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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Stone Junction by Jim Dodge

18:05 / 14.04.05

Has anyone read this? After wanting to for years, I finally got around to it last summer. The book was published in '89 I believe, and then a later printing included a typically-great introduction by Thomas Pynchon.

From what I've read, Junction was the first book Jim Dodge started to write, then dropped it for a while, then came back to it. It pretty much reads that way. The novel is two halves, and you could separate them and have unrelated novels.

I liked the first half the best. It starts out like an underground/'60s Illuminatus-type deal, but then is more about young main character Daniel growing up with his strong-spirited mother in the middle of nowhere. After her mysterious death, Daniel is mentored by a variety of outlaws in a variety of specialties -- poker, stealing, the art of disguise, etc.

Then the second half of the book kicks in, and I think Pynchon described it as a "techno-suspense" affair, which it pretty much is. The subversive flair of the previous half is mostly submerged, as Daniel goes nearly insane, trying to steal a fabled diamond from the US military. The story works, mostly, but the problem is that the majority of the "specialties" Daniel was taught in the first half don't even figure into the second half. So it seems useless that he learned how to play poker like a pro, that he learned how to fix up old steamboats, that he learned how to grow hemp, etc. Not very much of the diamond-stealing plot ties into previous events, and Daniel himself spirals from a mostly-likeable lead to a blank template.

Regardless, I recommend the book, and did enjoy a lot of it. I just think Dodge could have made a good book great, had he tightened it up. I figure the plot alone would interest most people here, so I just wanted to see if anyone else has read it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:41 / 15.04.05

It's been on my "must read" list for a couple of years now, after a (Pynchon-obsessed) friend impressed upon me IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that my life wouldn't be complete without reading it.

Hmm... you've got me thinking. I may buy a copy today.

A fall of geckos

12:36 / 15.04.05

From what I've read, Junction was the first book Jim Dodge started to write, then dropped it for a while, then came back to it.

I never knew this but I'm not surprised. It did feel very much like two books glued together - each promising a revelation that never really happens. The language, the action and the philosophising are compelling, but I felt that the novel seemed to lack something. Still, I really enjoyed it and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it generally.

It reminded me a lot of books like the Illuminatus trilogy, Burroughs’s novels etc... It also made me consider the background and history of the American counterculture, which led me to pick up You Can't Win by Joe Black. It’s a autobiography of a small time criminal/hobo living in the 1900’s. It’s amazing stuff, and has quite clearly left a mark on American countercultural fiction – from Burroughs to Stone Junction. I'd definitely recommend You Can't Win to anyone who enjoys either Dodge or Burroughs.

17:26 / 15.04.05

ha. I've only read the first half, and then lent it to an ex, so haven't finished it. I was enjoying it though.

17:55 / 17.01.06

It's funny, despite my comments above, Stone Junction is one of those novels that just sticks in your head. One thing I didn't make clear above is the Tom Robbins influence on the book. In fact the first portion seems like a Robbins novel, focusing on Daniel's mother and her run-ins with authority (of the legal and religious kind).

I think I was also being a bit too hard on the book. It's more of a picaresque, I'd say. But I think Dodge tried to hammer everything together, and so came up with the diamond-stealing second half. The problem with this section (though a second reading may leave me with a different impression) is that Daniel isn't the Daniel we knew in the first half -- he's grim, humorless, doesn't talk much. He's obsessed, basically. And I have to say again, it just felt like the second half was written long after the first half.

Sadly, Dodge hasn't published another novel since. The old UK edition of this (from a few years back) had a great cover: an abstract painting of Daniel as a child walking in the rain with his mother and a Native American -- a poignant scene early in the novel. The new UK edition is an artsy shot of playing cards, referencing the long poker-playing section of the book, and doesn't fit the book nearly as well.

09:52 / 18.01.06

I remember liking Stone Junction when I read it, although bits failed to live up to some of the expectations that the book itself raised, if that makes sense. I had not heard that it was a book of two halves, as it were, but it does not surprise me.

At the time, I did not see the change in the protagonist as a contradiction. The way I saw it was that there was a Citizen Kane-like plot, in which he began by being taught all these homely frauds and crimes and ways of seeing the world, but that inside him they rotted and were replaced by paranoia, enmity, greed and a failure regarding the legacy of the people who had taught him (including Bill Clinton the safe-cracker, if I remember rightly?).

I was a literature student at the time-- and indeed was reading this book to review it for the student paper. To me, I thought it was a sort of American novel, charting in discrete episodes the various movements, morals and ideals of a colourful counterculture, but ultimately showing American corruption tainting those legacies.

Annoyingly I forget the ending. Does he not stay invisible or implode or something? There is an ambiguous apotheosis if I remember correctly. Can someone put me out of my misery and remind me?!

What is undeniable is that this book had an energy and an imagination that was so absorbing that I missed it hugely when I had to put it down. It was fresh and fun and funny and all in all had me enthusing and recommending, and resulted in my reading the charming and whimsical Fup soon afterwards, a work of which I am told he is so ashamed that he refuses to talk to people who mention it (he may have mellowed now, I suppose).

13:03 / 18.01.06

I think you're onto something. There's even a scene, very early in the book, in which child Daniel has a problem with one of the "guests" at the safehouse Daniel and his mother run -- he has a problem believing in her non-violent methods and beliefs. So he has that dark edge from the start.

SPOILERS below!

As for the end, yes it is a bit irritating, something along the lines of Slothrop dispersing into the text. Jimmy becomes addicted to roaming around inside the diamond he steals, and basically decides to live in it. Or he becomes trapped in it...it's pretty mystical, for sure. I was annoyed with the book by that point, though: that super-long scene in which Jimmy meets the "crazy" girl (whose scenes previously had nothing to do with the novel), where they talk for pages and pages, decide to marry, etc, just wore me out.

16:33 / 18.01.06

As far as Jim Dodge's work goes, I've read the one (reluctantly, but very, very quickly, example, I think,) where the central character goes off on a kind of free-wheeling, existential, beat search for the 'Big Bopper's' grave, the 'Big Bopper' having been someone, it seems, who went down in the same bird as Buddy Holly. Dodge, one senses, trawling through his material, is a man who doesn't care too much about what anyone thinks. Like what Kerouac, Pynchon, Dylan and Burroughs felt - In his sick, spittle-flecked, bearded imagination, then, Dodge doesn't seem to feel as if there's too much of a problem, with the dire banality of his thoughts. I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but, there's a particular reason why the counter-culture doesn't carry too much weight anymore (see also; Tom Robbins, TC Boyle etc, Tony Parsons and such,) and it's because, I fear, of this kind of iffy book.

I can't recommend avoiding Jim Dodge's material highly enough, then. It's not worth you tenner, nor your 50p.

17:32 / 18.01.06

Alex -- you don't know who the Big Bopper was? "Helllllllllo baby!" Heavyset '50s rocker, and yes he died in the plane crash that also killed Vallens and Holly, providing the inspiration for Don McLean's "The Day the Music Died."

Can't recall the name of the Dodge book you read at the moment, but it's one I've meant to get around to.

08:58 / 19.01.06

I read Not Fade Away, for that is its name, and I admit that I was disappointed. Some of the stories were entertaining, some interesting, some of the writing had great energy, but all in all I found it far less satisfactory than either of Dodge's other books. It did indeed seem like a scrapbook of assorted ideas, some of them a lot better than others, and made little sense and proved little point. It had no centre or core and parts of it had no heart. The anecdotal, or episodic, first half of Stone Junction was a lot more interesting than almost anything in Not Fade Away, which just did not gel for me although it had flair and some flights of fantastic whimsy.

I recommend the sweet fable Fup as a serious contrast to either, though.