"The Actor's House" by David Means

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #34 - Spring Issue


In the middle of the story's second act, it lost me. At this point in the story, it has become - like several stories from McSweeney''s first three issues - too bogged down in its postmodern sentence structure to be effective. It became simply too wordy, offering sentences stuffed with extra clauses and factual tidbits that the author could not precisely juggle into a smooth act. If the section in question had a voice, it would be that of a lecturer who speaks through a mouth of mashed potatoes. This is the story's major flaw, and otherwise there are few others.

The story is a very conceptual piece you might expect from a student working towards his MFA. It is about the house of a famous actor and the actresses who lived there directly before and after he did. "The Actor's House" is designed to discuss what it's title suggests it would, and probes into the lives of three celebrities through the ways in which they effected the house and how their presence changed the public's conception of the home.

The story is not incredibly moving, but it is well-crafted. It, unfortunately, is one of the quarterly's weaker pieces - which is a shame when considering that the author has published such strong contemporary short fiction - but it is not bad or long. It's a worthwhile read just to examine the craft put forth by one of America's most promising young writer, especially considering that this piece is less than ten pages long.