I have become an AAJ contributor

[Eloe Omoe]

Which year did the review appear? I ask because this year McShann's gig was cancelled, which was one of the major reasons why the Montreal Bistro closed.

Late 2005, I think.

Luca

[Dan Gould]

Which year did the review appear? I ask because this year McShann's gig was cancelled, which was one of the major reasons why the Montreal Bistro closed.

Late 2005, I think.

Luca

thinking it was more recent, I was pleased to hear that Hootie is still gigging. This year's missed show notwithstanding, I hope he's still getting around.

[Eloe Omoe]

I like Leonard's fiction, though haven't read any of it for a while. It's a little too easygoing for me, maybe (in that I tend to prefer blacker, more fatalistic hardboiled worlds.

Have you ever read James Sallis, Nate?

Luca

Edited October 23, 2006 by Eloe Omoe

[Chuck Nessa]

You wanna make sure that your generation is not screwed?

Stop worrying about being screwed, tell my generation to go fuck itself (we'll be dead soon enough), and make the music in your gut. Not in your brain, but in your gut. Tell your story in your language, and if "we" can't handle it, fuck us.

I. for one, will love y'all for it, even if I do or do not "like" the music that ensues.

Your generation and Jim's and mine (where do we draw the lines?) have already been screwed. That's the deal. Now you have to live with that information. Any idea who the cops are, so you can report the crime?

[ep1str0phy]

I have no illusions, but I'm still fresh enough (mired in the relatively idealistic atmosphere of DT Berkeley) to feel the sting. Doesn't mean the young folk don't appreciate the tough love. As for living: I don't plan on dying anytime soon--and I'll wear my lungs proudly.

-Apologies, btw, to CJ Shearn, whose thread has spun off into a million tangents. Good luck!

[Chuck Nessa]

Yes. please, all good wishes to CJ. He seems to be a smart music fan and I think we should all hope for the best for him.

Go CJ!

[JSngry]

You wanna make sure that your generation is not screwed?

Stop worrying about being screwed, tell my generation to go fuck itself (we'll be dead soon enough), and make the music in your gut. Not in your brain, but in your gut. Tell your story in your language, and if "we" can't handle it, fuck us.

I. for one, will love y'all for it, even if I do or do not "like" the music that ensues.

Your generation and Jim's and mine (where do we draw the lines?) have already been screwed. That's the deal. Now you have to live with that information. Any idea who the cops are, so you can report the crime?

True, we've all been screwed. But the nature of the perps is such that there are ample opportunities (never refused, it seems) for post-screwing screwing. My advice was offered in that light.

[JSngry]

Yes. please, all good wishes to CJ. He seems to be a smart music fan and I think we should all hope for the best for him.

Go CJ!

Ditto!

[Chuck Nessa]

You wanna make sure that your generation is not screwed?

Stop worrying about being screwed, tell my generation to go fuck itself (we'll be dead soon enough), and make the music in your gut. Not in your brain, but in your gut. Tell your story in your language, and if "we" can't handle it, fuck us.

I. for one, will love y'all for it, even if I do or do not "like" the music that ensues.

Your generation and Jim's and mine (where do we draw the lines?) have already been screwed. That's the deal. Now you have to live with that information. Any idea who the cops are, so you can report the crime?

True, we've all been screwed. But the nature of the perps is such that there are ample opportunities (never refused, it seems) for post-screwing screwing. My advice was offered in that light.

Sounds good.

Yours truly

Ben Dover

[Nate Dorward]

Have you ever read James Sallis, Nate?

Luca

No, not yet! Lately a run of Jim Thompson novels (Killer Inside Me, The Getaway,, &c).

Edited October 24, 2006 by Nate Dorward

[jazzbo]

Wow Thompson. . .I've read/own every scrap of his I've seen published, even his "Ironside" novel!

I love his writing.

[Eloe Omoe]

Have you ever read James Sallis, Nate?

Luca

No, not yet! Lately a run of Jim Thompson novels (Killer Inside Me, The Getaway,, &c).

So you should try Sallis' Difficult Lives, which is a wonderful essay on Thompson, David Goodis and Chester Himes. Great stuff.

Luca

[Tom Storer]

I agree that Elmore Leonard is a very fine writer. Too fine, maybe--you can hardly pick up a crime novel these days without running across Leonard's dialogue style in the mouths of another writer's characters, usually unconvincingly done. But hey, that's not Leonard's fault.

As for the passive voice... as Nate says, it is ridiculous to attempt to ban it outright. However, beginning writers do need to know what it is, and to be aware that the active voice has many advantages. I disagree with the notion that writing can't be taught--as an editor of technical writers, I know that it needs to be taught and that writers can and do improve. The rules in a style guide look stupid as soon as each is confronted with a real-life situation where the rule is overruled, but if they're presented with examples and the proviso that there will always be times when they should be ignored, they make a handy reference. I believe from experience that writers learn (when they do learn) from the example of better writing, not by diligently applying rules. But in the case of AAJ, can you blame them for trying to limit the damage? Their reviews come from people with different levels of writing skill, and some of them are real train wrecks. At least they can use their rules to justify some of their edits to the writers.

This reminds me that I wrote a couple of reviews for AAJ myself, but many years ago. I didn't continue because I naively just wanted to review whatever the hell I wanted to, whereas they wanted me to concentrate on one style or another that they needed reviewers for.

[clifford_thornton]

ALL writers can improve. The public forum is a good place to do that.

And I quote (not necessarily verbatim):

Jazz Kat: "I'm gonna go get stoned."

Chuck Nessa: "May I throw the first?"

[clifford_thornton]

ah but CT, remember-- define improvement. I agree or else everyone might as well stop but there's lotsa variables there, many of which have little to do w/writing-typing-scribbling per se.

Yeah, I guess you gotta account for the improvement from "utter shite" to just plain "shite," but I try to be more optomistic than that. And some people just don't have it, and should involve themselves in other pursuits.

However, I like to think that those who write regularly (and I mean daily, or at least something every few days) and like writing, will get better at the craft. And, like I've said on this board before, criticism as an artform can exist independently of that which is criticized. At this point I read (Clem) Greenberg as literature more than anything else, though his work has informed my aesthetic vantage point a great deal.

[Nate Dorward]

However, I like to think that those who write regularly (and I mean daily, or at least something every few days) and like writing, will get better at the craft.

Well, in many cases, but I can think of people who have improved not one whit after decades of writing, too!

I just remembered that I'd come across Sallis when I was reading a pile of Chester Himes earlier this year (I think he wrote the intro to one of the books). Right, I'll have to check him out.

I think (I know this is probably boring the hell out of 99% of readers but anyway) that rather than confusing people with strictures on the passive, it would be more beneficial just to teach it correctly. It's all about point of view and the placing of emphasis, like most issues of syntax: "Joe Blow was born on January 1st, 1970" (passive voice--"born" is the irregular past participle of "to bear") would be the obvious choice for a bio of Joe Blow; "Marie Blow gave birth to Joe Blow on January 1st, 1970" (active voice) would be more appropriate for a bio of the mother. It's simply a way of shifting the emphasis from subject to object, which is actually very important for coherent narration. (For instance: "After the overdose, he was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, where he was pronounced dead on arrival." -- two passives, which keep the emphasis on "him". This is far better than "After the overdose, ambulance attendants rushed him to the hospital, but the doctor pronounced him dead on arrival." -- converted to active verbs. We know who performs the tasks associated with these verbs so there's no reason to identify the performers.) Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.... but then again given the persistence of strange prescriptions about passives & confusion about identifying them, maybe not. Being able to use them naturally is actually the mark of a fluent speaker/writer, which is why it's a crucial stage in ESL learning.

[Larry Kart]

Clem -- I vaguely recall enjoying Higgins' "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." What I recall much more clearly was an episode I had with him in 1989, when I was in second in command of the Chicago Tribune books section. John Le Carre's "The Russia House" was about to come out, and it was a so-called "embargoed" book -- which meant that only one copy per newspaper would be sent out to the reviewer you had designated, and this would be done at the last minute. Higgins was our man, the book would get to him from Random House on Friday, he'd read it over the weekend and fax us a copy of his review (things weren't fully computerized and wired-up then) on Monday morning so we could get it into the paper the following Sunday, on the cover of the book section. The review comes in on time, I read it, and see that it's rather short and oddly circulaqr and inconclusive -- as though Higgins were merely stating and re-stating what seems to me like it might be like the initial premise of the book (that the Soviet missile defense system is a sham, and that a noble Soviet scientist wants to relay this news to the West in the hopes that a lessening of tensions and eventual peace might follow). Now I have no way to be sure about this, because we don't yet have a copy of the book (our only copy is in Higgins' hands), but my gut tells me that something's wrong here -- that Higgins probably has read only the first 50 or 100 pages of "The Russia House," then stopped or was stopped for some reason (booze? drugs? fear?), and is trying to fake his way through this. (In fact, it eventually became quite clear that Higgins hadn't read the whole book, because his review didn't even mention the book's main male character, Barley Blair, the guy Sean Connery plays in the film version, or the main female character either.) So I called Higgins on Monday, without yet knowing for sure what he had done or failed to do, and tried to talk around this -- saying that the review was a bit short and we'd like another page or so, hoping that he might have finished the book in the meantime, if that's what the problem was. He agreed to write more, rather testily, and what arrived in a hour or two was just more of the same, and even more lame. I tried one more time, saying that the Random House catalogue implied that the book was about something more and a good bit other than what he was saying in the review At this Higgins became furious, saying that he had read the book and I hadn't, that I was mortally insulting him, etc. So the book editor and I put our heads together and decided that by this point (our literal deadline for sending copy down the hopper now just a short time away) we had no choice but to run the review as written. As I said, it was our cover review that week, with a nice piece of art locked in place there, which made the deadline tighter and our eventual embarrassment greater, because Higgins had in fact read only a bit of the book -- with the review and the book in hand, you could see on what page he'd stopped. As to why this happened, I'm pretty sure it was personal craziness amplified or in league with booze or drugs. "The Russia House" is not a long book, and it would have been just as easy -- if you weren't loco or blotto -- to keep reading and then write the review, even if that tightened your own deadline, rather than to stop and try to fake the damn thing. On the other hand, now that I think of it, in the realm of personal goofiness there are some people who are drawn to the idea of faking things -- that there's a sick thrill for them in it when it works and another kind of sick thrill when it doesn't.

[T.D.]

there's gotta be some goddamn one on the George V. Higgins tip... no?

Yeah, I've read just about all of GVH's novels, plus the baseball book (The Passing of the Seasons? OK but nothing special).

I strongly prefer the relatively early underworld/Southie oriented novels. Never thought Coyle was as good as its movie-inspired reputation, but dug The Digger's Game, The Patriot Game, Cogan's Trade, the Jerry Kennedy novels (Penance for Jerry Kennedy, Kennedy for the Defense), The Rat on Fire, maybe a couple others I can't recall right now.

He did write some clinkers, though. In later novels, he cultivated an extremely polished style, albeit mixed in with his trademark dialogue, but the results tend to be extremely boring (The Mandeville Talent was stupefying). Only intermittent winners, to my taste, from this period, eg Trust. There was a very late novel about a sports agent (I forget the title), that was interesting but very sloppy compared to previous work. Perhaps GVH was having health or personal problems at that stage.

Funny thing, I once had to review a number of courtroom transcripts (surprisingly interesting reading), and it hit me (duh) that Higgins, a former lawyer, likely developed his dialogue writing through courtroom experience.

If you wanna go the British route, I recommend Bill James's "Harpur and Iles" novels. Great mixture of police procedural/comedy of manners. The earlier ones are better, but they're all decent. Later ones easier to find, of course... I've read them all, loaned most out.

Edited October 25, 2006 by T.D.

[Larry Kart]

If you wanna go the British route, I recommend Bill James's "Harpur and Iles" novels. Great mixture of police procedural/comedy of manners. The earlier ones are better, but they're all decent. Later ones easier to find, of course... I've read them all, loaned most out.

The best of the "Harpur and Iles" novels are amazing. Iles is one of the great comic monsters of all time. On the other hand, it seems to me that James kind of ran things into the ground after a very good and long stretch. I'm trying to read the new one, "Wolves of Memory," and find as I did in other recent ones that Iles's mad public outbursts are becoming so broad and absurd that surrounding more realistic, or less stylized, passages threaten to become meaningless. As I recall, things really get rolling with "The Lolita Man," where Harpur collaborates and to some extent bonds with the man who then becomes the new Chief on Harpur's turf. Then Iles crops up (in the next book?) and the slow-motion destruction of the dreamy, decent Chief begins, though I don't recall how many books that takes. When I read "Roses, Roses" (the one narrated entirely or in part by Harpur's wife), I had the feeling that it was the climax of what James had in mind when he set out. My favorite, as I recall, is "Astride a Grave."

[AllenLowe]

Larry, on the subject of book reviewers who have not read the whole book - I've seen many a letter in the NY Times book review from annoyed auithors in which it was clear, from what they were discussing, that the reviewer had not read the whole book - my brother-in-law had a review of his non-fiction book in the NY Times (and it was a generally positive review) in which it was glaringly obvious that the reviewer had not read the whole thing (criticized him for failing to discuss something which was done in detail) - I also remember reading a review of a book on John Kennedy in which the Times reviewer said something to the effect that 'thank goodness the writer has no truck with conspiracy theories' - and than, when I picked up the book in Borders, and checked the index, I found a section in which the author stated, in direct terms, that he believed that there had been a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy - this all constitutes some kind of literary malpractice, in my opinion -

and there's my own personal experience, which I've mentioned here before - Gary Giddins reviewed my book American Pop in the Village Voice, and it was clear that he had read not the book but the liner notes, which contained about 60 oercent of the book - he criticized me for failing to cite a work which I cited very clearly in the index and bibliography and in a footnote - he also went after me for allegedly putting everything in the context of "the first rockand roll record" in a trendy way - when in fact I had taken very specific pains int he book to do the opposite (I even discussed the issue directly) - well, I wrote a letter to the Voice pointing this out, and Giddins said, in response, that my entire book was appropriated from the work of other writers. I wish now that I had sued him -

[clifford_thornton]

CT-- i forget, yr deep in a parallel art history bag, si? who's the very fucking best there? do you like Dore Asheton at all? her brother was in The Stooges!!!

I wasn't that impressed with Ashton (well, more indifferent), but haven't read enough to call it either way...

I think Michael Fried is also excellent, though the best writer on modernism as a living - albeit somewhat historicized - process, is Richard Shiff. He's current. Ditto James Meyer (though not all his ideas are that original, he expresses them well. Craft.) and my former mentor David Raskin.

Gregory Battcock was also pretty hip, back in "the day." We're talking '60s/'70s minimal art here, where I think some of the best critics had to cut their teeth on some very difficult artwork. Lucy Lippard was/is another excellent writer coming out of that scene. Early Ros Krauss, though often misguided, is still very good. I got away from her, though, as October seems like too much copping the philosophical feel with not enough payback.

My art history bag was intense a few years ago; in school for something else now that has taken some time away from seeing.

Edited October 25, 2006 by clifford_thornton