Alex Mindt's Male of the Species is pretty good—although I'll be right glad to reach the end of this spate of short story collections through which I've been slouching.
But I did like Mindt's stories because of a quirkiness that could turn sad or funny, a quirkiness that always started with a character: a black teenager who burns a cross on his family's lawn and fakes his own lynching to remind those around him that racism is still part of our society, the dancer who while dressed as an ape on his way to perform at a retirement party is given a traffic ticket and realizes how far off the mark his life has gone or a father who has always lied about his hunting adventures takes his son on a hunting trip.
As with any author with whom I'm not familiar, Mindt went through an accuracy test. He made two statements I questioned:
1) "I have this facility, in Santa Fe, the second oldest city in America." (page 4) Second oldest? Is it? A brief time on google told me it was the third. Second? Third? Why quibble? I'll give him a pass.
2) I knew I had him when he referred to "Nixon's 1962 concession speech." (page 158) Everyone knows Nixon ran for president in 1960, not 1962. What I didn't know was that he ran for governor in California in 1962—and lost. Point and game to Mindt.
And, as with most good writers, he had some well-turned phrases:
1) On our fast-paced, on the move culture. "Here, no one is anywhere, they are in between places. Only the dead are content." (page 6)
2) "As my daddy used to say, 'Gd bless the man foolish enough to do what's right." (102) But it's what once upn a time we used to expect of our leaders.
Recommend? Sure. Why not?
