Junot Diaz, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (2007).

Once or twice a year a new author bounds upon the popular literature scene, and compels the attention of the rapidly shrinking American readership. Often the author gets a boost from Oprah Winfrey, and maximizes the profitability of the release. Sometimes a book gets its acclaim by winning a prestigious award, although this isn't as sure a means into the nation's consciousness as the aforementioned coronation via day-time talk show queen. I would hazard a guess that the proportion of society that can actually name the year's Pulitzer Prize* and National Book Award winners is less than one half a percent. I make a point of reading a lot of fiction, and (to be honest with you), I can't do it.

Generally books come into my hands through one of two means- either someone I know personally makes a recommendation and/or loan, or I read about it on Amazon. Rarely do I scour the shelves and discover stuff I have not heard about previously. There's only so much time in my day to devote to reading nowadays, and I want as close to a sure thing as possible. My habits are increasingly self-directed, and that's why it's a real pleasure when I end up liking a friend's suggested title. That's the case with Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Even though I had seen that several of my newer favorite authors liked Diaz's writing, it might have been a long time before I actually sat down to read it.

Ultimately I'm glad I did. Normally I tend to resist writers who are transplanted Americans. I don't know why this should be so, and I'm certainly not proud of it. It's a very provincial attitude. I guess I'd just typically assume that I wouldn't get into a story unless I have a degree of cultural identification with the author. In the case of the Dominican-born Diaz, this would have been a real loss. Not only does the main character (Oscar De Leon) hail from Paterson, NJ (a mere hour-and-a-half from my own hometown) , but he's also heavily informed by the type of comic books and culture that I digested growing up. The kid may be black, nerdy, fat, and an ugly virgin... yet somehow he strikes certain chords of recognition.

Oscar is more than just a late-bloomer. He's truly at risk of never blooming at all. Aside from his mother, sister, and grandmother, he doesn't have a lot of admirers. He spends his time writing science fiction and fiddling around with role playing games. That doesn't mean he doesn't have the conventional needs of a red-blooded American (let alone Dominican) male. He just doesn't have any sort of success with the ladies. In this respect, his misfortune mirrors that of his broader family. While his clan doesn't share his clumsiness with the opposite sex (in fact they are all players), they do seem cursed to eat shit. Somehow they manage to run afoul of a motley assortment of genuinely bad actors.

Diaz is not merely concerned with telling Oscar's tale, but rather with sharing an informal history of his native country, and the brutal regime of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. I've heard about the type of atrocities dictators of banana republics can visit upon their people, but this guy was extreme. I'm assuming that the historical context that Diaz provides throughout his novel is accurate, and that the events occurred as he portrays them. If nothing else, reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao should make the reader grateful for his/her life. The entire DeLeon family endures such misery from an apparent fukú (curse) that appears to be supernaturally merciless. Still it makes for some rip-roaring reading.


* Diaz won the coveted prize in 2008.

William Gay, "I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down" (2002).

I wonder. How many times will I have to write a review of a William Gay book before everyone that reads this blog will run out and get one for themselves? This is an essential question because there is a particular imminence to my recommendation. Gay is still alive. How many times have you thought to yourself that you'd like to find a classic American author while he/she is still alive? You have that chance right now. Get in your car (or on your bike) and go to whatever local book store has the largest selection of lamentably obscure fiction. Now buy anything they have by William Gay. He is a living master. And he's about 66 years old. Go give him some of your hard-earned cash while he is still alive, because he won't last forever.

As for me, I'll patiently await the release of his next novel- The Lost Country. I have no other choice, since I've read virtually everything else that Gay has published in book form. Likely there is a treasure trove of unedited work lying somewhere that has never seen the light of day. That stuff can trickle out posthumously. For now I just want Gay to be as prolific as possible. I tried to save something for a rainy day, but I just couldn't. I had to read it sooner rather than later. Today I've finished I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, an amazingly well-crafted collection of stories that I'm certain will linger in my subconsciousness for a long time. It is constructed with a detailed hand that manages to wend its way into the substrata of my imagination.

In fact Gay writes with such a deft touch that I'm just a little bit scared when I read his stuff. I'm afraid that the events and themes that he writes about will slip off the page and began to manifest themselves in my life. That's the type of power and force that I attribute to the experience of reading his words. He manages to meticulously capture a sense of foreboding inevitability that is at once shocking and believable. There have been numerous times when I was reading his tales when I stopped short in the middle of a paragraph, at once divining what was to happen to one of Gay's characters. It's a heartrending experience, but there is nothing to be done but continue with the thread.

This specific collection underscores one of Gay's repeating obsessions- the idea that there are certain doors that, once opened and traveled through, cease to function as portals forever after. There are actions that entail such severe consequences that they permanently alter a life's trajectory. These form a "before" and "after" that define personal eras. As we watch a protagonist drift toward a certain decision, we become aware of the vicissitudes of fate. These people may know less than the reader, but at a cellular level they seem to realize exactly what they are heading for. In the case of Gay's tales, these destinations are always transformational, and seldom for the better.

Whether it's a successfully married man of thirty years gunning down his wife's annoying lapdog or a straying spouse finally succumbing to the worst sort of temptation, we know that Gay's characters will pay a steep price for their lapses andindiscretions. I can only speculate as to the real-life lessons that William Gay has accumulated. His hardened features seem to betray a series of disappointments and tragedies that have become his inescapable companions. Maybe we are better off with his fictions. They serve, as often as not, as cautionary tales. Perhaps we will subsequently go off and make the same mistakes we've seen documented in his books, but at least we will have a better facility for imagining the worst case scenarios.

Sara Gruen, "Water for Elephants" (2006).

Every once in awhile a book hits the wider public consciousness, and the relatively small group of readers left in this nation recommend it to each other. Sometimes it is an activist effort- new age beliefs or other ideas that challenge the contemporary belief construct, masquerading as a novel. These often seem revelatory while you are reading them, and then slightly silly in retrospect, after a bit of time passes. And then there are other books that are hyped for their pure escapism. The discriminating reader is usually just as suspicious of these works as he/she is of polemical fiction. If it's as popular as it seems, it follows that it could well be an appeal to the lowest common denominator. In these instances, one considers the source(s) of the recommendation.

There is reading that you do while laying in the sand at the beach, and there is the kind that you engage alone at night on your living room couch. Obviously these categories are subjective and mutable. If I can identify a single quality that distinguishes Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants from most of the offerings of the American publishing industry, I'd have to say that it is a title that would find an appropriate home in the hands of a sunbather and/or a domestic recluse. It's not necessarily "highbrow literature", but it won't insult your intelligence unless you are hypercritical. It's 300 pages (and change) that turn quickly, and it has just enough meat on its skeleton to sustain the reader's imagination.

I know why the people that told me to read this did so. They know that I have a moderate obsession dedicated to "show business". I use this term in the old sense, referring to "outmoded" forms of entertainment such as vaudeville, carnivals, and independently-run amusement parks. Of course it is a reasonable leap of logic to suspect that I'd be interested in a story set within a circus company in the 1930's. Indeed it didn't take me long to get captivated by the vernacular of the traveling show. It's easily apparent that Gruen took the time to learn the language, and her work wouldn't be nearly enjoyable if she hadn't. For me, it's a quick way to my heart. I love getting into the intricacies of argot, especially when it comes to the bygone "show era".

The plot itself is only marginally compelling. The protagonist is a newly-orphaned young adult named Jacob Jankowski, who drops out of his veterinary program at Cornell right before final exams, and hops a train. He happens to land on bed of a stock car used by the Benzini Brothers Circus, a spectacle in between a "Mud Show" and Ringling Brothers. It doesn't take long for Jacob to realize that he needs to grab whatever opportunity he can, given that he is living in the midst of a Great Depression that is ravaging what used to be the Middle Class. So he embraces a new way of life, and becomes a "First of May" in the rough-and-tumble, gritty world of performers and working men that separately and together ensure that the show goes on.

Sure, Jacob falls in love with a woman (Marlena, who so happens to be married), and manages to ingratiate himself to the owner (Uncle Al) and the Superintendent of Animals (August, who is Marlena's husband), at the same time becoming mired in a nasty love triangle. It's pretty typical melodrama... basically soap opera stuff. But for me the point is not the narrative, but rather the details. Gruen took the time to research the ambiance and background of her thematic material. This effort lends a sense of authenticity to her tale. For this she deserves unreserved accolades. Ultimately it doesn't matter that the plot is predictable, or the relationships cliché. She has successfully evoked a time-and-place long past. That alone justifies all her efforts.

William Gay, "Twilight" (2006).

I put off reading William Gay's Twilight for months after I found it on the shelves of a used book store. I had already been through his first two novels over the past twelve months, and I didn't want to run out of his works too quickly. Gay is an older man at 65, and I'm not sure how many more novels he has in him. I like the idea of setting one by for a rainy day. On the other hand, I've become accustomed to thinking about this author as one of my favorites, and I feel some obligation to complete my reading of his output in its entirety. Now I have just one collection of short stories to go, and then I'll have to wait for the publication of his work-in-progress, which is apparently titled The Lost Country.

Unlike Gay's previous two novels (Provinces of Night and The Long Home), Twilight is almost devoid of humor. It concerns a macabre discovery unearthed by siblings Kenneth and Corrie Tyler. Apparently the local undertaker (Fenton Breece) is kinkier than his job should allow. Gay doesn't necessarily linger over the details of Breece's perversions (at least not at first), but the reader is meant to understand that this creep has overstepped the lines of criminal decency. The Tylers are alerted to his activities because they have recently lost their bootlegging father and they have espied Breece removing a precious article from his grave. Upon further investigation, they realize that the man is up to no good.

While one might be tempted to immediately blow the whistle on such a ghoul, sister Corrie see these circumstances as an opportunity for her and Kenneth to escape the poverty of their life, and get out of town. She would like to blackmail Breece, but needs proof of his wrongdoing. This comes in the form of polaroid shots of the undertaker abusing dead bodies in his workshop. Despite her brother's hesitancy, Corrie approaches Breece and demands fifteen thousand dollars for the return of the photos. Now Fenton Breece is a bit of a pampered aristocrat, but he doesn't relish being extorted by a teen-aged girl (especially one that he has lusted after in the past). So he hires the meanest cuss in town to get the photographs back.

Granville Sutter is a bad, bad dude from rotten stock. It's no secret that townspeople fear him, and Kenneth Tyler would like to give him a wide berth. Unfortunately Sutter has targeted the young man as the weak link, and believes that the threat of violence against the siblings will compel them to give up the game. Sutter doesn't necessarily approve of what Breece has been up to, nor does he really want to know any of the gory details. He just wants what's coming to him when he delivers the goods to Breece. And he's bound to employ any means to accomplish his mission. Not surprisingly, things turn ugly for the Tylers. Soon enough Kenneth finds himself on the lam, pursued by the maniacal Sutter.

Much of Twilight takes place in a vast tract of overgrown wilderness called the Harrikan. It is in this haunted terrain that Sutter attempts to overcome Kenneth Tyler, and the boy in turn encounters some truly archetypal Southern Gothic figures. Gay is able to make the Harrikan come alive with his efficient yet evocative description of flora and fauna. Interspersed within the woods are the abandoned detritutus of coal and other industrial operations that accentuate the sense that the characters are passing through a forbidden "no man's land". A feeling of impending doom accompanies the text, so that the reader is not sure what might happen next, but remains continuously aware that the possibilities are virtually endless.

Steven Millhauser, "Little Kingdoms" (1993).

Sometimes when I develop a taste for a certain author, I decide to read his works over a long span of time, in the hope of making a good thing last. In the case of Steven Millhauser, circumstances have led me to make my way through a few titles in a relatively short period. While this has given me a clearer understanding of the continuity of his perspective, I think it may have also led to a subtle fatigue. I still feel that he is an interesting and talented writer, but I found myself continually checking to see how many pages were left in Little Kingdoms. However it's not the case that it contains inferior tales. Maybe Millhauser is simply better appreciated in the depths of winter. While his themes are accessible, his style is often fairly dense.

Regardless of whether or not Millhauser is appropriate beach reading, there is much to savor in Little Kingdoms. It contains three novellas of wildly divergent settings and approaches. The first is entitled "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne". The titular character is a young man from Cincinnati who steadily distinguishes himself as a newspaper cartoonist. He gets married and finds his way to Manhattan in the first decade of the 20th Century. While he continues to turn out editorial cartoons and Sunday funnies, he labors into the night working on an animated cartoon distinguished by tedious precision and unfettered fantasy. As he does so, his marriage slowly dissolves. Still he manages to create an art that is truly out-of-time.

"The Princess, the Dwarf and the Dungeon" occupies the middle portion of the Little Kingdoms. For this tale Millhauser abandons his typical turn-of-the-century urban milieu in favor of medieval towns and castles. It describes a tale of palace intrigue between a prince, a princess, and a visiting noble. When the sovereign finds himself suspicious of his beautiful wife's fidelity, he decides to engineer a test. He urges her to offer herself to the noble (who happens to be his longtime loyal friend) and report the results of the situation back to him. Obviously this is a no-win situation all around, and the reader sees the eventual outcome as inevitable. The dwarf of the title is particularly treacherous, and perhaps a slight to "little people everywhere".

The final installment is "Catalogue of the Exhibition", and perhaps the most fascinating from a structural standpoint. It is divided by descriptions of various paintings the main character (Edmund Moorash) completed during his lifetime. The notes on the content and style of these works are supplemented by the kind of historical context you might see in curatorial statements. They gradually unveil a story of two pairs of siblings that spend time together in a rural idyllic setting, and the ramifications of their intensely formed individual bonds. Ultimately the developing plot takes on a tragic quality, as we see Moorash increasingly affected by the relationship between his artwork and the events of his life.

I was particularly struck by some of the formal experimentation of Little Kingdoms. As noted above with "Catalogue of the Exhibition", Millhauser has chosen to employ some atypical means to relate his stories. While I found "The Princess, the Dwarf and the Dungeon" fairly trite in terms of the plot-line, I was mildly intrigued by Millhauser's choice to have an anonymous townie as the narrator. He uses this device to examine the nature of folktales in general, with mixed results. Obviously "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne" hews most closely to the traditions of Millhauser's most celebrated works. While I found the other two included novellas to be a bit contrived, I still enjoyed the author's consistent mastery of the language and his amazing facility for description.

William Gay, "The Long Home" (1999).

As I predicted in this blog about a month ago, I have eagerly devoured another heaping portion of Southern Gothic by the talented writer William Gay. This time I chose to read his very first book, The Long Home. As I've previously mentioned, this was the first novel that Gay published after toiling in obscurity for almost forty years. Not only did it garner prizes and critical acclaim, but it ensured that the author would have additional opportunities to access a greater audience. While it's a bit of a shame he's not better-known, I feel privileged to have come across his work. I made no secret of the fact that I was impressed by Provinces of Night, and I'm happy to report that his earlier title stood up to the standard of excellence that I expected.

The Long Home begins with an enigmatic event of great magnitude- a backwoods bootlegger named Hovington is almost swallowed up by a cataclysmic pit that spontaneously forms on his land. Soon after, his homestead is invaded by a darkly malevolent character named Dallas Hardin. This interloper takes advantages of Hovington's rather steady deterioration, moving in on not just the whiskey business, but on the man's wife as well. As the original master slowly fades, Hardin consolidates his power over both the household and the community. He begins to build a small empire of vice and will let nothing and/or no man stand in his way. Even Hovington's beautiful young daughter is held in his power.

That's particularly disconcerting to young Nathan Winer. This seventeen-year-old man has already had his share of misfortune. His father disappeared ten years ago, and his bitter mother suspects that she has been intentionally abandoned. Nathan is put off by her harsh recriminations of her long lost husband, and secretly believes that his Dad met a far worse fate than escaping his shrill harpy of a wife. But there's not much that young Winer can do about any of this. The only paternal guidance he gets is from an elderly neighbor who lives and works on a nearby plot of land. William Tell Oliver has been around a long time, and understands local secrets that he'd rather shunt aside. Still he cares a lot for Winer.

Despite the mild warnings that Oliver delivers to the boy, Winer decides to take Dallas Hardin up on an offer for a job. Hardin is expanding his operation with a large honkytonk, and he needs someone that can help with its construction. When the head carpenter on the project gets caught with his figurative pants down, Hardin decides to let Winer take his place. Even though Nathan has no formal training, he is confident that carpentry is in his blood (his father worked the trade). With a contrary resolve to mind his own business, Winer is brought inextricably into the gritty demimonde of a truly villainous character. Hardin is both devious and determined, and thinks little of destroying life for his own gain.

When Winer falls for Amber Rose Hovington (the orphaned teen who Hardin has "adopted" as his own), a brooding storm threatens to erupt. Secrets and betrayals are exchanged, and all the story's players assume their tragic roles. The violent consequences strike the reader with such force that one can only wonder whether they can be redemptive, or if they merely underscore the essential bleakness of the boneyard of life. Gay has struck a few deep chords of humor into his tale, but one suspects that they are only meant to serve as the sugar that helps the bitter medicine go down. There is a deep despair underlying the beautifully evocative descriptions in Gay's prose. I can only hope that he remains productive in his late years.

James Carlos Blake, "A World of Thieves" (2002).

Over the last couple of months I've been doing pretty well pulling recommendations off of Amazon. I've discovered several authors that I have enjoyed, and I'm sure that I'll continue reading their books. Many of these writers work within male-oriented genres. The characters are hard and capable of excessive violence. They are also tortured by the disconnect between the way things should be, and the way the world is. There are a lot of unattractive truths and complicated relationships. Certainly there is also a lot of moral relativism. For the most part, I've enjoyed the themes these authors have explored. If nothing else, they have found a way to avoid easy answers and broad generalizations. That's why they seem so true.

As I finish one title, I'm led to the next in a chain of kinship. In this way I came across the name of James Carlos Blake. The man is the product of the Texas/Mexico borderlands, and a descendant of a noted pirate. As a kid he made pocket change by capturing poisonous snakes. It's been said that Blake is the literary equivalent of film director Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia). Certainly Blake manages to pack a lot of bloody incidents into his narrative. His characters seem fated to fulfill their harsh destinies despite the circumstances that might momentarily distract them. It seems a point of confidence for Blake that a man will be what he is meant to be despite his own will.

Buck, Russell and Sonny are not exempted from Blake's convictions. They believe (as the author no doubt does) that thievery is in their blood. A World of Thieves chronicles their adventures in Louisiana and Texas. Sonny is an orphaned teenager that is slowly learning his own place. He has cast his lot with his paternal uncles and intends to find his fortune by hook or by crook. Fraternal twins Buck and Russell started out as gamblers and petty thieves, and slowly worked their way into committing armed robberies. While their eldest brother (Sonny's father) looked the other way regarding the crimes of his siblings, he wanted something different for his son. But when he passed away, Buck and Russell recognized Sonny's true nature and kinship.

A World of Thieves begins with a botched bank robbery that results in the capture of Sonny (whose job is to drive the getaway car). As luck would have it the authorities have very little evidence that Sonny is guilty. He expects to get released quickly, but then finds himself sticking up for an effeminate weakling in his holding cell. As a result Sonny finds himself staring down a life sentence, and he is sent to Angola- a prison plantation in the swamps of backwater Louisiana. Despite history and conventional wisdom our protagonist believes he can successfully escape his imprisonment, and sets off to do just that. Against all odds he succeeds and sets off to rendezvous with his mentors and resume his life of crime.

Blake's spare prose keeps the reader's eye moving quickly through the pages. There is very little extraneous description- the writing is almost entirely focused on the action. I found this a bit unfortunate, as the novel's settings have enormous atmospheric potential. The characters blunder through the murky wilderness, raise hell in raucous oil-boom towns, and make pit stops along isolated desert roads- but Blake skims over all of this, rushing toward his eventual goal of utter destruction. He also inverts traditional morality in such a way as to make the villains heroes, and vice versa. He punctuates his narrative with moments of brutality, but for the most part he makes a crime wave look like a humorous romp. I don't think this approach does his material justice.

Iain Banks, "The Wasp Factory" (1984).

Iain Banks is a Scottish writer who has written both 'mainstream' and science fiction novels. These two pursuits are distinguished by the addition of his middle initial (M.) when publishing the latter. While he will admit to enjoying writing the genre fiction more, he says he gets slightly more reward from 'literature'. That's because (in his words) he feels he has "achieved more having had to wrestle with reality as well as with (my) imagination." And this struggle with 'reality' extends to his external life as well. After a long period of acquiring sports cars, he recently sold his entire collection and bought a Lexus hybrid. He has also vowed only to fly in "emergencies". These decisions are the result of his political views.

After Tony Blair committed the United Kingdom to partnership in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Banks threw in his lot with a group of British politicians seeking to have the Prime Minister impeached. He even cut up his passport and mailed the remains to Downing Street. Banks has a very defined and elaborate vision for the future of society, and it apparently doesn't glorify aggressive militarism. His futurist works take place in "the Culture", a place where advanced technology and pacifism combine to form a sort of utopia. Banks is not ashamed to dwell in such an imagined world- he has repeatedly stated he would like to live in this world of his own creation. If he can't do it within our contemporary times, he has at least achieved this residence in his head.

Banks is deeply secular and humanistic, but oftentimes he creates the opposite in his characters. In his first novel, The Wasp Factory, the author introduces us to a 17-year-old kid named Frank- a manifestly unsympathetic creature. Frank has a penchant for weaponry and black magick, and he's not at all afraid to exploit these interests in a manner that creates great harm to others. The reader learns directly that Frank has no compunction about having killed repeatedly. He's offed a half-brother and a little cousin with little concern for the feelings of his family. As far as he's concerned, his malicious deeds are only further proof of his own cunning and innovation. The methods by which he has achieved such dastardly deeds are indeed darkly artful.

Judging from his everyday activities, one need not be surprised by his occasional outbursts of extreme mayhem. Frank lives on an island off the shore of a resort town, and guards his territory with diligence. In fact he has accumulated a serious arsenal. He has devised all manner of bombs that he stores in a backyard shed. He's created booby traps and death-dealing kites. He has murdered a variety of small animals, skinned them, and mounted their skulls on poles to serve as sentries against possible invaders. While his father has wisely prohibited him from buying the firearms he desperately covets, he has managed to attain a lethal skill with a weapons-grade slingshot.

Frank's maneuvers and preparations are only interrupted by the impending return of his older brother, who has just broken out of the madhouse. As he anticipates the eventual arrival of his sibling, he realizes that he is on a collision course that will change his highly-ritualized life. He has received signs of this encroaching danger from an elaborate death trap called the Wasp Factory that he has built in his private loft. As if this weren't enough, similar signals are being sent out from a macabre altar he has constructed in a nearby abandoned concrete bunker. Unfortunately Frank is unable to pinpoint the exact nature of the coming transformations. Banks leaves the reader to work his way through the foreboding sense of dread.

Edward Carey, "Observatory Mansions" (2000).

Before my last trip to the library, I did a lot of research on Amazon in an attempt to devise a list of intriguing books by authors I haven't read. Some of my exploration was guided by theme, but there were a few titles that seemed to pop out of nowhere. Such was the case with Observatory Mansions, by Edward Carey. While reading this odd book, I tried to recollect why I would have identified with it in the first place. So when I was was done reading, I made a point to return to its Amazon listing page to try to figure out why I was drawn to it. I noticed right away that the Publisher's Weekly editorial review name-drops David Lynch- a sure way to grab my attention. Anything that elicits such a comparison earns a closer look from me.

Of course this is an easy way to court disappointment. Very little deserves to be placed in a category with the undisputed king of weird American cinema. It seems increasingly popular to try to sell a consumer by identifying his/her demographic, attributing a typical reference point, and then associating it to anything that vaguely resembles a landmark work that might appeal to the target. There is seemingly no end to the stream of contrived entertainment that gets passed off as "Lynchian-weird". So it's a bit unfair to be moved by this tactic, and then suspicious of any work that is marketed this way. In the case of Carey's first novel, it is only vaguely applicable- yet enough so not to add insult.

Francis Orme (our protagonist) is a strange figure. He is strangely detached from all other life forms. He works as a "living dummy" in a wax museum, has very few friends, and refuses to ever remove a pair of white cotton gloves shielding his hands. Francis is clearly plagued by one or another fashionable mental affliction. Maybe he's autistic or maybe he's got obsessive-compulsive disorder- either way, credit Carey with not saying. In fact, we should applaud the author for taking the time to describe his characters through their interactions, rather than force-feed his readership with expository details. The strange tenor of the story lends itself well to slowly-revealed mysteries.

Why does this peculiar individual keep an exhibition of odd objects in a tunnel underneath the building where he lives? Why do his parents sit mute in the background of his tales for the first half of the book? Who are the strange folks who live in Observatory Mansions, and how did they get the way they are? Carey is in no hurry to explain any of this. He is content taking his time and shining the barest hint of light on his delightfully idiosyncratic subjects. There is a woman who believes she is a dog. There is a fusty old tutor who is continuously pouring sweat and a hundred scents from his body. And there is the enigmatic young woman who throws an entire building of flats into upheaval with her facility for encouraging memory and its communication.

Observatory Mansions is not a particularly easy book to read. It is instead fully imagined and surreal without being contrived. The behaviors of these queer fish are never simply arbitrary, and thus they don't seem artificially rendered (this is not a Wes Anderson movie). Sometimes they are brutal, but there is a core of tenderness to many of their actions... if the reader can get beyond the oddity of surface descriptions. Carey has found a way to animate the conflict between modern life and an anachronistic courtly existence, and the deterioration of what was once a grand country estate reverberates in the resignation of its inhabitants. This is a periodically perverse journey into the emotional isolation that can ultimately keep those in close proximity apart. But I'd say it owes less to David Lynch than to Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amelie).

A.M. Homes, "In a Country of Mothers" (1993).

There is a common theory that people who choose to become psychologists usually do so out of an unconscious wish to work out their own internal mental problems. Having been drawn to study psychology as an undergraduate, I believe there is probably some element of truth in that supposition. If I felt growing up that something was 'wrong' with me, surely the answers into that condition could be found at the feet of my professors and on the pages of the class texts. In truth I did find certain information resonant- descriptions of various maladies that can afflict those who bear them. Similarly I spent enough time considering my friends and family, trying to match them with various diagnoses. Often it was quite entertaining.

Such impulses must have somehow affected A.M Homes at one point or another in her life. Her works all deal in some way with various dysfunctions, some of which are more serious than others. Her short stories are filled with characters trying to work out their inner demons. But the level of psychosis gets amped up in her longer works. The first Homes novel I read was Music for Torching (1999). It concerned a suburban couple and the slow deterioration in their relationship. They are so obviously incapable of managing their lives, and their perceptions of success, that they neglect the basic fundamentals that would otherwise keep their young family together. It is a brutal book filled with the raw stuff of extreme emotionality.

Homes' most famous work is probably The End of Alice (1996). The 'protagonist' in that work is a child molester, who is imprisoned for having murdered a little girl. Critics and other readers were astonished that Homes could so effectively imagine the inner life of such a character. The idea that she could so empathize with this man made people uncomfortable. What in her life would provide the necessary insights? Most successful authors advise young writers to write about 'what they know'. For Homes' audience, this often has disturbing ramifications. What do the themes of her books say about her? It's not always obvious. However her second novel (In a Country of Mothers) seems like a natural extension of Homes' life.

In a Country of Mothers concerns a psychologist who gradually goes through a process of transference, so that she superimposes her own difficulties on one of her vulnerable clients. Claire Roth seems to have it all- a loving and wealthy husband, two sons, an apartment in the city, and a home on the Island. But in all of Homes' work, appearances can deceive. When Claire was a teenager, she had to give up a baby girl that she conceived with one of her professors. Twenty years later a young woman named Jody is referred to her by a colleague. She comes in to discuss her anxiety about graduate school, but soon reveals that she was adopted. Claire begins to suspect that Jody is her long lost child, and she begins to mother her in an increasingly unhealthy manner.

As a co-dependency between therapist and client develops, both of these women explore the emotional detritus of their fractured identities. Homes explores the essential maternal bonds that exist between all mothers daughters- even those who aren't related by blood. More impressive perhaps is the author's portrayal of a possible consequence of therapy- the unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another. This can be quite harmful for the patient when the professional is not aware of it. But it can be doubly destructive if the therapist herself falls prey to its temptations. With Homes (and her readers), transference is always a possibility- that's what makes her effective and her work dangerous.

Tom Franklin, "Hell at the Breech" (2003).

Having sampled Tom Franklin's writing in his short story collection Poachers, I thought that I'd return to the well for a novel. Hell at the Breech is (nominally) historical fiction about a backwoods war pitting town vs. country folk in Alabama's Clark County. Apparently the author first heard tales of this feud while growing up in the very state where it happened. One might expect a litany of violence, unremitting vengeance and good old Southern backstabbing- and if that is the type of thing you are interested in, you can indeed find it all right here. However don't expect to find some pulpy, breezily entertaining read. Franklin's got the goods, and while comparisons to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy may be presumptuous, they may not be completely out-of-order.

The cycle of mayhem is set off when two young rural brothers decide to play 'highwaymen" along an isolated dirt road out in the sticks. Macky and William Burke merely want to get a few funds so they can visit the local prostitute, but they inadvertently set off a chain of events that builds steam until the region's inhabitants become inextricably involved in a series of bloody conflicts. Sheerly by accident they manage to kill a man. Fortunately for them, they are able to slink away without their deed being witnessed. When the murder is discovered by the victim's cousin, an insidious plot is hatched to extend the violence outward. The poor folk of the Mitcham Beat have been oppressed by the 'city ways' of nearby Grove Hill and Coffeeville for far too long.

County Sheriff Billy Waite is growing weary and preparing to retire from his long career as a lawman. He understands the barely repressed hostilities and resentments borne on the chests of the cotton farmers in Mitcham Beat. When he learns of Arch Bledsoe's death, he knows there is going to be trouble. Bledsoe was a popular store owner and aspiring politician who was extremely popular in the outlying rural areas of the county. Not only was he free with the bootleg whiskey he stocked at his shop, but he had the only outdoor croquet court for hundreds of miles. When his surviving kinsman "Tooch" Bledsoe decides to form a local gang called 'Hell-at-the-Breech' to avenge his cousin's death, he is able to recruit a small band of potential outlaws, ready and wiling to take the fight to the towns. Soon he has built his own little fiefdom in the wilderness.

"Tooch" begins his efforts close to home. He and his men (including the Burke brothers) start to lean on the neighboring farmers. They let them know that sides must be chosen. Either they will assume the banner of the 'Breech', or they must keep silent and stay out of its way. When several independently-minded dirt-scratchers challenge his growing authority, they find themselves on the wrong end of some unlucky mishaps. A few of them end up six feet under the cold, hard ground. As news of this filters back to Grove Hill, pressure builds on Sheriff Waite to get some satisfaction. He intends to get to the bottom of this rash of violence and bring the appropriate ne'er-do-wells to justice. Problem is there isn't a lot of love for him out in the cut. And eventually the "Breech" strikes closer to home.

Franklin's prose is spare and precise. He doesn't waste a lot of time examining the inner lives of these simple and brutal men, but rather conveys character and motivation through their laconic verbal interchanges, and their deeds. Many of the incidents he describes are brutally violent and gory- yet never sensationally so. The visceral nature of the evils perpetrated among the cotton fields and dense woods is conveyed without unnecessary elaboration. And yet even within the most malicious perpetrators, he finds strains of humanity. The reader understands how the hardscrabble conditions of life in rural southwestern Alabama (in 1897) led to bloodletting and betrayal. Franklin's account is all-the-more convincing because it is essentially true. This is exactly how historical fiction should be written, even if it doesn't adhere strictly to the 'facts'.

Harold Schechter, "The Mask of Red Death" (2004).

I was familiar with Harold Schechter as a recognized expert in the study of serial killers. I had seen him appear in a few documentaries, including one concerning his artist-friend Joe Coleman, and another that detailed the phenomenon of collecting serial killer art. For the hipper, more literary crowd interested in the dark psychology of accomplished murderers, it seems like Schechter is the go-to guy. I've found his perspectives to be fairly convincing. He is absolutely fascinated with the grisly details of crime, but he tends to shy away from elaborate psychosexual explanations for murderous behavior. He seems to know his way around the psychopathic mind, and clearly has the type of non-judgmental attitude required to truly understand extreme violence.

While reading The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers (2003), I had to wonder about Schechter's background. He certainly seemed like an authoritative source, but how had he come across his knowledge? Did he have a law enforcement background? That would give him a deep understanding of the investigatory process that identifies and categorizes aberrant behavior. Or was he a mental health professional? Maybe he had experience with examining or treating killers? The truth is a bit strange. Schechter is a professor of American Culture and Literature at Queens College of the City University of New York.

His profession doesn't really explain how he acquired his particular interests. However it does shed light on one of his sidelines- he has written a series of 'historical fictions' employing the iconic poet Edgar Allan Poe as the protagonist. This strange approach puts Poe in the role of detective, trying to sort out the facts of a series of horrific murders in mid-19th Century New York City. In this adventure, Poe meets up with a series of other prominent figures of the age- such as P.T. Barnum, Tom Thumb, and James Gordon Bennett, Sr. (the founder and publisher of the New York Herald). Schechter even has Poe teaming up with one of the biggest celebrities of the day, Christopher "Kit" Carson.

The writer and the explorer make for strange bedfellows. Schechter writes Poe as if he was a pretentious prat, giving him high-falutin' dialog that often distracts from the flow of the narrative. Instead of merely being gloomy and taciturn, Poe is represented as being a flowery dandy, who never misses an opportunity to slag a fellow writer. Meanwhile Carson is portrayed as a one-dimensional cartoon character. He's a plain-talking superhero, who saves the day so many times that he might as well be the second coming of Jesus Christ. In fact all of the characters are drawn so simplistically that Schechter's story loses a lot of its atmosphere. And that's rather a shame, because there is a lot in this book.

An undertaking like The Mask of Red Death is by its very nature quite perilous. Our history books have already colored these well-known figures with distinct impressions. The well-informed reader brings a fairly solid set of assumptions about their personalities and motivations. We have an intuitive sense of how we would expect them to act, and what they would care about. It's risky to try to put words in their mouths, and especially difficult to present a convincing account of how they may have spoken to each other. As soon as a hint of doubt is inadvertently introduced, we remove ourselves from the setting. It takes an extremely deft hand to avoid causing such a reaction. While Schechter is obviously articulate and knowledgeable, I don't think he was quite up to this challenge.

Harry Crews, "The Knockout Artist" (1988).

It's really a shame that when Harry Crews was recommended to me fifteen years ago that The Knockout Artist wasn't the title lent to me. If it had been, I likely wouldn't have put the author aside for as long as I have. A Feast of Snakes (1974) was mildly entertaining, but I thought it exposed the author as a gritty pulp-meister who had a limited ability to build substantial characterization. Everybody who appeared in that book came off as cartoon stereotypes. My experience with Classic Crews (a collection of some of his earliest works) put him back on the map of quality Southern scribes, as far as I was concerned. I decided I had made a hasty judgment and sought out one of his most critically-acclaimed works.

The Knockout Artist tells the story of Eugene Biggs, a Georgian farm boy who strikes out for bigger adventures in the city. He travels to New Orleans and meets a trainer named Budd, who schools him in the fine art of fisticuffs. Eugene quickly ascends the ranks of the local fight scene, and begins to get some opportunities to meet tougher opponents. Although he lacks the ability to put his man on the canvas, he is wickedly deft and able to shuck-and-jive his way to many victories on points. As long as he is successful he receives the admiration and attention of his adopted father figure. But then he gets clocked by a power punch, and his tragic flaw is exposed (he has a weak chin). He can't beat the count and loses his first match. The floodgate now open, he loses three subsequent bouts and is dropped by his manager/trainer. On his way out the door, Budd retorts that Eugene could probably knock himself out. In frustration, the young fighter does just that.

Left alone and abandoned on the street in the most insidious Southern port, Eugene finds his way waiting tables at a restaurant. It is there that he catches the eye of a young socialite named Charity. She is a beautiful, vibrant, and intelligent girl who has a suspicious interest in bedding Eugene. It is soon revealed that Charity is close to receiving her doctorate in psychology, and has an academic interest in the grittier, lowlier class of people- such as washed-up young boxers. While Eugene does indeed feel patronized by the attentions of Charity, he has also become cynical and is lacking quality alternative options. Not only does he bed Charity, but he actually allows her to put him up in a fancy apartment. Thus begins a relationship that carries us to the main events in the book.

Somehow Charity has convinced Eugene to perform his inimitable self-knockout trick in front of paying audiences. She has arranged for him to be compensated well for his efforts. In return, she requests only that he allow her to document his life-story via tape recorder while they have sex. While he doesn't cotton to having his brain picked and battered, he does find both money and Charity attractive, and so agrees to the arrangement. Through these public appearances, Eugene comes into contact with some of the seedier denizens of New Orleans, and the story widens to include additional subplots. The main thread finds Eugene and a friend taking up a Cajun youth in order to make him into a champion fighter in his own right.

What makes The Knockout Artist impressive is the vast range of characters Crews is able to bring to life. Far from being limited to the depiction of working class toughs and outcasts, this book presents a wide range of folks, freakish in varying degrees in outward appearance and/or psychological makeup. While everybody is distorted at some level, their humanity is drawn broadly enough so there is virtually no one without redeeming qualities. There was a certain complexity to these personalities that I found largely absent in Crews' other books. Although there were plenty of bleak and depressing events in the narrative, The Knockout Artist contains a germ of hope- which seems to be a rare discovery within the works of this author. Perhaps Crews was merely mellowing in his advancing age, but I enjoyed the compassion he bestowed upon his protagonist. It made the book more than just ugly.

Turb Blurbs

If you read a lot it's inevitable that you are going to come across stuff that you either mildly dislike, or are otherwise indifferent to. After you read such books they generally fade from your mind quickly. People who review books are not likely to invest a lot of time into writing about something mediocre, unless they work as professional critics. Every year thousands of books get written, and it's likely that the majority of them fall into this category. They exist to fill up the shelves of stores and libraries. They make this nation look like it's brimming with literature. To most it's mainly blank space, except to the handful of readers that are either related or have some other special interest in the authors. I tend not to post blogs about books I don't care about, and I rarely even write a hate screed against something I found awful. But I've decide to include some blurbs about a few. After all I've invested a lot of time into reading them, and maybe I can save others the trouble.

Charles Portis, The Dog of the South (1979). Portis has been called "one of the most inventively comic writers of western fiction". This characterization is completely beyond me. If this particular title is representative of his work, then I can think of few more misleading descriptors. The protagonist is a man who has just discovered his wife has left him with a man who has stolen his car. He decides to set off in pursuit of the wayward couple, and finds himself in Mexico. The most apt way I can describe Portis' writing style is to use the word 'meandering'. I don't necessarily require a clever plot to enjoy a book. I don't need unexpected twists and turns. I don't even need tons of sparkling dialog. But if you are going to center your narrative on a series of conversations between characters, their talk should convey an understanding about what these people are about. Instead Portis has his characters shoot the breeze about arbitrary subjects, and even then he fails to describe anything interesting. It's not that NOTHING happens in The Dog of the South... it's that there is no reason to care.

Dennis Cooper, Guide (1997). I had read that Cooper was a transgressive author, but I had no idea what he actually wrote about. This particular work is the fourth in the George Miles cycle, but Miles himself appears little here. Apparently he was a boy who Cooper fell in love with as a child, and with whom the author had a brief affair as an adult. None of that is necessary to understand what is happening in Guide. The protagonist seems to be Cooper himself, and the events portrayed may or may not be non-fiction. Much of it reads as wish fulfillment, as Cooper no doubt intends. The challenge is that his fantasies closely echo those of historical figures like Aleister Crowley and the Marquis de Sade. There is also quite a bit of William Burroughs at its core.

Stylistically Cooper is nothing special. His writing is very accessible. It's the subject matter that is likely to put off a lot of readers. Cooper is flamboyantly gay, and if that is a problem you should steer clear of this title straight away- because that is the mildest thing about the identity he shares with us. Apparently his fetishes include the idea of the murder and mutilation of underage boys. The amount of violence directed against the seemingly 'innocent' is truly frightening, and makes one wonder about the mental stability of the author. I guess this is the point in Cooper's work. He doesn't spend a lot of time apologizing for these themes. Perhaps he intends it to be titillating for his audience... but if that's the case, the work is meant only for extreme sadists. It takes a lot to turn off my fascination for different perceptions and world views- in this respect Cooper is a complete success. Still. Like when approaching a gory car accident, one wonders just how bad it can be. Despite the fact that I found most of this singularly unpleasant, I can't say for sure that I'll never read Cooper again.

A Trip to the Library. Tom Franklin, "Poachers" (1999)

Having whet my appetite for Southern Literature, I went to the Carnegie Library main branch in Oakland for some reading material. With a new baby in the house, I figured I'd try to find ways to save money. I used to frequent the library a lot more than I have in the last couple of years. When I started exploring the world of graphic novels and comics, I decided that I didn't want to spend an inordinate amount of money just trying to familiarize myself with what was available. At the library I could find out which ones should be in my collection, and maximize my resources. I'd stumble out with arm-loads of stuff. I discovered plenty that was worthwhile, and a fair amount that made me thankful I had merely borrowed them.

On this trip I wanted to concentrate on finding novels written by authors I had either read previously, or had learned about through Amazon. I had to make a stop in the 'graphic novel' section first. I've been receiving 'snail-mail' notices that I owe money for a comic I took out two years ago. The few times I've gone to the Carnegie recently, I've always made a point of locating that particular item on the shelf (no one ever borrows it) and showing it to the desk clerk nearby. Invariably I am told by staff that I actually owe nothing at all, and shouldn't be receiving those notices. It's a bit of a hassle, but I'm never actually kept from grabbing more books, so I don't complain too much. Believe me, if I owed for the thing I'd simply pay the fine and be done with it.

Anyway I did find a few choice items with pictures, and then made my way into the low-ceilinged concrete rooms in the back. This is where they keep the fiction, jammed together and lit with God's awesome fluorescence. Overwhelmed by the claustrophobic atmosphere and the quantity of books, I tried to recall the name of an author I was interested in. After a few minutes I settled down, and was able to concentrate. I chose writers who I associated with the Southern Tradition- George Saunders, Charles Portis, George Singleton, Harry Crews, and Tom Franklin. I didn't really think that I could read all 9 or 10 books within the initial three-week lending period, and so I planned to renew whatever was left by accessing the Carnegie site on the internet.

I started in on the stuff this past week. I read the A.M. Homes book that I reviewed earlier. I went through a collection of Singleton's stories that lacked focus, and failed to match the expectations I had formed based upon previous readings of his work. And I followed that up with Franklin's Poachers (1999). Tom Franklin was born in the small town of Dickinson, Alabama and received an MFA from the University of Arkansas. He currently teaches at the University of Mississippi. His short stories reflect the untamed interior landscapes of the Deep South. In his introduction to Poachers , Franklin sheds light on his upbringing with tales of his nascent hunting career. To hear him tell it, it was an activity that he felt pressured to engage in to prove his manhood. But whatever nostalgia he has for hunting is tinged with gore and self-doubt.

However the three brothers featured in the eponymously-titled story of Poachers take to the wilderness with such natural aplomb that it is impossible for them to function in polite society. They are teenage orphans, who rely on their deep knowledge of the swamps and woods to sustain them. They have very little contact with any of their own species, and would be perfectly happy if it were to remain so. But after a run-in with a new game warden, they are inevitably targeted as transgressors. Their confrontation with a shadowy vigilante is brutally savage, yet deftly told. Franklin has a way of miring his readers in the kudzu-choked corners of his stories. There are plenty of grisly details and horrific consequences accompanying plaguing the author's gritty characters. Yet the humanity at their core is made undeniably present through Franklin's keen observations.

Fortunately I picked up another of Franklin's titles in Oakland the other day. When I finally make it through the Portis book, and some of the other dross I no doubt accumulated, it will be refreshing to return to the fierce places of this writer's fresh imagination.

My Attraction to the Southern Gothic Tradition.

Sometimes it's hard to account for the direction of one's interests. For some reason I've been drawn to Southern Gothic literature for much of my reading career. Sure, it started out with William Faulkner. I started with his most difficult work- The Sound and the Fury. I didn't know what the hell I was doing with that book, but I plowed through despite myself. I understood it to be about the madness of one insular Southern clan and their relationship with their region's history. I didn't get much further than that. Yet I knew I had touched on something great, and resolved to continue my explorations of this seminal American author. I read his most accessible book next (The Reivers) , and realized that Faulkner was not just deliberately obtuse.

I continued my exploration with As I Lay Dying, and decided that the book was probably where I should have started with this author. It was straightforward, and yet encapsulated many of the elements and themes that Faulkner is celebrated for. I particularly enjoyed the multiple narrators. The more I consumed, the more I became addicted to tales his about fictional Yoknapatawpha County. I found Absalom, Absalom and Light in August, and figured out that these works would live inside me forever. My Faulkner phase came upon me so fast and hard that I quickly came close to exhausting his entire oeuvre. Wanting to extend my relationship with his extraordinary work, I chose to save his trilogy (The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion) for a future date.

Having moved on to other things, I soon found myself pining for Southern literature in the tradition of the master. I heard about a contemporary author named Cormac McCarthy, who was said to be influenced by the man from Oxford, Mississippi. The first title I picked up was Suttree, and I was immediately hooked. Not only was it written in the same spirit, but it exhibited some of the stylistic mannerisms I had come to love. As with his progenitor, I quickly went through all of McCarthy's books. And as I read them over the years, McCarthy evolved into a master in his own right. While there is no denying the craftsmanship of his early works, one would be hard-pressed not to recognize The Road as a modern classic. If he never hits that level of excellence again, I will still feel that he met his full potential.

After Faulkner and McCarthy, I knew I was hopelessly addicted to stories set in the South. Someone recommended Harry Crews, and I found him to be a harder-edged, trashier writer who caricatured his gritty Southern locales and the inhabitants that populated them. Due to proximity, I also became fascinated with the enigmatic qualities of West Virginia. I encountered the posthumous stories of Breece D'J Pancake, the singular literary voice of the Mountain State. His short career (punctuated by his 1979 suicide) was a tantalizing glimpse into the dark ways of the backwoods hollers. His work moved me to begin my own personal explorations into the mysteries of the state. I became aware of the excellent documentary filmmaker Jacob Young, and his subject from Boone County- Jesco White.

It's hard to say just what compels me to sustain my travels through this shifty and evocative terrain. The culture and politics of its people are about as far from my own upbringing as possible. Maybe it's the fascination with the 'other' that keeps me returning to this region. Or perhaps its because it's the one part of America that seems to hold on to its authenticity. If there exists a place in the United States beyond the reach of the homogenized suburban development and the consumer hell of strip malls, then it is surely to be found somewhere on a Southern back-road.

A.M. Homes, "The End of Alice" (1996).

Once in awhile a book is written that enters public consciousness as a work of almost complete transgression. What gives it that status is the prevailing climate of morality and the prevailing perspective of the society into which it is released. Certainly Marquis de Sade is a good example of a transgressive author. I'd actually suggest that Justine still stands as one of the most challenging creations ever written. Throughout the centuries, other titles have arisen to draw public ire, and have been held up as examples of filth and depravity. D.H. Lawrence, Nabokov, William Burroughs, and Georges Batailles are all noted for being especially controversial. Often the literary establishment simply censors these works, and draws more attention to them as a result.

Nowadays it is very unlikely that a book will become unavailable due to censorship. While public school libraries will remove it from the shelves, and universities will strike them from the curriculum, transgressive literature is invariably available from some source. This provides fodder to both sides in a nebulous 'culture war' which is said to be fought continuously in our nation. Personally I have almost always found myself defending the right of provocative authors to be heard. The sole exception in my life has been the aforementioned de Sade, whose 'masterpiece' I sought to burn in my apartment in college. I wasn't thinking 'straight' at the time, and felt that I'd better destroy it rather than risk it falling upon some impressionable mind. Since then I have adopted a fairly non-paternalistic approach.

These last few decades have seen a general shift in the limits that confine writers. Bret Easton Ellis, Kathy Acker and others have tried their very best to outrage modern sensibilities, but that's tough to do in an ever-expanding media environment. Most parents aren't scared that their children will read an inappropriate book. Their fears have generally been transferred to the internet. While that's liberating for readers, it may actually have the effect of repressing the publication of extreme writing. If it's not likely to generate any publicity, then there is little incentive to put it out. The overall audience has narrowed and grown more refined. Those who may have picked up a salacious trade paperback in the past are now looking to be shocked elsewhere.

Having said that, stuff slips by now and again. A. M. Homes crossed several invisible lines with The End of Alice (1996). The narrator is an unnamed pedophile, who has found himself serving a long term in prison for the murder of a pre-adolescent girl. The reader is asked to entertain this man's explanations for, and descriptions of, his behavior. Homes details the perp's crimes in such salacious detail that it is at once profoundly disturbing and horribly provocative. She doesn't go out of her way to pronounce judgment on the criminal actor. In fact, we find ourselves in the position of having to determine on our own the likely truth of the situations explained. The narrator is distinctly unreliable, and made more so by his particular predilections. After all, who wants to empathize with, or put any trust in, the accounts of a man who sexually exploits children?

Homes has indeed demonstrated her remarkable ability to get under our skin. There is no such class of human less sympathetic than a molester. Yet somehow his humanity seeps through on to the pages like the vile secretions he visits on his targets. We are not burdened with detailed rationalizations and justifications. True to form, the narrator was abused by his mother as a child. But his behavior is not blamed outright on these past incidents. We understand the progression that has brought him to his current situation- locked in a cell and communing by letter with a young female adult with her own aspirations of exploitation. Still Homes avoids bludgeoning us with easy answers or pat conclusions. We are given a window into a world few of us would seek to enter, and we finish with a bit more awareness of the mindset of a child abuser.

Cormac McCarthy, "The Road" (2006),

Although I make a serious effort to spend as much time reading as possible, it's very rare for me to read an entire book in one day. Besides the fact that I have more responsibilities and priorities than ever, I am a notoriously slow reader. I'm usually satisfied if I get through 100 pages over several hours. So it's notable that I completed the entire length of Cormac McCarthy's The Road in a single day. I'm certain that it's partially attributable to my appreciation for the author's previous works. I've gotten through almost all of them. And I was particularly looking forward to The Road, because of its post-apocalyptic theme. But I also found it eminently readable, despite its relentlessly bleak tone.

The Road is the tale of the relationship between a father and his young son, and their struggle to survive a harsh world. Something has occurred to make living on the Earth virtually unmanageable. McCarthy never explicitly outlines the cause of the transformation, but certain clues suggest that it might have been the result of a nuclear war. There are ashes over everything, and the sun is perpetually obscured by the particulate matter in the atmosphere. Naturally this means that all plant life is either dead or extremely unhealthy. Without feed animal husbandry is impossible, and so food supplies are almost non-existent. People aren't able to rebuild from the ashes of civilization because agriculture is seemingly impossible. The survivors are left to salvage the remains.

McCarthy increases the mystery and tension by leaving out the exposition that most writers would be tempted to include in the book's early chapters. We don't know who the father was before the disaster. We are told that he once had a wife, but she couldn't bear life without hope. Their boy was born after the key transformational event, and he knows nothing of what society used to be like beforehand. His father realizes that those "old days" are slipping away forever, and exist only in his receding memory. It's for this reason that he chooses not to talk too much about the past to his son. We don't know exactly how long the pair has been wandering, but we know that it's been at least several years. It is obvious that love for his boy represents the only reason for the father to stay alive.

The descriptions of their surroundings are concise and matter-of-fact. This is unexpected considering the author's usual penchant for long, meandering, occasionally indecipherable paragraphs. For the first time in my experience with McCarthy's work, I was actually propelled along by the rhythm of his writing. The horror is explicitly drawn whenever the father and son encounter something new. Meanwhile we are aware of much unspoken nastiness that they have apparently become desensitized and detached from. The reader is often asked to consider the plight of the main characters, and ask him/herself whether or not he/she would continue on, or just give up altogether. As our heroes search through the ruins of one tableau after another, it's quite clear that a commitment to persevere has to be renewed daily.

The Road would be nearly unbearable if there weren't such a tender relationship at its core. The depth of feeling exchanged between Papa and "the Boy" is clearly evident, and the dialog between them makes up a large portion of the book. In fact there are very few other characters that McCarthy introduces directly into the narrative. When the few exceptions occur, these figures are usually employed merely to advance the understanding we have about our protagonists. What degree of humanity have they been able to preserve despite the unthinkable pain that accompanies them? How do they relate to others when the inexorable message of life is "kill, or be killed"? If this incredible work doesn't evoke both dread and introspection in its readership, then the scenario it's based on is probably inevitable. This is a tremendously important book, and a true classic in every sense.

Harry Crews, "Classic Crews" (1995).

Over a decade ago one of my friends tried to get me into Harry Crews. Usually I have to ask to borrow a book, but in this case it got shoved in my face. This particular friend was just a bit too concerned with being a hipster, so I felt the need to approach his recommendation with skepticism. He also pushed Neil Gaiman and Barry Gifford on me, and I wasn't very impressed. Still it was true that I claimed to like Southern Gothic writers, and I was assured that Crews fit the bill. I took Feast of Snakes home and read it in a few hours. It was mildly entertaining, but I felt like its portrayals of "white trash" were too stereotypically condescending. The writing style was also on the wrong side of a bit-too-clever. I thanked my friend for letting me borrow the book, while silently resolving to forget about Harry Crews.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I brought a documentary called Searching For the Wrong-eyed Jesus over to a buddy's house. Featured in the film was a grizzled, beat-up, old southerner telling stories about growing up in the Deep South during the mid Twentieth Century. My buddy recognized him as one of his favorite writers, and talked me into taking home a volume called Classic Crews. Despite my initial reaction to Crews, and the subsequent purchase of another novel that I found mediocre (Scar Lover), I decided I'd give the author one more chance. Hell, here was a reader whose tastes I respected, and he was pushing Harry Crews. This volume was older stuff, and (as the title suggested) considered 'classic' work. Surely it must be worthwhile.

Well, it turns out that the material in this book is quite good. It begins with an autobiographical account of Crews' childhood in Bacon County, Georgia. His family were tenant farmers, and lived alongside an African-American brood of sharecroppers that featured an old woman who had been born into slavery. When Crews got so sick that he was confined to his bed, this wise elder would sit alongside him and distract him from his pain with tall tales. The author would credit that time as the start of his love for story-telling. The extreme poverty he grew up within was made bearable by the charms of the Southern oral tradition. No doubt that gift helped him through the years after his stepfather slipped into alcoholism, and his mother brought him to Jacksonville, Florida. Crews' childhood was rough and largely unsupervised, and obviously informed his fictional content and style.

Classic Crews also contains two relative early short novellas. The first is called The Gypsy's Curse (1974), and sketches the world-view of a young man who labors under severe physical disabilities. Marvin is deaf, mute and has undeveloped legs, but his upper body is so developed that he can perform amazing feats of balance that people will pay to see. He lives with an adoptive father figure named Al, a punch-drunk old negro, and an addled youth who aspires to be a boxer. Together they inhabit an old-school gym, where bodybuilders and boxers seek physical perfection. People may underestimate Marvin, but they do so at their own peril. When his girlfriend Hester decides that she is going to move into the gym, its comfortably depressing atmosphere is radically altered. The story proceeds at a brisk pace to its inevitably catastrophic end.

Car (1972) deconstructs the American love affair with the automobile. At its center is a motherless family toiling in the largest auto graveyard in the southeastern United States. The dreamer of the brood is Herman, who has decided to 'become someone' by eating an entire Ford Maverick. While his father and siblings initially resist the idea, they are eventually caught up within the spectacle surrounding his well-publicized effort. After all, Herman's made his decision, and they might as well profit from it. A local hotel has sponsored his strange project, and it is gradually gaining nationwide attention. Car has more satirical social commentary than I have learned to expect in Crews' fiction . The message of the novella is reinforced by a personal essay detailing the author's own experiences with cars, which precedes Car.

I don't know whether Classic Crews is just extremely well-edited, or if there is a lot more to Harry Crews than I thought. Perhaps the collection really does represent the best of what he has to offer. In that case I probably don't need to keep returning to the well. On the other hand, I might just be developing a taste for the writer's fascinatingly unique settings and situations, and his deft characterizations of eccentric Southerners. I have to admit a willingness for further exploration.

Jonathan Franzen, "The Corrections" (2001)

For a long time, the names of two contemporary American authors seemed to be intertwined in my consciousness. Jonathan Lethem and Jonathan Franzen both found wider exposure for their writing in the last ten years. I knew that they were both vaguely hip, had received significant critical acclaim, and had connections to New York City. Beyond that, I couldn't distinguish them from any other name I had heard but knew little about. Several months ago I read Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, and I frankly recall very little about it. While I remember being moderately amused by portions of the book, I wasn't inspired to continue reading Lethem's work. Now I have read Franzen's The Corrections, and I'm not confident that much will stick from this read either.

The Corrections concerns a family that grew up together in the fictional Midwestern town of St. Jude. They are ruled over by Alfred, a manager of engineers for a regional railroad company. This patriarch represents old school family values, the absence of which are so grandly lamented by conservatives across the nation. Tellingly, at the time most of the book is set in, Alfred is gradually deteriorating due to Parkinson's diseases and an increasing dementia. His wife Enid is trying desperately to hold together their house and their family. She is struggling through the denial with which she has responded to her husband's condition. All she can really hope for is one last Christmas for her grown children in their hometown.

Chip is Alfred and Enid's middle son. He is the black sheep of the family, constantly searching for an alternative way to view himself. He's recently been fired from a secure teaching position at a small liberal arts college in New England. His field of study is cultural criticism, and his theories and lectures provide an opportunity for Franzen to lampoon the frivolously pretentious qualities of modern academia. Chip is holding strong to his appropriated anti-consumerism until he engages in an illicit affair with one of his students- a decision that causes his demise. Having been forced to reevaluate his world view, Chip is desperate and vulnerable. After a stint in Brooklyn, he is talked into moving to Lithuania to help a former ambassador set up a web page intended to facilitate a fraudulent investment scheme.

His older brother is Gary, the living embodiment of American capitalist success. Gary has a beautiful wife, three sons, and plenty of opportunity to explore whatever passions occur to him. As far as anyone should be concerned, Gary has it all within his exclusive urban enclave of Chestnut Hill. Unfortunately he is a man with very little imagination. His obsession with the idea of clinical depression is eroding his confidence and solidarity with his family. His mother is trying to convince him to bring the entire brood to St. Jude for the holidays. The problem with that prospect is a promise he has made to his wife never to commit his clan to such a trip. His own loyalties torn, he starts to feel like his wife is playing on his sons' feelings in order to sabotage the plans he feels obligated to make. Whether or not this perception is reality-based, it is eating away at what should be an ideal marriage.

Meanwhile little sister Denise is struggling to form a meaningful romantic relationship with a series of partners. She is the ultra-successful chef of the hippest restaurant in Philadelphia. This position garners her fame and wealth. But her workaholic attitudes threaten to forever stultify her emotional growth. Through one amorous misadventure after another, Denise stumbles through her mess of a personal life. Perhaps if she avoided adulterous affairs, she could find some happiness. Maybe if she decided whether or not she was gay, she could narrow the field. Either way, her resolve to offer strength to the dispersed members of her family distracts her from finding any real clarity.

Franzen ensures that none of his characters can find any lasting satisfactions, despite their wildly disparate strategies for living. He implies that no matter how much one works to find his/her own place in society, there are always corrections that need to be applied as circumstances change. This should be no great revelation to any reader who has attained even a minimal level of maturity. Still the reminders Franzen offers of this eternal truth are dropped like anchors in a tumultuous ocean, and plummet into the depths of the reader's consciousness. It's not a particularly light or enlightening read. It's therefore all the more remarkable that The Corrections was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's book club. On the other hand Franzen eventually resisted that honor, describing his discomfort with being saddled with the "logo of corporate ownership". Nonetheless, Robert Zemeckis and David Hare are currently working on a film adaptation, which should only reinforce Franzen's cynical posture.