...sorry..."transgressive" writing leaves me cold...I am sort of amazed I was able to slog all the way through this mess...and that is the best description I can offer...I am sure that in some literary circles this is genius material, hence all the nominations the author has racked up..."getting his PhD from Florida State University in a record two years" is no mean feat but still...sometimes he talks directly to the reader, lists bullet points like it is some sort of college paper, "cues" characters...just strange stuff...I cannot even tell you what this books is about so don't ask...the term "mental masturbation" just popped into my head so...perhaps another reviewer says it better than I ever can..."My mother lives in a nursing home. Most of the time, she is coherent and can tell me how she's feeling and even discuss current events. But sometimes, when she's tired or when she's just taken her medication, her conversations are very hard to follow. She changes subjects mid-sentence or starts talking about someone by first name who she hasn't previously introduced into the conversation. Reading Growing Up Dead In Texas, I had the impression it was written by my mother on one of her bad days.I believe there is a good novel, possibly a great novel, buried somewhere in the pages of this book, but the narration is so maddening, with arbitrary shifts in narrative direction, that I was driven to distraction. Jones doesn't know enough to get out of his own way and just tell the story. I've read many difficult books in my life, but no author, not Faulkner or Joyce, no one, has left me so thoroughly confused and frustrated with a story." Memory is a mess, thinly fictionalizing it makes it messier. This strategy seemed necessary and largely effective.A lot of people die tragically and families through the generations are damaged and destroyed. Still made the greater Midland region seem nicer than it has the times I've driven through en route to Big Bend.I might have thrown in a thing about a roughneck humping his girlfriend in a Whataburger parking lot on a Sunday afternoon: "In the mens' room a trail of soiled toilet paper can be pursued, was it him, yeah. But this story isn't about dirty TP. Isn't just about, anyway."
What do You think about Growing Up Dead In Texas (2012)?
Sherman Alexie recommended this author in an interview in the NYT Book Review 12/08/2013
—mrmd61
WTH? I read the whole book and still can't tell you what happened.
—Katie
Stephen Graham Jones. Thank you. That was really great.
—paulyn
