Arkansas by John Brandon

McSweeney’s was having a garage sale, $5 or less for some of their copies of books they had stored in the attic, sold as-is. The copy of Arkansas I got (ordered along with Hornby’s Shakespeare Wrote For Money) was in perfect condition, so I don’t know what the fuss was about.

I read about Arkansas when it first came out, a first novel with interesting narrative style. I was intrigued, but more or less forgot about it until the McSweeney’s sale.

I really enjoyed the style, and the story is an engaging tale of back country drug dealers. On average, I don’t ordinarily go for drug dealer tales, but McSweeney’s gave me a hard sell in their pitch, so I gave it a chance.

If nothing else, I think Brandon uses the second person narrative form better than any other example I can name. This is not much of a feat, since the only other 2nd person writing I’ve read is Tom Robbin’s Half Asleep in Frog’s Pajamas, and that one seemed like a stunt more than anything else.

The trick is that Brandon only uses the second person on a certain character, and all the other’s character’s narrative tracks are in third. It works. For me, anyway. And since those chapters were about me, I guess that’s all that matters.

Apparently my name is Frog now.