![Rural family noir: a video book review of In the Devil’s Territory by Kyle Minor [video]](https://calebjross.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Thumbnail-Devils-Territory.jpg)
Kyle Minor’s In the Devil’s Territory is rural family noir at its best, with lots of back-woods religion overtones, and family dynamics rooted in harsh sexism where women are taught to be subservient to men and men are trained to exploit that subservience.
Buy it here.
What am I drinking? Schlafly Coffee Stout. Mmmmmmm.
“Sugarbaby” from William Gay’s collected stories, I Hate to See that Evening Son Go Down captures slow, unaffected degradation of a marriage in ways I’ve never read before. The main couple, Beasley, and let’s say, Martha (as part of the rules, I’m not allowed to go back to the story at all, and I can’t remember the wife’s name) are seen within their small community as a pillar of marital perfection. They’ve en-joyed/-dured marriage longer than any other couple. One day, Beasley buys his wife a dog, a small, yap-yap-yap kind of dog, who doesn’t seem to appreciate the fine home Beasley has brought him into. Eventually, Beasley shoots the dog with a gun far larger than would be necessary to kill such a tiny animal. This fact, though not directly addressed, is mentioned only enough to be allowed to simmer in the reader’s head. This is what makes a Gay story so perfect: small actions and tiny mannerisms imply tremendous consequences.
After a lifelong perfect marriage, Margaret suddenly abandons her husband. Beasley doesn’t react. This non-reaction is the impetus for an eventual divorce lawyer sent to Beasley’s house, a court supenona, and on and on the list goes, when really, Mildred never even tried to contact her husband after her split. This is where the reader is asked to pick a side. We choose Beasley because, yeah yap-yap dogs are terrible, and yeah, Megan should have given Beasley a phone call before sending in the law. What the fuck, Marge!
So the reader roots for Beasley, yeah, perhaps by default, as we aren’t allowed to see Melissa’s side of the story. And sure, eventually Beasley kills a cop and “escapes” to live on his own in the wilderness, primarily to avoid paying 50% cash to his wife in lieu of 50% of his property (the property deal having long been decided by Melody’s lawyer as no longer enough), but despite all of this, we actually still feel for Beasley. It makes me wonder if my loyalty would be different if Beasley shot a real dog like a Golden Retriever.
The stories of Fuckload of Shorts by Jedidiah Ayres, which includes the stories that inspired the short film Fuckload of Scotch Tape, are the best kind of short stories. Each one takes an idea that, realistically should make for a horrible, shock-driven story, and instead delivers amazing noir fiction with beautifully rendered characters. Ejaculating a dead man? Yep. Selling corpses to a dog foot plant? Yep. In the hands of a lesser writer, these ideas would amount to nothing more than throwaway snuff fiction. But in the hands of Jedidiah Ayres, these ideas are simply climaxes of and catalysts for truly compelling stories.
This video book review examines one of those scenarios in-depth: how exactly, logistically speaking, can one ejaculate a dead man? Yes, there is a whiteboard and drawings included.
The amazing Laurance Kitts interviews me for his Slit Your Wrists Magazine website, a site that frequent visitors may recognize; my story “Sebaceous” appeared there back in April. Laurance knows how to ask questions without bowing to a person’s ego, so you can read this Q&A without anticipating a pretentious me basking in the warmth of praise. I mean, sure, Laurance does feed me some softballs, but…those are easier to chew.