Zoners! It’s time for the first day of the club. Today we will talk about Wigfield. Let’s start with our opinions of the book – favorite characters, passages, etc. Here are a few questions to feed your thoughts:
1. Russell Hokes is the voice of the story, but it is the citizens who create the little town. Which characters vividly stick out for you and why?
2. The town of Wigfield is a fictional one, but it’s not hard to envision small-town U.S.A. while reading the pages of the book. Which parts of the book eerily represented real life for you?
3. One of my favorite lines throughout the entire book occurs when the editor says that a line from Hokes’s work “sticks out like a turd in a sh*t hole.” Do you have any favorite lines?
As always, keep in mind the rules of the club.
Now, go to town.
My favorite line in the entire book is from chapter 2 (P.33) “Sometimes I’ll take twice as long to do nothing as it would take a city fella to do something just because I know I can. Last week I spent forty-five minutes putting on a sock. That’s Wigfield.”
I think this hit me as hysterical because of a story about the day that my younger brother John was born. My mother went into labor and told my father to get ready to go to the hospital. She then went and gathered up my older brother and myself to drop off at my grandmother’s and made a few calls and got ready to go. She went to go get my father to drive her to the hospital, and when she walked in, he was sitting on the side of the bed with his undershirt and underwear on, smoking a cigarette with one sock on.
When I heard that line in Wigfield, I though, oh my God, my father is Donny Larson. And I laughed for 10 minutes straight.
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Oddly enough, there are a few towns in Jersey that remind me of Wigfield, one of which my other half lived in before we got married. It was beyond a crap-hole and was *literally* right next to a Hess refinery. I can’t begin to tell you how bad it smelled there and it’s a teeny tiny podunk town that you can’t even find on a map. The day before he moved there, we found out a hooker had been shot around the corner from where his apartment was. Needless to say, he didn’t live there too long, thankfully.
And I have to identify with Russel Hokes — he takes the concept of procrastinating to new levels, as have I. : )
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Russell Hoakes sticks out pretty vividly to me! I love his crazy similes he uses to describe stuff. I love how he just goes on and on too, just hysterical. I also really like the Grimmets (sp?) and Donny Larson. Donny Larson kills me every time! XD
I honestly can’t say that anything in this town reminds me of my own town!
As for favorite lines…jeez, how do you choose? I really like the one that DB mentioned about taking 45 minutes to put on a sock. I’m also partial to: “Yes, I was in the service. Yes, I was stationed overseas. Yes, I was dishonorably discharged. And no, I don’t wanna talk about it!” Oh! And also his line about driving, something about somebody’s bound to be hurt, “that’s pretty much been proven to my satisfaction.”
I love Wigfield. :P
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What a coincidence! I loaned my copy to a friend a while ago, and it was returned to me today.
One of my favorite characters is Lenare, because I really like that photograph of him, and his story is really funny. Another one of my favorites is Julian Childs. I know a lot of crazy theater people like that. :D
And the whole conversation with Eleanor and Udell is just hillarious.
I really like the introduction: “But freedom had its price, which I soon found out was money.” some more favorite quotes:
“I’m not making this stuff up. I’m imagining it.”
“Fleet Hollinger kept bobbing to the top of conversations like a corpse in a creek.”
This whole book is just full of quotes that I love. :)
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Aw it’s impossible to pick one thing. Gotta love Raven though for the drug addled sass, the hip boots and Stephen’s impossibly good drag.
Russell Hoke’s stressing about his deadline and inflating his word count by filling the page with horribly written, wordy sentences is another fave. And the warped taxidermy. I can’t find my copy otherwise I quote some.
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i have to agree with Lisa who loves Russel Hokes, who takes procrastinating to the extreme! “I’ll be the first to admit that literarily, I literally was losing hope of delivering my book on time, unless my publishers were suddenly willing to accept some factor of 50,000 that wasn’t 50,000.” (p.80) … LOVE IT!
I love that it represents the small town USA. I am sure that DB can relate to driving though small towns in Texas – but I think it’s funny that as I drive from San Antonio to Austin, when I hit the city limits what’s when I hit the strip clubs … Wigfield is a lot like that. Pretty funny.
Fave lines:
* “Everything fries at the same rate. But you gotta pull it when it’s golden brown. Especially the salad. ‘Cause if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t unfry things” (from Strangers with Candy too!)
* ” I have made friends with many of the ladies who visit my plastic surgery van, and it’s sad to think that if this dam comes down they will no longer have a place to shake their incredibly large appendages I have worked so hard at creating”
(from Russell’s interview with himself)
ME: “What are your plans after the book is published?”
ME: “A series of long vacations, punctuated by a number of illicit affairs.”
(from page 125) “Sometimes a challenge can spark the greatest in a man. When an impossible dream hangs just beyond our grasp, that’s when we dig down for that extra effort, that painful sacrifice that will extend out reach and find us clutching a star… Or you can quit, which is what I’m doing.”
LOVE that last one
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I love the characters’ signature Sedaris/Dinello/Colbert trait of self-centeredness. Moments that expose that are usually the funniest to me, especially when the character really tries to sell and almost believes that their actions are generous and helpful to others, but they openly talk about how selfish they really are.
My favorite characters…gosh, it’s so hard to choose. I like Donny Larson’s insistence that he’s completely honest and fair but isn’t really any more special than the next guy. Cinnamon always struck me as someone who seems genuinely dull, but deep down is a secret genius…like she’s got all these brilliant ideas buried in her mind, she just doesn’t understand why they would be important. I love Julian Childs all over; his voice, his photo, his dark, suger-coated character. Fleet’s photo is probably my favorite of all of them, with his smiley mug resting on his pooch. And I just love the way Amy says, “Hoyt Gein!” Plus, who couldn’t love Raven? I must have read/listened to her part 60 times. A couple other scenes that stood out to me were Lenare’s and the one with Ella Mae Padget. Yeah, I’m not decisive enough to choose just one character. It might be Cinnamon.
The fact that everyone in Wigfield knows, talks about, and/or is involved with one another pretty much mirrors the small town I go to school in. Plus, as Donny Larson says, no one does anything and they’ve got plenty of time not to do it.
Quotes:
“I can’t help the starving people of India, because I don’t know what they need.” – Cinnamon
“While I favored the beast with a liberal dose of my home brew…” – Russel Hokes peeing
“I could easily describe Wigfield in three words, but I don’t know what they would be.” – Raven
“The regulars like the heels because it adds length to your ass. It gives you a lengthy ass.” – Raven
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OK, I’m going to get in a post while it’s still May 26th here! also, I may actually visit a library to get a physical copy of this– I’ve never seen it, actually, only listened to the audiobook a couple of times.
I think my favorite line, mostly for the concept behind it, is “Dot, dash, dot, dash, dot, dash. Like Morse code, America’s vast interstate highway system was tapping out a message to me and me alone. Literally translated from the Morse it would be, ‘A … A … A … A … A … A … A … A,’ as if America as if had something it desperately wanted to say but was hampered by a pronounced stutter.” When I think of Wigfield I always think of that line. It’s perfect, because although I see roads, and know Morse code well enough to think di-dah = A, I have never thought about roads spelling anything! And here, they don’t just spell something, they make the whole country sound awkward!
One character who I always think of quickly is Carla Port Hollinger. she does some weird things, like that rather forceful poem about Dillard Rankin, but she kind of seems like a normal teenager dealing with a seriously messed up town, and not the most conventional family either! also, I kind of like the way school was such a difficult thing to access for Wigfield, because it basically keeps them isolated from the world!
fortunately I do not usually associate Wigfield with any places I know. however, one of my classes last semester spent a week or so talking about water management, and the decision-making surrounding dams was a big part of that. you might not be surprised to learn that my mental reference dam was the Bulkwaller Dam and my mental reference dam dispute was the one depicted in this book! not particularly educational, but I got to smile to myself a lot!
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Tiger, that line is my absolute favorite as well. Possibly because the first time I heard Wigfield I was driving across Ohio and watching the road say “dot, dash” in time with Hokes’ narration.
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Woo, late. I only have the audio book, but I love this part from Chapter 11:
“As I continue my journey, I soak up the quiet. It was quiet, quiet in that unique small town way. In the big city the sound never stops. It’s a blur of noise blending together into a cacophony of unidentifiable racket. But here, silence dominates. It’s a silence that one has to hear. It’s the kind of quiet that almost acts like a bandshell for the random sounds of the night, allowing them to stand out in the spotlight for their solo performance. There was no mistaking the chirp of the crickets, or the roar of the semis, or the nearness of those gunshots. I decide to pick up my pace.”
I just enjoy how a questionably written ode to a questionable small town atmosphere veers right into the reality of what Hokes would rather subject himself to instead of doing actual research.
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