“We are the farting children of Heaven, blessed be our slippery viscera”

This is a story collection by the Missouri writer Daniel Woodrell, best known for Winter’s Bone, which of course brought Jennifer Lawrence into our lives. I feel like anytime you mention an American Southern writer–and yeah it gets complicated when you’re talking about Missouri, I know–you are compelled to mention what state they’re from. That’s why we all know Faulkner is from Mississippi along with Larry Brown and Eudora Welty; we know that Georgia gave us Flannery O’Connor and Alice Walker; we think of Zora Neale Hurston and Harper Lee from Alabama; Cormac McCarthy being from Tennessee and so on. Daniel Woodrell is a perfectly capable writer, or at least these are perfectly capable stories, but I also feel like it’s pretty well-worm territory. There’s a lot of Larry Brown and Tim Gautreaux and William Gay in these stories, along with some elements that feel straight from “Justified.” And again, that’s not an issue. I just happen to think it’s a relatively limiting factor in set of stories to feel the influences and similar other stories out there.

What I don’t feel from these is a strong sense of purpose or even a strong sense of place. Instead, I feel some kind of received wisdom of the South and rural life being remixed and reinscribed onto a newish landscape. It’s not all that novel, but it is quite readable.

I think had Winter’s Bone not turned into a whole thing, I wouldn’t think much about that part of it, but I’ve read my fair share in this general field. I also find that

(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Album-Stories-Daniel-Woodrell/dp/0316232491)