Everything ravaged, everything burned.

Ended up devouring this short story collection by Wells Tower. Carnies, Vikings, angry brothers, just really engaging stories. I ended up having to drop all my other books to finish it. I didn’t want to like it because he seems like one of those annoying MFA writer types, but it was pretty good. Of course, Bonnie Jo Campbell also has an MFA and she is not annoying. I think it’s his name that bugs me. Who names their kid Wells Tower? It’s either a pseudonym or another case of horrible parental name choice. He seems young enough to be part of that whole “last names as first name” generation of kids who came along over the last 25 years or so.


I have not talked about Carolyn Chute and I should. Years ago I tried to read THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE and it probably fell victim to library book overload, which is the book lover’s equivalent to getting too much food at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Anyway, I saw her mentioned on another writer’s website and decided to check out more of her work…read and enjoyed her most recent, THE SCHOOL ON HEART’S CONTENT ROAD which supposedly is a portion of a larger work. Confession: I like reading things about militias and people who live off the grid. It probably appeals to my fantasy about “dropping out.”

I am waiting anxiously for another longer novel of hers called MERRY MEN. I started BEANS but got distracted by EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED. Now hopefully I can get back to it. I’ll write more about it later. I grew up in a rural town where people sort of just did enough to get by. Sometimes that still appeals to me. When I was younger I wanted to be a high achiever type person, and I am proud of some of the stuff I’ve been able to do, but I’m starting to really think you can take the boy out of the slacker rural town, but you can’t take the slacker rural town out of the boy. Of course, Chute’s characters are far from slackers, slacking being more of a comfortable middle-class or government subsidized type of existence.