Country: USA
Genre: Literary/Country Noir
Pages: 225
thank you Jed Ayres, for the book donation!
I came up with this theory about writers. There are a lot of very good ones. A lot of AMAZING ones even. But what separates AMAZING from true, epochal talent like William Faulkner or Francis Scott Fitzgerald doesn't lie in storytelling, but rather in language. The hardest thing for a writer is not to come up with a good plot or a tight story, but rather develop a unique angle on language that will make people click and say: "I know who wrote this", just from reading a few words. Reading those writers is like watching your favorite T.V show. You know from the first notes of the theme that it's going to be awesome. Daniel Woodrell is one of those writers who are truly different, unique. Reading his fiction is not only the pleasure of reading a good story, but it's also an experience in disembodied prose that will make the abandonment of his characters resonate through you. There are no epic gun fights in TOMATO RED, but it's not important. It's a book burning hot with actuality about poverty and the outcast culture in America.
The narrator is named Sammy Barlach. He speaks like the people in the Ozarks do, which will remind you of Faulker, without the difficult time-slips of steam-of-consciousness monologue. Sammy will stay on the subject and won't lose you in his mind. While breaking into a rich man's house, he meets the Merridews. Jamalee and Jason, brother and sister. He's a hairdresser and the prettiest boy in the Ozarks and she has short, tomato red hair. While they aren't exactly the rich home-owners they pretend to be, they provide Sammy shelter and a purpose to his life. Jamalee doesn't want to live in the Ozarks anymore. She had big dreams and wants to see the world. So she invites Sammy over to the house they're squatting along with their mother Beverly (that belongs to a guy named Rod, who goes to jail at the beginning of the story) and he's now in charge of helping Jamalee to run away from the life of misery her hometown seems to destine to her.
TOMATO RED is a noirish story, but it's not really a crime novel. It's a hybrid of a southern novel in the purest Faulknerian tradition and a the German bildungsroman made popular by the immortal J.W Goethe. It's a learning novel where the only learning made by the characters is that life, as they know it, has no hope of getting better for them. Together, Sammy, Jason and Jamalee have a very positive vibe (in their beautiful imperfection) and yet wherever they go, they have no hope of anything if they keep being like that. They have to take destiny by force of they'll keep seeing doors close to their faces. There's an uncomfortable longing to Woodrell's writing, like a desperate soul trying to claw its way outside a locked door and that made the reading ever so compelling. You know Sammy is trying hard and you know he's just not cut-out to be nice and things just aren't meant to work for him.
I'll admit it's not an easy book. You have to bound with your inner demons a little bit to sympathize with Sammy Barlach. He's not looking to be a better human being, but barely to fit in and enjoy the slow drift of life. It's difficult to see the bare minimum being denied to somebody and see him condemned to a drifting existence. In poverty, everybody is left to fend for themselves. Whether it's Sammy, Beverly, Jamalee or Jason, they all have to face their profound alienation. TOMATO RED is a bleak and disturbing read, yet it's an agreeable compromise between hardboiled crime fiction and a full fledged literary novel. Daniel Woodrell was able to mesh the glum feeling of imminent doom of crime along with the study of his character's emotional distress in order to create a unique object. If you're curious enough to give this early Woodrell a try, you will find it crawl up your spine and get to you in a surprising and pleasurable way.