13 July 2018

Ohio

Ohio begins with a funeral and ends in murder. What happens in between is as depressing as a high school reunion, but man, Stephen Markley’s writing elevates the wrist-slashing fatigue into a Stanley Kubrick-like, art-house style circa Clockwork Orange. Still, Ohio is 500-page work that feels like it takes all four years of the riding the after-activities bus route to read through.

Ohio Stephen MarkleyMarkley recounts the impromptu high school reunion of 2013 following the incredibly-pitiful-it’s-laughable funeral of fallen solider Rick Brinkland as told through the antics and mostly-troubled thoughts of four New Canaan alum, each getting a novella to tell their tales of woes: of trying to fit in, on being attracted to the wrong gal or guy, running away from responsibility, and the youthful persistence of taking the moral high road. After all, if Kevin Smith’s Clerks taught us anything, it’s that’s what high school is all about: algebra, bad lunch, and infidelity. Markley would add “with a ton of drugs” to that statement as apparently that’s all early 21st century kids in the Rust Belt seem to do. Ohio captures all of that and more. Sometimes, that’s too much.

Like its namesake river and the first ten years of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ existence, Ohio rambles on and becomes unwieldy. Markley’s accounts run so deep an Excel spreadsheet is needed to capture the dramatis personae, their nicknames, associates, sexual partners, and addiction of choice, because there is four years’ of catch up required for the reader while the story’s hook, that of the murder mystery, comes so late in the final act it’s nearly a post-credits zinger in a Marvel Studios film.

Aside from the back-and-forth storytelling told by a former basketball player, a beauty queen, a cheerleader, and a nerd, Markley builds a heavy universe, and one that is completely recognizable as anywhere in America and has the scars to prove it. Ohio may be depressing and fatalistic, but Markley’s craft brings a shine to this Shinola and casts a sense of importance to any of the fatalism plaguing fulfillment-seeking millennials. Unfortunately, this nine-course meal version of a history lesson suffers from distention well before any sort of a hopeful moral can be splashed back with Scotch.


Serious thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC. I just need a restorative nap and a mini-marathon of Teen Titans Go! for the laughs and I’ll be good to go.


As Always,
theJOE

03 July 2018

The Colorado Kid

Stephen King Colorado Kid
Hey Kids! Want to read about an unexplained mystery as told by two very old New England reporters in a meandering style similar to how your grandfather used to go on about his ’64 Chevy pick-up? Then break out the Coca-Colas and switch on the Mr. Coffee, Uncle Stevie has a book for you.

To be fair, The Colorado Kid is not quite that discouraging. The true narrative of this book, which slightly deceptive, is more about the craft of the story then the, as mentioned within the tale’s journalistic jargon, feature thru-line. This is also King’s love-letter to old-fashioned reporting as well as a chance to back up the treatise laid out in his memoir On Writing, which is a book any lover of stories, let alone those told by King, should have in their library. The Colorado Kid, however, can at best be settled on as a borrowed rental.

The Colorado King has old men Dave and Vince, islanders from birth, pass on their newspaper torch to their flat-earthed intern Stephanie, who has raw talent in need of honing. King cleverly, and ploddingly, explores the nature of telling a mystery, as opposed to actually solving the damn thing. Stephanie plays the role of the everyman/woman as King takes his time through the codgers at hand, to lay out the mystery – a dead man discovered on an island beach off the coast of Maine, no ID, save for a pack of cigarettes purchased in Colorado – and gives the reader, through Stephanie, the ability to play catch-up, to give life to what should be a dead story, to fill in the Ws for all the Qs, while learning they don’t always line up to a perfect A. The purpose of a story is that it needs to be told, and not always with a happy ending, which is what happens here. Yet, that story does need to be compelling and the main one here, that of Stephanie’s youth and eagerness, should have been the road explored, and not the well-worn paths of two men trailing off into the twilight. King, however, acting as the spokes piece, deserves that attention of an elder statesman and makes an even somewhat rote tale entertaining. Now pass me a cuppa coffee, willya? Uncle Stevie has more to tell.


As Always,
theJOE