Past master of family dysfunction hits the spot — again

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Since the publication of his first much lauded novel, Legend of a Suicide, Vann has made something of a reputation for himself as a master of the dark twists of family dysfunction. Dirt — the title implies emotional and moral grubbiness as well as roots — is a continuation of this theme. It is 1985 and 22-year-old anomic virgin Galen is living with his mother on the proceeds of a family trust in the run-down family nut farm (the play on words is presumably intentional) outside Sacramento. His resentful Aunt Helen and sexually predatory 17-year-old cousin Jennifer make occasional appearances, mostly to try to persuade Galen’s senile grandmother to alter her will in their favour. Galen characterises his family relationships as “like jousting ...tilting at each other [with] only a brief moment of contact”.

Vann has said that he is heavily influenced by “traditional tragedy” and views his novels as “plays” and, indeed, Dirt is nothing if not Oedipal, sharing with this and other Greek myths its febrile, doomy atmosphere, as Galen begins to cling ever more tightly to rubbishy New Age “philosophy” in order to relieve the emotional and intellectual paralysis threatening to undo him.

Unlike the flawed heroes of Greek myth, though, Galen has little to recommend him. He’s a supersized version of the whiny, self-regarding man-boys so beloved of American independent cinema, only without their comic/ironic self-awareness, ceaselessly bemoaning a fate that seems pretty benign. If Vann intends Galen’s embarrassing musings — that his mother, for example, is “a constant disruption, a tearing in the fabric of space and time” — to be comic, then the humour isn’t sufficiently signposted and the reader is left wondering if the true flaw in the flawed hero is his unsuitability for the part.

Vann’s undoubtedly impressive talent isn’t quite enough to save the first half of the novel from the bleak ennui it describes, and the reader is left with the sense that Vann’s real interest lies not so much in the build-up to the catastrophic event as in the deranged mental and physical violence which characterise the climax in all three of his novels. Events, one can only imagine, which have some connection with Vann’s own experience of family suicide and murder. Once we’re on the inevitable course to the denouement, the writing is all there. Vann really is a brilliant documentarian of folie de grandeur. From this point on, Dirt is unputdownable, thundering at breathtaking speed towards the shocking climactic act.

Brilliantly chilling though this is, one can’t help concluding that Vann has written the same novel three times, albeit in different settings. His talent requires him to expand into more subtle emotional territory. Dirt begs the question whether, like Galen, Vann remains too paralysed by the past to move on.

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