All the News That Fits

Shortly  my blog will enter its sixth year — a mere infancy compared to some other author blogs.  And Life Death and Fog, which should probably be renamed Life Death And Sand considering my recent move to the desert,  has had more than 100,000 page views, also a pittance compared to others.  One final note about the blog.  In the five years of its existence as mostly a crime fiction (and film) related site, I have made more than 600 posts, most of them rational.  Guest posts have also appeared and I would love more.

Georges Simenon

Other news:  The second novella (The Black Tortoise) in the Peter Stand series from Orca and its Rapid Reads imprint is scheduled for March of next year. Meanwhile the Kindle version of the first in the series The Blue Dragon is available for $4.99. And the last Shanahan, Killing Frost can be purchased for $2.51.I may buy it myself.

One of my every-morning stops is the blog, The Rapsheet.  The editor challenged readers and especially writers to come up with five crime writers who have at least five books each on their bookshelves, the mystery they would have most loved to have written and which classical mystery writers they’ve never read.  A great challenge. Below is my feeble attempt to comply.

James Purdy

In keeping with the challenge, I’ve read many books by the same author —  John Burdett, Michael Connelly, Terence Hallinan, James Lee Burke; but after a few major relocations, as well as accounting for loans to and from friends, I don’t have that many books by the same author. However I have made it a point to collect and preserve some. Most of the books from the following authors have at least some criminal aspect to them and, except for Mr. Garland, I have well more than five books each.

Alex Garland

Georges Simenon’s novellas  (non-Maigret)

Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles

James Purdy

Alex Garland (I would have at least five of his novels if he wrote that many.)

And I won’t embarrass myself by telling anyone how many classic authors I haven’t read. I’d be drummed out of the corps if I’d ever been drummed in.

Book Notes — Ten Books That Served As Courses in Life And Writing

Aside from cat videos, a relatively current Facebook trend is to get folks to list their ten top books.  The point here is to list those books that have stayed with them in some way, a special place in their hearts and or minds.  Because I’m a suspicious sort, I worry that some of these lists wander into the top-ten-books-of-all-time kind of thinking.  

I first learned of this “tag-a-friend” project on the crime fiction web blog, Rapsheet, which I go to every morning to accompany my first cup of coffee of the day.

I dutifully posted my ten (eleven sort of) in the comment section of that post and have been perusing other lists on the blog and on Facebook and decided I would like to explain my choices.  My first thought was that the premise was the greatest or my favorite 10 books. I would be unqualified to list the 10 greatest books because I don’t have the literary or historical qualifications, and because I really haven’t read enough to do such a list justice. Second, readers and writers may approach reading differently. The following is a list of books, not necessarily my favorites, but books that, in some way, changed my life, or my craft or at least my view of the world.

★ Young Törless, Robert Musil   Musil wrote this prescient tale about the end of innocence and the onset of adolescence while the Nazis were gathering their evil forces in Europe.  The book foresaw the human capacity to force people to belong to a powerful group and to torture those who don’t or can’t.  Musil also introduced me to his more famous contemporaries— Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse.

★ The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John le Carré. Le Carré let me know that crime and espionage novels could offer much more than the solving of a puzzle and introduced me to the concept of the  deeply flawed protagonist. We find ourselves interested in a central character who is no longer interested in the world.

★ Soul On Ice, Eldridge Cleaver  There’s no way that a middle-class white kid like me could understand racism as it was at the time without exposure to the stories of people who lived it.  I’m sure there are other great books (Baldwin and Wright) that could have provided me with that kind of education — perhaps a better one.  But at the time, this was what I found and what I needed and when I needed it. Cleaver went off into the ozone later. This, however, was a powerful and meaningful story.

★ Armies of the Night/Miami And The Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer   I’m not sure this is history as fiction or fiction as history, but Mailer’s journalistic style strikes me as a valuable writer’s resource. These two books, observations of our government’s bad behavior, were part of a new kind of writing that many well-known authors claimed to invent, including Truman Capote with his celebrated, In Cold Blood.

★ Tesseract, Alex Garland  Again, this is something for writers especially.  How much energy can anyone put into the written word? The words move. The reader must chase them. This was a book that shook me up.

★ The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda  Fact or fiction?  I’m definitely voting for fiction and from what we’ve learned later that’s a safe vote.  This first volume of books on “the Yaqui way of knowledge,” however reads as well-written magical realism that snagged my young mind.  It opened up possibilities.

★ Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey  However desperate some writers are to leave the traditional behind, it’s great to be grounded by a master mystery writer now and then. This was an assignment for a mystery conference.  Otherwise, I might have have missed this tightly-plotted classic.

★ Diva, Daniel Odier (a.k.a. Delacorta) What fun!  Not every book has to cause a furrowed brow. In the end, what this book (and the series) did for me was to say:  “This would be fun to write and “You could do this”— an inspiration I couldn’t resist. It was this series that caused me to write the now out-of-print, Eclipse of the Heart.

★ Clarence Darrow for the Defense, Irving Stone I was a strange little kid.  I didn’t have any real heroes until this book came along and I got to know something about Clarence Darrow.  A little later I discovered a second hero – Cassius Marcellus Clay (not the boxer, the abolitionist).  Both gained a significant amount of power and stature.  Both were deeply flawed, but both were willing to risk everything to pursue causes they believed in.

★ Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith  Much like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, we have an author who can create memorable characters and weave them into suspenseful tales relevant to our times. It’s education made compelling.  One learns or tries to learn from the masters. 

Film Pairings — Stylish, Violent, Quirky Assault On Your Senses

I love crime films with tightly constructed stories, clever plots twists and surprise endings. The other night I saw a film, Love, Cheat and Steal, with talented actors. Interesting plot, clever twists all the way to the end. But it was boring. Flat. I wanted to throttle the director. No mood, bad editing, absolutely mediocre cinematography. This is a moving picture, I wanted to say to someone. “It is supposed to move. The so-called action had the energy of a puddle.

Happily, I’ll excuse a slightly sloppy plot, maybe some unnecessary quirks, even a little self-indulgence if the film moves in such a way that I can’t take my eyes off the screen, that even if I am confused at times, I’m never bored — that my senses of sight and sound are fully engaged. These two films move. They have the energy of lightning storms.

We go to the Far East.

Hong Kong: Wong Kar-wai is one of China’s most famous directors (In The Mood For Love, 2046). In Fallen Angels he tackles two stories, a violent one of a hit man, the other a nearly absurd tale of a young man who makes himself so obnoxious people pay him to go away, an interesting scam. The humor of the second story intertwines nicely, playing off the cold harsh, but violence of the first. It all seems absurd, futile. Yet such futility and such violence are so stylishly portrayed, one simply gives in to the artist’s vision. You’ll also get a street-wise view of Hong Kong in 1995. In the end the director provides masterful sound and cinematography. The film is sometimes paired with the director’s Chunking Express and is part of a long list of mind-bending films from this talented, eccentric director, including the multiple award-winning Happy Together.

Bangkok: Though I don’t know for a fact, it’s hard to imagine that director Oxide Pang Chun wasn’t immensely influenced by Wong Kar-Wai. But even if that were true that doesn’t mean one is less than the other, merely that neither seems to be constrained by conventional story telling or standard cinematography. The movie, Tesseract (2003), based on Alex Garland’s underrated novel, is also underrated. Great book. Great movie. We get glimpses of four residents of a dumpy hotel in Bangkok. There is a drugged-out hippie trying to get a few bucks by transporting a highly valued, highly illicit product out of Thailand, an English psychologist researching Bangkok’s street kids, a hit-woman trying to heal her wounds after a botched assassination and a kid doing his best to survive in a corrupt, adult world. As it happens, all four of their worlds collide in a film that is almost hallucinogenically expressive. The cast is incredibly good, particularly Alexander Rendel as the kid. Western viewers will recognize and appreciate Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the young drug courier.

We’re not traveling among the rich and famous in these films, so let’s make it a beer night again. Though I’m told China’s best, if not most, exported beer is Snow Beer, I’ve not found it. Tsingtao is ubiquitous, however. When you switch to the Bangkok setting, go for Thai beer. The conventional wisdom is Sing Ha. For me it’s Chang. The label has elephants on it. But don’t let that put you off.

Then again, in terms of violence, these are hardcore films. If you want alternatives to beer, but a sense of place, maybe Maotai, a Chinese hard liquor distilled from sorghum. Strong. For the Thai movie, some Mekhong (or Mekong) Whiskey (more like rum), made from sugar cane or molasses and rice. Also strong.