ANOTHER MYSTERY, HALF READ

I've been trying to read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin, a mystery novel nominated for an award in the annual L.A. Times Book Festival, coming up at USC at the end of April.  

The book was one of five finalists, so I thought I'd take a look. I am always trying to find a good literary thriller, a novel that combines crime and violence with real fiction, an attempt at discovery of the self, a book about crime and violence that offers insight into human nature rather than simply escape.

Good friggin' luck.

I quit on Page 42, in the middle of a back-story chapter. Some of the writing is very good. In the first chapter, I only found two lines I wanted to scratch out. Of course I didn’t, since it is a library book.

I guess this book’s appeal is based on its exotic details: a body rotting in a swamp, found by the buzzards in the sky; a weird geeky guy who everyone thought murdered a missing girl years ago; the killing of that geeky guy; a love affair between a deputy constable and an EMT (paramedic); another missing girl.

That all sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I wish it was.

Ultimately, who cares? The back-story slowed it down, and I couldn’t finish it. It just didn’t hold my interest. I was doing OK until the back-story, which just got way too dull. But I saw no hints that the author was after any kind of truth.

I don't understand why these writers hunt such small game. Why shoot rabbits when you could shoot lions? (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

TAKING IT EASY

Not to get all amateur Dr. Freud here, but I think I've figured out why I was feeling guilty about having it so easy these days. (See yesterday's post "Guilty Pleasure.")

My parents struggled through the Great Depression in the 1930s, and my parents wanted me to appreciate the value of a dollar and have a sense of obligation to help others in need.

During the Depression, if a man came to the back door and asked for food, my mother told me, you just fed him, no questions asked. I think some people invited men in and gave them a plate at the table. Don't know if I heard that or if they told me.

I think farmers in Kansas would give a man a job for the day, in return for food. Kind of like day laborers now, who are mostly immigrants. For some reason, the Tea Party nuts want those people to starve. I don't know why. They should have been around during the Great Depression. They should have been out of work.

In spite of being kind to others, in theory, my mother was pretty nuts. I was an only child, and she made me responsible somehow for her feelings. She was hysterical, as a basic state of being, and I could send her into crying fits just by giving her the snake eye. It was great fun till it wasn't.

I have always hated selfish and self-centered people. To me, the greatest evil is someone who cares only about themselves. Ah, the Tea Party again.

I'm a communitarian. I believe in community. Of course, I don't do much to promote that, but I believe in it in theory.

Anyway, I am trying to feel less guilty about having it easy. It isn't easy having it easy. If it was, anybody could do it.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

GUILTY PLEASURE

I have a wonderful life. It's weird. I spend my days doing whatever the hell I want. I work on my novel, I work out, I write these self-indulgent blog posts, I e-mail my friends Adam, John, Sharine, and Laurel, among others. Part of the time, I just fart around.

I feel guilty because I'm not really doing much to help others. I've pretty much dropped out of MoveOn, partly because I didn't agree with their goals, and partly because I couldn't see any results.

I'm a results kinda guy. I like doing the laundry because I see the results: warm, clean clothes that smell good. I enjoy folding them and putting them in the drawer.

But I don't enjoy vacuuming the floor. It looks exactly the same afterwards as it does before. I suppose I could scatter baking soda on the carpet and then Hoover it up, but that seems too stupid even for me.

I feel guilty about what an easy life I have now. It's the first time in my life that I haven't had responsibility for others. And I was raised to think that taking care of other people was life's highest calling.

My son is grown, and he has turned out well. (I'm not biased. Just ask his wife.) I spent years as a single parent, and that made a human being out of me. I was terribly self-centered before that.

I've spent some time taking care of my grandkids. When the littlest Angels, er, Angles were in diapers, I used to spend one day a week taking care of them. It was hard and tedious, but it was great.

Then for years, I taught mostly high-school kids in Adult School. I felt responsible not only for teaching them academic skills and concepts but for a certain amount of moral guidance as well.

Now all that is in the past. I don't have to be responsible for anyone but me. And it's great. But I feel guilty.  

Oh, well, what the hell. Fukushima.

See my other blog:
http://rogerangle.blogspot.com/

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

YOUR OWN 'LAW AND ORDER'

Last night, for some reason, I got hooked on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." I don't know why. I have always hated those shows, like I've hated most TV.

Then today I watched part of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." Pretty soon, they are going to have one of these shows for each person, man, woman and child, in the USA. "Law & Order: Roger Angle."

Wouldn't that be fun? And one for Adam and John and Leif and my neighbors Pat and Franco and all my friends. Like everyone has a dog and a bathroom, everyone can have their own Law & Order. "Law & Order: Eat A Banana." One for every activity you can think of.

They already have them set in the UK and in L.A. They will have one in your town soon. And in your car, even if it's in the garage.

What got me about the show was its remarkable moral complexity. This is serious, now. In one episode, a college student pulled an elaborate stunt to get the cops to look for his kidnapped little brother. (SPOILER ALERT) He sent out a video that made it look like a girl was being raped.

In the end, she was part of the stunt, and the cops did find the missing kid. Wow, the bad guy became the good guy, and in the end it seemed like he did the right thing. He got his brother back and freed him from the crazy woman who had kidnapped him. 

So the show was morally complex. I found that fascinating. And I thought the show was well done. Good acting, directing, writing. Riveting.

I don't know why I didn't like it before. Maybe I was too busy before and was bored last night before I turned it on. Whatever. I'm on the bandwagon now.

-- Roger

Law & Order: The Ninth Year
http://www.nbc.com/law-and-order-special-victims-unit/

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES

I don't really mind crappy escapist fiction, a good beach read or airplane book. What I do mind is the lack of imagination and originality in these novels.

And I mind the low level of quality in so-called literary or mainstream fiction. I'm thinking of books by John Banville, Adam Ross, Jess Walter, Jonathan Franzen, John Wray and other respected, so-called literary novelists.

God damn, their stuff is disappointing, to me at least. Sorry to have to say it, but it's mostly crap, what I have seen of it. I even have problems with the works of my acquaintance Michael Chabon, who seemed like a nice enough young guy when I met him once. He's a wonderful technician, full of brilliance, line by line, but he wouldn't know a complete story if it bit him on the butt. (Sorry, Michael.)

The great literary critic Harold Bloom posits several criteria for good literature in his book "The Western Canon." One criterion is originality. He says when you read a great work for the the first time, "you encounter a stranger, an uncanny startlement rather than a fulfillment of expectations." 

In other words, a real work of art doesn't give you the same old crap that you have seen a million times before, whether it be in plays, poems, novels, or visual art -- sculpture, painting, dance, movies. 

The real thing is new, sometimes shockingly so, although that is not enough to make it art. That sense of strangeness, coupled with truth or insight into the human condition, is one way you can sort the men from the boys, the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff.

Popular fiction is not usually original. It doesn't go for that. It does just the opposite. It gives you a warmed-over version of the same old story, the same old ideas or sounds or shapes. New wine in old bottles, as they say in Hollywood. Some people, in fact many people, prefer the familiar, like coming home to the same warm oatmeal. They read the same mystery story written under different titles by different authors. And that's fine with me. I don't have a problem with that.

As my friend Adam says, these bestseller writers are not getting paid to write well, they are getting paid to make you turn the pages.

Maybe there is a way to bring them together. We'll see.


-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

LORCA AND I

Federico Garcia Lorca is my favorite poet, although I love others: Neruda, Rilke, even Borges, whom I think of mostly as a fiction writer.

Lorca has a poem that goes:

FAREWELL

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.
(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,
leave the balcony open!

I am at a certain point in my life, where I think of this poem. I was just sitting outside, on the deck, like a balcony, drinking beer and reading Borges in the sun.

I've been an outdoor guy all my life, and I still love the outdoors, even if it is just sitting outside.

I am very fortunate to have passed this love onto my son and grandchildren, who all love nature, too.

I am fortunate, indeed.

If I die, leave the balcony open!

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

DAMN GOOD MUSIC

If you want to hear some damn good music, click on this link:

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3XV7mxfIIr0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Don't ask, just do it.
You'll hear Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless. Whooo-ooo.

-- Roger