Universal Harvest: John Darnielle

Soooo….John Darnielle… lead guitarist, songwriter, singer, leader of “The Mountain Goats” who also aspires as an author.  His first novel “The Wolf In The White Van” was nominated for the National Book Award and was in a lot of ways a great little book.  That is one of the nicest things I can say about an author, that they write “little” books.  There is tendency especially after the first novel to, for lack of a better term bloviate, following their success, believing (apparently) that they have so much more to share.  Kudos to Darnielle for not getting to impressed with himself.

That being said it is a difficult book.  Set primarily in Iowa.  It explores families and according to Darnielle in particular mothers. It is fitting to be banking out a review of it on Mother’s Day but it is part of Darnielle’s somewhat dark take on the world that it is difficult to view this as a “homage”.  We have mothers who have disappeared and mothers who have apparently died. Families seem to come unmoored, at best, when bereft of even a mentally ill mother.

It all kind of starts around a spooky premise of a guy working at a video store who starts to get reports that “there is something weird” on this tape.  The story is set in the 80’s primarily and it is heartening to the baby boomer in me to have such detailed discussions of VCR’s and small video rental stores which used to be a hallmark of the suburbs and small towns and he name checks a lot of movies as he sets the stage.  The “something” tends to be someone recording over a portion of the video for some vaguely described yet very disturbing “vignettes”.  Implied violence...perhaps even torture but certainly troubling images that disturb people's days, nights, sleep and for some, their lives, which is the case of the video store owner who recognizes in these tapes something familiar and goes to investigate.

For me, perhaps due to disjointed reading I found the book somewhat confusing even though well written.  He really does a good job dealing with basic family, basic dysfunction, basic dysfunctional families. Some of the relationships just seem very personal but very real.  There is not a lot of action in the book but there is a lot of, relationship...dialogue and angst...especially in the context of Iowa.  One of the big things I took from it all was that there is a lot of trouble in even the calmest, most boring and apparently sedate households.  Almost Biblical… there is always more than enough trouble to go around and that old canard that happy families are always happy in the same way and unhappy families… there are a million ways and Darnielle explores a couple.

I cant tell you to buy this and read it but it is well written and it is interesting and if I had read it sober each night it might have fit together better for me.