"My new favorite writer is William Gay. He writes about a community of backwoods Tennessee characters entangled by geography, blood, competition, greed, love, and vengeance. As far as I know, Gay didn’t start publishing until the end of his life, spending most of it eking a living as a factotum of odd jobs in construction, carpentry, house painting, and whatnot. His first book was The Long Home and itis my new favorite book. It bears a title that references the eternal sleep of death. Its characters are embroiled in their country lives, doing things that are seemingly of no account. But somehow Gay infuses their activities with an epic grandeur, so that the building of a honky-tonk in the middle of the woods changes from a carpentry job into an eternal confrontation between son and father-murderer. How does he do this? How do McCarthy and Faulkner and Gay take the events of life that deserve no spotlight because of their cliché pallor and turn them into actions of consequence that we care about?I read tons of books and there are not many that catch my attention like these writers. I think the secret is that I, despite having grown up in a an affluent California city in the late 20th century, can identify with so many of these Southern characters from the past. Their surface circumstances don’t match my West Coast upbringing, but they are people wrestling with the practicalities of life: making a living, falling in love, fighting enemies. But the authors, through these characters, are dealing with the eternal: what does it mean to be a creative force on this Earth, does God exists, and how do we find meaning without his direct presence? This imbuing of the eternal in the everyday gives Gay’s work that same depth and consequence as McCarthy and Faulkner, so that at the same time everything can seem of the upmost importance while it’s also just sound and fury, signifying nothing."-James Francohttp://www.vice.com/read/i-love-willi...zie ook van William Gay:Twilight"I was first introduced to Gay’s writing by my former City by the Sea co-star, Anson Mount, who also teaches acting at Columbia University and stars in Hell on Wheels. Mount came to see me on Broadway in Of Mice and Men. Backstage, after the show, we were chatting about movies and literary things. He mentioned this book by a Tennessee writer with the unfortunate title of Twilight. The bookwas released around the same time as the vampire Twilight, which forced it to be talked about with introductions that made it clear it had nothing to do with teen vamps, but was a macabre coming of age story in its right.William Gay died in 2012, however, Twilight—like most of his work—takes place in the mid-century. It follows a boy’s resistance to a corpse-molesting undertaker and the unstoppable hit man the undertaker hires to kill the boy because the boy and his sister have discovered the undertaker’s secrets. If that story line doesn’t sound like McCarthy, I don’t know what does. It’s more Cormac McCarthy than Cormac McCarthy."-James Franco
Before Cormac McCarthy became the trendy writer of twisted southern Gothic masculine grit, William Gay was quietly writing a few novels that also relied heavily on the innovations that William Faulkner first filled his stories with in the first half of the 20th century. So while it is all to easy to say that Gay's writing is trendy, it is much more meaningful to say that it is powerful in its ugliness and beauty, that Gay loved and nurtured his characters, even the villains that populate his narratives."The Long Home" at first struck me as a dead ringer for its successor, "Provinces of Night," which I had read first. Gay creates a young, strong, hardworking protagonist in Nathan Winer, who has been all but abandoned by his own family. He falls in love with the town beauty and he finds a mentor in a wizened old neighbor, William Tell Oliver, who has been around the block and has seen all of the happenings on the block, especially those of the diabolical Dallas Hardin, who terrorizes most everyone in their small town. In fact, the novel opens with the cold and brutal murder of Nathan Winer's father, when Hardin ruefully dragged old Winer's body to the edge of a seemingly bottomless pit and bid farewell to it as he sent Winer off to his own "long home." In short, the classic themes of good and evil and a young hero fighting evil in the name of love are strong elements at play, as they were in "Provinces."And while there are obvious thematic elements from "Provinces" in the text, it's clearly not as hopeful a narrative. Infused with references to heaven and hell, good and evil, and a suggestion of the worst of all evils: apathy and turning a blind eye to wrongs done to others.While Gay's novels are slow to develop, the characters are layered, complicated souls whose desires often outweigh a sense of doing what is good or right. In short, they are very real characters, even the most diabolical of them, and one must respect the care that Gay put into developing them realistically. Layered with elements of nature (earthquake, rain, hobbling cold) that mirror human nature, this story is one of my favorite recent reads and is well worth the time it takes to become caught up in the story.
What do You think about The Long Home (1999)?
Well-written .......very moving passages and descriptions of people, locations and nature.Well-crafted ........plot and characterizations carry the story along perfectly.I am torn between 4 stars for the writing, and 3 stars because this book made me squirm, and not in a good, conscience stricken way as with a book that teaches me something, but because of the bleakness of the setting and his characters lives. I read some of Gay's short stories a few months ago, but had to give up after the fourth one because they were so dark. I hope the author was not as morose as his books. I wanted to read this for my group, On the Southern Literary Trail, as it was our December read, and I'm glad I did, but it will most likely be my last William Gay book. I know this will rankle with Gay's fans, as he seems to get mostly 4 or 5 stars in reviews, but he's just not my cup of tea.
—Diane Barnes
I just don't know what it is about this guy's books. There isn't really a plot, per se. I mean, nothing monumental. Several times during my reading I said to my husband that I was pretty sure nothing at all was happening. This novel was like opening a window to a small town in the South. There is a thread that holds the story together, but the reader becomes more concerned with the characters. I felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into this place, and it didn't really matter that there was nothing going on. I just wanted to sit and watch.The writing itself - I really enjoyed it. The style, the diction, the dialogue, the description - mesmerizing. I feel like Gay could really write something "great" someday. From his jacket picture, he looks rather old, so I hope that he's working on it as I type this. I've now read both of his novels, and I will be buying his short story collection.If you are trying to decide between Twilight and The Long Home, I say go with The Long Home. Twilight, although his newest work, just didn't seem as captivating, even with a more thorough plot. In the end, I say if you are a fan of writing, this is a nice choice. It's just so close, but not quite there.
—Amanda
3.5, truthfully. I'm not sure what I was looking for when I requested this book for Christmas, though I'm assuming it was because I wanted something from the South. This novel reminded me a lot of Faulkner, mainly because the tone was bleak. The prose was wonderful actually, as Gay throws out these little descriptions that are just bang-on, for example, "... a deputy named Cooper got out, stood for a moment in the timeless way cops stand, sauntered to the porch with an air of halfarrogant and halfdeferential." That description has suited every single cop who has ever pulled me over for a speeding ticket (except for that one jerk on the collectors in Toronto - that guy was all arrogance), but anyway, The Long Home was rife with observations like this. I really enjoyed Gay's writing. The story itself wasn't the most interesting to me though. Hardin was a bully and a murderer, yes, but hardly the malevolent force that I was expecting. Wider's character wasn't great either - he was very bland. Same with Rose and pretty much everyone. Gay focused more on describing the actions of people and their surroundings rather than people's thoughts and motivations, which kept me from being enthralled. I was interested, sure, but never was I on the edge of my seat. The ending was very inconclusive, which left the tone the same as the start - bleak. Overall, this novel was: (Drumroll): BLEAK.
—Tina
