David Thayer

Fade to Blonde is the award winning novel from Max Alan Collins. Published by Hard Case Crime, the format and cover art harken back to an era when places like Los Angeles were feeling their post war oats, not quite cities yet, with everything up for grabs. Imagine orange groves instead of tract houses. Hollywood had reinvented indentured servitude with the studio system while greater minds plotted vast schemes to control the destiny of the City of Angels. If you enjoy this sort of thing, Fade to Blonde is a fun read.

Crime fiction is enjoying a renaissance at a time when literary fiction is slipping to the margins. Noir is the heart of the genre and fifty years ago it carved out a little niche as literature for the masses. Even readers of Fitzgerald and Faulkner saw the grimy beauty of Hammett, the swift incarnation of the loner, the wiseguy. Noir delivered morality plays without the pomp and circumstance of academic interpretation; here’s looking at you, kid.

The gulf between literary and genre fiction is widening. Where there was synergy there is now only difference in theme, use of language, subject matter. Genre fiction is expanding while literary fiction contracts, the latter suffering from the idea that story doesn’t matter, theme is obscure, and language is a dialect of the elite.

When the Litblog Co-op chose Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories as their spring choice, there was quite a bit of discussion about where the novel fit along the genre divide. The LBC consists of twenty people who care about books, but it was easy to see their own confusion about the novel. Is Atkinson a literary novelist dabbling in crime? Did the book elevate a genre piece to the level of literature? No one was less certain than the author. She seemed baffled by the LBC’s attentions. Being British, she’s a culture removed from the American literary scene, perhaps more at ease with paradox, certainly not predisposed to worrying about marketing niches. I wrote a book, she seemed to be saying, let’s leave it at that.

But we can’t leave it at that. Booksellers won’t know how to sell it. Readers won’t know what they’re buying. Unclassified books wander the unmonitored halls, creating distress and uproar. Only the marketing department stands between us and anarchy bringing a whiff of the scientific method to the process. Kate, if the cover art features a bloody knife, you’re hardboiled. A martini glass? Tip it on its side and you’re romantic suspense. Suffuse it all in pastel shades and you’ve got literature. That’s better, isn’t it? It’s all so simple.

A birthday. Hmm. The problem with birthdays is those childhood soirees where scores of little boys and girls brought presents, there was chocolate cake, there was buzz. Days of build up and speculation, major excitement, stomach aches, someone stung by a bee. For a kid, having a birthday just after Labor Day is a cruel hoax as the iorn gates of school slam closed behind you. Even the duck and cover drill, the promise of momentary chaos, did not assuage the loss of summertime, freedom, bare knuckle fighting, dodging motorists who park and throw open their car door in the hopes of impaling a flying kid.

Adult birthdays are boring. Take a fast tour of all the good and wonderful things you remember. Start with cake. Kids devour cake, they use their fingers, get their face covered in frosting. Sure, some adults do that. Most adults nibble because of Adkins or South Beach or North Pointe or because they suddenly realized that Ollie North and Chuck Colson are coming over to play. Put your face in the cake now and somebody’s going to call an ambulance.

No fights break out over cool toys. Can’t go wading in the inflatable pool. Cannot inflate said pool due to insufficient lung capacity. School’s in session. White linen suit hangs in closet as though Truman Capote was airlifted straight off the hangar. Noogies for the birthday boy.

Late in the reign of Emperor Nero, the Bella Judaica raged across Galilee and Palestine. Nero, always short of cash, imposed one too many taxes on the people of Judea. They rebelled, chased the Roman garrison out of Jerusalem then invaded the coastal base of Caesarea. Led by the Zealots, they scored an incredible victory.

The Romans returned. In AD 67 they beseiged a town called Jotapata. The defenders fought hard, even capturing the eagle of the V Macedonia Legion, but the Roman commander, Vespatian, crushed Jotapata. In the rubble of the town they found Josephus, one of the leaders of the revolt. Josephus was one of a handful of survivors and Vespatian planned to honor him with a swift execution. But Josephus predicted the fall of Nero and told Vespatian he’d be emperor. Instead of being executed, Josephus took a slow boat to Italy and eventually wrote his book, The Jewish War ( Bella Judaica). A few years after Jotapata, the Temple of Solomon was destroyed by Titus, and finally, the seige of Masada ended a decade of strife.

He also wrote a history of the Jewish people called Jewish Antiquities from Creation to the decades after the death of Christ. His books survive to this day, providing a time line for events in the First Century.

I’ve posted a review of Terrill Lee Lankford’s Blonde Ligthning over at Collected Miscellany. Someday my ability to spell will return along with my sense of humor.

Congratulations to Harley Jane Kozak are in order. Over the weekend she won two prestigious awards for her debut novel, Dating Dead Men.

The Forty Third Earl reports that his recipe for Lapin au Angleterre took second place in the third annual Newbury Culinary Arts Competition. First prize went to the Right Honorable Guy de Marchant for his interpretation of Lapin du Vin. “The prize winner offered a daring departure from tradition,” said Mrs. Earnestine Ramble-Wilhelmshaven. “The judges were far from unanimous.”

The Earl is bitter about the outcome. “Anyone can add a gallon of plonk to what was otherwise an entirely forgettable stew.” The Earl went on to imply that improprieties in the judge’s chambers prior to the final tally influenced the outcome. “I heard laughter,” he reported. “I think my silence speaks volumes.”

There is an excellent article in the NYT today regarding the New Orleans daily paper, the Times-Picayune. The paper has been around since the 1880s and as the first week of Katrina goes by, they are back in business trying to cover the story that has swallowed them whole. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of solid information to the survivors of Katrina, but down the road, the Times-Picayune will be more vital than ever to the people of New Orleans.

FEMA is preventing volunteer doctors and nurses from reaching the Gulf coast communities demolished by Katrina. Surgeons and specialists from North Carolina are in Mississippi but are not able to help anyone. The reason? No one knows. I remember something my old man said once about the Army. You dig a hole over there today and fill it back in tomorrow. No one knows why, but you fill that hole smartly.

The President’s facial expressions still need remedial work in front of a mirror. He’s been making his Osama face all week, but for all the death and destruction, there is no enemy in sight. Vulnerability to natural disaster may be the product of all sorts of decisions, of actions taken and actions deferred, but when something like Katrina occurs, it is a test of the notion that in the union of the fifty states, we help one another without question. Attention coalesces on the leader with the most resources, something that startled the president. His hesitation seemed to call into question that fundamental belief that united we stand. He blinked, and all the spin doctors along the Potomac can’t seem to help him. Maybe FEMA will send them south with the real doctors.

Headline: Power restored to Colonial, Plantation pipelines. Distillates are flowing again through from the Gulf region. Power is restored to thirty percent of the refining capacity in and around New Orleans. The jackup rigs and semisubmersibles suffered acceptable losses. Oil can flow. No more shortages in Atlanta, or price gouging in New Jersey. AIG and other insurers are going to be fine. Let’s see, oh yeah, New Orleans is vanishing by degrees along with thousands of residents. This is a place where the dead cannot bury the dead, where the living must be wondering if the rest of us have taken a shuttle to Mars and can’t catch a ride to New Orleans.

The mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, recalls as Hurricane Hugo descended on his city he asked a FEMA official what his first priority should be. The FEMA guy said, “keep track of all expenditures.”

Bureaucrats to the rescue: it feels as though this response is being filled out in triplicate but no one knows where to file the yellow form. We have ‘authorized’ and ‘unauthorized’ refugees who don’t seem to understand the necessity for ground rules when fleeing for their lives. The President did a flyover a few days ago. I don’t know what he saw from the windows of Air Force One or who he was listening to when he drove on past, but he got some terrible advice and he followed it.

What’s ahead for the survivors? My guess would be a tax audit. Be sure and bring all your records.

While the focus of Katrina’s aftermath remains on New Orleans, it is becoming obvious that everyone in the world feels the effects emotionally. Since the tsunami disaster in Asia we’re tuned to the power of wind and water. Unlike earthquakes that strike without notice, hurricanes take a while to develop. The science of identifying tropical depressions is fodder for the Weather Channel. Only when a storm approaches landfall do CNN and the big boys jump in, with a choreographed coverage we’ve seen dozens of times, some poor reporter getting drenched while stop signs whistle by. The sight is so familiar that it has no impact, almost as though we’re watching the second reel of a disaster movie, waiting for the happy ending.

It seemed especially cruel that the levees around New Orleans broke hours after the storm passed, that relief turned so quickly into despair. Real assistance is slow in coming and the media’s top down look at the situation accentuates the fact that an entire city is beyond our reach and for the moment, everyone in that town is living in a shock induced vacuum. Let’s hope and pray that the ending here includes getting those survivors to safety.