Review #8 - Kiss Her Goodbye

Kiss Her Goodbye (or Why I Love Monsters and Revenge)

Why so many Hard Case Crime books? Certainly there's a reason beyond, "I've fallen behind on my reading count and can knock one of these out on two days' worth of subway-commute to work," isn't there? Sure, they're light and quick reads, and pure and utter pulp, and that's a massive part of the appeal, but there's something more. Something in pulp speaks to me. Something in pulp is fucking street-gospel, and it shoots straight in my black third eye and reveals the truth of the world to me in ways Italo Calvino and Salman Rushdie can only dream of doing. Pulp is not only worth doing, it may be the only thing worth doing.

Kiss Her Goodbye has what can be categorized as a liberal borrowing of Get Carter. You know the drill: Tough mob enforcer's daughter winds up dead, apparent suicide. Hero, if he can really be given such a qualitative moniker, decides something isn't right with all this and starts turning over stones to find out what's under them. Inevitably he turns over some very dangerous stones, and something underneath strikes instead of scuttles. It's not the most original plot in the world, but so what? The fact of the matter is, I love this story. I've heard it tons of times, in comics, movies and books, and I won't be satisfied until I've seen the Twitter-fiction version of it, because it's the culmination of my favorite themes: Monster has chance to be happy. Chance is snatched from him. He wreaks holy Hell on all involved.

Ever since I was little, I've had a very strong affiliation with the bestial. Doctor Hank McCoy was my favorite X-Man, King Kong my favorite Giant Monster, Frankenstein and The Wolfman my favorite classic monsters. While some would say it's because I'm possessed of a singularly hirsute nature, and feel commonality with them in this capacity, I instead point to the fact that they are outcasts. Unable to help what they are, despised by their fellow men, only wanting one chance at happiness. Alan Moore's version of Edward Hyde falls into this category, in perhaps my favorite summation of the archetype. King Kong wants the girl, is told he can't have her and gets killed for it. They're not all big animals deserving of pity, Carter was a nasty piece of work, vicious and cruel, but he has a heart, and he's given it to his niece, and when she turns up dead, he's going to know why. Similarly, the main character in Kiss Her Goodbye is disgusting- he sleeps with hookers, does drugs, beats the shit out of people that owe his employer money, ignores his wife, and though he loves his daughter, doesn't know a damn thing about her. But she's what's in his heart, and once she's gone, he's going to know why. I think it's this paradox that keeps me so intrigued, because by all accounts, these men should be dead inside, or have their passions invested in some inanimate object such as drugs or money, but they finally get this one connection only to have it snatched away. I think that's the main motivation behind Walker's actions in the movie Point Blank, not the ninety-three thousand dollars, but instead the fact that his best friend and wife betrayed him. He demands his money as a mantra throughout the film, but when it's finally in his reach, he doesn't take it, finally satisfied that instead, he's been paid in justice.

Redemption, that's what it's all boiling down to. These men feel that if they can fix this one mistake, it's going to cancel out the bad they've done. They may not state this as their reason for it, but it's what's driving them. Revenge stories are always the most fascinating to me. My favorite book of all time is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and it is the archetypal revenge tale. A man has his life ruined, is sent to prison, but while there, finds a way to get revenge on those who tore apart everything he loved. He returns, sets his plan in action, and finally has to face the conflict within himself when he sees the effect his revenge is having on the woman he loves. Will he give up his revenge and find happiness with her, or will he let it destroy him? That's the kind of question that can hook you into further reading. I hope to never have to answer it myself, but if I do, I'm almost positive I'm going to have to destroy everything as a matter of principle.

Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie: B+

It's got cliches galore, and of course you know who's behind everything and what they did, and the main character is slightly daft to not pick up on it as soon as you do, but hey, it's got bravado and swagger and fulfills all of my requirements for great literature: That somebody gets what's coming to them.

Minor Layout Changes

I'm fooling around with the formatting, trying to find a layout more pleasing to the eye, but my html knowledge is, shall we say, limited.

I've republished the last review, #7, with a centered picture above the post, and tab breaks inserted at the beginning of each paragraph.  It may show up in your RSS feed.  It may not.  Nothing major was changed about it.

Please resume your regularly scheduled day.

I Live Here

Review #7 - Voyage Along The Horizon

This week, we're trying something a little different.

Javier Marias' novel Voyage Along The Horizon, recently translated and published in America by Believer, a subsidiary of the nobel McSweeney's publishing enterprise, is a fascinating homage to the adventure novels (Seawolf comes to mind, as does really, any Jack London) of the late nineteenth century.  Written in the earlier years of Marias' life, published when he was twenty-two (and even then, his second novel!), it seems a much mature work than one should be capable of at that age, urging me to seek out the remainder of his body of work.

Fascinatingly, the book concerns the reading of a novel, also titled Voyage Along The Horizon, that a gentleman intends to publish, having discovered it among his deceased friend's effects, and wishing to bring him posthumous renown.  It is read out loud to two parties, one interested, the other, our framing narrator, less so.  Within this story, already contained in our framing story, are other stories, within stories within stories and so on, to the effect of a collection of Russian stacking dolls.  The stories are all immediately engaging, and leave you in suspense for what's happening one layer above you while you read through the currently engrossing tale preventing you from returning to the mystery already laid out in front of you.

Of particular interest is the fact that two nights ago I attended a screening of The Saragossa Manuscript, a Polish film from the 1960s documented to be a personal favorite of Coppola, Scorsese, Jerry Garcia, and Neil Gaiman.  Based on a novel published in 1815, unfinished after the sudden (and decidedly strange) suicide of its author, this film, set in Spain, concerns two opposing soldiers who stumble upon a manuscript in an inn in the middle of an intense battle, and sit down together, as if old friends, and begin to pore over the tale told within.  Realizing it concerns the grandfather of one of the two soldiers, their interest heightens, and they delve into the passages, no longer heeding the cannon-fire raging around them.

A simple framing narrative gives way to more Russian stacking dolls, as the story focuses on a Spanish captain of the Waloon Guard, who is searching for a short pass through the mountains.  When he stays the night at an abandoned inn, he finds there are two ghostly women waiting for him, and after a strange encounter, wakes up at the foot of the gallows beneath two hanged men.  His adventures in the country-side continue, and each time, he blacks out encountering a new visage of the two women, and wakes up beneath the gallows.  Soon, he encounters others who have stories to tell, and characters in their stories have further fables to reveal, and anecdotes to share.  Eventually, captured by the Inquisition, the captain of the guard finds himself fortunate enough to be saved by a Qabbalist, who gives him sanctuary.  When a gypsy captain arrives, he begins to regale them with tales of his life, as they eat dinner, and again, the tales stack like turtle shells all the way down.  They range from ghost stories to love stories to morality plays and back, and eventually the characters start to intertwine, as the Waloon captain's father makes an appearance in the gypsy captain's tale.

Panscheco, a man driven mad by the two ghostly sisters, tells his tale, as full of tragedy and heartbreak, and ruthlessness as the tale Victor Arledge relates to the crew of the Tallahassee in Voyage about their Captain Kerrigan, explaining the behavior that has confined him to his cabin under guard.  Similarly, the tales focus on the privileged, a high-ranking officer, and artists and poets, who contrast with those they interact with, be it gypsys, holy men, or sailors.

The narrator of Voyage Along the Horizon (the novel within the novel, that is), is decidedly unreliable, as he was not on the strange sea voyage that is the subject of the book, and certain details begin to not add up, and are commented on within the framing device.  The Manuscript found in Saragossa is similarly untrustworthy, as, even if it does present everything that happened at face value, there is strong insinuation that the majority of the events are staged for the benefit of the Waloon captain, and the narrator who wrote the manuscript would have been aware of this, as he may have been the one who set the extraordinary chain of events in motion.

A surrealist and strange ending, wherein our captain literally rides away into the sunset after encountering himself, leaves us with the same idea that it's the stories that are important, not the endings, that we get from Voyage Along The Horizon.

The characters of Voyage and The Saragossa Manuscript, and the tales they tell, are of more importance than the actual framing device.  These tales are how the main characters while away their evenings, and it's how we should too.  In a similar fashion, The Canterbury Tales has no ending, as it also, was unfinished.

"The end of a novel isn't usually very important.  In fact, people never seem to remember the endings of novels and movies.  Conclusions and final explanations are often the most irrelevant- and disappointing- parts of a novel.  What counts the most- and what we remember the most- is the atmosphere, the style, the path, the journey, and the world in which we have immersed ourselves for a few hours or a few days while reading a novel or watching a movie.  What matters, then, is the journey along the horizon- in other words, the journey that never ends." - Javier Marias

Voyage Along the Horizon: A

The Saragossa Manuscript: A

Book Review #6 - Scalped Volume 1: Indian Country - Jason Aaron

Still don't have my pen tablet pen, so bear with one last standard picture here:

Also: If I'm going to start including comics collection reviews in here, I'm going to overshoot my 52, so consider yourself lucky.  I did read a novel this week, but I was more excited about this, so the novel review will get published later.

Indian Country, the first collection of Scalped, Jason Aaron's first ongoing series, published by the fine people (with who I am personally angry for other reasons) at Vertigo, is vicious, ugly, stomach-turning, and pants-wettingly awesome.

Jason Aaron, who will, even if Scalped somehow self-destructs, be remembered for his excellent mini-series The Other Side, about two young men on opposite sides in the Vietnam War, delivers nothing but peak performances on every page.

The basic premise behind the series is that Dashiell Bad Horse, formerly of the Reservation, has returned home after ten years, and sets about starting trouble.  Chief Red Crow, former criminal and Indian rights activist, and now respectable leader of the Oglala Sioux nation, is opening a brand new casino, and sees potential in young Dash to help him run the place with an iron fist.  But Dash, like so many wonderful characters in this book, has plans of his own.

What starts out as mildly confusing quickly coagulates into a taut suspense-filled piece of crime fiction.  We're introduced to the various factions, the Indian rights activists, the FBI, the crime syndicate, the tribal council, the little meth labs trying to operate on Res soil and so on, and the best part is, they all feel real.  The whole book shows a dramatic ecosystem wherein each faction feels necessary and has actions that cause repercussions for everyone.

Crime is the distillation of The American Dream, and to take what can arguably be labeled as a group of people who had The American Dream stolen out from under them, and then watch them scrabble to get it back by any means necessary is the root of some damn fine compelling drama.

R.M. Guera's art has been called ugly, which I don't think deserves to even be commented on, but other people have commented that they can't tell characters apart.  Granted, this can be a huge problem in some comics, and since it's a primarily visual medium, it can cause all sorts of headaches.  I, however, don't see that happening here.  Once you've been introduced to the characters, and see them interacting, I think it's extremely easy to tell them apart.  The color palette is extremely muted, giving way to primarily earth-tones to properly represent the drab prairie environment.  The less than flattering figures and art style are a stylistic choice in and of themselves, as this is a vicious and ugly place.  

Less important in a collection than in singles is the covers to each issue, but they're reprinted faithfully in the book, and deserve to be noted.  Jock, a favorite artist of mine (see the majority of The Losers by Jock and Andy Diggle), is the cover artist for the series, and each one screams, "BUY ME!"  They're the kind of pieces you could hang on your wall once you stripped the title off.  I'm hoping Vertigo publishes an art book of their covers like they did with Glen Fabry's Preacher covers.

All in all, definitely worth checking out for any fans of crime fiction, non-superhero comics, or those interested in life on the Reservation.

Grade: A

Just trying out a blogpost from a Dashboard widget for increased productivity.

Also, as Brent and I have discussed, the overwhelming stalwartness of Penny Arcade is derived from their ability to deliver content, regardless of quality, on a consistent basis.  As such, this blog will be updated every Wednesday by 5:00PM EST.