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Hey,
folks! Slower few months, as I moved from Tacoma to
Vancouver, but nonetheless, I managed to eke out a
few books. Here goes!
I
fretted reading this book, I really did. I waited
half a year, and like Rollins says, I just eyed it
when I walked by the “to read” shelf, like, hey,
motherf****er, I can read you WHENEVER I WANT! I
treat my books like that.
So
I finally plucked it, and said, “You’re gonna be an
overly nostalgic look at the forties that sucks!
You’re gonna SUCK HARD!” Because I have learned that
you can judge most books by their cover, alas.
But
the phrase should be, “You can’t judge ALL books by
their cover.” “(Just most)”
I
have seldom read a more spot-on and forlorn version
of Clark Kent. A more real-world, honest, frank
examination of what Superman would be like were he
to really happen.
The
book does have a nostalgic bent, and many characters
that are not the biggies in the Superman mythos. If
you’re looking for Jimmy, Lois, Perry, Supes, and
Luthor in a giant robot, you’re S.O.L. But instead
you’re given character, a coming of age story, and
Superman discovering who he is in a way that the
show Smallville would never dare.
It’s slow, and it’s a long read, but that kind of
thing has never bothered me so long as the writing
is good, and here’s it’s great. I highly recommend
this book when I thought I’d hate it. The exact
opposite happens later in this column...
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My mancrush on
Charlie Huston continues, as does his Joe Pitt
case files series. I’ve read all five in the
space of months, and I may again. They’re good
reads, they’re quick reads, and anyone I’ve
handed them to who gives them a chance agrees
that they’re liquid dynamite on pulp.
In terms of plot
progression for the overall arc, this puts Pitt
back in the city after a novel about his exile,
and starts the path of reuniting him with his
tragic love figure. The situation between
vampire mobs slowly devolves with Pitt on the
tail end having his ass handed to him.
Pitt pulls a Roland
from The Dark Tower move. IE, Roland loses a
bunch of his fingers in the third book of a
seven book series despite being a gunslinger,
and it’s compelling as hell. I won’t tell you
what it is, but to give you an idea of the sheer
balls Huston has, he gives the character a
pretty mighty handicap, and one that has lasting
and constant ramification.
A hit, just like all
the other books in this series. You should be
reading them. |
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Charles
Bukowski on literary theory is kind of like
Daniel Steel doing a book on literary theory.
It’s not that Bukowski is not a literary genius.
Frankly, he’s the most brilliant minimalist I’ve
ever read. And it’s not that he isn’t qualified.
He obviously is, as anyone who reads this book
will realize.
The dilemma
of this book is that Bukowski’s literary theory
is not what SELLS him, so most of you would find
this book boring. I found it fascinating.
Despite all talk of (and righteously) an artist
being a man who says a complex thing in a simple
way, this book outlines, through a series of
essays over time, the simple motivations that
led Bukowski to become, over time, a complex
mind.
He speaks of
how to write close to the reality as opposed to
with flowery bullshit terms, and he slips a
number of gems of humor in with it, as he always
does, but from start to finish, you can tell
that these are the thoughts Bukowski had when he
wasn’t being “Bukowski!” which is the kind of
thing I enjoy the most about the man. His
character was an ass. His writing was
brilliance, and this is a series of essays about
what the writing was for him.
There’s also
an utterly priceless piece about the decline of
John Fante that anyone who is obsessed with the
hierarchy and patronage of writers can’t pass
up. I look at the writers who influenced me as
my fathers, and Bukowski’s father was, quite
obviously, Fante, not that bastard who beat him
in a bathroom. To see Bukowski deliver the
eulogy after reading it from Dan, Fante’s son, a
few months ago, is a double pump to the stomach.
These are
men who died mostly alone who will define
literature for centuries, and didn’t want to.
That alone is enough reason to read their
philosophy.
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I bought this book a
month ago, and began reading it promptly,
because to be honest, I was a HUGE fan of Nathan
McCall after reading Makes Me Wanna Holler. I’ve
referenced his work in poetry, praised it to
friends, and generally done everything I can to
get his name out there when I can. He’s a word
of mouth guy to me, in other words.
This book pretty
much killed his mystique for me. It’s pretty
dismal.
The premise is, on
its surface, enthralling. It’s the story of
gentrification in a largely black neighborhood.
A black dude has established himself in his
community of other mostly black folk, and in
comes whitey to screw up his noise. I get that.
I DIG that concept, quite a bit, as a position
of philosophical debate, because I AM that awful
whitey. I went to my largely yuppie college
(after living eighteen years in largely black,
Mexican, Vietnamese neighborhood) and moved
myself from my white suburban little paradise to
a neighborhood undergoing the process of
gentrification, and in the process, watched
blacks get removed from my house, and the house
to my left and right, only to be replaced by
white neighbors capitalizing on the housing
values while unafraid of the black folk all
around them.
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Like the main
female white character of the book, my
motivations were great. I wanted a good
house, I wanted to move back home, and I
believed black people and white people could
reasonably co-exist in peace.
Like the main
character, I was driven from my house by
black people who threatened my life,
probably because I was white, out of fear. I
still don’t hate black people, but I
couldn’t cut it in a world where my life was
threatened.
This book
portrays that as flatly racist, and blames
white people for black people in the book
making poor life choices. It’s a victim
mentality farce of the highest order, and
I’m not afraid to say so, because I’ve seen
situations where white people screw over
black people with gentrification. The
examples this book sets are NOT those
situations.
Basically, the
main black character is a dude who works in
a press and starts to make positive changes
in his life, and every time he does, he sees
white people do something, becomes
discouraged, and quits. The book traces an
arc of how he is a renter in a house next
door to where the whites move in (buying the
house), and he tries to buy said house, but
never has enough money. The book makes a
strong point of making him seem a victim,
without him taking any initiative to get a
better job, to save money, to remove his
felon roommate that eventually gets him
booted, to listen to the man who might sell
him his house as to how he might do so. He
leaves relationships that bring him
stability. He is, in essence, a colossal
jackass we’re supposed to root for simply
because he’s black and the main character,
and because he has flavor. And
honest-to-god, he’s an interesting guy.
McCall goes to great pains to make him fun
and human. And he is. But if you’re human
and all the stupidity that entails, that
doesn’t mean you’re entitled to success.
Being abnormal, IE working your ass off,
leads to success, be you black, white, or
martian.
The next door
whites drive him to anger and inability to
control himself, but throughout the book,
the only thing the whites do that is
actually BAD is insist on the police keeping
people from peeing on their lawns, lighting
their mailboxes on fire, and doing things
that it makes sense to keep people from
doing. A fan of this book would say that I’m
missing the point, and that those things
hurt nobody. A dude peeing in another dude’s
yard is an affront, and it’s trespassing.
And what does
the black dude do? His relative CHOKES the
neighbor (who doesn’t call the police) for
cutting down a tree on their own property.
Eventually, all
of this idiocy is justified when the white
dude suddenly goes nuts with a gun for
little rational reason in a response no real
human being would ever have, and the black
dude gets his house from another black dude.
This book is
racist in that negative, victim mentality
kind of way, and though I have the utmost
respect for Makes Me Wanna Holler, this book
is just utterly ridiculous and pisses me
off, as a white dude trying to make his way
toward racial equality. It’s patronizing,
it’s shallow, and it doesn’t address any
problems, it just assigns blame to white
people for trying to buy houses cheap. Which
is, you know, not a crime.
The sole saving
grace is the beautifully crafted side
characters, when they’re not acting like
idiots. The black characters are very real.
The white characters are very archetypical
and weak. I suppose this makes sense, given
the seeming message, but trust me, black
folk, white folk won’t pull a gun on you and
charge your house shooting because your wife
goes missing for ten minutes. Promise.
That’s the moral of this story.
I read a proof
copy, and the thing was rife with spelling
errors, too, which I hope didn’t make the
final book. Regardless. Save your cash.
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This is my
last Huston book before I have to wait like a
schmuck for the next one to come out, and for
that alone, I resent it. But beyond that,
there’s nothing negative I can say about this
book. It examines a series of REAL kids who
screw up in a vivid portrayal of the eighties.
It’s a dynastic story about a dysfunctional
cycle of families and their punk kids over a
thriller spine, with huge potential
consequences.
Unlike most
thrillers, where you spend most of the book
watching people flee a monster or bad person,
Huston does what is typical. He takes these kids
and beats the holy crap out of them, leaving
them scarred permanently and CHANGED. You know,
change, that thing that used to happen to
characters in that thing called a STORY? Well,
Huston gets that, thank Christ, and emphasizes
it here in a story that leaves you nostalgic for
youth and at the same time afraid of it.
If you grew
up near or around any shady characters, dudes
who dealed drugs, tooled on motorcycles or with
motorcycle gangs, this’ll crack your teeth. Good
times. |
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Stephen King is a
moral dilemma for me, because he’s a GENRE
FICTION guy. Or was. Now he’s turned into a
LITERATURE guy. But the thing is, he’s slipped
it under the radar and tricked everyone who
still thinks he writes genre.
He used to write
stories about escaping the dog in the broken
down car, simple as that. Now he weaves complex
narratives about the meaning of death, the
potentialities in terms of loss for the nuclear
apocalypse, and he caps it with a story about a
dude caught in a shitter. But that doesn’t mean
it’s not literature (see Bukowski above). Well,
okay, maybe the last one was just a fun story.
But there’s more to
eat here, and that’s what I dig. His short
stories have improved, his style has approved,
and he’s slowing down, I can see it. I lament
that. He’s only sixty. That means if I get
better, I’m gonna slow down, too. That scares
me.
But the book itself
rocks and rolls, and kept me enthralled. It even
references Charlie Huston. In the Gingerbread
Girl, he points out that she has Six Bad Things
on her shelf.
King, you rock. Told
you Huston was good, folks. Even the King’s
reading him.
The Wheelman is
actually the book before The Blonde (or one of
them), as I’m working my way into Swierczynski
(and curse his name, every time I review it’s
like J. Mike, I keep having to look at the
name).
I didn’t realize,
given The Blonde, but there are characters that
carry over between his stories. I don’t want to
spoil it, but it’s really awesome, actually, and
like Huston, all of his characters end up
fundamentally annihilated in pursuit of the
resolution of conflict.
Duane (ah, that’s
better!) is a strong writer, he writes in crisp,
short chapters in the style I enjoy, and I look
forward to Severence Package, which I’m gonna
pick up soon.
BODY COUNT: 7 books |
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