Empty Mile: A Novel
When Johnny Richardson comes home to the town of Oakridge he has one thing on his mind—putting right a terrible mistake he made eight years ago. Revisiting the past, though, is a dark and dangerous game in small town America. When a careless sexual episode leads to the suicide of the town's first lady, Johnny finds himself the target of a revenge campaign that threatens to tear apart the fragile world he's built with his brain-damaged brother and depressive girlfriend among the gold-bearing mountains of Northern California.A searing meditation on the futility of trying to right the wrongs of the past, Empty Mile blends elements of thrilling urban noir with the wide open spaces of outdoor adventure in a story that reflects America's contemporary uncertainty about itself.
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It is straight up criminal that Stokoe isn't as widely read as some of the more mainstream ‘transgressive' authors. I think it's probably because he's been sadly typecast by readers who've only heard about him because of ‘Cows' and are afraid to approach his other works. They're missing out. And also dumb >:[
In my mind, I lump Stokoe in with my other current favorite author Zahler. They're both doing really similar things but coming at it from different angles. They're both pulp kings, but where Zahler knows he's writing pulp and leans into as hard as possible aiming to make the most intricately crafted and idealized pulp possible, Stokoe reaches for grander literary aspirations. Zahler makes pulp so perfectly honed that it transcends its genre limitations while Stokoe intentionally pushes the limits of what storytelling can be/do while existing inside a pulp framework. I love and deeply appreciate both approaches.
I kinda feel like they're the literary equivalents of like Tarantino (Zahler) vs De Palma (Stokoe). Tarantino makes pulp so pure and brilliant and hyper-focused and stylish that it's elevated to capital-A, Art. De Palma on the other hand is an Artist first and foremost and uses the dark recesses of pulp fiction as his base materials.
It's a fun dichotomy. And I think about their works in conversation while reading them.
I didn't talk about ‘Empty Mile' at all.
Is real good. 5/5.
