The Coen Brothers have made a nice career out of crafting stories about guys who are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Folks whose plans are not nearly as airtight as they need should be. Folks who don’t have nearly the power they think they do. In his debut novel Arkansas, John Brandon creates some characters who would fit perfectly in a Coen Brothers movie. Brandon’s tight story also reminds me of the whole Southern Gothic thing (Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy) and the fine crime novel style of Elmore Leonard. He also manages to throw in a few experimental flourishes that don’t seem to bog the narrative down but rather elucidate it.
Here we have Swin and Kyle, two men who back into jobs in the drug trade in the rural South. Their improbable rise to the lower echelons of narcotics distribution finds them working for a fake Ranger in an Arkansas State Park. They drive for a man named Bright who in turn gets packages from a mysterious woman who goes by the name of “Her.” The ultimate power in the small backwoods drug ring is held by Frog, yet another foolhardy type. We learn of Frog’s rise to the top of his game (which really isn’t all that far up, to tell the truth) in some interstitial chapters written in second person.
Brandon makes all of these characters seem real and you find yourself rooting for Swin and Kyle even though you get the feeling from pretty early on that their story will not end nicely. Then the bodies start piling up and what little center there is obviously cannot hold. The sympathy is ratcheted up when Swin gets his girlfriend pregnant and the three try to make a semblance of a normal life. Brandon makes Swin an intelligent (if not too clever) wannabe family man who is more than a little self-centered. He fears that the sisters he left in Kentucky will miss him so much that they will become strippers for lack of a decent male role model. The truth is they are doing just fine without Swin. His partner Kyle is the real criminal of the two. Kyle doesn’t pretend to be smart but he thinks he knows how to live outside the law. The two bring out the best and the worst in the each other. Mostly the worst.
Brandon does a fine job detailing the land of Razorback football and shady trailer parks. With a debut as strong as this, I expect great things from John Brandon. I highly recommend Arkansas. Read it now so you can impress your friends when the Coen Brothers version wins Best Picture.
Arkansas is published by McSweeney’s Books and can be bought here.
