A Fine Book (But a Bit Too Ozarkian)

books:

	• Tomato Red Daniel Woodrell Henry Holt and Co., 1998 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Fine Book (But a Bit Too Ozarkian)

First of all, I agree that some of the negative reviews seem a bit odd. Some reviewers hate this book simply because they hate the characters, which makes me wonder, Why pick up a book about small-town misfits and petty criminals and drug dealers if you have no sympathy for these people? It's like me watching "Saw II" and saying I hated it because I hate violent movies.

I really enjoyed this book, even if at times (especially in the second half) I wanted it to be just a bit better. "Tomato Red" gets lots of good press for the stylistic flow: beautiful writing, use of dialect, engaging dialogue, etc. I can see why people enjoy this. The speech of his characters is musical, inventive, and terribly funny at times. Then again, I'm a fan of Jack Kerouac, and this reads at times like a redneck Kerouac.

What I liked best about "Tomato Red" was the humanity and depth Woodrell breathes into the characters. Although I love novels with ideas, I value a memorable, sympathetic character more than anything. I like an author who loves his characters like friends, so much so that the reader does the same at the end (even if he or she shouldn't). The characters in "Tomato Red" require the reader to overlook a lot of flaws, but in the end, you can't help but root for them. The highest compliment I can give this book is to say that I'll remember the characters for a long time.

In the end, I wish two things had been better. (1) The plot comes across as forced, without enough mystery to pull it along. It's not bad, but it feels like a rough sketch used to develop the characters. At the same time, too much happens for a sketch. It needs a more plausible plot (or really just a few changes) or it needs to simply give up plot and go for the snapshot approach to these characters. (2) It's just too much Ozarks. Now, I don't purport to be an expert on Ozarkian trailer parks, but I did spend many of my formative years in the Missouri Ozarks, and I've spent plenty of time around (and shared a few apartments) with the like of Sammy Barlach. I don't sound all that different from him if you catch me at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Woodrell does a fine job of capturing the redneck fun of language, like the use of old-fashioned sayings in ironic and often offensive situations. What he does that rubs me slightly wrong is make it super-Ozarkian. I think it probably strikes the reader in the big city as appropriate, but it tries a little too hard for my taste. Sammy makes just a few too many jokes, and he has a few too many hillbilly epiphanies. Woodrell has a bit too much fun writing Sammy's dialogue.

In the end, it's a fine book with many strengths, a lot of fun to read, and good enough that I'll pick up another book by Daniel Woodrell.

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Exceptional!

This is a superbly written book! The prose is at times breathtaking and the plot, while certainly quirky, was fascinating. A book that you will want to re-read. This guy REALLY has a way with words. Buy it and savor it.

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Absolutely Stunning!

This may be one of those rare cases (for me, at least) where the story is less important than the writing (which is as tense and immediate as a cocked mousetrap). Daniel Woodrell is a master of language, and in Tomato Red, uses it to create a sense of place, a sense of "being there" so compelling that I felt the steam rising off my brain. I can't help but share the opening paragraph of Chapter 14:

Sometimes nature has this look where you want to hoot and shout accusations because the look seems so unbelievable, an obvious fake. I study these looks for the brief reward of them, and that night nature tossed me such a look. Rain clouds, all dark and muttering, were mobbing up out west, but long finger bones of sunlight showed through and played the range of colors like a range of musical notes, making a tune of colors from pink to plum and back to yellow all across the rim of the world.

You don't need me to tell you anything about the story, you just need to know that you will be swept away by Mr. Woodrell's writing. I read this slim book until I was done, because I could do nothing else. No one has ever written better than this.

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Tough and True

Sammy Barlach, wild and lyrical, crazy and philosophical, is automatically stopped by cops, followed around in a retail store by suspicious managers and someone you would probably cross the street to avoid. He is our narrator in this sharply satirical trailer park trash slice of life.

Sammy meets Jamalee and Jason Merridew while very unsuccessfully robbing a mansion. So far, the only thing he's managed to pilfer is a half-gallon of vodka, which he decides to drink then and there. Jamalee is a half-pint girl with hair the color "only a vegetable should have" and brother Jason is "the most beautiful boy in the Ozarks." Jamalee wants to get out of West Table, MO, and just maybe Sammy can help her. Sammy wants love or "any bunch that will have me." In Venus Holler they meet mother Sandra, a laid back, easy going, southern-to-her-fingertips whore.

Their antics are so funny, their energies and coping mechanisms so off the wall wild, I just gave in to helpless laughter. And yet, there is a sense of something preordained, sad and tragic about their existence. In ways both large and small, they are stripped of their dignity over and over again by the way they are perceived by society. "Society" ain't much in West Table, but it knows for a fact it's a world away from the likes of Sammy, Jamalee and Jason.

As the author shapes the rhythmic cadence of Sammy's story, the future is glimpsed and it's bad. It's been a long time since I have grown so fond of a character in a book. He has all the fascination of a train wreck waiting to happen. And then you shed a tear and knew it had to be.

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Blood ,sweat, toil and tears

Woodrell is marketed , at least in the UK ,as a crime writer --his British publisher the estimable No Exit Press labelling them as country noir--but the subject matter is social class normally a covert as distinct from overt theme in crime writing .In particular they treat of the dispossessed ,the bottom feeders who must lie to cover up gaps in employment history all for the sake of menial low paid work which still denies them the cornerstones of human dignity namely choice ,spontaneity and purpose.
Tomato Red is narrated by Sammy Barlach who as the boojk opens is employed as a labourer in a dog food factory and has his foreman on his back the whole time . On a drunken Friday payday ,drinking with bar room buddies and fuelled by substances both illicit and alcoholic ,not to mention a heady dose of sexual bravado he , on a dare breaks into the home of an absent wealthy family and promptly passes out.He is awoken by Jamalee--aka Tomato Red for her distinctively dyed hair and her androgynous beautiful brother Jason They are not as he assumes and they pretend wealthy inhabitants of the home but trailer park inhabitants from the most despised part of their backwater town Venus Hollow.They flee when police arrive and Sammy is taken in by the pair and their mother Bev who is unashamedly a hooker and whose calm stoic dignity is a commanding presence in the book
Jamalee dreams of escape and views Jason -poor sexually confused Jason whose hard road is to be gay in a world where this is not an easy furrow to plough.Jason as magnet for sexual blackmail is the plan and Sammy the protector.In a heartbreaking but strangely funny scene she rehearses Sammy and Jason in good manners using an antedeluvian etiquette book role playing with plastic cups instead of cut glass.
These are intruders into the world of comfortable society whose life is around of small humiliations--Sammy is followed when entering a supermarket,simply because of his looks,police harrassment is common and the greatest enemy they face is the active collusion of there fellow blue collar citizens from the next tier above .
The book is not a comfortable read but all is not gloom.The narrative voice --Sammy -is wry and sharply funny;there is compassion Steinbeck ,Farrell,Algren et al the names usually associated with blue collar fiction ,all pall beside Woodrell for his clear eyed portrait of the dirt poor .He does not sentimentalise and the resolution is spot on.Escape is possible but only at the expense of your own kind.Witness if you will the actions of crabs in a basket; when one seeks to crawl out the others combine to pull him down

There is a bitter -sweet inevitabilty here which is moving .Not for eveyone but I am moved by him as by few other writers I am moved to anger by smooth voiced television hosts building a not insubstantial fortune on the back of people like those here and then exposing them to the baying hordes

We are all human and our destination is they same ultimately.We need reminding of this and Woodrell does it brilliantly.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

I was a kickaround mutt from Blue Knee, Arkansas, on my own slow ramble through sincere poverty and various spellbinding mishaps."That's the voice of Sammy Barlach, one of life's losers who sings the blues with acid sweetness and fated violence--another original from Dan Woodrell.

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