Daniel Woodrell: A revelation

Funny how one thing leads to another...

Last year, I learned about the movie "Winter's Bone" from reading an interview with the leading actress in Esquire. It was a below-the-radar indie film and I'd never heard of the star, Jennifer Lawrence. But, damn, it was one of the best movies of 2010 IMHO for its gritty depiction of the meth culture in the Missouri Ozarks.

Well, I was thumbing through another issue of Esquire last month and, lo and behold, I came across a short article singing the praises of Daniel Woodrell, who wrote the novel on which "Winter's Bone" is based, plus four others. I let it be known that I wouldn't mind receiving any of his books as a birthday present and -- what a coincidence -- Lori came through with a gift of "Tomato Red," a 1999 novel that won the PEN West Award for the Novel (yes, that's the name) and mention as a New York Times Notable Book for that year.

After inhaling the novel's 167 pages, all I can say is "Wow!"  Just as "Winter's Bone" takes the viewer into a seedy subculture of drugs, violence and rural poverty, "Tomato Red" draws in the reader with an irresistible opening paragraph  -- actually a masterful sentence of 278 words -- and never lets up. It's like jumping in an old beater with a local yokel behind the wheel and he stomps on the gas pedal and away you go. (Think of Nicolas Cage in "Raising Arizona.")

Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not saying "Tomato Red" is a downer of a book or that the characters are unlikable. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. Sure, Sammy Barlach, a loser and ex-con passing through the fictitious town of West Table, Mo., is no one you'd probably want to associate with in real life. He is, after all, a Southern redneck with no education, no job and no prospects of things getting brighter. But at least he falls in with others of his ilk -- call them trailer trash, if you will -- who've grown up knowing their life's possibilities are determined (i.e., stunted) by the fact of where they live, in the other-side-of-the-tracks community known as Venus Holler.

Sammy, the narrator, is befriended by the Merridews -- mother Bev, a slightly worn but still attractive prostitute; daughter Jamalee, a smart, feisty dreamer with tomato-red hair, scheming of a way to break out of their sad-sack existence; and younger brother, Jason, a so-called "country queer" who's a hairdresser and just may be the prettiest person, man or woman, in those parts.

Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas line and he writes lovely, lucid sentences that you've never seen or heard -- or even thought possible. He makes verbs out of nouns and piles up words in ways that take your breath away. The voices are absolutely authentic, reflecting regional colloquialisms and the challenged grammar of the rural poor. Most of all, it's life as seen through the prism of people who've always been told they'll never amount to much and who, except for Jamalee, accept their fate with resignation.

I'd love to offer a handful of choice samples, but let me just cite two. The first is Sammy, late at night in Bev's ramshackle house next to the railroad tracks:

"Way past nightfall I flicked the TV on and sat in the squeaky rocker. Some show played, kids who drive Porsches to high school and eat in sit-down restaurants on their own, but there's this emptiness in them, apparently, bigger than the beach. They were folks you'd like to meet sometime and leave in a car trunk at the airport. The show, though, was candy to the eye. I rocked and watched."

The second is Sammy describing Bev as she prepares to call on Abbott Dell, a good ol' boy who runs a towing and repair shop and doubles as the county coroner.

"Bev got out of the Pinto and went toward the office. She slipped some comely wiggle-waddle-wiggle into her walk. Her dress was a size low or so and she got that white fabric slamming from side to side like it was a sack she'd trapped a poodle in."

I can't say enough about Woodrell. After I get through my next book, I'm certain I'll be looking to dive into another one by this talented author. What a revelation.

Photograph by Sam Kerr