Alright, alright, alright - and my own Night Moves

Well, not sure if it was Matthew Mcconaughey's acceptance speech at the Globes last night, or it being the new year (half a month ago), a drop in from a twitter follower, or the embarrassment of my last post being from October... but here we go again.

If I could write a novel that felt like the 1975 Arthur Penn, Gene Hackman film, Night Moves, I think I could call it a day, or a career, or something. What the hell is it about this movie? Pretty sure I've blogged about it before, but it is one of those films I go back to again and again (like Bladerunner, the Leone westerns, and Altman's Long Goodbye).

I was viewing it the other night, lost track of how many times I've seen it, and my wife asked me halfway through, "Are you thinking about your novel?" She's a damn fine mind reader at the best of times, and, yes she was right. Watching Hackman as Harry Moseby, ping pong from California to Florida made me think exactly about my current novel in progress. It was funny, but made sense, that she picked up plot points in Night Moves that I'd missed - even though it was a first time viewing for her. In my defense, the movie is not about the plot. It's about us being like Harry, we just can't quite figure it out. Yet, we keep trying because it is the thing to do - the thing being either figuring out a missing girl, and a smuggling crime, or as movie viewers, just what the hell is going on.

Lots has been written about Night Movie - by Ebert and others - declaring it a hidden gem, not just in the noir vein, but as one of the best movies of the 70's period. The murky lighting, the cheesy (but wonderful) soundtrack, the sharp dialogue, and the metaphors... oh, the metaphors. Remember those in movies? Maybe I'm a bit dense, but it took me a few viewings over the years to figure out that Night Moves, was really Knight Moves - as in the chess piece that jumps around the board in "L" movements. The knight can seem random in a way, but it can also pop up and wreak total havoc. Harry relates a game in which the chessmaster missed the knight moves that would have led to a victory, and how he must have regretted it his whole life. He just never saw it. This image of the missed opportunity, or inability to figure it out, plays out in the rest of the movie, and moreover, in Harry's life.

The other killer metaphor is that last shot of Harry on the boat, it making a wide circle, going nowhere, as he lies there gun shot in the leg. He never figured it out. And we are left not so much wondering what will happen next, as to thinking about what won't happen. Harry won't solve the crime, he might not even make it back home (although, I've always thought he would.) I love his wife's, played by Susan Clark, last line - how can you come back if you don't leave?

Coming back to my novel - still unnamed... kinda hoping I figure that out - I know that I am creating a vibe to it that may not appeal to some readers. A lot of crime fiction I dip into lately just bores the shit out of me. I say dip into, because I can hardly make it through. So much of the recent trendy Scandinavian crime writers seem to be based on this dark cold violence, committed by dark cold individuals. I am not opposed to these books (hell, I'm Norwegian/Danish!), but they just don't have the vibe I am seeking. Same goes for Connelly - though, I did quite like the Lincoln Lawyer. For me, it's been about John D. Macdonald and Travis Mcgee's boat, or even more so, James Crumley and C.W. Sughrue kicking ass and drinking a boat load across a barren American landscape. There are a few others - I've read almost everything Joe R. Lansdale has written. I love the poetry of James Lee Burke, and Robicheaux and his Dr. Peppers. (Black Cherry Blues is one of my all time favorites).

I am only somewhat digressing. But what worries me about when I finish this book is if there will be a readership for that kind of novel anymore. Night Moves, I know, would bore the shit out of a lot of movie viewers. Yet, I can watch it again and again, just to sit out there with Moseby in the Florida Keyes, making chess moves in the screened in porch, and drinking whiskey out of a clear bottle.

I guess I am left with writing the book I want to write.

Should be blogging.

Yes, I should. And will.

Life has dealt me a whole mess of busyness. I say stuff on twitter, but it is damn short - I kinda like that. Bought myself the new Lansdale, got a cheque from Amazon, and am trying to return to a novel I started.

Hopefully some updates to these things and more is upcoming.

And ditto on Bent Highway.

Mini-blog out.

Ahhh, Vonnegut

Not much to say - but this is damn cool.

by mayaeilam.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

Random

I kinda liked when this saying emerged - I think I heard my daughter use it one day - how random is that? Not even sure if it is still in use, but it sure fits a lot of my goings on in a day (and at times, my moods).

Randomness floating through my head currently:

Still thinking about Elmore Leonard's passing - notably when I am writing dialogue for my new novel, Surf City (working title based on all the surf rock I listen to while writing it. No one as of yet has surfed in it.) But yeah, hearing the voice of his characters, Chili Palmer for example, when having my tough guys talk - and even my not so tough guys.

Finishing Phillipp Meyer's The Son. Billed as Blood Meridian meets 100 Years of Solitude - I have to say no, and no. The first two-thirds pulled me along, but now I'm just finishing to finish it. Could have been a couple 100 pages shorter and still worked - though not as well as the aformentioned literary masterpieces.

Lots of short fiction rolling around in my head - other people's mostly. I've been reading entries for the magazine SixFold these last weeks. A cool concept where the writers that submit also judge the submissions. 500 subs, three rounds - and no one knows the results until the end, which is coming up this week. I am very curious to see how my story fared. Steeling myself for not making it past the first round.

But mostly, it has been a great experience. Read 18 stories from different writers, at different skill levels, and you really start to see what makes a great story - at least, I did. There were some that I knew right away were doomed. Others snuck up on me. And then a few - one in particular - that blew the back of my head off. My chest was tight when I finished reading it. I'm really expecting to see it in the top 10, or it better be.

Anyway - I'll let you know how I did.

Randomness out for now.

Going go try to finish that damn book.

Ford's Hi-Line and Why I should read more Elmore Leonard

Back from an extended road trip - directed toward Utah, but sidelined (car issues) to Montana. Travel always makes me think about my life, my writing, my direction (in both). Montana, at first, was a substitute vacation - but as I drove across the Hi-Line, I felt my mind clearing, echoing the landscape around me. Richard Ford's Rock Springs, and especially, Wildlife, came back to me as I drove through Havre, Great Falls, Missoula and Billings. A lot of Rock Springs happens in places like those along the Hi-Line (the northern highway, 200, across Montana). My stories and novels often take place in those places (!), except about a 100 miles north, across the border.

Driving through Great Falls, though, was a bit disappointing - it didn't fit the mood of Ford's Wildlife, nor his story Great Falls from Rock Springs. But I was viewing it as a drive-through tourist, and a number of years later than those stories took place. (They were from the 60's) A further disconnect was my road trip reading material. I like to bring along books that are set in the landscape of my trip. Now, as I thought I was headed south to Utah, I'd packed The Son (Philipp Meyer), set in Texas (close enough), and immersed in that old west of guns and oil. Nonetheless, it is a great novel, and worthy of all the recent praise, including a blurb from Richard Ford.

Along the way, I read that Elmore Leonard died. I was reading one of his books (Freaky Deaky) before I left on my trip - I didn't want to read crime fiction on the way, so I left the Leonard book at home. Unexplainably, I felt bad about this. I haven't read a lot of Leonard, but enough to know that he has influenced my work. Sometimes I wonder if I see him more through movies made from his books, than his actual novels. But the great movies capture his writing, rhythm, and characters, so well that they are like reading a novel. Top of the list: Out of Sight, Get Shorty, and Jackie Brown. His style of dialogue is often referenced as changing the crime-fiction genre. Anytime a couple of criminals are bantering back and forth about food, or movies, or pop trivia, that convo can be traced back to Leonardian roots (a word, I proudly just made up). Travolta talking about Royales with Cheese in Pulp Fiction could have been written by Leonard. The hired killers in Gross Pointe Blank could have been written by Leonard (a lot of that movie, really).

And then when I look at some of my characters in Correction Line - takiing baseball, or the distance to the sun, or how geese fly - well, yep, Elmore again.

Now in the middle of writing my new novel - one that is more rooted in the crime fiction / detective genre than ever before - I find myself thinking of those conversations in Get Shorty, or Jackie Brown (which is the novel, Rum Punch). The reasons I picked up Freaky Deaky was to listen to those rhythms again. Re-reading Leonard, I am also struck by the structure of his novels, and his ability to move things forward. I am also struck by how much he wrote (I think around 45 novels). His 10 rules on writing get referenced a lot. They made his list into what I thought was a too skinny book - I mean, they're great rules, but not worthy of a whole book (one rule per page, not much else). Still, they bang around in the back of my brain when I write - Don't Start with Weather (guilty) Don't Write the Parts that Readers Skip (also guilty).

His influence is greater than some might imagine - including me. It's like when I'd explain Chaplin to my kids, or the early movies of Orson Welles and Hitchcock. "Yes, you've seen this in a lot of current movies - to the point of cliché - but this was the guy that did it first." So when Travolta talks about a foot massage with the Sam Jackson character, or all the movies that came after, and when we come to expect hitmen to talk like this, well, you know who was the first to write this way.