Book Review : Jordan Harper - Love and Other Wounds (2015)
Order LOVE AND OTHER WOUNDS here
(also reviewed)
Order AMERICAN DEATH SONGS here
I told him. Maybe he was a little hard of hearing. Don't push the button. He pushed the button. So I swabbed out his fucking earwax with a Q-Tip of the gods. If he'd listened there wouldn't be five cop cars outside and I wouldn't be playing eenie-meeny-miney-hostage. He pushed me to Plan B.
(PLAN C)
Being a literary critic is great because once you've found an audience, it's unlikely you'll ever run out of anything to read ever again. At least, not for as long as you keep at it. One thing that sucks about that is that you never (or rarely) get to read your favorite books twice, because you have a schedule to keep and an audience to entertain. I have read and reviewed Jordan Harper's first short story collection American Death Songs in 2013 . It was evident he was a standout talent, but I don't know. He didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet.
Love & Other Wounds is an updated version of this collection. It's refined, reworked, more cohesive and augmented with a couple new stories. It's a tremendous collection from one of a great young American writer.
To my surprise, Love & Other Wounds starts with the best story in American Death Song : Agua Dulce. I have discussed this story in length on this blog and on social media already, but I need to tell you again. It's difficult to write a compelling action scene. Maybe it's the most difficult thing in fiction. Most I've read as a reviewer were boring as hell.
Agua Dulce kept me glued to the page and felt as fresh as the first three or four times I read it, in 2013. The otherworldly setting of a wildfire and the slow build of emotional tension, subtly intertwined in breathless action are simply just a perfect storm. I don't know if it could've lasted for an entire novel, but each time I read this story, I'm flying back to that city on the edge of oblivion and nothing is important except the next second in the life of its desperate protagonist.
The reason why Agua Dulce is the first story in Love & Other Wounds is simple: it's not the best story in the collection. Whoever put the stories together, whether it's Jordan Harper or his editor, put them together like a rock show: it opens up with a hit to shock the crowd and only builds momentum from there. I am notoriously critical of dog fiction because they are often used as plot devices in order to artificially create pathos, Jordan Harper's story Lucy in the Pit is...is...I don't know what it is, but it hit me like a cement shovel. The first person narration is key to the success of this story, because the protagonist is torn about what he does (handling pit dogs) and looks up to Lucy for her courage and her gameness.
Lucy in the Pit is a cliché busting freight train and I would've be surprised if it got canonized by academia and thought in creating writing classes as an example of great writing.
I don't find peace in some ashram or on a therapist's couch. It's here in this gun and this car, and through the glass door. It's inside the gas station as I burst through that glass door. It's pouring like tears from the terrified eyes of the clerk. It's inside that cash register. It's under the counter as the scared man's hands go out of view. It's in that moment when maybe it's money he's going for or maybe it's a shotgun to silly string my guts on the chip rack behind me. I tell you that moment lasts forever and blinks by like it's nothing.
(PROVE IT ALL NIGHT)
The short stories of Love & Other Wounds are not necessarily connected, but some characters reappear from time to time. One of my favorites is named Great Mashburn, he's an interloper living in the Ozarks. He's the son of a local legend, a neo-nazi serving hard time in Leavenworth penitentiary. Geat's as tough, but he's learned from his father's criminal and ideological mistakes. He's both compelling and sympathetic, yet he carries around an unspeakable darkness that doesn't feel artificial and is most easily observable in the story I Wish They Never Named Him Mad Dog, which is another of my personal favorites.
Playing Dead, Plan C, Beautiful Trash, Heart Check and Johnny Cash is Dead are all unique and beautiful in their own ways too. Love & Other Wounds displays the tremendous narrative range of Jordan Harper as a writer. He’s a standout talent. I think he is bound for a mainstream breakout that won't involve any form of narrative compromise whatsoever. The dude is just THAT good. He writes like a demon hybrid of Donald Ray Pollock and Nic Pizzolatto on his best day *. There's a little of James Ellroy's uncompromising approach to his prose, too.
I don't think this breakout is going to happen with Love & Other Wounds, simply because short stories are a hard sell, It might just happen with his first novel If All Roads Were Blind though, scheduled for publishing in 2016. I'm buying stock on Jordan Haroe. He is talented enough to make you love him, no matter what he decides to write about. It's a rare gift, seldom found in the publishing industry, but he has "it".
8.7/10
* If True Detective 2 taught us anything, it's that Pizzolatto can have a bad day at the office.
