25 September, 2001: King Suckerman
King Suckerman was a disappointment, particularly because I've liked other Pelecanos books. It felt like it was relying upon an intimacy that wasn't there and a trust that wasn't earned; it's all well and good to assume a backstory exists, but so much of the novel revolves around the friendship between Dimitri Karras, a Greek drug-dealer and layabout, and Marcus Clay, a black Vietnam vet and record store owner, that you need their utterly buy into the reality of their relationship. I didn't. Karras and Clay came off as characters in a pretty decent Tarantino knockoff: enjoyable enough and self-consistant, but more well-rounded clichés than living breathing characters. That's deadly in a book that relies on a dramatic shift in Karras' attitude; from a well-meaning coward, he becomes a standup guy who's willing to help Clay in a showdown with the books' villains, and if you never believe him as a full-fledged character in the first place. It leaves a hollow in the heart of the book.
11:08 pm 
23 September, 2001: Ceremony
Ceremony is one of the last of the really great Spenser novels; I think the series really hits its stride around Mortal Stakes or Promised Land and begins dropping off around A Catskill Eagle (which concludes the story arc of the early books in a mostly dissatisfactory way). Spenser is hired to track down a teenage runaway who's turning tricks; in the process of doing so, he runs afoul of a pimp and the mob. It's interesting -- I never really noticed how many of the early Spenser novels involve teenagers. (more...)
11:05 pm
11 September, 2001: Home Cooking
Novelist Laurie Colwin's first collection of articles about cooking, food, and the art of eating, Home Cooking is a gem. Unlike many food esayists, Colwin can flat out write. The essays in Home Cooking -- as opposed to those by other many excellent food writers, like John (Serious Pig) Thorne -- aren't daunting. Colwin isn't, say, exploring the nuances of a regional cuisine or exploring the evolution of salade Nicoise; she's writing about much homier topics. The baked chicken she brings to parties; spinach casserole with jalapenos; slow-rising slightly sour bread; the perfect potato salad; Carribean fruitcake (for special occasions only, as you have to marinate the fruit in dark rum for weeks). These aren't intimidating recipes -- even the scary ones sound like a breeze in Colwin's sisterly, comforting voice. (How can you resist an essay called "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant"?) And, to gild the lily, Colwin's recipes (the ones I've tried, at least; there are a number of vegetarian or easily-adapted recipes, although it's not the focus of the book) are very, very yummy.
1:08 am
5 September, 2001: Looking for Rachel Wallace
I'm a big fan of the first dozen or so Spenser books; I think Robert Parker has a nice ear for dialogue and I enjoy his characters. By about Crimson Joy, I think the series had started to become repetitive, but I still read 'em anyway. Going back and reading some of the older books, however, is more of a treat; there's a real rhythm to them that I think most other detective novels never fall into. Looking for Rachel Wallace isn't the best of early Spenser -- there's not enough Hawk or Quirk, it was written 1980 and the central plot point (the world's reactions to the titular Rachel Wallace, a lesbian feminist writer) hasn't really aged well, and Wallace's reconcilliation with Spenser at the end seems rather too neat, as does some of the dialogue about gender issues. Still, Wallace is a nicely drawn character and Spenser behaves in an enjoyably non-cuddly manner for much of the novel. And it contains possibly the definitive Spenser line:
"You think you should have noticed them sooner?"
"Yeah. I was too busy arguing patristic nomenclature with you. I should never have had to hit the curb like that."
And amen to that.
12:31 am
3 September, 2001: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
In her prime, Pauline Kael was a perceptive critic and a wonderful writer, but I found Kiss Kiss Bang Bang more interesting as a historical artifact. It's a collection of essays and reviews written between 1965 and 1967, not great vintages for American cinema. More to the point, Kael was writing these essays before the French New Wave and New Wave-inspired criticism had thoroughly legitimatized the high-culture study of film that Kael was performing, so there's an underlying pedagogical subtext. Kael is not simply trying to be an arbiter of taste in these essays (I feel that she was in her later years, and I also feel that her taste had declined), but instead offering by example her opinion on how to judge movies. And it's always fun reading the first draft of history -- I don't think any film critic writing now would dismiss Boorman's Point Blank with a sentence, but Kael doesn't muff any easy ones. It's always fun going through a volume of criticism like this and looking for howlingly bad judgments from the critics, but with early Kael I appreciate her reasoning and taste even when I disagree with her. That's more than I can say for most critics, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang gave me at least three ideas for movies I should rent, which is more than I can say for most film books.
11:39 pm