Trouble in the Ozarks

Despite attention received from last year’s film version of his book Winter Bone, until reading in May a novel by Daniel Woodrell called Tomato Red, the writer’s name was unknown to me. Since that time I’ve read three of his novels collected under the title, The Bayou Trilogy, and that added Woodrell’s name to my look-out-for list of writers. In October he published a collection of short stories called The Outlaw Album. The book is a collection of twelve rather raw and disturbing stories, and to use an expression out of Billy Bob Thornton’s movie Sling Blade, an almost insane journey into the Ozarks among people living their days like escapees from a nervous hospital.

Woodrell’s characters murder over a dead dog and return to kill the corpse three times. A niece tortures and teases her rapist uncle confined to a wheelchair, a man burns downs a neighbor’s house because it blocks his view; a father lives on heartbreak and dreams of revenge. The very powerful second story, “Twin Forks” begins this way: ‘A cradle won’t hold my baby. My baby is two hundred pounds in a wheelchair and hard to push uphill but silent all the time. He can’t talk since his head got hurt, which I did to him. I broke into his head with a mattocks and he hasn’t said a thing to me nor nobody else since.’ The baby here is the narrator’s uncle, a serial rapist observed by the niece raping a young woman in the barn. She, too, has been a victim of her uncle’s repeated incestuous rapes. She beats his head in with a heavy farm tool and then later cares for him in his vegetable state, until there ultimately comes a time when she realizes that even the crumpled silent mess in the wheelchair still harbors a resurgent evil.

What is it that holds the reader throughout these forays into backwoods evil? The answer is Woodrell’s respect for an oral tradition of storytelling that was so rich in his own childhood, and a form he recognizes as the birthplace of words on a page. He follows in the vein of a million grandmothers and graybeards who sat around the hearth thrilling listeners with their stories. Woodrell takes his stories to the raw edge, spoken in the voices of crank heads, traumatized and dangerous veterans of Iraq, a rapist, people all tending toward the bottom half of a social and economic morass. His characters are in a large sense without a moral compass, seemingly ignorant of what most think of as normal behavior. But his storytelling is unflawed.

The twelve stories in The Outlaw Album have a distinct flavor reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor. Her stories frequently include a pinch of twisted behavior, though more often than not in her stories the twist pops up late in the story. Woodrell brings his twist of human nature to the reader on page one.

A skilled storyteller with an idiom that rings true in every syllable. This new book is one I don’t hesitate to recommend, but hold onto your bootstraps.

Life of Riley

Life on the beach never guarantees that each day will include lazy hours of studying blue water and dilly dallying along golden sand, but Thursday was one of those blank days with nothing ventured and nothing gained, apart from the ease of lazing away the hours in a beach chair, feet tickled by the last gasp of surf and thoughts taken up with a first-time writer. Living the Life of Riley, is it? Call it a twelve-hour vacation before the spectre of one more Home Owners’ Association weekend. Thinking about the agenda begins on Friday, the gruesome gathering with spits and hisses on Saturday and the surefire hangover taking up most of Sunday. Given all that upcoming HOA color, Thursday was a day given over to nothing more strenuous than watering the plants and carrying a chair down to the surf’s edge.

Water is warmer these days and swimmers dive into the tumbling waves without the hesitation of a month ago. Mid-week in May is not a time when the beach is crowded with either people, birds or sea life and first thoughts are for the clean stretch of sand in all directions, unblemished by anything but the occasional misguided jellyfish or the delighted screech of an excited toddler. The ocean is a sandwich of three colors—the hard blue-black line of horizon, a deep blue beneath it and the blue-green shallows that roll onto the sand in a lacy spill. Staring out over the miles of restless current I imagine Tenerife, the Azores and the hot sands of Morocco.

And for the times between gazing at the Atlantic blue and drifting off to sleep, a book to read. An unremembered book that must have come from a friend, a book that enticed me with its opening sentence of 273 words that reads like a hillbilly trailer park on fire. Daniel Woodrell is a writer I’ve never encountered and one who has written close to a dozen books, all of which have remained off my radar until today. What a loss on my part. The discovery of Woodrell was similar to last year’s introduction to Kent Haruf and my shock at what I had been missing. Tomato Red (1998) is Woodrell’s sixth novel, another of his Ozark tales set in trailer parks and shotgun shacks and revolving around people living hard lives. If nothing else, Woodrell’s style and language are exceptional.

A passing glance through a car window leaves its distinct image… ‘A yellow bus honked on the road and went by, carrying a load of tired young Baptists home from the Bible camp that sat four or five miles down. There were two babes in rusty-lookin’ diapers wrestling with a dog in a mud yard across the street. Mom squatted on the porch, cherishing her cigarette, and there was a squad of dead schnapps soldiers scattered to the side of the steps.’ Woodrell describes a walk-on character this way: ‘He smells of baby powder and Old Spice and has a mint clicking behind his teeth so he’s got sweet breath and is prepared to start kissing’ at any second.’

Impressed with Tomato Red and a ‘new for me’ writer, the temptation is to carry on too long about a story only half read. Woodrell deserves more and I will wait until I’ve read the last 120 or so pages before saying more. Still, the first half of the book has been enough for me to recommend this writer for his Ozark English that The Kansas City Star calls, ‘…what barbecue masters do to a tough cut of meat. He smokes it with a combination of raw and rich words, tenderizes it, spices it up until it’s mouthwatering.’