Maybe it was Reno’s glut of old-man bars that put Willy Vlautin onto
a self-consciously Bukowskian path. He remembers their names: Last
Dollar Saloon, Fitzgerald’s, the Continental, El Cortez Lounge. He
described them over a couple pints at Flowers in the U-District after a
reading from his debut novel, The Motel Life, at University
Book Store not long ago.
Born and raised in the self-appointed Biggest Little City in the
World, Vlautin was drawn to those bars, dark in the daytime, haunted by
solitary fellows hunched over well drinks and bottled beers. Eighteen
years old and he wanted to be an old man, he said, attracted to a
poisonous, boozy romance because he was never encouraged to expect
more: He thought his passion for music—listening to it, talking
about it, playing it—would never be more than a passion.
He could’ve succeeded at failure—something akin to
freedom—and disappeared. Or he could’ve failed at failure and
made something of himself. Luck, Vlautin said, has a lot to do with
which way he went. Sometimes a life lived so marginally pivots on the
slightest of points.
There was the time in the early ’90s when he saw Crackerbash, a Sub
Pop band from Portland, making their way down the West Coast. These
dudes were angry as hell, jumping around onstage like maniacs.
Afterward, Vlautin talked to the lead singer and found him to be gentle
voiced and open-minded. It was an epiphany, a glimpse at the world
outside Reno, where angry people could be decent people, too.
A decade of singing songs to indifferent drinkers in dive bars
doesn’t do much for the self-confidence. All it took was a nudge and
Vlautin left home.
In Portland he painted houses, drove a delivery truck, and put
together a country-rock band. After a few years, his band, Richmond
Fontaine, built up a strong following on Vlautin’s raw, sympathetic
songwriting. They toured the world and released a few albums to
critical acclaim. A huge fan of Raymond Carver, Vlautin was also
writing short stories and stashing them away in his closet. Writing had
long been another passion without much promise. But when a chance
publishing opportunity came, Vlautin was ready for it.
Vlautin is a true literary talent, and The Motel Life is a
wonderful discovery. His success is a suitably morbid reminder that
there’s nothing so tragic as wasted potential. This is what fills the
story of The Motel Life: unfulfilled promise, misplaced
integrity, and plain-old bad decisions.
Orphan brothers Frank and Jerry LeeFlannigan decide to bail out of
Reno after Jerry Lee is involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident.
The brothers aren’t exactly homeless or jobless—they live out
of their car, or sleep in weekly rate motels when they’ve saved money
from day laboring. Picking up and leaving doesn’t require much
preparation.
On the lam, Jerry Lee is albatrossed by guilt. He returns to Reno
and tries to commit suicide. Frank—the laconic,
all-too-self-aware narrator—”the loneliest guy I know,” as Jerry
Lee calls him—is forced to deal with his depressed, hospitalized
brother. Neither knows what to do, nor do they have anyone to offer
guidance or help. They want to do the right thing—find the
victim’s family and give them some money, maybe, some
closure—though they’re totally unequipped and untrained to do so.
Their functional alcoholism—”drinking as a way of life,” in
Vlautin’s words—further blurs their predicament. It’s a blur
Vlautin is familiar with.
Familiarity is ultimately what makes The Motel Life enthralling: Vlautin’s familiarity with the setting, with the
lifestyle, with the moral ambiguity and the desperate need for clarity.
Vlautin’s prose is unadorned and immediately gratifying. Stories within
the story—Frank’s is an active, creative mind, and he habitually
unravels vivid if farfetched yarns of his and Jerry Lee’s World War II
exploits, wild sex escapades, true loves, and other
fantasies—convey within the brothers a grasp of a better world
they know they’ll never reach. Their willful daydreaming amid poverty
and recklessness is heartbreaking.
It isn’t pretty, but nor is this the harsh, broken-down reality of
Carver. Vlautin explained to me that he’s written love songs for the
most down-and-out characters in his stories, songs he’ll perfect and
perform with his band, because he fears he brutalizes his characters
too relentlessly. His instinctive reaction to failure is hope.
