Dirt: A Novel [Hardcover]

David Vann (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 2012

The year is 1985, and twenty-two-year-old Galen lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded old house surrounded by a walnut orchard in a suburb of Sacramento. He doesn't know who his father is, his abusive grandfather is dead, and his grandmother, losing her memory, has been shipped off to a nursing home. Galen and his mother survive on the family's trust fund—old money that his aunt, Helen, and seventeen-year-old cousin, Jennifer, are determined to get their hands on.

Galen, a New Age believer who considers himself an old soul, yearns for transformation: to free himself from the corporeal, to be as weightless as air, to walk on water. But he's powerless to stop the manic binges that overtake him, leading him to fixate on forbidden desires. A prisoner of his body, he is obsessed with thoughts of the boldly flirtatious Jennifer and dreams of shedding himself of the clinging mother whose fears and needs weigh him down.

When the family takes a trip to an old cabin in the Sierras, near South Lake Tahoe, tensions crescendo. Caught in a compromising position, Galen will discover the shocking truth of just how far he will go to attain the transcendence he craves.

An exhilarating portrayal of a legacy of violence and madness, Dirt is an entirely feverish read.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Searing. . . . Vann has an extravagantly literary sensibility, and his novel is full of echoes: One thinks of the stately inevitability of classical tragedy, of Chekhov’s lost souls, of the hallucinatory quality of Faulkner’s rural fantasia, and of Stephen King’s depictions of an unraveling mind.” (Washington Post Book World )

“There’s a lot of humor here, of a very dark vein. And Vann, a Guggenheim fellow, excels at sly truths” (Boston Globe )

“Brilliant narrative. . . . This is a novel of violence, destruction and ruin. There is no salvation. And yet Mr. Vann’s soaring writing carries it forward-a reminder of the beauty that can grace even the beastliest things.” (The Economist )

“His language is sharply funny, even as his characters enact a tragedy of Greek proportions.” (The New Yorker )

“The book is wonderfully twisted, but a sinister humor keeps things from getting too bleak. What begins as a literary family drama turns slowly into a heady horror story, part Stephen King and part Immanuel Kant.” (The Daily Beast )

“Brave and brilliant. . . . Dirt is showing us something unexpected, and unexpectedly stunning . . . Vann’s details here, as always, are pitch-perfect.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

“Haunting.” (Financial Times )

“Vann has a remarkable gift for capturing the harsh realities of a family held together by hate and violence. Riveting and impossible to put down.” (Library Journal (starred review) )

“Multi-award winner Vann writes undeniably powerful prose, whether he is blithely satirizing transcendental meditation, or meticulously detailing Galen’s descent into madness.” (Booklist )

“David Vann excels at writing about the darkest side of the human heart. . . . Vann fully exhibits the writer’s chops that served him well in his earlier works, and he again plumbs the darker parts of the human psyche. This novel is simultaneously disturbing and haunting.” (Denver Post )

“Harrowing. . . . Vann, a professor at UC San Francisco, is often compared to Cormac McCarthy; he exerts a powerful grip here, as Galen learns how far he’s willing to go to get free.” (San Jose Mercury News )

“Vann truly is brave. . . . there is no denying we emerge indelibly affected.” (Philadelphia Inquirer )

“This experience is prolonged to the very last page, graceful paragraph, stunning word. Then it reverberates. Vann’s book is art, and not to be missed.” (BookPage )

About the Author

David Vann is an internationally bestselling author whose work has been translated into eighteen languages. He is the winner of fourteen prizes, including France's Prix Médicis Etranger, Spain's Premi Llibreter, the Grace Paley Prize, a California Book Award, the AWP Nonfiction Prize, and France's L'Express readers' prize. His books include Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, A Mile Down, and Last Day on Earth. A Guggenheim fellow and former Stegner fellow and National Endowment for the Arts fellow, he is a professor at the University of Warwick in England. He has written for The Atlantic, Esquire, Outside, Men's Health, Men's Journal, McSweeney's, the Sunday Times, the Observer, and many other publications, and he has appeared in documentaries for the BBC, NOVA, National Geographic, and CNN.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition, First Printing edition (April 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780062121035
• ISBN-13: 978-0062121035
• ASIN: 0062121030
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #351,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, an international bestseller and winner of the 2010 Prix Medicis in France, the L'Express readers' prize in France, the Grace Paley Prize, and a California Book Award, has been on 29 "Best Books of the Year" lists in the US, UK, Ireland, Spain, France, and Australia, including The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. Vann was also shortlisted for The Sunday Times Short Story Award and longlisted for the Story Prize. His new novel, Caribou Island, set in his native Alaska, will be out January 18, 2011 from HarperCollins, and he has a nonfiction book about a school shooting coming out Sept 2011 (titled Last Day On Earth). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he is currently an Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco. www.davidvann.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Coming closer to origins, another gift of the dirt." March 4, 2012

By Evelyn Getchell TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Dirt: A Novel is David Vann at his best. Readers familiar with Vann who approach DIRT expecting another Legend of a Suicide: Stories (P.S.) or Caribou Island: A Novel will most likely be thrown off guard. Vann is still the master of visceral atmosphere and probing characterizations but this time he toys with his reader in an unexpected way, teases the reader gently at first, with quirkiness and humor, before unleashing a dramatic prototype who longs to become a Siddhartha but is driven instead to becoming more like Aeschylus' Orestes or Shakespeare's Hamlet or Hitchcock's Norman Bates.

DIRT is a novel of depth and complexity delivered with Vann's trademark ruthless imagination and penetrating style. It opens in 1985 on a Sacramento Valley walnut farm in Northern California. With a comic tone that is unusual for Vann, he makes a mild mockery of a dysfunctional family consisting of its only male - 22 year old Galen - and the four women who dominate his life - his suffocating mother, Suzy-Q, his 17 year old vixen cousin, Jennifer, his bitter and sarcastic Aunt Helen, and finally his wealthy but dementia-addled Grandma.

Galen has always hoped for a normal young man's life, to perhaps travel across Europe for a year before enrolling in a university and in the meantime to also lose his virginity to a woman he would fall madly in love with...but Galen's mother has other plans for her only child.

In order to move beyond the boundaries and limitations set for him by the unyielding matriarchal power of his mother, Galen takes on the New Age in fullest measure. The hero's journey is to turn his gaze from the externals of the world around him and to look deep within himself. Galen practices vegetarianism (and also fasting and bulimia), Qigong and transcendental meditation. He does sweat lodges and walks on hot coals. He attempts to walk on water and performs Native American ceremonial dances. He chants and he repeats mantras. He channels Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge and reads The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. He studies Jonathan Livingston Seagull while listening to recorded nature sounds of breaking waves on the beach. His favorite music is Kitaro's SILK ROAD and he works tirelessly at achieving a higher level of consciousness and a greater awareness of reality.

But in addition to transcendence and New Age enlightenment, Galen also desires his seductive cousin Jennifer, and he does so with such robust obsession, his lust will ultimately become his tragic flaw.

It is Galen's tragic flaw which turns DIRT from satirical humor into psychological horror. It is the crux where the leitmotif of dirt becomes the primal force that drives Vann's twisty narrative deep into the surreal labyrinth of Galen's fractured psyche. Dirt becomes Galen's puja, his purification. But it also becomes his madness.

With Dirt: A Novel, Vann masterfully crafts a fiction of such fierce beauty, staggering force and mind-blowing finesse that as far as this reader is concerned, in great contemporary American literature... David Vann is his own genre.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars I did not connect with any of it. Not recommended. May 19, 2012

By Kimberly J. Karas VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I see a good amount of praise for Dirt though myself I have little good to say here. I realize that this is the work of a much acclaimed, prize winning author and yet I walked away from Dirt empty. My first time reading Vann and if this is any indicator, it will be my last time. I anticipate getting "not helpful" votes for my review by other readers who disagree with my opinions. I'm bringing it on regardless. Reviews are meant to help those who are thinking about reading the book and I want to give my two cents that it wasn't a good read in my opinion.

First off you need to know that the writing is graphic when it comes to sexual topics and violence. That was a little too much for me and I wasn't expecting it, hence my first strike against the book.

The novel is one of a dysfunctional family centering around main character Galen who is 22 and living at home with Mom in the old family home complete with nut orchard, how fitting! Other family members are his maternal grandmother who despite being in good physical health, is confined to a nursing home due to mental deterioration. The family also includes Galen's aunt who is a rival against his mother and his cousin who is 17 and a very disturbing young woman. She is a creature who exudes sexuality and violence simultaneously. Also she professes that being violent is just being part of the family. The premise and trying to figure out what makes these people tick are what brought me into the book. The characters I found to be flat, strike two. If the plot went somewhere, it went without me. Three strikes and you're out.

I don't mind a depressing story of which we all agree this clearly is. I do like dark humor and sarcasm which editorial reviews suggest you will find here. If it's in there it clearly went over my head. It seems like a lot of questions with loose ends as to family history, character motives and the finale is most unsatisfying. It's more of a book that just ends rather than concludes in any way. On the plus side it's a fast-paced read so I didn't have to waste much time getting through it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Actions Propel the Protagonist to Inevitable Tragedy March 7, 2012

By Bonnie Brody TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Dirt by David Vann is a tragedy in the true Greek sense of the word. The protagonist is propelled by actions to destroy his own life and that of a loved one. There is no stopping the chain of events.

The novel takes place outside of Sacramento, California in 1985. Galen and his mother live on a walnut orchard surrounded by suburbia. His grandmother has been put in a home because she has dementia. He and his mother visit her daily. Galen is 22 years old and has been wanting to go to college or study a year abroad in France but his mother keeps telling him that they do not have the money. He and his mother, Suzie Q, live off the proceeds of a trust from his grandmother. Galen also has an aunt Helen and cousin Jennifer who are not in his grandmother's favor. Galen refers to them as `the mafia'. "The mafia standing by on the deck, watching with their arms folded. Galen felt almost bad for them for a moment, always on the sidelines. But that was just the order of things. Galen and his mother were first, and they were second, and that was just the way it was. It couldn't be changed."

Jennifer is a luscious 17 year old tempting Galen with her body at the same time that she is sadistic to him. He is a virgin and his only exposure to sex is Hustler magazine and Jennifer, his first cousin. His sexual obsession with Jennifer contributes to the tragic consequences of this novel.

Galen is an odd one, interested in the works of Gibran, especially The Prophet. He reads Siddhartha, Jonathon Livingston Seagull, and listens to the music of Kitaro. He tries to be in the here and now, in a meditative trance that he takes from an eclectic mix of new-age venues. He chants, hums, prays, and sings but he is truly a lost soul. He thinks that water might be the answer to his being but ends up realizing that dirt is the true essence to which he must pay heed. "Dirt was inescapable. Always a return to dirt." He lives with the knowledge that life is about Samsara, or suffering.

At times vegetarian and bulimic, Galen wants to know more about the history of his family, especially the violence. "If only there were some way he could throw up his family and not have them inside him anymore." Unfortunately, this is not possible. He also understands "that what held his family together was violence. But he was locked here, glued in place, unable to move." Helen has no problem discussing the history of family violence but Suzie Q pretends everything was hunky dory growing up and no violence ever occurred. She is the avoider and Helen is the scrapbook of every wrong.

I don't want to give more away about this wonderful book except to say it is an exceptionally vivid story of a dysfunctional family that is like no other book I have ever read. It cornered me and placed me in its shadow world like a spy. I did not want to come up for air as I read each page. I was both mesmerized and horrified by the events. There is some humor but the horrors far outweigh the light parts of the book for even in the humor there is meanness.

By all means, read this book. Vann is a brilliant author and story teller. There is none like him and this book deserves as wide an audience as possible.