Monday, December 02, 2024

Monday, Monday


 Really cold now. I wonder what it would be like to live in a warmer, sunnier climate.

Saw three decent movies: A REAL PAIN, WICKED and ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT. The third one I slept through mostly, a shame because I think it was the best of the lot. Three women slept while the man took notes for us. 

We celebrated Kevin's 18th. And then they took off for Chicago. So nice that he is still happy to go places with his parents. He is excited to be seeing SECOND CITY.

Enjoying LATER DATERS on Netflix as well as this and that. Also COLIN FROM ACCOUNTS (Paramount).

Still working my way though ALL FOURS (Miranda July, which is so very odd. Also a novel about a woman involved in solving polio. WOMAN WITH THE CURE. 

What about you? Had enough turkey?

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving, All


                                Happy Thanksgiving. Kevin turns 18 on Saturday.  

                            This was from the time when he didn't have a phone in his hand.
                            Have a good day everyone and thanks for the ecard, Jeff and Jackie.
 

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Short Story Wednesday :THE COLLECTED STORIES OF LYDIA DAVIS

 

I remember buying this on the upper west side at the urging of a friend and that was well over a decade ago. I have read the occasional one-most of them are a page or two-and being somewhat stymied by them. The critics love her.  The writing is not gorgeous enough to function as poetry and there's not enough narrative to be a true story.

“A body of work probably unique in American writing, in its combination of lucidity, aphoristic brevity, formal originality, sly comedy, metaphysical bleakness, philosophical pressure, and human wisdom. I suspect that 'The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis' will in time be seen as one of the great, strange American literary contributions.” ―James Wood, The New Yorker.

"The Cats in the Prison Recreation Hall" tells the story of the horrible smell cause by the cats occupying a prison hall and how it was dealt with. Just a few pages long and you may or may not find it entertaining. Most of the stories are like this. I think Jeff M is a fan. I will keep reading. 

They are not so different than the prose section of a haibun. Maybe I need to think of them like that. 


George Kelley

Todd Mason

Monday, November 25, 2024

Monday, Monday


 

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE was a terrific movie-so true to the book, so well-acted however I found it very hard to follow the Irish dialogue. Should have waited for the closed captions on TV, I guess. Watching the new Ted Danson show, which does not have the heft of THE GOOD PLACE and the setting is pretty depressing but it is still well done. I wish I liked SILO more and I wish I had the focus for SAY NOTHING. So I have been watching a lot of documentaries on you tube and Kanopy. 

Go Lions!

Just started the new Charles Baxter novel (BLOOD TEST) and am reading Stanley Tucci's WHAT I ATE FOR A YEAR. 

Trying to shake the depression of the election. Just one decent appointment might help. One reason to think a democracy will survive. Can we throw it all away after three hundred years?

Hoping you have a good Thanksgiving. What's new? Love you all!

Friday, November 22, 2024

FFB: RIDERS ON THE STORM, Ed Gorman

 

Ed Gorman, Riders on the Storm (reviewed by Ron Scheer)

Ed Gorman’s new Sam McCain mystery is set in 1971 and reflects some of the civil turbulence of those Vietnam years as they wash over a small Iowa town. 

Plot. A hawkish Senator is trying to ride a waning tide of patriotic enthusiasm to keep himself in office. But his handpicked candidate for a Congressional seat gets murdered after an altercation with a fellow veteran who has made public his opposition to the war.

That John Kerry-sympathizing vet is quickly suspected of the crime by the new sheriff, and the man’s best friend, McCain, has an uphill battle finding evidence of his innocence.  

Time and tide. Gorman remembers the early 70s well (Janis Joplin is heard on the radio at one point singing “Me and Bobby McGee”). The novel is aptly named for the mournful Doors song, “Riders On the Storm,” which recalls the darkly violent and divided mood of a time marked by the growing national ambivalence about Vietnam. He is also a sharp observer of small-town politics and social distinctions.

The portrayal of women in the novel does much to fix its particular point in social history. Whether wives, lovers, or others, they are mostly untouched by the feminist creeds that came to dominate public discourse about gender roles in the years that followed. Gorman shows them as attractive and sexy, reliant on the men in their lives, homemakers and loving mothers of small children.

Ed Gorman
Two, however, emerge as professional women, one of them McCain’s own girl Friday, bracingly independent and unapologetically resourceful. Another seems able to blend marriage and career, though we don’t learn quite everything a candid review would reveal about her until well after she gets involved in McCain’s attempts to rescue his falsely accused friend.

While Gorman does not necessarily endorse it, there is much of the 1970s indulgence in extramarital sex, booze, and other pastimes that had a generation smugly confident in themselves because they were under 30. But you can feel the earth shifting under McCain’s feet as the 1960s recede into the hazy distance behind him.

Wrapping up. This is an enjoyable novel that has as much fun capturing the time and place of its setting as puzzling over the clues pointing to the solution of the mystery it poses. Whether westerns or crime fiction, you know you’re in good hands with Ed Gorman. I recommend this one.

Riders on the Storm is currently available in print and ebook formats at amazon and Barnes&Noble.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Strangers in Town, Three Newly-Discoverred Mysteries by Ross Macdonald.

 (from the archives)

Strangers in Town: Three Newly-discovered Mysteries by Ross Macdonald, edited by Tom Nolan
(Review by Deb)

Containing three short stories (only one of which was published in Macdonald’s lifetime), written in 1945, 1950, and 1955 respectively, Strangers in Town displays some of the earliest themes, characterizations, plot twists, and motifs that are found in Macdonald’s longer works.  In each one of these stories, we see elements emerge that will be explored more fully in future mysteries, including the development of Macdonald’s series private investigator, Lew Archer.
The first story, Death by Water, was published in 1945 in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine under Macdonald’s real name, Kenneth Millar.  Written while Millar was serving on a naval vessel in the Pacific Theater of WWII, the story features Lew Archer prototype, p.i. Joe Rogers, who is investigating the drowning death of a wealthy man.  Was it just an unfortunate accident or was he deliberately killed?  And, if the latter, who is the killer?  The man’s younger, wheelchair-bound wife has only a few months to live herself.  The man’s stepson is on a navy ship (much like Millar himself when he wrote this story) and therefore unable to have committed the crime.  How about the dead man’s brother, who struggles to live on a limited income?  And where was the wife’s personal nurse when the death occurred?  Millar manages to pack a lot of suspects and motives into a few pages, but what I found most interesting about the story was the reference to ALS (aka, Lou Gehrig’s disease) just a few years after Gehrig himself succumbed to the condition.
Lew Archer appears in the next story, 1950’s Strangers in Town, where he is hired by a woman to prove that her son did not kill a pretty, secretive young woman who was renting a room in her house.  Archer has to travel to a dusty town in the California desert to investigate this one.  As in much of Macdonald’s longer fiction, the small California community in which the story is set is a character in itself.  What I liked most about the story was the sympathetic and dignified treatment of African-American and Hispanic characters (the victim and the alleged killer are both black; the attorney defending the young man is Mexican-American)—they are depicted neither as caricatures nor noble stoics, but as fully-realized characters with the standard human mix of decency, faults, and failings.
The final story in the collection is 1955’s The Angry Man which features several frequent Macdonald themes:  The mentally-ill and the often callous treatment they receive from law enforcement and society as a whole; wealthy but dysfunctional families; the lengths to which people who have no money will go in order to get it; and the juxtaposition of a character’s surface persona with their inward self.  You can also see Macdonald working on the technical problem of how to have a first-person, non-omniscient narrator receive and communicate information without the story devolving into one long piece of exposition (I think Macdonald handles this type of narrative extremely well in both his short and long fiction).  Neither this story nor Strangers in Town was published in Macdonald’s lifetime.  He decision not to publish these works was not because they did not measure up to his standards but for quite the opposite reason:  He liked what he had written so much that he wanted to expand upon it and develop the material into longer works.
As entertaining as these short stories are, I found the most interesting thing about the book to be its long, informative introduction written by Tom Nolan which quotes extensively from letters Millar/Macdonald wrote to his wife (fellow novelist, Margaret Millar—herself an FFB honoree some time ago) while he was serving in the Navy.  During long, occasionally dangerous, deployments, Millar was able to read extensively from the ship’s library and continue to write fiction and develop his ideas for writing first-person murder-mysteries narrated by the hard-boiled but moral private investigator who ultimately became Lew Archer.
Todd Mason

Monday, November 18, 2024

Monday, Monday

 STILL SICK. But let me know what you are up to. The Paxlovid didn't work for me. Just made me nauseous. Or maybe that's the politics of the country right now.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Short Story Wednesday: "Cranked" Bill Crider

 Hey, guys, I have Covid. I am taking Paxlovid but so far no improvement. Yikes! Probably won't be around the rest of the week. How long does this last George and Tracy who have had this version.

"Cranked, Bill Crider from DAMN NEAR DEAD


"Cranked" was from the first collection of geezer noir from Busted Flush Press. Bill was nominated for an Edgar Award (2007) for it in the best short story category. In "Cranked" we have a meeting of four individuals at a roadside convenience store about to be robbed. Karla has escaped a meth fire and is on the run, Royce and Burl, the two bumbling, giggling robbers, are hopped up on meth, and Lloyd has run away from a hospital while his daughter is getting him a cola. These are four tough characters and yet the story has a lot of humor and grace in it. Few writers can pull off humor and violence (and there is plenty of both) as well as Bill did. Bill went on to write another story about Karla, who he took a liking to. I think you can read both of them on kindle for a few bucks. This first collection was edited by Duane Swierczyncki, who was just starting out then. He did a great job of luring good writers in here.

TracyK 

Jerry House 

George Kelley

Kevin Tipple

Monday, November 11, 2024

Monday, Monday


 I am sick so this will be short. I got my shots so I blame that airplane trip.

Liked CONCLAVE very much. Also MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK.

Reading ALL FOURS by Miranda July. I am sure I am watching TV but I can't think of what.

How about you?  Wait: THE DIPLOMAT, THE LINCOLN LAWYER. And a great little movie on AMAZON PRIME, LIMBO set in the outback.

Friday, November 08, 2024

FFB PLAINSONG, Kent Haruf

 

 


This is the second time I have read this novel and it's just a brilliant book. Perhaps most of the characters are too black or too white but it didn't bother me. It concerns a teacher, his two young sons, his mentally ill wife, a pregnant teenager, the two elderly men who take her in, and a bully and his bully family. One chapter is about an elderly woman teaching the two boys (nine and ten) how to bake oatmeal cookies and I could read it over and over. Haruf went onto write more novels about this town in Colorado. His last novel OUR SOULS AT NIGHT was published a year after his death in 2014. Funny how many of my favorite writers write about small town life in the Midwest and West.

Wednesday, November 06, 2024

Short Story Wednesday: "The Best of Everything" Richard Yates

 (from the archives)

Richard Yates wrote two of my favorite novels, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and THE EASTER PARADE, but he also wrote this fabulous collection of ten short stories (among others). Written in the fifties "The Best of Everything" almost seems like a story written earlier. Were people in their twenties this naive? This innocent? I have to assume some were.

It is the story of a couple on the day before their marriage is to take place in Atlantic City. The point of view switches between the two of them and you can't help but notice how drastically different they are from each other once you are in their heads. You also realize they don't know each other at all and that their marriage will probably fail quickly. 

The woman is a typical middle class young woman working as a secretary. She speaks well and is respected in her office. The man is a step or two down the socioeconomic ladder and has a poor grasp of English, which the woman's roommate makes her constantly aware of, calling he and his friends, "Ratty little clerks." 

But for whatever reason, Grace goes forward with the marriage plans although we sense her worry. Her roommate, feeling badly about the things she has said about Eddie, leaves her alone the night before the wedding and Grace plans an early consummation, feeling this will set things right.

But Eddie has been the man of the hour with his friends at a bachelor party and he is stunned by their good will. You get the feeling he has never been the center of attention before this night. He hurries to Grace's apartment to tell her he is going back to the party and her attempt to seduce him goes to naught.

We understand now that Eddie will always choose his friends over his wife and that will destroy their marriage quickly. She goes so far to put his hand on her naked breast. Nothing.

There is a lot of discussion online about this story. One teacher said it was the cause of a female student in his class dumping her boyfriend. Yates' real gift here is capturing the mind and language of both characters so clearly and with sympathy. Eddie is not a bad man and Grace is not a snob, but they certainly don't belong together. They seem to have reached an age when they believe it is time to marry no matter to whom. 

 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Kevin Tipple 

Todd Mason

Monday, November 04, 2024

Monday, Monday

 What are you guys up to?



Monday, October 28, 2024

Monday, Monday

Started this book by Jeremy Cooper where nature stands in for film as a balm. Also just ordered HAMMERSTEIN AND THE INVENTION OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL. Since he lived down the road from my husband's hometown I have long meant to read more about him. After watching SIX BY SONDHEIM I was reminded of it.

Watching the TV show INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE (Netflix), which is so well written despite the gore. Also watching THE LINCOLN LAWYER (NETFLIX), MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, (MAX) SHRINKING (Apple) and a lot of docs. Why make a doc when you aren't able to use more than a line or two of music (Joni Mitchell, LADY BLUE) ?

Saw WE LIVE IN TIME, which I didn't care for despite two good performances.Do people really want to see a movie that is almost entirely about dying from cancer? From the very first scenes? I should have read the reviews more carefully.


Going to see STRANGERS ON A TRAIN with Josh and family (play). On Tuesday, I fly to DC and a friend and I are going to New Hope, where we were waitresses in 1964. And where I met Phil in 1965.

Be back in a week. Will put up a Monday post for you guys to communicate on. 

Hope next we meet, we have the first Black female President.

Friday, October 25, 2024

FFB-BRIAN, Jeremy Cooper

 

This book was published in 2023 so it's not forgotten, but I'm betting few people have read it. I heard of it through a podcast GOOD READS. (on GOOD READS, three British celebrities of sorts each pick a book, which all three read).

Brian is a lonely British office worker who has shut off most of the world due to various fears. But one night he goes to the British Film Institute and enjoys a film. He begins going regularly because a membership is affordable and through his growing interest in film, he becomes familiar with the other regulars. He also begins to take film seriously and reads books about the films, the directors and engages in discussions about them after the film ends. In this way, a lonely man creates a life for himself. It still has limits-he is careful not to get too close to most of them, but it's a richer life than he lived before. We learn why he is so fearful as the book goes on and the ending is heartening. 

This is an unusual book. There is no dialogue although Brian tells us what was said. He also fills us in on what he learns through his reading, his own impression of the films. This is for a patient reader because almost nothing happens. My favorite sort of book but not everyone's.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Short Story Wednesday "You're Ugly, Too" Lorrie Moore from the Best American Short Stories of the Century"

 


This was John Updike's choice from 1990. It is probably one of the nastier Lorrie Moore stories I have read-although nasty in the way many short stories of that time were. Humorous but acid-tongued protagonists. And so often set in academia.

Zoe Hendricks is a young English professor that the reader views as pretty privileged, but she sees herself as put upon-by her ungrateful students, her not up to snuff dates, dull Midwesterners and colleagues that surround her, and her sister who gets to live in New York. It is possible fate will catch up with her--she has just had a scan to investigate a mass, but she still flies to New York to attend her sister's Halloween Party without calling for the results. She meets a man at the party and the two exchange insults and she comes close to taking out her rage on him. Well- written, lots of humor, but not my favorite Lorrie Moore story. It must have been difficult to pick the best books of the century. I mean how many books are there to choose from a year.

George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK

Monday, October 21, 2024

Monday, Monday

The 18th would have been Phil's 80th birthday. I think this photo was taken was not long before he died, probably on Cape Cod. He was such a great husband, father, friend. We never had a single fight. Probably more him than me.

Saw THE OUTRUN with Saoirse Ronan. Beautifully filmed and she was terrific but boy the story is too familiar by now. Also saw ARMY OF SHADOWS at the Detroit Film Theater. Made in 1969 by Jean Pierre Melville, a French Resistance story. Dark in every way. We went out to dinner after that and we were the oldest people in the room by 35 years. This was a super expensive place-the salads were $17-20 and entrees were $50--75. How did these kids get so much money? And to me, all the women looked like sex workers. I am getting too old. Happy to see the diversity though.

Reading BRIAN by Jeremy Cooper. So very British. Also lots of haiku books.

Watching MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, DISCLAIMER, ABBOTT'S ELEMENTARY, HOMICIDE. 

Lots more great weather. What a autumn this has been.

What about you? 

 



Friday, October 18, 2024

FFB: ROSS MACDONALD'S THE INWARD JOURNEY, Ralph B Slipper, ed

 reviewed by Bill Crider

FFB: Ross Macdonald's Inward Journey -- Ralph B. Sipper, Editor

Ross Macdonald isn't much read or discussed these days, and when I do see references to him by younger readers, they don't seem to be much impressed with his work.  That's quite a change from past decades, including the 1980s when Ross Macdonald's Inward Journey was published.  The book includes two previously unpublished essays by Macdonald himself and a short but quite poignant one by his wife, Margaret Millar; however in the main it's a tribute to Macdonald's life and work by other writers.  Those who don't think that Macdonald was one of the greats might want to consider what these writers have to say.  I'll give a few examples.

Robert B. Parker:  "It's not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live."

Thomas Berger:  "Ross Macdonald's work has consistently nourished me, at home and abroad.  I have turned to it often to hear what I should like to call the justice of its voice and to be enlightened by its imagination, and, not incidentally, superbly entertained."

Collin Wilcox: "I own Ken Millar more than I can ever repay."

Paul Nelson:  "I remember thinking we come to his novels for comfort in the disaster of our lives, knowing that he and Archer have seen us -- and worse than us -- and will dispense mercy and kindness or, if they turn us over, at least understand."

And so on.  Some of the writers were even inspired to write poems instead of essays.  I've been a fan of Macdonald's work since the first time I picked up one of his books, more than 50 years ago.  Reading Ross Macdonald's Inward Journey reminded me again of why I liked his work so much.  It might do the same for you.  And if you've never read his books, don't read this book first.  Read one of Macdonald's novels first.  The sooner, the better

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Short Story Wednesday, CHALLENGE THE IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL PROBLEMS OF DR. SAM HAWTHORNE, Edward D. Hoch

 

reviewed by Jeff Meyerson

Edward D. Hoch, Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Crippen & Landru 2018).

When I thought of which book to choose for the first of these short story collections to review, the choice was fairly easy.  Why not go with possibly the most prolific short story writer ever, a man who published over 950 stories, including one or more in every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for 35 years?  Ed Hoch created a dozen or more series characters of varying types, but my favorite remains the impossible crime specialist, small town Connecticut doctor Sam Hawthorne, who had some 72 recorded cases, published between 1974 and 2008, of a remarkably high quality.  Hoch did something interesting here, besides the ingenuity of the stories themselves, by setting them in a specific time and place, a smallish town in Connecticut between the doctor's arrival in 1922 and his final story, in 1944.  You always get a feel for what was going on in the world then, from the Depression to the Second World War.  Crippen & Landru has done fans a favor by publishing all 72 stories in five volumes (of which this is, clearly, the last), all with "Impossible" in the title.  From the first story, "The Problem of the Covered Bridge," in which a man drives into a covered bridge and seems to vanish off the face of the Earth, Hoch was a master at coming up with truly impossible-seeming crimes and then providing mostly brilliant solutions.  I'd recommend starting at the beginning and reading all five volumes, but you can't go wrong with any of them.
 

Monday, October 14, 2024

Monday, Monday

 

Sorry to see the end of SLOW HORSES and PACHINKO. But am still enjoying MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, THE ENGLISH TEACHER, and the new Cate Blanchett series, DISCLAIMER. 

Saw BASQUIAT at the Detroit Film Theater (from 1996). Jeffrey Wright did a great job of playing Basquiat although the film was so loaded with famous actors it was disconcerting trying to remember them. I don't remember seeing this one at the time. Then I was able to watch JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT: A RADIANT CHILD on Kanopy, which gave a lot of context and criticism to his work.

Sunday I saw a play in Ann Arbor at Theater Nova. IN SEARCH OF THE MOTHMAN. Two fine actresses did their best with a muddled script. This seemed like a good first draft.

Finished THE SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner and about to start BRIAN, Jeremy Cooper.

We finally got some rain and boy, did it smell good. What makes some rain smell and others not. 

What are you up to?

Friday, October 11, 2024

FFB BRIARPATCH, Ross Thomas

 (from the archives)

from: Libby Fischer Hellmann

Briarpatch, by Ross Thomas

My favorite “forgotten” novel is Briarpatch by Ross Thomas. I’d already published three novels when I stumbled onto it, but when I did, I instantly knew why I write the books I do. Its structure, style, and substance are an indispensable template, and its dog-eared pages will stay in my library forever.

Briarpatch
is a structural chameleon. Technically, it’s an amateur sleuth novel. Ben Dill, a Senate staffer in Washington DC journeys to an unnamed Southern city to bury his sister, a homicide detective killed in a bomb explosion. While there, he intends to find out why she died. In short order, though, characters are introduced, complications mount, and by page thirty I wasn’t sure whether I was reading a police procedural, a PI novel, or a thriller, complete with ambitious politicians, intelligence operatives, and arms-dealing mercenaries. In the hands of a lesser talent, this complexity might be disastrous, but Thomas weaves the threads into a seamless, satisfying story.

The prose in Briarpatch -- spare, lucid, silky -- is just this side of Chandler. It has rhythm. And pace. And while it’s easy to read, it’s never dull. Sometimes Thomas breaks the rules, having fun with alliteration, for example, or planting his tongue firmly in his cheek. But the writing is never offensive, and a too clever sentence is redeemed in the next with a thoughtful observation. I come away from Briarpatch thinking Thomas says what he means and yet it means so much more.

I grew up in Washington D.C., and when my family gossiped about the neighbors, we were essentially talking politics. As a result, stories that touch on national or global issues draw me like a moth to the light. Fold in murder, suspense, and small town corruption that stretches to the nation’s capital, and I’m a goner. (I learned after I read Briarpatch that Thomas lived in DC as well). Half way through, I realized we never know the Southern city where Briarpatch takes place, but we don’t need to. It could be any town in which a police chief hungers for higher office, a cop may be on the take, a formerly dirt-poor pal is now a millionaire, and a shady businessman tries to set up his partner.

But perhaps the novel’s most attractive – and durable -- quality is that it’s a story lightly told. Briarpatch never screams or calls attention to itself. Its complexity sneaks up on you-- until you realize you’re in the hands of a master and you’ve been reading a classic. It deserves to be “rediscovered.”



Wednesday, October 09, 2024

Short Story Wednesday "Hi, Daddy," Matthew Klam, THE NEW YORKER

Our narrator is taking his eighteen year old daughter to the airport where she is flying to Spain to join her boyfriend for a pre-college trip. He is also caring for his aging parents. This would be the circumstance my son finds himself in and I read the story with him in mind. Our narrator is suffering physical symptoms brought on by this double whammy. He has a wife, but she is doing important work so a lot of the everyday stuff falls on him. Also she is more at ease with life moving on than he is. A good story. I will look for more from Matthew Klam. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/hi-daddy-fiction-matthew-klam

George Kelley

TracyK

Monday, October 07, 2024

Monday, Monday


 LEE turned out to be a pretty ordinary biopic. Winslett was very good but the script didn't pursue her more interesting qualities enough. Still it did make me want to find out more about her and her photographs.

Reading THE SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner. A first novel for a woman who has been in publishing for 30 years. 


Going to see MOULIN ROUGE (the show not the movie) at the Detroit Opera House today. 

Still watching SLOW HORSES, PACHINKO, HOMICIDE. Finished NOBODY WANTS THIS which I enjoyed. I am anxious to see what they do with it next. Gave up (again) on ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. Is it written by AI? Trying WHERE IS WANDA?

Can you imagine our last President having a clue how to handle the world we now live in. I am not really thinking of his domestic horrors but what he would do about the Middle East, Ukraine, etc.  Biden is struggling with it too. It might be an unsolvable crisis. 

What's new in your hood?

Saturday, October 05, 2024

Haibun


Articulating Space

Patricia Abbott
Birmingham, Michigan, USA


That winter she made a series of small quilts patterned on Paul Klee paintings there were
difficulties since the library books she used as sources varied in the precise tint of all those
little squares and it was difficult to match them up in fabric since the rectangles lost their
plumb perfection matched end to end though at other times they seemed rigidly square like
a kindergarten teacher’s idea of art and sitting on the floor amongst the pieces she grew
frantic she would ever get it right with the sizes and colors and piecing all dependent on
what appeared to be but wasn’t random choices then once finished the quilts had a
undulating look quite different from her image of the Klees and if she hung them unframed
they seemed bulky and primitive on the white, white walls and if she framed them they
floated crooked like fragile fiber sailboats on a chintz black sea.


beneath my breastbone
you stayed too long
to leave nothing behind

************

This haibun appeared in DRIFTING SANDS HAIBUN JOURNAL, July 2024

Friday, October 04, 2024

FFB: THE DEEP RANGE, Arthur C. Clarke

 (reviewed by Rick Robinson in 2012)

The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke © 1957, Signet 1964 mass market paperback (second printing), – science fiction – cover painting by Paul Lehr

According to the note inside, I read this one in September 1964. I didn’t put a grade down for it, as I sometimes did, but that means nothing. Honestly I didn’t remember a darn thing about the book, though it’s easy to tell from the cover art by Paul Lehr that it takes place in the sea.

Walter Franklin was a senior crewmember on the space vessel Antares when he had to go outside to repair an antenna knocked askew by a small asteroid. His suit rocket got stuck wide open and he sailed off into cold, empty space out of control and expecting to die by oxygen starvation after several hours in the cold reaches of space.

He was rescued, four hours later, but it was the last time he would ever go into space. The trauma was deep and seemingly permanent. So the psychological staff treated him as best they could and he was returned to Earth to start a new life, leaving his wife and two sons on Mars. All this is briefly told in flashbacks throughout the first half of the book.

Franklin was put through a special course to become a Warden in the Bureau of Whales. The sea was being harvested for it’s food and mineral wealth, and – along with plankton farms – whales play a big part, for milk, oil, meat. Wardens keep watch over the herds and keep away predators. It’s an underwater, exciting job, and the sea provides a kind of security the very opposite of space.

The book follows the career of Franklin from raw rookie through Second Warden, First Warden, Chief, then on into the bureaucracy and finally to head of the Bureau. There are some exciting adventures, some dangerous encounters with sea life and the equipment that can be deadly if not properly handled, there are under-sea rescues, a light love story, challenges and rewards.

Yes, this is science fiction, nothing like what is depicted here existed in 1957 and still doesn’t, but the equipment Clarke describes is a lot closer to becoming real– and some already has – certainly much of the undersea submersible equipment is in use today. Clarke as usual had a good eye for future technology.

A very different science fiction book, almost more of an adventure tale. I found myself thinking a few times as I read it that it would make a pleasing audio book. There was one done in 1980, on cassette, a special library edition, which may be out there somewhere. Though how many people still have cassette players? If you’re looking for something different in science fiction, light but interesting, this may be one worth trying. I enjoyed it.