But somehow, amidst the drugs and fighting and perversion, Pollock managed to create characters interesting beyond black curiosity, taking up the mantle of Southern greats such as William Gay and Flannery O’Connor in his ability to induce sympathy or at least complicate the antipathy his characters will garner. This style was developed (and potentially mastered) with Devil All The Time, his debut novel which cast the reader into world in which the membrane between reality and nightmare is leaky at best, with blood sacrifice and serial killer couples complicating an already bleak coming-of-age tale.

While Donald Ray Pollock’s latest novel, The Heavenly Table, takes us back to the 1917, it’s still rooted in the area of America he is making his own. The narrative is snappy and unsettled, the short chapters jumping between various locations and points of view, slowly drawing inwards in an inescapable ring which corrals the characters into the inevitable finale at the town of Meade. We have Ellsworth Fiddler, a swindled farmer trying to save face, Jasper Cone, a painfully afflicted sanitation inspector, Lieutenant Bovard, a jilted husband turned homoerotic (would be) war hero, and finally the luckless Jewett brothers, Cane, Cob and Chimney, who grow tired of the poor life and turn to robbing banks as a path to salvation.

With the graphic violence, crude sex and odd scatological humour, this appears to be more or less Pollock’s odd twist on the standard Western fare. Where things get interesting is that the Jewetts are inspired by a cheap dime novel, The Life and Times of Bloody Bill Bucket. Every cliche can therefore be read as a secondhand gesture, the Jewetts wearing Bloody Bill’s persona like a tacky fancy dress costume, hoping some of his magic (ie. his fictional bravado, success, imperiousness to pain/failure/death) might rub off on them. Furthermore, as their ‘spree’ gains traction so does the media’s reaction, with stories of ‘Jewett’ crimes emanating from newspapers in other areas and states, despite the brothers never having been there.

So not only are the boys distorting fiction into reality, but their reality is distorting into fiction, leaving them having to live up to the magnificent/terrifying tales on both ends. And while it’s apparent the trio are not well-equipped for such pressures, they sure give it their (quite literal) best shot, working on the logic of faking it ’til you make it:

‘Leaning over the horn of his saddle, Chimney spat and then said, “Well, I don’t know who those ol’ boys are back there, but I don’t figure they can shoot any better than we can.”

“Maybe, but there must be fifteen of them in that pack.”

“So?” Chimney said. “That many don’t even amount to one box of shells.”‘

Here are some dust-strewn, blood-spattered songs to listen to as you read.

Tracklisting:

1) Devil Town – Bright Eyes
2) Blood Red Sentimental Blues – Cotton Jones
3) Bury Me in the Garden – Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends
4) Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber, Apprehended at Ace Hardware in Libertyville, IL – Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
5) Murderous Joy – Carter Tanton
6) Christ Jesus – Deer Tick
7) You Should’ve Seen the Other Guy – Nathaniel Rateliff
8) Buriedfed – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
9) Fire & Fast Bullets – Blitzen Trapper
10) Brother’s Blood – Kevin Devine
11) I Dreamt of My Brother Dying – Oscar Lush
12) Drunk and On a Star – Kevin Morby
13) Weather of a Killing Kind – The Tallest Man on Earth
14) Whore – Low
15) Liars – Gregory Alan Isakov and the Colorado Symphony
16) Closer to Heaven – Pink Mountaintops
17) Killer – Samantha Crain

The Heavenly Table is out now via Harvill Secker and Doubleday. You can read about Donald Ray Pollock’s other works on the Knopf Doubleday website.

The post Lit Links: Donald Ray Pollock – The Heavenly Table appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

The post November Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment… My stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

[The album Violence] is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.”

The self-titled EP from Butler’s latest project, Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends, is the Tyler Butler we know and love but with some welcome additions. The Handsome Friends bring electric guitar, bass, percussion, keys and fiddle, fleshing out Butler’s folk sound into something richer but not necessarily more complicated. Take opening track ‘Bury Me in the Garden’ as an example – a chirpy country foot-tapper which follows the same ideals as all of his music, the added instrumentation managing to add depth without put-on complexity. The song could be said to be beautiful, sad or disturbing, depending on your point of view, and as it’s about life and love, the truth is probably somewhere in between (or maybe all three simultaneously). Here the sweet declarations of love traditional to country music (“I knew nothing until you held me in your arms”) are peppered amongst the dark and strangely comforting truth about our place in the environment, charting the same sort of territory as the Young Jesus album we loved, albeit in a very different way:

When I’m gone, my darling, she’s going to bury me in the garden
lay my weary head under the soil.
My body has been borrowed from the earthworm and the sparrow
I am everything that cycles and returns

‘Cradle Robber’ follows a similar path, the meandering romance of previous Tyler Butler releases coloured with crunchy folk rock instrumentation. This proves a perfect accompaniment to the surprisingly stark narrative, the gentle love story brought into relief by some rather high stakes, giving the whole thing a serious, severe edge. The natural world has often featured in Butler’s work (check out the track-listing for Winter King), and here it rises to prominence again, every inch of grace matched by a helpless and inadvertent cruelty, where everyone is hurting and each of their actions has a consequence beyond their control:

“I want to steal you from your man
he lays to sleep against your back
my child swells against your stomach
a raven tangle of wind.
So hide the things we do alone
I press my lips on your skin
and sing a song of the forest
I am the egg-thief, the cradle robber”

Like all good murder ballads, ‘The Stranger (A Death Foretold)’ has love and anguish and the swagger of a life well lived. It tells the tale of a travelling/sleeping narrator, the sort of quiet and determined hero William Gay wrote so well, living life with gentle simplicity and moral rules which push toward his darling and spiral toward tragedy (at least in his dream world). Closer ‘Wandering Man’ continues the Western theme, sung from two perspectives: That of the titular character and of his lover left at home. The song also comes with a three-part short film from one of the Handsome Friends Dylan Rhys Howard (whose beautiful work you can find at Truthful Work Films), which does a far better job of expanding upon the mood and themes than I ever could, so have a look at Pts. 1 & 2 below:

You can buy Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends now via Bandcamp, and also grab a rather lovely t-shirt.

The post Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.