1: [gestures at photo taped to cabinet] is that your hubby?
2: no, that's raymond chandler. that's joe [gestures at photos pinned to wall].
1: oh. he's a lot younger.
2: and a lot less fond of gimlets, fortunately.
Showing posts with label raymond chandler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raymond chandler. Show all posts
05.24.10
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 17
SURVIVOR: let the great world spin (colum mccann)*
CHALLENGER: nobody move (denis johnson)
denis johnson is that guy you met at someone's roof party like four summers ago: his face and the way he holds his beer are familiar and you vaguely remember something about his working with your friend's old boyfriend, but it takes you another conversation to realize you've almost completely forgotten the conversation you already had with him. already dead is the conversation johnson and i seem to have had; the roof party in this scenario is my shelf either in san francisco in the careless early aughts or my senior year of college (i know i've got a copy of that book somewhere, but the summary in that salon review i just linked is only familiar in the loosest possible sense of the word), and nobody move is our more lucid reconnection. i'm glad i was paying attention this time: at 196 pages, nobody move doesn't pause to breathe too often. it pauses exactly three times, actually: johnson wrote it in four parts for playboy, where it was published in 2008. this, kids, is how a modern serial should look.
the consensus among critics seems to be that johnson approached nobody move as a palate cleanser after his mighty national-book-award-winning vietnam novel, tree of smoke, a work that's reported to have been knocking about in his head for twenty years. he does seem to be enjoying himself with the genre (modern crime) and the audience (degenerates**): his main character (jimmy luntz, an especially shitty gambler) starts out in a white tux, for example, because he's taking part in a barbershop chorus competition in bakersfield. johnson's down-and-out dame, the lovely and equally luckless anita desilvera, gets a playboy (or perhaps a letters-to-penthouse) intro - jimmy's punching way above his weight with her, and we hear about it at length - but she's steely and funny and vengeful, and johnson gives her room to be more than a pair of tits. she reminds me a bit of frances mcdormand in blood simple, actually: she's considerably meaner (she's got the most vicious set piece in the book, actually), but her scenes have a crunch-and-thump physicality i associate with coen brothers heroines. nobody move has a galloping inevitability i associate with the coen brothers as a general proposition, actually; it disappoints me that this has been noted elsewhere (o, to be a beautiful and unique reviewer-snowflake!), but the point's a solid one. this is a mirthless northern california, moreover, that i can get behind: bakersfield aside, most of the story crawls around in grotty rest stops and bars north of sacramento along highway that looks best after nightfall. as settings go, i prefer these unlovable inland towns to armistead maupin's san francisco and the misty coastal scree in johnson's already dead (hey, i remembered something else about it!); they're brief and brutal, and they suit johnson's language. superfluous blow jobs aside (oh, playboy), this could be the best book i've read since let the great world spin; i'd ask you to keep that from raymond chandler,*** but i suspect he'd approve.
VICTOR: let the great world spin,**** though the crowd was behind nobody move - i was re-reading it on the way in to work this morning and managed to miss my subway stop. that never happens (re-reading, that is).
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 17
SURVIVOR: let the great world spin (colum mccann)*
CHALLENGER: nobody move (denis johnson)
denis johnson is that guy you met at someone's roof party like four summers ago: his face and the way he holds his beer are familiar and you vaguely remember something about his working with your friend's old boyfriend, but it takes you another conversation to realize you've almost completely forgotten the conversation you already had with him. already dead is the conversation johnson and i seem to have had; the roof party in this scenario is my shelf either in san francisco in the careless early aughts or my senior year of college (i know i've got a copy of that book somewhere, but the summary in that salon review i just linked is only familiar in the loosest possible sense of the word), and nobody move is our more lucid reconnection. i'm glad i was paying attention this time: at 196 pages, nobody move doesn't pause to breathe too often. it pauses exactly three times, actually: johnson wrote it in four parts for playboy, where it was published in 2008. this, kids, is how a modern serial should look.
the consensus among critics seems to be that johnson approached nobody move as a palate cleanser after his mighty national-book-award-winning vietnam novel, tree of smoke, a work that's reported to have been knocking about in his head for twenty years. he does seem to be enjoying himself with the genre (modern crime) and the audience (degenerates**): his main character (jimmy luntz, an especially shitty gambler) starts out in a white tux, for example, because he's taking part in a barbershop chorus competition in bakersfield. johnson's down-and-out dame, the lovely and equally luckless anita desilvera, gets a playboy (or perhaps a letters-to-penthouse) intro - jimmy's punching way above his weight with her, and we hear about it at length - but she's steely and funny and vengeful, and johnson gives her room to be more than a pair of tits. she reminds me a bit of frances mcdormand in blood simple, actually: she's considerably meaner (she's got the most vicious set piece in the book, actually), but her scenes have a crunch-and-thump physicality i associate with coen brothers heroines. nobody move has a galloping inevitability i associate with the coen brothers as a general proposition, actually; it disappoints me that this has been noted elsewhere (o, to be a beautiful and unique reviewer-snowflake!), but the point's a solid one. this is a mirthless northern california, moreover, that i can get behind: bakersfield aside, most of the story crawls around in grotty rest stops and bars north of sacramento along highway that looks best after nightfall. as settings go, i prefer these unlovable inland towns to armistead maupin's san francisco and the misty coastal scree in johnson's already dead (hey, i remembered something else about it!); they're brief and brutal, and they suit johnson's language. superfluous blow jobs aside (oh, playboy), this could be the best book i've read since let the great world spin; i'd ask you to keep that from raymond chandler,*** but i suspect he'd approve.
VICTOR: let the great world spin,**** though the crowd was behind nobody move - i was re-reading it on the way in to work this morning and managed to miss my subway stop. that never happens (re-reading, that is).
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 have you encountered denis johnson? how'd you get along?
02 have you seen blood simple? if you're a coen brothers fan, how does it rank among their movies for you?
03 did you know that shel silverstein drew cartoons and wrote travel stories for playboy back in the day? that scandalized me when i was a tween.
04 did you know that silverstein also wrote "a boy named sue"?
05 ...and that he wrote a sequel about sue's father?! sorry, i'll stop talking about shel silverstein.
06 what character or plot device in jj abrams's television work would you most like to see in a film adaptation of Big-Time Literature like let the great world spin?
*previous battle here.
**kidding, mostly. i once purchased a playboy, actually - the "women of the pac-10" issue. long story.
***speaking of chandler, i read a marvelous review of nobody move in which the writer noted that johnson had studied with raymond chandler at the iowa writers' workshop in the seventies. with, like, a ouija board? (they meant carver.)
****which jj abrams is apparently interested in filming - hmm.
05.16.10
work has demanded a lot of head space lately, and i've done my best for the past week or so to shove it out of the way by overpreparing for our friend lesley's cocktail classic (particularly the gala on friday night). call me a girly girl and i'll punch you in the kisser, but it felt good to think about shoes and dresses for a change. for the record, a vintage scarf used for several years as a christmas tree skirt makes a fine shawl, prohibition chic has more to do with one's stance than one's fripperies, absinthe cocktails eventually love you back, and philip marlowe lives somewhere in the new york public library (my money's on the basement).
oh, and the flinty dame with the floor-length satin gown and the bag of tacos on the f train at one was me.
{full set here}
work has demanded a lot of head space lately, and i've done my best for the past week or so to shove it out of the way by overpreparing for our friend lesley's cocktail classic (particularly the gala on friday night). call me a girly girl and i'll punch you in the kisser, but it felt good to think about shoes and dresses for a change. for the record, a vintage scarf used for several years as a christmas tree skirt makes a fine shawl, prohibition chic has more to do with one's stance than one's fripperies, absinthe cocktails eventually love you back, and philip marlowe lives somewhere in the new york public library (my money's on the basement).
oh, and the flinty dame with the floor-length satin gown and the bag of tacos on the f train at one was me.
{full set here}
04.13.10
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 11
SURVIVOR: let the great world spin (colum mccann)*
CHALLENGER: trouble is my business (raymond chandler)
internets, it's almost impossible to be objective about raymond chandler at this point. i've read all of the novels and nearly all of the dime detective and black mask stories in print; as i finished "red wind," the last of the four stories in trouble is my business, i knew that i was at the end of the line.** though another chandler collection survived a couple of pushover rounds at the beginning of the year, i'm tempted to goddess in the doorway him with a big win over colum mccann: as jann wenner would say, trouble is my business is definitely four, for sure.
except when it isn't, that is. if some sources are to be believed, the detectives in some of these stories have been "marlowed" - that is, they began as different characters. that rings true to me, though bits of the street chivalry (and abrupt boorishness) i associate with philip marlowe of the novels do turn up here. either way, the introductory essay keeps me honest: i was halfway through it before i realized chandler had written it. "the simple art of murder" is an endlessly quotable, ferocious defense of detective stories; this stuff, by contrast, is pugnacity without chandler's intellectual snap. well, a single passage reminded me just a bit of oscar wilde on bad poetry:
VICTOR: for consistency, let the great world spin - though if frank miller ever delivers on trouble is my business starring clive owen as marlowe, i'll overturn the decision on proximity alone. also, paul auster blurbed my edition.*** find a new squire, chandler estate.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 11
SURVIVOR: let the great world spin (colum mccann)*
CHALLENGER: trouble is my business (raymond chandler)
internets, it's almost impossible to be objective about raymond chandler at this point. i've read all of the novels and nearly all of the dime detective and black mask stories in print; as i finished "red wind," the last of the four stories in trouble is my business, i knew that i was at the end of the line.** though another chandler collection survived a couple of pushover rounds at the beginning of the year, i'm tempted to goddess in the doorway him with a big win over colum mccann: as jann wenner would say, trouble is my business is definitely four, for sure.
except when it isn't, that is. if some sources are to be believed, the detectives in some of these stories have been "marlowed" - that is, they began as different characters. that rings true to me, though bits of the street chivalry (and abrupt boorishness) i associate with philip marlowe of the novels do turn up here. either way, the introductory essay keeps me honest: i was halfway through it before i realized chandler had written it. "the simple art of murder" is an endlessly quotable, ferocious defense of detective stories; this stuff, by contrast, is pugnacity without chandler's intellectual snap. well, a single passage reminded me just a bit of oscar wilde on bad poetry:
There are things in my stories which I might like to change or leave out altogether. To do this may look simple, but if you try, you find you cannot do it at all. You will only destroy what is good without having any noticeable effect on what is bad. You cannot recapture the mood, the state of innocence, much less the animal gusto you had when you had very little else. Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.i'll take sullen chandler over most writers at their best, mind you.
(from "trouble is my business," 1939)
"I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he's got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel. I need a guy who can act like a bar lizard and backchat like Fred Allen, only better, and get hit on the head with a beer truck and think some cutie in the leg-line topped him with a breadstick."
I called him from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.
(from "goldfish," 1936)
"If it's going to be a long story, let's have a drink."
"I never drink until sundown. That way you don't get to be a heel."
"Tough on the Eskimos," I said. "In the summertime anyway."
There were long slim fish like golden darts and Japanese Veiltails with fantastic trailing tails, and X-ray fish as transparent as colored glass, tiny guppies half an inch long, calico popeyes spotted like a bride's apron, and big lumbering Chinese Moors with telescope eyes, froglike faces and unnecessary fins, waddling through the green water like fat men going to lunch.
(from "red wind," 1938)
On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
The car outside let out a roar and when I got onto the sidewalk it was flicking a red smear of taillight around the nearby corner. I got its license number the way I got my first million.
Across the street somebody had delirium tremens in the front yard and a mixed quartet tore what was left of the night into small strips and did what they could to make the strips miserable.
She wasn't beautiful, she wasn't even pretty, but she looked as if things would happen where she was.
VICTOR: for consistency, let the great world spin - though if frank miller ever delivers on trouble is my business starring clive owen as marlowe, i'll overturn the decision on proximity alone. also, paul auster blurbed my edition.*** find a new squire, chandler estate.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 can we verb goddess in the doorway? i would like that.
02 do you agree with chandler's comment on the craft of fiction?
03 would you buy clive owen as marlowe? if not, whom would you prefer? (i'm thinking contemporary actors, not bogey &c.)
*previous battle here.
**there are stragglers, but they'll be hell to find.
***"Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since."
02.09.10
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 5
SURVIVOR: chronic city (jonathan lethem)*
CHALLENGER: gun, with occasional music (jonathan lethem)
a THUNDERTOME first: man versus himself! in this case, it's genre-bending young california-lethem (gun, with occasional music), back from the early nineties to do battle with contemporary, supercelebrated brooklyn-lethem for...control of the future? mastery of the past? the sci-fi imagery folds in on itself a bit, but we can be fairly sure at least one of them is a robot.
i first met california-lethem at solar light books, a basement joint in san francisco at which i hustled new age workbooks from beneath leaks in the ceiling and listened to old elvis costello albums for the first few months after graduating from college.** he was the owner's favorite author, which gave me the impression that his was a niche within a niche within a niche; amanda had particular tastes, to put it mildly. gun is indeed a quirky novel, but it's a novel with a little something for everyone rather than a lot for a few (except for amanda, that is). "evolved" animals walk, talk, shoot, and deliver sandwiches! sloppily-evolved babies give everyone the creeps and hang out in cracked-out bars! the government issues cards with karma that can land you in cryogenic prison if you anger the police-inquisitors or have the nerve to ask questions, and it also encourages you to snort soma-like "make!" news radio is music rather than language! people live in oakland intentionally! it's a bit much to take in at once; most of lethem's sci-fi flourishes fit together by the end of the novel, but a few (the titular music, for instance) flap in the breeze at the others' expense. i imagine a first-time novelist would be tempted to use every trick at his disposal, but a seasoned editor might have encouraged him to stick to his favorites. i'm also less than wild about lethem's first attempt at noir; mimicking raymond chandler is dangerous, for anything other than perfect pitch is wildly unflattering to the mimic. 1999's motherless brooklyn, lethem's second detective novel, is considerably more satisfying; half a dozen books later, lethem's PI is his PI, not philip marlowe lite. that said, the second section of the book (which takes place six years after the first) is as focused as the first section was manic: it's spare, overexposed, and sorrowful, and the low notes lethem hits at the end of his story do sound a bit like chandler. i was rooting for him by then, and i'm glad to know what i do of the work that was to come. is to come? damn robots, messing with my concepts of time.
VICTOR: chronic city. gun, with occasional music is a much cooler title, but lethem circa 2009 has had much more practice.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 5
SURVIVOR: chronic city (jonathan lethem)*
CHALLENGER: gun, with occasional music (jonathan lethem)
a THUNDERTOME first: man versus himself! in this case, it's genre-bending young california-lethem (gun, with occasional music), back from the early nineties to do battle with contemporary, supercelebrated brooklyn-lethem for...control of the future? mastery of the past? the sci-fi imagery folds in on itself a bit, but we can be fairly sure at least one of them is a robot.
i first met california-lethem at solar light books, a basement joint in san francisco at which i hustled new age workbooks from beneath leaks in the ceiling and listened to old elvis costello albums for the first few months after graduating from college.** he was the owner's favorite author, which gave me the impression that his was a niche within a niche within a niche; amanda had particular tastes, to put it mildly. gun is indeed a quirky novel, but it's a novel with a little something for everyone rather than a lot for a few (except for amanda, that is). "evolved" animals walk, talk, shoot, and deliver sandwiches! sloppily-evolved babies give everyone the creeps and hang out in cracked-out bars! the government issues cards with karma that can land you in cryogenic prison if you anger the police-inquisitors or have the nerve to ask questions, and it also encourages you to snort soma-like "make!" news radio is music rather than language! people live in oakland intentionally! it's a bit much to take in at once; most of lethem's sci-fi flourishes fit together by the end of the novel, but a few (the titular music, for instance) flap in the breeze at the others' expense. i imagine a first-time novelist would be tempted to use every trick at his disposal, but a seasoned editor might have encouraged him to stick to his favorites. i'm also less than wild about lethem's first attempt at noir; mimicking raymond chandler is dangerous, for anything other than perfect pitch is wildly unflattering to the mimic. 1999's motherless brooklyn, lethem's second detective novel, is considerably more satisfying; half a dozen books later, lethem's PI is his PI, not philip marlowe lite. that said, the second section of the book (which takes place six years after the first) is as focused as the first section was manic: it's spare, overexposed, and sorrowful, and the low notes lethem hits at the end of his story do sound a bit like chandler. i was rooting for him by then, and i'm glad to know what i do of the work that was to come. is to come? damn robots, messing with my concepts of time.
VICTOR: chronic city. gun, with occasional music is a much cooler title, but lethem circa 2009 has had much more practice.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 speaking of influences, lethem lo-o-oves philip k. dick (do androids dream of electric sheep?, &c). if you're familiar with both authors, how dick...ish(?) was gun for you?
02 speaking of philip k. dick, if you were on your way to the airport and saw rutger hauer sitting in a starbucks, would you point him out to your companion, even if you guys were running a little late?
03 if you were rutger hauer, what would you order at starbucks?
04 cool titles: which stand out for you? (as she climbed across the table, another lethem title, has a nice ring to it as well.)
*previous battle here.
**the owner wavered on hiring me when she found out i'd once worked for borders, but my pierced eyebrow convinced her that my intentions were good. yes, a facial piercing once got me a job.
01.21.10
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 3
SURVIVOR: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)*
CHALLENGER: chronic city (jonathan lethem)
the thrill of recognition you get from a novel that really roots around in a place you know well is a rare treat. i wanted so badly to find the san francisco in lisa lutz's spellman books that joe and i actually took the muni out to the philosophers club, an old bar in our first neighborhood, and quizzed the bartender about her (they'd never met). i've read a handful of manhattan novels** over the last few years, but i have yet to find my mysteries of pittsburgh.*** jonathan lethem has turned in some fine work about brooklyn (i loved both motherless brooklyn and the fortress of solitude), and i've been all kinds of excited to see how he'd handle my island, as it were.
lethem devotes quite a bit of time to regions (the upper east side) and issues (construction of the second avenue subway) i know very well, as it happens, and it is indeed thrilling to see those things through him (he's not rose-colored glasses, but he's something like a holga: everything is a bit more intentional, a bit sexier.). like raymond chandler's, his imagery can be immensely satisfying ("the green-gray sneakers like mummified sponges glimpsed within a janitor's bucket."); a monied dinner party sequence in the first hundred pages won me over completely. i knew those people, twenty years and several million dollars ago. he also writes three-legged pit bulls well. i've known a few of those, too.
lethem gets into a bit of trouble when it's time to add mystery to the mix. his narrator, former child actor chase insteadman, is unreliable because he says he's unreliable; in fact, as written, he seems a bit too keen.
speaking of michiko kakutani's rage, she's pretty upset about lethem's goofy names (pynchonesque!) and magical realism (a bit helprinesque, i'd say). i forgive lethem his absurdism, for unlike pynchon's, his characters aren't wholly "plasticky;" they're types, sure, but i give a damn when one of them suffers. the physicality of perkus tooth, the mentor character whose rants are supposed to drag chase into the real world, is in some ways more tragic than anything he argues: tooth never stops sounding silly, but the way he falls asleep on a sofa kills me. the final scene, dependent though it was on a few plot twists i found kind of tiresome, revived me and killed me again. that lethem nailed something about manhattan in it...doesn't bode well for me and the neighbors, does it.
VICTOR: lethem. he makes a few missteps, but he wants it more - and his footwork is as fancy as chandler's.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 3
SURVIVOR: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)*
CHALLENGER: chronic city (jonathan lethem)
the thrill of recognition you get from a novel that really roots around in a place you know well is a rare treat. i wanted so badly to find the san francisco in lisa lutz's spellman books that joe and i actually took the muni out to the philosophers club, an old bar in our first neighborhood, and quizzed the bartender about her (they'd never met). i've read a handful of manhattan novels** over the last few years, but i have yet to find my mysteries of pittsburgh.*** jonathan lethem has turned in some fine work about brooklyn (i loved both motherless brooklyn and the fortress of solitude), and i've been all kinds of excited to see how he'd handle my island, as it were.
lethem devotes quite a bit of time to regions (the upper east side) and issues (construction of the second avenue subway) i know very well, as it happens, and it is indeed thrilling to see those things through him (he's not rose-colored glasses, but he's something like a holga: everything is a bit more intentional, a bit sexier.). like raymond chandler's, his imagery can be immensely satisfying ("the green-gray sneakers like mummified sponges glimpsed within a janitor's bucket."); a monied dinner party sequence in the first hundred pages won me over completely. i knew those people, twenty years and several million dollars ago. he also writes three-legged pit bulls well. i've known a few of those, too.
lethem gets into a bit of trouble when it's time to add mystery to the mix. his narrator, former child actor chase insteadman, is unreliable because he says he's unreliable; in fact, as written, he seems a bit too keen.
These guessing words I find junked in my brain in deranged juxtaposition, like files randomly stuffed into cabinets by a dispirited secretary with no notion of what, if anything, might ever be usefully retrieved. Often all language seems this way: a monstrous compendium of embedded histories I'm helpless to understand. I employ it the way a dog drives a car, without grasping how the car came to exist or what makes a combustion engine possible. That is, of course, if dogs drove cars. They don't. Yet I go around forming sentences.what chase does or doesn't realize about himself, his friends, and manhattan (plus a number of stoned conversations about culture, conspiracy, and marlon brando that enraged michiko kakutani is the novel's bulk and its fulcrum, so the plausibility of his cluelessness is rather important.
speaking of michiko kakutani's rage, she's pretty upset about lethem's goofy names (pynchonesque!) and magical realism (a bit helprinesque, i'd say). i forgive lethem his absurdism, for unlike pynchon's, his characters aren't wholly "plasticky;" they're types, sure, but i give a damn when one of them suffers. the physicality of perkus tooth, the mentor character whose rants are supposed to drag chase into the real world, is in some ways more tragic than anything he argues: tooth never stops sounding silly, but the way he falls asleep on a sofa kills me. the final scene, dependent though it was on a few plot twists i found kind of tiresome, revived me and killed me again. that lethem nailed something about manhattan in it...doesn't bode well for me and the neighbors, does it.
VICTOR: lethem. he makes a few missteps, but he wants it more - and his footwork is as fancy as chandler's.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 have you read a novel that's representative of your city, or one that was way off?
02 does michael chabon get pittsburgh in the mysteries of pittsburgh?
03 how do you feel about characters with faintly ridiculous names?
04 do you like magic realism in contemporary novels? in which novels does it move and/or annoy you?
05 do you agree with kakutani's review?
06 is obstinate dust (in chronic city) infinite jest?
07 is the grey fog that's settled permanently over lower manhattan a fitting translation (in lethem's alternate manhattan) of 9/11?
08 what novel, if any, says "new york" to you?
*previous round here.
**mark helprin's myth-a-riffic, turn-of-the-century-ish winter's tale (1983), don delillo's cosmopolis (2003), the tale of a limousine ride across midtown, and great jones street (1973), a much older novel about fear and loathing in the east village.
***which could be a horrible caricature, for all i know (i've never been to pittsburgh) - it just felt lived to me.
01.12.10
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 2
SURVIVOR: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)*
CHALLENGER: why buffy matters: the art of buffy the vampire slayer (rhonda wilcox)
it became apparent over the weekend that rhonda wilcox's why buffy matters, not jonathan lethem's chronic city, would be bringing the pain to chandler; WBM was my subway book, and i spent a hell of a lot of time on the subway (chronic city, a hardcover, is my nightstand book, and i also spent a hell of a lot of time sleeping). as i thought about how rhonda versus ray would unfold, i realized that i've been rooting for the lady for some time now. chandler champions the detective story like, well, a champ; i re-eally wanted professor wilcox to throw a few of those punches for buffy the vampire slayer in her essay collection. buffy the television series has been close to my heart since my freshman year of college, when my hippie roommate's dad called from vermont and insisted we find a set and watch this thing about high school and the undead;** it's one of the scariest ("hush"), funniest ("once more, with feeling"), most moving ("the body") things ever to happen to network television. affection biases me, of course. does it bias wilcox? as one critic noted in a rather scathing review,
VICTOR: chandler. though the audience was with wilcox, ray (the critic) has ice water in his veins.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 2
SURVIVOR: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)*
CHALLENGER: why buffy matters: the art of buffy the vampire slayer (rhonda wilcox)
it became apparent over the weekend that rhonda wilcox's why buffy matters, not jonathan lethem's chronic city, would be bringing the pain to chandler; WBM was my subway book, and i spent a hell of a lot of time on the subway (chronic city, a hardcover, is my nightstand book, and i also spent a hell of a lot of time sleeping). as i thought about how rhonda versus ray would unfold, i realized that i've been rooting for the lady for some time now. chandler champions the detective story like, well, a champ; i re-eally wanted professor wilcox to throw a few of those punches for buffy the vampire slayer in her essay collection. buffy the television series has been close to my heart since my freshman year of college, when my hippie roommate's dad called from vermont and insisted we find a set and watch this thing about high school and the undead;** it's one of the scariest ("hush"), funniest ("once more, with feeling"), most moving ("the body") things ever to happen to network television. affection biases me, of course. does it bias wilcox? as one critic noted in a rather scathing review,
One thing that doing graduate school work on Star Trek taught me is that while academia had given me a new and powerful vocabulary to discuss television, and enabled me to put the smackdown on people who disagreed with my analysis much more effectively because a lot of people are intimidated by academic-sounding phrases, it didn't particularly make me a better critic of shows or movies of which I am a fan.that's a bit harsh; enthusiasm and a critical eye don't have to be mutually exclusive. some of my favorite critics are tough lovers, if you will. i do, however, think wilcox is unconsciously preaching to the converted; though she addresses her introduction to both pre- and post-buffy readers,*** she doesn't always show her work. i love, for example, a riff spawned by her discussion of riley (buffy's milquetoast mid-series love interest) as virgil's aeneas:
At this point I can't resist indulging in a brief digression. The other two major Greco-Roman epics [re: the Aeneid] are, of course, the Iliad and the Odyssey; their heroes are Achilles and Odysseus, respectively. Aeneas, Achilles, and Odysseus certainly represent three very different types of hero. And it seems to me that they correlate to the three main romantic interests in Buffy's life. Achilles, who sulks and broods in his tent, is an extraordinarily powerful warrior who sometimes fights for the right and sometimes does not, and gloomily ponders his own curious form of immortality--Achilles is of course Angel. Odysseus, who has a wonderful facility with language, who is a trickster in both word and deed, who is a great fighter but does not seem to take that as his defining characteristic, who enjoys having sex and is more or less kind to the various women he encounters but is basically a one-woman man, who actually enjoys hanging out with and fighting alongside the goddess of defensive warfare (Athena) - Odysseus, my favorite, is Spike.do i love it because i'm pro-spuffy (that is, spike plus buffy; spuffy's web presence is a frightening thing) or because she makes a good point? at the end of the day, wilcox has done some fine work (in "pain as bright as steel," on the operation of joseph campbell's monomyth in buffy) and some not-so-fine work (did the world need "when harry met buffy," on "buffy summers, harry potter, and heroism"?). if you're already a fan, she'll drive you to rearrange your netflix queue (or drive you to your DVD collection, if you're that type). if you're not, she'll...hmm. i will tell you what my friend george thinks of buffy as art if i can trap him under something heavy and force him to read it.
VICTOR: chandler. though the audience was with wilcox, ray (the critic) has ice water in his veins.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 are you a buffy fan?
02 if so, who's your favorite of the love interests? do you buy wilcox's parallels?
03 if not, what's wrong with why not?
04 have you ever written an academic paper about television? (full disclosure: i wrote a freshman civ essay on odysseus and james t. kirk. let us draw the curtain of feigned forgetfulness around my TA's response.)
05 what do you consider the scariest, funniest, or most moving things on television, network or otherwise?
*previous round here.
**the writers' treatment of buffy's cataclysmic breakup in season 2 was especially resonant for me, though in retrospect anyanka the vengeance demon and i had more in common than angelus the once-again-evil vampire and my poor ex ever did.
*** "I hope you will read the succeeding chapters and find it easier to believe that television can be art - and that you will then begin (if you have not already done so) to watch Buffy."
01.07.10
i make note of what i read fairly casually. i name-check the latest twelve books here at kidchamp HQ (in the column at right), i keep a longhand list on a spare page of my weekly planner each year,* and i chat about notable bits now and again. all of that is amusing enough, but it's not especially useful. i reviewed my 2009 list as i snazzed up my planner with a crisp new annual insert, and while i know that raymond chandler's the long goodbye was, to me, the best of the bunch (and that kazuo ishiguro's marvelous never let me go gave it a run for its money), i'd have to chew on my thumb for a bit before i could tell you why. as many former english majors and current black turtleneck wearers know, immediate, biased hierarchies can be much more fun (unpacking, all the works and days of hands: there will, forgive me, be time). moreover, the part of me that's twelve and a boy has been thinking about deathmatches, as one does. so: 2010 will be a year of immediate tussles. when i conclude a read, i'll explain (with the flush of the endpage yet upon my fingers) why it did or didn't best the reigning champ. two books enter, one book leaves.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 1
SURVIVOR: pride and prejudice and zombies: dawn of the dreadfuls (steve hockensmith)
CHALLENGER: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)
first, let's recognize steve hockensmith's good sportsmanship in taking on a completely original prequel to seth grahame-smith's cult hit (last year's pride and prejudice and zombies), a novel which is 85% jane austen; i shudder to think of the comparisons and superfan enmity in store for him. that said, hockensmith came up with new zombie jokes and eschewed the scatological stuff (e.g. wickham's spectacular and frequently referenced incontinence) that bogged P&P&Z down - and he had an interesting take on why elizabeth bennet is eventually so resistant to mr. darcy (she has been disappointed by two would-be suitors: dr. keckilpenny, the too-cerebral zombie whisperer, and master hawksworth, the secretly marzipan-filled deadly arts instructor). dawn of the dreadfuls could have been better (i vastly preferred the original satire), but it could easily have been much worse.
and then there's the rusty-but-perilous buzzsaw of the simple art of murder, a collection of entertaining-but-not-epic stories by one of my favorite writers that begins with a really spectacular essay. chandler defends well-written detective stories as nimbly as austen defended novels in her day; it's satisfying to see genre snobbery deflated. i don't even mind his fightin' words for sir arthur conan doyle, for he's right:
VICTOR: chandler, without breaking a sweat. he'd better rest up, though: i just started jonathan lethem's chronic city, and it's fabulous.
i make note of what i read fairly casually. i name-check the latest twelve books here at kidchamp HQ (in the column at right), i keep a longhand list on a spare page of my weekly planner each year,* and i chat about notable bits now and again. all of that is amusing enough, but it's not especially useful. i reviewed my 2009 list as i snazzed up my planner with a crisp new annual insert, and while i know that raymond chandler's the long goodbye was, to me, the best of the bunch (and that kazuo ishiguro's marvelous never let me go gave it a run for its money), i'd have to chew on my thumb for a bit before i could tell you why. as many former english majors and current black turtleneck wearers know, immediate, biased hierarchies can be much more fun (unpacking, all the works and days of hands: there will, forgive me, be time). moreover, the part of me that's twelve and a boy has been thinking about deathmatches, as one does. so: 2010 will be a year of immediate tussles. when i conclude a read, i'll explain (with the flush of the endpage yet upon my fingers) why it did or didn't best the reigning champ. two books enter, one book leaves.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 1
SURVIVOR: pride and prejudice and zombies: dawn of the dreadfuls (steve hockensmith)
CHALLENGER: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)
first, let's recognize steve hockensmith's good sportsmanship in taking on a completely original prequel to seth grahame-smith's cult hit (last year's pride and prejudice and zombies), a novel which is 85% jane austen; i shudder to think of the comparisons and superfan enmity in store for him. that said, hockensmith came up with new zombie jokes and eschewed the scatological stuff (e.g. wickham's spectacular and frequently referenced incontinence) that bogged P&P&Z down - and he had an interesting take on why elizabeth bennet is eventually so resistant to mr. darcy (she has been disappointed by two would-be suitors: dr. keckilpenny, the too-cerebral zombie whisperer, and master hawksworth, the secretly marzipan-filled deadly arts instructor). dawn of the dreadfuls could have been better (i vastly preferred the original satire), but it could easily have been much worse.
and then there's the rusty-but-perilous buzzsaw of the simple art of murder, a collection of entertaining-but-not-epic stories by one of my favorite writers that begins with a really spectacular essay. chandler defends well-written detective stories as nimbly as austen defended novels in her day; it's satisfying to see genre snobbery deflated. i don't even mind his fightin' words for sir arthur conan doyle, for he's right:
Every detective story writer makes mistakes, of course, and none will ever know as much as he should. Conan Doyle made mistakes which completely invalidated some of his stories, but he was a pioneer, and Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue.one could say the same thing about chandler himself - in fact, that's my reaction to the rest of the stories in the collection - but the attitude and dialogue really are indelible.
VICTOR: chandler, without breaking a sweat. he'd better rest up, though: i just started jonathan lethem's chronic city, and it's fabulous.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what was the best thing you read last year?
02 anything good on the nightstand at present?
03 speaking of conan doyle - and fighting - have you seen guy ritchie's sherlock holmes? what did you think?
*as one of my sisters does, as we discovered over the holidays; is that a common thing? did art garfunkel's celebrated reading list move the nation?**
**i considered turning my list into artgarfunkelwouldbesodisappointed.blogspot.com, but my sloth's claws are too unwieldy for two blogs.
01.06.10
i tipped my fuzzy hat to raymond chandler by ordering a gimlet in brooklyn last week. i botched the recipe* when i accepted the drink with ice, which could account for the mayhem that followed later that night; i mean, i'm only 75% likely to drag a random christmas tree down the street on my own. i was feeling a bit bereft, though, as i was about to finish the simple art of murder. unless i become a serious pulp archaeologist and start hunting down old issues of black mask, i'm running out of chandler - which is a damn shame. i am extremely picky about who is** and isn't*** allowed to write about california, and chandler makes most of the good guys look like amateurs. to borrow a phrase from a subway poster that always makes me giggle, when chandler is on fire, no one can touch him.****
so if you live in los angeles i wouldn't mind having a look in your basement, is what i'm saying.
i tipped my fuzzy hat to raymond chandler by ordering a gimlet in brooklyn last week. i botched the recipe* when i accepted the drink with ice, which could account for the mayhem that followed later that night; i mean, i'm only 75% likely to drag a random christmas tree down the street on my own. i was feeling a bit bereft, though, as i was about to finish the simple art of murder. unless i become a serious pulp archaeologist and start hunting down old issues of black mask, i'm running out of chandler - which is a damn shame. i am extremely picky about who is** and isn't*** allowed to write about california, and chandler makes most of the good guys look like amateurs. to borrow a phrase from a subway poster that always makes me giggle, when chandler is on fire, no one can touch him.****
(from "the simple art of murder," a 1944 essay on detective stories)
There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.
Other things being equal, which they never are, a more powerful theme will provoke a more powerful performance. Yet some very dull books have been written about God, and some very fine ones about how to make a living and stay fairly honest.
(from "the king in yellow")
Steve stared into her eyes and said softly: "I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard."
(from "pearls are a nuisance")
I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.
(from "smart-aleck kill")
There was a smell of food and liquor and perfume and face powder. The dance floor was an empty splash of amber light and looked slightly larger than a screen star's bath mat.
(from "nevada gas")
Francine Ley said: "I didn't have anything to do with it, Johnny." Her voice was as dead as the summer before last.
so if you live in los angeles i wouldn't mind having a look in your basement, is what i'm saying.
*per terry lennox in the long goodbye, "a real gimlet is half gin and half rose's lime juice and nothing else. it beats martinis hollow."
**joan didion.
***thomas pynchon. i will find you, pynchon.
****(without tongs.)
07.23.09
i never did mention how the raymond chandler "what's yr take on cassavetes"* fact-finding mission wound up, did i? i finished tom hiney's biography a month ago and decided that i do like chandler...and don't like hiney. my impression of chandler is that he was maladjusted and mostly well-intentioned rather than hateful; he spent most of his life performing chivalrous acts for and/or proposing to various women (his mother, then his invalid wife, cissy, then personal assistants and agents and anyone who'd stand still long enough, really). the rest of the time he was drinking: at one point in his later years, as a friend recalled, he had crate upon crate of rose's lime juice (for gimlets) delivered directly to his house in la jolla.** he was devoted to his cat, too, and my feelings about that kind of man are well-documented.
robert moss's brilliant review of hiney's work plucks apart nearly all of his hunks of questionable research; if you're a chandler nut or the sort who gets off on muscular fact-checking (cough), it's worth a read. to make a long complaint short, characters' quotes are repeatedly handled like direct observations from chandler, and that's more than a little shady - and hiney doesn't appear to have read the novels very carefully (he flubs all kinds of plot points in his summaries***). he did include chandler's notes for a cookbook, however -
speaking of chandler quotes, another handful:
i never did mention how the raymond chandler "what's yr take on cassavetes"* fact-finding mission wound up, did i? i finished tom hiney's biography a month ago and decided that i do like chandler...and don't like hiney. my impression of chandler is that he was maladjusted and mostly well-intentioned rather than hateful; he spent most of his life performing chivalrous acts for and/or proposing to various women (his mother, then his invalid wife, cissy, then personal assistants and agents and anyone who'd stand still long enough, really). the rest of the time he was drinking: at one point in his later years, as a friend recalled, he had crate upon crate of rose's lime juice (for gimlets) delivered directly to his house in la jolla.** he was devoted to his cat, too, and my feelings about that kind of man are well-documented.
robert moss's brilliant review of hiney's work plucks apart nearly all of his hunks of questionable research; if you're a chandler nut or the sort who gets off on muscular fact-checking (cough), it's worth a read. to make a long complaint short, characters' quotes are repeatedly handled like direct observations from chandler, and that's more than a little shady - and hiney doesn't appear to have read the novels very carefully (he flubs all kinds of plot points in his summaries***). he did include chandler's notes for a cookbook, however -
It will have such headlines as:- and i appreciate that.
HOW TO BROIL A STEAK - DON'T
HOW TO MAKE COFFEE THAT DOESN'T TASTE LIKE COLORED WATER
DISHES THAT TAKE ALL DAY AND THE HELL WITH THEM
REALLY GOOD MASHED POTATOES ARE AS RARE AS VIRGINS, BUT ANY FOOL CAN MAKE THEM IF HE TRIES.
speaking of chandler quotes, another handful:
(from the high window, 1942)god he's good.
He lifted his hands off the desk and made a steeple of the fingers, like an old time family lawyer getting set for a little tangled grammar.
(from the lady in the lake, 1943)
I separated another dollar from my exhibit and it went into his pocket with a sound like caterpillars fighting.
The self-operating elevator was carpeted in red plush. It had an elderly perfume in it, like three widows drinking tea.
(from the little sister, 1949)
"Will you make love to me tonight?" she asked softly.
"That again is an open question. Probably not."
"You would not waste your time. I am not one of these synthetic blondes with a skin you could strike matches on. These ex-laundresses with large bony hands and sharp knees and unsuccessful breasts."
*"genius! misogynist! / messiah! alcoholic!"
**i would probably have to maintain a near-constant state of inebriation to live in la jolla as well, but that's neither here nor there.
***at one point he directly contradicted what i'd just read; i did a bit of checking around and realized he was summarizing a film version of one of the novels instead of the novel itself. yikes.
05.19.09: hard-boiled wonderland
when i mowed through stephenie meyer's supercheesy twilight series last year, the subject was the hook: i can't stand meyer's writing style, but i love all things vampire-related.* now, after reading the big sleep for my 101 in 1001 list, i find myself scrambling for raymond chandler novels with what seems like the flip side of those feelings: detective novels don't usually do it for me, and i really dislike guys'-guy characters...but chandler is so much fun, so bone dry yet maudlin, so preposterous and great. the upside of this is that i'm having windfall fun with a genre that had always seemed awfully flat to me; the downer is that i'm falling in love with a writer who might or might not be, well, a total asshole (if you take him and the novels at face value, a misanthrope's the nicest thing he could be). i'm turning to an expert (tom hiney, whose biography of the guy was a times notable book in 1999) for context; in the meantime, i'm going ahead with the shameless page-turning.** some of the passages i've dogeared:
have you read chandler? what'd you think?
when i mowed through stephenie meyer's supercheesy twilight series last year, the subject was the hook: i can't stand meyer's writing style, but i love all things vampire-related.* now, after reading the big sleep for my 101 in 1001 list, i find myself scrambling for raymond chandler novels with what seems like the flip side of those feelings: detective novels don't usually do it for me, and i really dislike guys'-guy characters...but chandler is so much fun, so bone dry yet maudlin, so preposterous and great. the upside of this is that i'm having windfall fun with a genre that had always seemed awfully flat to me; the downer is that i'm falling in love with a writer who might or might not be, well, a total asshole (if you take him and the novels at face value, a misanthrope's the nicest thing he could be). i'm turning to an expert (tom hiney, whose biography of the guy was a times notable book in 1999) for context; in the meantime, i'm going ahead with the shameless page-turning.** some of the passages i've dogeared:
(from the big sleep, 1939)
Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else's rain.
(from farewell, my lovely, 1940)
The big man said: "Now that we are all between pals and no ladies present we don't really give so much time to why you went back up there, but this Hemingway stuff is what really has me down."
"A gag," I said. "An old, old gag."
"Who is this Hemingway person at all?"
"A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good."
(from the long goodbye, 1953, my favorite thus far)
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.
At three A.M. I was walking the floor and listening to Khachaturyan working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it.
I might even have got rich - small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast-iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.
have you read chandler? what'd you think?
*and zombie-related, apparently. not sure when they shambled into the tent, but there they are.
**it's best when you read it aloud in your head with a beaky gumshoe voice.
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