Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale (Southwestern Writers Collection) [Hardcover]

Joe R Lansdale (Author), Bill Crider (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: Southwestern Writers Collection | Publication Date: March 1, 2009

Master of mojo storytelling, spinner of over-the-top yarns of horror, suspense, humor, mystery, science fiction, and even the Old West, Joe R. Lansdale has attracted a wide and enthusiastic following. His genre-defying work has brought him numerous awards, including the Grand Master of Horror from the World Horror Convention, the Edgar Award, the American Horror Award, seven Bram Stoker awards, the British Fantasy Award, Italy's Grinzane Prize for Literature, as well as Notable Book of the Year recognition twice from the New York Times.

Sanctified and Chicken-Fried is the first "true best of Lansdale" anthology. It brings together a unique mix of well-known short stories and excerpts from his acclaimed novels, along with new and previously unpublished material. In this collection of gothic tales that explore the dark and sometimes darkly humorous side of life and death, you'll meet traveling preachers with sinister agendas, towns lost to time, teenagers out for a good time who get more than they bargain for, and gangsters and strange goings-on at the end of the world. Out of the blender of Lansdale's imagination spew tall tales about men and mules, hogs and races, that are, in his words, "the equivalent of Aesop meets Flannery O'Connor on a date with William Faulkner, the events recorded by James M. Cain."

Whether you're a long-time fan of Joe R. Lansdale or just discovering his work, this anthology brings you the best of a writer whom the New York Times Book Review has praised for having "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace."

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Dallas Morning News:

'Sanctified and Chicken-Fried' by Joe R. Lansdale: the twisted soul of East Texas

By JANE SUMNER / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

What's a nice old girl like me doing reviewing a Joe R. Lansdale anthology? After all, you can drink while reading Lansdale, but you sure can't eat. And you can't read him at bedtime without inviting creepy dreams.

He may be violent, gruesome and shocking, but Lansdale is also one of the greatest yarn spinners of his generation: fearless, earthy, original, manic and dreadfully funny.

The mojo East Texas writer with a ton of awards, including seven Bram Stokers for superior achievement in horror, can write chilling stuff, but mostly he mixes up genres: horror, mystery, suspense, science fiction, Old West, humor and coming-of-age.

There are other Lansdale collections, but what editor Steven L. Davis wanted to do in this welcome addition to the Southwestern Writers Collection Series was "capture a distinctive element of Joe's work - the deep sense of East Texas that permeates his writing."

And except for a post-apocalyptic tale and an excerpt set in Deadwood from the rowdy out-of-print western novel The Magic Wagon, "the soul of East Texas" is here, he says, "in all its twisted, gothic beauty."

As a writer, Lansdale may not be appetizing, politically correct or genteel. But he is laugh-out-loud funny, acquainted with the night and often acutely profound. After dipping into this bunch of weirdness, a grin creased my face for the rest of the day.

But not all Lansdale is as ribald as "Mister Weed-Eater," his short story about a sightless groundskeeper that the author insists is based on true happenings. "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back," which helped fuel his big international rep, is dead-serious sci-fi that will hang in your head like a mushroom cloud.

The author's masterful novella, The Big Blow, set in Galveston Sept. 4-9, 1900, keys on a prizefight between a local black boxer and a white street fighter pro imported to give him a comeuppance.

And who but Lansdale, himself a martial artist, would have an elderly Elvis and black JFK battling a mummy at a rundown nursing home in wacky, touching "Bubba Ho-Tep"? A movie version hit the big screen in 2002.

Here, too, are excerpts from the author's haunting out-of-print novel A Fine Dark Line and three of his favorite short stories: "The Pit," about backwoods dog fights, man fights and snake-fondling; "The Fat Man and the Elephant," about a preacher who finds inspiration at a sad roadside zoo; and Lansdale's unflinching signature piece, "Night They Missed the Horror Show," about two hicks who skip a drive-in horror flick, because a black man is the star, and encounter real evil.

The wonderful "White Mule, Spotted Pig" proves that, as Davis says: "Joe addresses uncomfortable topics like sexism and racism in a challenging, in-your-face kind of way. Sometimes with high satire or low comedy but always with an open heart."

Anthologies are an editor's call, but my Lansdale reader would have included something from one of the author's raunchy, witty Hap Collins-Leonard Pine whodunits and from his Edgar Award-winning period novel, The Bottoms. But if you're new to Lansdale, not easily shocked or offended, Sanctified and Chicken- Fried is a good place to jump in and hang on for a crazy ride off the rails.

Jane Sumner is an Austin freelance writer.

[e-mail] -- Jane Sumner, Dallas Morning News, March 29, 2009

About the Author

JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of thirty novels, including The Bottoms, Mucho Mojo, A Fine Dark Line, Two-Bear Mambo, and Bad Chili, as well as two hundred shorter works in fiction, nonfiction, essays, and columns. His screenplays, novels, and stories have frequently been optioned by producers and directors such as David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and Adam Friedman. He has written teleplays for Batman: The Animated Series, as well as a multitude of comic book scripts. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was filmed and starred Ossie Davis and Bruce Campbell, and his short story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was filmed for Showtime.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press; First Edition edition (March 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292719418
• ISBN-13: 978-0292719415
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,315,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Hotep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror." He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MoJoe Gets the Hifalutin Treatment: One of the Best Lansdale Anthologies Yet, April 26, 2009

By 

LawrenceSvetlana (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale (Southwestern Writers Collection) (Hardcover)

Anyone who knows anything about Joe R. Lansdale knows that his very best is included here. And if you're new, well, you're going to find out. Years ago, when I didn't even know who Joe was, I came across the free story "Fat Man and the Elephant" on Joe's site (after having been referred to him by Andrew Vachss's site). I don't want to ruin the story for people who don't know the details of it, but suffice it to say: It's the very best of the kind of stories that mix elephant poo, racial tension and overcoming racial divides, and downhome Southern entrepreneurism. Come to think of it, this brings up an issue that is very often true with Lansdale: this is the only story of its kind. There's nothing else out there like "Fat Man and the Elephant"; its cast of characters, its plot, and its overarching theme are so unique that it deserves to be called on of Joe's "best-of"s. I could talk about all these, but I'll merely mention a couple more. "Mister Weed Eater" is a wicked tale about evil existing in the guise of the helpless; and, though events are sickening and sad, you'll laugh at least once every page in spite of yourself and in spite of the woe that's the major element of this story. Joe's magnum opus is "Bubba Ho-Tep," a scatological masterpiece (I'm serious, here, folks) that is one of the most tightly written, word-for-word thought out story that I honestly think I've ever read. It is undoubtedly one of the few popular genre fiction (I'm assuming that since we've graduated to admitting a Zombie Genre, that there's a Mummy Genre now) pieces that have ever made me realize that it's writer is for real. Again, it's word-for-word mastery. "The Big Blow," "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back," "Night They Missed the Horror Show," and "The Magic Wagon" are all Lansdale classics: the big ones. "The Pit" has been anthologized several times and selected by fine writers in the modern realistic, horror, and mystery fields. "A Fine Dark Line" and "The Big Blow" are pieces that, honestly, I have to say I would have traded for others. Joe has stories that, in my opinion, beat these at every turn. That's not to say that they're not worth reading. Fans who are new to Joe are likely to be impressed with these. "White Mule, Spotted Pig" is the truly Southern fried piece here. It is a hilarious rampage through crazy south of the Mason-Dixon line hilarity and inanity. Although I know I'm risking sounding like a blabbering fan boy, it is one of the best of his newest pieces. All in all, this book is a great look into Joe Lansdale's world. Granted it is an introduction to it, but I promise that, for those of you who are new, it would lead on to the rest of his works. This book is also introduced by the inestimable Bill Crider, rather famous for his own yarns. I don't see how new or old fans alike could go wrong with this collection. I think it'll be the best of Lansdale's best-of anthologies since Electric Gumbo: A Lansdale Reader, which, is undoubtedly the one that Sanctified and Chicken Fried has to beat. But it's title alone is already upping the ante for this University of Texas Press release. And, hey, it's supposedly portable. Great for taking to the bathroom, sneaking under the pillow when you're supposed to pleasing your better half, or sitting in a hot, closed tent breathing in elephant crap. In other words, based on the stories that's included alone, it's great stuff.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lansdale's humor, July 5, 2009

By 

Scott (Mt Pleasant, SC, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale (Southwestern Writers Collection) (Hardcover)

What's in here is excellent; "Bubba Ho Tep" and other stories show why Lansdale has become such a cult favorite. Wry sensibilities mixed with an amazing imagination. Lansdale isn't for the faint of heart, as his long story about the Galveston hurricane and Jack Johnson make clear. My only complaint is that a couple of novel excerpts are included instead of, perhaps, any excluded short stories or a short novel (or novella) in its entirety. Very much worth your while, though.

5.0 out of 5 stars SANCTIFIED & CHICKEN FRIED, November 8, 2011

By 

PHILLIP G. BUIE - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale (Southwestern Writers Collection) (Hardcover)

ALWAYS ENJOY ANYTHING EDITED OR WRITTEN BY JOE R. LANSDALE. GOOD BOOK .
HAVE BEEN A FAN OF LANSDALE'S FOR QUITE A WHILE.