Crumley Time

I can't recall if I've talked about James Crumley before... but I am going to talk about him now. I found out about him during a aprés shower conversation I had with another man. What?!!! Wait... I better explain and fast. I was at a resort where they had a hot tub, steam room, spa thing. I love reading by the pool, especially in the dead of winter. I carried my book into the changing room afterward and a guy asked me what I was reading. When another guy asks you what you are reading, it means he is probably a reader, too. I was reading Lansdale and said so, knowing he wouldn't have heard of him. Well, to prove me wrong, he had and he was a big fan. Anyway - this story is sounding blog-familiar - the long and the short was he recommended Crumley to me. It took a while to track down his work, and then I found out he recently died in 2008.

The first book I read was BorderSnakes.... or tired to read. It was a rambling mess and I wondered what my Spa Buddy was talking about. Then I found The Last Good Kiss, and wow, I knew what he was talking about. Raymond Chandler meets Hunter S. Thompson (not my comparsion, but a good one). Uneven strange poetic prose, which can catch fire and burst into put the book down brilliance.

Lately, I have been reading The Right Madness, Crumley's last book before his death. I am saddened while reading it that this guy did not acheive more acclaim. I read, and understand, that he has influenced a lot of writers, and not just in the crime fiction genre.

He is influencing me for sure. I am already thinking of stories that happen in lonely bars, with broken down cops, detectives, handguns, and lots of bottles of scotch. Sounds like another novel.

Small "h" hope.

Well, I girded up my loins and went to see the Road. I was a bit nervous about how graphic it might be - I don't do well with a lot of violent, or what I refer to as, "icky" scenes. Knowing the book quite well, I knew what would be in each scene. This helped a lot in knowing when to look away, or hum the Flintstones song in my head (try it, it works).

It was a faithful adaptation of the book, very thoughtful, vivid, yet very gray cinematography, and strong performances. At the end, I didn't feel as moved as I thought I might. A shitty sentence to explain that I was like, "Okay, end of the world, yep. That's depressing."

Anyone who comes to this blog knows that I am wild about McCarthy and every sentence he writes. If you go searching, I am sure there are at least a few post about No Country For Old Men - in my opinion, a better film than the Road. Maybe it is that I can better understand No Country's take on a violent society, I can fit that in my head, contemplate it, and as tough as it is, I can still get up the next day and face the brokenness in the world. I have a hard time truly contemplating the apocalyptic vision of The Road. And to think of me and any one of my kids facing into a world like that  - nope, I just can't go there. There is of course hope of a sort, McCarthy hope, which is a very small "h" hope. Spoiler alert -

The boy going on with another family after the father's death suggest that there is hope, the boy has found hope and will go on. There is a similar hope in the final scene of No Country. In the movie Tommy Lee Jones gives the final speech pretty much verbatim from the book. I watched it again recently and was struck by the image of the father carrying the fire, going on ahead of the son. I had somehow missed this similar theme in The Road, where the son talks about carrying the fire. In this case, it is the son that goes on ahead, or is it the father.... hmmmm?

Here is that final speech from No Country. Watch and be amazed by one of the best movie endings, by Tommy Lee's stunning performance, and by McCarthy's poetic prose.

Emerging

I have been reading The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle, and it is quite wonderful. Ms. Tickle writes beautifully, is brilliant and just happens to have the last two thousand years of history in her head (or so it would seem.)

I usually shout about fiction at this site, and I've been reading a lot of that, too. But lately I find myself immersed in history, not just church history (as Tickle's subhead may imply), but all the ways we have been changing these last decades and centuries.

I loved science in high school, especially physics, as it explained how the world worked (or tried to). I still remember the day our teacher started filling boards with equations, a lot of equations. And our 17 or 18 year old brains were able to take a lot of it in - he was a great teacher. On the last board he wrote E = MC²

You could hear the "ohhhh" throughout the class.

Reading about Einstein's Special Theorey on Relativilty and then his General Theorey on Relativity  and how it forever changed our understanding of the world, and not just the science world, is making me relive that "ohhhh" experience all over.

Whether you have a faith or not - I highly recommend Tickle's book.

Year of the (Chilled) Flood

Okay, okay, I'll blog!!! Note to self: when you forget your log in password, it probably means you haven't blogged in a while (!)

Just finished the Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. I kind of have a love/hate thing going on for her books. I mean, I definitely respect her, and where she sits in the Canadian Canon. Though, I have uneasy memories of reading the Handmaid's Tale (my favorite, until YOF). If I was uneasy before, now I am down right chilled to the bone (or better, sacred shitless). The prophetic voice in this novel is turned up to 11. Perhaps, because I am surrounded by people in my life that remind me of what we have done (and are doing) to our planet, climate change, pandemics, and population explosion are just a few of the things that haunt my daymares.

McCarthy's Road put forward a dark vision that hard to read. Atwood, in a way, does him one better. Now, let me be straight, The Road is a much better book IMO, than YOF (lol, btw and wtf). But Atwood inhabits this dystopian future with characters I can actually relate to, as opposed to the boy and the father in The Road. YOF has flaws, lots of them - the theology of the Gardners sets my teeth on edge; there are too many coincidental meetings of characters; and sometimes the emotion gets a bit syrupy. But then when I read her list of Saints (Saint David Suzuki, Saint Rachel Carson), I get a bit of a chill. Actually, a helluva chill.

Are we going to look back on this book as one of the many warnings of the death of our society? Maybe I am still writing out of my "spooked" zone. And I have to remember this is a novel - but like some of Philip K. Dick's work, a lot of it might just come true.

I need to go read something light. Like maybe an Archie comic. All is fine in Riverdale. Always.

Southern where?

I picked up the latest Oxford American , a magazine that often interests me - especially the free CD issues.

This month's issue held particular interest as it had an article on one my new obsessions, Barry Hannah. I have a hard time explaining what I love about his work, and I really have just started, but he has crazy sentences that jump off the page and grab your throat. The article in the Oxford talks about his syntax, and how he bends, folds and mutilates it - I am sure ninth grade grammar teachers would burst into tears reading his work. "But, you... just... can't do that. Can you? sob, sob, wail, etc."

This issue also lists the top 10 best Southern Novels of all time - lists like this always generate controversy, but I like reading them, both to uncover gems that I've missed over the years, or to remind myself of books I need to get around to reading (Wise Blood).

Between Faulkner, O'Conner and Lee, I realized there was a lot of "Southern Fiction" I liked. It's a bit of a strange, anachronistic term - they slap it onto Hannah's work as well. I am discovering that rather than geographic, it is a sub-genre, lens, vibe, a way of looking at the world. Now, I grew up in SOUTHERN Saskatchewan and I've been to the Virginia's, I love music from the Delta, and Joe R. Lansdale is one of my favorite writers (East Texas).

So maybe I am a southern writer after all.

Y'all come back to the blog you hear.