Arkansas (McSweeney's Rectangulars) (Hardcover)

~ John Brandon (Author) "Swin Ruiz was born in Tampa..." (more)
Key Phrases: pawnshop owner, new ranger, Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Bright's Bronco (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brandon introduces his main characters gradually in his quirky debut about a bunch of rootless drifters who form an unstable drug-distribution network in Arkansas: Swin Ruiz, who pulls his first scam before dropping out of college; Kyle Ribb, a shoplifter who stumbles on a job as a courier; and mysterious Ken Hovan (aka Froggy or Frog), who begins with bootleg tapes but graduates to run the shadowy organization. Tangential characters include a middleman, Pat Bright, who oversees Swin and Ruiz in their nebulous and phony cover jobs in a state park, and a black woman known only as Her, who passes packets and instructions to the couriers. As Swin and Kyle try to puzzle out how to survive in a crumbling organization, their futile attempts to create some semblance of a normal life evoke only pathos. Not evil as such, these unsympathetic people simply fall into a rut that leads inevitably to violence and death. (Mar.)
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Product Description

Arkansas is a biting first novel full of wet T-shirt contests, illicit drugs, and cross-country road trips. There are the days: the dappled grounds, the aimless yardwork, the hours in the booth giving directions to families in SUVs. And then there are the nights: crisscrossing the South with illicit goods, the shifty deals in dingy trailers, the vague orders from a boss they've never met. Before Kyle and Swin can recognize how close to paradise they are in this neglected state park in southern Arkansas, the lazy peace is shattered with a shot. Night blends into day. Dead bodies. Crooked superiors. Suspicious associates. It's on-the-job training, with no time for slow learning, bad judgment, or foul luck.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: McSweeney's; First Edition edition (March 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932416900
• ISBN-13: 978-1932416909
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #433,443 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well-done crime novel, February 12, 2008

By	David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a rather quirky, often compelling tale of four men--Swin, Kyle, Bright, and Froggy, and Swin's girlfriend Johnna. Swin and Kyle work for Bright, who in turn works for Froggy, although at times the exact chain of command seems a bit fuzzy. The primary activity of the group is moving illegal drugs--Swin and Kyle are sent to Florida, to Louisiana, to Texas in old cars with a stash of drugs and return with, say $50K in cash to Arkansas. We're not talking TV glamour here, no high living, no hobnobbing in glitzy Miami bars. Froggy is careful, and runs his operation almost like a communist cell: Swin and Kyle never know just who Froggy is, and it may be that Bright doesn't know either. But it pays the bills, if you don't mind living in run-down house trailers.

It's gritty storytelling, somewhere between Larry Brown, Harry Crews, and William Gay. You won't see any exciting car chases, but there is death. $50K may not seem like a lot to a Kenneth Lay or a John Gotti, but here it can be a major temptation. As you read the book you get the feeling that there is not going to be a nice happy ending: this is not the kind of life that fairy tales are made of.

Brandon does not--as of yet--have the lyrical writing of a William Gay or a Cormac McCarthy, as in Gay's Provinces of Night or McCarthy's Child of God. He does not--as of yet--have the fine sense of pace as you'll see in Crews' brilliant Feast of Snakes. But he certainly has the grit right, and that puts him in the Crews/Brown school. So this is a very good debut.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Drugs, Dirty Deals and murder in the South, Brandon's first is a good one!, March 3, 2008

By	James Vanek (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Arkansas is a great read! A fantastic combination of well-developed characters, intriguing plot and unbelievably clever, witty dialogue. The story of Kyle and Swin is an incredible saga that includes everything from sinister encounters with the South's drug underworld to comical exchanges with the many great southern characters found along the way. Brandon keeps you guessing, laughing and genuinely entertained right up to the last page.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not What You Might Expect (Which, If You Read McSweeney's, Is Expected), August 19, 2008

By	Sarah Buer (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Arkansas is a book that is unapologetic about breaking rules. It's full of unimportant details, irrelevant backstories with dialogues that don't always move the plot, a narrator who speaks in third person, but also in second, and then finally in first. Arkansas throws you off center, destroys your sense of balance. It makes you struggle and curse at your own inability to determine who exactly the good guy is.

And yet, you tolerate it. You tolerate it because it's different, because you can tell it's doing something new, just like Robert O'Conner's 'Buffalo Soldiers.' The same old elements are being combined in ways you never thought were possible, in ways that aren't fair. You're just starting to get hopelessly disoriented, pissed off, fed up, when John Brandon switches to second person. You. `You, Ken Hovan,' he says, and suddenly you don't get to be a confused reader anymore, but rather a confused character, inside the book, and you're not just watching the action, but in fact, you're the mastermind, the Godfather, the drug dealer who is responsible for everything. It's all your doing. Your fault. Your problem.

Once that happens, it's harder to put down. You want to know what it is that you, Ken Hovan, have been up to. So what is this book about? Objectively, it's about a bunch of drug dealers, criminals, and murderers who clearly weren't meant to be drug dealers, criminals, or murderers. They're too smart or too dumb, too sensitive or too insensitive, too comical and too harmless for the brutal, twisted, and gross things that they do. They like to cook. They have families. They fantasize and exercise and waste time in front of the tube.

You expect whores, torture scenes, overdoses and big cities from drug dealer books. You don't expect hilarity, mythical characters, meta moments, or philosophizing, and Brandon gives you all of those things. And then he does more; he gives you failure, and loss, and hurt, but not in a mushy gushy, call-you-mom-and-tell-her-you-love-her way. Instead he gives them to you in a choking, empty, silent way, a way that makes you question what you're doing here, and why you're doing it. `What's the plan for you two? You know, in life?' someone asks of one of the central characters, Swin. `We try to keep the meat on the bones and keep the bones moving,' he says, as if it's all that simple.

And when you're stuck in the middle of Arkansas, when you're alone there and trying to figure out what the hell is happening to you, and to the people around you, and to the life you've constructed, you start to think that maybe it is. Maybe it is that simple. Maybe it is that sad. Characters here feel what everyone has felt some point, guilty `to have life and not know what to do with it.' Some of them have ideals, but most of them don't. They get caught up, purely by luck, in the right things (friendship, tentatively, and love, vaguely) and, also by chance, in the wrong things. Somehow or another, that's what we all do- we fall into and out of things - while we ramble around in this confusing world, trying to keep the meat on the bones and keep the bones moving.

Meanwhile Brandon keeps coming back to the main man - you - and telling you how you feel. You (as the character) are an omniscient presence in the book, the Head Honcho, God, but you (as the reader) are also under Brandon's direction, at his mercy. "You can acknowledge the injustice and the absurdity of life," he says, "while never getting weighed down by these things." You realize that it's true. You can read this book without letting it keep you awake at night, but you can't read it without feeling its effects, now and then, when you go about performing your own mundane routine, dissecting your own predictable life. I couldn't relate to the drug deals, the murders, the being-a-fugitive-in-a-park. But I could relate to that one central question, and that, for me, was enough.