Texas Saga

Wow, this is not my kind of book. The Son, by Philipp Meyer, is a sprawling, multi-generational saga set in Texas and spanning over 160 years, replete with such standard Western elements as cowboys, Indians, cattle, oil, death, greed, betrayal - not exactly in my wheelhouse. Yes, I loved “Lonesome Dove” - not multi-generational but certainly a saga – but so often books in this genre fall into the cliches of the strong, silent cowboy, the noble savage, the patient wife, the money-grubbing oilmen, the romanticized view of the Old West. So I took advantage of Kindle's option to sample the first few chapters before deciding if it's worth buying. And let me just say that when I finished that sample I could not push the Buy Book button fast enough. I would say those early chapters were hair-raising, but, given that they involve Comanches attacking a homesteading family, that would be a little too literal.

The book's chapters alternate in three different voices. Centenarian Eli McCullough, patriarch of the family, speaking to a WPA recorder, narrates the story of his long and eventful life, beginning with his abduction by the aforementioned Comanches. His son Peter's story is told by entries in his diaries. They reveal a man who possesses the moral compass his father lacks, but who is powerless against the dogged ruthlessness that allows Eli to build his empire. Eli's great-granddaughter Jeanne Anne has inherited his greed and determination, even his brutality, but at the start we see her as an eighty-six year old lying helpless on the floor in her mansion, and even as she unfolds the events of her life, we sense that she has sown the seeds of her own destruction.

This is a long, rich, powerful story that avoids every stereotype. There are no heroic cowboys, no brave Rangers, the Indians are noble and they are savage, the strong steal from the weak. The three narrative perspectives eventually merge into a complicated tapestry of Texas history.

Worth a Second Look

I'm taking another run at Denis Johnson. I tried before with “Tree of Smoke” and I just couldn't get out of the starting blocks. Maybe I just wasn't ready to tackle a Viet Nam novel, and somehow it seemed so very male. I gave up early. But I always feel a little guilty when I abandon a book. So when I saw Johnson's new novella Train Dreams (short read!) I decided to try again. I'm so glad I did.

The story is simple (and still quite male) – it follows the life of Robert Grainier, an orphaned boy who works on logging crews in the Northwest in his youth, loses his wife and child to a wildfire, and lives out his life in a remote cabin in Idaho where his only company is wolves, coyotes and the sound of the train's whistle as it passes through the valley two miles below him. He makes a modest living using his horse cart for hauling, and rides the train to Bonners Ferry when he's in need of supplies or human contact.

Doesn't sound like much of a story? In Johnson's hands it becomes a spare, honest portrait of a man's life. Grainier's existence is basic, but his connection to nature is powerful and profound, and Johnson slips effortlessly from the simple declarative sentences that describe Grainier's unadorned life, including the occasional humorous encounter with an odd assortment of characters peculiar to the isolated West, to the evocative dream-like descriptions of his experience of the force and mystery of the natural world.

You can read this entire book on a plane ride or on a rainy afternoon. I hope you will find it as powerful and absorbing as I did.

Men Behaving Badly

Is this becoming a sub-category of American fiction? The main character is a decent, flawed male who makes bad decisions and lives to regret them. He's a taciturn loner prone to excessive drinking, womanizing, and machismo. But he is nourished by the stark beauty of the western landscape he inhabits. And his story is told in unadorned prose that seems to match his persona.

Did it begin with Hemingway and his simple declarative sentences? Sam Shepard often populates his plays with these damaged types. Cormac McCarthy portrays them in his dark morality tales. More recently Ron Carlson, in his novels “Five Skies” (Loss and Redemption)  and “The Signal” (Western Love), explored the psyche of emotionally scarred men struggling to become their better selves.

The latest in this literary line is Brian Hart's first novel Then Came the Evening. His flawed hero is Bandy Dorner. In the opening pages he behaves so badly that the story needs to skip ahead eighteen years to pick up the story, as Bandy approaches the end of a prison term. He returns to his native Idaho to try to connect with his ex-wife Iona and a son he didn't know he had.

Perhaps more than the other authors I've mentioned, Hart explores the complicated dynamic that pulls family members together and pushes them apart. His portrayal of the angry, needy son Tracy is especially honest and touching. His descriptions of the small Idaho town and its residents felt gritty and true. Violence seems to be a necessary component of this genre, and as is often the case there was more of it than I needed, although Hart doesn't wallow in it the way McCarthy sometimes does. And occasionally I felt that the story jumped in time and left me wanting the gap filled in.

Still, I admire Hart's attention to the specifics of place that made this story feel so real and honest, and in Bandy Dorner he has created his own version of the flawed Western hero.

Western Love

Good news – another Ron Carlson book has arrived. Our Book Club recently read and loved his “Five Skies” - spare but elegant prose, beautifully rendered characters, wonderful descriptions of the stark beauty of the western landscape. Does The Signal deliver more of the same? It does.

As before, we have a strong but damaged man. This time his name is Mack, and his struggles to hold on to his family's Wyoming ranch have led him to crime and alcohol, and have cost him his marriage. Now he has a chance for some semblance of peace and redemption. His ex-wife Vonnie has agreed to take one last fishing trip with him in the mountains, a trip they have taken each September for ten years. But Mack has another motive. He is secretly receiving a signal on his hidden Blackberry that may lead him to a piece of equipment his shady employer wants to recover. Carlson doesn't reveal much detail about this mission, but as the trip progresses the tension mounts, and the book becomes both the examination of a failed marriage and a terrifying thriller.

What can I say about Carlson's prose? One critic calls him “Hemingway without the misogyny and self-parody”. He has wonderful descriptions of the Wind River range, a glacier-carved mountain range in central Wyoming (I was there once and can attest to its stark beauty). Through flashbacks he shows us how Mack got to where he is. These include understated but emotional scenes with his father, whose sudden death still haunts Mack, and warm and funny scenes of his early romance with Vonnie. Does it pack the wallop that “Five Skies” did for me? Maybe not quite. The characters are a little less complex and nuanced, the plot a little more revved up. But I'm nitpicking. Ron Carlson's taut, elegant writing is a joy to read.

Loss and Redemption

Reading Ron Carlson’s novel “Five Skies” was one of those wonderful reading experiences that reminds me of why I love to read. It is a story of redemption. Three men meet on a ragged plateau in Idaho. They are there to build a large and spectacular project. For most of the story the reader isn’t quite sure what the project is. What the reader learns through Carlson’s meticulous prose is the incredible detail and work involved in digging holes for posts, paving a road and making a sumptuous sandwich. But as the men skillfully build, we learn that they are each running away from their lives. With sparse language and curt exchanges between the men we learn that Arthur Keyes, a huge, strong man, has run away from the guilt and sadness of his brother’s death. Darwin Gallegos, the foreman of the project, has deep seeded rage over the accidental death of his wife. And Ronnie Pannelli, a gangly nineteen year old is running from a life of petty crime.

Carlson uses the parallel of constructing the spectacular project with the building and repairing the lives of these men. One of the strengths of the Ron Carlson’s writing is the slow and skillful way he develops his characters. He also uses the wonderful devices of literature that make a story come alive, metaphors, foreshadowing and personification. His descriptions of the Western skies over this Idaho plateau are beautiful. His phrases such as, “in some ebony quadrant of the sky there were ghosted flashes of an electrical storm blooming like small stars……” are lyrical. The names of the places, the ranch called, “Rio Difficulto” and the town called “Mercy” all reflect the story Ron Carlson is so skillfully presenting to the reader.

The three men learn life lessons from the stark landscape of the Idaho plateau and the bizarre project they are building. With the slow, meticulous building of the “ramp to nowhere” the three men find ways to rebuild their broken lives. The ending is powerful and riveting. The reader of “Five Skies” finds a story of loss and redemption that is beautifully written and one that will bring up some thoughtful questions about life, and the environment. How we appreciate them and how sometimes we mistreat them.