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    Against the Country
    Against the Country
    Against the Country
    Audiobook10 hours

    Against the Country

    Written by Ben Metcalf

    Narrated by Scott Sowers

    2.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    For fans of Southern Gothic, Ben Metcalf's AGAINST THE COUNTRY is an intense, sly and deceptively humorous debut novel about growing up in the wilds of Goochland County, Virginia, from former literary editor of Harper's Magazine. Beginning with his parents' decision to move away from the corrupting influences of town, and to settle instead in rural Virginia, Metcalf's narrator leads the reader through a gallery of scabrous youths and callous adults driven mad by the stubborn soil of the New World. Eloquently misanthropic, the narrator of AGAINST THE COUNTRY fully inhabits the style of the old timer's winding yarn even as he sabotages all that the forces of provincialism stand for from within. For it is through this deft and self-destructive tone that it becomes clear that the land itself, from dirtyards to farms and forests, is not mere backdrop but the living, breathing, menacing influence behind each and every inhabitant's hardscrabble existence. Ben Metcalf was born in Illinois and raised in that state and later in rural Virginia. His writing has appeared in The Baffler, Harper's, and elsewhere and has twice been included in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 6, 2015
    ISBN9781490632452
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    Reviews for Against the Country

    2.5/5

    62 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A book of sharp vignettes about growing up in rural Virginia that "Attacks our National Myth". Told with gothic humor, you might not always agree with what Metcalf has to say; he pushes the envelope to give the reader a more authentic view of growing up surrounded by the failed, flawed and cast-off.
    • 1/5
      This book was so hard to read I just read a few pages, gave up then forgot I had it until I was looking over the list of books I've won...always sad to give a bad review.
    • 3/5
      The excerpt in Lapham's Quarterly contained elegant and ascerbic observations on the difficulties of living close to nature. The book is openly anti-pastoral. It refutes the idea that a life lived on the land is a better life, with tales narrated by man dragged to rural Virginia by parents who tried out rural living. The narrative voice is a satirical echo of the New England transcendental voice of the hermit of Walden Pond, tinged with a satirical echo of the teenage voices of Holden Caulfield andf every writer of suburban teen ennui. .While short and lucid, it is a difficult and tiring book. I gave up on it and returned it to the library.
    • 2/5
      I just couldn't with this book. Against the Country is the painful ramblings of a man who hates, loathes and despises everything about Goochland County, Virginia and his father. It's the exact opposite of Thoreau's Walden Pond as Metcalf finds any excuse to rail against anything that encounters him in his rural existence.If a reader isn't turned off by the pure negativity of the book, Metcalf's writing style will. The book is a soliloquy aching for empathy but is nothing more than a tangle of half-baked thoughts. Metcalf eschews traditional dialogue and character development for a stream of consciousness approach. With all of his diversions and thoughts within a thought, his writing style makes as much sense as using a smashed saltine cracker as a jigsaw puzzle. Save yourself the time and skip this book.
    • 4/5
      The writing is dense, but in a way that I rather like. It's like a classic with modern bite. It is sort of a massive diatribe though. I tended to pick it up and read just a page or two, kind of like sipping a really rich port. Couldn't gulp it down like I do some books.
    • 4/5
      Definitely not for everyone. While many images will stick with me, and despite the resonance I often felt in his descriptions of daily life (I spent the school year in the city and summers and holidays on the farm) as well as the mentality that allowed adults to physically attack their children… man! This book is a slog. If you love William Faulkner (I do) or James Joyce (not so much) you'll probably be fine, but if I must work hard to read a book, I expect a LOT.Sentences go on and on… often so that you've forgotten where you started by the time you get to the period. There's a footnote that not only sprawls across several pages, but engenders its own footnote. This is a book where the author uses the punctuation )?)) correctly. Think about that for a minute. Okay, some of this is tongue in cheek: "We cherish the little kindnesses, I suppose, in them that are departed. (My father the teacher might insist upon a "those who" there, and also back in the last paragraph of the eighth part of my third attempt to end all this (not to mention the third paragraph of the eleventh part of my second, not forgetting the second paragraph of my fifth, or is it now the seventh part of my sixth?), but the builder in him would at least acknowledge that the sentiment is right, and so perhaps also the sound.) I would follow this notion further, except that I think it a hair too late to introduce so fraught a motif as is kindness into what has thus far been an uncomplicated remembrance of the man." (page 207)Yes, some good writing in the literary sense and I'll admit he made me smile now and again. It also reminded me why I got into therapy once I grew up and left home. My advice to most readers would be to take it in small bites, as I did, although I typically like to immerse myself and get through a book in a day or two. As an author, I confess I work hard to make the mechanics "invisible" so the reader can simply fall into the story without undue distraction. I am, perhaps, revealing myself as low-brow in finding complaint in masterful writing. Metcalf certainly has credentials, and perhaps the "literary minded" will simply fall in love with this book. But for those looking for simple entertainment… there's entertainment here, but it's not simple. You know the difference between peeling a clementine vs. a valencia orange? Thank goodness my husband brought home a couple of John Sanfords to give me a break.
    • 1/5
      LIfe is short, too short to read books you really don't like. I got about 50 pages into it. The man can write, but why is he writing this? I even skipped through it to see if we got a new narrator or a plot or something. So although I rarely do this, I have abandoned this book.
    • 2/5
      Against The Country's narrator rages against all the injustices in his life including his forced exile into country living and his exposure to country folk. At times humorous Metcalf has highlighted his story in a series of vignettes highlighting an issue or event the narrator finds troubling or depressing Metcalf is a skilled writer who enables you to feel the narrators angst at the injustices on his life. This was a definite challenge to read primarily due to the sentence structure. It' gets difficult when you have to reread sentences because they're too long or too confusing. Parenthetical clauses within parenthetical clauses are difficult to absorb
    • 5/5
      I admit this book is not for everyone, but for those who hunger for literacy and poetry this is a rare find. I believe his discovery of the two Americas, urban and rural, is significant and almost unnoticed in contemporary literature. I moved to richmond in the 80s from NYC, in hope of just such a life as the author's parents, and am very familiar with the realities of life as he describes in Goochland County.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book. Ben Metcalf can definitely write -- as an earlier reviewer said, Metcalf's writing is both bizarre and beautiful, but it also seems a little forced. I had trouble slogging through it, all the while admiring phrases, sentences and thoughts. I finally gave up about a third of the way through the book because it took just too much effort to read it. I had to be constantly re-reading sentences and paragraphs to get the gist of the story. I actually thought I must not be "getting it," but after looking at other reviewers' reactions, I guess my opinion is pretty much the norm.
    • 2/5
      Like some of the previous reviewers, I too gave up on this book partially though. There's humor here, and there's a story that I would enjoy reading -- say, if the book was outlined and then passed on to a different author to write it. Which is not to say that Ben Metcalf can't write, but his writing is not to my taste. It feels very self-aware, challenging for the sake of being challenging, verbose for the sake of being verbose - like an intellectual exercise for the author. And that's fine for him, and I'm sure it's fine for some readers. But it just left me frustrated and bored. I note some reviewers didn't like the plot (or rather, the fact that there's not a whole lot of plot), or the negativity (the narrator hates pretty much everything) - but those are not deal-breakers for me. The writing style was the deal-breaker for me. My advice to a potential reader would be to sample the first few pages in a bookstore or with the "Look Inside" on Amazon, and if the writing doesn't turn you off too much, then pick it up and give it a try.
    • 1/5
      This book was not at all what I expected, and I used my 50 page rule on it....if I'm not gripped by page 50, it's time to put it down and move on to something else. The narration grated on my nerves, so I'm presuming I just don't "get" it the way some people seem to. This is strictly my personal opinion....your results may vary.
    • 4/5
      The first-person narrator of Ben Metcalf’s Against the County is ticked off, and he wants to make sure that you, the reader, understands just exactly how ticked off he is. He hates living in the country, certainly never wanted to spend his childhood there, and blames Goochland County, Virginia, for pretty much every bad thing that has ever happened in his life. Metcalf, in fact, effectively sets the tone of Against the Country with the book’s very first sentence (a sentence that is typical of the style and structure used throughout the book):“I was worked like a jackass for the worst part of my childhood, and offered up to a climate and predator and vice, and introduced to solitude, and braced against hope, and dangled before the Lord our God, and schooled in the subtle truths and blatant lies of a half life in the American countryside, all because my parents did not trust that I would mature to their specifications in town.”And, yes, our narrator is not just ticked off at Goochland County; this is a man who still hates his parents for having moved him to such a remote, poverty stricken area in the first place. But all of us, if we survive the process, eventually will come of age, and in the long run, that is what happens to our unhappy narrator. Now he wants to share with us all the details of that horrible experience. And Ben Metcalf obliges him in this sometimes sad, often laugh-out-loud funny, coming-of-age novel that would have been more have descriptively titled “Rant against the Country.” Along the way, the narrator is (from his point-of-view) abused at home by a father who seems to take great glee and pride in making life at home as difficult as possible for his children; physically abused on the school bus on a regular basis; and abused, perhaps worst of all, by the physical environment in which he is forced to contend with snakes, forced labor, rats, and the harshest winters he would ever experience in his lifetime (both indoors and outdoors). But, through it all, never does our narrator lose either his way with words or his sarcastic sense-of-humor. He rants; he raves; and he makes us laugh. This, for instance, is one of his typical observations about his childhood:Mostly I spent my energies on my parents new conception of themselves, and to a smaller extent their children, as real Americans, which was undertaking enough, and looked to my chores, and mostly completed them, and did my best to stay out of the on-deck circle for a whipping, where I never stood less than third in line.”That image of a special “on-deck circle” for whippings paints a vivid picture – and it made me laugh, transforming the sentence into one of my favorites in the entire book:Against the Country is not an easy read, but patient readers will soon find themselves warming to both the narrator and his voice. it is a novel I will remember for a long time, one that has earned a permanent spot on my already overcrowded book shelves.Bonus Suggestion: Do not skip the section at the end of the book titled “A note on the text,” whose first sentence is the pithy, “This text was set in Christ knows what by who knows whom,” or the section titled “A note on the people” that follows it.
    • 2/5
      As a fan of Southern Gothic literature, I really wanted to love this book -- and there are definitely moments in which this book echoes the conventions of Southern Gothic lit to some success, including some hilariously weird episodes and gorgeous uses of stream-of-consciousness. Though it takes some getting used to, Metcalf's writing is both bizarre and beautiful.But overall, I thought this was a more interesting intellectual exercise than it was a reading experience. Metcalf's critique of the sentimentalizing of the rural is excellent and fascinating, but that critique is yoked to characters and a plotline I could not make myself invest in. (Also, a lot of dogs die in this book, so if you, like me, don't handle that well, this might be a book to avoid.)
    • 3/5
      I was eager to read this Southern Gothic but I could not have been more disappointed. I respect Metcalf's literary background but this book tries too hard to be "original." The writing style with its excruciatingly long sentences could not make up for having no coherent plot. I like a challenge but I found I couldn't force myself to like the characters. Much of what I enjoy in Southern literature are the colorful characters but they must have some charm. There is a lot of ranting against Southern stereotypes. The humor is very dark. The author is obviously very gifted and I would out of respect try his next literary offering out of curiosity.
    • 3/5
      Count this as one of those books I’m happy I’ve read, but wouldn’t want to read again—perhaps due to its recursive, parenthetical (or sometimes parenthetical within parenthetical (sort of like the flashbacks within flashbacks in Bogart’s Passage to Marseilles) which gets really confusing and makes you return to the beginning of the sentence multiple times (if you can find the beginning of the sentence) since you’ve completely forgotten what the subject (or verb, or something else important) was), but maybe that isn’t important and you can value the book for the near-poetry of some of its opening sections; the author, wisely, keeps each section usually about 3 pages long—some only a page, some four or five—which makes it easier to comprehend, or at least to escape from the labyrinth, but after a couple of hundred pages of this, it gets a bit old and tiring and you start to think about the plot (is there a plot?) and wonder if the book is about moving to the country and the hardships caused by its land and people or maybe it’s about the yellow school bus and its occupants' daily dishing out of abuse on our poor narrator until he takes matters into his hands in one of the book’s more interesting (though no less discursive) passages—but wait, it’s really about the father who whips his children and makes them work long hours in the fields and chop down every tree in the forest for firewood (although they aren’t required to use a herring), but we aren’t really sad to see him go, because he has been a cypher all the way through, unlike, for instance, the Great Santini, whose death makes us cry because SOB that he was, he was quite an impressive SOB—but wait again, I think the book is really about the chickens (and the obscenely named rooster; let’s just call him B.F.) and the dogs whose stories seem to dominate the book after the father shuffles off the mortal coil, or maybe it’s just about the author’s brain dump—which he seems to semi own up to a few times when he speaks about trying to come to an end of things but repeatedly fails to do so, then refers back to previous passages as if it all weren’t digressive enough already—but—when all is said and done—there are certainly some memorable passages about going to school and about growing up that all of us, even those not lucky enough to have come of age in Goochland County, VA (a real place, yes, and only two hours and fourteen minutes from my house according to Google Maps, and I must really visit there to get the flavor, because for all of its annoyances, this semi-(I certainly hope it’s semi-)autobiographical novel’s depiction of the place does worm its way into your conscience), and maybe, in the end, this may be all Mr. Metcalf has to say to us, and we better enjoy it (in moderation) while we have a chance.
    • 3/5
      Fun, but I couldn't quite get into it and did not fully finish. The book is described as a “gift for fans of Southern Gothic and metafiction” but for me it didn't live up to that claim -- perhaps it is just too self-aware about what it wanted to be. Angry, biting satire can be a great thing, but has to be earned. This fell sort of that mark, unfortunately, though it's enough to keep me looking out for what his next publication is.
    • 3/5
      Ben Metcalf's Against the Country is a novel distinguished by two attributes: its virulent attitude toward terra firma and its excessive use of parentheses. On both counts, it is entertaining, but not as deep as its elevated vocabulary and precise punctuation might suggest. The editor, however, and/or the author, are to be highly commended on the appropriate if ample use of commas, semicolons, colons, and the aforementioned parentheses. Footnotes are, mercifully, contained, if not brief. Popularly compared to southern Gothic, Metcalf's narrator has at least a superior reliabilty to most of Faulkner's, and the prevailing mood, while depressing, does not quite reach the lugubrious depths of O'Connor. It's a book I suspect many raised in the country could relate to, if they were not likely to be outdone by the aforementioned vocabulary. At any rate, it encourages the rest of us to remain, if not happily, more safely ensconced in our ivy towers (or suburban homes, as the case may be).
    • 1/5
      I tried several times to read and like this novel. Some lines interested me, but more did not. I read a few reviews for inspiration; one reviewer compared Metcalf to Faulkner. Loving Faulkner, I resumed reading with a positive frame of mind. After another fifty pages, I realized I had to make a decision. I was simply unmoved and uninvolved. In fact, I was thoroughly bored and felt indifferent to the emotions and experiences expressed by the author. I rarely encounter this sort of ennui when reading and realized it was time to put Metcalf’s book to rest.I have not given up on Metcalf altogether. I am not trying to be soft and appeasing. I did find an element of interest within his writing style that affected me. It was that latent quality that kept me returning to Against the Country. Where I did not find it here, specifically, he peaked my curiosity. I will look for him in future publications.
    • 3/5
      Metcalf's book combines rural noir genre writing with metafiction in a convoluted twist of run on sentences and large vocabulary choices. Like another reviewer, I thought that I would enjoy this book based on the publicity blurb about suicidal chickens and evil trees. However, I found his prose difficult to impossible to wade through at different junctures, particularly when his multiple parenthetical asides took up more space than the one paragraph main sentence of the chapter. The novel did grow on me towards the second half of the story, but it is not one that I would recommend.
    • 4/5
      Wow ! This is a very difficult book to review. When I started reading Ben Metcalf's "Against The Country", I was instantly reminded of another southern novelist...one of my very favorite authors T.R. Pearson. Both writers have a very distinctive style and until one reads far enough, it can be difficult to "catch on" as to what the author is saying. However, Metcalf is as dark as Pearson is funny. That is not to say that Metcalf does not include humor in his story, he does but his tale is caustic and bitter. I am able to cut him a lot of slack on this because as a child, I was moved from the city to the country, and as I see it, some amount of bitterness is to be expected. Other readers may not be as forgiving. Having said this, I will admit to liking the book quite a bit. As hard as it was to read and as bleak as the story was, it is a testament of a good writer to make a person "feel" something and that Mr. Metcalf accomplished. Many children grow up living bleak, disjointed lives and this novel does an excellent job of painting a picture of just such a life. In my opinion a piece of writing that elicits strong feelings, either negative or positive is more than worth the paper it is written on. One could say this is a story about a dysfunctional family and leave it at that, however Mr. Metcalf has made it pretty clear that their is far more that he feels strongly about than just family life. He seems to find the direction of our country an issue that is just as dark and just as depressing as the family he depicted in his tale. He may have a point....in fact it may be an important fact.Against The Country is a first novel. I would read another by Ben Metcalf. It would be interesting to see if he is able to maintain the aura of dissatisfaction he has portrayed in this book.
    • 4/5
      Against the Country starts off as a brilliant, apparently semi-autobiographical, rant of a middle aged man as he bitterly, VERY bitterly, recounts the emptiness of American country life (this country being a stereotypic land of hillbillies, hicks, rednecks, and other shallow-minded self-righteous and mostly racist "protestants" in central Virginia) in the 1970s/1980s after his father decides to leave behind the "town life" of southern Illinois and move the entire family to the country and closer to where he hopes god is. As such, Ben Metcalf's novel is a hilarious verbal assault, frequently recalling Alexander Theroux's diatribe against New Hampshire in "Adultery" or Henry Miller's passionate rant against interwar New York (American) culture in "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" and akin to Michel Houellebecq's depressive realism. Metcalf expresses nothing but acrid memories of everyone and everything (other than dogs and chickens) in his novel and the rant begins to tire before ending (plus it will likely offend anyone actually enamored or even sympathetic to rural life anywhere and likely result in countless negative reviews). Some of the metafictional technique used near the latter parts of the book gave it a somewhat disjointed vibe. Regardless, I found this to be an intelligent, insightful and engaging book well worth reading.
    • 1/5
      The blurb about this book made it seem to be one I would really enjoy. It had me at “suicidal chickens” and finished grabbing me with “…is the most hilarious sermon one is likely to hear on the subject of our native soil…”. Then came the first sentence: “I was worked like a jackass for the worst part of my childhood, and offered up to climate and predator and vice, and…”. By the time I finished the run-on and too-long sentence, the book had completely let me go; however, I felt an obligation to read it in order to write a review.One gets the feeling that the story in Against the Country is at least partially autobiographical. If so, pity the poor author. He hates blackberries. He hates corn. He hates the school bus. He hates his bedroom. He hates everything and likes very few people, especially his father. Aha! A light dawns. Perhaps a better title for this book would have been Against My Abusive Father. Apparently he was regularly beaten and overworked by his father, and his mother did nothing to stop it.It appears that his mother wanted him to be a homosexual, so he could at least be special in some way.Mr. Metcalf never uses two words when ten will do the same job. His sentences are so long, some lacking correct punctuation, that you are either lost or bored by the time you finish reading one.I don’t like to write a review about a book I did not enjoy, but the truth should be said. Maybe another will like it better, but to me, it was a waste of time.
    • 1/5
      Verbose doesn't come close. Flowery doesn't quite cut it. I'd say grandiloquent sums up this novel in one word. I'm not a lazy reader; I don't mind working at reading extravagant prose when it successfully gets the point across. But when it results in a migraine and exasperation, I know the book just is not for me.