Still Here

Sick of snow and at least two months to go! It seems like every Sunday I am worrying about whether my snow removal place will come. I pay them $600 a winter and so far they have come twice this year. They only come if we have over two inches. I think I said all of this last Sunday.

Watching False Flags on Hulu, which may be more needful of close attention than I can give it. Also watching C. B. Strike on HBO Max, based on the Galbraith books. Awfully good atmosphere and acting but the first plot was sort of so-so. Also All Creatures Great and Small, which is a pleasant show but not very compelling. I guess the original was much the same. Not sure how many times I want to watch a vet put his hand up a cow. 

Watched a play called Lung from the Old Vic, starring Matt Smith and Claire Foy. Also listened to the NYT Book Club session with Claire Messud discussing Edith Wharton's The Custom of the County. Wharton certainly made her living off of books with similar plots.

Just finished two very mediocre books, which I won't name because maybe it's me. 

All my walking has been around the house. It is too cold and icy outside. Hard to get a decent amount of steps in circling my kitchen island but what else can I do. I have a lot of things that make me feel guilty and not getting any exercise is one of them, However, my grandmother, who never walked more than a block in her life, lived to be 91.

I have had a headache for two weeks, off and on. Not a bad one but an annoyance. It could be from grinding my teeth. It could be sinuses. It could be my glasses need adjustment. The most likely thing is stress. Trying to get the second shot before I do anything about it. Schedule for the 17th.

Rewatched Gregory's Girl last night. But the great movie of the week was Tavernier's The Clockmaker of St. Paul. Just terrific.  

What about you? 

FFB: A Poem

About a decade ago, I belonged to a writing group and one of the members was Patrick O'Leary who had written several rather distinctive novels. But he also wrote poetry and the poem he read that night (which was about out group) seems especially appropriate in the times of a pandemic. 

THE BIG THING AT THE END, Patrick O'Leary

The one time I ever fainted

she said

I was furious when they woke me

We laughed that laugh

when you want to hold someone

& say Yes I know yes Yes it’s awful

& it may not get better

but we laughed instead

& someone said my friend

was dying from an overdose of penicillin

& he felt nothing but ecstasy

& another said yes

my friend felt the same

when she was drowning

on a perfect summer day

& someone asked what possible

evolutionary purpose

could such a reprieve serve?

Couldn’t it all be random?

But it nagged us nonetheless

that in our final passage

we might go gently

& I noticed no one dared

to tender the possibility of

a merciful manager of

survival dispensing relief

though that is what some of us

actually believe or hope

& then our friend whose mother

had survived the camps said

Perhaps it’s not for us

but for the predator

rewarding his catch

by pacifying his prey

(who after all is caught)

hastening the transition

from creature to meal

This seemed so shocking

& apt it silenced us

on this lovely evening when

we huddled around

our civilized fire

of coffee cheese & crackers

telling stories of precipices

reassuring the tribe

with tales of great escapes

thrilling chases & close calls

which if one is honest

form the spine of all story

& I believe each of us

became aware

for the briefest moment

of that larger thing

hovering outside

in the brutal winter

& the darker dark

who occasionally listened in

on our little group

of story makers

sometimes observing

our lively heads chatting

in the golden windows

of the night

& thought

Let them talk

Let them talk their heads off

 

 Patrick O'Leary's books

• Door Number Three (1995)
• The Gift (1998) – nominated for the World Fantasy Award
• Other Voices, Other Doors (collection) (2000)
• The Impossible Bird (2002)
• "The Cane" (2007) Published in Postscripts 12
• The Black Heart (2009)
• "51" (2022)

Short Story Wednesday: A Short Guide to the City" Peter Straub

This story begins by reporting the deaths of six women by a person known as the Viaduct Killer,
the place where the victims were found. But then Peter Straub launches into what appears to be the description of a city, one that might appear in a travel book. 

At first it seems like an ordinary Midwestern city with the typical harsh winters, a vaguely incompetent mayor, the usual distribution of housing, classes, schools, political parties. But gradually we descend into a much more ominous landscape where feral children roam, where ethnic groups clash, where wolves, raised for unknown reasons, by one generation, still exist.  More and more we find traditions, creatures, habits that seem frightening or fantastical. There is a unfinished bridge that no seems to find unusual.

Straub's descriptions are so well done, alternating the real with the surreal that we willingly follow him along. The story succeeds on the evocation of an atmosphere rather than any specific plot. The horror is  palpable if somewhat vague.

In an interview Straub says that he wanted to take his native city of Milwaukee, and exaggerate its weaknesses to the point of horror. 

You can find this story right here. https://www.shortlist.com/lists/best-horror-short-stories-400388

 George Kelley

TracyK

 Jerry House

Steve Lewis 

Kevin Tipple

Still Here

 

There is a scene in Ma Rainey that looks so much like this one of my grandfather's jazz band from 100 years ago. Except the faces here are all white instead of black. This was Al Deisseroth's band out of Syracuse. My grandfather was the drummer. In both, the pianist is standing. I guess that was common then.

Hope that by noon today, I have been inoculated with the first dose of one of the vaccines. I hear some sites are running out of vaccines so fingers crossed. 

The Criterion Channel has some of the films of Bertrand Tavernier this month, which I have always loved. So far I have rewatched A Week's Vacation and A Sunday in the Country. Both were outstanding although certainly not happy films. But thoughtful ones where an old man (Sunday) and a young woman (Week's) examine choices they have made.

 

Also watched Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which was terrific. Especially Chadwick Boseman. One monologue by him just brings his plight as both a character and a dying man home. It still had the feel of a play rather than a movie, but I love plays so it didn't bother me.

Also finally got my nerve up and started A Handmaid's Tale. It seemed too prescient up until now.

Also watching Flack with Anna Pacquin. Too soon to judge, but I have always thought her an interesting actor.

Reading The Wife Upstairs which is a reimagining of Jane Eyre. I have to assume the author had something specific in mind when two of her main characters are named Bertha and Bea. Very hard to remember which is which. Also reading The Creak in the Stairs, set in Iceland, and I am too lazy to look up the author. 

What are you up to?

FFB DIRTY WORK, Larry Brown

(from the archives)

DIRTY WORK is the debut novel from Mississippi writer, Larry Brown, and it seemed appropriate to read it around Veteran's Day since that's its subject matter. I picked it up in Mississippi last month and just wish I had picked up more of them. I have RABBIT FACTORY around somewhere and will dig it out now.

Walter James and Braiden Chaney are two Vietnam Vets lying side by side in a Vet hospital 20 years after the war. Chaney has basically spent the entire time in a hospital since the war left him with no arms or legs. James is newly admitted with some sort of brain trauma from a bullet lodge in his head. He has also been badly scarred from his years in Vietnam. 
  
The two men eventually trade war stories, but this book does much more than that. It painted the lives of the sort of men who couldn't dodge the war--the down and dirty life they led in northern Mississippi. Much of Chaney's thoughts are dream-induced and almost biblical in theme. Who could spend 20 years in a bed and not retreat to such a place?

The two men do a lot of drinking with the beer Chaney's sister smuggles in.  They also smoke a lot of pot. Their stories are different and the same. It was men like these two who served in Vietnam and never recovered from it. They either died in body or died in spirit. An amazing and thought-provoking book.

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Something is Out There" Richard Bausch

Back in 2005, I sent a story to a submission call for a new publication called MURDALAND. It was probably the darkest story I ever wrote and I was surprised when Eddie Vega, the submissions editor, took it and encouraged me to make it even darker. This would be the first issue (there were only ) two and the magazine was the lovechild of two guys named Cortright McMeel and Mike Langnas.  A lot of the stories were from real stars in the field:( Ken Bruen, Mary Gaitskill, Daniel Woodrell) But my favorite was from Richard Bausch, who eventually made this story the title story in a collection.

A family returns home from the hospital where the father is spending some time after falling off the roof after being shot. They are having a rare snowstorm, and the boys begin to shovel the driveway and walk. The women try to piece together what has happened. The man who shot the father has been captured and was a former business partner. They are also waiting for the return of another family member away at college. They are worried about him out on the icy roads.

The dread in this story is palpable: the storm, the fate of the college student, knocks on the door, is the father involved in some crime? And then the power goes out. 

Bausch takes his time to make you feel what they are feeling. In fact, when a knock came at my own door (something very rare nowadays) I almost fell out of the chair. (It was the mailman). 

Bausch understands that the threat of violence can be more frightening than actual violence. He gives you enough information to understand, sort of, what might be going on. The story ends with the woman, standing at an upstairs window, with a loaded gun. The kids wait downstairs baseball bats and knives at the ready. The other woman waits too.

 Superb. There are probably pdf's online if you care to read it. A new copy of that issue MURDALAND lists for almost $800. 

 Kevin Tipple

TracyK 

Jerry House 

Todd Mason

Still Here

Thanks to Jeff, I watched MEKIMI this week. It's the story of a TV performer who falls for a guy who quickly becomes an ultra religious Jew. She follows him down this path much to the anger of  her family and friends. It's a short series, I would have liked to know more

In catching up online with what happened after the series, the couple divorced and he returned to a secular life. Although I do not understand why women live in a sect where they are expected to spend their lives in the kitchen with their many children, I do admire their non-materialistic life.

And I really do find stories about people wrestling with this sort of decision interesting. 

When I was reading the Cary Grant bio, there was a lot of print given to how much he loved Sophia Loren, although she turned around and married Carlo Ponti. So I was eager to see this film with the two made during this time. It wasn't a great movie, but it was entertaining, light, and you could see the chemistry between them. Although he was 30 years older, she seemed older than 23. It had some of the poorest sets and background I have ever seen in a A movie though.  She certainly was gorgeous. I guess they figured that was all they needed.

Reading the Willie Vlautin book still, (THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES) which is very good. Also a book by Sue Miller (THE LAKESHORE EXPRESS) on audio.  

Although I have put my name on several lists to get the vaccine, I have heard nothing. One more issue blown as we learn Trump did not have any stored vaccine he promised. Remember when we saved Europe after WW2 through the Marshall Plan. Now we can't save anything or anyone. It's a good thing no one is counting on us to do more than destroy ourselves.

What about you?

FFB: THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, Barbara Kingsolver

 I have been in a book group for close to twenty years and this is probably one of our five favorite reads over that period. (Other contenders would be NICKEL AND DIMED, LEOPOLD'S GHOST, and LAB GIRL) 

It is 1959 and Nathan Price, a Baptist minister, takes his wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo where he believes he can convert the heathens. He is from the fire and brimstone school of preachers and this does not serve him well with the local population. The family is ill-prepared for the climate. They also are ill-prepared for the unrest they will find as the Congo tries to pull away from Belgian's harsh colonial rule. The novel does a great job of showing the reader how this period played out. King Leopold of Belgian would give a certain president a run for the title of worst person who is not Adolf Hitler.

The first half of the novel documents the many vicissitudes found by the Prices and practiced on the local population by Nathan. It is written from all of their POVS, which gives a pretty full picture of how this affected each one of them. Nathan gives little thought to how this experience will affect his family, reminding me of the father in MOSQUITO COAST and the parents in AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY.   

The second half of the novel details the lives of these seven people over the next thirty years. I have to say that half of the book is not as memorable or at least I don't remember it. It is hard to compete with the fiery Price. But a very good book all in all.

Short Story Wednesday "How Old, How Young" John O'Hara

I have always thought I read a lot of John O'Hara as a kid until I looked at his list of publications. I may have only read FROM THE TERRACE, or was reading it when my father pitched it out the door. This action necessitated a late night retrieval because it was a library book. And I really can't believe my father had any idea about who O'Hara was or what the book was about. Maybe the cover scared him.

At any rate, I think I mostly read O'Hara short stories He published hundreds of them. But I did read a lot of novels by three other Johns as a teen: Steinbeck, Marquand and Dos Passos. As well as Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and Theodore Dreiser. No mysteries at all. I don't think I knew they existed then.  My mother had a few in our one tiny bookcase, but I was more attracted to the romances there.

Anyway this story is collected in the Library of America collection of a few years ago. It is a nine-page story. O'Hara wrote both very short and very long stories. It begins with a young man (Jamie) noticing a young woman crying in the street. He recognizes her and has a immediate desire to cover her up because her deep distress is like nakedness to him. People didn't often cry in the streets. 

He looks for her at a swimming party that night (this is probably set in Gibbsville- a stand in for O'Hara's own hometown in PA) Nancy has begged off coming; she was supposed to bring 12 ears of corn, someone complains. A discussion takes place over how girls mature earlier than boys. How he shouldn't fall for her since although the same age, he was too immature for Nancy. "She needs someone who can take care of her," someone says.

But he looks for her again the next day at the club swimming pool and finds her. He is very attracted to her and watches as she climbs out of the pool to see where the swimsuit sticks to her body. (I had never thought of this as a "thing" before). The dialog between them is snappy. 

She has been crying because her father has been charged with misappropriation of funds and she asks him if he assumed she was crying because she was pregnant. 

Again there are references as to how he is not mature enough for her. He offers to marry her and she says he isn't even finished with college. The story ends with the lines. 

"I don't want to have to wait that long," he said.

"We don't have to wait, for everything," she said. 

Although only nine pages, you come away from the story feeling you know a lot about these two twenty-one year olds.  They come from the privileged class and I think that was the typical group O'Hara wrote about. He came from that class  (father was a doctor) although he always felt like an outsider apparently because he was Irish and Catholic. There are lots of phrases in the story that date it, but the story isn't dated at all. Something very like it is in The New Yorker most weeks. 

Steve Lewis

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK

George Kelley 

Todd Mason 

Public Service Announcement

The Science page of the NYT today has an article stating an FIT (Fecal Immunochemical Test)  is equally acceptable to a colonoscopy. No need to go through a horrible preparation and test with this at home test providing reliable results

 

"If your doctor tells you a colonscopy is better, that's not accurate," said Dr. Alex Krist, chair man of U.S. Preventive Services. 

 

FIT yields an equally reliable analysis. But do get the test. Page D3 of today's issue.

 

Still Here

and waiting for the call that says I can schedule my vaccination. How do things look where you are? They lowered the age to 65 here and I have gotten several emails from my local hospital telling me they would soon begin a schedule. 

Reading the new Willie Vlautin book-THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES. Enjoying more stories from LIES OF THE SAINTS.  Also read WITH OR WITHOUT YOU by Caroline Leavitt which was pretty good until the end when she insisted on every character becoming self aware and able to right themselves. Do you want that in a book? That must be why it happens so much in mainstream literature.

Rewatched MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE last night. Myrna Loy and Grant are, of course, great but Melvyn Douglas really steals the show for me as their acerbic friend. Grant is sort of a bumbler in this part, but he does it beautifully. My favorite scene is the one where Loy describes what colors to use in painting the house.

Finished A SUITABLE BOY, which I have to say was disappointing. I had always heard how terrific the novel was but this probably stripped the novel of everything but the romantic story lines. I can say the same thing about BRIDGERTON. Although maybe that was all romance in book form. 

Don't need to say anything about this week, but I was never more ashamed of being an American. As more information dribbles out, it is clear just how vast and far-reaching the planning for this was. Has there ever been an American who did more harm to their country that 45. I don't think so. And his enablers are just, if not more, culpable by not seeing a mad man and working against him.

So what are you up to?

FFB-CROSS COUNTRY, Herbert D. Kastle

 (From the archives-2009)

Ed Gorman was the author of TICKET TO RIDE and many other fine stories-long and short.

Herbert D. Kastle wrote a number of science fiction stories in magazines of the 1950s. That's where I first read him. Later in the 1960s he was writing those fat sexy bestseller-type novels that owed more to marketing and Harold Robbins than his presumed muse.

Then in 1974 he wrote CROSS COUNTRY. Here's a quote from one of the reviews: "This novel seems to occupy the same dark and twisted territory as the works of Jim Thompson. Characters interact in a dance of barely suppressed psychopathological urges and desires that is as grotesquely fascinating as a multi-car pileup on the freeway. It may leave you feeling unclean afterwards, but chances are you will not forget it."

Damn straight. It really is a sewer of sex and terror and blood-soaked suspense. I read it in one long sitting. If it's trash, as some called it at the time, it is spellbinding trash.

IMDB sums up the story line succinctly: "After a woman is found butchered in her New York apartment, suspicion falls on her estranged husband, an ad executive who has suddenly left town on a cross-country road trip. He takes along a beautiful girl he met in a bar and a drifter he picked up along the way. A cop sets out after the husband, but he's more interested in shaking him down than bringing him back."

Kastle masterfully controls his long nightmare journey and you buy into his paranoia. He shows you an American wasteland of truck stops, motels, convenience stores connected by interstate highway and darkness. By book's end everyone will betray everyone else. This is survival of the fittest enacted by a Yuppie businessman, sociopathic hippies and a crooked cop. The sheer nastiness of Kastle's existential vision make this book impossible to forget. Thirty-some years after I first read it I still think of it from time to time when hundreds of other novels have fled from memory.

As a vision of hell, it's a small masterpiece.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Return of the Argentine Tango Masters" from The Lies of the Saints, Erin McGraw

This story came my way via George Kelley who kindly sent me this collection. I was all set to talk about a story by Joyce Carol Oates from Best Mystery Stories of 2017, but it was so JCO that I was not enthused about talking about it. But this one was charming and it just had more story to it. The setting was interesting, (a radio station) and the characters felt more fleshed out, less generic. And in some way, it was subtly as dark as JCO. 

A radio talk show host is surprised when her ex-husband, Rafe, calls into her show, eight years after they split. The audience is enthralled with his tales of their marriage, especially ones about their doing the tango. Gwen's producer is insistent that the increase in ratings after this is thanks to the delight their audience is taking in the replay of this relationship. He will not let her blow Rafe off. And, in fact, when the Argentine Tango Masters come to town, the entire town comes to watch them dance. 

Gwen's new husband, Leo, is gradually seduced by the idea of learning the tango. By the story's end, the reader is not sure if the "tango" has a deeper and possibly more sinister meaning than the name of a Spanish dance. A fun story for me.

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Steve Lewis

My Favorite Movies of 2020

                                                                                    

Lovers Rock

The only movie on this list I saw at a theater was Portrait of a Lady on Fire. There are a ton of movies I haven't seen, which is unusual. But anyway these are the ones I most enjoyed in no particular order.

The Vast of Night (Prime)

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix)

Palm Springs (Hulu)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Hulu)

Small Ax: Lovers Rock (Prime)

The Painter and the Thief  (Hulu)

The Forty-Year Old Version (Netflix)

Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often (HBO Max)

Dick Johnson is Dead (Netflix)

The Assistant (Hulu)

The Nest (Prime)

If I had to give the Best Picture Oscar to one, I think it would be Lovers Rock.

What movies have you enjoyed this  year? Even if the movie is from another year.

Still Here

                                        This is just one side of the sidewalk I have to shovel.

For six  years, we headed out to CA about now. I heard from a friend yesterday that San Diego County had 4500 Covid cases on January 1. My friends that we went out there with cancelled their trip their this year and I am sure we would have had to. Despite getting to FL last  year, it seems  like a very long time since I've been away. And, of course, I was sick almost the whole time in FL. MY DIL's uncle died of Covid this week. He broke his hip and contracted it at either the hospital or the rehab place he was sent to. The number of deaths that have occurred in nursing facilities is staggering.

I am having trouble right now finding books I like. The one I am reading for my book group is awfully dull. (THE BOOKWOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK) I ended up not like Bryan Cranston much after reading his memoirs. He was too full of himself and confident he knows everything there is to know about stagecraft. Funny how often that happens in a memoir. I have two books coming from a gift card. Maybe one of them will work. My library card has expired and they are open so little I have trouble renewing it. So I can't borrow anything from them. I have about 1000 books in here I haven't read but I just can't seem to land on a good one. And I am trying hard not to use Amazon, which eliminates a lot of options. When I read what Bezos took in last year, it made me sick. As basically a shut- in, I have to use Amazon for some things, I need, but I won't use them for books if I can help it. 

Saw two old movies. I had never seen HAROLD AND MAUDE before and I enjoyed it. Did Ruth Gordon ever play anyone but herself? Not that herself wasn't a good character. I also watched STARTING OVER, which I thought held up well. Jill Clayburgh was such a great actress and Burt managed to mug his way through it. Lots of good scenes and lines. 

Enjoying watching DARE ME on Netflix without commercials. It does make a huge difference. BRIDGERTON is very junky. Maybe it's just I never read or watch romances but it seems like every scene is about sex. I really don't think a comparison with Jane Austen is apt. However, I continue to watch it. 

So what's up with you guys?

FFB-My favorite mysteries from 1989-92.

Sleep and His Brother-Peter Dickinson
Well-Schooled in Murder-Elizabeth George
Burden of Proof-Scott Turow
Nemesis-Rosamond Smith
Going Wrong, The Crocodile Bird, Anna's Book-Ruth Rendell
Icy Clutches, Old Scores-Aaron Elkins
The Wench is Dead-Colin Dexter
H is for Homicide, I is for Innocent--Sue Grafton
Dancehall of the Dead, Coyote Waits--Tony Hillerman
A Ticket to the Boneyard, A Dance in the Slaughter House-Lawrence Block
Body in the Vestibule-Katherine Page
Shadow Play, Not That Kind of Place, Deep Sleep-Frances Fyfield
A Simple Plan, Scott Smith
A Literary Murder-Batya Gur
Sculptress-Minette Walters
Past Reason Hated-Peter Robinson
Devil in a Blue Dress-Walter Mosley  

Remember any of them?

Short Story Wednesday; "Tiny, Smiling, Daddy" Mary Gaitskill

 "Tiny, Smiling, Daddy" is in the collection Because They Wanted To. Gaitskill is an extremely dark writer and pleasure (for me) is derived from recognizing truths in her stories and in the quality of her writing. I like a story that makes me examine issues I have known or been made aware of in myself and others and this one does. Who doesn't know a father (or mother) who lacks what they need to connect with their child.

In this story a father has shunned his daughter since her teenage announcement that she is a lesbian.  His feelings toward her had already been affected by things like nose piercings and her failure to set the table correctly. As a small child, Kitty was close to her parents but that changes as she changes. This announcement leads to Stew (and his wife) telling Kitty she's free to leave and make her own way in the world. 

The story begins with a phone call from a friend telling Stew that Kitty has published a story about their relationship in a magazine titled "Self." Stew gets a copy of the magazine and although there is really nothing surprising in her article, it sort of sums up what their relationship has been, which is sad and shocking for Stew. He then thinks back on his relationship with his father, which was distant, harsh and short. 

The success of this story for me is that although Stew behaves badly in this story, by the end you feel some sympathy for him because he is so clueless about nearly everything in his life. You know he won't change.

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House

Still Here

 Be back next week. Have a safe one.

Christmas 2015

 

Christmas in the Fifties

 https://youtu.be/e4OiFU_qzDg

Short Story Wednesday: Backrub from Tom Perotta's collection Nine Inches

 

I read several stories in hopes of finding one, but none of them were great this week. How about you?

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House 

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Rick Horton 

Matt Paust 

Richard Robinson

Still Here

 

Yesterday I watched six hours of NURSE JACKIE, perhaps the most depressing show ever run on SHOWTIME. I've seen it before, but I just couldn't summon up the energy to do anything else. Part of the problem was I bought this really comfortable chair six weeks ago and it did not seem worth leaving it.  My bottom, as big as it is getting now that I don't get to walk, is already imprinted on it.  

The walking is over now because it is too cold and icy outside so I have worn a path through my house trying to get some steps in.

This bingeing on Jackie came after completing the book, THE MAN IN THE EMPTY BOAT.  I was assured this story would buck me up but really it did not. After recounting the tragic story of the death of his sister from a flu that went haywire, Mr. Salzman, on holiday, bonded with a dog he didn't expect to like. When the dog got sick, I almost gave  up. So a book can be almost entirely depressing, but if at the end, the man and dog bond it is considering uplifting. Interesting.

It was interesting though how every member of his family was anxious. And anxious to the point it was crippling. When his brother almost succeeded in a business, he had to give it up because success made him so anxious. I never thought of anxiety as being genetic really, but in this case it was both environmental and genetic. I am thinking my family was a pretty anxious group too.

BLACK SPOT (Netflix) is another downer of a story. If you don't die from murder in this town in France, you will die from drink because there is nothing else to do. And here's a question. Why are all of these European imports so dark? Dark visually. Even when it's daytime, it never seems sunny. Rather like Detroit in winter. And all of the characters seem washed of any bright colors clothes-wise. I would think it was my failing vision but FLIGHT ATTENDANT is bright enough. Maybe these European countries are still following that idea about filming using natural light.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT, based on the novel, is a thriller and slickly done but still a bit of a downer too. What if you wake up with your one-night stand dead beside you? What if you are a drunk and have blacked out the night? What about if no one is who they seem to be? What if the dead guy haunts every scene? Can't remember if that was in the novel.

Movies: FAST COLOR was an "almost" good movie about three generations of Black women who have special powers. But the world they live in is apocalyptic and I found it hard to wade through the bad stuff happening to get to the somewhat hopeful end. 

Anyway, NURSE JACKIE is calling. I only have a week to finish before it leaves Netflix. 

Sorry if this depresses you. No doubt, I will feel better tomorrow.  (Ah, yes, I do. Must have been KINKY BOOTS).

What are you up to?

FFB-Mucho Mojo, Joe R. Lansdale

Patti Abbott, Mucho Mojo, Joe R. Lansdale (from 2011)

Mucho Mojo is the second installment of the Hap and Leonard series by Joe R. Lansdale and a worthy follow-up to the first one. It concerns the disappearance of a number of eight 10 year old boys over a period of 10 years in a small town in Texas. It was very well done, of course, although I did find it improbable that such a long string of disappearances would get so little attention from the authorities given certain similarities. But all in all, I enjoyed this book immensely.

What I wanted to talk about here are the considerable strengths I found in this novel--almost amazing ones.

This is a novel by a white writer set entirely in the black community of a small town--and it never seems patronizing or inauthentic. Hap is virtually the only white character.

Secondly, Lansdale is able to write, almost obsessively, about sex without it seeming prurient or pornographic. His sex is tender and graceful.

Third-he is able to create believable characters with a few strokes of his keyboard. Truly, he can find a feature or embellishment to give them something to make them stand out.

Fourth-he can insert humor gracefully at even the darkest moments.

Fifth- he can use profanity without seeming crass.

What a writer. I am in awe.

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Killing: John Updike

This is a bleak story about both the death of a father and the death of a marriage. A woman (Lynne) is forced to decide if her father's life will be continued through extensive life support or not. Having been in this situation myself--three times now--it probably spoke more to me than it would to many. 

Updike spares the reader little as he describes the dying man's last days. And the dying marriage gets the same treatment. It is made all the more poignant when you realize it is Updike's own marriage he is probably describing. He is both hard on himself (Martin, in the story) and forgiving of himself. Pretty nifty to pull off. He wants his former wife to accept his mistress into the family fold but chooses a strange time to attempt this. 

Although the writing is sure-handed, this is a hard story to like too much. I think that is due to Updike wanting Martin (himself) to be forgiven. And he also is ambivalent toward the woman by having her unable to stay by her father's side as he dies. Interesting in many ways but not totally successful, I think. 

When I was at Breadloaf, Updike was roundly criticized for many things: his upperclass characters, his ornate writing for two, his repetition of themes, but I never minded this. I wonder if he is thought better of today. I bet he doesn't turn up on many syllabuses. \

Jerry House

Matt Paust

George Kelley 

Kevin Tipple 

Todd Mason

My Favorite TV Shows of 2020

                                                            
DARE ME

I MAY DESTROY YOU

QUEEN'S GAMBIT

THE CROWN

THE LAST DANCE

NORMAL PEOPLE

MY BRILLIANT FRIEND

SCHITT'S CREEK

BETTER CALL SAUL

UNORTHODOX
 

What about you?

Still Here-December 14.,2020

One thing that has saved me over the last year is new "ideas or subjects" that come along and capture my interest. This week it was two things. 

The first was the idea of "dogs." In reading THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez, it occurred to me, though not for the first time, that a dog would have given me something to sit this year out with. I have never owned a dog and concept is fairly alien to me. I don't think I will ever have a dog but a pretend one might be nice.

THE FRIEND is a terrific book and is not just about the adoption of a dog but also the years of her friendship with his owner, now deceased. Both the dog (Apollo, a Great Dane) and the protagonist are in mourning and share the bereavement, thus lightening the load for each. Like me, the protagonist is alone. I am not sure how this would play out for a couple or a larger family although I know people have been adopting dogs like crazy in our neighborhood.

This sent me on a search for other books about dogs and also TV shows about dogs on Netflix. There is quite a nice one called DOGS, in which each episode tells the story of a dog and his master. The first is quite moving as a young man who fled from Syria to Berlin, tries to get his dog back. Although Germany gave him sanctuary, he is forbidden to return or to bring the dog over. Also one called PICK OF THE LITTER which is about the training of special needs dogs. The book (THE FRIEND) won the National Book Award for Fiction although it rarely reads like fiction, more like a memoir. Stunning.

My second stumble this week was into the second film in Steven McQueen's SHORT AXE series: LOVER'S ROCK (Prime). It is seventy minutes of dancing mostly. Sort of reggae. It was popular in the Black community in London in the late seventies. It is very romantic dancing, a kind you don't see anymore. And aside from the film there is a documentary on Prime about Lover's Rock and the reason for its development.  Lots of sensational female singers. 

Listening to John Updike stories on Hoopla. Actually they don't all hold up as well as I would have expected. Some do seem overwritten in terms of four-syllable words when simple ones might have worked as well. But I have just listened to three so maybe it will change.

Cheers to Megan's DARE ME, which some TV critics have chosen as one of the best series this year despite its cancellation. Although if you didn't see it on USA last winter, it will be on Netflix starting Dec 29.  

I think I am done my Christmas shopping. How odd to never once walked into a store this year.  What would have happened if this pandemic came along 30 years ago.

What are you up to?

FFB: LIVING ON JACKS AND QUEENS, ed. Robert J. Randisi

(from the archives: Ron Scheer)

 

Robert J. Randisi, ed., Livin’ on Jacks and Queens

This is an entertaining anthology of 14 stories about gamblers and gambling in the Old West. Editor Randisi has assembled a notable gathering of western writers, providing an array of storytelling styles and imaginative treatments of the subject. The names of several contributors will be quickly recognized: Johnny Boggs, John D. Nesbitt, Matthew P. Mayo, Nik Morton, and Chuck Tyrell.

To these he has added a story of his own, plus the yarns of two women writers who may be new to some readers: Christine Matthews and Lori Van Pelt.

My favorites of the bunch include Ms. Matthews’ “Odds on a Lawman,” which tells of a succession of sheriffs who each assumes a tenure of service to a frontier town, before dying or disappearing for various reasons, on which the townsmen place bets until the turn of events claims one of them the winner. It’s an amusing and well-written tale that brings its Dickensian cast of characters to entertaining life, while we wait to see the fate that befalls each of the town’s series of sheriffs.

For a colorful portrayal of the daily life and business of a riverboat gambler, Nik Morton brings that world vividly to life in his story, “Hazard.” In “Acey-Deucey,” John D. Nesbitt’s central character is hired by a woman to retrieve an emerald pendant once given to her by a paramour. Finally locating the current owner of the gem, he has to win a game of cards before he can take possession of it.

Robert Randisi

Randisi’s story, “Horseshoes and Pistols” is so quirky, I kept thinking that it qualified as Twilight Zone material. In it, two men are forced to bet their lives on a game of horseshoes. Matthew Mayo’s “Pay the Ferryman” veers off in another direction, as a man on the run escapes into what might well be called “the heart of darkness.”

My favorite story in the collection was penned by a favorite storyteller, Chuck Tyrell. His “Great Missouri River Steamship Race” evokes a period of river travel from the point of view of a youngster working as a fireman aboard a steamship with a regular route between St. Louis and Fort Benton. Tyrell brings his gifts for characterization, dialogue, and suspense to this story with its echoes of Huckleberry Finn.

First Wednesday Book Review, MY DARK VANESSA

Boy this was a difficult book to read. With LOLITA, a book that is similar in story but from the POV of Humbert Humbert, the predator not the victim, we are able to maintain a certain distance. With MY DARK VANESSA (Kate Elizabeth Russell), we have a sexually- abused fifteen year old to take us through the tale. And guess what? For 300 plus pages she is convinced she was not abused by her English teacher. That she longed for this man almost 30 years her senior. And the book is so hyper-focused on this relationship and a similar one that follows, there is no air to breathe. Literally, it left me feeling breathless with dread.

This is a well-written novel. And it is an interesting take on pedophilia. What if the child seems as obsessed with her seducer as he is with her? Is she culpable if she wants him to worship her? If he is the only thing on her mind for 20 years. 

I don't think so. I think the author has to look at the possibility of mental illness more if this is the story. There is literally not a page in this book when the narrator is not pondering this man. Her parents are fairly aloof but not abusive or bad enough to produce a child this obsessed. This obsession completely derails her life. At 32, she, a promising student at age 15 and even 20, works at a dead end job. I need to talk to her therapist. I need an explanation of why this middle-aged man so completely subsumed her. So I can't recommend it despite it being extremely polished and somewhat interesting.

For more and hopefully happier books, see Barrie Summy.

Short Story Wednesday -Keller's Last Refuge, Lawrence Block

I will come back and post links later today. I have competing projects today.

 "Keller's Last Refuge" appeared in Playboy and then in the 1999 Best American Mystery Stories. As of 2016, Keller had appeared in the stories listed below. He also appeared in half a dozen novels.  Considering how many of the stories appeared in Playboy, Keller isn't really a terribly violent hit man. At least in this story, he dispatched his victims in fairly civilized ways: mostly he strangles them. The conceit that makes this story interesting is that Keller believes he is dispatching his prey out of patriotism. Block's writing is terrific as usual. He supplies just the right amount of ambiance and detail to flesh out the story but never enough to weigh it down.  Block must have one of the longest lists of publications in the business. I have read three of his novels. My favorite being WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES.  Most of these stories are collected too, I believe.

SHORT STORIES

• "Answers to Soldier" (June 1990, Playboy)
• "Keller's Therapy" (May 1993, Playboy)
• "Dogs Walked, Plants Watered" (May 1994, Playboy)
• "Keller on Horseback" (1994, Murder Is My Business)
• "Keller's Karma" (February 1995, Playboy)
• "Keller in Shining Armor" (November 1995, Playboy)
• "Keller on the Spot" (November 1997, Playboy) 
• "Keller's Choice (1998, Murder on the Run: The Adams Round Table)
• "Keller's Last Refuge (March 1998, Playboy)
• "Keller in Retirement" (1998)
• "Keller's Art" (Spring 2000, Modern Painters)
• "Keller's Designated Hitter" (2001, Murderer's Row) .!
• "Keller's Horoscope" (2001, Death by Horoscope)
• "Keller and the Rabbits" (April 14, 2003, Audiobooks Today)
• "Keller's Adjustment" (2005, Transgressions) 
• "Quotidian Keller" (July/August, The American Stamp Dealer & Collector)
• "Keller the Dogkiller" (May 2008, EQMM) . 
• "Keller in Dallas" (2009, The American Stamp Dealer & Collector) 
• "Keller's Fedora" (May 2016; Kindle). 
• "Keller in Des Moines" (May 2016, digital) 

Matt Paust 

TracyK 

Kevin Tipple 

George Kelley

Steve Lewis 

Jerry House 

Still Here

 

I really miss going into a library and looking for books on the shelves. My library is open for curbside pickup only and it doesn't work well for me. So I have been reading what is on my shelves as I have said before. This library (above) in Philadelphia (West Oak Lane section) came on the scene when I was about ten. It was a thrilling day for me because book mobiles had great limitations.

 I can still remember the floor plan and how often I campaigned the children's librarian to let me go to the adult side of the building. Mrs. Robinson was the first Black person I knew and she was beautiful, smart, and loved kids. She tried valiantly to get me to read better books than the ones I was drawn to. The books she suggested seemed like boys books to me at ten. I was very wrong to think Sue Barton, Shipboard Nurse, was a better pick than 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Robinson Crusoe.
 

Even though our six thousand person community in Michigan doesn't have a very good library, I can use any in my county and do through loans. 

I have watched a number of plays through various online methods this week. Saw THREE KINGS (with Andrew Scott from the Old VIC) AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, on you tube, which was sensational. a play at the Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea, MI (that's Jeff Daniels' theater) but missed one or two opportunities. If I was adept enough I could figure out how to stream them onto my TV instead of just watching on my laptop. Tonight I will watch showupforgeorgia.com, a table read of VEEP with special guests to raise money for the senate race in GA. Being able to see this sort of thing over the last year has been one of the few good things about the year. I have also been able to watch various authors at book store events through zoom and facebook. As hard as this year has been, it would have been a lot harder 20 years ago. I don't think I would make it if all I had to do was read. As much as I love to read, it's not enough. Even the audio version.

I only saw one person this week, but I ordered meals for us from a nice restaurant and we were able to have a pleasant dinner. They deliver them for $10 and you get three, three course meals for $40. They were quite good. 

I ordered all my Christmas presents in the last few days, just hoping they can get them delivered in the next few weeks although Megan got one of them the next day. I wonder how many people will get Obama's book as a present. 

Reading the Obama book myself. Don't think I am going to finish Nabokov's THE LUZHIN DEFENSE. It is too similar in tone and style to LAUGHTER IN THE DARK.

Been watching MURDER ON MIDDLE BEACH on HBO, which is pretty exciting. Also ETHOS, which I go back and forth about. Too many characters for my taste. And because so many women wear head coverings it is hard to tell them apart. And because all of the men have dark beards, they are not easy to tell apart either. Watching the last two seasons of FOYLE'S WAR, which I don't think I saw but who knows. Also watching the Cary Grant movies on Criterion this month. Can't remember ever seeing HOLIDAY before but it was a real gem. OPERATION PETTICOAT was a yawn though.

How about you?

 

DARE ME #5

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/12/netflix-best-new-shows-december-full-list-2-1234602156/

FFB-THE FREE, Willie Vlautin

Is there a kinder soul writing today than Willy Vlautin? Although there are villainous characters in his novels, he keeps them off-stage most of the time and usually gives you a reason for the villainy. THE FREE looks at three or so overlapping characters in a small Southern town. This story revolves around Leroy, an injured Vet who, in attempting to kill himself, ends up in a coma. There is nurse Pauline, who cares for her patients with great tenderness. She also care for her miserable father who criticizes her as she is spooning soup into his mouth, and there is a opiod-addicted teenager, Jo who can't seem to extricate herself for the guys who got her hooked. And then there is Freddy, hoping he will get to see his daughters and working for an abusive jerk. There are so many moments of grace for each of these characters, it serves to lift you up despite their harsh circumstances. I've got his new one waiting for me.

My Favorite Books Read in 2020

More than in most years, these twelve books gave me succor, escape, pleasure. If I had to pick #1
it would be LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, Rumaan Alam, which imagined a fate possibly worse than ours, but shielded us from it in the end. Brilliant. 

Here the top twelve are. It would have been easy to pick 20.

Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam

Lean on Pete, Willie Vlautin

Hidden Valley Road, Robert Kolker (NF)

Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith

Between Them: Remembering My Parents, Richard Ford (NF)

Before the Poison, Peter Robinson

The Dutch House, Ann Patchett

The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa

Lab Girl, Hope Jahren (NF)

This is the Story of Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett (NF) 

Laughter in the Dark, Vladimir Nabokov

Cary: A Brilliant Disguise, Scott Eyman (NF)

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Peach Cobbler" from THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES

         

   "My mother's peach cobbler was so good, it made God himself cheat on his wife"

A great first line in a terrific little collection of stories (Deesha Philyaw) dealing with Black women, church-going, and life in a patriarchal world. God, in this case, is Pastor Troy Neely, who Olivia at first believes to actually be God. Certainly his sonorous voice at church is God-like and his hold over Olivia's mother is too. He has the big car, the big house, the expensively dressed wife so often found in ministers in Black churches.

Her mother and Neely are engaged in a ten-year affair, which the peach cobbler is part of.  (She makes it every Monday the day that he comes, throwing it out if he doesn't turn up) Over time Olivia can't help but wonder if other women are baking peach cobbler for him the other days of the week. 

As Olivia grows older, she learns how to make cobber. Her mother won't even let her taste the ones she makes for the pastor so it's experiment after experiment. Eventually Olivia is hired to tutor the Pastor's son and she begins a relationship of sorts with him. She brings he and his mother a peach cobbler when a death in the family occurs. But then she learns that, like her mother, her role in the son's life will be as the "woman on the side" when he takes a more acceptable girl to the prom. 

A lot of this story concerns the relationship between Olivia and her mother. Her mother is terribly hard and withholding, thinking that will make Olivia a righteous woman. She is punishing her daughter for her own mistakes. The writing is excellent in this and in all the stories in this collection. It is a debut collection and it was nominated for the National Book Award.

Other Stories

Matt Paust

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

CrossexaminingCrime 

TomCat 

Todd Mason