Darren “Task” Tasking aka “the slick” (get used to this nonsense - EVERYONE’S got multiple names in this baby!) is a pimp of a brothel who tricks his sex workers into working for him. But when he recruits Erin Greene, aka “the butterfly”, her complicated life complicates his life and soon shit starts falling right into the gutter - the SLANTED gutter (aka S. Craig Zahler’s latest novel)!
I don’t mean (business on north ganson street) to come off as too snarky on this one because I quite liked the novel. BUT, holy satanic cowbells, does Zahler need an editor to rein in his literary diarrhea - The Slanted Gutter did not need to be over 400 pages long.
The “story” is essentially the day-to-day of a gangster scumbag and the people in his orbit. Not a whole helluva lot happens. It boils down to Task plotting against a couple of hookers and a loan shark called Chester Fredericks, aka “the redneck”, and then later getting into some more shenanigans with Chester as things go “to Alaska” in a spectacularly gruesome finale.
One thing you will learn, whether this is your first experience with him or your nth, is that Zahler is a storyteller who will not be rushed. He will take his damn time telling you what happened, however unremarkable it all adds up to be, and, while you’re waiting for that, he will describe every single movement his characters make, every thought they have, as well as every item in every room they’re in, and every scrap of clothing they’re wearing.
Nothing is taken as a given - if there’s a waste bin in the room, even if it’s irrelevant, he’s mentioning it, and the colour of it, and anything it contains. You can’t just assume that a character, upon waking up, will do a bunch of tedious things before getting into the car and carrying on with the story - he has to walk you through it, step by step, so you know EXACTLY what they’re doing, whether or not that’s relevant too (so many protein bars...).
Yeah - it’s not surprising that the end product is a flabby 400+ pages if that’s your approach!
This style goes from frustrating to gross towards the end where one character is being tortured by another and you have to read every horrendous thing that character does to the other. It’s a bit too much and makes me wonder why Zahler needs to be so graphic - I guess to make the violence seem more real to the reader?
The characters are really well-written - Task, Erin and Chester are all distinct and memorable, unlike the story - and that’s no small thing, so zudos Mr Kahler. But that effect wasn’t achieved through telling me what type of footwear they were wearing or what jaunty outfit they had on!
The staggering and persistent verbosity was my biggest gripe about the novel because, in between all the mundanity, the various episodes were actually quite entertaining. How Task gets the first two butterflies to work for him were both imaginative and surprising. The best was how badly Task messes with Chester, both times. It’s clever, it’s funny, it’s totally unpredictable and insane - it’s kind of like a real-life Tom and Jerry cartoon but definitely not for kids!
That business with the Mexican lowlifes interfering with Task and Task finding a husband for the old Chinese dumpling chef felt like unnecessary additions to an already questionably lengthy narrative. I love Zahler’s movies, which is what he’s probably best known for, but, like this book, his last one, Dragged Across Concrete, also needed heavy editing (there’s a lot of sandwich eating in The Slanted Gutter too). That’s the problem with great creators getting success - they have more power in saying what gets cut, they’re often not the best judges, and they’re usually convinced it’s all gravy (aka the Tarantino effect).
I’m glad I read it, both as a fan of Zahler’s and a fan of fun Elmore Leonard-esque crime fiction. The Chester sections alone are worth it, just because he’s such a wonderful shitheel and I loved seeing things going so badly for him, but there’s a lot of original, entertaining stuff here too. Still, it felt oddly insubstantial for the page count and I was left wondering what the point of it all was. A modern-day, smaller-scale retelling of the Hatfield and McCoy feud?
It’s easy to put down because the pacing is practically non-existent and anything resembling a plot took a walk before the first page, but so long as you have the patience to settle in for the long haul, there’s enough here to make The Slanted Gutter just about worth the effort. For all that, Zahler remains a unique talent.
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