There are people for whom a painting’s value is not measured in square inches of canvas; people for whom the enjoyment of a piece of music is not a function of its length. There are people for whom a movie that is one and a half hours long is actually preferable to a movie lasting several hours. And there are people who do not buy literature they same way they buy hamburger—by weight. As idiosyncratic as they may be, there are people who derive significant pleasure from reading, say, a novella.

All of which brings me, as one such idiosyncratic reader, to a particular novella: Brennan Coleman’s Long Night Out. At 89 pages, Coleman’s novella is a very satisfying read. The prose rolls with a nice easy rhythm, reminiscent of Bukowski. Rather than straining for new territory, Coleman, like Bukowski, is more concerned with bringing into sharper focus the quotidian bits of life that tend to blur in the daily grind. That doesn’t mean the protagonist, Jack Cooper, is an ordinary guy. It may seem, with the drugs and booze, that he’s just another all-too-familiar casualty circling life’s drain, but Cooper has an inner life that belies his circumstances. He’s one of those enigmatic characters who seem to dwell simultaneously in two dimensions. Bad luck, bad habits, and bad friends conspire against him, but his inner buoyancy somehow keeps him afloat. At stories end (which is just right), when his girlfriend, Vanessa, with whom he has recently been reunited, says “…let’s not try to solve any problems today…”, it almost sounds like good advice. Then Cooper checks his mail…