Books We Can't Qu: The Long Home, by William Gay - [PANK]

I LOVE WILLIAM GAY’S ‘THE LONG HOME’

A moody first novel is offered as s gifted thor’s claim to the regnal-metaphysil mantle currently worn by Cormac McCarthy—though, fact, reveals the overpowerg fluence of Flkner, particularly of the “Spotted Hors” chapter The Hamlet. A terse Prologue reunts the murr 1932 of tenant farmer Nathan Wer by erant thug Dallas Hard, followg an argument over a whiskey still. Then, 11 years later, the dilapidated backwoods hamlet of Mormon Sprgs, Tennsee, an creasgly bleak drama is played out among the avaric Hard (now a prospero landowner and small-time entreprenr); Wer’s teenaged son and namake; a reclive old man named William Tell Oliver (who harbors his own guilty secrets); and a betiful girl, Amber Rose, whom Hard threatens to add to his ill-gotten holdgs. The story—told clipped, often enigmatic parallel scen—emphasiz Oliver’s crafty momentum toward remptn, Nathan’s thwarted love for Amber Rose and dogged pursu of vengeance, and the overreachg that brgs their tormentor Hard to a kd of jtice. The Long Home (the phrase is an digeno metaphor for ath) ntas several memorable scen and strikg characterizatns (both Nathan’s dysfunctnal ra “Motormouth” Hodg and ex-football hero and town dnk “Buttcut” Chsor are amg troublemakers). But the novel drowns s own rhetoric, wh risible abstractns (“she shrieked at the immutabily of his back”) and pretently grotque, and exact, scene-settg (“The bare branch of the apple tre wrhed like tre om a provce mentia”). Gay has read Flkner wh reverence (Dallas Hard is a py of the master’s immortal, satiable rpetbagger Flem Snop), and imated him whout a sense of when to stop—or much w. When emerg om the fog of verbiage, Gay’s but tells a grippg and termtently hntg story. If he ever cis to wre his own novel, may be a good one. * the long home william gay *

*Ma to a major motn picture, directed by Jam Fran and starrg Josh Hutcherson, Josh Hartt, Ashton Kutcher, and Courtney Love*In a lerary voice that is both origal and powerfully unsettlg, William Gay tells the story of Nathan Wer, a young and headstrong Tennsee rpenter who lost his father years ago to a human evil that is greater and closer at hand than any the boy n image - until he learns of first-hand. Gay's remarkable but novel, The Long Home, is also the story of Amber Rose, a betiful young woman forced to live beneath that evil who regniz even as a child that Nathan is her first and last chance at pe. ABOUT WILLIAM GAYBorn Tennsee 1939, William Gay began wrg at fifteen and wrote his first novel at twenty-five, but didn't beg publishg well to his fifti.

THE LONG HOME BY WILLIAM GAY

My new favore wrer is William Gay. His wr about a muny of backwoods Tennsee characters entangled by geography, blood, petn, greed, love, and vengeance. The thg about Gay is that he’s the strange tw brother of Cormac McCarthy... * the long home william gay *

William Gay’s novel The Long Home is epic spe. Gay’s characters range om solid and kd to phantasmagorilly evil. How have I e this far whout even mentng Gay’s precise and mil ear for language, his portrayals of nature as awome and awful all one, his habual age of clever pound words?

William Gay was a master. He hailed om Hohenwald, Tennsee, a muny as ral and remote as the on he renrs his fictn, and not far om the hometown of Cormac McCarthy, who both spired and mentored Gay. Led by Gay’s reverence for the man, though, and followg the remendatn of a fellow Gay fan, I recently read McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper.