The Quick and the Dead

Rating:
Summary: A comedic tour de force of language and character
Review: This is a darkly comedic novel by one of America's premiere writers of fiction. Reviewers have compared her to Flannery O'Connor and that comparison is valid in terms of originality and the ability to cut through the pretense of life and reveal what people do and what they think beneath the surface of convention. But Joy Williams does not have Flannery O'Connor's polished sense of story and structure; however she doesn't need it. She has instead an eagle's eye for detail and an awesome command of language. Her characters are alive with the quickness of life, its strange twists and turns, its Shakespearean absurdity and its banality and wonder. So insightful and so sharply rendered is her prose that it alone carries us along. Into the mouths of babes she puts words of wisdom and out the mouths of her everyday people emerge worldly philosophies.

Thus 8-year-old Emily Bliss Pickless, who likes to pour dirt on her head and to pretend she doesn't know how to read to see if adults will try to mislead her, observes, "You had to act dumb around adults, otherwise there was no point in being around them at all." Assessing her mother's new boyfriend, she concludes, "...mother lacked all discrimination when it came to men." (p. 167) When she has finished re-educating the proprietor of the stuffed animal/trophy museum, we find it shut down with her sign out front, accurately announcing, "CLOSED FOR RECONSIDERATION."

Thus Nurse Daisy, as she washes Freddie Fallow, an elderly 350-pound mountain of an old man (who had to be hoisted into the tub with the aid of block and tackle), muses, "Isn't water a remarkable element? It's exempt from getting wet. It's as exempt from getting wet as God is exempt from the passion of love." (p. 169) Or, "Birth is the cause of death," and "The set trap never tires of waiting." (p. 170) Or even, "Our capacity to do evil has nothing to do with our innocence." (p. 171) Or--most especially--her description of Freddie's impending death as, "the evaporation of your little droplet above the sea..." (p. 172)

This last is an echo of Buddhism that Williams wants to satirize, as she does through the person of the undead Ginger, whose husband Carter has taken a fancy to his gardener, Donald, who espouses trendy Eastern philosophies. She begins, "What's he doing tonight, out hand-pollinating something?" She goes on to say, "Slow white dudes studying Buddhism make me sick," and finishes up with, "I can just hear him. It's only death, Ginger. Everything is fine...Does he say, Thank you, Illusion, every time he manages to overcome some piddling obstacle in his silly life?"

Thus Joy Williams's characters are vehicles for the author's expressions and her starkly original slant on the living and the dead. But what Joy Williams does so well is that she plays fair. The words of quirky wisdom come not necessarily from characters who represent her own views, such as Alice and Emily (although sometimes they do) but they can even come from the most minor of her human creatures. Thus Ottolie "who resembled an iguana" tells Alice from her bed, "I never sleep, you know...Never. Someone sleeps for me. She lives in Nebraska." Ottolie adds, "Aksarben. That's where I get a lot of my people. You have to learn how to delegate tasks." (p. 117)

Some have criticized this novel as "structurally a mess." Not so. Williams has her own organizing mechanisms. Characters flow from one to another; incidents are connected by invisible synchronicities; people appear to further the plot, and then disappear, but they are melded into the psychological and atmospheric structure of the novel. One sees this in the rednecks who seem to appear just to finish off poor Ray of the slanted mouth, but actually they are essential fixtures of the landscape as they smoke dope and shotgun saguaros, observing that "Shooting felt good..." consisting in "the increase of one's power," or that "Paranoia is having all the facts." (p. 152)

Sometimes what is best about Joy Williams is the sheer dazzle of language. Thus the unrelenting Arizona sun is made manifest through metaphor: "The sun shone like oil upon the limousine's hood, which had been waxed to the shine of water." Or the boy Alice sees whose hair was "as white as glare." (pp. 303-304) And sometimes the best thing is her revelation of character with just a phrase or two. Thus we know what Annabel is like because she worries about things like running out of avocado butter or whether she can actually wear beige or not. On page 163 a waiter, who wore "white clinging plastic gloves" comes to life with just these words:

"Have a nice remainder of the rest of your life," the waiter said. "Gotta cough." He turned away.

Or the two loud women at a nearby table who "had poured sugar on their food so they wouldn't eat anymore."

People yearn for things that cannot be, and that is life. Thus Ginger yearns for Carter to renew their vows of love and for him to join her, but he prefers to conjoin with Donald. And Alice is strangely smitten with the tuxedo-wearing piano player who is (unknown to her, but Annabel sees this clearly) irrevocably gay. But some people do indeed find love or something akin, as the stuffed animal museum owner and his adored Pickless, or Carter with Donald, or Annabel and Paris. Or the "pretty lizard" with J.C.'s missing "Little Wonder."

"The Quick and the Dead" (Second Timothy: 4:1; also The Book of Common Prayer) is a work of art that finds its own structure, that reveals itself to us in its own way. It is a fascinating reading experience, alive and vital, a tour de force of language and character, a darkly comedic romp through the sunshine of our psyches.

Rating:
Summary: A comedic tour de force of language and character
Review: This is a darkly comedic novel by one of America's premiere writers of fiction. Reviewers have compared her to Flannery O'Connor and that comparison is valid in terms of originality and the ability to cut through the pretense of life and reveal what people do and what they think beneath the surface of convention. But Joy Williams does not have Flannery O'Connor's polished sense of story and structure; however she doesn't need it. She has instead an eagle's eye for detail and an awesome command of language. Her characters are alive with the quickness of life, its strange twists and turns, its Shakespearean absurdity and its banality and wonder. So insightful and so sharply rendered is her prose that it alone carries us along. Into the mouths of babes she puts words of wisdom and out the mouths of her everyday people emerge worldly philosophies.

Thus 8-year-old Emily Bliss Pickless, who likes to pour dirt on her head and to pretend she doesn't know how to read to see if adults will try to mislead her, observes, "You had to act dumb around adults, otherwise there was no point in being around them at all." Assessing her mother's new boyfriend, she concludes, "...mother lacked all discrimination when it came to men." (p. 167) When she has finished re-educating the proprietor of the stuffed animal/trophy museum, we find it shut down with her sign out front, accurately announcing, "CLOSED FOR RECONSIDERATION."

Thus Nurse Daisy, as she washes Freddie Fallow, an elderly 350-pound mountain of an old man (who had to be hoisted into the tub with the aid of block and tackle), muses, "Isn't water a remarkable element? It's exempt from getting wet. It's as exempt from getting wet as God is exempt from the passion of love." (p. 169) Or, "Birth is the cause of death," and "The set trap never tires of waiting." (p. 170) Or even, "Our capacity to do evil has nothing to do with our innocence." (p. 171) Or--most especially--her description of Freddie's impending death as, "the evaporation of your little droplet above the sea..." (p. 172)

This last is an echo of Buddhism that Williams wants to satirize, as she does through the person of the undead Ginger, whose husband Carter has taken a fancy to his gardener, Donald, who espouses trendy Eastern philosophies. She begins, "What's he doing tonight, out hand-pollinating something?" She goes on to say, "Slow white dudes studying Buddhism make me sick," and finishes up with, "I can just hear him. It's only death, Ginger. Everything is fine...Does he say, Thank you, Illusion, every time he manages to overcome some piddling obstacle in his silly life?"

Thus Joy Williams's characters are vehicles for the author's expressions and her starkly original slant on the living and the dead. But what Joy Williams does so well is that she plays fair. The words of quirky wisdom come not necessarily from characters who represent her own views, such as Alice and Emily (although sometimes they do) but they can even come from the most minor of her human creatures. Thus Ottolie "who resembled an iguana" tells Alice from her bed, "I never sleep, you know...Never. Someone sleeps for me. She lives in Nebraska." Ottolie adds, "Aksarben. That's where I get a lot of my people. You have to learn how to delegate tasks." (p. 117)

Some have criticized this novel as "structurally a mess." Not so. Williams has her own organizing mechanisms. Characters flow from one to another; incidents are connected by invisible synchronicities; people appear to further the plot, and then disappear, but they are melded into the psychological and atmospheric structure of the novel. One sees this in the rednecks who seem to appear just to finish off poor Ray of the slanted mouth, but actually they are essential fixtures of the landscape as they smoke dope and shotgun saguaros, observing that "Shooting felt good..." consisting in "the increase of one's power," or that "Paranoia is having all the facts." (p. 152)

Sometimes what is best about Joy Williams is the sheer dazzle of language. Thus the unrelenting Arizona sun is made manifest through metaphor: "The sun shone like oil upon the limousine's hood, which had been waxed to the shine of water." Or the boy Alice sees whose hair was "as white as glare." (pp. 303-304) And sometimes the best thing is her revelation of character with just a phrase or two. Thus we know what Annabel is like because she worries about things like running out of avocado butter or whether she can actually wear beige or not. On page 163 a waiter, who wore "white clinging plastic gloves" comes to life with just these words:

"Have a nice remainder of the rest of your life," the waiter said. "Gotta cough." He turned away.

Or the two loud women at a nearby table who "had poured sugar on their food so they wouldn't eat anymore."

People yearn for things that cannot be, and that is life. Thus Ginger yearns for Carter to renew their vows of love and for him to join her, but he prefers to conjoin with Donald. And Alice is strangely smitten with the tuxedo-wearing piano player who is (unknown to her, but Annabel sees this clearly) irrevocably gay. But some people do indeed find love or something akin, as the stuffed animal museum owner and his adored Pickless, or Carter with Donald, or Annabel and Paris. Or the "pretty lizard" with J.C.'s missing "Little Wonder."

"The Quick and the Dead" (Second Timothy: 4:1; also The Book of Common Prayer) is a work of art that finds its own structure, that reveals itself to us in its own way. It is a fascinating reading experience, alive and vital, a tour de force of language and character, a darkly comedic romp through the sunshine of our psyches.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: This is a very cool book that reminded me of Denis Johnson, especially Already Dead. I'd give it 5 stars, but the dialogue was stilted and too mature in spots (i.e., everything spoken by the formidable Emily Bliss Pickless) and the Ginger-Carter stuff was a bloody yawn.

Rating:
Summary: I was born in the desert... I been down for years.
Review: This is one of my favorite novels of all time. It is absolutely flawless - a deranged, bizarre trip into the heart of the desert and the mind's of the characters who populate that arid climate and their own internal, personal, emotionally devastating landscapes. Joy Williams creates a world of heartlessness, beauty, insincerity, twisted motivations, utterly believable and flawed characters, and the most quotable dialogue I've found in any book. This novel was up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 but Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" took home the prize. Joy should have won, no question, but if she had to lose to someone I suppose I'm glad it was Mr. Chabon. Anyway, back to Joy - not only does she create a world of dazzling brilliance, she quite effectively mocks our modern culture and comes up with characters that are utterly distinct and memorable and also human - I dare anyone to read this novel and not find at least two characters they can strongly relate to and could mistake for themselves. Joy Williams, simply, is one of the best writers around, and this is one of the best things I've ever read. It's absolutely teeming with originality, genius ideas, and wonderful execution. I wish I'd written it. It's a novel that you don't so much read as experience, it's something that pulls you in with it's hooks and releases you, at the final page utterly changed. It will stick with you. I loaned out my hardback copy almost two years ago to my cousin, who is an English teacher, she's read it several times now and has yet to return it. I had to go out and buy another copy, just because I couldn't handle being without it for so long. When I first discovered this book, I carried it with me nearly everywhere I went, just wanting to keep the characters and the pages close within my reach - it's hard being away from this book, it's become a part of me, almost as vital and important as an organ. This book has a heart of it's own, and you can feel it beating below the surface, you can taste the blood and muscles and sweat when you read. It's simply impossible to describe the passion and art that are contained within these pages. I think everyone could benefit from reading this. It is the great American novel - it touches and comments upon nearly everything in our society that one can think of, it points out what is wrong, it so perfectly describes people and their personalities and actions and it even has elements of the supernatural. Yet for all of Joy William's sarcasm and harsh wit, she loves her characters and does not judge them. Ultimately, we may not be left with answers to every question, but we are left with hope, as delicious as honey from a thorn.

Rating:
Summary: remarkable
Review: With each book, Joy Williams brings comparison to another woman concerned with the mystery of grace-Flannery O'Connor. Difficult to dispute this. But, unlike O'Connor, in The Quick and the Dead Joy Williams keeps a loose grip on her narrative, givng the characters room to kind of mingle around one another. Beautifully grotesque stuff here. Monkey-haunted, shoe-selling stroke victims, doomed nurses, ghosts, etc. The horror! Williams is at her best when writing about children and animals, something else she and O'Connor have in common. A remarkable book.

Rating:
Summary: The Slow and the Inane
Review: Word had filtered down to me from my many literary sources that Joy Williams' novel, The Quick and The Dead was akin to many of David Lynch's enigmatic and enticing films. Being a huge Lynch fan, I decided to check out her book. Sadly to say, this book was no where near the type of scope that Mr. Lynch works with. I've been reading voraciously for about 35 years and my literary tastes cover a wide spectrum of styles and approaches. Rarely have I ever had to wade through a book as if it were linguistic molasses. But the Quick and the Dead fits this bill. While some of Ms. Williams' writing styles is quite good, the novel as a whole is a mess. Obnoxious characters that fail to even give the reader a hint of caring about, plots that seem to go nowhere and scenes that are just plain absurd. Most books take me about two days to read at the most. I finally got around to finishing this one about two months after I started it. Only picked it up when I had nothing better to do. Take my advice. If you want to spend money on paper, save it for a few rolls of toilet paper. You'll be more satisfied.