Short Story Wednesday "Men's Club" from the collection, POTATO TREE byJames Sallis

 

My late husband, Phil, often taught an undergraduate college class on utopias. As you might expect, it was hard to find novels and stories about utopias but easy to find ones about dystopias. A story he often used was "The Ones Who Walk Away from the Omelas," by Ursula Le Quin. I'm sure most of you have read this story, but for those who haven't it was about a utopia whose existence relied on the towns people's ability to stomach the torture of one small girl so that the rest of them could lead a utopian life. 

In the "Men's Club," James Sallis lays out a somewhat similar situation. His story is a mere two pages and Le Quin's is longer, but he manages to capture the thrust of it in all its horror very quickly. 

In Sallis' story, a teenage girl is chained and held in a squalid room where men seek pleasure in awful ways.  Having this girl at their disposal makes them kinder to their wives, evokes a camaraderie between them. As they wait their turn, they share liquor, jokes, business deals. Over time the party-like atmosphere subsides, the girl ages, the room deteriorates, and there is nothing pleasurable about what remains.  

This story is tough to read and I doubt anyone would justify the situation here as some justify the Le Quin scenario. If the majority find happiness at the sacrifice of one, isn't it worth it? No one would say it was in the Sallis story. He is excellent at any length he chooses to write.

POTATO TREE is a collection of short stories from 2007. Many are very short. Many were published first in other outlets but not "Men's Club." 

Kevin Tipple

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Richard Robinson

Monday, Monday

 

So much to watch. All three of these are off to a promising start. So promising that I am reading too little. (SLOW HORSES, PACHINKO, JULIA) Having one of those patches where I can't settle into a book.

Saw an interesting but troubling Israeli movie at the Detroit Film Theater, AHED'S KNEE. Is Israel about to lose its democracy too? Is there this much censorship? And yet this film was made in Israel so I am not sure. I should be more up to date on this. 

It was a cold, windy week and I am not getting outside enough. Have to do better.

What about you?

FFB QUITTING TIME, Robert J. Conley

(from the archives, Ron Scheer)

Robert J. Conley, Quitting Time (1989)

This short novel is a curious cross between a standard western and an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The central character, Oliver Colfax, is something of a range detective, with a license to kill, should he be so inclined. But he’s grown weary of the work that has been his livelihood and is looking to retire from being a gunman for hire. It is, as he says, “quitting time.”

Considering a job for a Colorado cattleman who believes he is the victim of rustlers, Colfax travels to a small frontier town, drawn in part by the opportunity to see a touring theater company perform Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Agreeing with the cattleman to find out who, if anybody, is rustling his stock, Colfax gets to work and determines before long that a gang of cowboys at a nearby camp are the only likely suspects.

But matters take a sudden turn when the traveling actors begin being brutally murdered. One mystery solved, Colfax begins tying to figure out who has reason to be knocking off thespians. The resolution, though a bit implausible, is an interesting one and calls to mind accounts recorded elsewhere during this period of unexpected behavior from theater patrons not used to stage illusion.

Scene from Titus Andronicus

Colfax is an enjoyably urbane character, if you can get past his history as a contract killer. Having changed his ways, he no longer wishes to be a gun for hire for men wealthy and powerful enough to simply exterminate others who get in their way. 

He likes good whiskey and a hot bath poured for him in his hotel room. He knows how to do business and can skillfully handle an awkward client. Socially progressive, he demands that a black actor be served at a hotel with the same consideration as whites. Meanwhile, his apparent appeal to the opposite sex wins him the welcome interest of one of the actresses in the touring company.

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Kill the Cat" Loren Estleman

 

Loren Estleman has written 90 novels and many short stories and essays. He is an old-school crime fiction writer, telling a story much like his contemporaries, Michael Connelly and Elmore Leonard, wrote. He even resembles writers of an earlier generation, such as Ross MacDonald and John D. Many of his stories are set in Detroit and many feature Amos Walker, P.I. The story in DETROIT NOIR, "Kill the Cat" is a fairly generic story, but it is well-written and certainly uses the city of Detroit as a character. This was pretty much the intention of the Noir series by Akashic Press.

Amos Walker is hired by the wealthy Childs' family to locate their missing son and notify the parents so they can have cops get him off the streets. Walker finds the kid too late. He and three other kids (all college students)are dead by the time he arrives. The rest of the story concerns Walker finding out what really happened. 

I have found many of the stories in this series to be uneven. Some of the writers are not fiction writers but journalists and their stories are rarely satisfying. Some also lean so heavily on the city they are set in, they don't tell much of a story. In this case, it is a story that is too familiar. Something you might see on the Rockford Files. Still you can see Estelman's skill. Detroit is not the same city it was in 2007. But as he notes in the story, Detroit has a way of reverting to a particular place. Hope that isn't true this time. 

Kevin Tipple

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Steve Lewis 

Todd Mason

Monday, Monday

 

I am pretty much settled in but the weather hasn't allowed much walking. I did walk to the movies and saw THE OUTFIT, which I liked. Also saw a great play called PASS OVER, by Antoinette Nwandu in Ann Arbor and went to an exhibit of nature photography at the Detroit Zoo. 

I am reading THE MARTIAN, which I liked a lot more as a movie. Too much technical stuff and not enough character development. Watching THE DROPOUT on Hulu, which is excellent. Still trying to navigate the new TV. I am used to closed captions and I haven't figured out how to get them on some of the streaming channels. 

This doesn't feel like home yet. The building is so very quiet and I seldom see anyone other than the management. Still I am near almost all of my friends so I don't have to make new ones but I would like to know someone in here at some point.

How about you?

Friday's Forgotten Books

(from the archives)
DRIVE EAST ON 66 -- Richard Wormser (reviewed by Bill Crider) 

Okay, as I said, it was inevitable that after seeing the title of James H. Cobb's West on 66, I was going to read it. Today's book is the reason why. I read it around 40 years ago, and I have to wonder if maybe Cobb's read it, too.

A cop named Andy Bastian is hired to drive a kid named Ralph from California to Kansas, where Ralph will be put into what's called, in the novel's 1961 way, an insane asylum. Ralph is brilliant, and his father's quite rich. Accompanying Ralph and Andy is Olga Beaumont, a psychologist who's along to care for Ralph. They don't get far before it's apparent they're being followed.

This isn't an adrenaline-fueled thriller like Cobb's book. The characters following along aren't hate-filled gangsters and hitmen. There are no heart-stopping car chases, hot sex, and shoot-outs. But that doesn't mean there's no suspense. It's just a quieter kind, and it's played out along a route that runs in the opposite direction, as the titles indicate.

James mentions that Cobb's book isn't quite a pitch-perfect recreation of a Gold Medal novel. Wormser's book is pitch-perfect, not as a re-creation but as an original. Read the first couple of pages, and you'll know what I mean, I think. Wormser's descriptions of the people, the landscape, and the seedy motels are on the money. I like all Wormser's GM books, including The Invader, which won an Edgar for best paperback. If you get a chance, give one a try and see what you think.