Rating: 
Summary: Long term laughs, but a very short range
Review: When I read "Issues I Dealt With in Therapy" in the New Yorker, I thought it was one of the funniest short stories I'd ever read, and I still think that. However, Klam's New Yorker version of the story benefited immensely from an editor out to make it briefer and punchier, more focused. The version in "Sam the Cat and Other Stories" is about five pages longer, but it feels about twenty. And the only reason I'm telling this anecdote here is that, for me, this lack of punch and focus hurts a lot of the stories in the collection.The funny moments in "Sam the Cat and Other Stories" are way too numerous to list in even the most abbreviated form, but, as one reviewer has pointed out already, some of them repeat themselves, so you'd probably have to list them twice. More troublesome is the repetition of mindset, as one narrator after another gets smelted into one mass of undelineated young white male insecurity and aggression. Part of why I read fiction is the way it's able to take me places; Klam only really ever takes you to one place, and not matter how much you like it and how funny it is, you will begin asking yourself where it all ends. I can't help but compare "Sam the Cat" to another young white male collection of stories, but one that really reaches a good degree of breadth and humanity, Paul Rawlins' Flannery O'Connor Award-winning "No Lie Like Love." Rawlins shows you a spectrum of experiences, while Klam seems overly enamored of the same one. Over. And over. I still like the collection, and will probably read it again. (Hell, I'm teaching "Issues I Dealt With in Therapy" in a Short Fiction class next semester--the short version.) But I want to see its author stretch on his next effort. He's got way too much talent and style to be retreading the same tires for 200 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Sex, Lies, and primates.
Review: [[[[[From The Battalion]]]]]] Sam the Cat is an original and feisty piece of American fiction. Klam takes a big torch and burns away pretense and facade. This collection of seven short stories disregards everybody's concerns and emotions but the teller's. In many ways, this novel is naked, but does not shy away from its nakedness - it runs into crowds. The title story, "Sam the Cat," is about a guy who constantly attempts to find comfort in his life. He constantly dates women and enjoys sex in a vain attempt to settle into society. At a bar, Sam's eyes follow a pair of legs from the ground up - along the calves, thighs, midsection, up the back, the neck, and finds himself convinced that this is what he is looking for. The head turns quickly and he is staring eye-to-eye with another man. This does not align with his world view, but he somehow finally feels comfortable. This is the type of story Klam is going to tell. He deals with the emotions that people feel. He is bold and uncut and tells the whole truth. The truth is not that Sam is gay or straight, but that he is thinking, feeling and discovering. In "There Should be a Name for It," Klam details a beautiful relationship of love and happiness that is interrupted by an unplanned pregnancy. Jack treats his wife Lynn disrespectfully and leaves her and her mother to deal with the pregnancy. The mother's only advice comes in a foreign language: aborto, that is, abortion. Jack's tragic abandonment, both emotionally and physically of Lynn is Klam's social commentary of the harsh reality women face. Klam has a voice that is shamelessly honest. His article on romancing the drug ecstasy in the New York Times Magazine is a perfect example. He is relentless in his pursuit of accuracy. Although hard to accept, the quality is necessary to get attention. Through his stories, Klam invents the reality of individualism - the notion that events happen differently to different people and that there are no standard rules for response or reaction. From the outside looking in, perhaps that is the notion readers have the most trouble dealing with.
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