Greetings!
If you’re new here, I’m Terry Freedman. I love writing, reading and writing. If you like this article, why not subscribe?
Greetings!
I’ve been catching up on my reading, and here is the result, largely based on books I’ve recenltly been sent by publishers. Several of these are not yet published, so consider those reviews, or partial reviews, to be a series of heads-ups.
The books I’ve looked at are:
Celtic Wonder Tales
Hard Rain Falling
La Brava
The Life of Crime
Split Images
The Complete C Comics
Here is where we meet
About Looking
Giovanni’s Room
G.
… though not necessarily in that order, because I’m feeling rebellious!
But enough of this persiflage! On with the newsletter.
Split Images, by Elmore Leonard
I’ve just started reading this, and it has me gripped already. I like the fact that it doesn’t mess about: no long-winded descriptions of the dawn in russet mantle clad walking over the hills and all that rot. Well, not so far at least. In fact, the beginning is so straightforward that I wondered for a moment if I was reading non-fiction.
Is it me, or is there some bleak humour here? A bloke has entered a millionaire’s home uninvited, and the owner has shot him. While he is lying in hospital, he tells the police officer interviewing him “I came here to search for my life.” The policeman responds: “You find it?”
Very deadpan I think.
I thought this would make a nice companion piece to Hard Rain Falling (see below). The nice people at Penguin also sent me another book by the same author — Elmore Leonard (who, by the way, receives no mention in The Life of Crime, reviewed below) — La Brava (ditto). They must think I need cheering up.
La Brava, by Elmore Leonard
Before I read a book properly, especially if it has only just arrived, I like to get its measure. I look it up and down. Are its shoes polished? Does it have a good job? Would I be happy if my daughter brought it home for dinner? In other words, does the first paragraph grab me, and does the next paragraph keep me gripped? This is important. I have too much to read, and too little time, to want to waste my life away being bored.
Thus it was that I opened La Brava.
I thought, “Another noir novel. Another murder mystery. Yawn.” But I started reading and, annoyingly, was hooked immediately. Why “annoyingly”? Because I already have several books on the go, and I was hoping to put this one aside for a few weeks. But as I say, I started reading, and by the time I put my now-empty cup of tea down I had read the first chapter. Like Split Images, the author launches straight in, no long description, no efflorescent prose, no persiflage.
Before I had received these books I was a straight down the line Raymond Chandler man. Now I can see I am going to have to widen the scope to include Elmore Leonard.
Celtic Wonder Tales, by Young, Gonne, et al
I am not familiar with Irish myths and tales, so this beautiful collection of stories is quite an eye-opener. One of the stories I have read so far is a rewrite —or a pre-write, I’m not sure which— of the Arthurian legend of the sword in the stone.
As you would expect, good battles with evil, which is clearly a universal theme.
The illustrations are quite ethereal, just like the text. As I might have said back in the days when I had waist-length hair, this book gives off good vibes.
Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter
This is a very compelling book to read, but to describe it as noir fiction is almost an understatement. It is pretty bleak most of the time. The protagonist doesn’t have much going for him, or at least has had a rotten start in life. I don’t wish to say too much because of spoilers but he does turn his life around to an extent.
I have no idea if the American penal system is as harsh as it seems to have been in the mid-60s, when this was first published, but Hard Rain Falling would be an excellent book to give someone who has embarked on a life of (petty) crime. Do consider this an idea for a present for the juvenile delinquent in your life.
The bleakness is such that I stopped reading the book in bed, because I didn’t want depressing dreams. But it’s a compelling read while ensconced in an armchair or on a train journey.
Two things I didn’t like much. Firstly, it doesn’t have the great lines we find in Raymond Chandler’s work, though I acknowledge that it’s probably not fair to compare the two writers.
More seriously, there are long, long passges of telling the reader what someone is thinking. The experience reminded me of those old movies and TV where ther is a voiceover telling you what’s going on instead of simply showing you.
Still, it’s a good read on the whole, and satisfyingly different from a lot of the new novels coming out these days.
The Life of Crime, by Martin Edwards
The Life of Crime is a 700+ pages volume covering all kinds of crime novel, tracing the genre from its beginnings in the 18th century right up to almost the present day. Mind you, despite its comprehensiveness it doesn’t appear to include the Cormoran Strike novels by Galbraith, at least not judging by the indexes. Note that plural. There’s an index of titles, index of names and a subject index, plus a select bibliography. I love all the cross-referencing, and the little known (by myself at any rate) facts.
For example, David Goodis wrote noir fiction that apparently was so bleak that another novellist, Ed Gorman, said of Goodis that:
He didn’t write novels, he wrote suicide notes.
What a recommendation!
Like all the best books, this can be read chronologically or dipped into. It will keep you engaged for a long time.
The Complete C Comics, by Joe Brainard & Bill Kartalopoulos
“Perfect is the enemy a good.” Are you familiar with that expression? I am (obviously) and I aspire to live by it, but rarely do. In a way, I am like Claudius in Hamlet:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts rarely to heaven go.
Thus it is that, if I spot an error in a drawing, I am very likely to erase that part of the drawing, or even discard it and start again. For example, if I draw a speech bubble that turns out to be too small for the amount of text I want to put in it, out comes the eraser.
But in C Comics, not only is the mistake left uncorrected, quite often it is adorned with an arrow actually pointing it out! This strikes me as a very psychologically healthy approach. As Kartalopoulos writes, in this way the error becomes part6 of the aesthetic.
I have enjoyed reading the C Comics, especially the mock advertisements and the parodies of famous comic book characters like Nancy, Archie and Veronica.
An essay by Bill Kartalopoulos gives us the history of the C comics, dating from the early 60s.
The C comics content is often weird, but in a good way!
Here is where we meet, by John Berger
A strange sort of book, this. A mixture, it seems to me, of fiction and autobiography. But some of the autobiography is, I believe, more true in an emotive sense than in a literal one; evocative, in the same way that Parisienne Walkways is evocative.
When people die, there is always a sadness, I think. As if their legacy is not necessarily anything tangible, but resides in the thoughts and memories of the people who threw them. Reading this book made me feel how I felt when I wrote about the Gold hawk café.
The story about visiting Borges’ grave was, dare I say it, haunting, and describes an occurrence that I think would have appealed to Borges himself.
The one about Kraków is beautiful, but punctuated abruptly by recollections of the Nazis, One such shocking interruption is the one about the Jewish ghetto, in which thousands of Jewish people died of malnutrition or disease.
The beautifully written introduction very much sets the tone of the booki: wistful, a little sad, but triumphant too.
About Looking, by John Berger
This is a collection of essays or meditations on looking and seeing or, fundamentally, visibility. The means of making something visible is important, but not necessarily the main point. Photography is covered, as in The suit and the Photograph, an essay on the work of Paul Strand, and a response to Susan Sontag’s book On Photography. Art is also covered, and I found his “take” on Magritte especially interesting.
The prose is functional, competent, rather than lyrical. No reason it should be lyrical, of course — this is a non-fiction book after all — but I do find it a little dry.
I’m looking forward to reading the chapters on Turner, Millet, and why we should look at animals.
Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin
Giovanni’s Room, which is the only work of James Baldwin’s that I’ve read so far apart from a few articles and a short story, starts at the end. The result is a story that is intriguing and gripping within the first few minutes.
The writing is both beautiful and effective. You can feel the walls of Giovanni’s Room bearing in on you. You feel grubby from the sleaziness of some of the settings and scenes — the ones which involve hanging around bars looking for someone to pick up.
All the characters are portrayed with sympathy and are well-drawn. They all feel like real people. The interesting thing is that even when the narrating character behaves reprehensibly, such as by not helping his friend Giovanni, you cannot bring yourself to judge him.
This is a definitely a book worth reading if you value good writing, an interesting story involving a young man struggling with his sexuality, and a glimpse into the underbelly of French nightlife.
My only criticism, which is unfair given that it was first published in 1956, is that David’s girlfriend Hella seems quaintly old-fashioned. She feels it is necessary to be attached to a man. This is strange, considering that she has been independently-minded enough to travel around Spain by herself.
She also makes a comment that perhaps even now is incisive and indisputable:
Americans should never come to Europe. It means they never can be happy again. What’s the good of an American who isn’t happy? Happiness was all we had.— Hella, in Giovanni’s Room
Thoroughly enjoyable, if at times uncomfortable, read.
G., by John Berger
The funny thing about reading the first few pages of a book is that the outcome can sometimes be the opposite of what you’d expect. Take G. for example. The blurb on the back cover reads:
“G. is a young man forging an energetic sexual career across Europe on the eve of the First World War.”
Really not my cup of tea at all, and the Introduction did nothing to persuade me otherwise.
Still, it is the duty of a reader to read, or at least have a damn good reason for shirking that duty. The possibility of sleaziness is less important to me than the beauty of the writing. True, that principle has not yet persuaded me to persist with Nabokov’s Lolita, but I held to it when embarking on Giovanni’s Room (see above).
So, I began to read this, and discovered writing that was gentle and lyrical. The strange thing is, though, that it is not obvious why that should be the case. The sentences seem somewhat staccato, but there is also a nice balance to them. Perhaps that’s it. Take this, for example:
“He arranged for singers, she reported to her mother, to accompany us at night, either side of us, in gondolas. I will remember it always.”
The characters I’ve met so far are interesting, their circumstances more so. I’m looking forward to reading the whole novel.
Thanks for reading this, I hope you found it enjoyable.
"I have too much to read, and too little time, to want to waste my life away being bored." Well said, Terry, and a great quote for a t-shirt. Maybe you and Elaine could open an online shop and sell merchandise with your drawings and quotations on them. I would be a customer. P.S. I enjoyed all of this post!
Elmore Leonard is one of my all-time favorites. He lived his entire life in greater Detroit and most of his stories are set in this gritty atmosphere and the swanky surrounding suburbs. His ear for dialog is unmatched and his humor is subtle and sometimes ironic. Several of his books were made into movies: "Get Shorty" for one.
Leonard's longtime researcher, Greg Sutter, has his own Substack where he shares stories of "Dutch" (Leonard's nickname) along with video clips from interviews and readings. It's a rabbit hole worth diving into.