Big Lonesome

CRAIC HEAD*

 

Have you seen this man? ( Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!)

*Craic: An Irish word for "fun."

OH SHIT, VIKINGS!

 

Assuming you haven't been living under a rock the last seven years (in which case you totally missed the collapse of the housing market, the economy, the Republican party and women's professional sports), then you know that Wells Tower is a damn fine writer. His debut short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, was released earlier this month. Go read my review and then buy the book.  

BEING & EVERYTHINGNESS

The summer of 2008 was an eventful one for me. I attended my first BEA, interviewed John Banville in Dublin, went to a wedding in West Belfast, and turned 40 years old; but twenty years from now when the details have faded and withered, I suspect I'll still be reading Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint whose slim novels I discovered last summer. So smitten am I by his work that for me, the summer of '08 will go down as the Summer of Toussaint.

The Dalkey Archive published Monsieur in English last June and followed that up in November with the release of The Bathroom and Camera, which I reviewed for the L.A. Weekly.

Toussaint traffics in a kind of slow-motion situation comedy. What makes the humor so effective is that he never appears to be going for the gag. His work is frequently compared to the silent comedies of Buster Keaton, but you won’t find anything as inelegant as a pratfall in Toussaint’s oeuvre. He doesn’t construct plots; rather, he devises pantomimes in which his reluctant heroes grapple with dilemmas largely of their own making. Whether it’s the decision to suddenly leave the bathtub — and Paris — for a decrepit hotel in Venice or insulting a dinner party host’s style of dress, seldom if ever do Toussaint’s characters reveal what motivates them to behave as they do.

I used to think that authors of independently published trade paperback short story collections had the toughest road to hoe in terms of breaking out of the pack and finding an audience. I no longer think that way. There is no tougher sell than an independently published trade paperback novella-length novel in translation originally published almost 20 years ago. Still with me? Then you won't want to miss this interview with three of Toussaint's translators at The Elegant Variation.

The L.A. Weekly gets huge props for championing these novels, which makes the news that they won't be doing much more of this kind of thing because of budget constraints all the more heartbreaking. 

  

BOOK OF THE WEEK: ABLUTIONS

Patrick deWitt's debut novel has a superb hook: a bartender in a Hollywood bar collects notes about his clientele — the coke dealer, the transvestite, the cop fetishist, the alcoholic child actor, etc.. Although the tone is as curiously detached as a 19th-century naturalist's ("Discuss Junior, the black crack addict"), the gruesome catalog of his customers' failings is spliced with confessions of the bartender's epic consumption of Irish whiskey and whatever drugs he can get his hands on. These excesses, which are rendered in the second person, are pursued with persistence and determination until the line that separates the bartender from the "lowlifes" becomes blurred.

Then things get steadily worse. Abandoned by his wife, the bartender embarks on a series of stomach-turning sexual encounters that only the most depraved people would call "erotic." He takes a trip to the desert in the hope of finding redemption, and nearly gets his brains stomped out by a shitkicker at the World's Oldest Rodeo. He returns to the unnamed Hollywood dive bar more shattered than when he left, and starts skimming the till to build up a stake, so he'll have something to fall back on when everything eventually collapses.

For the rest of the review, check out the new and improved and back from the dead book reviewing concern, Bold Type. Also check out this review in the L.A. Times and this interview at Three Guys One Book. Now for a few tidbits that aren't in the review...

Having been a frequent habitue of Hollywood dive bars for most of the ten years I lived in Los Angeles, I was dying to know where exactly Mr. deWitt had worked as a mixologist. For decades any sentence with the word "bar" and "Hollywood" would point you directly to Musso & Frank's, but deWitt makes no mention of a kitchen or its staff so I'm ruling out bars with restaurants attached. Dive bars tend to be small and the joint where Ablutions's narrator works has a large staff with a bouncer at the door, which rules out some of the smaller places like Powerhouse or the Frolic Room, which used to be called Bob's Frolic, hence Bob's Frolic 2 on Wilcox, but who knows if it's still there. The clientele doesn't seem to change so I'm ruling out some of the trendier places, i.e. bars that have differerent patrons during the day than they do at night. Ditto live entertainment. This pretty much wipes out all of the contenders.

But if by "Hollywood" you mean the oft disputed East Hollywood / Silverlake border region, you've got some more contenders. There's a scene where the narrator drives to the Santa Monica Pier and it feels like a journey. (Granted, getting anywhere in L.A. can feel like that but, generally speaking, not at 3am.) Then there's the author photo.

  

This is clearly the mug of an Eastsider. Granted, this is pure speculation, but I'm going to guess that when he goes to the beach he has to Google directions first. I'm thinking the bar is waaaaay east of Hollywood, like an Echo Park bar with a Sunset Boulevard address which the tools in New York mistake for Hollywood even though North Hollywood, which is separated from Sunset by a freaking mountain is closer to Hollywood than Echo Park. My guess is it's this place...