The Ice At The Bottom Of The World: Stories (1991) - Plot & Excerpts
If you read this in the wrong head-space, it's like listening to a drunk person tell a story while you're sober. The monologue (as it becomes) can run on-n-on and before you know it you're like "wait, what?" This happened to me a couple of times while reading this, where I was distracted by some sort of whatever, and I had to go back and re-scan, which led to complete re-absorption and head-scratching self-doubt like "uh, did I even read words that first time? What was I doing just then? Did I just leave my body and look down at me NOT reading or something? Was I in all reality sitting in a motel on Xanax atop a vibrating bed just watching the fan twirl while hearing muffled voices?" You expect to occasionally find yourself doing as much with the Big Pomos if you're little-brained and sporadically A.D.D. like me, but in the context of a series of what are essentially rednecks telling stories, it is confusing how confusing it can be, this lack of digestion. Despite my familiarity with the ways of the good ole boy ramble from spending about a year as a bar-wench in the trenches of southern blue-collar-ness, I still got lost in the prose-style from time to time. Still, Mark Richard (as I hear, pronounced in the "French Style" which may have been part of my distractibility problem because I kept looking away from the book and saying to the kitty "Reee-shard, Reee-shard! In the stylings of Reeee-chard! Huhuh, ouioui!") is...wait, I was talking about something. Right, Mark Rich-Hard has such humorous, metaphorically rich, hard narration no matter who is spinning whatever story (well, it's pretty much the same-seeming person in every story, but I'm not holding that against him or anything...there's something to be said for style) that he pulls off the dopery with transcendental and astute feelings-humpery. This book is funny and emotions-pull-y. Judge it by its cover, which is quite a babe.I should discuss this later. And...I'm going to stop talking now. I liked this book, and you probably would too if you like the Barry Hannah school of thought-spew, where the illiterate become the poets, and the grotesque stands as a tape-measure for everything else, with everything else just being a shinier version of the same shit. Sure, you can borrow it. I'm not terribly sentimental about stuff-stuff these days. Y'all.
It's tough to go into a book where the author is heralded as "heir apparent to Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner," but after reading these stories I'd say that's pretty accurate. There was really only one story that fell flat to me. The first 3 are absolute knock-outs. Also, a nice feature is that these are truly short stories so I could read them on the park & ride bus and be completely immersed in bizarre worlds. Richard has a really strong ear for the rhythms of language and trusts that his reader is intelligent to follow where he leads. This was the perfect interlude after East of Eden.
What do You think about The Ice At The Bottom Of The World: Stories (1991)?
I like short stories, I like white trash americana. I just did not like this book very much. Richard is a good short story writer, and loves his swamp-shore heritage, and it shows through in some of the highlight stories, particularly the title story. There are some real 5-star gems in there, but that's not all. I just found them to be too repetitive to fill a book with, and by the end of it I was just sick of the more modern trashy characters, and bored by the ole' folky ones.I think this book might have come out a more positive if I had not read all the stories consecutively.
—Daniel Stedman
