Country Noir: My Journey to the Rough South

It’s not often that you can pinpoint the reading of a particular book as life-changing. Rummaging through a box of a stranger’s discarded books in 2009, my eye was caught by the cover of Harry Crews’ A Feast of Snakes. I hadn’t heard of the author, but the reading of this, the fiercest and bleakest of ‘country noir’ novels (a term coined by Daniel Woodrell), compelled me to track down and read every book the man had written, which took me through to some time in 2010. Much of Crews’ work falls short of this standard, but some of it is very fine indeed. I didn’t realise it at the time, but Crews was my entree into the world of what is often called Southern Gothic literature. Crews, from Bacon County, Georgia, wrote the seminal A Childhood: The Biography of a Place about his early life, and the various snippets of interviews with him that can be found on youtube make for absorbing and often hilarious viewing. Crews died in 2012, a couple of years after I discovered his work, and it won’t be long before I’m ready to re-read the fifteen or so novels I devoured so eagerly in 2009-10.

 

In 2010 I also read my second Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country for Old Men, which I enjoyed immensely (the film is outstanding too). I was less taken in by James Whorton Jr’s novels Approximately Heaven and Frankland, which I felt to be ‘Crews lite’ (to be fair, almost anything Southern could be described as such). Crews spoke reverently of his literary forebear Flannery O’Connor many times, so I obtained the Library of America edition of her complete works, but I wasn’t especially enamoured with her first novel, Wise Blood, and the rest remained unread for the time being. In 2011 I read McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, which I found heavy going, but precious little else in this genre. Other than Crews, I hadn’t yet discovered authors I would bond with.

2012 proved to be an important year for me in this regard. As often seems to happen when you so diligently trawl remaindered book piles in newsagents and discount stores, I discovered William Gay (pictured above) quite by accident. I was extremely impressed with his stately prose in The Long Home, Provinces of Night and especially Twilight, and a couple of years later I very much enjoyed his stories in I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. Gay died that same year, a month before Harry Crews, but I’ve recently learned that a ‘lost’ novel of his, Little Sister, Death is to be published later this year. Gay saw himself as an acolyte of McCarthy but, initially at least, I preferred the work of the apprentice to that of the master. Gay was born in Tennessee and much of his work is set there. 2012 and 2013 were also the years I read virtually all of Daniel Woodrell (pictured below), starting with Winter’s Bone. I enjoyed pretty much all of Woodrell, but especially Tomato Red, The Death of Sweet Mister and the author’s most recent, The Maid’s Version. Much of Woodrell’s work is set in the Missouri Ozarks, perhaps not Southern in geography but certainly in tenor.

I’d read a couple of novels by Larry Brown (pictured below) previously but, like in the case of McCarthy, I was a little less enthusiastic and seemed to read only one or two of his titles a year. I liked Joe but not Fay, and it wasn’t until 2014 that I finally read a Brown novel I fully enjoyed (his first, Dirty Work). By now I’ve read most of Brown, including Jean W. Cash’s biography. His second collection of stories, Big Bad Love, is currently enroute, and I couldn’t get through The Rabbit Factory as it reminded me of Crews’ late and not so amazing work. As mentioned above, Brown saw himself as a follower of Crews (he has an essay on this subject), but when William Gay was first published in 1999, he was seen as a ‘new Larry Brown’ (even though he was considerably older). Brown was the first of these authors to die, far too young, in 2004.

Like I’ve said, I’d been reading Cormac McCarthy on and off for years, starting with The Road in 2008, which I saw more in the context of dystopian fiction at the time. I read the ‘Border Trilogy’ out of sequence (The Crossing in 2012, All the Pretty Horses in 2013 and Cities of the Plain in 2015), and I recently enjoyed Child of God. This leaves me with three of the author’s early novels, The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark and Suttree (enroute), and a couple of recent titles. In many ways, McCarthy is the granddaddy of the writers discussed here, born earliest (1933), published first (1965), and now the oldest (81). In this regard he reminds me of another long-living writer-patriarch, William S. Burroughs, who might himself have had more of a place in this conversation were he not so widely and perhaps incorrectly known as a Beat writer.

And then there’s the rest. By the time of this writing, I’ve managed to read five novels by North Dakota native Larry Watson without enjoying his work very much. I liked Montana, 1948 and Orchard, but found In a Dark Time, Sundown, Yellow Moon and American Boy dull and staid. Perhaps it’s because while Watson is certainly a ‘country’ author, he’s by no means Southern? My problem with Ohio born Donald Ray Pollock is somewhat the opposite in that I found his novel The Devil All the Time and collection Knockemstiff too dark and horrible without any kind of redemptive feature at all. Nor did I appreciate the only James Lee Burke novel I have read, The Tin Roof Blowdown (too trashy), although I did like his early collection The Convict and Other Stories. I fully expected to take to the works of New Orleans native Elmore Leonard, but I didn’t think a great deal of Rum Punch or Tishomingo Blues and thus I haven’t yet read further. I’ve read one James Sallis (pictured below) novel, Drive, and I have a further two enroute in Cypress Grove and Cripple Creek. I’ve recently read a few of Flannery O’Connor’s stories (especially enjoying ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’) but I wasn’t at all a fan of Philip Meyer’s much hyped American Rust or John Grisham’s A Painted House.

It hasn’t escaped my attention that these authors, with the exception of Flannery O’Connor, are all white American males. It has been a source of some consternation to me for years now that 90% of my influences and literary idols are men, but try as I might, I can’t seem to find females authors I enjoy to the same extent, with the exception of US crime writer Megan Abbott and English literary author Pat Barker. Nor have I failed to notice that most of my influences are American. Of the twenty authors I consider most important to me (only some of them mentioned here), eleven are Americans, six are from the U.K., and the only ‘Australian’ author, Peter Temple, was born in South Africa. What does this mean? Am I a reader and writer out of step with the Australian society around me? Should I pack up and move to the Rough South, or is there a place for me here in country Western Australia?

 

 

14 books read in Jan 2010: more miniature reviews

I like to read around a book a week or 50 books a year. Mostly fiction. Mostly 20th century literature but some historical stuff as well, and science fiction by authors of particular interest to me (I stopped reading widely in the genre years ago). But I am proud to say that I finished no fewer than 14 books in the month of January, which puts me on target for a collosal 168 books for the year. There’s no way in hell I’ll get anywhere near that though. For a start, I ‘only’ have about 35 more books in my possession that I want to read, and the pace inevitably slackens as the school year gets going, which it is about to do. I posted some mini reviews earlier in the month, so here are a few more. Let’s start with the ones that aren’t by Harry Crews first.

Lenin’s Embalmers by Ilya Zbarsky

Basically this is a strange mixture of biography of the author’s father who was responsible in part of the embalming of V. I. Lenin after his death in 1924, and partly the author’s own autobiography. It did give an unusual insight into the world of Communist Russia in the early twentieth century, but there was a whole heap in here of fairly tangential interest. You’d have to be a Russia buff to appreciate this. Or an embalmer, I guess.

Raymond Chandler: A Biography by Tom Hiney

It’s been a full twelve months since I fell in love with the work of Raymond Chandler. I read a book called Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved which, while interesting in parts, made Chandler’s life seem quite dull. Hiney’s approach is less exhaustive, breezy even, but it made for a good, short introduction to the somewhat strange life of Raymond Chandler. I’m recommend it as a starting point, but I feel that there’s probably more to Chandler’s life than Hiney has covered here. Perhaps that was a wise decision though, as Chandler doesn’t appear to have left much of a paper trial behind him.

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

I finally got around to reading the first novel in my Library of America Complete Works edition, and I have to say that it was a slight disappointment. There’s nothing especially wrong with Wise Blood – it has a couple of interesting and elusive characters in Hazel Motes and Enoch Emery – but as the book was concerned with matters of faith and heresy, I was left unmoved by the whole thing. It’s quite short, and while very well written, it didn’t strike a nerve with me. I’m expecting more from O’Connor’s later work (she was younger than I am now when she published this).

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

I’ve read this many times before. Full review to follow.

Onto the Crews books then…

Celebration by Harry Crews

His last novel except for the novella length An American Family (which I’m yet to read), Celebration is strong for about the first ten pages before descending into godawful drivel with occasional comic relief. I’m trying to repress the memory of how poor this is, so I can’t quite recall the names of the characters now, but suffice to say that he covered this ground much more effectively in at least two earlier novels. I was struck by how similar the setup was to that in the far superior The Gypsy’s Curse, which was written at least twenty years previously. In both books, a strong femme fatale character of superhuman strength and beauty pushes elderly folk into dangerous acts of self-renewal. I love Crews, but I’m afraid this one’s a stinker.

Karate is a Thing of the Spirit by Harry Crews

I knew I was going to receive a tacky paperback edition of this novel, given that the edition I ordered was published by Sphere in the early seventies, but the cover is the definition of tacky. I suppose I should scan and upload it, but that’d involve more effort than typing this does. EDIT: all right, I had to do it. This cover has to be preserved for posterity. Luckily the novel itself is a good one. In it, we are introduced to a guy called John Kaimon who wants to join an outlaw karate cult run by a guy known only as Belt. There’s another femme fatale, this one named Gaye Odell. There’s an empty swimming pool, a lot of gay men chasing after John, and a cult of people who eat pills all day long that they term ‘fresh fruit.’ Typical Crews carnival style, then. This is supposed to be among his best books, and while I certainly enjoyed reading it, I felt it lacked the punch of Crews’ very best work. But I could be wrong, and maybe it would help if I could track down the hardcover edition…

All We Need of Hell by Harry Crews

This one was a pleasant surprise in that I had somewhat lower expectations of it than I did of Karate, and yet I ended up liking this more. The novel, published in the late eighties, was Crew’s first after a decade-long hiatus. The first five chapters had already been published as The Enthusiast (which was itself republished in Florida Frenzy), and the character of Duffy Deeter had already appeared in A Feast of Snakes and in Where Does One Go When There’s No Place Left to Go? (although the latter wouldn’t be published until 1995). I hope you got all that. Written in a lighter, more comedic style in comparison with the darker A Feast of Snakes, All We Need of Hell is nevertheless an entertaining, amusing and thought-provoking read. The best thing about Crews’ novels is always the characters and the dialogue, and we have outstanding examples of both here. I can’t be bothered outlining the plot here, but Duffy Deeter and Tump Walker have got to be among the best of Crews’ characters. And some of the scenes, like the one where Duffy paddles his law partner Jert’s ass while the latter is having sex with the former’s wife, are among the funniest that Crews has written. Highly recommended.

But wait, there’s more: