Fiction, Reviews

Graveyard Special, by James Lileks

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…Two people + their problems < hill of beans. Not an equation we understood. And he shot the guy, too: the soundtrack seemed extra sharp – it echoed in the bare room, and I felt Tatiana jump when roscoe barked, saw her smile when Claude Raines threw in with justice and liberty. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted to snap a match and smoke and sneer at a dying Nazi and make a remark he’d carry down to hell. But the Minnesota Clean Air Act forbade these things.

For some time, James Lileks of lileks.com (I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but I did a half hour of radio with him once) has been telling us about a series of interconnected mystery novels set in Minneapolis he’s been working on. Graveyard Special, the first of these, is out at last, for Kindle users. Other formats will be forthcoming.

Graveyard Special is a semi-autobiographical book, loosely based on Lileks’ student days, when he worked at the Valli Restaurant (dubbed the Trattoria here). There are lots of familiar landmarks in this story for me, because although I didn’t live in the University neighborhood of Dinkytown myself, my friends and I used to head over there quite often to eat in our own college days, a few years earlier. We liked to dine at Bridgeman’s or Best Steak House, but we never patronized the Valli. I know exactly where I was when this story is supposed to have happened too (fall of 1980). I was a few miles away, in south Minneapolis, attending Brown Institute of Broadcasting on Lake Street.

Robert Thompson, the narrator, is an art student from Motley, Minnesota (a real town, I swear to you) whose life at this point revolves around his shifts at the “Trat,” where most of his housemates also work, and where they love to hang out in their off hours to play the arcade machines. He’s waiting tables one night when the night manager takes a break to huff some propellant from a Redi-Whip can and dies, shot by a bullet coming through the restaurant window. Being a witness gives Robert the chance to meet a very attractive reporter for the University student newspaper, and when he begins to notice suspicious behavior on the part of some of his housemates and some denizens of the Trat, he brings them to her, just as an excuse to get to know her better. Which eventually gets him in over his head, and involves him in bombings and a bloody Zamboni ride at a Gophers hockey game. Continue reading Graveyard Special, by James Lileks →

Uncategorized

In solemn remembrance

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I have to apologize in advance for what I’m going to write on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

I’d like to say that the losses are terrible, but they were not in vain, because America found courage in the time of trial to come back and rid the world of a great evil.

But (obviously, I think), that’s not exactly what happened.

There’s been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking about the War on Terror. I’m now inclined to the view that Afghanistan should have been a short, sharp punitive mission, and then out again. Iraq was the strategically useful war. But maybe that’s just because I haven’t read enough books on the subject from different angles.

It’s good that we punished the perpetrators. It’s good that Osama bin Ladin was killed. I’ve never nitpicked the president over that action, and I don’t plan to start now.

But all my life I’ve evaluated things through the lens of bullying and abuse. Many people think the United States must be the world’s bully, because we’re so rich and powerful.

But that’s not how bullying works. I’ve seen it myself, and I’ll bet you have too. Dominance is not (or not wholly) a matter of size or strength. It’s a matter of how far the various parties are willing to go to get their way. Often a smaller, weaker person can bully a larger, stronger one, because he’s more ruthless and selfish. Continue reading In solemn remembrance →

Fiction, Reviews

Solomon vs. Lord, by Paul Levine

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I found much to like in Paul Levine’s light legal thriller, Solomon vs. Lord, first in a series. I also found elements that creeped me out. I’ll give you my reaction; judge for yourself.

Like most male readers, I don’t actually hate romance in a story. I just don’t care for stories that are only romance. I want some swords or some guns, or stuff getting blown up. If you’re going to have romance, the best kind is the Benedick and Beatrice sort (as in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”), where the man and the woman fight like a dog and a cat, and everyone but they can see that it’s because they have unusual sexual chemistry.

That’s what we have in Solomon vs. Lord. Steve Solomon is a talented, not-overly-ethical Miami lawyer, who at the beginning is defending a man charged with importing exotic animals illegally. Arguing for the prosecution is Victoria Lord, scion of a wealthy family that’s fallen on hard times. Her life plan calls for her to pay her dues in the DA’s office, then get a job with a respectable law firm. She’s also going to marry Bruce Bigby, a handsome and wealthy avocado grower and real estate tycoon. Continue reading Solomon vs. Lord, by Paul Levine →

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me, by Ian Morgan Cron

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Ian Morgan Cron grew up with a deep, unsatisfied hunger for the love of his father. He tells the story of his struggle to understand and forgive in the memoir, Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me, A Memoir… Of Sorts. His father was, when Ian was young, an executive with a motion picture company. The family lived in Europe and hobnobbed with movie stars and political figures.

Then his father’s career crashed on the rock of his alcoholism. The family moved home to Greenwich, Connecticut, to a life of marginal poverty (sure, it wasn’t Harlem, but the contrast of their own lives with those of their wealthy neighbors just made it harder for the kids). His mother made a new career in time that gave them some financial stability, but his father’s continuing blackouts and rages left wounds Ian couldn’t deal with.

In his religious life, Ian went from an innocent, youthful love of Jesus to bitterness and atheism, when Jesus failed to give him the one thing he asked for—a sober father. He experimented with drinking, was scared by his own reaction, and settled into drugs for a while before taking up drinking again.

It was only after many years that Ian learned his father’s great secret—he’d been a CIA agent. Many spies are alcoholics and narcissists, he learned. They’re suited to the life.

Only the realization that he was himself turning into his father drove Ian to seek counseling, and finally to reconcile with God.

Ian Cron writes with a light touch and the kind of mordant humor you’re familiar with if you’ve read authors who suffered child abuse (and believe me, you have). His account of his journey back to faith is in many places touching and moving. The personal revelation that reconciles him to Christ at one point is one that some Christians may have trouble with. I’m not sure about it myself, but I generally try not to judge another Christian’s deepest confidence.

Hints in the course of the story suggest to me that Cron’s final faith road brings him closer to Tony Campolo than to James Dobson, but those hints are lightly touched on and need not spoil the story for those of us who trust the Bible more than our hearts.

Recommended, especially for Christians who come from dysfunctional homes. Or those who want to understand them better.

Authors, Poetry

Emily, wherever they may find her

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Amhurst College thinks they might have the second known photograph of Emily Dickinson.



Photo: Amhurst College Archives

There is, currently, only one authenticated photograph of Dickinson in existence – the well-known image of the poet as a teenager in 1847. But Amherst College believes an 1859 daguerreotype may well also be an image of the reclusive, beloved poet, by now in her mid-20s and sitting with her recently widowed friend, Kate Scott Turner. If so, it will shed new light on the poet who, by the late 1850s, was withdrawing further and further from the world.

The photograph is currently being evaluated by experts.

Tip: Neatorama.

Fiction, Reviews

Come and Get It, by Edna Ferber

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When I read We, the Drowned, which I reviewed the other day, I was making one of my attempts to connect with the lives of my ancestors, in that case my Danish forebears.

I’ve written before in this space about my mother’s mother’s family, who lived in Hurley, Wisconsin, generally considered the wickedest town in the north. So when I learned that a novel had been written (at least in part) about Hurley (renamed “Iron Ridge”) by an estimable American novelist, I had to read that too.

Come and Get It is one of Edna Ferber’s big American books. In novels like Showboat, So Big, and Cimarron, she attempted to capture the essence of her own country as expressed in the life of various regions. Come and Get It is her northern novel. It’s worth reading, though it hasn’t kept as well as its early fans hoped it would (it was even made into a movie with Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Joel McCrae, and Frances Farmer, but judging by the clips I’ve seen they made major alterations). Continue reading Come and Get It, by Edna Ferber →

Reviews

Netflix review: “Foyle’s War”

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Since the Foyle’s War mystery series has been broadcast in this country on PBS, all of you probably enjoyed it long before I did. But in case I’m not the last person in America to catch this excellent program, I’ll give my own viewer’s response here.

Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (splendidly underplayed by Michael Kitchen) is chief detective in Hastings, England, during World War II. A sort of running joke in the series is that he desperately wants to do something “more important” for the war effort, but again and again is denied the chance, sometimes because there’s a case he feels he needs to see through to the end, and sometimes because his stubborn integrity makes him enemies in high places. Later on, when the war is winding down, he just wants to retire, but keeps getting pulled back in.

Foyle is a smallish, unprepossessing man, but steely in his character. He’s the kind of superior officer who can flay a subordinate alive without raising his voice. Nevertheless he’s very popular with his underlings, and has a sly, dry, sense of humor.

He is assisted in his inquiries by two regular supporting characters—Samantha “Sam” Stuart, his military driver (played by an actress actually named Honeysuckle Weeks, who’s not conventionally pretty but is nevertheless entirely adorable), and Detective Sergeant Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), an early war casualty with an artificial leg. Together they investigate at least one murder each episode, often connected to war profiteering, espionage, and military secrets. Foyle isn’t always able to arrest the sometimes well-protected culprits, but he does all he can and never gives up under any pressure less than direct orders. In such cases, he never leaves the stage without laying out the moral case. Continue reading Netflix review: “Foyle’s War” →