Book review: Dirt by David Vann

Published on 07/07/2012 00:00

Since the publication of his much-lauded debut, Legend of a Suicide, Vann has made a reputation as a master of family dysfunction. Dirt is a continuation of this theme.

Dirt by David Vann

William Heinemann, 272pp, £12.99

It is 1985 and 22-year-old virgin Galen is living with his mother on the proceeds of a trust in the family nut farm near Sacramento. His resentful Aunt Helen and sexually predatory cousin Jennifer make occasional appearances, mostly to try to persuade Galen’s senile grandmother to alter her will.

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 clings ever more tightly to New Age “philosophy” in order to relieve the mental paralysis threatening to undo him. Unlike the 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.

Vann’s impressive talent isn’t quite enough to save the first half of the novel from the ennui it describes, and the reader is left with the sense that his 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 imagines, which have some connection with Vann’s own experience of family suicide and murder. But from this point on, Dirt is unputdownable.

Yet one can’t help concluding that Vann has written the same novel three times. Dirt begs the question of whether, like Galen, Vann remains too paralysed by the past to move on.

l David Vann is at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 19 August.