The Battle of Pollocks Crossing

The Battle of Pollocks Crossing by JL Carr has been sitting on my reading shelf for a very long time.  I remember I got it from Bookmooch, back when I was an active member, but I can't remember why.  It's the story of a young English teacher who goes on a job exchange to South Dakota in the late 1920s, thinking he will come back a Changed Man.  He encounters a very small and quite isolated community, and builds a sort-of friendship with the town's bank manager, who likes to ask him for lots of details about English life, so he can then tell them to his friends in anecdotes that make it seem as if he travelled there in his youth.  It's very funny in places, but the ending is quite horrible, and various parts in between are just really strange.  I'm not really sure what it's meant to impart, but it was mostly quite entertaining.