Same Old Same Old: Pelecanos, Lightman, Hassman

by Weston Cutter

I’ve been doing a shit job lately here and have nothing but busyness to blame, plus of course the fact that once a week I’m dumping energy into the Kenyon Blog and not here (latest [about masterful John Leonard's great Reading For My Life] here). Whatever.

I’ve actually been reading lots, have a stack here of 11 books I’ve read since the year’s start, but we’ll see how long it takes to cover each. I’m not making any claims: I just want to get through this stuff in decent time.

What It Was by George Pelecanos

This actually might be my favorite Pelecanos novel so far—simply because the threads were so deeply buried I couldn’t, by page 120, remember all the plot complications that’d led me through those pages. The cast of characters in What It Was is bigger than anything of his I’ve read before, and the twists slicker, the sleight-of-hand surer. Weirdly, it feels like a less oomph of a book—less somehow deep-digging as his last two, though I think this book simply feels lighter because 1) it’s set in the 1970′s, and 2) the whole book is, the reader understands, a conversation between two dudes at a bar, present-day. One of the guys is telling of his start as a private detective, and the story’s about as satisfying a pulpy crime novel as you’re likely to read in a good while.

Mr g by Alan Lightman

I’ll admit to being one of those Einstein’s Dreams dorks—I think I’ve purchased and given away like 5 copies of that thing (it’s like The Alchemist but less treacly)—and that therefore I was hugely pumped to read Mr g, which—it says right there on the cover—is a novel about the creation. Yes! Speculative fiction from the great Lightman! People, no: this might be the least compelling novel I’ve ever read. It’s not that it’s bad—I don’t think Lightman’s a bad writer—it’s that it’s boring, and it’s silly, and it’s pretentious as hell, pretending to bite off the most compellingly mysterious chunk of life and then playing emptily with it. Read it only for frustration, and hope Lightman’s next outing will take him some place much more fruitful than this.

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

I was hoping to be able to feature an interview with Ms Hassman along with a long review of her book, but she never responded to the questions. I’m gonna go ahead and jump on Megan Mayhew Bergman’s review of the book from a few weeks back at the NYTimes, which I thought was thorough and accurate if, of course, slightly shorter than it could/should be. Girlchild is, actually, a fucking great book—the first great book of 2012, for my money. It’s not just that Rory Hendrix is an unstoppably entertaining and heart-breaking and vivid character, or that the book’s got its share of post-modern trickery (blacked-out passages, sections written by Rory’s mother’s social-worker), or that the book’s balance of startling frankness and incredible fragility should be enough to make anyone real grateful for the book’s existence—it’s all of those, plus the fact that Hassman’s made a novel, a real story. This isn’t just some stuffed-together nonsense: the book adds up, and you close the pages feeling changed, weight added to your inside bits. This one’s a stunner: I’m amazed the book hasn’t gotten much much bigger and more notice—it sure as hell deserves it.

Giving Away Chapbooks, Skating + Reading DC

by Weston Cutter

Yes: still blogging at Kenyon Review—another month—and recent stuff’s here and here (that second post is one I’m actually finally thrilled about–it’s about the massive problems with how narrative is used in contemporary writing on the food industry) to go check out. Also: recent work just went live at Scythe, which is a place I didn’t know enough about before but hot damn do they do great stuff.

Along that line: I was finalisted yet again in a chapbook contest. This is, of course, cool, and I’m excited, and sure would’ve loved to have been the picked winner. Still: great. Burnside’s amazing. I did get to thinking, though, that it seems silly that I’ve got all these poems and books and etc., and they’re all sitting on my own hard drive, doing no one any good. So: you can now download a pdf of a chapbook of mine right here. It’s called Scarcity Models vs the Heart’s Brick Factory. I’m literally just putting it here because it’s not in any contests right now and I’m tired of having stuff almost but not quite out for whatever. To the right you’ll see the first image result if you enter the chap’s title on Google. Download it if you’d like. Pass it around. Enjoy. Now, some reviews.

 

On a Day With No Waves by Raphael Zarka

Because I’ve got a good + strident friend who’s deeply and life-long into skateboarding, I’ve ended up with skateboarding in the margins of my life for a long while now. I’m drawn by/to skateboarding in the same way I was by/to the city bikers and messengers on fixies from maybe 8 years ago: there’s a relationship between skater/biker and city that I admire and wish I had. Nobody driving can possibly have a relationship to movement or streets or the basic geography of urbanity that a skateboarder can. Which is of course obvious, but you still need to read Raphael Zarka’s incredible On a Day With No Waves. Why?

First, most boringly and obviously: the subtitle, A Chronicle of Skateboarding 1779-2009 is not at all a typo or intending to be clever or cute: Zarka brings a smattering of historical examples into play to allow the development of the skateboard—starting for real in the 50′s in the States—to feel grounded historically, but also to try to tease out the Zarka’s broader thesis. Which is, ultimately, abstract and hugely cool: that skateboarding is what it is not just because it’s pleasurable or whatever but because the machine facilitates and allows that unique relationship between human and city that’s unavailable elsewhere (unless you’re a die-hard city biker and believe that, which I think is arguable). This all sounds hoity-toity and French and metaphysical, and it sort of is, but I’m telling you, the book is riveting: Zarka’s focus stays tightly on skateboarding as an experience which allows flex and flow within it—a static thing made of motion. Skateboarding, in Zarka’s able work, is a unique opportunity for all of us to play with and in and against the gray heavy-dutiness of a city. It’s phenomenally cool reading: I can think of no recent book which’ll so light so many disparate parts of your brain.

The Cut by George Pelecanos

I interviewed Pelecanos a bit back for the Kenyon Review blog, which I feel makes this pretty obvious and foregone: hell yes I like his books (and his TV writing). His new one, The Cut, qualifies for consideration as his best yet: Spero Lucas, the book’s hero, is fascinating and great in more complex and whole ways than even the heroes in Long Way Home, his last one. You want more than a great, conflicted, out-for-redemption character? Fine: the plot here’s tight enough to induce sensations of g-force just by reading (my spouse and I each read it on a beach in a day, hardly getting up from our chairs). There’s this whole other thing, too, that makes Pelecanos so great: dude’s local. He writes Washington, DC. I asked him about it in the interview, and you can go read his answer, but you sort of can’t grasp how cool it is to read mystery/thriller-type stuff set in a real contemporary place until you come across it. I’ll here note that Hammett and the old legendary greats of pulp stuff did the same: Pelecanos is upholding a great tradition (along with, of course, Price and Lehane and the handful of other absolute genuises).

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by Weston Cutter

1) I’m still writing for the Kenyon Review blog (and have poems in their upcoming fall issue), so the bulk of my online work’s been directed that-a-way. Recent things: an interview with George Pelecanos and a long conversation with the fantastic Lily Brown about Wallace Stevens, an awesome interview with Alex Lemon which focuses much of its time and energy on baseball, a review of the stellar Just My Type by Simon Garfield. There was also a long, 2-part conversation with John Gallaher awhile back—can’t remember if I noted it here or not, but there it is. Keep tracking the site—I’m there through October and will have, among other things, a review of one of the best infographic books in who knows how long, The Real State of America Atlas, plus hopefully a long interview with Richard Buckner about books and music.

2) New work: I’ve got something in the latest issue of Muzzle magazine, though the issue’s chock full of far better shit than the absolute best I could possibly write. Also had a thing in the latest issue of MAYDAY, which is pretty okay too.

3) There’ve been a ton of books this summer that I haven’t taken the time to review fully (plus music!) and now it’s coming autumn again so I feel terrible and compelled to get bunches done. Expect short reviews for the next while, at least from me: there’s a ton to wade through. A couple books demand long-form reviews—chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is crazy good—but otherwise I want to just get things covered. Apologies to the books/authors for not being more thorough—and let’s start now:

Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill. Did you hear about this book? You probably should have—the similarities to Donald Ray Pollock are striking (rust belt state author with blue collar life by himself cracks his own code and writes incredibly, plus for each man the writing’s full of violence and brutishness), but that’s not reason to hear about it—you should’ve heard about it because the book’s fucking breathless, will knock you on your ass. I read the opening story, “Hill Clan Cross,” while I ate lunch one day and had to stop reading—it wasn’t ruining the meal, but I didn’t want to divide my attention between sandwich and book. You want sentences that just haul ass? “Bonfire bent his knees to standing. Turned to Willie, whose taffy-pink palm reached for Bonfire’s hand that held the .38, pressed his forehead into the heated barrel. His clouded eyes dug through Bonfire.” I don’t know what to call it—it’s not straight noir nor pulp nor gothic, this writing and these stories, it’s just good, and thick, and impossibly dark and moral and worth reading.

The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison. Jesus, just read this. I don’t know what to say—lots of the blurby stuff in the book features commentary on how the book’s brutal and gorgeous, and I’d agree fully. I’d also say it’s sadder by miles—real sad, in true ways—than anything I’ve read in awhile. I didn’t see this one coming, and maybe you missed it too, but it’s been out in paperback for awhile: get on this.

Gimme Mystery: Michael Connelly

by Weston Cutter

Michael Connelly’s The Reversal is mildly frustrating as a book, in the exact same way that ice cream’s mildly frustrating as a food product: it’s pretty easy to, once you’ve indulged yourself, keep on indulging, and then suddenly the half-gallon of Blue Bunny you intended to eat little bits of over a week has become dinner. It’s that sort of frustrating.

Lemme say this again: I don’t read mysteries, or don’t have a background in them, but I’m trying to, I’m getting there. These books—plotted tightly, anxiety-inducing, moderately but almost pleasingly sabotaged/undermined by the mystery/detective schtick (hard-boiled your mom, square-jawed you bet, damsels and distress and my oh my)—are easy for us jerks of literary snobbery to dismiss, but what these books do, and how they do it, is worth the time spent on them (best I’ve seen so far: Steinhauer’s The Nearest Exit and Pelecanos’s The Way Home).

I’d argue, hard, that mysteries are satisfying enough strictly because of their plots, though there’s more to it. Since this is a review of Connelly’s The Reversal, let’s be specific: the story’s lead, Mickey Haller, starts the book by taking on, as a prosecutor (which is an inversion for him—dude’s typically a defense attorney, and so the reader’s got permutation #1 of how the title might apply.), a case the LA DA’s office gonna be retrying after the convict was cleared, on DNA evidence, of a murder he was tried and imprisoned for in ’86. That, by itself, would be worth reading, in all likelihood—one guy’s conversion from one side of the legal bench to another, an investigation built around the shotgun blast of new evidence gutting the old case.

But it’s not just that: the chapters in Connelly’s Reversal flip-flop—every-other chapter’s written in first person, from Mickey’s point of view, and every-other one’s written in third person, from the point of view of Harry Bosch—a character Connelly’s built a series around already. This, I’d argue, is what makes a book like this fun: there are clearly moments in The Reversal in which Connelly’s lobbing softballs to folks who’ve already read the Bosch books, and at those points (moments when Bosch and Mickey [who happen to be half-brothers, by the by] brought up old cases, things that’d happened to either of them, specifically the whereabouts of Bosch’s wife, a situation that certainly must be covered in some book behind this one) I felt…lonely, I suppose. I felt left out. I wanted to know what was going on.

So it’s this weird satisfaction that’s offered, both character-based and plot-based. We’re narrative animals; we take pleasure in story. Mysteries are, far as I can tell, some of the purest stories presently offered.

———–

What actually happens in this book? How’s it go from A to B? It’s weird, or at least the book struck me as mildly weird: there’s a halting progress to The Reversal, an over-written quality. There are macguffin-y headfakes about the being-retried prisoner, Jason Jessup, who is, unfortunately, never offered in much more than a single dimension, which is probably the only thing I’d seriously want to bemoan at length. Jessup’s an interesting character—convicted young for killing (but not raping, as one would almost suspect of a character the reader’s supposed to instantly loathe) a girl he kidnapped from her front yard, it’s emphasized plenty that he’s leading a split life: in daytime, he’s a celebrity, having been sprung by DNA evidence after more than 20 years inside; at night, he’s a prowling loner, making moves which raise much—questions, stakes, eyebrows.

Because it’s a mystery, and therefore spilling too much about the plot would be unfair to the book itself, I’ll just say that what (if I’m right) ended up being The Reversal of the title is not quite as satisfying as I’d hope: there was a chance for large character-based drama, but Connelly instead chooses several white-knuckle chapters in which setting, amazingly, matters as much as anything. I feel like I’m approaching ludicrious waters now, at least regarding lit analysis, so I’ll leave it at that.

Still, despite Jessup not being the character he could be, The Reversal‘s a hell of a lot of fun, a fast book to plough glad through these crisp autumn days. Not for nothing, too, it’s hard to imagine reading this book and not automatically being interested in more Bosch books—one doesn’t want to feel left out next time, now does one?

Pelecanos, The Wire, and the Crime-slash-Literary

by Weston Cutter

            What’s funny is that there’s a decent chance you’ve watched more George Pelecanos writing than you’ve ever read (the guy was one of the writers for The Wire). And if you have watched The Wire, you know the series’s arc is as thick and rich and inbent as any novel (ar, at least, as any novel by Dennis Lehane, Richard Price or Pelecanos, ¾ of the show’s writers)(David Simon, the show’s creator, is the fourth, and his The Corner looks awesome, and I’m sure it’s great, I just haven’t gotten to it).

            Which is why reading Pelecanos (or Price, or Lehane) causes, post-Wire, a sort of strange sensation, maybe like watching your favorite baseball player playing for a new team. Pelecanos’ new novel, The Way Home, is just crazily good in all the satisfying ways you want from a crime/mystery novel (the cover blurb, at least on the ARC, correctly points out that the trio of Lehan/Price/Pelecanos are pushing “the boundaries of crime writing into literary territory.”).

            What’s coolest about this book—and the reason it’s pushing boundaries—is because it’s equally fun and engaging to read as a what-comes-next crime/mystery book and as a redemption/character-driven literary work. At the work’s center is Christopher Flynn, a kid who got into trouble as a juvenile, spends time locked up (here’s the automatic idle Q: when you read Price, Lehane, and Pelecanos, do you automatically picture sort of similar places [juvenile detention facilities, for instance] for each of them?), and, eventually, is back in the world, attempting to make his way and working for his dad’s carpet installation company.

            And Christopher’s relationship to his dad is what makes this story such a monumentally good read: these are real, complete, complex characters, Christopher and his dad (who, initially-confusingly, is often just called Flynn in the narration, so there’s a headscratching element at the start). More than just complex and complete characters, their relationship is amazingly real and about as true-feeling as any relationship you’re likely to find, crime fiction or literary fiction or whatever. It’s (of course) vital that the plot device (it’s a bag of money; I suppose it’s safe to mention that) shows up while Christopher’s working for his father; it’s equally important that Christopher’s working with an old friend of his from the juvenile detention facility when thing’s start moving.

            As in The Wire and his other books, Pelecanos’ The Way Home features messy one-good-vs-another-good moral stuff at work, and while it’d be easy to say the book’s focus is on something maybe reducible to ‘redemption,’ it’s actually more complext than that: what the book’s heart beats for and toward is how we square things, how we view things, and how we try to negotiate the dicey boundary between past and present (and it really does feel like it’s about we when you read the book—it’s hard not to feel resolutely [and, at times, frustratedly and unhappily] wound tight in the heads of the characters [even though it's not first-person]). It’s a great, great read, and it’s going to officially be the Summer Reading Season pretty soon: make The Way Home yr required mystery/crime/literary read.