045. SMONK (2006).

SMONK by Tom Franklin (2006).

Forget about the spaghetti Western where cool guys light their cigar with thumb matches and ride to the horizon with a beautiful score written by Morricone.

This is R-rated, DIRTY western at its brutal BEST!!   

OUTLAWS and HOOKER are NEVER been cooler than this!!

P

layers. –This is not your typical western. For one thing, there is no such thing as good or bad side. Everyone is equally sick (mentally/physically) and crazy and tries really hard to kill each other. Great ensembles of characters.

(Eugene Oregon) SMONK. The most extreme/bizarre main character I’ve ever seen or read. This is how he is describes: a red hair dwarf with gorilla muscle with low and cocked head. He has a wide and long hand with which he can crush brick and very short and thin legs all wrapped up in nice expensive clothes.

 He has syphilis, gout, blood sugar, neuralgia, ague, Malaria and coughs blood all the time and is missing one eye and arthritis on his knee. All those years of hard work and overtime come back and taxing his body heavily which off course doesn’t affect his brain and brutality at all.

Also, he has what they called “a horse dick” which is a gigantic chick magnets. The girls are just throwing themselves at him all the time!!

There is no single crime that he hasn’t committed. Murder, extortion, rape, blackmail, robbery, arson, torture, kidnapping, the list goes on forever. As a result of hard work, he accumulates a huge fortune and now owns a huge launch and farm land outside the village.

Various law enforcement units, individuals, town folks try to kill him for years but always end up got killed or blown up or tore into pieces by SMONK and his associates.

He is cunning, extremely smart, merciless, unpredictable, disgusting and totally invincible. 

Simply put, SMONK is the man in the wild west!!

Evangeline.  15 years old red hair hooker who has seen/done everything in the old west. After killing couple of guys who try to kill/rape her, she is on the run from the law. Not that she minds.

She is really skinny and doesn’t have any curve for a girl, so quite often, people treats her as a boy. It is her cactus-like figure that cause her to get accused of sodomy!! As a result, bunch of stupid Christian deputies go after her declaring a crime against human race!! Absolutely hilarious!!

She was raised by crazy man named Ned and before that, white gypsy witch, Alice Hanover. What a life.

Phail Walton.  The head of stupid Christian law enforcers who go after Evangeline for her crime (?) against human race and God.

Like all religious fanatics, he is stubborn and righteous and sexually twisted. But, not a bad man. Really.

Will McKissick.  A bailiff. Used to work with Smonk all the time, then got sick of it and cleaned up and went straight.

He used to sell his wife to Smonk for a few gold coins until she runs away from home going after Smonk. Not for revenge but the thing between his leg.

After the hotel ambush goes horribly wrong, he thinks Smonk kidnaps his young son, a horny little bastard, and goes after him with the only other man left in town, blacksmith Gate.

And the rest are all fantastically bizarre characters all across old west.

P

lace. –1911. A small town of old Texas, Alabama where Smonk terrorizes everything on his site. After the town, it is vast horizon of sand, heat, wild dogs and vicious criminals. Just a perfect setting for this savage western.

P

lot. –As you all know by now, the story is created by its main characters. And since there are not even one NOT-INSANE PERSON in this book, the story naturally is totally crazy. However, the insanity here is created by design and intention and brilliant but twisted mind of another brilliant writer (that nobody knows, which I think should be considered as a crime), the story itself is actually quite captivating and well-structured and totally, madly entertaining.

Everyone shoots, kills, fucks and beats each other up as they pleased just to survive the day.

The story is jumping around four main characters (for whom I mentioned above), but the fundamental storyline is, naturally, based on Smonk. Another word, everything starts and ends with Smonk. At the beginning, Smonk is on trial for all his crimes against the state of old Texas or town or something like that. People in the village however, ignoring all the legends and horror stories about Smonk and how invincible he is, decide to take matters on their own hand and plan the big ambush.  Smonk off course avoids the jail term or ambush or even a trial by blowing away everyone in the vicinity of the building with one big mother of all machine gun. 

Every single man in village is literally torn in pieces except two men: Mckissick the bailiff and Portis Gates, the blacksmith (Well, actually three but it’ll become two in a hurry). With order from Mrs. Tate, a woman who owns the town, they go after Smonk. And maybe something else.

Meanwhile, on the other side of old west, a young but street smart hooker Evangeline is chased by innocent but really twisted, right-wing fanatic, Christian Deputy Walton who has crazy sexual desire toward Evangeline.

Eventually, their path intervenes and reveals all the sick secrets behind the sunny town of Texas, Alabama.(the secret itself is so fantastically bizarre, I have to read it carefully twice to get the entire picture).

The writer uses the style of writing which I first encounter with “No Country For Old Man”: there is no distinction between narration and dialogue and since all of them speak with very thick old Southern accent, it takes me some time to get uses to the book. However, this style of writing is perfect for this book because it adds raw energy and harsh realism to already brutal atmosphere. 

As for a story, I’ll bet that you will not find any story more insane/disturbed than this any time soon. Or never. The setting is absolutely crazy and the deeper we get into the story, the crazier it gets. 

At the end of the story, there is not one innocent soul standing in old west and then there’s a strong indication that another massacre is in order for the next generation.

V

erdict. – This book is like watching Tarantino Western directed by a psychopath: full of cool dialogues with dirty, disgusting and quite often, meaningless violence which of course makes it totally cool.

It’s not everyday you find a book where all the characters are filthy-sick murderers yet so incredibly COOL at the same time.  So if you don’t mind a bit of violence (actually, it’s a lot more than “a bit”), please read this book. This gross and violent action thriller (with touch of black humor and tons of outrageous characters) will entertain you until the very last paragraph.

 And believe or not, it actually has quite good ending.