"Where All Light Tends To Go" by David Joy, A Book Without Light Or Joy

 

Sometime in the summer of 2023, I saw a television documentary about writers in Appalachia in which David Joy was portrayed as one of the newer and most respected writers of Appalachian fiction and ordered this book and three more of his novels.  I read this book with my wife shortly after it arrived, still don't know why, and have never touched either of the other two novels which I actually received.  I have also been quite thankful that one of the four I ordered from a used book website had actually already been sold but not removed from the website by the seller/member. I rejoiced when I got my money back instead of another of this man's books. I doubt that I will ever touch either of the other two novels unless I am snowbound for an extended period of time and have nothing else to read which is very unlikely since I own somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 books of all types.  I could very likely also buy copies of both "War And Peace" and "Ulysses" to hold in reserve for just such a blizzard.  DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BELIEVING THAT I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK BECAUSE I HAVE CHOSEN TO WRITE ABOUT IT!

This novel is set somewhere in the Carolinas in a fictitious town in which the protagonist (and I use that word very loosely), the teenage son of the local drug kingpin, is about to graduate from high school and has an ongoing relationship with the most desirable girl in the school and hopes to marry her someday.  They have grown up as best friends from babyhood and the girl hates the occupation of this boy's father.  The boy is making what initially appears to be a genuine effort to avoid becoming his father's right hand man in the drug trade which they disguise behind an owner operated mechanic business.  The boy's father is well connected in the area and has strong and well funded connections with the local law enforcement which protect him and his drug dealing from any law enforcement interventions.  The boy's mother, divorced from the father, lives in another house and is a drug addict with a mutually negative relationship with her ex-husband.  The boy works daily to maintain acceptable relationships with both his parents.  

As the novel progresses, the boy finds himself drawn into his father's drug operation due primarily to his dependence on his father for his daily existence.  He also becomes angry at a party because a local boy with connections to the sheriff's department is making a move on the girl he loves. He savagely assaults the boy and finds himself facing several criminal charges and must depend on his father's connections to dodge the penitentiary.  He eventually finds himself present at what he believes is the murder of another young man whom his father has ordered his son and two of his henchmen to take adverse action against.  They dump what they believe is the dead young man over a mountain and somehow he survives which intensifies the attention toward all of them by law enforcement.  Our hero, and I assure you that is a misnomer, finds himself deep in the drug business and appears to be trying to get out somehow after also helping the same two henchmen to dump a different body in the local lake in his father's favorite graveyard.  Just as the reader begins to develop hope that the boy will somehow find a way to testify against his father and escape the clutches of the drug trade, he goes completely off the deep end, shoots and kills the sheriff when they come to arrest him and the novel comes to a very undesirable end.  

It is abundantly clear that David Joy simply took his publisher's money and ran, has no commitment to supporting Appalachia or defending it in any venue, and is unworthy of the positive regard of any citizen of the greater Appalachian Region, especially if such a citizen has any positive regard for Appalachia, Appalachian Culture, or Appalachia's hopes for the future.  He is simply another writer who writes well enough to be published in the drug store novel trade, and likely has no ambition to become any better.  

What do I have to say further about this disgusting piece of work?  David Joy cannot be perceived, in my opinion, as a writer who is worthy of the respect of other natives of Appalachia.  This novel makes it abundantly clear that David Joy joined all the other detractors and defamers of Appalachia and Appalachian people, grabbed the easy money, and acquiesced to the commonly held belief outside the area that all Appalachia's best writers such as Thomas Wolfe, Pearl Buck, Marie Manilla, and a dozen others can either go to hell if living, and, if dead, can just roll over in their graves .  He has filled this novel with every negative, hateful, ignorant, and defamatory depiction he could envision of Appalachia; Appalachian people; the drug problem in America which is not just an Appalachian problem but a national problem; and has clearly chosen to produce the kind of writing which those other detractors of Appalachia love to produce, read, and spread as far around the world as they can.  This is a totally detestable novel and unworthy of anyone's time to read.  DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BELIEVING THAT I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK BECAUSE I HAVE CHOSEN TO WRITE ABOUT IT! DON'T BOTHER WITH IT!  IF NECESSARY, GO TO YOUR BATHROOM WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF READING MATERIAL AND READ THE BACK OF THE AIR FRESHER CAN WHILE YOU TAKE A CRAP!