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The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong
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The Fast Red Road—A Plainsong is a novel which plunders, in a gleeful, two-fisted fashion, the myth and pop-culture surrounding the American Indian. It is a story fueled on pot fumes and blues, borrowing and distorting the rigid conventions of the traditional western. Indians, cowboys, and outlaws are as interchangeable as their outfits; men strike poses from Gunsmoke, and
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Paperback, 326 pages
Published
November 30th 2000
by Fiction Collective 2
(first published 2000)
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I found this novel convoluted and dreamlike, in a way that made it very difficult to get through. I suspect that there is a depth of references beyond my comprehension, which, had I understood them, would have brought this work together more coherently.
Jones' first novel is his best. A myopic, occasionally difficult-to-follow, long-chaptered novel, TFRR is sometimes so caught up in its own world that it's hard to connect with, but ultimately, the effort is worth just to appreciate the compact, weird writing style.
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1/1000th of a star. A book that prides itself on not making sense. I’ve read some of Jones’s stuff before and liked it, but this (his first novel) simply did nothing for me.
I never buy books, but I bought a book. (I bought TWO books, actually!) My library has NO books by this guy who is one of my favorite authors. And I hope they add this copy to their collection when I am done with it, so others can enjoy. (Unless I decide to keep it for myself!!!!!)
This is my third time reading Jones’ work, after his creepy novella, Mapping the Interior, and the phenomenal werewolf coming of age novel, Mongrels. Sadly, this was my least favorite so far by a significant margin. The blurb for this novel proposes that it “plunders, in a gleeful, two-fisted fashion, the myth and pop-culture surrounding the American Indian”, but for me I feel it went totally over my head. I read the entirety of the 300-some pages, and I have almost no idea what happened. The Fa
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This book really requires a depth and attention to reading that takes its time and combs through the layers of reference and meaning Jones offers. I read it in a class and felt rushed and know I missed a lot. I would love to reread this book when I have more time to sit with it and leisurely look everything up. It's very much in the tradition of a Western, and grapples with Native American and multiracial/bicultural identities. It's dreamlike and hallucinatory which disorients on its own, but ri
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Some of the best and smartest phantasmagorical writing you'll ever come across. The author hits a range of moods. Even though I struggled with the narrative thread (which is constantly morphing but manages to maintain a kind of logic), the imagination of the writing is what keeps you reading. There's also a huge lineup of cultural and political references that place the characters' weird world against reality. A very original book and one that I read a long time ago, but it still stays with me.
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Magical realism of the most bilious variety. Don't peek inside the suitcase, & definitely don't eat the beef.
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Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of twenty-five or thirty books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in. He's married with a couple kids, and pro
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