includes works by former Phoenix staffwriter Alex Irvine and fairly frequent Phoenix contributor Tanya Whiton (are there enough disclaimers in this piece yet? Jeez, should I just admit now that I’m jealous as hell of Jessica Anthony and all her McSweeney’s hookups?), along with pieces by Whiting Award winner Lewis Robinson, David "the Miz" Mizner, and even Hoopleville savant David Kish (okay, yes, Kish and I are having coffee this week to talk about picking up his comic — I have no prayer of objectivity here). Sapphire Sea scribe John B. Robinson is here, too. Al Diamon ripped that book, so clearly we can be critical if we want to.

It’s no secret that Maine is awash in an unfair amount of literary talent, but it’s the "contemporary" that Meil’s out to emphasize here. These are mostly young, daring, often-interesting writers who may be on the cusp of superstardom, but aren’t quite Stephen King, Richard Ford or Russo yet. And it’s the "contemporary" that these writers emphasize in their works. If you’re a Portland resident who’s paying attention, you can often pinpoint the exact time at which the story was written. Irvine’s comic little piece about a college kid who’s lost an eyeglass lens on a bender the night before and is now in search of it? I’d say it was written in the first week of March, as there’s a reference to the imminent closing of Geno’s. Meil’s own piece about a man who teaches the world to fly? I’d say it was written just after Christmas, if only because of the reference to "tsunamis in the Indian Ocean."

Lewis Robinson’s lead piece about teenaged Mainers sneaking through the dairy aisles of Shaw’s and sucking down whippets seems like it could have been written yesterday. This guy simply floors me. Reading his Officer Friendly book of short stories on a plane two years ago, I remember desperately looking around for someone nerdy enough to push the book on. I was so geeked up about it I was embarrassed for myself. In "Sergeant Crabcakes" he’s got kids motoring down Exchange Street hosing yuppies down with fire extinguishers and somehow it doesn’t seem contrived at all. One even admonishes another: " ‘Dude,’ said Trudy, ‘Too much. You hit him right in the face.’ " Like any good Mainer, the kid who did the hosing quickly wonders if they should turn around and see if he’s alright. As with Irvine’s piece, which is Portland down to specific trash found in the alley behind the Asylum, Robinson gets his sense of place as right as his sense or time and community.

This guy Mizner, too, is the real deal. Somehow, he writes a story about American kids in Paris, and a love triangle, and it’s not the least bit sappy or overblown. He even gets away with a Hemingway reference that seems totally natural and an offhand nod to the fall of the Berlin Wall. If having characters acquire a piece of the Wall essentially as a party favor isn’t completely contemporary I don’t know what is. It’s like 2005 happening in 1989.

And because they’re all "contemporary" the same conceits do show up from time to time. There are hand-rolled cigarettes to be smoked (that’s a character trait that really tells you something, no?), the uneducated narrate in the first-person like they’ve just graduated from Haverford (to borrow from Mizner a school that means something), and just about everybody likes to get fucked up. God, what a bunch of drunks and louts populate our contemporary stories. Characters contemplate suicide after sucking down Aroostook sombreros, cheat on their wives, resent their mothers, and make statements like, "Already my rod stiffened in anticipation of Chili," just as the cops burst through the front door.

That last one’s Patrick Quinlan, the aforementioned Eder’s press guy (in one of his incarnations). In his "Avon Calling," a drug dealer — it’s only dope, as far as I can figure — waits for a pizza delivery guy only to be greeted by the fuzz. Are we to sympathize with our first-person anti-hero? Gosh, he can hardly count his money, what with the bouncy strawberry blonde in the white panties and that jungle music Sam keeps pumping through the stereo. And he’s so damn hungry! Plus, his name is Dick — what could be more shameful than that in today’s ironic literary society? His name’s Dick!

That’s the fun, really: if you’re the same kind of contemporary as these folks (and not, say, Susan Sterling, who’s clearly a good writer, but comes off a bit as the mom here). Take Meil’s story, about an overreaching and writ-large single father named Elmer Gigantic. What it boils down to is a simple story about a man who wants to give everything to his motherless son — strike "motherless" — it’s a simple story about a man who wants to give everything to his son, and eventually pushes too hard.

Meil, I happen to know, has himself a brand-new baby. Basically, so do I. So do so many of us who are "contemporary" nowadays. It’s not hard to see in Elmer Gigantic’s scheming for riches our own secret desire to find that get-rich-quick scheme that would allow us to actually find time to spend with our new-found centers of our universe. It’s not much of a metaphorical leap to see the book that Gigantic discovers in his attic as the book I’m reviewing right here. With this little and easy idea, Meil could very well have struck himself rich, with a call from Harper Collins just around the corner.

Or it could all be a fairy tale.

The needs of the contemporary are immediate. So are their stories. They may not be soul nourishing, but they sure are good reads.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com.

The Way Life Should Be will be celebrated with a release party, at SPACE, June 8. Call (207) 828-5600.