Not For Nothing

When I find myself wide awake in the middle of the night, to lull myself back to sleep, I work on on a blog post in my head. This happens at least once a week, and when it does I never get out of bed and actually bother to write anything. I always think I will remember everything in the morning, but of course that line of thinking also assumes that the first thing I will do when I get out of bed is go to the computer, or at the very least grab a pen and a notebook, and capture everything from the night before, the way one would record a vivid dream for later analysis. Me? I play with the cat, drink a glass of water, get up and make the bed, go downstairs for coffee. By the time I am on my second cup of coffee, The Today Show has usually obliterated most of the original or interesting thoughts that might have remained from the night before. Ah, the perils of morning television.

Last night as I lay awake I wrote a post in my head about Not For Nothing by Stephen Graham Jones. I finished the book a few weeks ago, but I have been thinking about it a lot. Here’s some of what remained of my thoughts when I awoke this morning:

• If Larry McMurtry wrote crime fiction in the second person, this is the kind of book he would have written.
• In cities, there are jobs. In small towns, there are simply things that have to get done. Somebody has to run the car wash, the burger stand, or say, the storage unit facility.
• People who leave small towns are resented and admired in equal measure. People who come back from the big city are generally considered to have come to their senses, but also viewed with some suspicion. (And remember, the “big city” is relative. When you’re from a town with less than 1,000 residents, one with 100,000 residents seems huge.)
• Someone is nodding on almost every single page in this book. I’m afraid that readers will think this is an author’s tic. Because I am from West Texas, I know very well that people there actually communicate this way. A nod can mean many things: an agreement, a disagreement, a laugh, an apology, an expression of love, an ending to a conversation or even a relationship. (See again McMurtry, Larry, Horseman, Pass By or The Last Picture Show. See Hud starring Paul Newman. If you must, see Friday Night Lights, only watch it with the sound off at least half the time. You can’t get away with all that nodding in television drama.)
• If people pick up this novel because they are curious about the second-person narrative, I hope they stay for the story. Even though it has a mystery with all the requisite (but not expected!) twists and turns, I found it to be much more than a crime novel (see yet again, McMutry, Larry).

Not For Nothing is the story of “you,” one Nicholas Bruiseman of Stanton, Texas. You went to school with the same kids all the way through your junior year of high school. You were a fat kid, and it earned you the nickname St. Nick. You had a case of sticky fingers in your later years. You had a secret, sweet moment with a girl in high school that left an indelible impression on your mind and heart. Nobody thought you would amount to much, but you went to Midland and became a cop. And then you had to come back to Stanton because being a cop doesn’t always mean being smart. It doesn’t mean who you are or meant to be won’t catch up with you sooner or later, as everyone is happy to remind you when they see you. You have a darker side, but you also have a wry sense of humor and know not to take yourself too seriously when you can help it. You take a job as caretaker for storage units, and one day that girl you were sweet on through high school, maybe longer, shows up. She wants to hire you to watch her husband, the football hero who made your life hell as a kid. And then the football hero shows up later, after she’s gone. He wants you to watch his wife.

And the rest is about you trying to figure out what game they’re playing, to understand why people are disappearing or dying. But also the rest is you trying to get through the day to day of the life you live now and to figure out how you can help other people you see hurting who don’t need a wannabe private-eye but a friend. And that’s the most interesting part of the book, and Jones does such a seamless job of telling Nick’s story, your story, that you willingly go along. And in fact you will forget you are reading in second person, most likely, because you’ll be able to smell the hot air, see the big sky, taste the chopped barbecue sandwich or the stale burrito from the convenience store. I highly recommend it, with 4/5 stars. (The novel, that is–not the convenience store burrito.)

I admit I might be a bit prejudice in the novel’s favor because I spent my first thirteen years going back and forth between Lubbock and Odessa, and through Big Spring and Sweetwater every other small town on I-20 on the way to Dallas when I went there to visit family. I haven’t been to West Texas in 20 years—I haven’t even lived in Texas since 1999—but I still see it and feel it vividly. It’s a place that once it’s in you, it’s always in you.

If you’re interested in why Jones chose to write the novel in second person, you can read his blog post about it at the Dzanc Books blog.

If you’re interested in what real Texans look like as opposed what y’all think they look like, then you should check out sponglr.

I received my copy of Not For Nothing through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.