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A Good Ram Is Hard To Find
“These stories capture the gritty realities of traditional masculinity falling apart. The quiet intensity of stoic fathers give way to big hearted sons who take in the world unguarded. This raw, brutally honest voice had me swinging between hysterical laughter and profound awe. Each page is magnetic and I’m now a forever fan of Drevlow’s writing.”
~Devin Murphy, National Bestselling author of The Boat Runner and Tiny Americans .
“Oh my oh my! What a gritty and poetic bunch of crazy-ass stories! Benjamin Drevlow’s A Good Ram is Hard to Find is chock-a-block filled with lonely, troubled misfits searching for kernels of sweetness in their hardscrabble, hard-luck lives. Even while forlorn and forsaken, abused and misunderstood, each character holds tight to their good-hearted, if twisted, sense of humor. Written with guts and pathos, these wonderful tales spark and fizz with an energy that makes this book hard to put down. Find a comfy place to settle in and consume this juicy collection. I’m sure glad I did.”
~Alice Kaltman, author of Dawg Towne
“What a mysterious and honest book. A Good Ram is Hard to Find captures the everyday violence of poverty, and the strange, beautiful tenacity of people living on the fringe of the working class. Together these stories capture every dark, electric detail of the least populated landscapes of modern America as we descend into what feels like the last days of late capitalism. Each story here lives and breathes and trembles like a living human.”
~Chris Dennis author of Here is What You Do
“Benjamin Drevlow comes at the reader with a logging chain and a tattoo needle and asks, which is it going to be? Your head or your heart? Can you smell my imagery? He writes true grit lit like the redheaded stepchild of Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews. Be warned, his humor has a crosscut serrated bite to it. In the title story, “A Good Ram is Hard to Find,” a young man struggles to win back his ram's dignity (the ram's name, Arnold Schwarzenegger) and at the same time struggles to discover how to become a man despite the bad hand life dealt him in the family department. In “Mama's Little Helper” a manipulative mama makes her big boy and her brother-in-law complicit in the murder of her husband in a gritty, grotesque, and paradoxically hopeful story about truth you might expect from a writer like Donald Ray Pollock. Drevlow knows, like any good southern writer, that life can be heartbreaking, freakish, and ludicrous all at once. A breakthrough writer you have to know!”
~Daren Dean, author of Far Beyond the Pale , The Black A Novel of the American Civil War , I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Stories , and This Vale of Tears
~Devin Murphy, National Bestselling author of The Boat Runner and Tiny Americans .
“Oh my oh my! What a gritty and poetic bunch of crazy-ass stories! Benjamin Drevlow’s A Good Ram is Hard to Find is chock-a-block filled with lonely, troubled misfits searching for kernels of sweetness in their hardscrabble, hard-luck lives. Even while forlorn and forsaken, abused and misunderstood, each character holds tight to their good-hearted, if twisted, sense of humor. Written with guts and pathos, these wonderful tales spark and fizz with an energy that makes this book hard to put down. Find a comfy place to settle in and consume this juicy collection. I’m sure glad I did.”
~Alice Kaltman, author of Dawg Towne
“What a mysterious and honest book. A Good Ram is Hard to Find captures the everyday violence of poverty, and the strange, beautiful tenacity of people living on the fringe of the working class. Together these stories capture every dark, electric detail of the least populated landscapes of modern America as we descend into what feels like the last days of late capitalism. Each story here lives and breathes and trembles like a living human.”
~Chris Dennis author of Here is What You Do
“Benjamin Drevlow comes at the reader with a logging chain and a tattoo needle and asks, which is it going to be? Your head or your heart? Can you smell my imagery? He writes true grit lit like the redheaded stepchild of Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews. Be warned, his humor has a crosscut serrated bite to it. In the title story, “A Good Ram is Hard to Find,” a young man struggles to win back his ram's dignity (the ram's name, Arnold Schwarzenegger) and at the same time struggles to discover how to become a man despite the bad hand life dealt him in the family department. In “Mama's Little Helper” a manipulative mama makes her big boy and her brother-in-law complicit in the murder of her husband in a gritty, grotesque, and paradoxically hopeful story about truth you might expect from a writer like Donald Ray Pollock. Drevlow knows, like any good southern writer, that life can be heartbreaking, freakish, and ludicrous all at once. A breakthrough writer you have to know!”
~Daren Dean, author of Far Beyond the Pale , The Black A Novel of the American Civil War , I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Stories , and This Vale of Tears
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 24, 2022
A Good Ram Is Hard to Find is a collection of short stories that tackles issues like poverty, toxic masculinity, addiction, body image, sex, families, and obviously, animal husbandry; but Drevlow makes it so much more. It is so raw and honest that it feels as though you're reading someone's secret journal. There's no posturing here, no pretension, its all vulnerable, soft underbelly. It's the unflinching gaze we love from Brown, Pollock, Crews, and Pancake, but with the author's willingness to point that camera at himself, and tackle the truly personal. I fell in love with Drevlow's self depreciating humor, and his willingness to probe recesses. Big fan.
January 4, 2022
Benjamin Drevlow’s “A Good Ram is Hard to Find” is an excellent example of what a short story collection can be at its peak. It is one part memoir, one part pure fever-dream fiction. It is raw and funny while all the while being completely devoid of pretension. Drevlow creates stories with characters that feel fully real, without any idealism or without caricatures. He captures the world of the poor, the down on their luck, and the hopefuls. He battles with masculinity in the 21st century and small town America. It is a master class in connecting the otherwise unconnected and leading the common threads create a rich, purposeful world. I highly recommend.
October 22, 2023
Great collection of midwestern grit. On my last visit to Wisconsin I saw that most of what I used to take for granted there has been vulcanized for yuppies, separated and conquered, and sterilized, but Drevlow gets us back into the trailer parks and hideaway farms, stink of cigarette burns on patterned couches, and shrunken frozen balls that someone then kicks that I remember having grown up there. My favorites are by far 'Porno Puppet Show', 'Jonesing for Jesus', and 'Work': the reader is treated to such delights as Mighty Schlong Beast, Dr. Van Penis, and Crippler Crossface in that order. Not to say that this is slapstick or in any way light, I see another reviewer Mr. Good mentioned that it is not escapist literature, it is the honest work of a writer in control of his craft with a serious bone to pick with society. Well done.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews