Order SUNSET AND SAWDUST here
(also reviewed)
Order THE DRIVE-IN here
Order COLD IN JULY here
Order SAVAGE SEASON here
Order MUCHO MOJO here
Order THE BOTTOMS here
Order PRISONER 489 here
''I ain't taking another whipping from you.''
''A wife is obedient to her husband.''
''I ain't your wife no more.''
''In the eyes of God you are.''
''Then he better turn his head.'' She put the shotgun to her shoulder, sighed down the barrels.
The hardest thing to write for a male author is a female protagonist that rings true and interesting. Several have tried their hand at it, and few were able to step outside themselves long enough to create a female character that, you know, sounds and acts like a woman would. I thought that if anybody could pull if off, champion mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale would. It's what he tried to accomplish with his revisionist western/social novel SUNSET AND SAWDUST, and it's an ambitious enough concept to make you wonder. Even Lansdale can't make it happen though. SUNSET AND SAWDUST's a tremendous period novel and a tightly wrapped mystery, but it carries the feminism themes as gracefully as a garbage truck on black ice.
Carrie Lynn Beck has been known as Sunset Jones by the inhabitants of Camp Rapture because she has bright, fiery red hair and that she married Pete Jones, the town's constable. Pete was somewhat of an asshole though, a drunk, a wife beater and even a rapist on his worst day, so Sunset blew his brains out in the midst of a memorable beating/rape he was administrating her. Being a single mother with a teenage daughter, Sunset doesn't know who to turn to aside from her in-laws, who happen to take the news of their son's murder admirably well. Her mother in law Marilyn arranges for her to take over Pete's job as the constable and Sunset is immediatly thrown into a bleak double homicide case that'll turn the people of Camp Rapture against her.
I was chatting with my friend TanTan the other day (she's my reference in anything feminism-related) and she asked me what I thought was a very pertinent question: ''Why is a woman called badass only when she behaves like a man? Badass is badass, it's about taking care of business.'' The TanTanator has a point. I believe SUNSET AND SAWDUST revolved around Sunset Jones taking over as constable, but the entire world seems to exist to justify her quest. The men are all stupid and gutless, except for a couple characters who had something to offer Sunset (including her long, lost dad, that was weird). Notice that outside Sunset's party, there are actually no living and breathing women in SUNSET AND SAWDUST. Only men who feel offended at women doing things all the time.
Don't get me wrong, Joe Lansdale's still the man.
Let me put an addendum to my criticism, though. I'm a huge fan of Joe R. Lansdale's work and I believe there's a certain standard of quality all of his work has. SUNSET AND SAWDUST crackles with a tremendous sense of place and powerful, taut dialogue, and despite it's flaws, it's still an above average mystery. My favourite characters were Hillbilly and Clyde Fox, Sunset's assistants, who were tormented by her very presence and kept fighting through it through the entire novel. There's a technical mastery to Joe Lansdale's fiction that undisputable. So what went wrong in SUNSET AND SAWDUST (at least, for me)?
See, Lansdale is a very ideological writer. His protagonists often find themselves fighting ideas and greater injustices rather than fighting other characters to get what they need. I mean, his recurring character Leonard Pine is black and gay in East Texas, and his existence is a challenge to conservatism. But Leonard's a full-blown character, drawn in several shades of grey as Sunset Jones' more of an embodiment of progressive philosophy. Whatever she does is bound to transcend the boundaries of early century Texas and it's what she's doomed to be because there is very little information about who she was before the traumatic event of killing Pete. What I think didn't work in SUNSET AND SAWDUST was that the thesis aspect of the novel cast shadow upon the narrative side. It can happen to the best.
The novels of Joe R. Lansdale have swept me away so many times, I actually felt like shit that SUNSET AND SAWDUST annoyed me the way it did. I felt like I had just cussed my dad or something. Anyway, I stand by my point, Sunset Jones was more of a living challenge to the conservative ideas of early century East Texas than a complete character. It's an angle an author is free to take, but it was a little less interesting to me than the usual Joe Lansdale novel. TanTan was right, you know? If Sunset Jones spent just a little more time facing her terrifying ordeal as a woman instead of being what her husband used to be, I would've loved her a bit more. I was surprised not to like this novel more than I did, but even the best hitters strike out sometimes, right?