Monday, Monday

 Pretty nice weather here. But it looks to turn hot this week. 

Saw MEMPHIS today. It was a great local production: great voices, costumes, music but the plot relies on a romance to carry the second half. 

I saw a great documentary on Arthur Miller (ARTHUR MILLER: WRITER) on Max, made by his daughter, Rebecca in 2017. Other than Shakespeare I have seen more of his plays than any other writer. At least ten of them and several more than once. I am sure Jeff can beat that. The doc did remind me that Miller institutionalized his Downs Syndrome son in the Sixties. It seems rather late to still be doing that. But I have come to the point where I don't judge the artist, just his work because so many of us are flawed in some way. Killers, child porn afficiandos and rapists are excepted from my tolerance though.

Also a good doc on the artist Alice Neal. Went to a lecture on the portrayal of America in art where I saw some of her work and got interested. Also went to a lecture on Mayan Civilization. What would I do without our Senior center, which has lectures, trips, music, classes, groups. etc five days a week. I am always looking to expand my network of friends as every article tells me I must do to avoid crushing loneliness. Of course, I never thought of this when I had Phil.

Watching PACHINKO, which is terrific. Also TROPPO on Prime, ENGLISH TEACHER on Hulu. 

My first haibun is up in DRIFTING SANDS latest online issue. #28. I have two more accepted in other journals. There are not many outlets for haiku but the ones that exist publish a lot of writers. I am trying to work my way out of confessional work, but nature is not my strong point, having always lived in cities and visited cities. I know haiku is not my strongest suit either but I lack the focus for writing novels. I am worried I will soon lack the focus for reading them, which has happened to a few of my friends.

Started THE HORSE by Willie Vlautin. I have liked all of his novels, especially LEAN ON PETE. GOD OF THE WOODS was pretty good although it seems like a few of the many, many characters were expendable. And a few less red herrings might be a good idea too. 

Very worried about the election. Those of you in CA or NYC don't know what it's like in the heartland. I think Kamala needs to take more interviews and do less rallies. The people who turn up at rallies are not swing voters. She's not going to win if she doesn't answer more questions and answer them better than saying on her first day in office she will make a salad. Jeez. Her opponent is completely bonkers now. Why don't these MAGA people see it? And why doesn't Bush speak up? So much is riding on the debate. I will probably follow the NYT coverage online rather than watch it. Yes, I am a coward. 

Hope the Lions did better than U of M.

What are you up to?

FFB: DEATH OF A CITIZEN, Donald Hamilton

 

Stephen D. Rogers:From the archives

Donald Hamilton's DEATH OF A CITIZEN changed my life.

I was brought up to be polite and courteous, to put others first, and -- if I had nothing good to say -- to say nothing at all.

Then, as a young teen, I opened DEATH OF A CITIZEN. Read it, flipped it over, and read it again. And again.

Matt Helm was a no-nonsense protagonist who thought for himself and did what needed to be done. If he was polite and courteous, he was polite and courteous because he'd decided to be, not because someone else how told him how to behave.

Some may say I'm splitting hairs here, but DEATH OF A CITIZEN taught me not only self-awareness but self-determination.

Sure, Helm killed people, but nobody's perfect.

No book is perfect. DEATH OF A CITIZEN comes very close.

Take the following exchange. Helm and his ex-lover Tina are traveling together. Teasing has lead to a game of tag, and the longer-legged Helm eventually brings her down.

"'Old,' she jeered, still lying there. 'Old and fat and slow. Helm the human vegetable. Help me up, turnip.'"

It's funny and it's fitting and it's a damn fine piece of writing. I've read the book dozens of times and still continue to be blow away by that paragraph.

As a bit of background, Tina and Helm (or Eric, as he was known at the time) worked together during the war as government assassins. He gets out once Germany is defeated, marries, and leads a normal life until Tina reappears.

Donald Hamilton delivers on multiple levels. Not only does he create entertaining plots, and write them well, he provides a rich array of three-dimensional characters.

Take, for example, what happens when Helm borrows a car, rushing home to save his daughter who's been kidnapped by Tina and her partner Frank.

"It was the ugliest damn hunk of automotive machine I'd ever had the misfortune to be associated with...

"[The gas attendant thinks differently.] 'That's quite a car you've got there. I tell you ... when they can get something real sharp made right here in America.'

"Well, it's all a matter of taste, I guess."

Helm might be his own person, but he understands and accepts that his way is not the only way. That's as rare in books as it is in real life.

One finds murder, kidnapping, and torture within DEATH OF A CITIZEN. The disembowelment of a pet cat. And yet, one finds the following passage while Helm waits for a female guest to leave Frank's hotel room.

"...the tartier the girl, strangely enough, the longer the skirt. You'd think it would be the other way around.

"This one was pretty well hobbled."

And after the woman leaves, and Helm follows Frank out of the hotel and under a nearby bridge:

"There were a couple of cars going past overhead. It was a good a time as any. I took out the gun and shot him five times in the chest."

Only later does Helm explain that Frank was too big and unimaginative to be made to talk. Killing Frank at least took him out of the equation, freeing Helm to concentrate on Tina.

"She licked her lips. 'Better men than you have tried to make me talk, Eric.'

"I said, 'This doesn't take better men, sweetheart. This takes worse men. And at the moment, with my kid in danger, I'm just about as bad as they come."

Between 1960 (DEATH OF A CITIZEN) and 1993 (THE DAMAGERS), Matt Helm appeared in 27 books. Donald Hamilton died in late 2006. He was just about as good as they came.

CRIME FICTION FOR HARRIS. 9/18/24 8:00 PM

 

https://x.com/meganeabbott/status/1831416478190727371https://x.com/meganeabbott/status/1831416478190727371

Short Story Wednesday: YOU THINK IT, I'LL SAY IT, Curtis Sittenfeld

 In the many years I have been reading short stories, one of the most common scenarios is that of a character at a conference and the sex with another attendee that ensues. This is probably because most short story writers (or novelists) attend conferences on their own and have the opportunity to engage in this activity or at least to observe it in others. The first story in this collection uses this theme. But the second, the title story, also about infidelity, has a more novel theme. What if a character mistakes clever party banter between two people as something more. How humiliating does the response to her overture have to be before "she" gets it. Sittenfeld is a very clever writer (and I have enjoyed three of her novels) although I am hoping not all of these stories are about extramarital affairs. Death or sex themes seem to be very common.

A story I read in THE NEW YORKER by Sigrid Nunez also trod this ground. I would like a percentage on how many short stories have this theme. I am betting over 50% either as its main subject or as a secondary one. What do you think? Probably short stories in genres are less dependent on it.  

George Kelley

TracyK 

Kevin Tipple 

Neer

Monday, Monday

Saw a very good documentary HOW TO COME ALIVE WITH NORMAL MAILER. Great footage, photos and commentary by his wives, children, contemporaries. It may have been a bit too sympathetic, but boy where is this sort of comment on society hiding today. We have a lot of political discourse, but lots of other subjects have been left behind. 

Watched THE NARROW MARGIN (thanks, Tracy), and BURY MY ASHES AT BERGDORF GOODMANs. 

Reading the short story collection by Curtis Sittenfeld, Jeff mentioned last week and also GOD OF THE WOODS (Liz Moore). 

Enjoying PACHINKO and BAD MONKEY. 

Beautiful day today.

What about you?

FFB:THE KISSED CORPSE, Asa Baker

( archives: from Randy Johnson)

Reading Forgotten Books: Sort Of: The Kissed Corpse

Technically, THE KISSED CORPSE by Asa Baker (Brett Halliday) is not a forgotten book. James Reasoner posted about the previous book here, Mum’s The Word For Murder, and mentions this book as coming out the next year, 1939. I traced down that one and posted on it here. I enjoyed it which led to me tracking down this second and final volume of the adventures of writer Asa Baker and police officer Jerry Burke.

Asa Baker knew he’d made a mistake calling the neighbor, Leslie Young, to borrow binoculars to check the flashing lights across the canyon. He barely knew the man, as he was using friend Jerry Burke’s cabin for the weekend to get some writing done. When he looked across the canyon, where the estate of oil baron Raymond Dwight sat, he spotted the great man looking through a telescope off to one side. When he follows the line of sight of the telescope, he spots Young’s wife sunbathing.

With Young standing beside him!

When Young demands to see, then goes stomping off, riding away on the horse on which he’d arrived, Baker smelled trouble.

Trouble was confirmed later when out walking Nip and Tuck, his two Scottie pups, they lead him up to a body off the edge of the Dwight estate. It’s the neighbor, Young, his horse tied to a tree nearby. Tire tracks from a recent car pulling out were in the dust.

What was unusual were the bright red lips,shaped like a female, covering his own and a double-barred cross in lipstick painted on his cheek.

Burke is called in and a note is found on the body, from a Michaela O’Toole inviting him to a meeting in Mexico that very night and beside the name was the same double-barred cross. The widow seems unconcerned about the death, though telling of a phone call from a woman warning Young away from that meeting.

Burke and Baker cook up a scheme where Baker takes the note and goes to the meeting, the idea being to find out maybe a connection to the murder. Along the way, Baker picks up a young woman, Laura Yates, heading there as well. They arrive and meet Michaela O’Toole just long enough for Laura to queer the deal by revealing that Asa wasn’t Young and the Mexican police to arrest them for murdering the dead man.

Things get confusing as the pair investigate. Dwight’s oil holdings, along with all other foreign businesses had been expropriated by the Mexican government. Dwight had a government diplomat at his home with a scheme to get his leases back, never mind anybody else. Young, a man with communist sympathies(remember this was ’39 before Commies became the big bad boogeymen), opposed him. And Young’s widow seemed to be having an affair with Dwight. Laura keeps sticking her nose in.

What’s going on? Another murder happens and a small double-barred cross is found clutched in the hand.

What is the meaning of the cross? Baker researches and learns of a Mayan cult that uses it. What has it to do with oil leases and murders?

A satisfying mystery. As the book went on, I began to get an idea of the murderer, but not the motivations. I like this early Davis Dresser novel, published the same year as his first Mike Shayne novel.

The book I have is a paperback and a strange one at that. It’s digest size, but constructed like a magazine. News print(down to those small holes in the outer edges of the pages) and a flimsy cover, there are sixty four pages folded over and secured with two metal staples(now rusty). Otherwise it’s like a regular book with lines running across the pages instead of double columns like magazines.

 

George Kelley 

Jerry House

Curtis Sittenfeld v AI

 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/opinion/beach-read-ai.html

 

At the end, CS lists what she did to make her story work. I bet most people who assume, she sat down and wrote it with little prep. The computer spent 17 seconds. 

Short Story Wednesday: "Greenleaf" Flannery O'Connor

 

 This is a story selected by John Updike in his Best Stories of the 20th Century collection.

Mrs. May, a Southern aristocrat on the decline, lives with her two sons in a fading mansion and farm.

In her employ is a Mr. Greenleaf, who also has two sons. One day Mrs, May spots a bull in her garden and spends the rest of the story trying to send him on his way. He is an inferior bull and she does not want her cows to breed with him. 

The bull is the property of Mr. Greenleaf's sons, who have been quite successful due to their service in the war and the G.I Bill. This is a source of jealousy to Mrs. May whose sons remained Privates. 

This story has no likable characters. O'Connor is equally hard on all of them. I have enjoyed many of O'Connor's works-"A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "The River" especially but this story is too blunt and sour for my taste. I am sure Updike could have chosen either of those. I wonder why he chose this one. Maybe because it is less familiar. 

George Kelley