A powerful coming of age story that dances between the bloody chaos of guerilla war and lively, resilient spirit of a young man with true grit. The scene is rural southern Missouri in the American Civil War, which experienced a terrible anarchy as a slave-holding state unable to commit as a state to either side. The pro-Confederacy guerillas known as Bushwackers try to outdo the terrorist campaigns of the Jayhawkers marauding from their bases in Kansas. Every outrage perpetrated by one side motivates the next cruel action by the other. We jump right in with Jake Roedel participating in hangings and executions of pro-Union civilians with a cold demeanor. He is successfully proving himself as a capable fighter among men. When a teenaged boy tries to cut down his father they have hanged, Jake shoots him in the back and puts forth this bravado:My face was profound, I hoped, when I faced Black John.”Pups make hounds,” I said. “And there are hounds enough.”But a spark of morality begins to grow with his repugnance over unnecessary torture and selfish pillaging and robberies that go along with these raids. His crossing one of their leaders, Pitt Mackeson, makes an enemy he must contend with throughout the book. Jake’s best friend from childhood, Jack Bull Chiles, notes that Mackeson is “dumb and mean and snaky”, but:“You must admit he is a good Yankee-killer.”“He is a good killer, Jack Bull. And this season he kills Yankees.”“Comrades can be made of less,” he responded. “Keep it in mind.”I had many comrades who were made of nothing but the same. I saw the truth of it and would not squawk that they were not made of more. We fan that spark with him until a turning point during the infamous Lawrence Massacre of 1864, in which Quantrill led about 400 in an attack on that undefended Kansas town, killing 150-200 and burning it to the ground. Loyalty to true friends comes to guide Jake’s choices more definitively. Ironically, his partner by this time is a laconic and deadly ex-slave named Holt. Eventually, a chance at love plants a seed for his becoming a real man. Early on we get this taste of Jake’s state of complete ignorance on this subject:It stymied me. I just didn’t understand how it worked between a man and a woman. There was just so much mystery involved. I hoped there could be a way around it.The process of Jake’s becoming human parallels his finding a voice and an ability lead others. Already in his second book (published in 1987), Woodrell to me displays masterful skills in dialog and the internal monologue of this first-person story. He is also wonderful in narrative pacing and in his understated presentation of dramatic tension. He is adept at “showing not telling”. We actually don’t get a sense of what set Jake on the path of breaking bad until the middle of the book, at a point when he and Jake are holed up at a farm of a family friend named Evans. They explain how the blurring of good and bad began when Jack Bull’s father was murdered by a Federal officer and they took retribution together :“Jake and me”—Jack Bull stopped and looked my way—“there is always Jake with me—went for him on our own hook. … Captain Warren came in for vittles and got served a bitter dish. His world went sour on him. We killed him. We killed him several times, eh, Jake?”“That’s right,” I said. “There was no chance left in it.”“It was our first real fight. Everything got changed by it.”“You took to the bush,” Evans said. “All the good men are in the bush now.”“Those are words that have went south forever,” Jack Bull said. “’Good’ doesn’t mean anything like what it used to mean. No, sir, we are not good men. But we are men. They’ll have to whip us. We won’t do it for them by quitting.”As with Woodrell’s fabulous “Winter’s Bone”, my reading of this story now has me interested in seeing the movie based on this book, Ang Lee’s “Ride with the Devil” (1999). It stars a young Tobey Mcguire and the singer Jewel as the love interest, Sue. Aside from that I am hungry to read more of Woodrell’s books.
so let's see...i've read tomato red, winter bone...or is it winter's bone?...the bayou trilogy...was there another? i dunno. this then, could be the 4th from woodrell unless i've misplaced one. seems possible.from 1987? need to verify that...could just as easily be the date of an edition printing and not the original printing/publishing.has a forward from ron rash...says woodrell is an outlier...and rather than run to a dictionary to look that word up--i honestly do not know, for certain, what it means...i've an idea..."his quest...is to render the world as it was, not as we wish it to have been."...jake roedel is the story's narrator....onward and upward.story begins:book oneplaying war is played out!--charles r jennison is jennison's jawhawkers (reminding me, of course, of "the outlaw josey wales"...clint eastwood...yay, go clint)we rode across the hillocks and vales of missouri, hiding in uniforms of yankee blue. our scouts were out left flank and right flank, while pitt mackeson and me formed the point. the night had been long and arduous, the horses were lathered to the withers and dust ws caking mud to our jackets. we had been aided through the night by busthead whiskey and out breaths blasphemed the scent of early morning spring...update, finished, 18 sep 12, tuesday 9:58 p.m. good story...time of the civil war...in an area of the country where...what? i dunno...kansas, missouri, the wild west...you had the various folk who didn't join an army rebel or federal...so on so forth. so it complicated things...maybe the same thing happened east, but i hadn't heard of it...whereas out here in the wooly west...so on so forth.there's a half-dozen 'main' characters...some of them were real people...and...the made-up characters are as real as the real real characters...mentioned mount vernon, iowa...just north of iowa city...and woodrell spent time there, at the fabled workshop...where he met his...wife? something..."a methodist will marry rocks if there is food in the deal"...a paraphrase from the story and a sign of the times...oh fuck me dearly...the ambassador in libya...set up cause he was gay...focked because they can...what a focking nightmare.sheesh.anyway...story...okay okay...so...so yea, a good story...there's a short q & a that is available elsewhere that provides a bit of light into woodrell's life...married? a woman (yay) from iowa...eustis...the name from mount vernon...and i knew the man who was a rep from mount vernon...painted his house minute=man blue. heh! ro foege.anyway...what else? there are no clearcut "good" guys and "bad" guys...although at times, people are clearly good and clearly bad...just not always.there's something about a plan that goes nicely with my previous read, too...apricot stories from soltzee=kneed-skin...real radical stuff here. wo wo
What do You think about Woe To Live On (1998)?
Huck Finn in Hell. The influence of both Twain and Cormac McCarthy are fairly clear to see in Daniel Woodrell's Ride with Devil (or Woe to Live on). The sheer carnage reminds one of McCarthy's Outer Dark and Blood Meridian. But there's more. Ride With the Devil is also a coming of age novel telling the story of Jake Roedel, a young Bushwhacker (and immigrant's son), who has not known a woman, but who has killed 15 men. In Woodrell's hands, Jake is a complex mix of child and killer. He has been hardened by a war that, in the contested border areas of Missouri & Kansas, was as murderous as modern day Bosnia. Robbery, murder, torture, in an eye for an eye conflict, was the coin of the day. Nevertheless, the reader senses the human Jake trying to peek out from beyond the hardened callus. Sometimes it's a moment of tragically misplaced pity for a northern militia acquaintance, or his growing interest in a woman, the widow Sue Lee, of his "near" brother Jack Bull. And then there's the growing friendship with Holt, a freed slave who has been riding with the bushwhackers. A common ground gradually develops between the despised immigrant's son, and the mistrusted black man, as they see the South fall apart due to invasion. Interestingly, Woodrell is able to show both characters growing dissatisfaction for the Southern cause, as it's increasingly being fought (the raid on Lawrence being a point of true descent), while at the same time retaining their hate for Northerners who seek to impose, through invasion, new unjust rules for the old. A subtle truth that historians still can't seem to get right, but which acquires an awful plausibility in the half-boy, half-man voice of Roedel. This is fine novel that should be probably be viewed beyond the genre of a western. Certainly, the romance in the novel is of a truer nature, given it is a time of war, than the high romantic one in Cold Mountain (which I liked). Ride With the Devil can sit quite comfortably beside that Frazier's fine novel. It has its own grim, but ultimately hopeful truths, to pass on.
—Steve
I hadn't planned on reading any Civil War books this year but I am reading all of Woodrell's works and have had this on order with my library for close to a year now. So it was a welcome surprise when it showed up with my library holds! While this is an historical fiction Civil War book it is like none I've ever read before, nor expect to ever read again. Not so much a story of the war itself as it is of a small group of southern men fighting independently as raiders, most are from southern states, a few are from neutral states and one is a black man based on a real photograph of Quantrill's Raiders. This story doesn't take anybody's side as being the right one, neither side is the courteous one. Told from the southern point of view, these men and boys fight because they believe in their cause or because it's what they want to do. As raiders they've chosen not to follow the rule of the military and are hard-knuckle folk who shoot to kill and raid for the rewards. Fresh young Jake Roedel is the main character and the story is told through his eyes. Jake learns to kill, lynch, shoot in the back, raid and pillage all because if he doesn't first, "they" will. At some point he realises that "they", the Yanks, are no different than him in a human way but also no different in that if he doesn't shoot first he'll drop dead first. There is no honour among killers. The black man, Holt, plays a strange role in the story first belonging to one of the men but in an equal relationship with him and then actually befriending our young Jake. The N-word is used superfluously until by the end of the book one has become desensitized to it. There is blatant racial prejudice and at other times as Jake and Holt become friends, between them Holt will always be the n-, but it is as if it were left-handedness rather than race that makes them "different" in Jake's eye, but Holt himself knows his identity is bound up in his race even when it comes to friendship. A very real book, written as if of the time period. The author holds back on nothing never trying to appease political correctness, the south or the north. The attitudes are all here as they were back in the 1860s. A brutish, hard, difficult story that does not end without some redemption and hope for its characters. A fine piece of writing.
—Nicola Mansfield
Ho. Lee. Shit. I am a big asshole for never reading Daniel Woodrell before. This is hands-down the best novel I've absorbed in years. Imagine Wells Tower rewriting Cormac McCarthy and you kinda know what Woe to Live On is like. C-Mac without the intentional obtuseness, with the added bonus of at least one amazing turn-of-phrase per paragraph? Oh, my stars and garters.And what's this? It was turned into a movie-film? EXCITING! Directed by Ang Lee? Interesting. Starring Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich? WHAT. THE. FUCK.Bah. Shitty movie adaptations aside, Danny W. is going to occupy significant hunks of my time for the rest of the year.
—Jake
