Boot Tracks by Matthew F. Jones
My rating: 4/5 cats
shit, man, i don’t know what just happened here…
i thought i would read a book by matthew f jones, to counteract my recent 0 for 2 book streak because i thought at least i knew what i was getting into with him, having just finished and loved A Single Shot last week.
this one was… different from that one.
i am still trying to decide whether it is genius or a mess. i am leaning towards genius, but i think this is a book i am going to have to read again. in a way, it seems perfect, but when i start to think about it and break down the individual scenes, it ends up falling apart a little into some sort of lynchian cutting-room floor situation. it’s not super-surreal or anything, but there is a very specific and familiar tension throughout, and discomfort. and some character-doubling and unreliable memories.
i was anticipating a straightforward novel with a moral gray area, but a plot pretty much grounded in strict realism. i got my moral gray area, but i got a little more dark surrealism than i had been banking on. the scenes seem unmoored, but in a way that makes my brain happy and puzzled and wondering if it really is the metaphor i am hoping it is.
a single shot was way jim thompson-y, in a respectful way, not as me calling it derivative. this one reminded me more of Nick Antosca than Jim Thompson, although it is less likely jones has read him. this is a dark little set piece that i imagine is on the glass table in hell’s waiting room. read it and get one last opportunity to regret some shit before you burn for all eternity kind of thing.
this character is deeply wounded, plagued by memories and trying to fulfill an obligation towards a man who has been at once a spiritual figure and an abuser, unsure what is real and what might hopefully be a dream. it involves killing and a bag full of money. and a dame.
this book always strives for the grotesque:
Behind the register a door marked “employees toilet” opened; a bleached blonde with bad teeth, pimply skin, and a six-inch stump for a right arm came out of the room trailing a bad stink
…five or six trash bags partially hidden amid drink containers, hamburger cartons, styrofoam coffee cups, a cat cadaver, its black and white head, streaming with maggots, grotesquely misaligned, facing the air immediately over its spine
cats, dogs, foxes, fish, a goat – animals do not fare well in this book. so much for me thinking europa was all classy books for gloved women and monocled men. this book has some serious gross in it.
this is a europa i expect elizabeth will avoid.
but now i am intrigued. jones has two books in print, and now i have read both of them and am desperately (i’m looking at you, bill thompson) awaiting some of his others because so far, i have loved them both, but they have left me unsettled, and i still don’t have a clear sense of who this guy is as an author.
but i want to know. badly.
this review is kind of a mess, but let’s call it an homage, shall we?
