The Counterforce

Sometimes, people disagree with me. Yeah, I know--what the hell, right? But being a season of compassion and giving, or whatever Hallmark says December is this year, I thought I'd compassionately give some equal-coverage time to some of that mythical other side of the story. But remember, kids: just because something is Other, doesn't mean it can't still be Wrong!


I. Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell

I read Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell back in August, and I liked it, and I suspect I'd like it more if I read it again today, now that there's snow on the ground. Dan Green, at The Reading Experience, was a bit more critical:

Suffice it to say I did not find the world depicted in Woodrell's novel so overpoweringly "raw" I didn't want to "stomach his reality," nor did I find Ree, the novel's protagonist, to be like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, "a knight in a world full of craven churls." Neither can I echo some of the over-the-top terms--"tremendous," "ferocious," "utterly compelling"--used by so many reviewers in describing this book, as illustrated in these excerpts. I can't say I found it a bad book (I managed to finish it, and a few of its scenes are well done enough), but I'm finally just puzzled about what such reviewers are seeing in it that warrant these kinds of hosannas.

Fair enough. There's nothing in particular here I feel compelled to disagree with or argue against. There's also nothing here that sways my opinion on the book. Take that for what you will.


II. Red the Fiend, Gilbert Sorrentino

Elsewhere! I read a couple Gilbert Sorrentino books in October, Aberration of Starlight and Red the Fiend (items number 64 and 67). I compared the latter to being punched in the face until it's no longer fun. Scott Bryan Wilson, in the latest edition of The Quarterly Conversation, had this to say:

Thankfully, Dalkey Archive, which now keeps the majority of Sorrentino's fiction in print, has rescued and reissued this book, one of the top three or four American novels of the 1990s and one of Sorrentino's very best. They've brought it out in a nice paperback edition, one which should expose many new readers to this book in which Sorrentino's writing is even funnier and more depressing than usual.

Fair eno...er, wait. Funny? Uhm. That was not a word I would have used to describe the book. Absurd, yes--and I suppose the absurdity of the book, from a certain point of view, could be seen as being funny. Except, the book never convinced me to look at it that way. Nor does Scott's essay--he links the humor and the depression of the book to the pain it causes the reader, and I'd be there with him on that if he'd shown me how the book is (or can be) funny.

Note, now, I'm not saying Sorrentino's not a humorous writer. I've only read two of his books, and from what I gather, they're on the darker or more serious end of the spectrum of what he does. It's possible that if you've read more of his work, which I look forward to doing someday, you'd see the humor in Red the Fiend, having more of a feel for the man's oeuvre or style or concerns. Maybe. From where I stand, though, the book comes across as being rather more unpleasant and brutal.

Perhaps it goes without saying then that I would not list Red the Fiend as "one of the top three or four American novels of the 1990s". In a footnote, Scott gives some context to that assertion:

To put this statement (or at least my tastes) in perspective, I'd situate Red the Fiend in the company of Gaddis's A Frolic of His Own, Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, Coover's John's Wife, Dara's The Lost Scrapbook, Wright's Going Native, Gass's The Tunnel, Dixon's Interstate, and Wallace's Infinite Jest.

Well...damn. I've only read two of these books, but oh damn, do they count, and do they not get other books lightly compared to them around TDAOC HQ. Infinite Jest, being, you know, Infinite fucking Jest, and Interstate being one of those books I would make everybody read, if I didn't think that 99 percent of everybody would think I was insane for it.

So it won't surprise you to see me say I would not place Red the Fiend amongst such exalted company. But I will say the comparison with Interstate is neither unwarranted nor uninteresting, in that Interstate could also be described as brutal and unpleasant. I'm not prepared to write an essay on that right now--I forgot to bring my notes to class today--but I think my reason would run along the lines of the fact that I found Interstate's merging of style and substance to be a more exciting, gripping, enthralling, what have you expression and exhibition of profound personal horror, whereas the Sorrentino book felt more merely lazily documentary of very much not-nice things.