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Night Soil
The first novel in 10 years by critically acclaimed author Dale Peck is a coming-of-age story about Judas, a gay teenager in the south. It is also an expansive take on the personal and the political, in which the legacies of racial exploitation in the years after the civil war, the big money of the contemporary art world, family secrets, sexual explorations, and ecological disasters collide.
Dixie Stammers, a potter, and her son Judas, live in an unusual community in an unnamed southern state. When Judas is a teenager, the art world falls in love with Dixie when it is discovered that not only are her pots mechanically perfect spheres, they are also identical, despite the fact that they are made entirely by hand, without benefit of a wheel, measuring device, or any other tool. Fame and fortune puts a strain on Judas’s relationship with his mother, in part because he is an only child and never knew his father, but also because he is afflicted with a port wine stain that covers the entire left side of his body, including his face.
Pathologically shy (or maybe just pathological), the teenaged Judas retreats into a world of anonymous sexual encounters at a roadside rest area, although what he really longs for is a relationship with one of the boys at the private school he attends. This Academy was founded by Judas’s ancestral grandfather, a nineteenth-century coal magnate named Marcus Stammers who due to a tragic accident, closed his mines and transformed them into a nature conservancy, which is overseen by the Academy. Driven by both lust and a desire to understand his mother, Judas dives deeper into his family’s history, and the Academy’s, until he uncovers a series of secrets that causes him to question everything he thought he knew about his world.
Dixie Stammers, a potter, and her son Judas, live in an unusual community in an unnamed southern state. When Judas is a teenager, the art world falls in love with Dixie when it is discovered that not only are her pots mechanically perfect spheres, they are also identical, despite the fact that they are made entirely by hand, without benefit of a wheel, measuring device, or any other tool. Fame and fortune puts a strain on Judas’s relationship with his mother, in part because he is an only child and never knew his father, but also because he is afflicted with a port wine stain that covers the entire left side of his body, including his face.
Pathologically shy (or maybe just pathological), the teenaged Judas retreats into a world of anonymous sexual encounters at a roadside rest area, although what he really longs for is a relationship with one of the boys at the private school he attends. This Academy was founded by Judas’s ancestral grandfather, a nineteenth-century coal magnate named Marcus Stammers who due to a tragic accident, closed his mines and transformed them into a nature conservancy, which is overseen by the Academy. Driven by both lust and a desire to understand his mother, Judas dives deeper into his family’s history, and the Academy’s, until he uncovers a series of secrets that causes him to question everything he thought he knew about his world.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published August 14, 2018
16 people are currently reading
959 people want to read
About the author
Dale Peck
41 books108 followersDale Peck (born 1967 on Long Island, New York) is an American novelist, critic, and columnist. His 2009 novel, Sprout, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children's/Young Adult literature, and was a finalist for the Stonewall Book Award in the Children's and Young Adult Literature category.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 3, 2018
2.5 / 5 stars
Let's get one thing clear—I am way too stupid to accurately judge or critique Night Soil . That being said, it is a beautifully told and intelligently written fiction novel, focusing on racism, sexuality, family, and contemporary art. The story is told by Judas Stammers, son of artist/potter Dixie Stammers. The duo live in an overcrowded apartment until Dixie is discovered by art aficionados and her career begins to soar. Judas suffers from physical abnormalities and an interpersonal strain with his mother. Judas hides in his own world of mystery and seclusion due to his birthmark that covers half his body, including his face—leaving him shy and detached from others around him.
Judas attends his education at The Academy, founded by an ancestor, under mysterious circumstances. While Judas attends his schooling, he masks his loneliness by escaping through his sexuality. Judas explores his sexuality via bathroom stalls and anonymous sexual experiences. Judas refuses to show people who he really is, not only physically, but personally. As Judas learns more about his family dynamic, he starts learning about the secrets his family kept hidden for generations. Judas is in an exploration of who he is and what he wants to be.
Night Soil is best when it makes no apologies—it is written as if you are reading a diary or attending a therapy appointment. It's blunt, sarcastic, and intelligently constructed. While the story fell flat and left me wanting to know more, its an interesting read if you want to break out of your comfort zone. It's a slow-burn at its core—taking over 50% to get to the heart of the story arc, but if you keep reading, you'll enjoy it.
Let's get one thing clear—I am way too stupid to accurately judge or critique Night Soil . That being said, it is a beautifully told and intelligently written fiction novel, focusing on racism, sexuality, family, and contemporary art. The story is told by Judas Stammers, son of artist/potter Dixie Stammers. The duo live in an overcrowded apartment until Dixie is discovered by art aficionados and her career begins to soar. Judas suffers from physical abnormalities and an interpersonal strain with his mother. Judas hides in his own world of mystery and seclusion due to his birthmark that covers half his body, including his face—leaving him shy and detached from others around him.
Judas attends his education at The Academy, founded by an ancestor, under mysterious circumstances. While Judas attends his schooling, he masks his loneliness by escaping through his sexuality. Judas explores his sexuality via bathroom stalls and anonymous sexual experiences. Judas refuses to show people who he really is, not only physically, but personally. As Judas learns more about his family dynamic, he starts learning about the secrets his family kept hidden for generations. Judas is in an exploration of who he is and what he wants to be.
Night Soil is best when it makes no apologies—it is written as if you are reading a diary or attending a therapy appointment. It's blunt, sarcastic, and intelligently constructed. While the story fell flat and left me wanting to know more, its an interesting read if you want to break out of your comfort zone. It's a slow-burn at its core—taking over 50% to get to the heart of the story arc, but if you keep reading, you'll enjoy it.
October 11, 2018
This book took me completely by surprise. I’ve never read Martin and John, but Dale Peck has always been on my radar as a gay author of note. So when Night Soil came out, I was sufficiently intrigued to give it a bash – curious especially as to why the reviews have been so polarising, on Goodreads and in the mainstream media.
This Southern Gothic potboiler unravels the tortured history of a famous family, its legacy and dark past, in a mother/son relationship. The son has a symbolic disfigurement, in the form of a widespread port wine birthmark, that seems to be the mark of his family’s past.
His mother, meanwhile, is a famous potter whose claim to fame lies in her effortless recreation of identical pots, without the use of a wheel or any other aids. Each pot she produces is a mirror image of the last – art as commodity. And each pot is as hermetically perfect as her son is a visible freak and failure.
I loved the way that Peck segues effortlessly from the coal-mining legacy of the Stammers family, which produced a fortune built on human misery and environmental degradation, to State Comfort Station NE-28, a derelict restroom awash in shit-and-piss where the son seeks out sordid sexual gratification.
(This is one obvious allusion to the ‘night soil’ of the title; the other is the fact that the seam of clay that the mother mines on the family property for her famous pots bears the detritus from those dark mining days.)
In keeping with the Southern Gothic theme, the writing here is foetid and ornate, lush with vivid description and allusion. Of course, this means that the sojourn in State Comfort Station NE-28 is particularly graphic and disturbing, which I suspect is what will turn many readers off the book. Which is a great pity, for this is but one facet of the story. (This certainly is not A Little Life, where perversion and abuse is the entire extent of the subject matter.)
“I know you got your rules. Your, whatever, system. I can even admire it in a way. But don’t you ever want to lay down next to a whole man, feel more of him than just his dick?”
Mostly I just wanted to correct his grammar.
And so Peck ushers in the final act of his extraordinary novel, a disquieting love affair between the son and a black student at the Stammers Academy (which is especially ironic given the prejudice and racial hatred that has fuelled the Stammers family legacy to date. But such inversions and reflections are what makes this such a surprisingly affecting read.)
The ending is as horrific as it is heart-breaking, which is to be expected given the Southern Gothic tradition that Peck excavates here, to reveal the ‘night soil’ at its source. I laughed out loud at the sheer Grand Guignol excess of the ending … and was then immediately embarrassed at my response to what is actually a devastating tragedy.
But then, like a palate cleanser, Peck recounts the ‘Parable of the Man Lost in the Snow’, an exercise in logic and ratiocination that students at Stammers Academy are subjected to. This coolly cerebral part of the novel is like ice water thrown onto a fire, but it slowly builds up an emotional register all of its own, mirroring what has gone before.
Curiously enough, this is perhaps my favourite part of the novel – grand, beautiful, remote. It is perhaps because I am simultaneously reading Space Odyssey by Michael Benson, an exhaustive account of the trials and tribulations of filming 2001: A Space Odyssey, where ‘The Dawn Man of Sequence’ reminds me so much of ‘Parable’. Another writer that springs to mind is Samuel R. Delany, who has a similar dual obsession with intellectual concerns versus matters of the flesh – its failings, desires, weaknesses. And epiphanies.
This Southern Gothic potboiler unravels the tortured history of a famous family, its legacy and dark past, in a mother/son relationship. The son has a symbolic disfigurement, in the form of a widespread port wine birthmark, that seems to be the mark of his family’s past.
His mother, meanwhile, is a famous potter whose claim to fame lies in her effortless recreation of identical pots, without the use of a wheel or any other aids. Each pot she produces is a mirror image of the last – art as commodity. And each pot is as hermetically perfect as her son is a visible freak and failure.
I loved the way that Peck segues effortlessly from the coal-mining legacy of the Stammers family, which produced a fortune built on human misery and environmental degradation, to State Comfort Station NE-28, a derelict restroom awash in shit-and-piss where the son seeks out sordid sexual gratification.
(This is one obvious allusion to the ‘night soil’ of the title; the other is the fact that the seam of clay that the mother mines on the family property for her famous pots bears the detritus from those dark mining days.)
In keeping with the Southern Gothic theme, the writing here is foetid and ornate, lush with vivid description and allusion. Of course, this means that the sojourn in State Comfort Station NE-28 is particularly graphic and disturbing, which I suspect is what will turn many readers off the book. Which is a great pity, for this is but one facet of the story. (This certainly is not A Little Life, where perversion and abuse is the entire extent of the subject matter.)
“I know you got your rules. Your, whatever, system. I can even admire it in a way. But don’t you ever want to lay down next to a whole man, feel more of him than just his dick?”
Mostly I just wanted to correct his grammar.
And so Peck ushers in the final act of his extraordinary novel, a disquieting love affair between the son and a black student at the Stammers Academy (which is especially ironic given the prejudice and racial hatred that has fuelled the Stammers family legacy to date. But such inversions and reflections are what makes this such a surprisingly affecting read.)
The ending is as horrific as it is heart-breaking, which is to be expected given the Southern Gothic tradition that Peck excavates here, to reveal the ‘night soil’ at its source. I laughed out loud at the sheer Grand Guignol excess of the ending … and was then immediately embarrassed at my response to what is actually a devastating tragedy.
But then, like a palate cleanser, Peck recounts the ‘Parable of the Man Lost in the Snow’, an exercise in logic and ratiocination that students at Stammers Academy are subjected to. This coolly cerebral part of the novel is like ice water thrown onto a fire, but it slowly builds up an emotional register all of its own, mirroring what has gone before.
Curiously enough, this is perhaps my favourite part of the novel – grand, beautiful, remote. It is perhaps because I am simultaneously reading Space Odyssey by Michael Benson, an exhaustive account of the trials and tribulations of filming 2001: A Space Odyssey, where ‘The Dawn Man of Sequence’ reminds me so much of ‘Parable’. Another writer that springs to mind is Samuel R. Delany, who has a similar dual obsession with intellectual concerns versus matters of the flesh – its failings, desires, weaknesses. And epiphanies.
October 9, 2018
“ A working class dithyrambs peppered with tautologies and sesquipedalia verbs and the bloviated self confidence that what he’s saying is true because he’s the one saying it.”
I post this strictly to illustrate how Peck, whose previous books I’ve loved, feels so overwritten that I found myself moving between book and dictionary like I was translating it rather than reading. The young gay Jude, disfigured by a horrible wine colored stain that covers nearly half his body relays a coming of age story...maybe? It’s unclear. Searching for connections by having anonymous bathroom encounters while attending a family owned academy, and sparring with his brilliant but aloof artist Mother, most of the story Peck seems to spend on the history of the University that Jude’s grandfather founded. Lots of dirt. And Clay. And soil. He’s a beautiful writer but this had me lost in the woods.
I post this strictly to illustrate how Peck, whose previous books I’ve loved, feels so overwritten that I found myself moving between book and dictionary like I was translating it rather than reading. The young gay Jude, disfigured by a horrible wine colored stain that covers nearly half his body relays a coming of age story...maybe? It’s unclear. Searching for connections by having anonymous bathroom encounters while attending a family owned academy, and sparring with his brilliant but aloof artist Mother, most of the story Peck seems to spend on the history of the University that Jude’s grandfather founded. Lots of dirt. And Clay. And soil. He’s a beautiful writer but this had me lost in the woods.
March 28, 2024
I have always been dazzled by Mr. Peck's writing, I wouldn't dare try to critique it (I have no academic literary background, only a love of books and stories) but then although I have no doubt of the richness and depth of his writing (and I don't just mean his use of odd words or when he refers to things that you need to Google) but you can still read this story and become drawn in and transfixed by the narrative. Any good book you start reading and becomes one you want to read, like Night Soil, like all of Mr. Peck's novels, goes one stage further and becomes one you must read.
August 17, 2018
This is my first experience reading Dale Peck, an author with a wide-ranging reputation in the LGBTQ community for both fiction and essays. It is obvious in reading segments from this brief novel that Peck is one of the true masters of using language. The expertise reveals itself not only in the descriptions of the (occasional) narrator Judas Stammers, but in the historical descriptions of how the Stammers family converted a mid-19th-century mine in the Tennessee River Valley into an odd sort of academy focused on the education of freed slaves and townies. Nevertheless, it's not entirely accurate to suggest, as marketing material does, that this is a coming-of-age story for a gay teenager in the South. Indeed, it's hard to say exactly what Night Soil is about. I am very comfortable with many varieties of experimental and speculative fiction, yet this seemed at first to be a collection of exquisite descriptions in need of a stronger narrative to hold it together - at first, I thought of the book as a compressed variation of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. I was not a fan of that posthumous novel, as I thought it was a suite of vignettes, all dressed up with no place to go.
Halfway through the book, I was ready to say that Night Soil could have earned an easy five stars if I could have discerned its overall message, but by book's end, I started wondering if the fault lay not in my stars but in myself. There is a Buddhist message on pattern-recognition, consciousness, and culture that begins to come into focus by the book's end, but it still is not quite clear how this applies to Judas Stammers, his mother Dixie, or any of the Stammers who have gone on before. And that means it is not clear how this might apply to post-Civil War Americans, to humans at large, or to the various species that preceded us. There is something going on here, only partially visible through the snow, but I can't make out its shape.
Much of the book is dedicated to Judas's mother's efforts to create random pottery-art by accident, and how humans are capable of making exactingly similar pieces if they allow the art to emerge from the shit/clay/earth from whence it came, hence the book's title. Judas tries to show some empathy for his mother's quirky way of throwing pots that become priceless artifacts in the art world. But he is also left to resolve the problems of his mother's estate when her pottery suddenly dissolves following her unexpected demise.
Just prior to his mother's calamity in Chapter 6, we are subjected to some heavy speculation as to how culture and art emerges in a species graced with a pattern-recognition consciousness, though this high-falutin' speculation is all bound up in Judas's affair with Lovett Reid - not through sloppiness on the part of the author, but because some larger moire pattern is supposed to emerge from these clashing images.
And then nothing can prepare us for the last chapter, "Parable of the Man Lost in the Snow," which could stand on its own as a short story. The novices in the Stammers Academy discern the parable through Socratic questioning of the master. The vivid details of a wanderer from a hunter-gatherer tribe evoke nothing so much as Kim Stanley Robinson's book Shaman, and we can feel the bone-chilling cold experienced by the man caught in snowdrifts. It is clear what the master, hence Peck, is trying to say about the man following his own snowshoe trail being like humans who are bound by despair yet must show hope. It is less clear what Peck is saying about how our lost hiker discovers "spirit" and pattern-recognition as the rudimentary base for an individual consciousness. The images of throwing pebbles at an igloo seem to suggest that all paths of enlightenment only help us understand our own boundaries and our own shackles, at least in this life. But I'm still groping here, blinded by the snowstorm. For now, I will give Night Soil four stars because the author's descriptive capabilities are so stunning. I reserve the right to go back and give it five stars if I can figure out how all these pieces are supposed to fit together.
Halfway through the book, I was ready to say that Night Soil could have earned an easy five stars if I could have discerned its overall message, but by book's end, I started wondering if the fault lay not in my stars but in myself. There is a Buddhist message on pattern-recognition, consciousness, and culture that begins to come into focus by the book's end, but it still is not quite clear how this applies to Judas Stammers, his mother Dixie, or any of the Stammers who have gone on before. And that means it is not clear how this might apply to post-Civil War Americans, to humans at large, or to the various species that preceded us. There is something going on here, only partially visible through the snow, but I can't make out its shape.
Much of the book is dedicated to Judas's mother's efforts to create random pottery-art by accident, and how humans are capable of making exactingly similar pieces if they allow the art to emerge from the shit/clay/earth from whence it came, hence the book's title. Judas tries to show some empathy for his mother's quirky way of throwing pots that become priceless artifacts in the art world. But he is also left to resolve the problems of his mother's estate when her pottery suddenly dissolves following her unexpected demise.
Just prior to his mother's calamity in Chapter 6, we are subjected to some heavy speculation as to how culture and art emerges in a species graced with a pattern-recognition consciousness, though this high-falutin' speculation is all bound up in Judas's affair with Lovett Reid - not through sloppiness on the part of the author, but because some larger moire pattern is supposed to emerge from these clashing images.
And then nothing can prepare us for the last chapter, "Parable of the Man Lost in the Snow," which could stand on its own as a short story. The novices in the Stammers Academy discern the parable through Socratic questioning of the master. The vivid details of a wanderer from a hunter-gatherer tribe evoke nothing so much as Kim Stanley Robinson's book Shaman, and we can feel the bone-chilling cold experienced by the man caught in snowdrifts. It is clear what the master, hence Peck, is trying to say about the man following his own snowshoe trail being like humans who are bound by despair yet must show hope. It is less clear what Peck is saying about how our lost hiker discovers "spirit" and pattern-recognition as the rudimentary base for an individual consciousness. The images of throwing pebbles at an igloo seem to suggest that all paths of enlightenment only help us understand our own boundaries and our own shackles, at least in this life. But I'm still groping here, blinded by the snowstorm. For now, I will give Night Soil four stars because the author's descriptive capabilities are so stunning. I reserve the right to go back and give it five stars if I can figure out how all these pieces are supposed to fit together.
September 25, 2018
Oh, how much I wanted to enjoy this book. I began with a certain appreciation for the voice of it's protagonist, Judas. But the more pages I turned, the more the style of the book - a bit stream of consciousness a bit meandering narration, became so intrusive to reader pleasures. Peck may be a much-lauded author, with many awards earned, but I became convinced he had devised a book as a test for a reader...and I do not believe I wanted to be one of those so judged. Maybe he created a new Dhalgren, maybe he is haute literary, but I put down the book without any sense of guilt or remorse. Perhaps an individual trapped in a terminal of some sort would find it the necessary distraction from boredom, or perhaps the boredom this book offers is less painful than that of a ten-hour lay-over.
July 5, 2019
There are some novels that make you feel and others that make you think. For me, the work of Dale Peck always falls squarely into the latter category. Night Soil is no exception.
It’s the story of Judas Stammers, son of Dixie, a self-taught potter who becomes the darling of the art world by making a series of clay pots that are all perfectly formed and identical spheres – completely by hand. Unlike Dixie’s flawless pots, Judas is marked with a port wine stain that covers half his body, causing him much discomfort, shame and making him almost pathologically introverted. The story pivots back and forth between the contemporary life of Judas and that of his maternal great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Marcus, a nineteenth-century coal mining tycoon being researched by Judas in an attempt to come to terms with his family history, his own life and his place in the world.
Honestly, I could never completely engage with the story because all the time I was reading it, I was trying to tease out the points Peck was trying to make. The novel seems to seethe with anger and I interpret that as a reaction to the current political climate in the US, as well as the dark, unacknowledged history that led us to this moment. Marcus Stammers is a classic robber baron and, in his excesses and abuses, I recognize everything that’s always been wrong with our country. Stammers Hall, his massive estate, a baroque folly of epic proportions (and, in the present day, the Academy where Judas is a student), includes an arbor planted with trees pillaged from the four corners of Earth – whether they’re fit to survive outside their native climate or not. At first glance, Peck’s exhaustive listing of every genus of tree seems unnecessary, but as I plowed through it, the long passage succeeds in hammering home the degree of excess involved in Marcus’s enterprise. Everything written about the elder Stammers is an indictment of corporate greed, US imperialism, the exploitation of the poor and the entitlement of the 1%.
But that hardly means Peck lets the common man off easy. In case you’re feeling superior, the author intends to prove your gullibility and/or your complicity in our country’s moral failures. For example, he makes a point to disabuse his readers of the erroneous [but commonly held] notions that Thomas Crapper and Emily Bloomer had anything to do with popular pseudonyms for commodes and ladies underthings, respectively. Were you convinced of the veracity of either of those “folk tales?” Well, Dale Peck is here to let you know that you’re just another chump. Even the art community doesn’t get off Scot free, since the story suggests that in Dixie’s work art snobs are able to enjoy the safety of homogeneity without having to sacrifice the idea that they’ve somehow discovered this naïve, unschooled artisan who hand-fashions primitive, yet perfect, objets d’art. While on the other hand, Judas represents everything that isn’t pure, homogenous and safe. Everything mainstream middle-America despises – a physically flawed, homosexual bastard who enjoys illicit liaisons with strangers in a filthy public lavatory. Everything he is and does flies in the face of “America the Beautiful.”
As always, Peck’s writing is stunning and his breadth of knowledge is impressive to say the least. But somehow, the story failed to involve me. It was a bit of a chore to read, to be perfectly honest. Even if a book is chockfull of laudatory ideas, if I don’t get swept up in it to some degree, I’m unable to fully enjoy it.
It’s the story of Judas Stammers, son of Dixie, a self-taught potter who becomes the darling of the art world by making a series of clay pots that are all perfectly formed and identical spheres – completely by hand. Unlike Dixie’s flawless pots, Judas is marked with a port wine stain that covers half his body, causing him much discomfort, shame and making him almost pathologically introverted. The story pivots back and forth between the contemporary life of Judas and that of his maternal great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Marcus, a nineteenth-century coal mining tycoon being researched by Judas in an attempt to come to terms with his family history, his own life and his place in the world.
Honestly, I could never completely engage with the story because all the time I was reading it, I was trying to tease out the points Peck was trying to make. The novel seems to seethe with anger and I interpret that as a reaction to the current political climate in the US, as well as the dark, unacknowledged history that led us to this moment. Marcus Stammers is a classic robber baron and, in his excesses and abuses, I recognize everything that’s always been wrong with our country. Stammers Hall, his massive estate, a baroque folly of epic proportions (and, in the present day, the Academy where Judas is a student), includes an arbor planted with trees pillaged from the four corners of Earth – whether they’re fit to survive outside their native climate or not. At first glance, Peck’s exhaustive listing of every genus of tree seems unnecessary, but as I plowed through it, the long passage succeeds in hammering home the degree of excess involved in Marcus’s enterprise. Everything written about the elder Stammers is an indictment of corporate greed, US imperialism, the exploitation of the poor and the entitlement of the 1%.
But that hardly means Peck lets the common man off easy. In case you’re feeling superior, the author intends to prove your gullibility and/or your complicity in our country’s moral failures. For example, he makes a point to disabuse his readers of the erroneous [but commonly held] notions that Thomas Crapper and Emily Bloomer had anything to do with popular pseudonyms for commodes and ladies underthings, respectively. Were you convinced of the veracity of either of those “folk tales?” Well, Dale Peck is here to let you know that you’re just another chump. Even the art community doesn’t get off Scot free, since the story suggests that in Dixie’s work art snobs are able to enjoy the safety of homogeneity without having to sacrifice the idea that they’ve somehow discovered this naïve, unschooled artisan who hand-fashions primitive, yet perfect, objets d’art. While on the other hand, Judas represents everything that isn’t pure, homogenous and safe. Everything mainstream middle-America despises – a physically flawed, homosexual bastard who enjoys illicit liaisons with strangers in a filthy public lavatory. Everything he is and does flies in the face of “America the Beautiful.”
As always, Peck’s writing is stunning and his breadth of knowledge is impressive to say the least. But somehow, the story failed to involve me. It was a bit of a chore to read, to be perfectly honest. Even if a book is chockfull of laudatory ideas, if I don’t get swept up in it to some degree, I’m unable to fully enjoy it.
September 8, 2019
This was a DNF at about 97% - it just got to the point where I didn't care enough to find out what happened at the end.
June 4, 2021
debated giving this book two stars because i appreciated the representation in it (lgbtq, obscure skin conditions) but it was just so painful to read i simply could not rate it any higher. the main characters pretentious ramblings which did not further the plot whatsoever made this book hard to get through. i think dale peck hoped to make a lot of points with this book, but sadly made them inaccessible to the reader.
February 1, 2019
Beautiful story- beautiful language. I love the imagery in this book. Glad I took the chance and picked this one up.
January 7, 2019
This is supposed to be literature, but all I see is an overblown, overwritten, pretentious pile of crap. I feel the worse for having read the first couple of chapters (and trying to decipher the last chapter; it got worse). I would give this disgusting mess negative stars if I could.
September 30, 2019
Torn between 2 or 3 stars, this is an odd, upsetting novel. I’m not sure if I like this one as Dale Peck can be a polemical writer.
February 3, 2021
As much as I want to complete this book one day, I cannot tell you the amount of times I've fallen asleep reading this book. The amount of times I've re read the same passage to have fallen asleep again and then to have to re read the same thing.
This book was like travelling through an endless underground tunnel. Ever constant and all forms of confining to the same monotonous tone. Hence the title 'Night Soil??'
I wish to have complete this book despite the unrelenting story. As what I have obtained at the first 60 pages it about a young fellow of the name Judas and his mother Dixie who are the last dregs of a large linage of wealth a power. There is an academy that once belonged to his great great great great great grandfather that his mother and him has been banished from or something. Judas and his mother have birthmarks that are a dermatologists night mare but Judas has it covering half his body. I think he had a lot of anal surgery because his butt is crusty and shrinks and rips- this is probably the only 'characteristic' that intrigues me. His mother is a renowned sculptor/potter/ artist. The pages that I fallen asleep to was in the middle of an endless description of his great grandfathers estate or land in which he owns, lots of trees and thats pretty much all I know about his book.
If you haven't already noticed, this particular book is a suffocation of description, of facts, of history. It is they type of book that feels like it should be self autobiography. Even though I am pretty certain this book is set in the 21st century (I do remember them mentioning Apple products). It feels ageless and historic.
DESPITE all this... I like it. I don't think I will be able to finish it but I truely liked it. I like the explanation of things and events that happened in the book. I like the long, extended logical explanation of all events. Of his scars of his mothers fame.
This book references a lot of historical events, icons, theories. I'm not talking about giant historical moments, I'm talking about tiny minute details in the world. This book is factual despite being a fiction. With that in mind I very much applaud Dale Peck for being a genius. I am 20 years old but I think I need to be much older to understand the copious amounts of references. I understood some but not all of them so I felt like I was just reading words.
Siann Out
This book was like travelling through an endless underground tunnel. Ever constant and all forms of confining to the same monotonous tone. Hence the title 'Night Soil??'
I wish to have complete this book despite the unrelenting story. As what I have obtained at the first 60 pages it about a young fellow of the name Judas and his mother Dixie who are the last dregs of a large linage of wealth a power. There is an academy that once belonged to his great great great great great grandfather that his mother and him has been banished from or something. Judas and his mother have birthmarks that are a dermatologists night mare but Judas has it covering half his body. I think he had a lot of anal surgery because his butt is crusty and shrinks and rips- this is probably the only 'characteristic' that intrigues me. His mother is a renowned sculptor/potter/ artist. The pages that I fallen asleep to was in the middle of an endless description of his great grandfathers estate or land in which he owns, lots of trees and thats pretty much all I know about his book.
If you haven't already noticed, this particular book is a suffocation of description, of facts, of history. It is they type of book that feels like it should be self autobiography. Even though I am pretty certain this book is set in the 21st century (I do remember them mentioning Apple products). It feels ageless and historic.
DESPITE all this... I like it. I don't think I will be able to finish it but I truely liked it. I like the explanation of things and events that happened in the book. I like the long, extended logical explanation of all events. Of his scars of his mothers fame.
This book references a lot of historical events, icons, theories. I'm not talking about giant historical moments, I'm talking about tiny minute details in the world. This book is factual despite being a fiction. With that in mind I very much applaud Dale Peck for being a genius. I am 20 years old but I think I need to be much older to understand the copious amounts of references. I understood some but not all of them so I felt like I was just reading words.
Siann Out
January 19, 2025
This is one of the worst books I have ever read. It is achingly dull. It is extremely difficult to read since it is packed with obscure vocab words, obscure historical allusions, and obscure phrases in Latin. Ordinarily, if I come across a word I don't know while reading, I look it up. In this book, there were literally two or three such words on every page; I gave up not because it was a lot of work to look up those words, but simply because I did not care and the book is so obscure and so bereft of incident that it literally does not matter what the words mean. It makes no difference whether the reader understand or doesn't.
Nothing happens in the books. The characters, such as they are, are incidental; the book is about the author's opinions and philosophy of life. The book masquerades as something very erudite and smart, but even as one does not understand it, one begins to suspect that rather than being smart, the book is actually very, very stupid.
A juvenile preoccupation with excretion and other bodily functions is one indicator of vapidity. Another is the weird insertion of completely irrelevant contemporary liberal race theory into the narrative. It is, to say the least, a little unsettling when the encounter between the mc and a young black man takes on very weird racial overtones. The whole thing is completely racist itself, viewing blacks as nothing more than an "issue" whites must contend with rather than as human beings. Of course, it is crucial to current liberal politics that people are not treated as people, but rather as elements or signifiers of a group. The author includes some writing about the KKK and other stuff that seems to be based on a deep misunderstanding or gross oversimplification of history.
How was something like this ever published? Does no one edit books anymore?
Whatever you do, don't read this. For some incomprehensible reason, there are actually fucking assholes out there recommending this book to gay readers. To the extent this book has gay content, it is self-loathing gay content and certainly no one will enjoy reading it. To repeat: Whatever you do, don't read this.
Nothing happens in the books. The characters, such as they are, are incidental; the book is about the author's opinions and philosophy of life. The book masquerades as something very erudite and smart, but even as one does not understand it, one begins to suspect that rather than being smart, the book is actually very, very stupid.
A juvenile preoccupation with excretion and other bodily functions is one indicator of vapidity. Another is the weird insertion of completely irrelevant contemporary liberal race theory into the narrative. It is, to say the least, a little unsettling when the encounter between the mc and a young black man takes on very weird racial overtones. The whole thing is completely racist itself, viewing blacks as nothing more than an "issue" whites must contend with rather than as human beings. Of course, it is crucial to current liberal politics that people are not treated as people, but rather as elements or signifiers of a group. The author includes some writing about the KKK and other stuff that seems to be based on a deep misunderstanding or gross oversimplification of history.
How was something like this ever published? Does no one edit books anymore?
Whatever you do, don't read this. For some incomprehensible reason, there are actually fucking assholes out there recommending this book to gay readers. To the extent this book has gay content, it is self-loathing gay content and certainly no one will enjoy reading it. To repeat: Whatever you do, don't read this.
August 14, 2018
Judas Stammers lives a peaceful life with his mother. He does not know anything about his father; only when he dies and leaves him masses of books and money does he actually notice this person. His mother is a potter and to their astonishment, her pots sell for an unbelievable amount of money that they actually do not need since their ancestors were coal magnates and founders of the Academy, a private school that also Judas attends. His mother often leaves him alone and the fact of being an outsider makes Judas ruminate a lot about life, his personality and also the history of the place he lives in.
I admittedly did not really get into the novel. Somehow for me, the narration did not completely make sense. I guess this was due to the fact that Judas narrates the long history of his family with masses of enumerations which made me lose the red threat. I found his personality quite interesting, but whenever I had the impression that the novel gets more fascinating and focuses on his development, the plot turned to something different. The end of the novel what highly noteworthy, the philosophical treatise about the parable - but how does this connect to the rest? To finish with something positive: I found many parts hilarious, I liked Judas style of narration, the way he puts his words, the comparisons, but this unfortunately could not counterbalance the weaknesses of the plot that I perceived.
I admittedly did not really get into the novel. Somehow for me, the narration did not completely make sense. I guess this was due to the fact that Judas narrates the long history of his family with masses of enumerations which made me lose the red threat. I found his personality quite interesting, but whenever I had the impression that the novel gets more fascinating and focuses on his development, the plot turned to something different. The end of the novel what highly noteworthy, the philosophical treatise about the parable - but how does this connect to the rest? To finish with something positive: I found many parts hilarious, I liked Judas style of narration, the way he puts his words, the comparisons, but this unfortunately could not counterbalance the weaknesses of the plot that I perceived.
October 23, 2018
This book was not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting something paranormal but instead I got is an intense, dark, and dirty coming of age story about Judas Stammers, a deformed boy who is struggling with not just his body but his mother and their greater family history.
The "intensity" comes primarily from Judas' emotional reactions to his life and the people around him. Nothing is ever "just" it is always a driving force in his mind. The "dark" comes in their family history and the destroyed lands that are their legacy. The "dirty" is also part of the land but also Judas' sexuality and his mother's career.
The book is a fast read even though the "advance uncopyedited edition" I got has too large paragraphs that made it difficult to read on many pages. Stream of consciousness is a tried and true storytelling technique but some physical guidance on the page can help the reader a lot.
If I were male maybe I'd understand the main character's motivations and actions more but as it was, I was often bewildered and even disgusted. That doesn't make it a bad book, simply means that I may not be the target audience.
The "intensity" comes primarily from Judas' emotional reactions to his life and the people around him. Nothing is ever "just" it is always a driving force in his mind. The "dark" comes in their family history and the destroyed lands that are their legacy. The "dirty" is also part of the land but also Judas' sexuality and his mother's career.
The book is a fast read even though the "advance uncopyedited edition" I got has too large paragraphs that made it difficult to read on many pages. Stream of consciousness is a tried and true storytelling technique but some physical guidance on the page can help the reader a lot.
If I were male maybe I'd understand the main character's motivations and actions more but as it was, I was often bewildered and even disgusted. That doesn't make it a bad book, simply means that I may not be the target audience.
April 29, 2018
a lot happening here that a better (more critical, more curious, better-informed) reader would appreciate - there's depth and weirdness and lots of ideas, pursued like Theseus's ball of yarn or whatever unspooling into an unknown. the book was fascinating to read and never knowing what the next page or even line would bring made it difficult to put down. i'm looking forward to reading others' thoughts on it. also there is a lot of satisfaction in a queer coming-of-age story that is not about being Nice or Uplifting or Encouraging (though those are important too).
April 13, 2020
The author is obviously very learned with a curious mind but I found the long descriptive segues difficult to follow. It may be that I don't have a good attention span at the moment. There is definitely something to this story- his timing re: revealing various facts to the reader is interesting but I finally gave up on it 1/3rd of the way through. I might try to revisit at some later time. A talented writer but maybe beyond my intellectual level?
January 1, 2019
Most enjoyable. A family saga, a coming-out story, an environmentalist critique. The idea of turning dirt into gold, in the form of identical and perfect pots, is profoundly poetic. And then the parable at the end, which opens up an abyss below any human choice. I won't easily forget the image of Judas Stammers skewered by dicks in the restroom.
November 11, 2019
Interesting in moments. Enjoyed last section greatly. Had seeds of ideas that could have been interesting but they seems to have randomly got slapped together.
Tedious, confusing and pretentious in many spots. Hard to get through for such a short book.
Gave it an extra star for ambition...even if I didn’t fully understand what the ambition was.
Tedious, confusing and pretentious in many spots. Hard to get through for such a short book.
Gave it an extra star for ambition...even if I didn’t fully understand what the ambition was.
November 7, 2018
I just couldn't get through the first chapter with the pretentious style. Stream of consciousness style can be tough enough without needing a thesaurus for every other word. It seems like an interesting premise, but you'd need more patience than I have to get to the plot.
October 17, 2019
Maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to understand this book, but I couldn't get through it. 40% done, and I don't really think that I had a firm grasp on what was happening. I'm a bit sad that I'm missing my book club's discussion!
dnf
May 26, 2025I picked this up because it was labeled as queer, but honestly it didn’t work for me. The tone didn’t match what was happening in the story, and I never really felt in the moment or connected to it. I didn’t get far.
June 29, 2018
I reviewed this for my ALA Annual 2018 Booklist Read ’N’ Rave Panel. Details: http://raforall.blogspot.com/2018/06/...
August 11, 2019
Strangest fucking book I’ve read!
August 30, 2019
Ugh. Too much rambling. May be too literary for my tastes. Just didn't care for it at all.
September 21, 2020
Waste of reading time. No interest in the characters or the writing style which was muddled.
Read
September 17, 2018I read this and it was good. Not for everyone, but nothing is.
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