Magnificent Desolation by Jess Walter

Buzz Aldrin.

Neil Armstrong tends to hog all the glory from the 1969 moon landing. Everyone knows his famous line, but Buzz Aldrin (and, let’s be honest, the other guy) rarely get a mention. Jess Walter’s Magnificent Desolation takes its title from Aldrin’s much less celebrated remark when he stepped onto the moon, which feels perfectly on-brand for a story about being perpetually overshadowed. The result is a quirky, darkly funny piece sprinkled with interesting factoids about the moon-landing and a gently mocking tone that never takes itself too seriously.

The narrator is a seventh-grade science teacher with a crush on the mother of one of his students, a boy who is failing because his religious beliefs won’t allow him to accept empirical evidence. Buzz Aldrin is also the teacher’s personal hero, so the science-versus-religion debate becomes both deeply personal and comically overblown. Walter has a lot of fun poking at this clash, letting it spiral into awkward conversations with the kid and misplaced bravado.

The story builds toward a hilariously unhinged moment when the narrator loses his cool after the woman’s ex-husband claims the moon landing was fake. What should have been a routine parent-teacher conference turns into a physical altercation that lands the narrator in the hospital. Overall, Magnificent Desolation is a quick, entertaining read, full of offbeat humor and a narrator whose earnest devotion to science (and Buzz Aldrin) makes his slow unraveling surprisingly funny.

You can read this story HERE.