Book Review : J. David Osborne - Black Gum (2015)
(also reviewed)
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I said, ''So why tattoo your gums?"
He said, "When I meet the devil, I want him to know that I'm a friendly guy."
There is no clear point to which one becomes an adult. Everybody follows more or less the same blueprint because nobody knows exactly what they're doing and people falling off the wagon are ostracized by those who are terrified that same fate awaits them. The structure of an adult man's life (or lack thereof) is a complicated and fascinating question author and editor-in-chief of Broken River Books J. David Osborne tackles in his short novel BLACK GUM with a tenderness and a sense of humor that transcend the bleakness of its setting. It shines a light on what's beautiful and moving at the heart of oblivion.
The narrator of Black Gum is living the last moments of a long term relationship with his girlfriend in complete alienation. He eventually surrenders and leaves of his own volition before causing a drama and lands in a strange situation living with one of his best friends and his drug-dealing, tattoo covered half-assed mystic cousin. The narrator redefines the direction of his life in a drug-fueled odyssey alongside small-time criminals, Juggalos and various other local underworld figures.
Black Gum is an oddly beautiful coming-of-age story about how sometimes the greatest thing can come from darkness and chaos. I found that Black Gum was a beautiful novel because of its simple, yet clever and powerful message: if you stop living like everybody else, maybe you'll discover who you are. J. David Osborne found a great word to describe the people who wander outside the beaten path of the unwritten social code of conduct: heathens. The characters of Black Gum experience their marginal status with the reverence of a religious experience, The narrator invest himself in his existential quest for direction with an almost scientific discipline. That's what separates Black Gum from the other drug novels, the protagonist is not eventually saved from darkness, it's darkness that saves him.
"I'm only just learning this, so I'm having trouble figuring it out."
"Figuring what out?"
"Your aura"
From the kitchen: "Your aura is gay."
"Don't be rude."
"You have the aura of a gay man."
Writing a serious and original introspective novel is a difficult thing to pull off for a white man. It's been done so many times and it's been parodied almost as much, it's not easy to find new and valid things to say. J. David Osborne recycles the old tropes of the drug novel in Black Gum , injects a good dose of humor and love for the people who can't walk the beaten path in order create something new and unique. It would be easy to compare Black Gum to the work of Charles Bukowski in order to give you a quick frame of reference, but it wouldn't be accurate. It is not a novel of destruction, but a novel of creation from the wreckage.
8.8/10
