I love Joe R. Lansdale, and it makes me mad that he is not as famous as he is. Him along with Haruki Murakami, are two writers who I think do not get enough love by the book loving public here in the states. He writes as if Flannery O’Conner watched too many episodes of The Dukes of Hazard and too many exploitation films. His stories always contain this mean-spiritedness that you have to laugh at, because it is sometimes too appalling to look at. Even with a book that is not so good, like this one, Freezer Burn. It is simply a wild bull ride every time you open a Lansdale book. The main character Bill is a typical Lansdale good ol’ boy. Bill is a total idiot and doesn’t really make up for it by being a rotten bastard who lets his mom’s decomposing corpse lie in her bed long after she dies of natural causes. He is trying to forge her social security checks, but sucks at that as well. If he were good at it, we’d hate him, but since he is a total loser, we sympathize with him. After a botched robbery of a fireworks stand (which leads to the death of two of his friends, and a hilarious police officer who keeps yelling COCKSUCKER as he searches for Bill) ends with him crashing into a swamp, Bill, now with a face swollen from mosquito bites, happens upon a traveling freak show. It only gets worse for Bill from here, as he meets a wide range of freaks from a retard pair of Black Siamese twins, to the beautiful wife of the freak show boss Frost, who is pretty obviously playing Bill. Granted it is mediocre Lansdale, but it is still Lansdale, and that is never a mistake to me.
Rating: 4/5
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