Were arriving aliens to be introduced to the concept of the USA via the work of Willy Vlautin, they would find a country populated by quiet people enduring quiet struggles. Family dysfunction, the repetitiveness of minimum-wage work, crushing loneliness and the detailed grind of daily existence (rarely has a writer said so much through groceries bought and meals cooked) are dominant themes, though always backlit by the suggestion that goodness prevails. Even entertaining the idea of the American Dream is an indulgence when the reality of simple survival is far more urgent. In this sense Vlautin is the son of John Steinbeck and Raymond Carver.
His latest novel explores the burgeoning friendship between the middle-aged house painter Eddie Wilkens and his eight-year-old neighbour Russell, a sensitive latchkey kid bullied by his sadistic brother Curtis and neglected by his stripper mother. Bruises pepper Russell’s body when he and Eddie first meet to bond over pizza and menial tasks. The child seeks safety and connection with Eddie, who slowly emerges as an archetypal Vlautin creation: a simple man with a failed marriage, beat-up car and, crucially, a conscience. The fact that he cares becomes a heroic stance that feels almost revolutionary.
Eschewing sentimentality or patronising portraits of poverty, the novel paints the lives of those left behind: people living in an entirely different America to the one that is presided over by a man who was made a millionaire at the age of eight – the same age as Russell, in fact. Vlautin asks: how has the American Dream come to this, and did it ever exist anyway?
His characters offer us an insight into an underclass that, far away from reckless Wall Street brokers and DC lobbyists, actually forms the engine of American society. Here are the people who fix your car, pour your coffee and paint your house. There’s Eddie’s irascible employee Houston, perennially treading the line between sobriety and boozy benders that send him AWOL for weeks; and LaDawn, the waitress whom Houston attempts to woo in scenes that provide some comic relief. Even the delinquent Curtis, a teenage father-to-be on the path to prison, addiction or death, is afforded a broader context of neglect and insecurity: ‘Why would you pick him to live here and not me?’ he sobs, after Eddie provides refuge for Russell, who Curtis beats and bullies so badly that he defecates in fear.
The most impressive portrait is of the resourceful young Russell himself, whose exhausting journey in life recalls that of others in Vlautin’s equally heartbreaking novels, Lean on Pete (2012) and Don’t Skip Out on Me (2018) – the latter one of the best literary depictions of the bottom end of the boxing world. Russell’s motivation is simply to ensure that Eddie remains in a position to keep looking after him. Food, a roof and safety are what the child seeks, but such basic needs seem at times beyond reach.
‘It’s all one song,’ Neil Young once said of his output. The same might be said of Vlautin’s novels, which give dignity and a voice to the disenfranchised. Right now his country needs him more than ever.
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