Vernon God Little

by ARAHH

Posted to What Are You Reading? on 2004-02-12 03:00:00

Parent message is 598999
by DBC Pierre:

“Winner of THE Man BOOKER PRIZE 2003
‘Fit to rank with ‘Catcher in the Rye’…the outstanding debut of 2003”

“The story is a darkly comedic portrait of Martirio, Texas, a town reeling in the aftermath of a horrific school shooting. It is told by fifteen-year-old Vernon Little with a cynical twang and a four-letter barb for each of his diet-obsessed townsfolk. His mother, endlessly awaiting the delivery of a new refrigerator, seems to exist only to twist an emotional knife in his back (while he is facing the death penalty); her friend, Palmyra, structures her life around the next meal at the Bar-B-Chew Barn; officer Vaine Gurie has Vernon convicted of the crime before she’s begun the investigation; reporter Eulalio Ledesma hovers between a comforting father-figure and a sadistic Bond villain; and Jesus, his best friend in the world, is dead – a victim of the killings. As his life explodes before him, Vernon flees his home in pursuit of a tropical fantasy: a cabin on a beach in Mexico he once saw in the movie Against All Odds. But the police – and TV crews – are in hot pursuit.”

“cynicism and smart-ass “learnings” give way to a poignant curiosity about the meaning of life, …he becomes a fully human, profoundly sympathetic character…, a loveable upholder of love, truth, and homespun wisdom in a world gone mad”

“a book about finding the good in yourself and in other people.. raucous and brooding, coarse and lyric, corrosive and sentimental, in the first person contemplations of the core character..”

“…humor that barely masks Pierre’s contempt for the media (and its lust for vengeance and blatant sensation), the criminal justice system, and the rampant materialism of contemporary culture (where innocence is definitely no defence). Scatological, irreverent, crass, and very, very funny …”

But there’s also critique I can share: “…most of the plotting feels like an excuse for Vernon’s endless, sharply snide riffs on his small town and the unique excesses of America that helped spawn the killings. Unfortunately, Vernon’s voice grows tiresome, his excesses make him rather unlikable and the over-the-top, gross-out humor is hit-or-miss.”

(and you can realize that the style is sometimes more ‘English’(than American)(trainspottin’))

The story is more to the surface than Lethem’s but, on the other hand, spiced with more laughs, and ‘Gonzo journalism’. But also, this parodic version of American culture, (more) social satire (than psychological analysis) never crosses the line into caricature.

“Mom’s best friend is called Palmyra. Everybody calls her Pam. She’s fatter than Mom, so Mom feels good around her. Mom’s other friends are slimmer. They’re not her best friends.”
“A shimmer rises off the hood of Pam’s ole Mercury. Martirio’s tight-assed buildings quiver through it, oil pumpjacks melt and sparkle along the length of Gurie Street. Yeah: oil, jackrabbits and Guries is what you find in Martirio. This once was the second toughest town in Texas, after Luling. Whoever got beat up in Luling must’ve crawled over here. These days our toughest thing is congestion at the drive-thru on a Saturday night. I can’t say I’ve seen too many places, but I’ve studied this one close and the learnings must be the same; all the mmoney, and folk’s interest in fixing things, parade around the center of town, the spread outwards in a dying wave. Healthy girls skip around the middle in whiter-than-white panties, then regions of shorts and cotton prints radiate out to the edges, where tangled babes hang in saggy purple underwear. Just a broken ole muffler shop on the outskirts; no more sprinklers, no more lawns. ‘Lord,’ says Pam, ‘tell me why I can just tastea Chik’n’Mix’. Fucken yeah, right. Even in winter the Mercury stinks of fried chicken, never mind today when it’s like a demon’s womb. ..”

”Deep fucken trouble keeps my euphoria at bay.”

“She’ll end up getting coleslaw anyway, on account of Mom says it’s healthy. It’s vegetables, see. Me, I need something healthier today. Like the afternoon bus out of town.”

“Glen Campbell starts to sing ‘Galveston’ from Pam’s ole stereo. It’s a law of nature. Pam only has this one cassette, see – The Best of Glen Campbell. It jammed in the slot the first time she played it, and just kept on playing. Fate. ..” (and time being an agent of Fate ..)

“A headwind worries our bikes on the way to school, weights them almost as heavy as this last Tuesday before summer vacation.. Physics, then math, then physics again, some stupid experiment in the lab. Hell on fucken earth.“
“It’s like we were men before we were boys, back before we were whatever the fuck we are now. I feel my lips clamp together with the strangeness of life, and watch my buddy pull alongside me on his bike. His eyes glaze over, like they do since he started seeing that shrink. You can tell he’s retreated into one of his philosophical headfucks. ‘Man, remember the Great Thinker we heard about in class last week ?’ he asks. ‘The one that sounded like ‘Manual Cunt’?’ ‘ Yeah, who said nothing really happens unless you see it happen.’ “ (Innocence, see ..)

“You’re just never taught when to be an asshole in life” (aggressive seducer..)

“I look around while everybody is shuffling papers. Mom couldn’t make it, which ain’t such a bad thing. I learned that the authorized world doesn’t recognize the knife. Your knife is invisible, that’s what makes it so convenient to use. See how things work ? It’s what drives folk to the blackest crimes, and to sickness, I know it; the thing of everyone turning the knife just by saying hello, or something equally innocent-sounding. The courts of law would shit their pants laughing if you tried to say somebody was turning the knife just with their calendar-dog whimpers. But here’s why they’d laugh: not because they couldn’t See the knife, but because they knew nobody Else would buy it. You could stand before twelve good people, all with some kind of psycho-knife stuck in them that loved-ones could twist on a whim, and they wouldn’t admit it. They’d forget how things really are, and slip into TV-movie mode where everything has to be obvious. I guarantee it.”
“I’ll be damned. I burrow through the mess of onlookers and float out of the courthouse into the sun, just like that. Reporters buzz around me like flies at a shit-roast. I’m full of feelings, but not the ones I dreamed of. Instead of true joy, I feel waves; the kind that make you look forward to the smell of laundry on a rainy Saturday, the type of drippy hormones that trick you into saying I love you. Security they fucken call it. Watch out for that shit. Those waves erode your goddam bravery. I even get a wave of gratitiude for the judge – go fucken figure. I mean, Judge Gurie’s been good to me, but – expand on the bowel thing ? – I don’t fucken think so.”

In Hamburg, we have a radio station which features a comedy, “Reverend Eminent”, who plays and talks it ‘cool’ half English / half German, and rappy – and who lays bare the same sensitive soul – and insight with his rough and hysteric scene talk – being only seemingly ‘deviant’ or feelingless while in truth he appears to be the only one wired to basic ‘human’ instincts and fairness, regulating ‘micro-justice’ in his confusing everyday world …
also, one is reminded of the World of the Simpsons, the attitude being not ‘alternative’ in the ‘deep’ philosophical/vision sense – but what is really left … today

(just) one spectral projection of life (truth, beauty/love, reality) which is worth mentioning, I think



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