Louis C.K.

The Great American Novel is a holy obsession – the Everest every writer dreams of summiting. For most, that dream begins and ends with William Faulkner, whose winding sentences and sunburned Southern landscapes birthed prose that seemed to breathe. His words marched; crookedly, yes, but always with purpose. Louis C.K., a would-be Faulkner disciple, trudges into the same swamp in Ingram, minus the map, the bearings and any sense of control. What was presumably intended to echo the Mississippian’s hypnotic disarray becomes instead a masterclass in incoherence. The story, told in long and sweaty first-person narration, follows a boy wandering through a Texan landscape of mud, hunger and half-formed memories.