Blood on the Tracks

This has a little Jack Kerouac feel. I'm curious enough about how the name affects the story, that I'm backing.

Troy,

This is a very accomplished and absorbing read, and I do wonder why it has not reached more shelves. It is clear that you are well versed in the cult writers of American literature and your style has the assuredness and flow of someone who is confident with their own voice.

The notes that follow are a mixture of observations and comments; I do hope they are of some use.

I like your opening a great deal; the way that you undercut the lyricism of the first line, with the roughness of those that follow. Together they create a sense of menace; that all is not right with the world, or that we are about to be plunged into a place where a dark underbelly exists beneath an innocuous surface.

Indeed, this is the case, and our first encounter with Lee pulls us straight into the drama of his narrative. The first appearance of a character is so important in setting up our expectations of them and in Lee you have created a man who is so conflicted in his being that he is not even sure of his own name.

I personally liked the fact that your MC has such an infamous namesake, although it did make me wonder what sort of parents he must have had! It’s as if his name has become his birthright, and with it, he seems doomed to a Jonah sort of life; forever saddled with the associations of being cursed and inherently destined for bad things.

A minor point for me comes right at the end of chapter one, when the police are trying to ascertain Lee’s guilt or otherwise, in the murder they are investigating. I would personally have preferred it if you had prefaced Lee’s final line with a bit of “stage business”; some action, etc. Just a line would have done it. I think Lee’s revelation at the end of this chapter is so profound and important that we need that one line of breathing space to give it centre stage.

For me, chapter two meandered a little, and lost the focus you had so brilliantly captured in the previous chapter. A lot of concepts were introduced: Lee’s trepidation about his new job, as well as his relationships with Claire, his father, and Jimmy. I think that you can afford to be more leisurely in these revelations; a hint of them is fine, but the four together was a little distracting for me. I was personally absorbed in his thoughts about his job and his sense of the whole sorry way his life was turning out. This alone lulled us into a false sense of security before the mysterious Honda arrives on the scene with the disembodied voice Lee recognises but cannot place. (When the owner of this voice is later revealed it is a genuinely chilling moment). I felt a little like the police in the car when they accuse Lee of not getting on with the point of the story! Again, I think it is a question of letting the language breath but not at the expense of the plot. And what language you have! There were too many fine examples to quote but one of my favourites: “The stars were a million salted peanuts, the moon a tangerine…” Just inspired.

At the beginning of the novel I must confess to feeling a little conflicted about the narrator’s voice. Although told in third person it is clearly a limited viewpoint that puts us very much in Lee’s vicinity. Initially I did wonder whether some of the thoughts ascribed to Lee were a little too writerly, a little self-conscious, but as the novel progressed I changed my mind. It reminded me very much of another book I recently reviewed: Andrew Stevens’s excellent The Poet, which has a similar third person limited POV but which is also quite stream-of-consciousness in its execution. The reason I loved this book, and yours too, was the way in which you very cleverly challenge the reader’s preconceptions about your character. Lee’s a rough handle guy from the wrong side of the tracks, who may or may not be a murderer. But could he also be incredibly sensitive and astute and wonderfully poetic at times? Why not? My preconceptions may tell me otherwise, but they are my preconceptions, and the subverting of these I absolutely loved about your novel. Some people may find it problematic; say it isn’t authentic, or realistic, but I say it works.

The language of the book is obviously one of its strengths. However, I did feel that it could perhaps do with some slight editing here and there. It reads so densely, with so many wonderful images, but sometimes the impact of them was lost through their sheer accumulation. I feel power can be gained through the telling detail at a significant moment and there is no need to imbue every element with equal weight. I would not want a massive edit, though; I think the language works both in and of itself but also as a barometer of the MC’s psyche at any one point. Through it I understood the slow unravelling of Lee’s mind and his search for meaning , in addition to the moments of peace and relative happiness, such as following the birth of Jimmy.
On a related point, I did find the tone of the novel a little relentless at times. It is incredibly intense, and I sometimes felt as though I needed some moment of levity, or simply a different voice, to bring me down a little. I wonder if you had considered the inclusion of an alternative view point character in the novel; Claire or Edison, perhaps, or even, rather contentiously, Jimmy? I know that Lee wonders at the beginning what kind of a legacy he is leaving his young son, and this might be something to consider. It’s just a thought.

I find Claire and Edison fascinating characters but as yet, can’t say I agree with Joe’s assertion that Claire is a classy lady. To me she seems petulant and paranoid and I wonder if a little more work to round her out would help us imagine her more favourably. Joe, perhaps intentionally, remains a mystery at this point, although his sudden disappearance after Jimmy’s birth had me off on a tangent imagining all sorts of plot developments.
A very small point: for some reason, I found the repetition of the word “cig” irritating after a while. I have no idea why; is it a British vs American thing? I would have preferred “smokes”, I think , but it’s purely a taste thing, obviously.

If you have not done so already, can I suggest you give “Legend of A Suicide” by David Vann a read. I have it as one of my favourite books on my bio and it’s well worth the effort. I think it may chime with you.

Overall, Troy, I think you have a very very promising novel here. I think it will take a book of extreme merit to topple it off my shelf in the near future.

I wish you all the very best with it.

Wiz

A Small Death

http://www.authonomy.com/books/38849/a-small-death/

It's an entertaining mix of the poetic flashes of Raymond Chandler mixed with the grittiness of Charles Bukowkski. The story wanders a bit, but a sharp eye for relevant detail helps to compensate for that lack of tautness. And author Troy Weaver knows his protagonist as well as Bukowski knew his Chinaski--there's a definite authenticity.

I think this might be a solid, gripping style. You might want to edit a bit here and there? I don't know. It's all so subjective. You become focused on sheer incompetence, looking at these manuscripts, when probably a larger psychological dynamic is far more relevant to any normal reader.

I am reminded of one of Kurt Vonnegut's "rules for writing':

"Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."

That's sort of a "looking at some random novel" consideration, though, since you're often adrift in stylish introductions to plot points. Obviously good novels can pad out an introduction to story in an enchanting way.