Customer Reviews

This Side of Jordan

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A multi-layered and beautifully written account of Depression-era middle America, Monte Schulz's new novel "This Side of Jordan" is one of the season's most unexpected surprises. In an unlikely collaboration--Schulz, son of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, and Fantagraphic Books (a label mostly known for graphic novels) have released a title of real literary merit. Don't let the unorthodox premise fool you, though. In "Jordan," the protagonist, a consumptive farm boy named Alvin, joins forces with a con man killer and a dwarf. Together, the threesome traverse America's heartland embarking on unlikely friendships, random acts of violence and facing a final showdown in, of all places, the circus.

Sounds like quite an adventure--and sometimes it can be. There are some moments within the crime spree that evoke memories of "Bonnie and Clyde" and/or "Badlands." But far from a propulsive plot driven narrative, Monte Schulz has achieved something deeper and richer than you might anticipate. With descriptive prose echoing some of the Southern greats, "This Side of Jordan" plays almost like a series of essays. Each segment of the book has its own voice with its own characters and plot. It is these individual tales, which range from hilarious to heartbreaking, that weave together a remarkable and fateful journey.

Schulz has really captured the feel of a time and place with spot-on characterizations and locales. I particularly liked the ambivalence and truthfulness within the oddball leads on this road trip. Alvin is no hero. Initially, you root for him to break free of his illness and the confines of his dreary life--but soon, you come to realize that he's not a particularly likable character. The dwarf, verbose and show-offy, is an obvious source of ridicule for Alvin. But while he is definite comic relief in his initial presence, his character evolves into the moral centerpiece of this twisted tale. "This Side of Jordan" holds many surprises. The language and tone of Schulz's story are a joy to read--his unique voice and powerful descriptive capabilities are something I'd happily revisit in future efforts! Add one terrific story, and "This Side of Jordan" is an unqualified success! KGHarris, 9/10.

I had high hopes when I started this one. The narrative style was natural and transparent, the dialogue was convincing, and the descriptions were thorough without being tiresome. However ... I found myself liking this book less and less the more I read it. Mr. Schulz set himself a challenge by deciding to use a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist, and that decision has cost him...

Alvin Pendergast is a little twerp. Okay, he's got tuberculosis; I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for him, but as a reader privy to his thoughts and observing his actions, I did not like him at all. He's stupid, ignorant, mindlessly belligerent ... he doesn't want people to think of him as a hick, but the truth is he's the biggest hick in the entire book. He failed to earn my respect and he clearly did not deserve my sympathy.

Rascal the dwarf is the most appealing character but he comes across more like a cartoon than a person. He's a witty, eccentric raconteur, constantly telling tall tales (which might or might not be true) and he bears adversity with a certain aplomb. Constantly cheerful and blessed with the gift of gab, he never meets a stranger. Rascal is able to be at ease and find something to appreciate in every situation - especially when Alvin sees nothing worthwhile in it.

Chester the sociopath is more of a prop than a character. He's just "evil" and that's all we know about him. He appears in the story to perform atrocious acts and is absent the rest of the time.

About 2/3 of the way through the book, in Icara, Illinois, a Peanuts character makes a subtle cameo appearance. You'll know it when you see it. Not long after this, the book suddenly transmogrifies into a strange philosophical, epiphanic novel in which the characters all talk like they're in a foreign arthouse movie. They deliver lines full of lyrical beauty but apropos of nothing, and the narrative style gets noticeably more florid. I first became aware of this transformation during the dinner scene in the boardinghouse. The conversation is nothing but an extended non-sequitur which left me going "HUH??? What happened to the book I was reading?" Everybody waxes poetical, and the book remains clogged with wax from here til the end. Later there's a seance which is equally superfluous. It felt like an excerpt from another book had been accidentally pasted into the manuscript.

The story builds up to an extremely lame climax at a circus, handled very briefly as if the author was in a rush to finish. After this, there's a short resolution full of forced sentiment and a very generic summation of the book's "deeper meaning." I pictured Alvin clicking his heels three times and saying "There's no place like home" at the end. It was almost that corny.

In summation, this book was a big bait-and-switch disappointment. It wasted my time, and that is the one unforgivable sin when it comes to literature.

As a Southerner through and through and a long-time admirer of the gentle wisdom of his father;s cartoons, I eagerly anticiated reading this book. Neither its characters or its prose embraced me, and it failed to maintain my interest. I kept thinking Mr. Schultz was retracing ground trod my energetically and agily by earlier writers.

Monte Schulz here presents us with a novel that is long on narrative prose but short on substance. It follows the story of a farm boy who has spent the last year of his life in a sanitarium because he had tuberculosis. Alvin is fully fleshed out in the story. He isn't the most likable person, but then again he has had a year of his life stolen and his understandably surly.
It's ultimately a travel novel. On paper it seems like it would work too. We got our "hero", the wise but light hearted character (Rascal the dwarf), and the evil villain (Chester). The real problem comes in where the author fails to flesh the characters fully out. They come across as sketches of who they are supposed to be.
Once again I will commend Mr Schulz on his use of description. He turns the phrase very well. But in the end it doesn't really get anywhere. Near the end of the book a lot of philosophical thinking is injected into the story. But it should've been there all along. Since it wasn't, it comes off to me as surreal and a bit preachy.

I would probably give Mr. Schulz another chance on his next book. But I definitely won't rush out to buy it. I will wait for the bargain bin..

It was very interesting how Alvin's tuberculosis made him very sensitive about life and death. I look forward to "Crossing Eden" coming out in 2012.

just finished reading a review copy. monte is coming to our bookstore, tsunami books in eugene, in october. i've been looking for a great new american voice for years. i think i've found it. i laughed out loud, i cheered, i broke down and cried, my mind was very pleasantly stretched. much like "bel canto, " i found this book of penultimate 'cinemagraphic' quality. can't wait for volumes 2 and 3. first printing of 8000 is bound to be gone in a heartbeat. with all the violence of "no country for old men," innocence in this book takes the day. thank you monte schulz. scott landfield, proprietor, tsunami books, eugene, oregon

'All that glitters is not gold and all that's mysterious is not ghosts in this world of wonders.' - Rascal - This Side of Jordan.

This Side of Jordan by Monte Schulz is a masterpiece. I forgot I was reading a book and became completely entranced by the writings and the story in this book. The setting takes place before the Great Depression but it is still in a time of trial with the hard work and rough way of life in the late 1920's.

'This Side of Jordan,' is ripe with atmosphere: dusty roads and small towns, characters good and bad that you'll love or despise. You'll certainly become emmersed in the grand writing and descriptions set out before you as you read.

Alvin is a comsumptive young man who wants to avoid another stay at the sanitarium where he'd spent a fearful year of his life living among those like himself struck with tubuculosis. At a crossroad of indescision he sets off across the river with someone he probably would have later chosen to avoid but goes nonetheless and gets himself knee deep into trouble. Along the way he meets Rascal - one of the most amazing characters I have encountered in my world of books. The three set forth across the South in one heck of an adventure.

I have lived in the South and found it as magical and lyrical as described in this book, as lively and depressing and enchanting and shattering as Monte has set pen to paper to describe. Granted this story takes place in another age and this makes the story even better.

There are many branches to the story and it's a lot like looking into a prism; there are glimmers and colors, smells and moods, blossoms and backroads and shadow and light much like in a painting you'd like to just sit and study and absorb.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading Carson McCullers, Cormac McCarthy, John Kennedy Toole, Flannery O'Connor or early Capote - writers such as these who capture so completely and deftly the tales of life and the human condition and who could and can knock out such a darn good story that it makes you feel sad to see the end coming.

Twelve years after the publication of his first novel, "Down by the River," Monte Schulz makes his return with his second, "This Side of Jordan," the first volume of a trilogy about the Jazz age in America.

Set during the summer of 1929, Schulz's story takes place during the middle of Prohibition, and just before the stock market crash which would later be recognized as the beginning of the great depression. His protagonist, Alvin Pendergast, is a consumptive Illinois farm boy who is at best ambivalent about his life on the farm. Having thus far survived tuberculosis, he lives his life begrudgingly doing chores on his aunt and uncle's farm. He occasionally escapes the drudgery of his life by going into town to watch, and vicariously participate in, dance marathons. He isn't necessarily envious of the lives of others, but he longs for a different, more active life for himself.

At one such dance marathon Alvin meets Chester Burke, a smooth talking conman who drives a tan Packard Six. It doesn't take much for Chester to convince Alvin to leave his life on the farm for a night and come with him across the Mississippi River, for a bite to eat and a stay overnight.

The next day Chester drops Alvin off in Hadleyville, Missouri with instructions to meet him at the bank. When he gets there he is to walk up to the window and hand the teller a note, "My nephew here is come to get his inheritance which is one thousand dollars. Please let him have it."

Along the way to the bank Alvin meets a dwarf named Rascal, who has escaped from his tyrannical and abusive aunt. After a bit of conversation, Alvin shows the dwarf Chester's note and Rascal immediately recognizes it for what it is . . . a poorly planned attempt to rob the bank. The dwarf has a better plan and unexpectedly shows up at the bank to help. The Hadleyville bank robbery was beginning of a summer crime spree that would travel across Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa and leave several corpses in its wake.

Monte Schulz has done his home work, "This Side of Jordan" is written in the vernacular of "The Jazz Age," and the dialogue rings true to the era. However the book could stand to be tightened up a bit. There are occasional long and meandering segments of the book which do not serve the needs of the story and should have been shortened or cut entirely from the book.

Son of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz, Monte Schulz has cast three misfits of society to fill the pages of his novel. Alvin, much like his father's creation, Charlie Brown, doesn't quite know where he fits in the world, but that's as far as the comparison will go. As the summer goes on, Alvin realizes that his life on the other side of the river wasn't exactly what he thought it might be, and just like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" comes to realize "There's no place like home."

This book grabbed me at the outset. It was full of wonderful descriptions of 1929 mid-America and related a terrific scene at a dance marathon.

At the marathon, Alvin, the tubercular farmboy, hooks up with Clinton, a man with a cool Packard, and decides to go get something to eat with him. He decides to stay with him rather than returning home where he will be sent to the sanitarium again. From there, Alvin meets Rascal, a dwarf. Rascal joins the other two in a bank robbery that is hilarious and clever.

From there, nothing happens.

The wonderful descriptions continue on and on as the trio travels around the midwest. Clinton gets babes and commits crimes. We know that Alvin and Rascal occasionally have to clean up after him, and there must be some money involved, but the reader never gets to see the crime or the money.

The picaresque novel continues on and on affording Mr. Schulz many opportunities to show-off his wonderful skill as a descriptive writer. Unfortunately, there is no plot. There is nothing to keep the reader's interest or attention as, eventually, even the long descriptive passages get repetitive.

The beginning of this book had great promise, but then it ran aground. You can pick it up virtually anywhere and get a great descriptive passage that captures the lives and times of the era. However, you can't pick it up to see if anything else developes beyond the descriptions. It is a shame, because it is evident that Mr. Schulz can write with action verbs, like his portrayal of the one bank robbery we see. He also can write dialogue. Much more of those two facets and much less description and I would look forward to another book by him. This one, however, just did me in.

I was fortunate enough to hear author Monte Schulz read from his latest novel recently. This Side of Jordan is in my opinion his breakout work, an admirable result of meticulous historical research and marvelous wordcraft that just happens to tell a great story, too. Schulz manipulates words on the page the way a painter moves color across a canvas - with a combination of great skill, sensitivity, and love for both his subject and his medium. This Side of Jordan doesn't flinch away from either gross brutality or exquisite tenderness; the book deftly portrays human condition in all its forms without imposing judgment on its characters. This is something all too rare these days. Readers who still enjoy the sensual and intellectual stimulus of reading will not be disappointed by this book.