• WHO?
  • THINGS I'VE MADE
  • TEXTURE PODCAST
  • BLOG
  • STORE
  • CONTACT
Menu

Josh Gaines

Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number

Your Custom Text Here

Josh Gaines

  • WHO?
  • THINGS I'VE MADE
  • TEXTURE PODCAST
  • BLOG
  • STORE
  • CONTACT

The Outlaw Album - Daniel Woodrell

February 8, 2016 Josh Gaines

I picked up this short volume at a library used book sale for one dollar, and am now so very grateful that I did not spend anywhere near the $24.99 retail price (highway robbery for a book that has a large font and is not even 200 pages long). After reading through it, I got the sense that this collection was hurriedly assembled and released as little more than a cash-grab in the wake of the success of the Oscar-nominated film Winter’s Bone, based upon Daniel Woodrell’s novel. I myself read Winter’s Bone and found it to be decently enjoyable. It was not anything mind-blowing, but was entertaining and had compelling characters and an engaging plot, and was the reason I decided to go a little further down the road with Woodrell’s work.

The Outlaw Album, on the other hand, read like a series of college-level in-class writing exercises, and unfinished ones at that. The majority of these stories felt incomplete, like ideas jotted down but never fleshed out. Very few of them had character, and the characters themselves were not memorable. On certain stories, it seems that Woodrell tried to employ a minimal, jump-cut sort of storytelling that often left me bewildered because the scene changes and implied action made very little sense, as if he was attempting to be dark or ironic by leaving the reader to read between the lines and not quite succeeding.

On a more positive note, I will say that a few of the stories were pretty good and had plot arcs that actually made sense and were interesting. Woodrell also occasionally lucked out with a very strong sentence here and there; vivid, eloquent one-liners full of stark detail or metaphors that landed just right. But those two compliments are about as kind as I can be towards this collection, a book that, believe it or not, I had set out with the expectation to enjoy. Very rarely do I feel the need to rip a book up and down, but this volume came across as an amalgam of largely undeveloped stories that whoever edited them must have barely glanced at before giving them the stamp of approval.

Woodrell’s writing is, in this case, like a second rate Donald Ray Pollock, or a third rate Cormac McCarthy. He has neither the devastating punch nor the literary touch that those men do. If you want some quality Southern fiction with grit as well as heart, read those authors instead.

-D.G.

In Book Reviews, Film, Writing Tags daniel woodrell, winter's bone, oscar, nominated, the outlaw album, stories, short stories, fiction, dark, southern, gothic, gritty, frank bill, donald ray pollock, author, bayou trilogy, jlaw, collection, volume, william faulkner, cormac mccarthy, doctor gaines, dr gaines, josh gaines, gaines, claras quilt, michigan ten cents, hitching post, white bark, pirate ghost of hole 19, THE SHOT, poisonous snakes of the midwest, muzzleland press, denver, colorado, writer, novel, book, book review, books 2016, readin, reading, reading 2016
Comment
← Newer Posts Older Posts →
More Reviews
Nov 30, 2018
2018 - The Year in Film: A Personal Confession and List
Nov 30, 2018
Nov 30, 2018
Oct 18, 2017
Sit in the Pain & Know That You'll Be Okay
Oct 18, 2017
Oct 18, 2017
Sep 15, 2017
Shedding the Old Self & Coming to Life
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017
Jun 5, 2017
THE FAMILIAR, Volume 4: Hades (Review)
Jun 5, 2017
Jun 5, 2017
Mar 24, 2017
We Were Supposed to Be Famous: A Letter to Millennials & The Discontent
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017
Dec 20, 2016
12-20-16
Dec 20, 2016
Dec 20, 2016
Oct 25, 2016
10-25-16
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016
Aug 4, 2016
08-04-16
Aug 4, 2016
Aug 4, 2016
Jul 12, 2016
THE FAMILIAR Volume 3: Honeysuckle & Pain - Mark Z. Danielewski
Jul 12, 2016
Jul 12, 2016
Jun 22, 2016
THE FIREMAN - Joe Hill
Jun 22, 2016
Jun 22, 2016

Powered by Squarespace