Barry Graham: Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky
The French magazine Marianne recently described Larry Fondation as “the Raymond Carver of Roman Noir.” I think the comparison flatters Carver.
Fondation’s new story collection, Martys and Holymen, was published this month. To coincide with that, I republished his earlier collection, Common Criminals, which was first published in 2003 and had been out of print for some years.
“Larry Fondation’s second book reads like a collaboration between Elmore Leonard, Dennis Cooper and Eminem.” - Metro Times (Detroit) Larry Fondation writes about what he knows best, the inner city with a twist. Raised in Dorchester, MA, where street fights and criminal acts were common occurrences, Fondation studied at Harvard University where the disparity between his history and his present stood out in sharp relief. He went on to become a community organizer in South Central Los Angeles and Compton, CA. The requirement for this job was not the degree in his hand but the fire in his belly. That fire burns in Common Criminals.
I.
You come out of the court wearing handcuffs,
shirt and trousers. You look like Richie
Cunningham, as one newspaper will observe. They’ve
watched you during the trial, notebooks in
front of them, pens poised and quivering like
excited hard cocks. Now they’re waiting for
you in the cold afternoon, flashing cameras trying
to swallow you. You wonder if this is how it was
for Elvis or Kurt Cobain. They
all want to know about you, they all
shout your name in the hope that you’ll look
their way. You’re glad you’re not allowed
to be interviewed, because you have no idea what
you’d say. You have no creative bullshit
that is relevant to their interest in you. When
you strangled the boys or beat their heads in,
maybe it was to keep them
from leaving. That’s what you told the shrink.
But you don’t know whether it’s the truth. You
don’t recall what you were thinking when you
killed the first one, or the ones who followed.
When the jury saw pictures of what you did later,
some of them needed counseling. The
prosecution has talked about “evil.”
Others want to “understand” you.
You have nothing to tell them.
You’re thirty-two years old
and you don’t know whether you’re evil.
You don’t know
whether the raven is evil, or just a black bird.
II.
Your dad made a home movie, a
visit to your aunt’s house, the record of
a family reunion. You sprawl
on a chair in your glasses and
lumberjack coat. Your aunt asks how
you’ve been. You say you’ve mostly
been working and living on fast food.
No one can say for sure how many boys
you’ve slaughtered by then. When you’re
arrested a few months later, the figure
will be seventeen. In a little less than three
years you’ll be battered to death by
another prisoner. None of this is in
your dad’s home movie. Or maybe all of it is.
As Blake Crouch said in a recent Tweet: Where are all the longtime authors jumping to the defense of legacy publishing? Surely, since legacy publishers treat their authors so well, there should be thousands of happy authors rallying behind their publishers, disagreeing with my points, telling the world how wonderful their legacy experience has been.There’s a reason we don’t see any of this. What could they possibly say?
“I love the fact that my royalty statements make no sense and I only get paid twice a year!”
“I love that my publisher prices my ebook at $12.99 and then keeps 52.5% of the list price!”
“I love getting my title changed to something I hate, and getting stuck with terrible covers!”
“I love the fact that my publisher didn’t get me a single review!”
“I love turning in a manuscript and not getting the rest of my advance money until publication 18 months later!”
“I love the fact that it takes my publisher three months to give me the proofs, and then I have to return them in four days!”
“I love it when I painstakingly go through a copy edit, and then when the book comes out none of my changes were made, and brand new mistakes were added!”
“I love being told there is no money for marketing my title, and then seeing a TV commercial for an author who has my same publisher!”
“I love it that my publisher insisted on owning world rights, and then only published in the US and Canada!”
Click HERE to read the rest.
The clear winner for this reviewer is Kelly’s highly engaging historical mystery set in 1917 New York, featuring the crusading and already-famous female attorney and detective Mrs. Grace Humiston, whose derring-do in a case of abduction and white slavery is narrated by her earthy Transylvanian sidekick, an ex-Federal Department of Justice agent known as Kron.
This year’s Spinetingler Awards winners have been announced.
My novel The Wrong Thing was nominated in the Best Novel - Legend category, which was won by Lawrence Block’s A Drop of the Hard Stuff. I’m happy to be in such fine company.
I’m also happy that the award for Best Crime Fiction Publisher went to New Pulp Press, who published Jake Hinkson’s brilliant novel Hell on Church Street, a book that seems to be getting no attention at all.
Congratulations to all the other nominees and winners.
When asked to recommend “Zen books,” my friend Deb Saint Sensei says, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover, or any other D.H. Lawrence book.”
I agree with her. I think people in the West have a tendency to get confused between Zen and an Asian fetish, and so to overlook the rich Zen tradition in Western literature. Here are a few other great Zen books:
Hombre by Elmore Leonard
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Savage Night by Jim Thompson
Cast in Doubt by Lynne Tillman
Dalva by Jim Harrison
The Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown
Drive and Driven, by James Sallis
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Fish, Soap and Bonds by Larry Fondation
Blues for Cannibals by Charles Bowden
The Burglar by David Goodis
I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond
Love and Rockets by the Hernandez brothers
Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
Also, the poetry of Burns (who wrote in both Scots and English), Stevenson, Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot, Philip Levine, Czeslaw Milosz, Norman MacCaig, Wendell Berry and James Tate.
