At a party, Paul Bibeau is the guy standing in the corner, near the cheese cubes. He is balding, overweight, lazy and can't hold down a steady job. But there is one thing Bibeau is good at -- writing. In his life and career, Bibeau has encountered some colorful personalities, lived through some unique experiences and garnered some great observations. Thankfully, for readers of "The Big Money and Other Stories," he has been taking notes.
Bibeau graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1992 with a double major in Foreign Affairs and English. He called the notorious Gildersleeve in Brown College home for three years, all the while tarnishing the reputation of area publications like The Yellow Journal and The Declaration. One piece on a local nursing home prompted the serious threat of legal action and the removal of numerous copies from newsstands.
In the years since graduation, Bibeau has held jobs at several periodicals, including an editorial position at Maxim, where he is currently a regular contributor, and the male advice columnist position at Mademoiselle.
As of late, in between feature gigs at Maxim, Bibeau has begun a murder mystery novel and maintains his Web site (www.goblinbooks.com), where copies of "The Big Money and Other Stories" may be purchased.
Over the past three years, Bibeau has reviewed his numerous notes from periodical life and personal journals and transformed them into a group of short stories. These diverse stories cover a wide spectrum, from an insider's spite of the wheeling and dealing woman's magazine industry to the shockingly transparent emotions of a betrayed teenager.
"The Big Money and Other Stories" is a collection of 15 short stories and a novella utilizing considerably variant styles to address a broad range of eclectic topics.
"The Long Confession" is a potent second-person piece where the reader is the perpetrator of a horrible crime. Located within a pseudo-futuristic mental rehabilitative center, "Confession" is replete with precisely detailed interjectory flashbacks.
"Geiger Counter of Human Misery" is a personal narrative in the vein of Fight Club's unabashed contempt for suburbia and the fallacy of image as everything. Similarly vitriolic, "Sharing" attacks the phoniness of elevator chit-chat with an extreme monologue embodying the fundamentals of Too Much Information. An unintentional trilogy of humanity-hating is completed by "Parties," a veritable how-to guide for sulking partygoers scornful of modern commercialism and conceited peers.
These three stories, though not coupled in the book, firmly establish Bibeau's Glass Half-Empty writing mentality.
"Mule" is based on Bibeau's interview about three friends' annual weed smuggling run from Jamaica to the States. This piece in particular exemplifies Bibeau's fine blend between truth and fiction. The author skillfully balances the minutiae and imperfection of everyday life with the elaboration only a good storyteller can imbue.
By concentrating on the human aspects of doubt and tension, Bibeau compels the reader to internalize the story's strife and live the tale vicariously through the characters. This deft manipulation of the reader's emotions is the tool of an experienced writer.
'Mushroom Boy' is the strongest of Bibeau's personal pieces. A summer of forlorn love is related through scraps of unmitigated emotions in intense journal entries and harsh recollections. Bibeau's tragic, but magnificent, personal revelations while attending Summer Fun Mental Achiever's Camp ("which is almost like advertising you're a virgin") are powerfully transmitted to the reader.
In truth, this story is based on Bibeau's painful but relevant experiences during his month at the Virginia Governor's School for the Humanities at the University of Richmond. Readers familiar with the infamously putrid pond at the center of campus will get a kick out of Bibeau's spot-on depiction.
This piece also features excerpts from Bibeau's personal journals, including what is possibly the best one-liner in the entire book in the deprecating gem "I am the clotted blood in the veins of God."
In "Reckoning," Bibeau transfers between the past and present timelines with ease in one of the longer stories of the collection.
The reader is taken inside the head of the unnamed main character as he pre-meditates exacting his revenge on a man who tormented a would-be lover. Heavily influenced by a specific personal experience from Bibeau's time at the University, "Reckoning" is the author's favorite piece in the book and follows his most effective story-telling format of psychological tension developed at an articulated pace.
The story plays with issues of causality and role reversal as the once-nice protagonist transforms into the very type of person he is attempting to kill. A cliffhanger ending teases the reader into extrapolating their own conclusion.
"Scarecrow" is a conventional ghost story set during the Civil War where the Fifth Pennsylvania unit is stranded in a spooky field bordered by haunted train tracks and "Hideout" is the tale of a bank robbery and the getaway gone wrong. "Hideout" is almost completely parallel in construction to "Scarecrow," but has a modern slant, is less scary and ends on a weaker, more deus ex machina ending.
In "What's Wrong with Us?," Bibeau employs a philosophical format to relate his commonly-held, but rarely vocalized, views on society's obsession with image and how we are perceived. "We live by looking," he writes. "We live to be looked at."
These statements foreshadow the book's final piece, "The Big Money," a novella recording the rise and fall of another unnamed male protagonist's journey through his career as a lone male writer in the feminine world of woman's periodicals.
The unnamed protagonist shares his brief, dynamic rise from secretarial obscurity and tedium to potential fame and stardom at a fictional woman's magazine, Verve.
The whole story is a thinly-veiled jab at the women's magazine industry, an unrepentantly honest appraisal of editorial powerplays and the nepotism within the recursive periodical world.
Though stagnant at times, the story's pacing is often upheld by the fully-transparent thought processes of the protagonist. From cat-sitting his ex-girlfriend's pair of feral ferocities to sapphic fantasies of his curvaceous co-workers, every experience, every thought of this man is provided with explicit clarity.
The capstone piece of the book, "Money" incorporates the strongest aspects of previous stories. Bibeau weaves together contempt for shallowness, role reversal and personal transformation in a tale chock-full of precise details and subjective observations that are exclusively drawn from the author's first-hand experiences.
In "The Big Money," Bibeau also includes gracenotes of minor themes sprinkled throughout the book. Alcohol and the aftereffects thereof, including inebriated emailing and lonely latenight office antics are touched upon in this cumulatively inclusive effort.
When taken as a whole, "The Big Money and Other Stories" is a portal into Bibeau's mind. Bibeau has taken a part of himself and put it into every story. His competent employment of literary tools enhances the metaphorical layers of his own experiences and gives the stories greater moral and entertainment value.
So go to that balding, overweight guy in the corner, near the cheese cubes. Get to know him.
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