Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Godfather of Kathmandu - John Burdett

John Burdett and Richard Price are my favorite mystery writers, although I think Price transcends the genre. You will find his work in the fiction section of a bookstore. Burdett's will be be under mystery. That does a disservice to Burdett's work. It could just as easily be found under fiction, or religion, or perhaps travel, maybe sociology, and sometimes political science.

Lisbeth Salandar notwithstanding, Burdett has also managed to create the most interesting detective type in modern day fiction. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a great tour guide for all things physical and spiritual. He will get you around the streets of Bangkok on the back of his motorcycle, or the temples and back alleys of Nepal, or the inner workings of a bustling brothel with equal expertise. And of course he will take you along on his spiritual quest with a succession of gurus and mantras.

Additionally, he will display his calm in the face of the most grisley crime scenes and salacious sexual escapades and dazzle you with his insight into all things seedy. This guy is great.

This latest installment of Sonchai's adventures has him acting as a consiglieri for a local mob moving heroin from Nepal to Thailand. This job does his karma no good whatsoever. There is also the matter of the horrible murder, or is it a suicide, of a prominent Hollywood director/producer with an appetite for drugs and Bangkok hookers.

You come away from this book with a few new convictions. Never let someone talk you into transporting drugs across international borders by hiding them in body cavities. Avoid driving in Bangkok traffic at all costs. Sometimes nothing gets your karma back into line like a good joint.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Blue Valentine

I don't love Blue Valentine simply because Derek Cianfrance wrote and directed it; however, that is why I went to see it last Saturday. I love it because I still can't stop thinking about it. That's the good news. The bad news is that I also can't get "You Always Hurt the One You Love" out of my mind. If I knew the rest of the lyric it might be easier to go to sleep. Oh well everything has a trade off.

No, I love the movie because it is one of those increasingly rare films that holds its tone all the way to the end. Derek's first big success at Sundance, Brother Tied, had a hard time with tone, I thought, because the story had too many holes in it. The characters' motivations were hard to understand and thus their reactions seemed out of proportion at times. (I hasten to note that I saw the film back when I was still teaching and that seems like a hundred years ago, so my memory is less than reliable here.) I walked away from that movie proud of Derek, but not all that satisfied with the film. In fact it seemed like the story of Brother Tied was simply a vehicle for an impressive collection of camera angles, shots, and artsy craftsy dissolves, pans, and fades.

Blue Valentine, by contrast, has a much smaller story to tell, but the thread of the narrative is so strong, so universal, that it never gets lost in the technical mastery of the film. I never lost sight of the ups and downs of this at once beautiful and heart breaking relationship. Of course the performances by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are pitch perfect. As I was watching them work I kept thinking of Holden Caulfield talking about the Lunts and Lawrence Olivier and how you could tell they were acting and how they were so good that they weren't real. That happens all the time in movies, but not in this one. I just felt that I was eaves dropping on two people whose story was not all that different from most love stories. There was never a moment when I thought I was looking at actors performing for my enjoyment.

Of course the editing and camera work and absolutely seamless flashes back and forward created that eaves dropping feeling. I loved how Dean and Cindy's conversations were filmed in extreme close-up and kind of over their shoulders. I loved the relative brightness of their past contrasted to the more muted colors of their present. I loved how the film didn't cop out at the end, but instead showed Dean walking away from his life into the (kind of) sad fireworks display.

Dean was such a great guy at the beginning of the relationship. The scene where he helps the old gentleman move into the nursing home is simply unforgettable. His parenting skills make him impossible not to love. Of course, it is easy to be a parent when your spouse does all the heavy lifting. You have to grow into a relationship. Cindy does; Dean doesn't. Sonnet 116 to the contrary, love can't withstand the stagnant contentment embodied in Dean's ever present cigarette (sexy during courtship; just obnoxious and smelly during six plus years of marriage), his lack of ambition, his less than sober self.

As a person who used to make his living getting kids to think about art, I always talked about tone and holding point of view. There are very few movies I can watch all the way through without losing interest. But there are a few that hold up for me. I'm not a film expert, but Straw Dogs by Peckinpah (spelling?)holds its tone to the bitter end. Virgin Spring by Bergman is another. I think Silence of the Lambs and Goodfellows are two more. I loved a little known film called Miss Firecracker. Fargo is the only Coen brothers film that holds on till the end. I think Blue Valentine belongs in that group.

This last comment may be a little hyperbolic, but I also thought about Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I saw the film. Joyce pays his readers the huge compliment of trusting them to find their bearings in the novel without any help from some omniscient narrator. He just dives in and expects his readers to get lost in the world he has created. I think Derek has done the same thing in his wonderful film. He has truly held a mirror up to nature and has invited us to watch and make of it what we will. There is no irritating voice over. There is no indication when we are in a flashback or in the present. We are left to our own devices and for that I am grateful and more than a little impressed.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Reading in Puerto Vallarta

We just got back from twelve days in Puerto Vallarta with Bud and Janet. High seventies every day. Lots of good restaurants. Every morning by the pool reading books and drinking Pina Coladas. I polished off five books during my stay and got half way through a sixth on the plane ride home.

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

I am accidentally reading Nick Hornby in reverse chronological order. I first read Juliet Naked a couple of years ago and fell in love with Hornby's voice and self-deprecating sense of humor. I say self-deprecating because the main characters he writes about have to be thinly disguised versions of Hornby, a person who seems to love drugs, sex, and (especially) rock and roll. Next I read A Long Way Down. I didn't think it as good as Juliet because it didn't have the same acerbic humor directed at rock and roll groupies and fanatics. High Fidelity, Hornby's first novel, is the best of the three. I haven't seen the John Cusack movie version, but after reading the book, one comes to the undeniable conclusion that only John Cusack could play Rob, the music store owner with one foot in reality and the other on a musical banana peel.

Rob and his down and out employees remind me of the guys in Diner, especially Daniel Stern who submits his prospective wife to a sports quiz to make sure they are right for each other. In Rob's world, everyone who walks into the store is subjected to a music quiz. YOU LIKE TINA TURNER?! GET OUT OF MY STORE! But Rob, unlike his co-workers, is slowly beginning to see the shallowness masquerading as good musical taste that is bringing about his ruination. The fact that he has just been left by his girlfriend helps bring him to that realization. In the end, Rob sees the light and seems willing to let someone with a bad record collection enter his life.

I know lots of Robs, but I am not going to mention any names on the off chance someone might actually be reading this. They usually have an icebox full of beer, a killer sound system, and a collection of concert tee shirts. Their homes are great places to hang out while getting lost in ear drum shattering recordings and good dope, but after awhile you just have to move on. Rob is on the verge of learning that lesson.

I loved the section at the end of the book where Rob is being interviewed by an undergraduate who innocently asks him to list his top five recordings of all time. Rob has waited all his life for someone to ask him this question and after much thought presents his list. But the list keeps festering and he calls back again and again to amend it. It is a funny moment and I can't imagine anyone who would be able to read on without stopping to make his own list. Here is mine.

"Cripple Creek" - The Band
"Eddie's All-Star Joint" - Ricky Lee Jones (Thank you Katie Hoffman)
"The Unsquare Dance" - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Old Friends" - Paul Simon

Here is Kathie's list.

"Honky Tonk Woman" - The Rolling Stones
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Come Together" - The Beatles
"Life Is A Carnival" - The Band
"Ain't Scared of Dying" - Blood, Sweat, and Tears

An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin

Steve Martin's Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile is one of the smartest plays I have ever read or seen performed. It basically explores the idea that art and science both spring from the same creative impulse, the same need to explain. His new book isn't nearly as smart, but it taught me a lot about the inner workings of the art world. How art dealers deal. How art is valued. How to tell good from bad. It also gives a little history lesson about the state of the world the last couple of decades.

It is also a romantic comedy with a speaker who is a writer about art. This speaker unwittingly becomes involved in a little scam at an art auction which supplies the book with the bare bones of a mystery.

When I taught AP I would sometimes tell my students to go to a show at the art museum and rent the headphones. The descriptions of the paintings provided wonderful models for writing about literature, especially poetry. Steve Martin's descriptions of the various works considered in this book are masterful models of writing and thinking about art.

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

I decided to reward myself with Catcher. I hadn't read it for about ten years, so I figured it was time. Let me tell you that Salinger's masterwork holds up quite well against all the stuff I've been reading lately.

I read a piece about Catcher by Louis Menand(I think)celebrating the book's fiftieth anniversary a few years ago. The article was fun to read, even though it didn't teach me anything new. The one thing I remember from the article was Menand thought Holden was more articulate and more insightful than any seventeen year old could possibly be and he saw that as a flaw in the novel. At the time, I remember thinking he was as wrong as he could be, and now having read it again, I am convinced he was wrong. I've known all kinds of seventeen year olds with the same insight and the same ability to express that insight. On top of that, I continue to maintain that Holden Caulfield is the most memorable character in American Literature. I also maintain that anyone who doesn't love that little boy and that great book is either illiterate or has no heart.

The one thing that struck me about the book this time is that I am basically the same person I was when I first read the book at age fourteen. I laugh at the same jokes, cry at he same frustrations, recognize the same fears. I am still the hopeless neurotic I was in junior high school. I'm not sure what I think about this.

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

I have recently enjoyed watching Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, so while picking out books for our Mexican sojourn I chose this one to refresh my memory about the whole Clutter thing. It was quite a juxtaposition to Salinger, but it was even more compelling. Very few people write sentences like Capote. You can taste them.

I taught the book two or three times years ago and I remember that kids almost always loved it. I'm not a big fan of mystery novels. Don't get me wrong; I read them, but I always feel guilty afterwards. Not so with this magnificent book. I knew what was coming, but I still couldn't put it down.

Generosity - Richard Powers

In the midst of making some pretty heavy indictments against everything from genetic engineering (and profiteering) to the evils of Oprah Winfrey, this terrific book creates Thassa, maybe the most memorable character you will ever encounter.

Thassa is a blissfully happy and content creature and her happiness infects all around her. I found myself wanting to go out into the world spreading joy and good will, but not ironically. For real.

She is a student in a creative writing class taught by a young man whose caustic vision tends to skewer everything he encounters, but not Thassa. The problem is that anyone who is unqualifiably happy (She is said to possess the happiness gene.) is not sufficiently armed to withstand the 24/7 media scrutiny that such a person would inevitably be subjected to and we are forced to witness the gradual eating away of her joyfulness.

Don't worry. The end is satisfying without being sappy. This is a wonderful book and a great way to end my reading binge.