Crimes in Southern Indiana<\/a><\/em> – Frank Bill
\nAfter reading the collection of Daniel Woodrell short stories, I did some digging for authors with a similar style and came across Frank Bill. As the title of his own collection of short stories suggests, he is from southern Indiana, and all his stories take place down near the Ohio River.<\/p>\nLike Woodrell, and Donald Ray Pollack, Bill\u2019s stories are dark, full of violence, and rarely have sympathetic characters. There are criminals and borderline criminals. Meth heads, dog fight trainers, cheating spouses. There are murders aplenty.<\/p>\n
That this was Bill\u2019s first published work was apparent. His stories lack the polish and subtleties of Woodrell\u2019s and Pollack\u2019s works. But they show promise, if you\u2019re into the genre his work fits into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Funny thing. After reading that Van Halen book in one day, I then didn\u2019t read a thing for an entire week. And then took roughly a week to really get into my next book. Obviously my body was self-regulating and making sure I didn\u2019t get too far ahead of my book-a-week pace. The Sellout – Paul Beatty Here we have An Important Book. So important, in fact, that Beatty became the first American to win the Man Booker Prize. That label and accolade make this a tricky book to write about. Oh, and the fact the book is a layered and outrageously original look at race in America makes it difficult to write about, too. Do I just run through the plot? Tell you how it\u2019s set in the mythical community of Dickens, CA, in south central LA, a predominantly black neighborhood that has been \u201cdisappeared\u201d into larger LA – its borders erased, exit signs noting its name removed, city services all but dissolved? Do I focus on the narrator, a second-generation farmer in the community who continues to adhere to the original intent of Dickens – farmland for black folks – even as the land around him becomes increasingly urban? Do I tell you about his assistant, errrr, slave? The last surviving Our Gang actor who, after facing decades of racial abuse decides to turn himself back into a slave and demand to be worked hard, whipped, and otherwise degraded? Or do I go into detail about the narrator\u2019s plan for saving Dickens as a distinct entity, which involves re-segregating its schools, buses, and businesses? Any one of those elements could demand 500 words or more to break down. And then there\u2019s Beatty\u2019s writing style. This is an insanely funny novel, but also deeply disturbing, depending on how you approach it. I read some reviews by people who either didn\u2019t get Beatty\u2019s humor, or were put off by it, and thus missed the power of the book as a whole. The book is profane and direct, yet also laugh-out-loud funny on nearly every page. I guess some folks think when you\u2019re writing about the series concept of race in America, you can\u2019t have any fun while doing it. This is a crazily good book. It\u2019s one that you want to go back and read again as soon as you finish it, both because of Beatty\u2019s writing ability and the story he\u2019s trying to tell. And beyond all the laughs are some deeply important questions about where we are as a country and how we should try to move forward, and how in a multi-ethnic nation we find the balance between a new, common culture and keeping the traditions of our various sub-cultures alive. Crimes in Southern Indiana – Frank Bill After reading the collection of Daniel Woodrell short stories, I did some digging for authors with a similar style and came across Frank Bill. As the title of his own collection of short stories suggests, he is from southern Indiana, and all his stories take place down near the Ohio River. Like Woodrell, and Donald Ray Pollack, Bill\u2019s stories are dark, full of violence, and rarely have sympathetic characters. There are criminals and borderline criminals. Meth heads, dog fight trainers, cheating spouses. There are murders aplenty. That this was Bill\u2019s first published work was apparent. His stories lack the polish and subtleties of Woodrell\u2019s and Pollack\u2019s works. But they show promise, if you\u2019re into the genre his work fits into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-6675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13505,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions\/13505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}