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A Garden of Sand
Destitution, hunger, cruelty, rootlessness-all the odds stand against Jacky, the young boy at the center of this powerful, popular American classic, yet still he prevails. Resourcefully, doggedly, Jacky nurtures his spirit of independence, his capacity to love, and his faith in a nation's dream in a journey that takes him from Wichita to Corpus Christi and from poverty to possibility.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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About the author
Earl Thompson
11 books26 followersEarl Thompson ( May 24, 1931 – November 9, 1978 ) was a leading American writer of naturalist prose. Nominated for the National Book Award for A Garden of Sand and chosen by the Book of the Month Club for Tattoo, Thompson died suddenly at the peak of his success, having published just three novels—the fourth The Devil to Pay, was published posthumously.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
January 23, 2022
well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl Thompson? This portrait of America during the Depression, and its author, were complete unknowns to me. I actually have no recollection of how my mildewed and battered, torn and tattered paperback even came into my possession. The book was apparently A Big Thing when it came out, yet I've read nothing about it. Why is that? The author's talent with the prose is amazing: as poetic and as earthy as Steinbeck, with an interest in the same themes, the same era; but Thompson is somehow more empathetic, more alive in how writes about people, places, and times. There is no remove, no distance between author and subject, of the kind that I've experienced with Steinbeck. Thompson is right there in the dirt with his characters. The book feels beyond lived-in; it reads like an autobiography that was written while events were actually occurring, rather than being reminisced about when older and wiser. There is a palpable energy in this book, a livewire sort of aliveness that makes every description sing and sting, every person both Dickensian grotesque and fully recognizable, every horrible occurrence feel like something out of a rural gothic horror and also like something the author personally experienced, full of the kinds of details and character traits that make each and every scene feel completely authentic.
On top of all that, despite all of the despair on display, all of the broken lives and crushed dreams, this book is really, really funny. Sometimes the humor is meanly sardonic, other times warmer, based on recognizable human foibles and physical flaws; never in a way that feels like the author scorns who he is writing about or even the repulsive places where they struggle to eat, let alone get ahead. To me, the ability to illustrate the tragically humorous folly and smallness of life, while not actually being contemptuous of those lives, is the mark of a truly brilliant book.
...and yet, this masterpiece is impossible to recommend. Just have to get this out of the way: besides the over the top sadistic violence that occurs frequently, I'd say fully a third of this book details the extremely explicit fantasies or actions of our pre-pubescent hero and his sexual desires for his mother. Emphasis: extremely explicit. Wild to imagine this book being reprinted in our modern times. Jack alternately hints, begs, pleads, and demands the satisfaction of both his curiosity and his needs. He's constantly ogling her or finding ways to place his hands or mouth on her belly, breasts, groin, anywhere, when she's awake, when she's asleep, most usually in the twilight state in-between. He guilt trips and scolds her, molests her when she's out cold, he practically assaults her on more than one occasion. For a period of time he sleeps with an oversize makeshift pillow that has been fashioned into a pretend-person, fucking it furiously whenever he can as he imagines it as his mom. At one point, his degenerate step-father aids him in his goal (an especially grueling sequence); more frequently, stepdad gets in the way of young Jack's dreams, much to the boy's chagrin.
SPOILER ALERT: lil' Jack's dreams come true.
...and yet, the boy is indeed the book's hero, not just its protagonist. Take away his demented obsession with his mother (a hard thing to subtract, I know) and we are left with a portrait in pragmatic courage, dogged individualism, and the refusal to be cruel despite the cruelty surrounding him. This is a boy who is at first abandoned by his mother to the care of his grandparents, then taken up by her and her ne'er-do-well alcoholic husband in the second half of the novel as they traverse America, a boy with no education, very little in the way of guidance (his grandparents do try; they are the book's most genuinely positive and kind characters), constantly neglected and abused and lied to and barely fed and forced to not just survive with next to nothing, but often to support his parents... and yet he retains his intelligence, empathy, strong opinions, an ability to see beauty in life when it does appear, and most of all, a drive to achieve happiness throughout it all. "Scrappy" does not begin to describe him. "Ferocious" is a better adjective, but it is still one that makes him sound harder than he is. I'd use "spunky" but that is just a little too cutesy for a kid who makes it with his mom before he even reaches his teens.
One is tempted to see the relationship between mother and son as an allegory for America at its lowest point. Say, the boy representing the stubborn optimism of an American people that will always cling to its hopeful dreams in the face of their struggles, despite those ambitions being, essentially, the longing for the obliterating comfort of a return to mother's embrace, to the womb itself? Perhaps that would make the incestuous activities so fervently described easier to handle? The author places their actions and the many depredations occurring around them within the specific socio-political context of farmers-turned-itinerants living in the heartland of a supposedly liberal country; a country that dehumanizes its own people, reduces them to beggarly recipients of public welfare or scorns them as deplorable trash, but never deigns to view them as actual human beings. Certainly the portrait of an America hopelessly divided between an elite minority and everyone else, where everything is commodified including the smallest of spaces and especially the bodies of women - an almost Marxist analysis that upbraids the flaccid "good intentions" of liberalism while detailing the evils of capitalism at every turn - all of that critique is front and center. Often coming directly from the mouth of Jack's pro-union yet anti-New Deal grandfather. The story may be the story of America trying to find itself and failing, writ small. Mom & son could very well be metaphors for all I know. But I'm not a particularly deep thinker, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to see them or their story as such.
Instead I saw a portrait of a woman both weak and strong but mainly weak, a kind-hearted person whose unrealistic dreams of a better life than her parents lead her on an inexorable path to larceny and prostitution, and finally into the arms of the only person who has persistently declared his undying devotion, her son. Instead I saw a portrait of a boy who refuses to buckle under the yoke of a society that embraces fixed identities and destinies, a boy who sees through all of the bullshit, who refuses to be fooled, and yet who maintains his own secret idealism at his core, insisting to himself that he will create his own destiny - society and those who would stop him be damned. The narrative of the book is teeming with human insects, praying mantises eager to mate and to kill, but the book itself is teeming with human life and the need to be alive, the struggle to survive, making a life wherever and however one can make it. The book despairs but somehow, magically, does not depress. It is too busy being alive to be depressed.
Who was Earl Thompson? This portrait of America during the Depression, and its author, were complete unknowns to me. I actually have no recollection of how my mildewed and battered, torn and tattered paperback even came into my possession. The book was apparently A Big Thing when it came out, yet I've read nothing about it. Why is that? The author's talent with the prose is amazing: as poetic and as earthy as Steinbeck, with an interest in the same themes, the same era; but Thompson is somehow more empathetic, more alive in how writes about people, places, and times. There is no remove, no distance between author and subject, of the kind that I've experienced with Steinbeck. Thompson is right there in the dirt with his characters. The book feels beyond lived-in; it reads like an autobiography that was written while events were actually occurring, rather than being reminisced about when older and wiser. There is a palpable energy in this book, a livewire sort of aliveness that makes every description sing and sting, every person both Dickensian grotesque and fully recognizable, every horrible occurrence feel like something out of a rural gothic horror and also like something the author personally experienced, full of the kinds of details and character traits that make each and every scene feel completely authentic.
On top of all that, despite all of the despair on display, all of the broken lives and crushed dreams, this book is really, really funny. Sometimes the humor is meanly sardonic, other times warmer, based on recognizable human foibles and physical flaws; never in a way that feels like the author scorns who he is writing about or even the repulsive places where they struggle to eat, let alone get ahead. To me, the ability to illustrate the tragically humorous folly and smallness of life, while not actually being contemptuous of those lives, is the mark of a truly brilliant book.
...and yet, this masterpiece is impossible to recommend. Just have to get this out of the way: besides the over the top sadistic violence that occurs frequently, I'd say fully a third of this book details the extremely explicit fantasies or actions of our pre-pubescent hero and his sexual desires for his mother. Emphasis: extremely explicit. Wild to imagine this book being reprinted in our modern times. Jack alternately hints, begs, pleads, and demands the satisfaction of both his curiosity and his needs. He's constantly ogling her or finding ways to place his hands or mouth on her belly, breasts, groin, anywhere, when she's awake, when she's asleep, most usually in the twilight state in-between. He guilt trips and scolds her, molests her when she's out cold, he practically assaults her on more than one occasion. For a period of time he sleeps with an oversize makeshift pillow that has been fashioned into a pretend-person, fucking it furiously whenever he can as he imagines it as his mom. At one point, his degenerate step-father aids him in his goal (an especially grueling sequence); more frequently, stepdad gets in the way of young Jack's dreams, much to the boy's chagrin.
SPOILER ALERT: lil' Jack's dreams come true.
...and yet, the boy is indeed the book's hero, not just its protagonist. Take away his demented obsession with his mother (a hard thing to subtract, I know) and we are left with a portrait in pragmatic courage, dogged individualism, and the refusal to be cruel despite the cruelty surrounding him. This is a boy who is at first abandoned by his mother to the care of his grandparents, then taken up by her and her ne'er-do-well alcoholic husband in the second half of the novel as they traverse America, a boy with no education, very little in the way of guidance (his grandparents do try; they are the book's most genuinely positive and kind characters), constantly neglected and abused and lied to and barely fed and forced to not just survive with next to nothing, but often to support his parents... and yet he retains his intelligence, empathy, strong opinions, an ability to see beauty in life when it does appear, and most of all, a drive to achieve happiness throughout it all. "Scrappy" does not begin to describe him. "Ferocious" is a better adjective, but it is still one that makes him sound harder than he is. I'd use "spunky" but that is just a little too cutesy for a kid who makes it with his mom before he even reaches his teens.
One is tempted to see the relationship between mother and son as an allegory for America at its lowest point. Say, the boy representing the stubborn optimism of an American people that will always cling to its hopeful dreams in the face of their struggles, despite those ambitions being, essentially, the longing for the obliterating comfort of a return to mother's embrace, to the womb itself? Perhaps that would make the incestuous activities so fervently described easier to handle? The author places their actions and the many depredations occurring around them within the specific socio-political context of farmers-turned-itinerants living in the heartland of a supposedly liberal country; a country that dehumanizes its own people, reduces them to beggarly recipients of public welfare or scorns them as deplorable trash, but never deigns to view them as actual human beings. Certainly the portrait of an America hopelessly divided between an elite minority and everyone else, where everything is commodified including the smallest of spaces and especially the bodies of women - an almost Marxist analysis that upbraids the flaccid "good intentions" of liberalism while detailing the evils of capitalism at every turn - all of that critique is front and center. Often coming directly from the mouth of Jack's pro-union yet anti-New Deal grandfather. The story may be the story of America trying to find itself and failing, writ small. Mom & son could very well be metaphors for all I know. But I'm not a particularly deep thinker, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to see them or their story as such.
Instead I saw a portrait of a woman both weak and strong but mainly weak, a kind-hearted person whose unrealistic dreams of a better life than her parents lead her on an inexorable path to larceny and prostitution, and finally into the arms of the only person who has persistently declared his undying devotion, her son. Instead I saw a portrait of a boy who refuses to buckle under the yoke of a society that embraces fixed identities and destinies, a boy who sees through all of the bullshit, who refuses to be fooled, and yet who maintains his own secret idealism at his core, insisting to himself that he will create his own destiny - society and those who would stop him be damned. The narrative of the book is teeming with human insects, praying mantises eager to mate and to kill, but the book itself is teeming with human life and the need to be alive, the struggle to survive, making a life wherever and however one can make it. The book despairs but somehow, magically, does not depress. It is too busy being alive to be depressed.
July 19, 2011
Earl Thompson is a relatively unknown American writer, which is a shame, as he penned a handful of books before his untimely death that are as good as anything created by his peers. A Garden of Sand is one of my contender's for the Great American Novel, a semi-autobiographical story set in the desperate, illusion-shattering years of the Great Depression amongst those who lived their life close to the soil that had been the lifeblood of American prosperity. A boy is left with his grandparents in rural Kansas - an environ of stubborn independence and gritty, rumpled honour - until, reclaimed by his young mother, he learns an entirely new set of values as the two are dragged across the southern United States by the zigzagging peregrine ways of his rowdy stepfather. It could have been written by Steinbeck or Bellow, if they had worked on an oil-rig, or down in a mineshaft, drinking hard and fighting harder in blue-collar boozecans across the midwest; as good as those two American literary icons are, Thompson's prose feels lived in, worked in, batted around; leaves little doubt that the author had passed days as disheveled as those of his clenched-jaw characters.
Thompson's bildungsroman is a visceral stew, packed full of real, raw-boned Americans: angry and cheerful, stoic and wretched, broken, damaged, soulfully tender, crushed by that harshest of mistresses, life - yet scrappy and full of vibrant energy even in defeat. This is a tale with cantankerous elders and chin-skinned kids, grifters, drifters, cheats, and street saints, whores and pimps and roughnecks aplenty - fingernails are dirty, skin is bruised, and both sheets and souls are stained beyond redemption. The copious sex is raunchy and rough - and the young hero, Jack, deals with issues of abandonment by his gorgeous mother, and a yearning for her that is way beyond normal or healthy. The ending fits like a work glove as a closing off of the desperate measures, devil's bargains, and painful lessons that have pulled the reader along to the final page—sad and worn and fractured, but limned with sun-burnished promise. Thompson would continue Jack's wayward journey through life in the equally excellent Tattoo.
Thompson's bildungsroman is a visceral stew, packed full of real, raw-boned Americans: angry and cheerful, stoic and wretched, broken, damaged, soulfully tender, crushed by that harshest of mistresses, life - yet scrappy and full of vibrant energy even in defeat. This is a tale with cantankerous elders and chin-skinned kids, grifters, drifters, cheats, and street saints, whores and pimps and roughnecks aplenty - fingernails are dirty, skin is bruised, and both sheets and souls are stained beyond redemption. The copious sex is raunchy and rough - and the young hero, Jack, deals with issues of abandonment by his gorgeous mother, and a yearning for her that is way beyond normal or healthy. The ending fits like a work glove as a closing off of the desperate measures, devil's bargains, and painful lessons that have pulled the reader along to the final page—sad and worn and fractured, but limned with sun-burnished promise. Thompson would continue Jack's wayward journey through life in the equally excellent Tattoo.
August 25, 2017
Had I known what this was about, I never would have picked it up. But it lived up to recommendation as a serious work of fiction, and was an exceptional novel. However, I can't recommend it to many, it is disturbingly and frankly sexual in a way I've never encountered. These kind of people need religion and the strictures of civilization, and even as reader I feel the need to be cleansed. It is hardscrabble in the thirties, with drunken mean stepfathers and a whore / prostitute mother. Growing up Jack develops and consummates a seriously screwed up desire for his mother. And the encounters are absolutely relentless and told with cringing detail. But the story is real, and I will have to find out about this author and somehow begin to understand how any human being could get this down. I imagine this is autobiographical to some extent, all the more remarkable to put down this content, and he had to get it out (like Melville's Moby). But be forewarned, though entertaining, funny and educational about American history in the depression, this is very strong stuff and it will wear you out. It started in Kansas, so that's partly why I picked it up (my coming of age years were there), but most of it is throughout the hardscrabble gulf coast. Written in the 70s, this is a much more intense version of Angela's Ashes.
July 29, 2024
A Garden of Sand begins with a very young Jack MacDeramid, Jacky, living with his grandparents in Wichita, Kansas in the early 1930’s. Jacky loves his grandparents but especially adores his grandfather, John MacDeramid, a passionate opponent of Roosevelt and his New Deal policies. Jacky grows very frustrated, however, at how poor his grandparents are and the life that means for him. He is envious of those he sees living a bit better. He moves from dump to dump with his grandparents, each place as bad or worse than the previous. Jacky thinks living with his mom will be better, and eventually his mother, Wilma, takes Jacky to live with her and her husband, Bill. Jacky’s father died before he was born.
What follows is a dreadful life moving back and forth across the southern United States, often leaving on short notice: the landlord is typically either threatening to confiscate their belongings or report them to the police. Bill is an alcoholic that can’t keep a job, and often doesn’t bother looking. Wilma becomes a prostitute, about which Bill knows and Jacky learns, to provide enough income for the three of them to survive. Jacky becomes adept at stealing and develops a strong sexual attraction to his mother.
Sex is a frequent and significant part of this story, told often in grisly detail. Violence is a regular ingredient in the family’s life, between Wilma and Bill, between Bill and Jacky and in other variations. This is one of the most revealing descriptions of life and survival in the Great Depression that I have encountered. It is not pretty. It is an open, infected, pus-ladened wound of a life. If you are to read this novel, you should be ready for the violence, but you should be more ready for the sex scenes, including incest and rape, although the rape takes place mostly off-stage, that might leave you feeling the need to take a shower just to cleanse yourself of the vivid, unpleasant images (it didn’t really work for me). I read this slowly, not because I was relishing it, but because sometimes I could only take it in small doses. We have all heard or used the expression don’t tell me, show me. Earl Thompson shows you.
I could play it safe and say I don’t know who I would recommend this to, but that would be a mistake. If you think you can handle it, you should read this novel, because there is simply not much that compares to it or measures up to its honesty. Supposedly, it is autobiographical, but to what degree is not known.
Earl Thompson wrote four novels. A Garden of Sand, Tattoo and The Devil to Pay make up a trilogy, but Earl died at the age of 47 leaving The Devil to Pay incomplete. It was finished by a ghost writer and is significantly shorter than the other two.
What follows is a dreadful life moving back and forth across the southern United States, often leaving on short notice: the landlord is typically either threatening to confiscate their belongings or report them to the police. Bill is an alcoholic that can’t keep a job, and often doesn’t bother looking. Wilma becomes a prostitute, about which Bill knows and Jacky learns, to provide enough income for the three of them to survive. Jacky becomes adept at stealing and develops a strong sexual attraction to his mother.
Sex is a frequent and significant part of this story, told often in grisly detail. Violence is a regular ingredient in the family’s life, between Wilma and Bill, between Bill and Jacky and in other variations. This is one of the most revealing descriptions of life and survival in the Great Depression that I have encountered. It is not pretty. It is an open, infected, pus-ladened wound of a life. If you are to read this novel, you should be ready for the violence, but you should be more ready for the sex scenes, including incest and rape, although the rape takes place mostly off-stage, that might leave you feeling the need to take a shower just to cleanse yourself of the vivid, unpleasant images (it didn’t really work for me). I read this slowly, not because I was relishing it, but because sometimes I could only take it in small doses. We have all heard or used the expression don’t tell me, show me. Earl Thompson shows you.
I could play it safe and say I don’t know who I would recommend this to, but that would be a mistake. If you think you can handle it, you should read this novel, because there is simply not much that compares to it or measures up to its honesty. Supposedly, it is autobiographical, but to what degree is not known.
Earl Thompson wrote four novels. A Garden of Sand, Tattoo and The Devil to Pay make up a trilogy, but Earl died at the age of 47 leaving The Devil to Pay incomplete. It was finished by a ghost writer and is significantly shorter than the other two.
August 10, 2018
A GARDEN OF SAND is the double-dog-dare-ya of American naturalism. Earl Thompson's 1970 masterwork, while much better written than the usual 1960s/70s "sprawler," exploits themes that seem too rough for even a Dust Bowl coming-of-age saga. Even so, Jacky, a boy on the cusp of manhood and Oedipality, engages our sympathy and does not seem like a "type" in the Dreiser tradition. If your taste in American naturalism extends beyond The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, give this one a try. However, remember what one college history teacher told me ca. 1980: "I'd love to assign this. It says so much about the Depression and what people had to do to survive. But I think even today, many of my students would object." You were warned!
A GARDEN OF SAND sold like hotcakes in paperback in the boundary-pushing Seventies; today, used copies take a bit of looking for. Antiquarians: if you run across a hardbound copy in good shape, it's rare -- snap it up at a good price. Sequel to A GARDEN OF SAND: TATTOO (1974), which takes the now young-adult author/protagonist into World War II, and along with the war come a renewed emphasis on grit and sex.
A GARDEN OF SAND sold like hotcakes in paperback in the boundary-pushing Seventies; today, used copies take a bit of looking for. Antiquarians: if you run across a hardbound copy in good shape, it's rare -- snap it up at a good price. Sequel to A GARDEN OF SAND: TATTOO (1974), which takes the now young-adult author/protagonist into World War II, and along with the war come a renewed emphasis on grit and sex.
November 13, 2017
I can't write a review of this one; instead I'll direct you to the review of Ned Mozier, who says it very well.
March 1, 2018
Wow, this novel kicks down the door and raises hell! Brutal, violent, shocking, with superbly drawn characters and terrific dialogue. But be warned. Graphic scenes of beatings, rapes and incestuous liaisons make this a tough read at times. Definitely not for the fainthearted.
December 8, 2022
Compliqué à évaluer. Excellent roman initiatique, style fluide, personnages forts avec en décor la Grande Dépression. Mais trop de scènes d'inceste & agressions sexuelles pour ne pas m'interroger sur les motivations de l'auteur.
December 4, 2022
Je crois ma lecture la plus éprouvante.
Ce n’est pas un roman à mettre entre toutes les mains, les Trigger Warning ⚠️ sont légions ! (Rapport sexuel violent et non consenti, inceste, zoophilie, meurtre, violence gratuite, misogynie, pedophilie, grossophobie, homophobie…)
Néanmoins il a été écrit dans les années 70’ et traite d’un sujet antérieur qui est la Grande Dépression des années 30’ aux USA.
Le contenu est bien sûr moralement criticable mais il n’est en réalité que le reflet de la misère poisseuse et puante qu’ont subi des milliers de personnes durant cette période troublée.
Le prisme du miroir reflète une réalité factuelle qui a bel et bien existé. Le texte est dur, choquant, éprouvant, incisif et ne nous laisse pas indifférent mais tellement réaliste de violence.
J’aime les écrits qui mettent à l’épreuve mes sentiments et me font ressentir des émotions bonnes ou mauvaises.
C’est réussi ici avec Le Jardin de Sable 👍🏼
Ce n’est pas un roman à mettre entre toutes les mains, les Trigger Warning ⚠️ sont légions ! (Rapport sexuel violent et non consenti, inceste, zoophilie, meurtre, violence gratuite, misogynie, pedophilie, grossophobie, homophobie…)
Néanmoins il a été écrit dans les années 70’ et traite d’un sujet antérieur qui est la Grande Dépression des années 30’ aux USA.
Le contenu est bien sûr moralement criticable mais il n’est en réalité que le reflet de la misère poisseuse et puante qu’ont subi des milliers de personnes durant cette période troublée.
Le prisme du miroir reflète une réalité factuelle qui a bel et bien existé. Le texte est dur, choquant, éprouvant, incisif et ne nous laisse pas indifférent mais tellement réaliste de violence.
J’aime les écrits qui mettent à l’épreuve mes sentiments et me font ressentir des émotions bonnes ou mauvaises.
C’est réussi ici avec Le Jardin de Sable 👍🏼
April 15, 2025
2,5
J’ai failli DNF à partir de la moitié du texte (J’ai même lu la fin en diaaaagonale). Je comprends ce qu’on peut y trouver, une certaine réalité, violente et crue.
Mais alors pour moi c’est non. Trop de violence. Trop de sexe (beaucoup trop et hyyyyper malsain dans toutes ses formes). Trop de tout à tel point que la lecture était franchement désagréable pour moi.
J’ai failli DNF à partir de la moitié du texte (J’ai même lu la fin en diaaaagonale). Je comprends ce qu’on peut y trouver, une certaine réalité, violente et crue.
Mais alors pour moi c’est non. Trop de violence. Trop de sexe (beaucoup trop et hyyyyper malsain dans toutes ses formes). Trop de tout à tel point que la lecture était franchement désagréable pour moi.
January 28, 2018
When you read a book with a cover protector on it because you want no questions asked by others, you know it's not a good read. It's one of the roughest books I have ever read in terms of subject matter and sexual content. You ask why I read the book, my answer, Donald Ray Pollock made me do it. A small group of reading friends found a list of reads that influenced Donald Ray Pollock. This book was on the list and the last one for us to read. We don't give up easy. So to complete the task we finished this book. We ranged from 1 star to 3 stars collectively. I almost hate giving it 2 stars because that might give a reader hope that it is a readable and enjoyable book. I only give it 2 because early on there were some decent chapters. I can not recommend this to anyone and I don't know how to even get rid of the book without it being offensive to someone. It took me almost 4 months to read and it was a challenge.
Read
June 15, 2012I read this book when I was 10. Not really age appropriate, but I would sneak and read my mom's books whenever I could. I couldn't remember who wrote it, only the title. This book has stayed with me my entire life. Jack was my age and many things hit close to home for me. After finding out about the author, I will have to reread this as an adult to see if it still affects me the same way.
November 30, 2022
Un récit initiatique qui démarre fortement avant la Grande Dépression. Malheureusement l'auteur m'a perdu à cause de scènes d'incestes à répétition non nécessaire et un manque cruel de contexte historique, j'aurai aimé en savoir plus sur la période. Certes on peut voir la noirceur de la période, la pauvreté, la misère sociale et économique mais l'angle sexuel pris pour la dépeindre était trop prononcée à mon goût. Néanmoins, la recontextualisation du roman me fait dire qu'il est probablement un bon marqueur de l'époque et mérite d'être lu.
November 20, 2011
picked this one the other day....and here i go! 11/12/11....woooo....cue the twilight zone soundtrack!
like has been said elsewhere it is unfortunate that this man's stories are not better known. this one reads easy, haven't had to do a lot of double-backing and even when that happens it is as much the problem of our time as it is the story...maybe even more so.
kansas...fdr is in the white house...the story moves from one character to another...mac--this old man married to a good woman and their daughter wilma gives birth to jacky...we look at the world through jacky's eyes a time or two.
there came a loud, thigh-slapping, black-haired woman from st. louis in a '29 ford, with a boy that should have been weaned long ago fastened to her big breast, a hole in the muffler, and a boot in every bald tire...the boy stared at her there at the kitchen table, her pig-faced brat, claude, sucking on the biggest, whitest tit he had ever seen. claude was as big as himself. he was amazed.
i guess the world was not ripe for this at the time? or was too busy protesting the war or feeling groovy? there have been things like this and more so, up to page 137 in this 500+ page story...some nasty stuff about a midget using his teeth...think jeffrey dahmer or worse or just as bad or something.
there's some stuff that has passed, like the old man ma wears some sort of cotton string/rope on his wrist and ankles to ward off the rheumatism. things that are no more...or less...i believe i read in this stubborn soil things of that nature...as well in a story from this finnish writer...guy who wrote our daily bread and four others...i wonder if anyone has ever tried to collect all those "things"....wearing a dead bat in one's armpit to have luck at cards...that in this other story, from finland...sisu.
some neato expressions like: ...when life and dreams were twin and everything one needed was possible by hard work. i thought it was poetic and a nice touch, given the pig-faced brat fastened to the tit so-and-so pages previous.
from the 1st few pages: "love a place like kansas and you can be content in a garden of raked sand....this is a story of ordinary, hardworking, often out of work christians who are kansans until they die."
you have to pay attention because like other stories you see someone walking around and then thompson tells you the man is barefoot and you did not know.
....finished...19 nov 2011
this is the story of jack andersen, mostly, the story from birth to about age 14...in may....as he is left w/his mother's parents and they raise him to...must be almost ten when his mother gets him again and from there they...his mother, a step-father name of bill who is an occasional felon....they travel the south...leaving wichita behind them...jacky returns to wichita at the end, determined to join the marines....
prior to that...he was determined to have sex w/his mother....there are numerous scenes throughout the story, jacky, feeling, touching, exploring his mother's body...she at times allowing it...most times, allowing it...the two of them often w/o bill the step-father...he is in jail often...the two of them in mississippi, in florida, in texas...trying to make a go, his mother wilma working as a prostitute...jacky at times stealing things...taught by bill at sears roebuck where he has jacky try on a leather jacket and walk out the door.
the time period is just prior to the outbreak of ww2...
this is a long and involved story...500+ pages...the characters are real...the circumstances are unfortunate...yet real...i was asking myself...what mother? what son?...my willing suspension of disbelief bought it, more or less, because he'd been raised from an early age to....about 9-10 by his grandparents...so his mother....shrug....it happened. in one town, a few want to do them in because a tenant in a neighboring room heard the boy asking/begging his mother to let him do her, like he did before...
some of the last chapters...the way they begin...curious, as a new character is often introduced...whereas prior, most of the story, followed the handful of main characters...some of the later chapters, the way they began...seemed...i dunno...i paused. not a bad thing...but i thought it was curious, i wondered how they came about...had a sense that the story could have just gone on and on and on....and these almost abrupt...in that they did not follow the earlier a-b-c-d-e-f narrative....as if these were...what? i dunno like i said, maybe the author trying to end this part of jacky's story?
as i understand it, the story continues w/tattoo...(jacky or someone like him in the service) and the devil to pay.
like has been said elsewhere it is unfortunate that this man's stories are not better known. this one reads easy, haven't had to do a lot of double-backing and even when that happens it is as much the problem of our time as it is the story...maybe even more so.
kansas...fdr is in the white house...the story moves from one character to another...mac--this old man married to a good woman and their daughter wilma gives birth to jacky...we look at the world through jacky's eyes a time or two.
there came a loud, thigh-slapping, black-haired woman from st. louis in a '29 ford, with a boy that should have been weaned long ago fastened to her big breast, a hole in the muffler, and a boot in every bald tire...the boy stared at her there at the kitchen table, her pig-faced brat, claude, sucking on the biggest, whitest tit he had ever seen. claude was as big as himself. he was amazed.
i guess the world was not ripe for this at the time? or was too busy protesting the war or feeling groovy? there have been things like this and more so, up to page 137 in this 500+ page story...some nasty stuff about a midget using his teeth...think jeffrey dahmer or worse or just as bad or something.
there's some stuff that has passed, like the old man ma wears some sort of cotton string/rope on his wrist and ankles to ward off the rheumatism. things that are no more...or less...i believe i read in this stubborn soil things of that nature...as well in a story from this finnish writer...guy who wrote our daily bread and four others...i wonder if anyone has ever tried to collect all those "things"....wearing a dead bat in one's armpit to have luck at cards...that in this other story, from finland...sisu.
some neato expressions like: ...when life and dreams were twin and everything one needed was possible by hard work. i thought it was poetic and a nice touch, given the pig-faced brat fastened to the tit so-and-so pages previous.
from the 1st few pages: "love a place like kansas and you can be content in a garden of raked sand....this is a story of ordinary, hardworking, often out of work christians who are kansans until they die."
you have to pay attention because like other stories you see someone walking around and then thompson tells you the man is barefoot and you did not know.
....finished...19 nov 2011
this is the story of jack andersen, mostly, the story from birth to about age 14...in may....as he is left w/his mother's parents and they raise him to...must be almost ten when his mother gets him again and from there they...his mother, a step-father name of bill who is an occasional felon....they travel the south...leaving wichita behind them...jacky returns to wichita at the end, determined to join the marines....
prior to that...he was determined to have sex w/his mother....there are numerous scenes throughout the story, jacky, feeling, touching, exploring his mother's body...she at times allowing it...most times, allowing it...the two of them often w/o bill the step-father...he is in jail often...the two of them in mississippi, in florida, in texas...trying to make a go, his mother wilma working as a prostitute...jacky at times stealing things...taught by bill at sears roebuck where he has jacky try on a leather jacket and walk out the door.
the time period is just prior to the outbreak of ww2...
this is a long and involved story...500+ pages...the characters are real...the circumstances are unfortunate...yet real...i was asking myself...what mother? what son?...my willing suspension of disbelief bought it, more or less, because he'd been raised from an early age to....about 9-10 by his grandparents...so his mother....shrug....it happened. in one town, a few want to do them in because a tenant in a neighboring room heard the boy asking/begging his mother to let him do her, like he did before...
some of the last chapters...the way they begin...curious, as a new character is often introduced...whereas prior, most of the story, followed the handful of main characters...some of the later chapters, the way they began...seemed...i dunno...i paused. not a bad thing...but i thought it was curious, i wondered how they came about...had a sense that the story could have just gone on and on and on....and these almost abrupt...in that they did not follow the earlier a-b-c-d-e-f narrative....as if these were...what? i dunno like i said, maybe the author trying to end this part of jacky's story?
as i understand it, the story continues w/tattoo...(jacky or someone like him in the service) and the devil to pay.
October 17, 2019
Ce roman est une brique. Une brique visuellement tout d'abord (820 pages quand même). Et puis, et surtout, une brique sur les émotions du lecteur. C'est une œuvre qui enserre, d'abord doucement, avec beaucoup de chaleur, puis elle devient de plus en lourde à porter jusqu'à devenir quasiment insoutenable. Même quand on ne lit pas, on est encore côte à côte avec les personnages. Ces personnages on ne peut que les aimer - pas seulement les trouver attachants- non, les aimer vraiment, malgré tout ce qu'ils endurent, malgré tout ce qu'ils font, malgré tout ce qu'ils sont ! J'ai ressenti comme une dissociation entre cet amour indicible pour les personnages, ce plaisir intense à lire la moindre de leurs pérégrinations, et cette clarté presque insoutenable sur la moralité de certaines de leurs actions, dont pourtant j'ai eu du mal à les trouver répréhensibles.
En plus de ces exceptionnels protagonistes, l'auteur peint sans fard l'Amérique de la Grande Dépression, ses dérives et ses petites joies. L’œuvre est traversée aussi par des réflexions brillantes, des dialogues percutants, et des petites phrases qui vous restent dans la tête.
En plus de ces exceptionnels protagonistes, l'auteur peint sans fard l'Amérique de la Grande Dépression, ses dérives et ses petites joies. L’œuvre est traversée aussi par des réflexions brillantes, des dialogues percutants, et des petites phrases qui vous restent dans la tête.
April 7, 2012
I was very surprised at how this book was able to make me sincerely care about the main characters despite their often times horrible natures. The atmosphere is oppressive and at every turn, I could feel the harshness of the world and the complex and difficult choices each had to make. While one moment I hated the mother, the next I felt extremely compassionate towards her. The main character, the son is also one of those characters that will make you hate and sympathize with him. There are parts of this novel that are very graphic and not for the more sensitive reader or those that have difficulty with strong/violent sexual scenes. It is certainly one of those novels that stick with you, something akin to Sofie's Choice. Worth the read for sure, but be ready for some concepts that might shock you.
January 1, 2020
« Si ce système peut pas absorber c'que les fermiers font pousser quand y'a tant de gens qui crèvent la dalle sous les yeux des politicards, alors c'est le système qu'y faut enterrer. »
Ça commence à peu près comme ça. L��, c'est le grand-père de Jacky qui parle. Il est en rogne, c'est la Grande Dépression aux États-Unis, la prohibition oblige à dissimuler les bouteilles de whisky dans des sacs en papier kraft et, pendant ce temps, alors que les fermiers courent à l'assistance pour y demeurer des heures à attendre soupes et laits déshydratés, ainsi que vêtements usagés, le grand-père gueule ses vérités à bon entendeur, au cas où quelqu'un l'entendrait ou voudrait bien l'écouter, bien que « l'espoir, il était effectivement descendu bien bas pour un homme qui savait lire entre les lignes du journal. »
Ma chronique, dans sa totalité, est par là : https://wp.me/p9AvxC-bq
Ça commence à peu près comme ça. L��, c'est le grand-père de Jacky qui parle. Il est en rogne, c'est la Grande Dépression aux États-Unis, la prohibition oblige à dissimuler les bouteilles de whisky dans des sacs en papier kraft et, pendant ce temps, alors que les fermiers courent à l'assistance pour y demeurer des heures à attendre soupes et laits déshydratés, ainsi que vêtements usagés, le grand-père gueule ses vérités à bon entendeur, au cas où quelqu'un l'entendrait ou voudrait bien l'écouter, bien que « l'espoir, il était effectivement descendu bien bas pour un homme qui savait lire entre les lignes du journal. »
Ma chronique, dans sa totalité, est par là : https://wp.me/p9AvxC-bq
April 13, 2015
Earl Thompson should be as famous as Hemingway, Faulkner, Bourjaili, and a few other American writers whose works paint a land and its people in unadorned fashion. I have read everything Thompson has written. Garden of Sands and Tattoo at least four times, and his other two books, three. I've even looked for and found the hardbacks so I'd have them long after the paperbacks decomposed. Thompson is magnificent, raw, honest, and unapologetic. Someday there will college courses devoted to his work.
March 21, 2012
I would have given this book five stars except for one thing. The accounts of incest bothered me intensely. Not because of the idiosyncrasy or the taboo quality of it, but because it was genuinely some of the sexiest writing I have ever read.
More of the same in Tattoo, as Jack grows up. No less foolish or selfish, but more adaptive.
More of the same in Tattoo, as Jack grows up. No less foolish or selfish, but more adaptive.
December 21, 2017
This book is supposed to be autobiographical. If that is true then the author, while a talented writer, was one sick man and his family incestuous secrets needed to be kept secret and never put on paper. If you made it through the last 1/2 of A Garden of Sand, pat yourself on the back. It was one long, sad, sick journey.
A Garden of Sand was on a recommended reading list by Southern Grit author Donald Ray Pollack. Pollack said in an online publication that he read this book several times. Yuck. I felt violated and nauseated reading it once. I couldn't force myself to read it again. While there is some really good background on life in the Depression Era in this book, the grossly detailed mother and son relationship destroys any shred of humor, historic detail or creative writing within it. I look forward to burying my copy under a pile of clothes in a bag going to Goodwill soon. I'd throw it in the trash, but I'd feel guilty throwing away a book that is hard to find and barely in print anymore. I sure won't be loaning it to a friend for some light reading on their next vacation.
My rating: Proceed with caution. You can't read too much of this book in one sitting.
A Garden of Sand was on a recommended reading list by Southern Grit author Donald Ray Pollack. Pollack said in an online publication that he read this book several times. Yuck. I felt violated and nauseated reading it once. I couldn't force myself to read it again. While there is some really good background on life in the Depression Era in this book, the grossly detailed mother and son relationship destroys any shred of humor, historic detail or creative writing within it. I look forward to burying my copy under a pile of clothes in a bag going to Goodwill soon. I'd throw it in the trash, but I'd feel guilty throwing away a book that is hard to find and barely in print anymore. I sure won't be loaning it to a friend for some light reading on their next vacation.
My rating: Proceed with caution. You can't read too much of this book in one sitting.
Read
August 2, 2007"Raw". How an author has the courage to write something like this is beyond me. This is the first of four books by Earl Thompson. He followed this with "Tattoo" and "Caldo Largo." The fourth book, which I did read and cannot recall the title, was a complete departure from the first three in every way save that it, too, was autobigraphical. His descriptions of life during the Depression are incedibly vivid and real. Thompson died not long after the fourth book was published and I don't think he ever recieved the critical kudos he was due. "Garden of Sand" is honestly in a class by itself.
October 20, 2013
This book is not for everyone, probably not for many. It is brutally frank; the story is utterly sad. But I give it five stars for Earl Thompson's masterful use of language. His renderings of people, places and events are so clear and powerful that I often forgot I was reading fiction. Any writer who can describe sexual thoughts, feelings and acts without resorting to pornographic triteness is a very good writer. And of course that is only part of the tale Thompson tells. He deftly explores the miseries of economic disaster, the dimensions of human love, and the endless seesaw of hope and despair. And along the way tells one of the funniest stories I have ever read.
October 9, 2021
A very dark, episodic Depression-era novel of stories of deprivation and sexuality told from the perspective of a child who grows up poor during the worst period of American life. This was the writer’s personal story of his childhood. The muscular writing style kept me riveted. As much as I like it, I found the female characters were l passive and subject to the most violent sexual acts imaginable. Earl Thompson wrote a couple of other novels. Unfortunately, his untimely death stopped him from being the great writer he truly was.
March 12, 2018
This book is tough, violent, incestuous and makes you feel uncomfortable but vibrant in some way.
I was appealed by the backcover saying it's in the same vein as Steinbeck and Fante. Well .. I have to admit it's true in a kind of way.
A truly american dusty, filthy literature masterpiece. And thanks for the brilliant french edition (the translation is a gem) by Mr Toussaint l'ouverture.
I was appealed by the backcover saying it's in the same vein as Steinbeck and Fante. Well .. I have to admit it's true in a kind of way.
A truly american dusty, filthy literature masterpiece. And thanks for the brilliant french edition (the translation is a gem) by Mr Toussaint l'ouverture.
December 29, 2010
Full of sex and description of depression era Kansas, this is a great book by a great author.
January 7, 2025
well...Scandalous, shocking, cruel and sickening... the naked reality of very difficult times... a confused boy, a manipulative mother and many other rude characters.
I liked it, even though it was shocking.
I liked it, even though it was shocking.
September 5, 2018
A classic of it's era, sexuality explicit and politically and socially challenging, just like the 60s were...
April 17, 2025
This is definitely not for everyone because if a book with a storyline featuring such strong themes as mother-son incest or people driven to ruthlessness by Depression-era poverty can offend, then some people might find the story hard to take. Reading some comments, I know there are those who feel some family matters - and the author made no bones about this book being semi-autobiographical, although he never specified which parts - shouldn't be told in public; well, here they are with all the graphic sex and violence.
This was the first part of Earl Thompson's trilogy but he died before completing it. "Tattoo" was equally great, dealing with his Navy years, but the third part, "The Devil to Pay" about his time at university was finished by a ghost-writer. The books are out-of-print now but have inspired writers such as Donald Ray Pollock who wrote an impassioned and fervent account, available by Internet, of how he became a writer in part because of this book. Well worth looking for but, as I said, not for everyone.
This was the first part of Earl Thompson's trilogy but he died before completing it. "Tattoo" was equally great, dealing with his Navy years, but the third part, "The Devil to Pay" about his time at university was finished by a ghost-writer. The books are out-of-print now but have inspired writers such as Donald Ray Pollock who wrote an impassioned and fervent account, available by Internet, of how he became a writer in part because of this book. Well worth looking for but, as I said, not for everyone.
October 22, 2025
Un livre d'une grande violence sur l'enfance chaotique d'un jeune orphelin dans l'Amérique (le Kansas) de la dépression. Dans la première partie du roman, l'enfant est gardé par ses grands-parents qui enchaînent les petits boulots pour survivre. Dans la seconde partie, il accompagne sa mère venue le rechercher et un beau-père violent et alcoolique. Le livre semble par moment se complaire dans la violence, en particulier sexuelle. Certains passages sont drôles, d'autres presque insoutenables. On croise beaucoup de tordus. Ca parle inceste, viols, violence gratuite. On sent l'envie de témoigner crûment d'une autre réalité américaine, assez abominable même si on croise parfois un peu d'humanité. Intéressant mais éprouvant.
May 2, 2019
Kansas got a hold of me. I was born in Kansas and have heard the stories all my life of the hard times for farmers and blue collar worker alike. The book is well written and is an excellent read. Yes, the boy grows up in an abusive house, and hate to say this but this is the life of many children.
To be an author and write about sex sounds easy, yet to get the story and message across, whether or not the sex is pleasant or wanted in our viewpoint, the author should be applauded. To make the readers skin crawl I say well done.
To be an author and write about sex sounds easy, yet to get the story and message across, whether or not the sex is pleasant or wanted in our viewpoint, the author should be applauded. To make the readers skin crawl I say well done.
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