reviewed by Jeff Meyerson
reviewed by Jeff Meyerson
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?
(from the archives)
from: Libby Fischer Hellmann
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.”
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
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?
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