Eric Shonkwiler

Richard's incredible review below is what prompted me to seek out and read this short novella...

He is spot on with all that he has said! And he has said it all so very eloquently that I can't begin to compare.

I will say this. I too, dislike Cormac McCarthy so when I saw that Shonkwiler was even remotely compared to his style, I wasn't sure how he would sit with me. But I felt more hope in "Rene". I liked the characters Shonkwiler paints for us. And the emotion that he portrays were more real to me than what I felt in the one McCarthy that I've read.

The short version is that I'll read more of Shonkwiler. You should too.… (mais)

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Book Report: In a timeless American space and a placeless American landscape, Rene and Lilah eke out a hardscrabble life. Young Rene works in town and drives her rattletrap Chevy Townsman wagon down a patch of bad road to the tumbledown house she shares with her pale, ill mother Lilah. It is Lilah's unstoppable nasal bleeding that sets the women on a hard course, one that takes every tiny piece of easy left to them and grinds it to powder.

All endings are beginnings, though, and on their quest to stop the endless bleeding that's defined their existence, the pilgrims meet a crazy white woman-witch who promises nothing and delivers healing; a black family with even worse problems than their own; and four helping hands when no one was looking for any more gifts. Returning to Horn (short for Hornblower) and Sawyer, their family of dogs, the healing set in motion by their arduous journey gives the end and the beginning of this tight, spare tale its terrific wallop.

Eric Shonkwiler is a writer preoccupied with ruination. He can be followed on Twitter @eshonkwiler. He has had writing appear in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Fiddleblack, [PANK] Magazine, and Midwestern Gothic. He was born and raised in Ohio, received his MFA from The University of California--Riverside, and has lived and worked in every contiguous U.S. time zone.


photo of Eric Shonkwiler by Sabrina Renkar

My Review: Look at that photo up top. This is the face of the young man who's just kicked me square in the cojones and rapped my noggin with a two-by-four just to be sure I got the message. And I guarantee you he's young enough to be my kid. (And the less charitable members of the audience are now cueing up their sarcasm font to comment about grandkid-aged, don't I mean; beat ya to it nyah.) So how, I want to know, does this revoltingly young person already know this:

One of the biggest sicknesses this world has is expectation. We all expect other people to be a certain way or to do a certain thing. Most people, they spend their whole lives under the wants of other people.

I expect the answer to that question is uncomfortable. The story Shonkwiler's telling here is uncomfortable, and yet comforting...I understand Rene's problem, I deeply understand Lilah's hurts, and I can't tell you why anyone would do any of the things I know they've all done. But I know they're doing whatever they can, however they can do it. And that's what makes this short read, an hour and a half at most, so deeply satisfying.

The golden youth's first novel, Above All Men, is in my to-be-reviewed queue. I've urged the book on many of y'all already. Okay, you want to know why? Read this novella. This kind of lean, no-BS storytelling is how he rolls. All of y'all who've made my online life a misery because I don't like Bore-max McClotty...oh dear, I mean Cormac McCarthy, I've got such fat fingers today...heed this: Shonkwiler uses the same style of simple, unadorned prose, the same "difficult" *sigh* technique of not using quotation marks to indicate dialogue, and the same rural setting, and does what the older man never could do. Shonkwiler makes (miserably) living, (barely) breathing, emotionally vital (if suffering) people that I can invest in. And he does it in under 20,000 words.

I say that's talent, high-order talent, and some very serious writing chops. Now let's see what else he can do, what's next for him. The only way that's going to happen is if we support him by reading and discussing and recommending AND BUYING his work.

You have your instructions.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.… (mais)

Above All Men
By Eric Shonkwiler
Midwest Gothic Press
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

Set in a post-collapse America only a few short years in the future, Above All Men by Eric Shonkwiler, tells the story of David Parrish and his family on a cattle farm. Despite its Christian tract title, Above All Men charts the everyday struggles and tragedies of living in a society slowly decaying. Shonkwiler weaves this post-collapse narrative together with tightly written prose and a notable lack of infodumping. When we first meet David, he is buying diesel in the nearby town of Dixon. It is a grim replay of the late Seventies oil shocks. He meets his fellow farmers and deals with the rationing and shortages. These little touches make the realities of the post-collapse society profoundly acute. On top of oil shortages, the cell towers don't function any more, and there are mass migrations out of the cities. This is the United States reduced to the conditions of modern-day Congo or Myanmar.

David lives with his wife Helene and his teenage son Samuel. For a time his fellow vet buddy Red lives with them, but, as is Red's wont, he skips out again. Red and David fought in the wars, seeing action in Costa Rica. When a new family moves in to Dixon, we learn that O H Reckard was a Marine and fought in Mexico. The Reckards, O H, his wife Delia and daughter Melanie, are African-Americans who escaped the strife in Atlanta.

What Shonkwiler does is remarkable, especially for a novel that has its feet firmly established in science fiction. He describes the past in dribs and drabs, the occasional hints here and there. When David and O H reminisce about their war experiences, we hear a lot mentioned for the first time, but the explanations still remain elusive. The war stories get buried beneath post-traumatic stress, bone dry sarcasm, and both men being rather taciturn by nature.

On top of the post-collapse economic situation, dusters become more and more frequent. The dust covers the topsoil and chokes the cattle. David has to contend with coyotes harassing his cattle and the threat of the water supply drying up. When diesel finally runs out, David and O H face the harsh prospect of hand harvesting. As technology fails, the circumference of connection between communities shrivels. The novel begins with talk about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. By mid-novel, the tone becomes more medieval.

The monotony and struggle of farm life shatters when Melanie is murdered. Delia, drowned in grief, eventually abandons O H. Both O H and David begin a desperate search for the killer. O H finally leaves Dixon, pushed to the very brink of sanity. Then David returns to his quest to find the killer. Along the way he encounters abandoned towns, feral meth heads, and highways overrun by the shifting dunes. He wrestles with his demons in haunting dreams. The dreams and surreal landscapes battered by dusters were described with the bloody rawness found in The Red Badge of Courage.

Above All Men is a relentlessly bleak depiction of human struggle. It is science fiction written with literary panache and a rare confidence. This is Shonkwiler's first novel and he aims for the bleachers. As someone living in the more rural section of Minnesota, I could relate to Shonkwiler's description of isolation and alienation endemic in rural communities. (Granted, Rochester, Minnesota is a town with 100,000 people, but like O H Reckard, the culture shock can be intense. Overall it is a nice place to live, but it is not close to either La Crosse, Wisconsin or the Twin Cities. There are days when I feel like I'm orbiting Neptune.) Rural life has a different rhythm than urban life, revolving around crops and the harvest. While some media outlets like to depict rural communities as the last outposts of Real 'Merica, it is a lazy stereotype and I'm sick of hearing it. Piloting a John Deere doesn't give one a monopoly on authenticity. And nothing reeks of fakeness like pimping one's authenticity. Unlike the carnival barkers who call themselves pundits and the slow-witted schmucks who hang on their every word, Above All Men doesn't come across as fake. It possesses a compelling narrative with realistic characters beset by trials that would challenge even the hardiest of souls.

My only minor quibble is in its writing. Some passages seem a little too on-the-nose in its description. For a novel that plays its hand so close to the chest, these passages project the hoof-prints of writing workshops and a little too much polish. The other is the lack of quotation marks. Granted, Shonkwiler's novel markets itself as a literary novel, hence using the lack of quotation marks like Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner. But, as it stands, this novel could function well enough on its own with conventionally written dialogue. (Sometimes the lack of quotation marks leads to inevitable confusion. Who said what? Did he think that or say that?) Since this is a first novel, these flaws are minor and don't take away from the high regard it deserves. The lack of quotation marks is a purely subjective thing. Your Miles May Vary.

Above All Men comes highly recommended, especially to those seeking science fiction tales in a rural setting.

Out of 10/10

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2014/05/book_review_above_all_men_by_e.html… (mais)