March 2012
36 posts
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Charlie Stella on When It All Comes Down to Dust
Charlie Stella, author of the great novel Johnny Porno (among others), reviews When It All Comes Down to Dust:
Barry Graham is a hidden treasure who writes with an openness that is refreshing. In this wonderful read, his protagonist (Laura Ponto) has a short fuse when it comes to bullies and the like (one of my favorite scenes is how she handles an asswipe who has just set a kitten on a...
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The Wrong Thing has been nominated for...
It’s nice to be in the company of such extraordinary gentlemen as Lawrence Block. Voting starts tomorrow at 6 a.m. E.S.T. Click here.
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Elmore Leonard and Crime Fiction Heresy
In the L.A. Times Magazine Megan Abbott (a superb novelist herself) has an interview with Elmore Leonard. (By the way, that’s a hideous picture of him; when I did a signing with him earlier this month, here’s how he looked.)
When asked whether he read the hard-boiled masters, he says:
Never read Chandler. Not much Hammett. James M. Cain was an influence way back. Spillane, I...
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U.S. Media: The News-Free Zone
This Salon piece on N.P.R.’s so-called “reporting” is, sadly, true of almost all U.S. media. Here’s what I wrote on the subject a while ago.
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Trayvon Martin: Tragedy and Commodity
The news that Trayvon Martin’s mother is trying to trademark phrases containing her son’s name reminds me of how manufacturers of such products as video games and condoms sought to trademark “Shock and Awe” when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. I wonder if there will be a new brand of hoodie.
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Trayvon Martin: Tragedy and Commodity
The news that Trayvon Martin’s mother is trying to trademark phrases containing her son’s name reminds me of how manufacturers of such products as video games and condoms sought to trademark “Shock and Awe” when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. I wonder if there will be a new brand of hoodie.
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Larry Fondation in France
Larry Fondation is one of the greatest fiction writers working in English. When I read his first novel, Angry Nights, back in the mid-1990s, I got so excited that I had to stop halfway through, get in my car and drive aimlessly around Phoenix late at night until I had calmed down enough to read the rest. Angry Nights has just been published in France, as Sur Les Nerfs, and Larry Fondation will be...
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George Orwell's Review of Mein Kampf in 1940 →
“It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the...
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The Foreign Language of 'Mad Men' →
“That’s just a statistic, but it hints at something deeper. Even more than anachronism, a core theme ofMad Men is the lost art of personal reserve, self-effacement, and mystery.”
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There Is Only One Story
Yesterday I heard a debate on the radio as to whether Hunger Games (which I haven’t seen and don’t expect to) is a rip-off of a good Japanese film, Battle Royale. It certainly sounds as though it is. But there are only so many stories that can be told. It’s been said that there are only seven stories. I used to say that there are only two: a stranger comes to town, or someone...
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The Work Ethic of Armed Robbery
In this excellent article, Gary Phillips makes the point that those the legal system calls criminals are hard-workers, and that even the most successful ones make millions, not billions.
I’m currently writing a novel about an armed robber, and in writing it have realized that the professional thief, especially one who uses force, is the embodiment of the capitalist ideal.
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Robert Bales Was the First of 17 Victims
Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier who murdered 16 Iraqi civilians, had been sent to a war zone for the fourth time. He had been wounded, losing part of a foot. He had seen a friend’s leg blown off as he stood beside him. His wife and children were about to be evicted because they could not pay their mortgage. The mystery is not why such terrible incidents happen, but why they don’t happen...
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Robert Bales Was the First of 17 Victims
Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier who murdered 16 Iraqi civilians, had been sent to a war zone for the fourth time. He had been wounded, losing part of a foot. He had seen a friend’s leg blown off as he stood beside him. His wife and children were about to be evicted because they could not pay their mortgage. The mystery is not why such terrible incidents happen, but why they don’t happen...
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Pangur Bán
I had to interrupt the novel I was working on to write one that came up and pushed it aside, demanding to be written. I’m deep into it now, and it should be finished in a few weeks. It contains this poem, written in the 18th Century by an Irish monk whose name is long forgotten: I and Pangur Bán, my cat, ‘Tis a like task we are at; Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all...
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E-Book Giveaway: Scumbo
Tomorrow and Sunday, my story collection Scumbo will be free on Kindle.
Dark, funny and compassionate stories of love, friendship, sex and violence, set in the urban jungles of Europe and the U.S.A in the early 1990s. In this world of punk rock romance, talking mailboxes, poverty, flowers, guitars and random death, things are never as they seem - and nor are they otherwise.
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A teaching on the art of living by Daishin... →
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Curing the Cult of Zen
In the west, Zen is more of a cult than a religion or a spiritual practice. Zen sanghas comprised of converts tend to be centered around a charismatic teacher, and I suggest that most, probably all, of the problems that afflict such sanghas are because of this. It has been suggested that the way to solve this problem is to stop having Zen teachers, and for sanghas to be peer-run. I think this...
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Book Festival Sponsored by Guided Missiles
Spreading literacyWhen I arrived at the Tucson Festival of Books last Saturday, I was happy to see that the food area had stalls from local vendors… and less so that there was a McDonald’s stall. Then I discovered that one of the festival’s sponsors was Raytheon, the world’s largest producer of guided missiles.
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Robert Towery's Death Row Diary Free on Kindle
Robert Towery was executed by the State of Arizona on March 8, 2012. For the last 35 days of his life, Towery was placed on “Death Watch” where his every move was recorded and chronicled by prison officials. Towery also kept a diary which he gave or mailed to his attorneys in installments. He detailed the ironies and absurdities of life in prison. He reveled in simple pleasures, such as a good...
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The Wrong Marlowe - an amnesiac pulp writer in... →
My friend Charles Kelly is writing a book about the forgotten hardboiled writer Dan J. Marlowe. He has a terrific article about Marlowe in the L.A. Review of Books.
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that awkward moment... of grace →
A lovely, wise blog post from my dear friend, Zen Episcopalian Rengetsu Kathleen Clark.
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Photos: With Elmore Leonard in Tucson Today
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What the Devil: An Appreciation of The Exorcist
I was seven years old when The Exorcist came out. I remember the grown-ups talking about it. I remember one grown-up saying she had to sleep with the light on for months after seeing it. I remember another saying he had to go on pills for his nerves after he saw it. I still remembered it when I was 20 years old and heard that the film was showing late night at a cinema in Glasgow. I had never seen...
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Tucson Book Festival and Book Giveaways on Kindle
Tomorrow I’ll be at the Tucson Festival of Books as part of The Poisoned Pen crew, doing a signing with Elmore Leonard (my favorite novelist ever) at 5 p.m.
All day today, my novel The Champion’s New Clothes, first published in 1991, is free on Kindle. Tomorrow and Sunday, the same goes for my latest novel, When It All Comes Down to Dust.
The Tucson Weekly has a review of The Wrong...
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A Note on Bresson's Notes
I’ve been reading Robert Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer. He refers to the actors in his films not as “actors,” but as “models,” because he sees the art of acting as something that gets in the way of the truth that is being shown. He writes: It would not be ridiculous to say to your models: “I am inventing you as you are.” This reminds me of...
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E-Book Giveaway: The Champion's New Clothes
Tomorrow’s book giveaway on Kindle will be The Champion’s New Clothes.
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Guest Blog Post: Maximum Wage by Larry Fondation
Cure the Economy: Eliminate Gluttony Americans have a love-hate relationship with excess. We are fascinated by it – just look at all the television commercials extolling Las Vegas revelry. Yet our Puritan tendencies tend to pull us back from the abyss. “The Pleasure Police” usually wins out in the end. Thus we are intimately familiar with the concept of “too much” – Don’t eat too much....
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E-Book Giveaway: The Book of Man
On Thursday and Friday I’m going to have book giveaways on Kindle. I haven’t decided what it’ll be on Friday, but tomorrow (running from around midnight tonight till the same time tomorrow U.S. Pacific time) it’ll be The Book of Man.
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Praise Indeed
I was just told: “Your writing is like a person stripped naked and standing outside when it’s thirty below - and being sprayed with water. It’s beautiful, but it hurts.”
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I Was Wrong About Organic Beef
Although I no longer eat meat, I have argued that it is better for the environment if we eat locally-raised, grass-fed beef rather than organic vegetables trucked hundreds or even thousands of miles. It turns out I was wrong. This article in The Guardian explains: Organics are… not even necessarily good for the environment, either. Increasing demand has led to organic meat being raised on...
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E-Book Giveaway: Why I Watch People Die
Starting at midnight U.S. Pacific time, and ending at the same time tomorrow, you can get my nonfiction book Why I Watch People Die for free on Kindle. If you’re at the Tucson Book Festival on Saturday, come and see me with Elmore Leonard at 5 p.m.
Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will... →
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EU justice chief warns Google over 'sneaking'... →
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Nine Years of Blogging & a Book Giveaway
I just realized that, as of last month, I have been blogging for nine years. It started with an impulse. I was living in Chattanooga, T.N., for my sins, and I had driven down to Atlanta, G.A., to forage in Criminal Records, where I found Aaron Cometbus’ book Despite Everything, a collection of his Combetbus zines. That evening, I had dinner in The Vortex. As I was sitting there reading the...
