An excerpt from a short story I've been working on called A New Chapter.
A NEW CHAPTER
I love my job for one simple reason. It makes me happy. I’ve had so many disappointments in life – tanking at law school, splitting up with my wife Angela, the woman who was supposed to be my one and only true love, but who let me down in the end, the endless parade of pointless grunt jobs in down scale offices, telemarketing boiler rooms and hamburger joints, each new position more absurd and meaningless than the ones that came before; all of this wormwood of disappointment left me bitter as though I had eaten ashes, which in some ways I guess I had, figuratively anyway.
But three years ago, I could say the misery had ended. After a long stint as a shift manager at a hamburger franchise, and just as my divorce from Angela was finalized, I ended up at the chain’s head office as a human resources manager, recruiting new staff. They downsized the company a year ago and set me free. Now, I am self employed. Now, I no longer suffer disappointments. Now, I offer fresh beginnings, new chapters transforming and renewing thwarted careers and stagnant lives.
My job is to help people begin new careers, to start again after being re-deployed by their employers. I open new chapters for them. That’s why I call my human resources consulting company New Chapters Unlimited. I really do offer people a new beginning, a new way of living life. It’s not a lie. I’ve learned to move beyond cynicism. It’s the most spiritually and psychologically corrosive mindset at large in our society today. I explain to people how cynicism rots and stifles hope and ambition and motivation. And I know the people I collaborate with listen to me and take what I say to heart as they strive to re-map their lives and career paths.
Yes, things are tough out there. Our corporate culture is changing forever as it adjusts to new global economic realities. There is no turning back. People should not fear this, however, but welcome it as an opportunity for growth and achieving one’s full potential.
My last client today understood this. Scott Tyson was his name, I think. Or was it Tyson Scott? No matter. He seemed so interested and curious and nodded while I explained the terms of his separation agreement from Consilium Amalgamated, a once great manufacturing powerhouse that is now being, well, amalgamated with a new tech and financial services based company, thus opening a new chapter for itself and for the people who now are being re-deployed; loyal and dedicated and industrious people like Tyson Scott.
He smiled when I finished my presentation. In the soft light of the hotel conference room – I always meet clients in the innocuous, charming neutrality of a bland hotel conference room – his eyes burned bright with excitement.
“Thank you very much,” he said as he signed the last of the release forms, “you’ve been very kind and helpful and informative.”
Sometimes the opening of a new chapter is rough for people. It means more than leaving a job; it’s leaving a life, a world of habits and routines and not everyone welcomes it. But Scott Tyson seemed genuinely happy as I walked him to the door. He said, “I’ve been stuck in the same groove for too long. I really need something new. This package really will help me open a new chapter, like you say.”
He shook my hand firmly, smiled a serene smile and disappeared down the hall.
I watched him leave then I started to pack up.
It only took me a few minutes to seal all the signed discharge papers from the twenty Consilium people I had met with into two big bubble envelopes. I locked up the conference room, settled out with the hotel manager and returned the room key. Parcel Direct had a big depot only a few minute’s drive from the hotel, so I was able to courier the discharge stuff from there to Consilium and didn’t have to carry it around with me.
At last, the day was over. I was free.
A new chapter had opened for a new evening.
As I drove along Ambassador Road, I pondered what I should do with the free time that now stretched before me in all of its inviting emptiness. My first appointment tomorrow wasn’t until the afternoon, so I could afford to stay out a little later than normal.
Perhaps this would be a good night to make my return to The Caboose. I hadn’t been there in a while and it wasn’t that far away.
I took a turn down Manufacturer’s Crescent, a largely deserted street that serviced a few tiny business malls and factory outlet places. Even on a sunny and warm August evening like this, there wouldn’t be much traffic on it, now that most of the businesses along there had been shuttered by the recession. It would be just a quick hop to drive along there direct to the Caboose which was at the corner of Manufacturer’s and Weatherbee Street.
I wasn’t on the road long when I saw something strange in a vacant parking lot in front of what looked like a boarded up furniture store.
A car had slammed into the front entrance.
I pulled over to take a look, thinking I could be of help. My heart raced as I hurried to the wreckage and I broke into a sweat.
I admit I was afraid of what I would see and my worst fears were realized as I peered inside the shattered driver’s window.
Scott Tyson was slumped over the wheel, his face smashed. Blood was all over what was left of his face, his shirt, the front seat and the dashboard.
That was awful enough, but what was even worse was that a handgun rested on the empty passenger seat.
My stomach churned and I wanted to throw up, but I held it down and forced myself to come around to the passenger side. In spite of the blood everywhere else on the front seat, the gun was clean. Had somebody planted it there? Why?
Sometimes in life, we do things that we can’t explain and perhaps even regret later. For some reason, I was compelled to reach through the shattered glass of the passenger window, and pick up the gun. It was .38 caliber hand gun – I took shooting lessons years ago. I opened the cartridge and it was full and there was a bullet in the chamber.
Why would Tyson crash his car when he had a loaded gun?
I made sure the safety catch was on and then I ran back to my car and hid the gun in the glove compartment. Before I could take off, my nausea got the better of me and I unleashed the remains of the ham sandwich I’d had for lunch on the asphalt.
As I sped away, I tapped my shirt pocket. I had my cell phone with me, as I knew I did.
No, I didn’t call the police.
How could I? I was fleeing the scene of my crime.
I was responsible for Tyson Scott’s death, wasn’t I?
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Dan J. Marlowe: The Vengeance Man
In my review for Marlowe's Strongarm a while back, I mentioned the author's possible Jim Thompson influence due to a certain brief episode involving the disposal of a severed limb.
Well, in Marlowe's 1966 balls to the wall bardboiled smash and grab extravaganza, The Vengeance Man, that influence is on proudly lurid display.
Jim Wilson, the novel's protagonist, like Strongarm's Pete Karma, has an ongoing grudge against the world, or at least that part of the world visible to him from his small South Carolina town of Moline.
Unlike Karma, Wilson doesn't care for aliases. Right up front, you learn his name and the names of the people in his network of old high school friends whose tangled business and personal relationships supply the twisted backbone for this intense novel. Within the first twenty pages, he shoots dead Mona, his cheating wife, gets locked up and then is cleared of any wrong doing by a theatrically imperious lawyer reminiscent of Lou Ford's defence attorney near the conclusion of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside of Me. The lawyer argues at the coroner's inquest into the shooting that Wilson was armed because he had been doing his job collecting rents for a local landlord. The killing was an impulsive crime of passion in no way pre-meditated. Reluctantly, the jury buys this argument and Wilson is set free.
Once out of the slammer, Wilson sets about on his campaign of revenge against Harrington, Mona's father and onetime mayor of the town who still is a key political fixer and purveyor of lucrative town contracts. Wilson is a construction contractor and, in spite of recent events, Harrington resignedly lets Wilson have a coveted road paving contract. Is Harrington acknowledging a slight change in the local balance of power, or is he playing dead for some obscure, strategic reason? Wilson isn't sure. He also does some heavy extortion on Ludmilla, Mona's best friend from high school, threatening to unleash on the conservative small town raunchy pictures of she and Mona making out at a drunken party.
With these two aces in the hole, Wilson thinks he has it made. But does he? Other emerging political cronies in the area, stronger than Harrington, don't like Wilson's maneuverings and his cockiness. They want to bring him to heel. Also, Ludmilla has a few tricks of her own up her sleeveless dress and Wilson is soon under her control. They plot together to take control of their town and surrounding county. And is Wing, Wilson's best friend from high school and his partner in the construction company, really as affable and loyal as he appears to be?
The result is an intensely violent climax to a deeply amoral story with as morally ambiguous and ambivalent a protagonist as any hard boiled fan could want. And along the way, there are some Jim Thompson-esque filigrees, like a flashback to his youth when Wilson recalls the beatings he received at the hands of the uncle who brought him up and the brutal revenge he exacted upon this uncle with a dog whip. Also, Ludmilla has a passion for punching bag sex that would do any number of twisted Jim Thompson heroines proud.
Yet, in the midst of all of this mayhem, I have some misgivings. At least Thompson's books had extra layers of irony or psychological observation that elevated them far beyond their hard boiled genre origins into true classic status. Think of the creepy Oedipal undertones to the relationship between Roy and Lilly Dillon in The Grifters, or the greasy verbal circumlocutions and strategic triangulations which are the manifestations of Lou Ford's murderous evil in The Killer Inside of Me, or the Dantesque hell of the Kingdom of El Rey episode that concludes The Getaway, the only attempt ever in hardboiled to rocket a crime story plot beyond naturalistic action into the shadowy realm of metaphysical speculation.
Marlowe seems only to have picked up the heavy handed violence and kinky sex from Thompson and not these additional plot elements which actually made those horrific novels important. Sure, there are some passing observations in the novel about political corruption and the small mindedness of small towns, but these are commonplace ideas you can find anywhere. Marlowe simply imitated, or paid homage to Thompson. He didn't go beyond him, or perhaps, even didn't really understand his books. I guess in the end, that was why, in spite of its impressive plotting and action elements, I found The Vengeance Man a bit of a letdown, and even a little bit of a paper tiger.
Well, in Marlowe's 1966 balls to the wall bardboiled smash and grab extravaganza, The Vengeance Man, that influence is on proudly lurid display.
Jim Wilson, the novel's protagonist, like Strongarm's Pete Karma, has an ongoing grudge against the world, or at least that part of the world visible to him from his small South Carolina town of Moline.
Unlike Karma, Wilson doesn't care for aliases. Right up front, you learn his name and the names of the people in his network of old high school friends whose tangled business and personal relationships supply the twisted backbone for this intense novel. Within the first twenty pages, he shoots dead Mona, his cheating wife, gets locked up and then is cleared of any wrong doing by a theatrically imperious lawyer reminiscent of Lou Ford's defence attorney near the conclusion of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside of Me. The lawyer argues at the coroner's inquest into the shooting that Wilson was armed because he had been doing his job collecting rents for a local landlord. The killing was an impulsive crime of passion in no way pre-meditated. Reluctantly, the jury buys this argument and Wilson is set free.
Once out of the slammer, Wilson sets about on his campaign of revenge against Harrington, Mona's father and onetime mayor of the town who still is a key political fixer and purveyor of lucrative town contracts. Wilson is a construction contractor and, in spite of recent events, Harrington resignedly lets Wilson have a coveted road paving contract. Is Harrington acknowledging a slight change in the local balance of power, or is he playing dead for some obscure, strategic reason? Wilson isn't sure. He also does some heavy extortion on Ludmilla, Mona's best friend from high school, threatening to unleash on the conservative small town raunchy pictures of she and Mona making out at a drunken party.
With these two aces in the hole, Wilson thinks he has it made. But does he? Other emerging political cronies in the area, stronger than Harrington, don't like Wilson's maneuverings and his cockiness. They want to bring him to heel. Also, Ludmilla has a few tricks of her own up her sleeveless dress and Wilson is soon under her control. They plot together to take control of their town and surrounding county. And is Wing, Wilson's best friend from high school and his partner in the construction company, really as affable and loyal as he appears to be?
The result is an intensely violent climax to a deeply amoral story with as morally ambiguous and ambivalent a protagonist as any hard boiled fan could want. And along the way, there are some Jim Thompson-esque filigrees, like a flashback to his youth when Wilson recalls the beatings he received at the hands of the uncle who brought him up and the brutal revenge he exacted upon this uncle with a dog whip. Also, Ludmilla has a passion for punching bag sex that would do any number of twisted Jim Thompson heroines proud.
Yet, in the midst of all of this mayhem, I have some misgivings. At least Thompson's books had extra layers of irony or psychological observation that elevated them far beyond their hard boiled genre origins into true classic status. Think of the creepy Oedipal undertones to the relationship between Roy and Lilly Dillon in The Grifters, or the greasy verbal circumlocutions and strategic triangulations which are the manifestations of Lou Ford's murderous evil in The Killer Inside of Me, or the Dantesque hell of the Kingdom of El Rey episode that concludes The Getaway, the only attempt ever in hardboiled to rocket a crime story plot beyond naturalistic action into the shadowy realm of metaphysical speculation.
Marlowe seems only to have picked up the heavy handed violence and kinky sex from Thompson and not these additional plot elements which actually made those horrific novels important. Sure, there are some passing observations in the novel about political corruption and the small mindedness of small towns, but these are commonplace ideas you can find anywhere. Marlowe simply imitated, or paid homage to Thompson. He didn't go beyond him, or perhaps, even didn't really understand his books. I guess in the end, that was why, in spite of its impressive plotting and action elements, I found The Vengeance Man a bit of a letdown, and even a little bit of a paper tiger.
Friday, January 13, 2012
The Doomsters by Ross Macdonald
What's in a name? A hell of a lot if you were to ask hard boiled crime writer Ross Macdonald, whose birth name was Kenneth Millar. His wife Margaret Millar was a highly successful mystery writer and to avoid confusion with her, he decided not to use that name for his books. He started writing under the name John Macdonald, but that was to easily confused with another renowned crime writer, John D MacDonald, so he tried John Ross Macdonald and then settled on Ross Macdonald.
Under the Ross Macdonald moniker he wrote dozens of mystery books, many of them featuring his private eye protagonist, Lew Archer, who was a more kind and reflective version of Phillip Marlowe. The last Lew Archer book appeared in 1976.
Macdonald's Lew Archer books were notable for their complex plots and intricate descriptions of the intrigues of dysfunctional families. Macdonald's father abandoned his family when Ross was very young and this was a likely source for his fascination with this theme.
The Doomsters, a Macdonald novel from 1958, is considered a turning point in the Lew Archer series. Here, the corruption and pain of a blighted family are on at once compassionate and voyeuristic display. Lew Archer's sympathetic side is often evident and fans of Macdonald have noted that it was in this novel that Macdonald found his own voice and style and relied less on imitations of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, his two main hardboiled writing influences.
The title comes from a Thomas Hardy poem and refers to demons and unresolved conflicts and pains that haunt and eventually destroy someone.
The novel begins with Lew Archer awakening one morning to find a stranger knocking at his front door. It turns out the stranger is Carl Hallman, the tormented son of a wealthy and powerful political family. Carl is on the run from a mental hospital and a fellow patient, Tom Rica, had given him Archer's name as someone to contact for help.
Carl had been sent to the hospital after a nervous breakdown following his father's death. He had had an argument with his father - who was a Senator and who had made his fortune from orange groves on land he owned - over the treatment of the Japanese laborers who worked in his orange groves. The father died after the argument and Carl assumed he had at least indirectly caused his father's death.
Once in the hospital, Carl became convinced that his despised brother Jerry was scheming to kill him, or at least keep him permanently in the hospital. He shared his fear with Rica and then he staged his escape.
Carl's story moves Archer and hits him in a sore spot: Tom Rica was a drug addicted tough kid that Archer had tried to set straight and failed.
Archer tries to drive Carl back to the hospital, but along the way, they get into an argument. Carl punches Archer in the jaw, knocks him out,leaves him unconscious in the ditch and makes off with his car.
Archer comes to and goes to the hospital to let the doctors there know that Carl is on the loose. A manhunt, led by a hardassed local sheriff in the pay of the Hallman family and who loathes Carl, ensues while Archer makes his way to the Hallman estate and starts to find many family skeletons - literally and figuratively - in dusty closets long locked.
The Doomsters is a powerful and elegantly written book but I find that Macdonald, like his hero Chandler, has a fondness for the overly convoluted plot. No matter. There is some fine noir atmosphere and hardboiled writing that more than make up for that.
What better exposition of the hardboiled view of life could there be than this:
The trouble with you, I said to myself: you're always turning over the postcards and reading the messages on the underside. Written in invisible ink, in blood, in tears, with a black border around them, with postage due, unsigned, or signed with a thumbprint.
Nothing ever is as it appears to be in the world of hardboiled fiction and The Doomsters is a compelling and fascinating example of this. Well worth reading.
Under the Ross Macdonald moniker he wrote dozens of mystery books, many of them featuring his private eye protagonist, Lew Archer, who was a more kind and reflective version of Phillip Marlowe. The last Lew Archer book appeared in 1976.
Macdonald's Lew Archer books were notable for their complex plots and intricate descriptions of the intrigues of dysfunctional families. Macdonald's father abandoned his family when Ross was very young and this was a likely source for his fascination with this theme.
The Doomsters, a Macdonald novel from 1958, is considered a turning point in the Lew Archer series. Here, the corruption and pain of a blighted family are on at once compassionate and voyeuristic display. Lew Archer's sympathetic side is often evident and fans of Macdonald have noted that it was in this novel that Macdonald found his own voice and style and relied less on imitations of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, his two main hardboiled writing influences.
The title comes from a Thomas Hardy poem and refers to demons and unresolved conflicts and pains that haunt and eventually destroy someone.
The novel begins with Lew Archer awakening one morning to find a stranger knocking at his front door. It turns out the stranger is Carl Hallman, the tormented son of a wealthy and powerful political family. Carl is on the run from a mental hospital and a fellow patient, Tom Rica, had given him Archer's name as someone to contact for help.
Carl had been sent to the hospital after a nervous breakdown following his father's death. He had had an argument with his father - who was a Senator and who had made his fortune from orange groves on land he owned - over the treatment of the Japanese laborers who worked in his orange groves. The father died after the argument and Carl assumed he had at least indirectly caused his father's death.
Once in the hospital, Carl became convinced that his despised brother Jerry was scheming to kill him, or at least keep him permanently in the hospital. He shared his fear with Rica and then he staged his escape.
Carl's story moves Archer and hits him in a sore spot: Tom Rica was a drug addicted tough kid that Archer had tried to set straight and failed.
Archer tries to drive Carl back to the hospital, but along the way, they get into an argument. Carl punches Archer in the jaw, knocks him out,leaves him unconscious in the ditch and makes off with his car.
Archer comes to and goes to the hospital to let the doctors there know that Carl is on the loose. A manhunt, led by a hardassed local sheriff in the pay of the Hallman family and who loathes Carl, ensues while Archer makes his way to the Hallman estate and starts to find many family skeletons - literally and figuratively - in dusty closets long locked.
The Doomsters is a powerful and elegantly written book but I find that Macdonald, like his hero Chandler, has a fondness for the overly convoluted plot. No matter. There is some fine noir atmosphere and hardboiled writing that more than make up for that.
What better exposition of the hardboiled view of life could there be than this:
The trouble with you, I said to myself: you're always turning over the postcards and reading the messages on the underside. Written in invisible ink, in blood, in tears, with a black border around them, with postage due, unsigned, or signed with a thumbprint.
Nothing ever is as it appears to be in the world of hardboiled fiction and The Doomsters is a compelling and fascinating example of this. Well worth reading.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The Rescue
Here is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on, tentatively entitled "The Rescue."
Noon and the sun's glare burned through me while I walked through the parking lot on my way into Smile's Donuts. Sweat dripped off my head and my t-shirt stuck to my overheated body. I always hated muggy August days like this and I cursed not having the money to get out of town to someplace cooler.
I stumbled as a foot cut in front of me. I crumpled as a knee slammed into my groin and a fist hit my jaw.
I didn't even see the pavement as my vision went supernova with stars and fireworks exploding in my head.
I squeezed my eyes shut and the fireworks just got brighter, so I just lay there face down on the pavement, the kicks and the punches crashing down on me.
This really was it. Nothing to do now.
Sweat poured off me, yet I shivered. Cold numbness spread itself over me like that blanket they threw over Dad after the car had hit him that morning in January years ago when the roads were so icy and nobody could stop...
"What the hell's going on here?"
That old guy who owned the big house out on the lake road was here. I knew his voice. He came around the doughnut shop a lot. But he must've been close to sixty. How the hell could he stand up to creeps like Kevin and his idiot friends?
The cold receded and pinpricks of warmth stuck into my arms and legs. I was coming back. Maybe.
Shouts and screams. Was that a thunderclap? Or a gunshot?
The fireworks went off and the blows and explosions of red spiked agony all over my body stopped.
The cold blanket lifted. Warmth was returning to me. Within minutes, I would be boiling again.
I didn't complain. At least that meant I was still alive.
"What the hell did those guys want with you?" a voice asked.
The old guy was speaking to me.
I couldn't answer. Hands reached under my arms and my feet dragged on the pavement.
He was taking me somewhere.
Blurred shapes spun around. I told myself to focus, try to see what's going on.
My stomach churned. Puke rose up in my throat.
The blurred shapes loomed larger again and I had to close my eyes. My God, my whole body ached now. I just wanted to get out of there.
Then all the pain went away and everything was quiet.
Noon and the sun's glare burned through me while I walked through the parking lot on my way into Smile's Donuts. Sweat dripped off my head and my t-shirt stuck to my overheated body. I always hated muggy August days like this and I cursed not having the money to get out of town to someplace cooler.
I stumbled as a foot cut in front of me. I crumpled as a knee slammed into my groin and a fist hit my jaw.
I didn't even see the pavement as my vision went supernova with stars and fireworks exploding in my head.
I squeezed my eyes shut and the fireworks just got brighter, so I just lay there face down on the pavement, the kicks and the punches crashing down on me.
This really was it. Nothing to do now.
Sweat poured off me, yet I shivered. Cold numbness spread itself over me like that blanket they threw over Dad after the car had hit him that morning in January years ago when the roads were so icy and nobody could stop...
"What the hell's going on here?"
That old guy who owned the big house out on the lake road was here. I knew his voice. He came around the doughnut shop a lot. But he must've been close to sixty. How the hell could he stand up to creeps like Kevin and his idiot friends?
The cold receded and pinpricks of warmth stuck into my arms and legs. I was coming back. Maybe.
Shouts and screams. Was that a thunderclap? Or a gunshot?
The fireworks went off and the blows and explosions of red spiked agony all over my body stopped.
The cold blanket lifted. Warmth was returning to me. Within minutes, I would be boiling again.
I didn't complain. At least that meant I was still alive.
"What the hell did those guys want with you?" a voice asked.
The old guy was speaking to me.
I couldn't answer. Hands reached under my arms and my feet dragged on the pavement.
He was taking me somewhere.
Blurred shapes spun around. I told myself to focus, try to see what's going on.
My stomach churned. Puke rose up in my throat.
The blurred shapes loomed larger again and I had to close my eyes. My God, my whole body ached now. I just wanted to get out of there.
Then all the pain went away and everything was quiet.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Charles Willeford's The Burnt Orange Heresy
Hardboiled legend Charles Willeford was a Miami journalist and author whose 1990 novel, Miami Blues, was a big hit and was made into a movie starring Alec Baldwin.
But long before that, Willeford's career as a painter and an art history teacher, brilliantly positioned him to write his 1970 novel, The Burnt Orange Heresy.
James Figueras is a prominent south Florida art critic. He is brilliant at his work. So brilliant, in fact, that he is one of the few people in the US who makes a living exclusively writing art critiques for academic journals, magazines and encyclopedias.
His renown draws the attention of Cassidy, a high rolling millionaire art collector who lets him in on a secret. Cassidy has assisted the reclusive French surrealist artist Jacques Debierue in settling down in Florida. In fact, he's now living only thirty miles away. Cassidy lets James have the reclusive and secretive artist's address on one condition: he must bring back one of the artist's current art works.
James leaps at the offer. He has to. After all, Debierue was one of the most important of the Surrealists, legendary for his No. One installation, a wooden picture frame placed on a cracked plaster wall. Now, the legend was literally in his backyard. He has to meet him.
With his girlfriend Berenice in tow, James meets the surrealist, who turns out to be a harmless, even charming old man who wants nothing more from life than to sip orange juice and to wander off to a nearby drive-in to watch old Bowery Boys movies. He also wants to be left alone. And he wants no one to see his current work. No one. Not even the great James Figueras, whose criticism Debierue admires very much.
His considerable ego and hubris piqued by the rebuff, James hatches a plot to see the artist's current work. When Debierue leaves his house for the drive-in one night, James goes to the house and is able to get into the artist's workshop. He finds...nothing. Many canvases and frames, many painting supplies and implements, but no art work. Nothing. Debierue has not painted anything since his arrival in Florida. Perhaps, James fears, he hasn't painted anything in many years.
At first horrified, James suddenly realizes that he now has a real opportunity to boost his own career, and, almost as an afterthought, Debierue's. He snaps up the artist's gear, sets fire to the studio and then meets up with Berenice and they get away. All the while, James's mind is convulsed by a scheme to unleash on the art world The Burnt Orange Heresy, Debierue's last major art work. James will make the painting and write an article celebrating it. Then, Cassidy and other collectors can move in and fight over it, driving up its already immense value.
One problem though. Berenice uncovers James's scheme and James goes into murderous overdrive.
The Burnt Orange Heresy is a slim novel, but it is jammed with ideas about art and money, art and the perception of reality, art and the criminal impulse. It is also a meticulous depiction of how one man's arrogance and professional pride turn into murderous psychosis. A chilling and profound and original hard boiled read.
But long before that, Willeford's career as a painter and an art history teacher, brilliantly positioned him to write his 1970 novel, The Burnt Orange Heresy.
James Figueras is a prominent south Florida art critic. He is brilliant at his work. So brilliant, in fact, that he is one of the few people in the US who makes a living exclusively writing art critiques for academic journals, magazines and encyclopedias.
His renown draws the attention of Cassidy, a high rolling millionaire art collector who lets him in on a secret. Cassidy has assisted the reclusive French surrealist artist Jacques Debierue in settling down in Florida. In fact, he's now living only thirty miles away. Cassidy lets James have the reclusive and secretive artist's address on one condition: he must bring back one of the artist's current art works.
James leaps at the offer. He has to. After all, Debierue was one of the most important of the Surrealists, legendary for his No. One installation, a wooden picture frame placed on a cracked plaster wall. Now, the legend was literally in his backyard. He has to meet him.
With his girlfriend Berenice in tow, James meets the surrealist, who turns out to be a harmless, even charming old man who wants nothing more from life than to sip orange juice and to wander off to a nearby drive-in to watch old Bowery Boys movies. He also wants to be left alone. And he wants no one to see his current work. No one. Not even the great James Figueras, whose criticism Debierue admires very much.
His considerable ego and hubris piqued by the rebuff, James hatches a plot to see the artist's current work. When Debierue leaves his house for the drive-in one night, James goes to the house and is able to get into the artist's workshop. He finds...nothing. Many canvases and frames, many painting supplies and implements, but no art work. Nothing. Debierue has not painted anything since his arrival in Florida. Perhaps, James fears, he hasn't painted anything in many years.
At first horrified, James suddenly realizes that he now has a real opportunity to boost his own career, and, almost as an afterthought, Debierue's. He snaps up the artist's gear, sets fire to the studio and then meets up with Berenice and they get away. All the while, James's mind is convulsed by a scheme to unleash on the art world The Burnt Orange Heresy, Debierue's last major art work. James will make the painting and write an article celebrating it. Then, Cassidy and other collectors can move in and fight over it, driving up its already immense value.
One problem though. Berenice uncovers James's scheme and James goes into murderous overdrive.
The Burnt Orange Heresy is a slim novel, but it is jammed with ideas about art and money, art and the perception of reality, art and the criminal impulse. It is also a meticulous depiction of how one man's arrogance and professional pride turn into murderous psychosis. A chilling and profound and original hard boiled read.
Brian Gifford's Port Tropique
Brian Gifford is a US novelist best known for his association with cult film maker David Lynch. His fourth novel, Wild at Heart, was memorably, if repulsively, adapted for the screen by Lynch, from a screenplay co-written by him and Lynch. Gifford also co-scripted the 1997 Lynch cult favorite Lost Highway.
In 1980, long before his collaboration with Lynch, Gifford wrote the distinctive noir thriller, Port Tropique.
Through a series of brief snapshot chapters, most of which are flashbacks ranging through the protagonist's memories with relatively few carrying forward the story, such as it is, we learn about the life of Franz Hull, a writer living in the fictional Latin American nation of Port Tropique. He's there, as he tells a journalist visiting the country to cover an impending Communist revolution, to write a biography of Benjamin Franklin. When the journalist asks why he'd be writing about Franklin in Port Tropique, Frans gives a revealing answer:
"Gore Vidal wrote Burr in Rome. Robert Graves wrote I, Claudius in Majorca. Mary Renault wrote The Persian Boy in Cape Town. Sometimes the proper perspective is more easily attained from a distance."
This answer reveals Franz's major problem. He sees life through the funhouse mirror reflection of fiction. All the writers he mentions are historical fiction writers, using real events to weave compelling narratives that may not entirely be "real" or "true." For instance, I Claudius contains a plot where Livia conspires to poison Augustus, her husband and the first Emperor of Rome. No such plot really existed, in fact, little is known of the historical Livia. Yet, Graves invented the conspiracy to make the novel more compelling and to give the Livia character more of a presence in the story. Graves' storytelling was so believable that many believe the poisoning plot actually happened.
This is the curious half-real, half-imagined world that Franz Hull moves, or is it dreams? through, in Port Tropique. A world convincingly evoked with vivid, concrete descriptions of street life, as well as knowing descriptions of the country's political crisis. Although I'm reading a novel, the tone and feel of it remind me of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuczinski's books about revolutions in the developing world in the way that concrete fact is mixed with strong story telling.
All of this is very clever and witty, of course, but what does it have to do with a hardboiled story? Well, in the midst of all of this post modern game playing with narrative, there is a smuggling plot. Every few nights, Franz ventures to the dangerous Port Tropique water front with a suitcase. Various mysterious and disreputable characters pull into the harbor and fill the suitcase with bundles and bundles of money. Soon, he has more than two hundred thousand dollars in the suitcase. With the revolution waiting to explode, should he sit tight and wait for his criminal contacts to claim the money he's been holding for them, or should he simply run away with it?
A hard and all too real choice is to be made. A choice with deadly consequences. A choice that perhaps shouldn't be left with a person so distracted by narratives,a choice that would be better made by someone with a clear headed view of the crisis exploding around him.
Franz makes his choice and the consequences of this constitute the story that Port Tropique has to tell.
An interesting novel, as well as a puzzle. With many red herrings with the slightest hint of the shaggy dog tale thrown in. If nothing else, Port Tropique is one of the most memorable and radical of the hardboiled books.
In 1980, long before his collaboration with Lynch, Gifford wrote the distinctive noir thriller, Port Tropique.
Through a series of brief snapshot chapters, most of which are flashbacks ranging through the protagonist's memories with relatively few carrying forward the story, such as it is, we learn about the life of Franz Hull, a writer living in the fictional Latin American nation of Port Tropique. He's there, as he tells a journalist visiting the country to cover an impending Communist revolution, to write a biography of Benjamin Franklin. When the journalist asks why he'd be writing about Franklin in Port Tropique, Frans gives a revealing answer:
"Gore Vidal wrote Burr in Rome. Robert Graves wrote I, Claudius in Majorca. Mary Renault wrote The Persian Boy in Cape Town. Sometimes the proper perspective is more easily attained from a distance."
This answer reveals Franz's major problem. He sees life through the funhouse mirror reflection of fiction. All the writers he mentions are historical fiction writers, using real events to weave compelling narratives that may not entirely be "real" or "true." For instance, I Claudius contains a plot where Livia conspires to poison Augustus, her husband and the first Emperor of Rome. No such plot really existed, in fact, little is known of the historical Livia. Yet, Graves invented the conspiracy to make the novel more compelling and to give the Livia character more of a presence in the story. Graves' storytelling was so believable that many believe the poisoning plot actually happened.
This is the curious half-real, half-imagined world that Franz Hull moves, or is it dreams? through, in Port Tropique. A world convincingly evoked with vivid, concrete descriptions of street life, as well as knowing descriptions of the country's political crisis. Although I'm reading a novel, the tone and feel of it remind me of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuczinski's books about revolutions in the developing world in the way that concrete fact is mixed with strong story telling.
All of this is very clever and witty, of course, but what does it have to do with a hardboiled story? Well, in the midst of all of this post modern game playing with narrative, there is a smuggling plot. Every few nights, Franz ventures to the dangerous Port Tropique water front with a suitcase. Various mysterious and disreputable characters pull into the harbor and fill the suitcase with bundles and bundles of money. Soon, he has more than two hundred thousand dollars in the suitcase. With the revolution waiting to explode, should he sit tight and wait for his criminal contacts to claim the money he's been holding for them, or should he simply run away with it?
A hard and all too real choice is to be made. A choice with deadly consequences. A choice that perhaps shouldn't be left with a person so distracted by narratives,a choice that would be better made by someone with a clear headed view of the crisis exploding around him.
Franz makes his choice and the consequences of this constitute the story that Port Tropique has to tell.
An interesting novel, as well as a puzzle. With many red herrings with the slightest hint of the shaggy dog tale thrown in. If nothing else, Port Tropique is one of the most memorable and radical of the hardboiled books.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
A few posts back, I mentioned Raymond Chandler's taste for complex, labyrinthine, and for some people, incoherent plots.
This taste is very much on display in The Little Sister, a novel first published in 1949 and considered by some to be Chandler's finest.
It's a novel starring legendary Chandler gumshoe Phillip Marlowe. At first, the story seems pretty cut and dried. Orfamey Quest, a young lady from Manhattan, Kansas, drops by his dusty and faded hole in the wall office and tells him about the disappearance of her brother Orrin. It seems he has been swallowed up in the big bad maw of Los Angeles. Orfamey is a very prim and proper smalltown girl who at once repels and captivates Marlowe. He teases her and plays games with her, but in the end, he accepts the case.
All Marlowe has to go on is the address given him by Orfamey of the boarding house Orrin was last known to be staying at. When he gets there, he finds the place to be rundown and stuffy and choked with the stink of cigarette smoke and marijuana. He also finds the landlord, a hard and suspicious man, counting rent money. Thinking Marlowe is a robber, he lets him have the run of the place. Marlowe pokes around in Orrin's old room and finds nothing. When he returns to the front room, he finds the landlord has been stabbed with an ice pick.
After this, things get complicated. Very complicated.
Many factors come into play. It seems Orrin had stumbled onto extortion photographs of a rising young Hollywood starlet having lunch with a known gangster who was up on murder charges. The pictures themselves are harmless, just a couple having lunch, but it's the company the starlet is keeping that could cause problems for her. Where did he get the pictures from? Did he stab the landlord, or was it someone else? Who exactly is involved in this conspiracy to extort this young starlet?
Of course, extortion pictures are a well-traveled plot line in hardboiled. In Chandler's own The Big Sleep, extortion pictures of the amorous exploits of a general's daughter and a lending library for pornographic pictures are the hinges of the plot. What makes this novel interesting isn't so much the plot as Chandler's telling of it; Marlowe's persistent, hunch and happenstance unraveling of the conspiracy, the peeling away of false exteriors to reveal an ever widening circle of human duplicity, lust and greed.
And along the way, we are treated to some find noir atmosphere and Chandler's often caustic and pungent observations of human nature as presented through Phillip Marlowe.
Some examples:
I left him to his thoughts, which were probably as small, ugly and frightened as the man himself.
I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that's been closed too long. But the colored lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful.
On the terrace of The Dancers, a few early birds were getting ready to drink their lunch.
It's specimens of acerbic writing like this that make Chandler worth reading, regardless of how convoluted or implausible some of his plots may be. The man had a real flair for the telling detail, the apt observation made with sharp, economical and witty language. If nothing else, Chandler should be turned to as a guide of how to knowingly and keenly describe your surroundings.
I highly recommend The Little Sister. If you've never read it, you should maybe read it before The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Yes, the plot does get complicated, but there are so many facets of brilliance in this novel that they more than overcome any frustration you may have in trying to figure out who is stabbing whom in the back and why.
This taste is very much on display in The Little Sister, a novel first published in 1949 and considered by some to be Chandler's finest.
It's a novel starring legendary Chandler gumshoe Phillip Marlowe. At first, the story seems pretty cut and dried. Orfamey Quest, a young lady from Manhattan, Kansas, drops by his dusty and faded hole in the wall office and tells him about the disappearance of her brother Orrin. It seems he has been swallowed up in the big bad maw of Los Angeles. Orfamey is a very prim and proper smalltown girl who at once repels and captivates Marlowe. He teases her and plays games with her, but in the end, he accepts the case.
All Marlowe has to go on is the address given him by Orfamey of the boarding house Orrin was last known to be staying at. When he gets there, he finds the place to be rundown and stuffy and choked with the stink of cigarette smoke and marijuana. He also finds the landlord, a hard and suspicious man, counting rent money. Thinking Marlowe is a robber, he lets him have the run of the place. Marlowe pokes around in Orrin's old room and finds nothing. When he returns to the front room, he finds the landlord has been stabbed with an ice pick.
After this, things get complicated. Very complicated.
Many factors come into play. It seems Orrin had stumbled onto extortion photographs of a rising young Hollywood starlet having lunch with a known gangster who was up on murder charges. The pictures themselves are harmless, just a couple having lunch, but it's the company the starlet is keeping that could cause problems for her. Where did he get the pictures from? Did he stab the landlord, or was it someone else? Who exactly is involved in this conspiracy to extort this young starlet?
Of course, extortion pictures are a well-traveled plot line in hardboiled. In Chandler's own The Big Sleep, extortion pictures of the amorous exploits of a general's daughter and a lending library for pornographic pictures are the hinges of the plot. What makes this novel interesting isn't so much the plot as Chandler's telling of it; Marlowe's persistent, hunch and happenstance unraveling of the conspiracy, the peeling away of false exteriors to reveal an ever widening circle of human duplicity, lust and greed.
And along the way, we are treated to some find noir atmosphere and Chandler's often caustic and pungent observations of human nature as presented through Phillip Marlowe.
Some examples:
I left him to his thoughts, which were probably as small, ugly and frightened as the man himself.
I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that's been closed too long. But the colored lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful.
On the terrace of The Dancers, a few early birds were getting ready to drink their lunch.
It's specimens of acerbic writing like this that make Chandler worth reading, regardless of how convoluted or implausible some of his plots may be. The man had a real flair for the telling detail, the apt observation made with sharp, economical and witty language. If nothing else, Chandler should be turned to as a guide of how to knowingly and keenly describe your surroundings.
I highly recommend The Little Sister. If you've never read it, you should maybe read it before The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Yes, the plot does get complicated, but there are so many facets of brilliance in this novel that they more than overcome any frustration you may have in trying to figure out who is stabbing whom in the back and why.
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