A few months ago I visited the town of Marfa, TX, and realized that I had somehow managed to not bring enough reading material with me to last the week (this particular vacation was the kind that involves a lot of down time, like reading in hammocks--not the kind of vacation I'm used to). So I ventured over to the local book store and came up with this book by Georges Simenon. Like most of his repertoire, it's a slim volume, one of the recently repackaged "romans durs"--dark, noirish, economically written novels.
On his 48th birthday (which no one has remembered), a "successful" Parisian businessman realizes how unsatisfactory his life has become, and on a whim decides to withdraw 300,000 francs from his account and disappear to the French Riviera, where he makes a new life for himself cavorting with prostitutes, drunks, thieves, and other assorted low-lifes. At first he finds himself unaccustomed to this lifestyle, having been used to the finer things for so many years--"and yet there was something pleasurable about this slight pain," as he says. Of course, his old life invades the new one, and he ends up being pulled back, returning as suddenly as he'd left.
Have you ever read a book, knew you enjoyed it, but have no recollection of what it's about, or of the experience of reading it? Or maybe this only happens to me. I've had this book scanned and uploaded for two months but have been avoiding it because I have no idea what to say about it. Ever after reading a plot summary, nothing jogged my memory of it. I don't know what that says about me, or the book, but I've decided I need to just post this and move on with it. Maybe I'll try to read it again, but maybe not.
According to the back cover copy, "At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms. Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover--and Bill's." (I love how that little bit at the end is supposed to be such a twist.)
With one exception, I've read all of Rick Moody's books and this is still my favorite one. Set in the affluent town of New Canaan, CT, the novel centers around one dysfunctional family over the course of one night in winter of 1973. Parents swap partners--I'm pretty sure this book first introduced me to the concept of key parties (not that I've ever participated)--while their children experiment with sex and drugs, and an ice storm, both literal and symbolic (how d'ya like that one?), sweeps through the area. Yet another one to revisit some day.
Just as war was breaking out in Europe, Henry Miller went to Greece, traveling around the country with the writer Lawrence Durrell, who lived there at the time. This account of his journey there is brilliant and intense with his feeling for the country and its people. As he describes it, "Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt."
I love what he says he looks for in his travel accommodations: "I like hotels which are second or third rate, which are clean but shabby, which have seen better days, which have an aroma of the past." Words to live by!
I had to read this book for a screenwriting class, which was happening right around the same time that that awful movie Adaptation came out. In the movie Nicolas Cage goes to one of Robert McKee's screenwriting seminars (though it's not actually McKee; he's played by the actor Brian Cox) and manages to arrange a one-on-one with him. I'm not sure if that's why the teacher chose this book for the class—he specifically mentioned Adaptation when introducing the book—but it's actually a pretty great tool if you're trying to write a screenplay. I guess that's what I'm trying to say—even though the author is portrayed in a terrible movie (I realize a lot of people really like it—they're just misguided), his book is pretty useful for people who wish to avoid writing terrible movies.
This book collects the zines and artists books that Raymond Pettibon made between 1978 and 1998, encompassing his early days drawing flyers and record covers for L.A. punk bands, to the recent past, by which time he'd been accepted into the art world, showing at galleries and world-renowned museums.
The book is pretty thick--about two inches.
Consisting entirely of black and white pen and ink drawings (with a few black and white xeroxes thrown in), Pettibon's imagery is dark and violent, but with a sick sense of humor. I've erred a little more on the conservative side with choosing images for this post (never know who might be looking at it...). Unfortunately the book is pretty hard to come by at this point but if you can get a copy of it I highly recommend it!
This is a collection of short vignettes that take place in every corner of the world, from Thailand to San Francisco to Bosnia to Cambodia, a sort of meandering travel journal of dissociated experiences. In Northern Canada he meets a woman being eaten alive by mosquitoes; in San Francisco he watches a prostitute build a crack pipe out of a broken car antenna and a Brillo pad. As in all the other books of his that I've read, he seeks out people living on the edges of society, finding beauty in ugliness.
A few months ago I visited the town of Marfa, TX, and realized that I had somehow managed to not bring enough reading material with me to last the week (this particular vacation was the kind that involves a lot of down time, like reading in hammocks--not the kind of vacation I'm used to). So I ventured over to the local book store and came up with this book by Georges Simenon. Like most of his repertoire, it's a slim volume, one of the recently repackaged "romans durs"--dark, noirish, economically written novels.
