It's been a great year for single-author short story collections that kicked off (for me) with Stephen Graham Jones's The Ones That Got Away and Alan Heathcock's Volt. Then, late summer smacked me around with Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana and Mostly Redneck by Rusty Barnes, (not to mention novels like Once Upon a River and The Devil All the Time by short story masters like Bonnie Jo Campbell and Donald Ray Pollock and a too-long-coming-but-rejoice-that-it's-finally-here paperback release of one of the finest collection of exactly the type of story I'm talking 'bout here Controlled Burn by Scott Wolven in November), but the year in gothic Americana has just glimpsed its closing act - The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell. No slight intended, folks.
One of the reasons this one excites me so much is Woodrell's exacting, measured and deliberate output (eight novels in twenty-five years), and the fact that this is not just a single, closed novel, but a dozen open-ended tales rooted firmly in the rich soil he's been working for decades that beg your imagination and knowledge of humanity, fate and narrative symmetry to work out the best/worst for the lovingly-rendered characters involved.
Are you sold on Woodrell? Are you sold on short stories? I dunno what I can do to encourage you either way - the work speaks for itself - but lemme just run down some of my favorites in here.
Echo of Neighborly Bones - kicks off the collection and it's the most overtly humorous. It concerns a man killing his obnoxious yankee neighbor moved to the area (I assume) to retire in the quaint and idyllic Ozark setting. The deed is done and explained in the first couple sentences of the story, but the character is hardly finished with the matter.
Nightstand/Twin Forks - two stories that are really opposite sides of the same coin. In Nightstand a man awakes in the middle of the night to find an intruder armed with a knife hovering over his wife in bed. Their struggle ends with the intruder dead and the victor secure in the righteousness of his actions, but revelations regarding the intruder cause town opinions to sway away from favoring him and he is haunted by his victim. Twin Forks concerns a small-business operator who runs afoul of some dangerous local criminals, but holds back from committing justified homicide one night and spends the bulk of the narrative literally looking over his shoulder for his comeuppance. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Woe to Live On - This one is essentially the first chapter of his Civil War novel of the same name - the one that Ang Lee adapted as Ride With the Devil - bookended by Jake Rodell as an old man reflecting on the war, his compatriots and his own grandchildren. Little Brown will apparently be bringing the novel back into print soon, and it can't happen too quickly. As fine a film as Ride was (and it is fine), the main problem I have with it is the exclusion of this chapter and the insertion of an extra-biblical alternative which softens things up considerably.
Two Things - Probably the shortest story of the bunch, but just look at how much there is to unpack here. A mother and father are visited at home on behalf of their incarcerated son by a social worker trying to secure his parole. Seems their kid has begun writing in prison and has a book of poetry being published - he's turned things around and deserves another shot at freedom - but his father is going to take some more convincing. What's so rich and telling about this story is everything that isn't said, but there in the details - the social worker's car, the couple's home and choice of words and even the sample poem read aloud by the social worker. I read this one over and over... and over.
The Black Step - my personal favorite. A damaged marine is back home taking care of his unwell mother and trying to put together a life after service in the middle east. I really don't want to say more except that the way this story has seared itself into my brainpan is testament to the power of a world-class wordsmith working in tandem with a sharp understanding of and empathy for his characters, and a master's resolute refusal to handle them sentimentally.
What else do you need to know? Any selection here could be read on a lunch break. Perhaps they're best not gobbled up in quick succession but savored, if you can hold yourself to one a day or week.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
