A Little Blood and Dancing

I know next to nothing about Oklahoma. After reading A Little Blood and Dancing, I’m not sure I want to know much more. The place seems pretty terrible. The worst mixture of redneck and urban decay. Which I have to assume is Tyler Parker’s intention in telling this tale about awful people mostly doing awful things. In the most Tarantino / Elmore Leonard voice possible. A fever dream of a novel that stylistically oscillates between an automatic writing exercise and James Ellroy staccato prose. Mostly violent, but also darkly funny in places and emotional in others, it kind of splits the baby (a term I actually hate) and ends up a bit of a hodge-podge of an experiment that never really comes together in a cohesive package. It’s entertaining and innovative in parts, but its circuitous narrative and uneven trajectory toward a conclusion ultimately makes for a less satisfying read than I would have expected.

How to explain my experience with this book? Let’s see. I don’t much care about art. Like paintings and whatnot. Graphic art, yes. But abstract stuff I generally don’t get. I can look at a canvas and see little pops of color I enjoy and possibly even a brush stroke or two amongst the caucophony that speak to me. But generally a look at a large abstract and I can do not much more than tell you the vibe it gives me with little to no understanding of why. That’s this book. Parker is interested in the feel of the thing more so than the plot or the character development, or anything you might tie to literary fiction. You can tell this just by his unusual disuse of quotation marks. Despite there being tons of dialog. Stylistically he’s telling you from the first paragraph that this is going to be something you either roll with or don’t. Eschewing typical novel writing formatting is a long-standing post-whatever choice by cool novelists, but his feels like an intentional challenge rather than something he believes in his soul. Especially when we get into his descriptive text that is often told in little, choppy abstractions. It’s a very specific writing style, which I can very much appreciate. The question is if you like those brushstrokes. And if those strokes add up to something you can stand back from and appreciate as a whole.

First, you have to appreciate the main characters. You have a dude named Sylvia Table. Who goes by Table. Which is weird. A career lowlife, the dude is a petty criminal, but also a murderer who alternatively speaks like a redneck and a blue-collar poet. He is biding his time for his rich uncle to die so he can inherit a ton of money. He is married to Lady Sixkiller, his long-suffering mate who is tough and somehow keeps him in balance when he is always on the verge of spinning out. As far as we know he’s only abused her once. But it’s probably more. They generally sit around and drink. Then there’s Priscilla Blackwood, the daughter of a man Table killed in front of her when she was a child, who has become unhealthily religious while planning to exact revenge on her father’s killer. That’s basically it.

The novel goes back and forth between the evolving Table and Lady relationship and the ever-devolving life of Priscilla as she becomes more and more detached and unhinged. Though, as I mentioned up top, the trajectory of each feels unbalanced. We spend ninety percent of the book watching micro changes to these relationships and then the last ten percent — after Table has inherited his cash and Priscilla has started a twisted relationship with god and revenge — racing toward the inevitable coming together of the two sides of our story. It honestly feels like two different novels for the larger part of the narrative. Not in terms of writing style, but Parker doesn’t really build everything to a head in a way that feels organic or earned. Table is all of a sudden on TV throwing bills like he’s at a strip club — which honestly felt like a dream and not reality based on the character’s personality — and Priscilla is all of a sudden in possession of a firearm and on a mission from god to put Table down. It all happens way too suddenly and then it’s over. It’s not an uncommon issue with modern novels, but this one felt particularly abrupt after reading four hundred pages, only to have everything just rocket ahead in the last forty. The anger and animus toward Table from Priscilla needed to build differently to have the payoff make more sense.

But, back to the writing itself. The brushstrokes. The pops of color. I feel like there will be people who pick this up and quickly put it down just based on Parker’s stylistic flourishes. It takes some getting used to. And in parts it does feel a little overindulgent in its abstraction. Lines after line of what feel like flashes of thought and/or brain damage rather than solid observations. Parker, being a writer for The Ringer, can’t help but throw in lots of sports and pop culture references of the early 2000s (or maybe late 90s?) during which the bulk of the book is set, which feel cools from my perspective, but very Oklahoma heavy in its inside jokes and Hakeem Olajuwon lore. Which I suppose makes sense given the OKC Thunder didn’t exist until 2008 and The Rockets must have been the closest NBA team geographically during the book’s timeline. The point here is that there was definitely a lot of originality in these characters, imbued with personalities and lives that represent a region with which I’m not at all familiar outside of my experience watching Reservation Dogs, The Lowdown and Watchmen. Huh, that’s actually way more Oklahoma than I knew I knew. Oh shit, that Tiger King documentary also takes place in Oklahoma! And Ghostbusters: Afterlife (which is kinda trash)! Man, this is one weird and interesting state. So I guess Parker is just expanding on the zany pedigree set out by these terrific TV series (and one lousy movie). Ultimately, as an experiment in form and study it’s an interesting artifact, but as a piece of narrative fiction I just can’t quite see the forest for the trees.