Picture Post #46

This time, you get a small selection...

Fear and Loathing - A Dual Review

So I got a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on BluRay a couple of weeks ago. And I decided to watch it, and it surprised me. What, at first glance, looks like a simple movie about two guys going on a drug fueled rampage through Sin City actually becomes a movie about the death of The American Dream. At least, the dream as far as the young people of the Sixties understood it. There is far more going on here for the characters than just abusing drugs and everyone around them. There is a reaction about what a world that looked like it was all about to go right going very, very wrong. This all comes together in The Wave Speech, which may be one of the only places where the whole thing is actually articulated.

I decided to get the book after watching the movie and give it a read. The book is like the movie, only more so in some places. The problem is, I got to a point in the book where it started to be work. It stopped being a story, or a novel, and became Literature and as such, was work to finish. Still, an interesting read. There are of course, two problems for someone of my age and generation.

Problem One: My generation has never known The American Dream as anything but a joke. We have always had the idea scoffed at, and we in turn scoff at it. Horatio Alger’s dream had long since become the Great American Fever Dream by the time we understood it and has since evolved into the Great American Nightmare. We don’t even understand Alger, we just know he’s dangerous and wrong.

Problem Two: Gonzo Journalism, while an interesting idea at first, became something incredibly dangerous. We might say it’s cool to say the fiction can tell more truth than the facts, but then we turn around and complain about Fox News and its loose interpretation of the word Accuracy. What are they doing if not forming a “truer” version of events? Well, truer for them anyway.

I think my generation grew up with the dark side of every bright shining dream. We’ve seen the potential, and we’ve seen what became of it. Any wonder why we’re so cynical?

Picture Post #45: Zebra Fight

These zebra's aren't actually figthing. This is a father and son roughhousing.

Picture Post #44

There are two seperate trips to the zoo here, but they're only 2 days apart.

Reading – Part Four: The Fat Man

It’s not that this series brought me back to reading or anything, but I want to talk about it and whose web space is this anyway? Yeah, so, you just sit there. You sit there and you read what I’ve written about a series of books that probably ended before you were even born.

Actually, let’s address this for a moment, most the books I read are by dead authors. I assume it’s because I have some sort of affection for an older style of writing, cheaper books, or for days gone by. Yeah, that’s probably it. It’s probably the days gone by thing. I dream of the days when people knew that “contact” was not a verb and hipsters hadn’t ruined everything by using the word “ironic” to mean… whatever the hell it is hipsters think it means. A simpler time, when being 300 pounds was extraordinary, when being OCD was merely called having “quirky” habits, having a Swiss chef wasn’t yet common place, and growing orchids on a rooftop in Manhattan was something you only did if you had lots and lots of money. Now, all those douchebag hipsters do it, ruining those simple pleasures forever. Damn hipsters.

So yeah, if you haven’t guessed yet, and I suspect only four of you have, I’m talking about Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. Now this links nicely to the bit I posted yesterday, because the A&E channel comes into it again. See, in 2000 they made a one off TV movie, that led to a show called A Nero Wolfe Mystery, which was based completely on Rex Stout’s writings. In fact, so complete was the transition that any little changes tend to jump out at you. Those changes tended to be small, and were generally put in for production reasons, so it’s no problem. It was a great show, but it only lasted two seasons. When it came out on DVD, I got interested in the series again and decided to get some of the books.

Now, there is a reason why this wasn’t higher on the list or really part of the original trilogy of posts. While I’ve got the entire series on audiobook, and indeed is the only series in all the ones so far mentioned where I’ve got them all, I’ve actually only read two of the books. And Four to Go & Too Many Cooks. I listened to the rest, getting them one set at a time from libraries and recording them myself onto the computer. I have downloaded very few books, opting to buy them or borrow from the library. Then I would record them digitally and listen to them first on a MiniDisc Walkman then an ipod and even later than that an ipod nano. Why did I tell you all that? Just so you’d get where I’m coming from. I just want it clearly understood that I haven’t listened to the radio since 1991 and I have no idea who that DJ you keep referencing is or what the wacky morning show guys did this time which is the same tired crap they’ve been doing since about 1924.

Point is, the Nero Wolfe series is probably my favorite book series of all time. I have actually read all of it, or at least listened to all of it, several times and I greatly enjoy it.

It’s a story in the Watson style, which is a name I invented for this style of work. The Watson Style is one in which a less intelligent character describes his or her adventures with a brilliant character. The Watson is usually competent, but less so than the genius. We see The Watson from Sherlock Holmes, to the Jeeves stories of PG Wodehouse, to the Philo Vance and into this series. It’s dropped off a bit the last few decades, but you still find it from time to time.

In this case, Archie Goodwin talks about his boss, Nero Wolfe. However, unlike many of the other stories, Archie is not worshipful of Wolfe. If anything, Archie is sort of contemptible of his boss, calling him a big fat bum and deriding him almost as much to his face as he does in the narration. Archie’s job in the books is to present a foil for Wolfe and as much as anything else, a tack for Wolfe. He prods Wolfe into motion, getting him to work on the problem at hand and not drift off into the sort of ADD lapses that affect all geniuses.

The stories are a bit different from a lot of the mystery you got at the time when they started. Stout was standing between two worlds, writing drawing room murders while they were being turned away by the hardboiled detective stories that were emerging from the pulps. If anything a nice contrast is struck between those two worlds with these two detectives. Archie would have been a rough and tumble hardboiled detective, if not for his association with drawing room style Wolfe.

As a result, the stories a strike a good and at the time anyway, popular balance between the two worlds. Stout’s books sold very well, and were made into movies and radio shows back in the 40s, as well as at least one other television series that I’ve never seen. The A&E series is probably the most popular though, or at least the one that is most well known to the current generation.

The books themselves are a little obscure these days though, most people haven’t ever read one. Like Wodehouse, another formerly popular writer that’s rarely read by kids these days. Probably, the lack of interest is because of a lack of purity about the books. They aren’t pure drawing room, they aren’t pure hardboiled. They’re not completely hetro-normal, but they’re not actually queer literature either. These are muddled books, standing firm at the crossroads of time, and as such must be read for enjoyment rather than actually used as examples of great popular literature from the early 20th century. Of course you can read the books academically if you want, you can read anything that way if you desire, but you’ll have more fun if you just sit back and let Archie think about shooting whatever book Wolfe is currently reading out of his hand. At this angle it would be a cinch and he wouldn’t risk hurting Wolfe at all.

Reading – Part Three: The Second Professor

So we’ve established that I listen to audiobooks, right? Okay, have we established that I listen to mystery audiobooks? Have we further established that I have an easier time listening to mystery stories than I do reading them? It’s true, and I have no explanation for it beyond “It’s a thing that happens” which isn’t helpful for anyone. However, it is true that for a long time, I listened to tons and tons of mystery audiobooks. As a matter of fact, I listened to a lot of mystery short stories, but that’s not important right now.

In fact, the amount I listen to audiobooks is only sort of germane to this conversation and I’m really just using it to link to the last post where I talked about reading and I suppose to the first post as well. Got that? Good, because you will be tested on this later. Not normal tested. Not paper and pencil tested. I’m going to test you GLaDOS style! How learning about books I’ve read will help you survive those turrets (oh so many turrets) is still sort of… well, let’s just say I didn’t think too far beyond getting the turrets. Yeah, you’re probably going to die, but at least you’ll die listening to Cave Johnson rant about combustible lemons.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Mystery novels. So I like watching and listening to dramatizations of Agatha Christie’s work, but I hate reading it. No, she was never a professor, calm down. This story isn’t about Agatha Christie! Calm down, I’m going to get to who this is about. Christie’s writing style has always grated on my nerves. Partly it’s the Tab A into Slot B style she developed later in her career, partly it’s the convoluted murders, but mostly it’s the head descriptions. You can only take so many heart shaped faced and egg shaped heads before you start throwing the tablet shaped book at the slate shaped wall. Seriously, there is something just amazingly tedious about how she describes people.

I know, you want to know how this becomes relevant. Well, maybe it doesn’t. Did you ever think about that? The sad thing is, most of you probably said “Yeah, after years of reading your shit, we have.” and for that, you are all cordially invited to go to hell.

I do like watching adaptations of Christie’s work, and that is how I ended up watching Poirot on A&E. For those of you not from America, A&E is a station that used to show interesting things like British TV shows, documentaries, and the occasional original program before they devolved into another reality TV slot. They it was who got me hooked on Nero Wolfe, and were I still talking about audiobooks, we would probably be talking about Rex Stout’s work. However, we’re talking about actual reading and as such Rex needs to stay to one side for the moment.

While watching Poirot, I saw a commercial for an original movie that A&E was promoting for Robert B. Parker’s novel Small Vices. I’d never read any Spenser stories, but I knew it was a TV show in the 80s, and I was into mystery so I gave it a watch. My mind did not equal blown. It was an interesting story, and it was sort of funny watching them try to pretend that Toronto Canada was Boston, when it was so obviously Toronto. I mean, they have a scene shot in the ROM, in a room I’ve been in, in a place where I’ve stood. However, I just thought the movie was okay. Nothing mind blowing, but I might read one of his books.

Dad bought Small Vices, but he didn’t really get into it. I didn’t read it, for whatever reason. Instead, I listened to Sudden Mischief which Dad bought on sale because he knew I had an easier time with audio. Now, that book was really interesting, and it was the next book in the series after Small Vices, so that helped. I still wasn’t blown away though. Probably, because I was older and I knew books like this existed by now.

However, I found myself grabbing Small Vices and reading that, and after that going for the newest book which was Hugger Mugger, although I got that in audio first. In fact, at this point the story gets muddled. Again, I was grabbing the books in whatever format I could find them. Some in audio, some in physical books form, and I still haven’t read the whole series. I’ve never fell in deep with the Spenser series, but I’ve always found myself reading or listening to them. I’m perfectly happy with them, but I’ve never needed the next one right now. I’ve also never felt compelled to search out any of Parker’s other series.

However, through cross contamination, I got into Chandler via Parker. Parker ripped off Chandler to a degree that would boarder on criminal if he weren’t so naked about it. He lifted the voice, the manners, even some of the character names directly from Chandler. Hell, the last line in Farwell My Lovely turns up in two Spenser novels that I can think of. Not that it matters, not really, what starts as an homage to one author quickly spreads and expands to cover so many that it becomes dizzying after a while.

Parker was an incredibly skillful writer, one that mixed complexity into a simple detective story. The name of his detective is in itself a reference to Edmund Spenser the poet behind The Faerie Queene, which… I've tried to read... I really have. That, however, is some dense shit and feels like homework in about five words. However, things like that are just an undercurrent for what is really a hardboiled detective novel. But the undercurrent is what changes Parker from another shmoe to something worth talking about.

Reading – Part Two: The First Professor

So I’ve mentioned that I listen to audiobooks, right? Well, let’s discuss that a bit. See, I’ve got ADD and dyslexia, which is a major reason for me not reading so much at all during any age. Actual sitting down and reading with my eyes is a laborious, time consuming task. I cannot speed read, and I will sometimes have to go over a sentence five or six times before seeing what the writer is trying to say. As a result, I am not big on reading in the traditional sense of the word. When not concentrating, I am a major skimmer. I scan around, picking bits and pieces from the text, looking for key words, which will often annoy people because I’ll sometimes miss things that way. Mostly it works though.

I can listen though, and often I’ll hear and record things without even appearing to pay attention to what’s going on or being said. Noticing this, my father came up with an idea. If I can’t read a book, maybe I could listen to one. This lead to the purchasing of several audiobooks, and me listening to them like other kids listened to rock albums. This was possible, in part, because back in the day audiobooks kind of sucked.

See, there used to be this thing called abridged audiobooks, and while their scourge has not been completely wiped clean from the face of the earth by the flaming paw of Fancy, they have dropped off as the popular method of production. However, quite often in the 80s and early 90s, there was no choice. Many companies would sell their tapes in a paper or plastic container designed to be about the size of a paperback book. Often, you’d have two 90 minute tapes, sometimes four. Depending on the company, they’d either come in a tape case, or just held in the cardboard by a sleeve or a plastic slot. Warner Brothers were the best because they actually printed a jacket for the tapes in their tape cases so that if you didn’t keep the paper container you could have the jacket art on each tape.

Yes I know this doesn’t seem to have any connection to me actually reading, just hang on, I’m getting to it. This part needs to be told so you’ll understand the rest later. You need to understand the thing with tapes first, so you’ll get the later bits. If not for understanding how audiobooks used to work, it’s hard to understand the whole story.

Now of course that’s mostly changed. Since you can buy audiobooks on CD, which are cheaper and easier to store, or get them digitally which is easier still, abridged books are far less common. What is also gone from the world is Audiobook Club, which was a mail order service akin to the Columbia Record club wherein if you didn’t send back a card once a month you’d automatically get sent a book. This is where we finally get to our author.

Once in a while, I would forget to send the card back, and I would get a book I didn’t want in the mail. This wasn’t actually a problem though, because I could just send it back and not get charged for it. I’d always look at what the book was though, just to make sure it wasn’t something interesting. I was struck by the design of the cover of the book, which was just a shot of the clock tower of Parliament and the words Drink With The Devil along with the author’s name Jack Higgins. The premise seemed interesting enough, a gold heist goes wrong and people have to get the gold back. Okay, I thought, we’ll give this a try.

What I got in the next three hours was an exciting, uncomplicated story about Irish terrorists stealing gold, getting double crossed, coming back some ten years later and trying to get the gold back again. Yes, this was something I enjoyed! I listened to several times, passing it on to my father who also admitted enjoying it. A few months later, the next bookfrom the same author came out and we grabbed that as well. That second book convinced me that we needed to find the first books from this guy. Now, one thing about audiobooks you need to understand is their short shelf life. Some books stay on the shelves at book stores for years and years, but audiobooks tended to get shoved aside very quickly. If there were earlier audiobooks, we had a devil of a time finding any and instead we started to look around for the actual books themselves. That is the important part of the story, I was interested enough to want to find the physical books and read them. This, as it turned out, was dead easy.

See, Higgins is not a writer whose work demands careful study. He writes potboilers, adventure stuff. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to have written any cold war thrillers, which is odd because many of his Sean Dillon Books feel like they’re written for the sort of people who couldn’t get over the fact that the Cold War ended. Anti-terrorist potboilers, that’s what he wrote. Books where the same thing tends to happen over and over again in slightly different situations. Dillon shoots some people, drinks some Krug non-vintage (it’s the grape mix), and then goes scuba diving in the last third of the book. What this meant was that hardcover versions of the books were very easy to come across. People would buy them, read them and then discard them a few months later to make room for the next book on their shelf. Poke your nose into a used book shop and you could usually find one or two. It only took us a couple of months looking to find them all. In the mean time I’d gotten my hands on a couple more of the audiobooks, but that was hardly important. We’d gotten the full collection of Sean Dillon books (up to that point) in hardcover and we started reading them all from the beginning.

That was how I found out how cut to the bone Drink With The Devil really was. The entire middle of the book was removed in the abridgement. Now, granted, you could argue that the section I’m thinking of is entirely superfluous to the story, but still. That is why we hate abridgements, I’d like to decide for myself when the author is simply faffing about.

This proved to be an interesting time for us. I read the books over a few months as we acquired them, then my dad read the books over a couple of weeks, and then Syd read the books in a week, knocking out one a day. The books spread like a virus in our household. Even my mother read one or two of them, though they weren’t really to her taste as she prefers John Saul. The point is, we spread this virus out a bit, until we hit people who weren’t interested in reading or in thrillers, and then it died down a bit.

Eventually, I started to loose interest in Higgins. When my interest waned, so did everyone else’s. I can’t say why exactly I lost interest. I think my tastes just changed, because I don’t go back and listen to or read his books now a days. I didn’t think much of his post 9-11 books, maybe that was it. No, I think it’s just that I grew out of them. They were interesting for a few years, and then they were less interesting and then I just wasn’t into them anymore. For a while though, they were great fun and just the sort of thing to excite the mind of a guy in his early 20s.

And it did get me reading, and trying to read. And it got me to learn a lot about the IRA and IRA and other groups like them. Any book that makes you want to know more has to be a good book, at least in my mind. Even if it only makes you want to know more to see if the writer is full of shit or if they knows what they’re talking about.

So where does the talk about him being a professor come from? He taught Liberal Studies at Leeds Poly before his writing income gave him the freedom to quit.