Fiction, Reviews

‘Strait Over Tackle,’ by Colin Conway

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What kept coming to mind as I read Colin Conway’s Strait Over Tackle, first book in his “Flip-flop Detective” series, was the movie “The Big Lebowski.”

I did not like “The Big Lebowski.” I don’t, in general, find slackers amusing.

Sam Strait is a former sheriff’s deputy in the same area (around Spokane, Washington) that is the setting for author Conway’s more serious “The 509” police procedural series. He got kicked off the force on false charges, sued them for damages, and won a cash settlement, which gives him some financial freedom. He lives in the lake cabin he inherited from his grandparents. This allows him to live the life he wants to. He lives by a short set of rules, the first of which is, “Only be where flip-flops can be worn.” That makes him a snowbird. He flies off to warmer climes each fall, taking temporary jobs like dishwashing to eke out his expenses. He’s happy with this life (or claims to be), but it angers his on-off girlfriend, a gorgeous local actress who wants permanence and doesn’t give up easily.

Sam comes home to open up for the spring and finds that somebody has held a party in his house and left it trashed. But it gets worse. He goes down to the lake to look at his boat and finds a young woman’s dead body in it. His call to the police brings Detective Shane McAfee, whom we know from the 509 novels.


When Sam discovers that someone has left a bag of drugs in his refrigerator, he ponders calling McAfee, but decides to go around and ask questions himself. This – as he eventually realizes – is a stupid decision, leading to confrontations, threats, and several fistfights (all of which he loses). But in the end he will identify the murderer.

Generally speaking, slackers make poor heroes for novels. Interesting characters operate from some powerful motivation, which is the main thing slackers generally lack. Sam’s chief motivation is avoidance of intimacy and commitment. His motivations for investigating the murder rather than letting the police do their job are unclear to the reader, and apparently to himself. He seems to have a poor conception of personal safety, which is bad because he keeps getting beat up (even by a woman). This is one of those stories where the hero gets “his bell rung” multiple times, and people even warn him of concussion, but he brushes the suggestion off and appears to suffer no serious trauma (which is implausible).

In the end, I figured out that Strait Over Tackle was intended to be taken as comedy. I guess it had its moments, but it didn’t amuse me a lot.

You might like it better than I did. Especially if you liked “The Big Lebowski.”

Uncategorized

‘Inalienable’ rights

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Look at me, posting my Independence Day contribution on the evening of the Third, so that you can enjoy it on the Fourth itself, which is probably when most of you will read it. All this thinking ahead and considering the customer is foreign to my habits, but I’m sure it’s good for my character, assuming I have any character left at my age.

Above, a cute snippet from the musical “1776,” in which John Adams (“unalienable”) disagrees with Thomas Jefferson (“inalienable”) about the wording of the Declaration. Not included here is Adams’ aside after he pretends to concede the point, that he’ll just fix it with the printer. Which he does. The official text has come down to us saying “unalienable.” And I can’t deny it annoys me a little.

Have an inalienable Independence Day holiday, friends.

Authors

Hawthorne on Having a Government Job

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In The Custom House essay that precedes The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne chafes at his inability to write and laments the dulling effects of his day job.

Suffice it here to say that a Custom–House officer of long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.

An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength, departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self–support.

. . .

Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle’s pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam’s gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the devil’s wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self–reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

Even with this, he didn’t quit his day job. He was fired.

What do you think? Does a regular paycheck pull a man away from self-reliance, or this just the way creative types talk when they can’t sell something?

Music

Sunday Singing: God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand

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“God of Our Fathers” sung by the congregation of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church of New York City

Today’s hymn, “God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand,” was written by New York Episcopalian Daniel C. Roberts (1841-1907) to commemorate the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. It was accepted by an Episcopal hymnal committee and given a fresh tune by organist George W. Warren for the commemoration of the United States Constitution.

1 God of our fathers, Whose almighty hand
Leads forth in beauty all the starry band
Of shining worlds in splendor thro’ the skies,
Our grateful songs before Thy throne arise.

2 Thy love divine hath led us in the past;
In this free land by Thee our lot is cast;
Be Thou our ruler, guardian, guide and stay,
Thy word our law, Thy paths our chosen way.

3 From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence,
Be Thy strong arm our ever sure defence;
Thy true religion in our hearts increase,
Thy bounteous goodness nourish us in peace.

4 Refresh Thy people on their toilsome way,
Lead us from night to never-ending day;
Fill all our lives with love and grace divine,
And glory, laud and praise be ever Thine.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

No Fear of Sleep, the Internet Gone to Pot, and Hollywood Noir

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Lee Yong-ju’s 2021 film Seo Bok is a standard sci-fi thriller about a cloned man with telekinesis. It opens with an ex-secret service agent, Min Gi Heon, being offered an outside job, one that’s dangerous enough to require deniability if it goes wrong. He’s asked to deliver an asset, and when he arrives at the lab to pick it up, he learns the asset is a young man, Seo Bok, whom the scientists introduce as undying. He is a lab-created human being who will not die if properly cared for. They say his cells are the key to healing many, if not every, human disease. Not only that, his brain waves are off the charts, enabling him to push and guide material around him. But, what could go wrong with that, eh?

I could tell you more of the plot, but I bring up this movie because of a couple minutes that appear right before the final act.

At one point, Seo Bok reveals he doesn’t need to sleep. Later, when exploring part of his backstory, he and Gi Heon go to a Christian mausoleum. With several crosses on the walls and light shining through stained glass, Seo Bok asks, “Do you believe dying is really like sleep?”

“Maybe,” Gi Heon replies.

“Then how come people aren’t afraid of falling asleep? It’s like dying a little while.”

“Because they’ll wake up the next day.”

“How do they know that?”

“They just believe it. They believe they will wake up in the morning.”

In the context of the story, that dialogue had me wondering if this was the seed for the whole. The scientists think they’ve created a cure for disease and even natural death in one man, and in the mausoleum another man suggests we can wake up after death if we put our faith in the cross. It’s subtle but stands out as the moral of the film.

Let’s move on.

Internet: 30 Signs You Are Living in an Information Crap-pocalypse. Here are the first two.

  1. “Create a society that rewards influencers more than truth-tellers—and turn every digital platform, large or small, into a boosting pad for these influencers.
  2. “Make plagiarism, cheating, and deception totally acceptable, so nobody gets fired from a media job, even for the most egregious violations of journalistic ethics.”

Also from the signs above, over 33% of people hired to train AI for better, more truthful output are using AI software to do the training faster, folding in errors that will be baked in if they aren’t removed soon enough.

Democracy: “This spring marks the 30th anniversary of the paperback release of Francis Fukuyama’s controversial book, The End of History and the Last Man.” How has his argument that democracy had and would continue to win over world civilizations panned out?

Hollywood: Brian Patrick Eha recommends the work of Alfred Hayes. “Money promises to give substance, in Hayes’s novels, to those without it; for those with it, though, material wealth proves unsatisfying, even oddly insubstantial. The vast sums that flow from the movie business have a ‘phantasmal quality.’ . . . Laboring for America’s dream machine, his men and women are made to bear, in the end, too much reality.”

(Photo by Hammad Siddiqui on Unsplash)

Music, Uncategorized

‘The Sons of Liberty’

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Not being in the work force anymore, I’m not current on work schedules. Is this considered a long weekend? The Fourth isn’t till Tuesday, and this is one holiday we still celebrate on the proper date (don’t we?). Anyway, I’m going to do my patriotic music post today, and we’ll see what happens on the holiday itself.

The clip above comes from the miniseries “Johnny Tremain,” which Disney produced way back in the ’50s. A few minor differences may be noted between Disney’s consumer product back then and what they’re doing now. Disney back then produced stuff like this, which reinforced patriotism, social cohesion, and traditional values. All this is deplorable to today’s Disney.

I don’t think I look at the ’50s through rose-colored glasses. The worst period in my life began in that decade, and I developed a deep personal cynicism that makes me fit in pretty well with much of contemporary culture. I know enough history, too, to be aware that the American revolution had its dark side. (I’ll still put it up against the French one any day, though.)

But I learned to be a subversive (at least in secret) in those days too. And today I exercise my subversion by flouting the cherished values of the present establishment. By posting patriotic songs and calling on people to come together around the old verities. Warts and all.

Have a blessed Independence Day.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Publishing, The Press

The Dead White Male and the Sea

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Hemingway writing at the Dorchester Hotel in London, 1944. Photographer unknown, public domain. By way of Wikimedia Commons.

Via Instapundit, this story from PJ Media: “The Woke Bell Tolls for Ernest Hemingway.”

The UK’s Telegraph revealed Saturday that Penguin Random House, which publishes Hemingway’s novels and stories, has slapped them with “a trigger warning” due to “concerns about his ‘language’ and ‘attitudes.’” Hapless new Hemingway readers are also “alerted to the novelist’s ‘cultural representations.’”

I can imagine what Ernest Hemingway himself would say to all this, but I wouldn’t be able to publish it. The arrogant, self-infatuated, blinkered, miseducated woke dopes at Penguin Random House don’t seem to understand that the whole idea of reading Hemingway, or any other great writer, is to encounter “language,” “attitudes” and “cultural representations” that are not one’s own, and are not the same as the language, attitudes, and cultural representations of contemporary culture.

As you may recall if you’re a regular reader here, I don’t like Hemingway much. Though his writing style was undeniably influential, I’ve never cared for his stories, and never worked up the interest to read any of his books. I don’t like his politics, and all I know about his personality repels me.

But you know how you can tell I’m not on the Left? You can tell because I think his books ought to be published straight. Adults should be trusted to have the maturity to handle ideas, words and imagery that might trouble or offend them.

Somebody made a comment on Twitter the other day to the effect that our times aren’t much fun. I replied, “Shoot, Prohibition was more fun than this.”

I think we ought to declare a new Roaring 20s. Let’s have speakeasies, places where you can speak easily. Say anything you bloody want. Leave your electronic devices in a Faraday Cage at the door, so nobody can listen in, and engage in old-fashioned forbidden conversation. All ideas permitted. No punching allowed, though.

Which would admittedly cramp Hemingway’s style.

Reviews

Of brownstones and starships

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Lately I’ve been “doing” Nero Wolfe on YouTube. First the 1981 series starring William (“Cannon”) Conrad and Lee Horsely, and currently the 2001 series with Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton. But in the course of my fumbling about on the site I stumbled on the little-known video above. It’s a 1959 pilot for a half-hour NW series starring Kurt Kasznar and none other than a pre-Star Trek William Shatner. But more about that below.

I sought out the Conrad-Horsely series for sentimental reasons. The series was one of my favorites back when it came out. Critics complained that it violated some of the basic protocols of the ordered household author Rex Stout created. Though I’m fond of the original Wolfe books, I’m not as punctilious about them as I am about, say, Sherlock Holmes or Travis McGee. I thought Bill Conrad was just splendid as Nero Wolfe, and he had excellent chemistry with Horsely’s Archie. The set designers worked meticulously (and at considerable cost) to recreate Wolfe’s office. I particularly liked the big chair. Stout often mentions in the stories that Wolfe’s upholstered desk chair was specially built to support his great weight.

The only problem with that handsome chair was that it was physically too large for Bill Conrad, who kind of got lost in it. I suspect it was designed with Orson Welles, who was originally meant to play the role, in mind.

But after I’d watched that series’ one season of episodes, I moved on to the 2001 series. It’s very well done and very faithful to the original stories. Also extremely stylish and shot in period. Maury Chaykin as Wolfe is growing on me, though I still prefer Conrad. I’ve always seen Wolfe as a dark-haired man. Timothy Hutton seems a little lightly constructed for Archie, but the attitude is spot on.

But now, back to the 1959 pilot. I was surprised how good it was. Bill Shatner may be the best Archie Goodwin of them all. The role plays exactly to his strengths. And Kurt Kasznar (whom I believe I saw in person once, as Moriarty in a road production of William Gillette’s “Sherlock Holmes” play, but I may have him confused with someone else), has a good look for Wolfe and brings the additional value of an Austrian accent. Stout’s Wolfe was Montenegran by birth, but I think this is the only time anyone ever portrayed him with an accent (except for Sidney Greenstreet’s English tones). The plot is stripped-down, as is necessary for the half-hour format (not ideal for the material), and the office set lacks the rich detail of the later productions. But all in all it’s a commendable effort and pretty entertaining.

(It also features the actor Alexander Scourby [whose Bible narration you may have heard], whom I also saw in person once, in college, doing a reading of Walt Whitman. I had a chance to meet him but missed out, as is my custom in life.)

One wonders why it wasn’t accepted by the network. However, if that had happened, Bill Shatner might have still been busy when Gene Roddenberry went looking for an actor to play Captain Kirk a few years later. And the world would have missed out on a rich font of camp, parody, and Facebook memes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder in the Fells,’ by Bruce Beckham

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Her face is big-boned like a Herdwick sheep and in the greenish-blue eyes rests an innate kindliness.

I’m not sure I’d have ever read the Inspector Skelgill novels if they’d been described to me first. An eccentric police detective whose main expertise is as a hunter and fisherman, who detects mostly by instinct and intuition rather than by reasoning, doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. And yet I find these books by Bruce Beckham fascinating, and they seem to get better and better as they go. They are set in the English county of Cumbria, up by the Scottish border.

In Murder in the Fells, a shepherd discovers a lost wallet in a fox’s “earth.” It contains an American woman’s passport. Probability indicates it belongs to a woman whose body was found near a waterfall in the fells, who has not been identified so far. Inquiries are begun to find out more about the woman.

Meanwhile, in a separate plot thread, we follow a woman named Dorothy T. Baum, another American who has traveled to Cumbria to meet a man, a professor of history, whom she met online and with whom she plans to move in. The reader soon realizes she’s the victim of a “catfishing” scheme, that she’s been lured to England to be fleeced of her money, then murdered. One suspects at first that this is the story of the dead woman – but it’s contemporaneous with Skelgill’s team’s investigation, and the dead woman’s name wasn’t Dorothy.

Tension builds as Dorothy survives a couple “accidents,” and Skelgill’s team becomes aware of her and begin trying to locate her in the tangle of mountain and valley paths that crisscross Cumbria.

And in the end, a big surprise. Very well done.

I liked Murder in the Fells very much. Enjoyed every page. It’s become a cliché for publicists to advertise every English mystery as “gripping.” But in this case it’s true.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder in the Air,’ by David Pearson

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The Galway Homicides is an Irish police procedural series I’m not familiar with. But in the usual way of such things I got the offer of a free book, and so I read it. I had the impression from the description that it starred a man/woman police detective team, but if that was true of the earlier volumes, it is so no more. The hero of Murder in the Air is Detective Inspector Maureen Lyons. Her former partner (and current “life partner” in the dreary contemporary parlance) is Inspector Mick Hays, who has been kicked upstairs to the administrative office of Superintendent and plays only a peripheral role in this story.

A Galway property developer named Gerald Fortune crashes his small plane in a West Ireland bog and is killed along with his 17-year-old daughter and a business associate. When it’s discovered that the engine was tampered with, the accident investigation becomes a murder case. Fortune was known as a ruthless competitor who profited from others’ failures, so there is no shortage of possible suspects. But the investigation turns in a surprising direction, and the real killer has an unexpected motive and turns out to have no scruples about hurting anyone – even the investigators’ own families.

The writing in Murder in the Air was fine – author David Pearson writes in a competent, professional manner. He has, however, the annoying habit (which seems to be increasingly common these days) of describing as few of his characters and possible – and when he does, it may be half way through the book. I presume he has reasons for this discourtesy to his readers, but I can’t imagine what they might be.

Being who I am, I was of course conscious of the sexual politics involved in the storytelling. This story takes place in one of those now-common fictional police stations where the personnel are evenly divided between men and women. Maybe that’s how it is in Ireland. Maybe affirmative action has forced those proportions on the famous Gardai. But it was at least good to see that Superintendent Mick Hays was on hand to take care of the rough stuff when called upon. We men are still good for lifting things and opening jar lids, it would appear, even in the age of Trans.

Anyway, Murder in the Air was okay. But I didn’t love it and feel no great impulse to read another in the series.