Customer Reviews

The Quick and the Dead

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This is a darkly comedic novel by one of America's premiere writers of fiction. Reviewers have compared her to Flannery O'Connor and that comparison is valid in terms of originality and the ability to cut through the pretense of life and reveal what people do and what they think beneath the surface of convention. But Joy Williams does not have Flannery O'Connor's polished sense of story and structure; however she doesn't need it. She has instead an eagle's eye for detail and an awesome command of language. Her characters are alive with the quickness of life, its strange twists and turns, its Shakespearean absurdity and its banality and wonder. So insightful and so sharply rendered is her prose that it alone carries us along. Into the mouths of babes she puts words of wisdom and out the mouths of her everyday people emerge worldly philosophies.

Thus 8-year-old Emily Bliss Pickless, who likes to pour dirt on her head and to pretend she doesn't know how to read to see if adults will try to mislead her, observes, "You had to act dumb around adults, otherwise there was no point in being around them at all." Assessing her mother's new boyfriend, she concludes, "...mother lacked all discrimination when it came to men." (p. 167) When she has finished re-educating the proprietor of the stuffed animal/trophy museum, we find it shut down with her sign out front, accurately announcing, "CLOSED FOR RECONSIDERATION."

Thus Nurse Daisy, as she washes Freddie Fallow, an elderly 350-pound mountain of an old man (who had to be hoisted into the tub with the aid of block and tackle), muses, "Isn't water a remarkable element? It's exempt from getting wet. It's as exempt from getting wet as God is exempt from the passion of love." (p. 169) Or, "Birth is the cause of death," and "The set trap never tires of waiting." (p. 170) Or even, "Our capacity to do evil has nothing to do with our innocence." (p. 171) Or--most especially--her description of Freddie's impending death as, "the evaporation of your little droplet above the sea..." (p. 172)

This last is an echo of Buddhism that Williams wants to satirize, as she does through the person of the undead Ginger, whose husband Carter has taken a fancy to his gardener, Donald, who espouses trendy Eastern philosophies. She begins, "What's he doing tonight, out hand-pollinating something?" She goes on to say, "Slow white dudes studying Buddhism make me sick," and finishes up with, "I can just hear him. It's only death, Ginger. Everything is fine...Does he say, Thank you, Illusion, every time he manages to overcome some piddling obstacle in his silly life?"

Thus Joy Williams's characters are vehicles for the author's expressions and her starkly original slant on the living and the dead. But what Joy Williams does so well is that she plays fair. The words of quirky wisdom come not necessarily from characters who represent her own views, such as Alice and Emily (although sometimes they do) but they can even come from the most minor of her human creatures. Thus Ottolie "who resembled an iguana" tells Alice from her bed, "I never sleep, you know...Never. Someone sleeps for me. She lives in Nebraska." Ottolie adds, "Aksarben. That's where I get a lot of my people. You have to learn how to delegate tasks." (p. 117)

Some have criticized this novel as "structurally a mess." Not so. Williams has her own organizing mechanisms. Characters flow from one to another; incidents are connected by invisible synchronicities; people appear to further the plot, and then disappear, but they are melded into the psychological and atmospheric structure of the novel. One sees this in the rednecks who seem to appear just to finish off poor Ray of the slanted mouth, but actually they are essential fixtures of the landscape as they smoke dope and shotgun saguaros, observing that "Shooting felt good..." consisting in "the increase of one's power," or that "Paranoia is having all the facts." (p. 152)

Sometimes what is best about Joy Williams is the sheer dazzle of language. Thus the unrelenting Arizona sun is made manifest through metaphor: "The sun shone like oil upon the limousine's hood, which had been waxed to the shine of water." Or the boy Alice sees whose hair was "as white as glare." (pp. 303-304) And sometimes the best thing is her revelation of character with just a phrase or two. Thus we know what Annabel is like because she worries about things like running out of avocado butter or whether she can actually wear beige or not. On page 163 a waiter, who wore "white clinging plastic gloves" comes to life with just these words:

"Have a nice remainder of the rest of your life," the waiter said. "Gotta cough." He turned away.

Or the two loud women at a nearby table who "had poured sugar on their food so they wouldn't eat anymore."

People yearn for things that cannot be, and that is life. Thus Ginger yearns for Carter to renew their vows of love and for him to join her, but he prefers to conjoin with Donald. And Alice is strangely smitten with the tuxedo-wearing piano player who is (unknown to her, but Annabel sees this clearly) irrevocably gay. But some people do indeed find love or something akin, as the stuffed animal museum owner and his adored Pickless, or Carter with Donald, or Annabel and Paris. Or the "pretty lizard" with J.C.'s missing "Little Wonder."

"The Quick and the Dead" (Second Timothy: 4:1; also The Book of Common Prayer) is a work of art that finds its own structure, that reveals itself to us in its own way. It is a fascinating reading experience, alive and vital, a tour de force of language and character, a darkly comedic romp through the sunshine of our psyches.

Having paid little regard to the literary careerist's rule of "publish early and publish often," Joy Williams tends to be underrated. Only four fiction titles stand in between her State of Grace, nominated for the 1974 National Book Award, and this new novel.

Williams is sometimes taken as an inheritor for Flannery O'Connor, who died in 1964. Both exhibit ferocious intellects that, for all their fascination, you wouldn't necessarily want as permanent next-door neighbours.

Corvus, Alice and Annabel are three motherless children pinned down in a harsh American desert landscape. The wraith of Annabel's mother pitilessly upbraids her father, all the while coyly inviting him into her "skeleton arms". Alice assists the still-living dead at the old folks' home, while Corvus tries her hand at arson.

As various characters explain helpfully, the human body is but a thief and a counterpart, while its annihilation is no failure, but merely "a night between two days ... the Radiant Coat". In The Quick and the Dead, death's personal business calls are inventive and grimly amusing.

Williams has lost none of her metaphysical skills but, structurally, her earlier novel Breaking and Entering is the more elegant.

I don't know how I managed to overlook Joy Williams before. If her other books are even half as good as this (and I plan to find out right away), it will be a miracle. The Quick and the Dead could very well be the best novel I've read this year. The language constantly surprises, and she very deftly conjures a narrative out of the most elusive (and allusive) elements. Comic, profound, and remarkably thoughtful. Comparable in some ways to Lynda Barry's Cruddy (another great book), but utterly original. I can't gush enough.

This is one of my favorite novels of all time. It is absolutely flawless - a deranged, bizarre trip into the heart of the desert and the minds of the characters who populate that arid climate and their own internal, personal, emotionally devastating landscapes. Joy Williams creates a world of heartlessness, beauty, insincerity, twisted motivations, utterly believable and flawed characters, and the most quotable dialogue I've found in any book. This novel was up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 but Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" took home the prize. Joy should have won, no question, but if she had to lose to someone I suppose I'm glad it was Mr. Chabon. Anyway, back to Joy - not only does she create a world of dazzling brilliance, she quite effectively mocks our modern culture and comes up with characters that are utterly distinct and memorable and also human - I dare anyone to read this novel and not find at least two characters they can strongly relate to and could mistake for themselves. Joy Williams, simply, is one of the best writers around, and this is one of the best things I've ever read. It's absolutely teeming with originality, genius ideas, and wonderful execution. I wish I'd written it. It's a novel that you don't so much read as experience, it's something that pulls you in with it's hooks and releases you, at the final page utterly changed. It will stick with you. I loaned out my hardback copy almost two years ago to my cousin, who is an English teacher, she's read it several times now and has yet to return it. I had to go out and buy another copy, just because I couldn't handle being without it for so long. When I first discovered this book, I carried it with me nearly everywhere I went, just wanting to keep the characters and the pages close within my reach - it's hard being away from this book, it's become a part of me, almost as vital and important as an organ. This book has a heart of it's own, and you can feel it beating below the surface, you can taste the blood and muscles and sweat when you read. It's simply impossible to describe the passion and art that are contained within these pages. I think everyone could benefit from reading this. It is the great American novel - it touches and comments upon nearly everything in our society that one can think of, it points out what is wrong, it so perfectly describes people and their personalities and actions and it even has elements of the supernatural. Yet for all of Joy William's sarcasm and harsh wit, she loves her characters and does not judge them. Ultimately, we may not be left with answers to every question, but we are left with hope, as delicious as honey from a thorn.

First off,to the Reader From Toronto above:the answer to your question is YES!Ms.Williams other works are just as wonderful as TQATD.Especially the novel, "Breaking and Entering",which is somewhat similar in feel.And the book of stories,"Taking Care",which is where I first discovered Williams work.And I do agree that this should have won the Pulitzer.But why should we expect those judges to ever think outside the box and use their imaginations-LOOSEN UP already!And I'm in agreement with the prior reviewer that Flannery O'Connor is Williams'obvious antecedent -an excellent model to follow,nuff said.

A generous, flawed, and brilliant book, which, I agree, should have won the Pulitzer (Who'd they give it to anyway, P. Roth again?), just for the lines "Concern is the new consumerism" and "He poured himself another Scotch and things became considerably less interesting . . ." If you want a novel that speeds along like a hundred-minute movie, clean and tight, relying on a tractable plot to carry its images, this ain't it. It's sprawling, yes. Structurally it's a mess, yes. Which would be a problem if, sentence to sentence, conceit to conceit, it weren't so precise and insightful. Nobody else writes like this.

A quirky and fastidious rant of a novel about the life-and-death adventures of three misfit teenagers in the American desert. Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, each a motherless child, are an unlikely circle of friends. One filled with convictions, another with loss, the third with a worldly pragmatism, they traverse an air-conditioned landscape eccentric with signs and portents -- from the preservation of the living dead in a nursing home to the presentation of the dead as living in a wildlife museum -- accompanied by restless, confounded adults. A father lusts after his handsome gardener even as he's haunted (literally) by his dead wife; a heartbroken dog runs afoul of an angry neighbor; a young stroke victim drifts westward, his luck running from worse to awful; a sickly musician for whom Alice develops an attraction is drawn instead toward darker imaginings and solutions; and an aging big-game hunter finds spiritual renewal through his infatuation with an eight-year-old, the formidable Emily Bliss Pickless. With nature thoroughly routed and the ambiguities of existence on full display, life and death continue in directions both invisible and apparent. Funny and serious, The Quick and the Dead limns the vagaries of love, the thirst for meaning, and the peculiar paths by which all creatures are led to their destiny. A panorama of contemporary life, endlessly surprising, vaguely apocalyptic, Williams' vision is unapologetically idiosyncratic, yet desperately relevant to our spiritual survival.

I just finished reading this book last night. I talked so much about it at work that three of my co-workers are asking to borrow it. I don't want to build it up too much. There are a dozen story lines/characters and not all of them interested me (Ginger and Carter were focused on way too much). However, I was mesmerized by all the children, especially Emily Pickless, and many times couldn't put the book down. Joy Williams is an incredible writer and the Quick and the Dead is a beautiful book that holds up to the very satisfying end. Read it if you like dark comedy/art house films but stay away if you need everything explained to you at the end.

joy williams just seems to get better with every book. i don't even know where to begin with writing about this book. her 4th novel is her longest and best, full of devastating writing - prose so sharp and original. she writes with fire and with feelings, i fell, of guilt, self-awareness, realization of death, fate of the human race. the novel's main characters are three teenage girls, whom bond over their dead mothers and live-out their inevitably lonesome fates in a desert setting. plenty of side characters propel the novel (including a dead wife revisting the husband) and make for the most interesting, transcending parts. i could relate to the hopelessness and want of more, as well all can. this novel is not done justice by my words.

If you are reading this review, this proves you have decent enough taste to read this amazing book, Changed my life. So underrated. Read it and weep.