The Great State of Hendrix

 by Sharon Kitchens

A wickedly funny place created by one of the greats of twentieth-first-century literature. A brilliant raconteur who charms you one platter of fried chicken at a time. Reading Hendrix is a lot like spending time inside a jewel box of antebellum splendor with Ricky Bobby watching a series of slasher films while eating takeout Chinese and a peanut butter and chocolate Dairy Queen ice cream cake as spirits are conjured in the southwest library and meteorological hell breaks loose outside.

You must dedicate yourself entirely to his layers of terror, strangeness and hilarity. Take a big jump, leave common sense and fad diets far behind, and boogie down to a supernatural pop culture rich existence. Page after page is so charming so gooey so FUN so WTF LOL OMG WTF. He touches all the bases. All the senses. Don’t hope to come up for anything but a short gulp of air here and there during chapter breaks. This dude has a gigantic imagination.

Also, he knows how to write high school, family dysfunction, the U.S. South’s culture and clichés, bloody assaults, and paranoia. You can’t fake what he does. I see my Arkansan relatives and all the love and totally f*cked up stuff and I take Hendrix’s work personally. Yeah, he’s hilarious, but he also gets the whole thing. 

There’s nothing especially fast-paced about his stories, but they hold onto you and you do feel an urgency to keep up just because his writing is so darn good. His characters aren’t even that flawed, they’re just weirdos and frankly people who are real. At some point they just say ok there’s a demon get the shovel and let’s do this thing. And you just know Hendrix is there cheering a few feet away. 

I love that man’s work. I’ll read every darn thing he writes. And yes, sure as heck, I’ll be making sure any old stuffed animals really are locked away. I mean, they're cute and all but I think at this point we can forego any catastrophic consequences they might wish to lob at me. Same with an Ouija board. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll just read your books!

p.s. Thought sharing a menu from the Book of Buffets might be appropriate given Hendrix's culinary tastes - at least in his books. After all, the South is more than fried chicken, potato salad, and pound cakes (though I love all those things).