Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Our man in New York, the one and only Frank Bascombe, is back with another look at those strange papery things that you can fill shelves with. You know... books. Check this out:
Before we get started this month I'd like to take some time to throw a really early sneak peek to a film that I'm sure you'll all be talking about in a few months, ‘Hard Scrambled’, directed by the extremely competent David Scott Hay, with dazzling camera work by a soon to be household name, Matthew Heckerling. Co-producer Michael Lent and I have become friends over the last few months and he was kind enough to share this little gem of a gritty crime comedy with me. Set in a diner in L.A. nowhere, we find Kurtwood Smith in what can only be described as his triumphant return to the big screen. Mr. Smith is beating ass…literary, and finds him self-married to a double-crossing Beth Grant, but she’s not really crossing anyone. Surprising even a jaded critic like myself is the fabulously underrated Eyal Podell as Scotty. He plays the thieving understudy with a wit as sharp as a bag of wet mice. He’s not Sean Penn, but he’s got something that I can't describe, and he plays it well. ‘Hard Scrambled’ is funny, witty, charming, and it’s got Richard Edson digging around in a mayonnaise jar (I think). Which is as far as I can go with this sneak peek. I promised Michael Lent that I wouldn't give too much away, or leave something indelible in a viewer’s head. Bottom line, check this out, I promise you'll dig it.
While I'm talking movies, let me tell you how I feel about ‘I'll Sleep When I'm Dead’, holy shit, what a movie. Wow. Wowie, Wow, Wow. Clive Owen, earth shattering. Mike Hodges, nearly God like. Subtle and deceptively brilliant our story doesn’t take us very far from the rain and cold of England, somewhere, or out of the darkness of night, which it always seems to be… the best is when Clive Owen shows up at someone’s house, whips some ass, then proceeds to the window to close the curtain, “I'm Will Graham, Davey Grahams brother…” Woops! This movie will remind you a lot of ‘Croupier’, which I adored, and the original ‘Get Carter’, which is an absolute must see. These movies all give off a distinct urgency of realism, in and about the people in a certain “place”. Are they the products of that place? What they do, did, and will do, is shocking, brutal and honest. Clive Owen is the new Michael Caine, the man to watch, and possible the coolest cat around. Trevor Preston is a writer on a level all his own.
Meanwhile…It’s Not A Secret Until I Tell Someone…
The Sleeper by Christopher Dickey
Simon & Schuster, 273 pages
You can count on one hand how many books on my shelves fit this description,
“…Page turning thriller…”
“…Fast read…”
“…You won’t be able to put this down…it leaves you hanging until the very last page…”
Does that make this book, which fits into those categories, bad? Certainly not, although it certainly is a dietetic infomercial for the McDonalds generation that I now find myself trapped in. After a long article in the New York Times month or so ago about post 9-11 books, I found my self compelled to read Mr. Dickey’s latest "thriller" about a subject that I’ve been avoiding like the flu since that awful day in September. Dickey has been avoiding it as well, and that’s just fine. Do I read books like this? Do I care? Certainly not and that’s okay. Reading and writing is so damn subjective that it ends up just being one mans opinion after all is said and done. I guess it’s my intelligence or that of the general reader which most I'm worried about being insulted. A lot like sitcom television, or Les Moonves who pretends the Big Mac loving world is interested only in Big Mac’s. If you've seen ‘Super Size Me’ you may agree with him. Happily… I don't.
Christopher Dickey has made a subject that is vexing and confusing very accessible and for that I applaud him. Try to find this book in your stores and you'll be hard pressed. Competently he tells the story of Kurt Kurtovic, ex army ranger and general loner, living a placid life in Kansas as the planes hit the towers. This story starts where so many others ended and that’s the main problem with this book. Like James Ellroy before him, Dickey could have easily followed. Instead of having the event and then its aftermath, he could have Kurt’s story lead up to that event, and end it like ‘American Tabloid’. We all know the world became a very small place for Bin Laden post 9-11 but what was happening before that? This is fiction of course, so why not go down that rabbit hole? Instead Dickey has Kurt travel the world and bring pain and finality to the demons that had anything to do with planning that terrorist attack. Fine. Great. How did this guy become who he is today? Why does he have a chemical weapon tucked in the freezer of a diner in his sleepy little American town? He’s a terrorist himself, sleeping carefully behind our wafer thin borders…waiting for the time to unleash hell on the great American way of life. But he’s got a conscious, and that’s the problem. The men who killed Kennedy didn't and that was the difference. Kurt comes home and then is dragged back into the post 9-11 war by his old friends who think he’s still dangerous and capable of unleashing the unthinkable on the world. He’s not and it’s his sophomoric leanings towards his family and Cracker Jack patriotism that is so, so, so much like a facade. The truth of it all is explained in a chapter at the end. Which if this were any other book would be unforgivable. Where’s the releasing of facts and tension through out the story? Why so much mystery and so little convenient payoff at the end? Yes. This is a fast read. Yes this book will scare you, if you're not scared already.
Fascination: Stories by William Boyd
Knopf, 275 pages
To be brutally honest, I've never in my life been at all interested in William Boyd, his books, or reading them. Surprisingly, that all changed when a copy of his latest, ‘Fascination’ found it’s way to my door. Knopf doesn't always honor my requests for galleys, that’s okay, I seem to find them anyway. Avoid I did, ‘Any Human Heart’, ‘Armadillo’, ‘The Blue Afternoon’, to name a few of his books that have sat within reach only to be discarded like yesterdays newspapers. Why? Who knows? But I tried, picking up each of the previously mentioned titles at least three times each in an attempt to read them. No luck. Into the fray I went, ‘Fascination’ in hand and what a glorious experience it was. William Boyd is one of those middle-aged masters of the woven sentence that defies logic, commercial or otherwise. Who knows the reason behind his virtual obscurity; sure the New York Times called ‘Any Human Heart’ the best book you've never read, or something to that effect. But what about this book? What will the pundits say when they've finished with this gem? We're lead deep into the mind of what seems to be a thousand different stories told from fractured perspectives, narratives, points of view and stylistic indifference. Leading with ‘Adult Video’, why haven't you done your thesis? Characters dip in and out Delillo style, paragraphs to them selves, with strands of narration running parallels. Why are we held in check with headings like 'fast-forward' and 'play', along with 'rewind'? Never mind. You can't answer these questions, read the story. Then there is ‘Varengeville’; a young man is given a bike to keep him busy while his adulterous mother sleeps with a local singer, and Daddy’s away, being a famous film director. Effecting as this story is, it’s not as shocking to find out that mom is on the prowl, but that son is quite happy with the knowledge that he is free from her apron strings, free with the knowledge that he could bring her world crumbling down at any moment. Men in odd spots, strange conclusions drawn by the actions of others, like in ‘Notebook No. 9’, a man writing his experiences down in a notebook, as if this story was snatched from his notebook, but it’s not, Boyd is here, but he creates that ultimate illusion, never reminding you that he’s writing these stories, a masterful trick. The narrator of this story is desperate for a bombshell actress he can't have, and that makes this story tick. That need. He writes women too, ‘Fantasia on a Favorite Waltz’, about a whore who loves the music of the Waltz, but she might be friendly with a famous piano player? Tricks, dirty, literate tricks are waiting up William Boyd’s sleeve. I loved these stories and surprised that I did, finally ‘The Mind/Body Problem’ a brilliant take on Americans fascination with the perfect physical form. ‘Vision Fugitives’ and ‘Incandescence’ are particularly confusing, leaving you completely lost, but that’s okay, a clunker now and again is to be expected in a collection that spans fourteen stories. Both stories make me wonder what Boyd was trying to describe? Does he know? William Boyd is a tricky writer, intellectually arrogant, and appealing to me in every way.
Got something you'd like to say? Let me know...
Thanks, Frank. Great stuff.
"Moriarty" out.
