Collect Drag The Darkness Down: A Novel Constructed By Matt Baker Available In EPub

Shiloh is in trouble, His job is going nowhere, his marriage is on the ropes, and running over a French cyclist in Memphis didn't help, Now his sister, the piano virtuoso Birdshit, has run off with a local high school football star, Enter Blakey Flake, an art history teacher and armchair philosopher turned private investigator: off they go in search of Birdshit, encountering evangelical preachers, articulate foreigners, drug addicts in Superman underwear and, of course, the cops.
But as the pair wind their way from Arkansas to Kansas City one cigarette at a time, Odom realizes that he isn't really running after Birdshit he's actually running away from his past.
Drag The Darkness Down was a pleasure to read, Although the worlds the stories inhabit are completely different, it reminded me of Michael FitzGerald's Radiant Days in that I thought I had the book pegged I thought it was going to be a kind of Jack Pendarvistype picaresque and then it did this amazing backflip into weirdness I never saw coming and just kept getting darker and stranger in a way that made me rethink everything that I thought about the characters and their

situations.
That is very tough to pull off, And there is some writing toward the end that just knocked me in the creek and continues to haunt me, Just that sentence alone is worth the price of admission, Where Pendarvis goes for the joke, Baker goes for the jugular,

My main grip about the book is the gutter the interior margins is too small, which makes reading it in bed at night a bit of an effort.
Want to drag the darkness down Go on a road trip with Odom Shiloh in his Honda of the year,

Thisyearold man from Frothmouth, Arkansas, has more than his share of troubles, Odom is unemployable, his second marriage is about to go bust, and his talented but neurotic sister, Birdshit, has gone missing, Oh, and hes also on the run from the authorities after ramming his car into a famous French cyclist in downtown Memphis,

With all this drama going on, why not hit the road Determined to track down his little sister, Odom enlists help from his private investigator friend, Blakey Flake.
The pair climbs into Odoms vintage Honda and travels the highways of Arkansas and Missouri in search of Birdshit, who Odom believes has run off with a fourstar high school football recruit.
Along the way, Odom mostly listens as the chainsmoking Blakey ruminates on topics ranging from his favorite French Impressionist painters to the theory that Oprah Winfrey is, in fact, ruining our way of life.
As is the case with most memorable road novels Charles Portiss The Dog of the South comes to mind, it is the journey not the destination that drives Drag the Darkness Down.


This debut novel by Kansas City author Matt Baker was published in, but I only recently became familiar with it, The book is an impressive start to what looks to be a strong fiction career for Mr, Baker. His characters in Drag the Darkness Down are cold, conniving and perennially selfabsorbed, The way they interact with each other while pursuing their individual agendas is often hilarious, though Bakers characters seldom see it that way,

No one in Drag the Darkness Down is satisfied with his or her current state: Blakey wants to be a standup comic, Birdshit wants to write poetry and escape smalltown life, Odom isnt sure what he wants, other than to evade the law, rescue his sister, and stick a fork in another failed marriage.
We see the action through Odoms eyes, but can we trust his view of reality The meandering banter between Odom and the screwball detective Blakey as they follow the trail to Birdshit fuels the first half of the novel.
After a while, Blakeys outrageous pronouncements and dubious theories start making sense, and Odoms internal broodings become more frightening, Which one of these two guys in the Honda is the crazy one Is it both of them Is it too late to bail on this road trip and catch a Greyhound back to Little Rock

Finding humor and building intrigue in characters who are as forlorn and shiftless as Odom Shiloh is the writing equivalent of a magic trick, but I believe Matt Baker has pulled it off.
Drag the Darkness Down is truly dark, and it is unlikely that this detective story is going to end happily, but we can at least sit back and enjoy the bumpy, tumultuous ride.
Clarence Matthew Baker was an American comic book artist best known for drawing early comics heroines such as the costumed crimefighter Phantom Lady, and romance comics.
Active in thes ands Golden Age of comic books, he is the first known African American artist to find success in the comic book industry.
He also penciled an early form of graphic novel, St, John Publications digest sized picture novel It Rhymes with Lust, Baker was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in, Clarence Matthew Baker was an American comic book artist best known for drawing early comics heroines such as the costumed crimefighter Phantom Lady, and romance comics.
Active in thes ands Golden Age of comic books, he is the first known African American artist to find success in the comic book industry.
He also penciled an early form of graphic novel, St, John Publications' digest sized "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust, Baker was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in, sitelink.