Now reading...

[jlhoots]

JLHoots-- is that the best of Montana as in the state? Who's in there? I'd guess Pete Fromm and Richard Ford, at least. I lke Ford's longer works. Night Swimming by Pete Fromm is on my "coming soon" list, recommended by Chris Offutt, a favorite author of mine from Kentucky.

Yes, the state.

Ford, Fromm, & Offutt are all represented.

Offutt, of course, wrote The Same River Twice (among others) & is apparently now living in Iowa City.

Lots of others including Ralph Beer, Tom McGuane, William Kittredge, Rick Bass, Claire Davis, Debra Magpie Earling, etc..

[chris]

I liked Offutt's _Kentucky Straight_ the best of all his books-- but there's not a bad one in the bunch. He wrote to me after I reviewed it and I did my best to get him up here for a reading but the stars were never in alignment. Rick Bass is an honorary Alaskan, so thumbs up there too. I'm going to have to order this book!

[jlhoots]

I liked Offutt's _Kentucky Straight_ the best of all his books-- but there's not a bad one in the bunch. He wrote to me after I reviewed it and I did my best to get him up here for a reading but the stars were never in alignment. Rick Bass is an honorary Alaskan, so thumbs up there too. I'm going to have to order this book!

Published by the Lyons Press.

I buy most of my books from http://www.booksamillion.com

[gdogus]

Just finished:

Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (2005)

At one point, Ishiguro was my favorite contemporary novelist; his first three novels, up through The Remains of the Day, were superb, while The Unconsoled and When We Were Orphans were daring and interesting. I'm rather disappointed in this, his latest. Some fine moments, to be sure, but they add up to very little. Kind of boring.

Just started:

Martin Amis - Night Train (1997)

Edited May 2, 2005 by gdogus

[BruceH]

I picked up Absalom, Absalom yesterday, but chickened out and grabbed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence instead. Just don't ask me why they were next to each other on the shelf...

An "A to Z" thing, no doubt....

[BruceH]

Now reading The Maltese Falcon. Amazing how closely the Huston movie version followed the book...

[jazzbo]

Yes, that's true. Quite a book.

[BruceH]

Maybe next I should read The Thin Man.

[ghost of miles]

Now reading The Maltese Falcon. Amazing how closely the Huston movie version followed the book...

Medjuck might be able to confirm this, but I think there's a story behind that. Supposedly an early bare-bones treatment--basically a secretarial typing up of the book--accidentally made its way to one of the studio heads, who responded so enthusiastically that Huston & co. felt compelled to work off the treatment. I'll have to go back and check on that story; read it in either a Bogart or Hammett bio years ago.

Lots of praise for RED HARVEST, but I'd still try THE GLASS KEY next... it's the book that Hammett wrote after THE MALTESE FALCON. And I even have a soft spot for THE DAIN CURSE, what with its prescient portrait of a druggy, cults-in-California culture.

[7/4]

I read this last week.

[7/4]

And I'm a few pages into this.

[Dr. Rat]

I'm reading Iain Pears new book The Portrait.

It's a long monologue by an artist spoken to an old friend/enemy who is a prominent art critic.

I'm about halfway through and I am really happy with the way pears deals with a lot of the issues surrounding aesthetics that have very little to do with art itself--rivalry, in-groups and out-groups, fashion, Oedipal feelings, salability . . . a lot of the stuff we end up talking about here quite a bit, presented with a generous (but far from non-judgemental) understanding.

A short and fast read, to boot.

Pears is the author of a series of art history mysteries and of Instance of the Fingerpost (mystery set amongst the scientists and spies of seventeenth-century England. Like Stephenson's Quicksilver, but better written) and of Dream of Scipio, which I haven't been able to finish yet but which seems to be about the parallel declines of a) Roman Culture b) Medieval Christianity c)the French Third Republic and d) Us.

Anyhow, so far I can give this one a strong recommendation.

--eric

[jazzbo]

7/4. . . . wow. . . good stuff.

Re: the Falcon: Anyone else feel that perhaps Guttman (right name?) (the sinister fat man) and his gunsel were sort of used as a springboard in the imagination of Rex Stout for Nero and Archie?

Edited May 9, 2005 by jazzbo

[Kalo]

ghost of miles Posted on May 4 2005, 03:28 PM

  QUOTE (BruceH @ May 3 2005, 01:08 PM)

Now reading The Maltese Falcon. Amazing how closely the Huston movie version followed the book... 

Medjuck might be able to confirm this, but I think there's a story behind that. Supposedly an early bare-bones treatment--basically a secretarial typing up of the book--accidentally made its way to one of the studio heads, who responded so enthusiastically that Huston & co. felt compelled to work off the treatment. I'll have to go back and check on that story; read it in either a Bogart or Hammett bio years ago.

Lots of praise for RED HARVEST, but I'd still try THE GLASS KEY next... it's the book that Hammett wrote after THE MALTESE FALCON. And I even have a soft spot for THE DAIN CURSE, what with its prescient portrait of a druggy, cults-in-California culture. 

Funny, I just finished The Glass Key a while back. Though I saw the movie many years ago, as far as I can recall it also followed the book quite closely, except for softening the ending. Good book and a good overlooked movie, one of the best of the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake pairings.

The Dain Curse struck me as a mite too pulpy in a bad way when I read it, unlike Red Harvest, which is the uncut essence of pulp in a good way. Not so sure that Dain was "prescient" about druggy California cults as merely observant. They didn't just arrive full-blown in the 1960s. California's always been a haven for nuts (I was born in the bay area, so I know).

I still haven't read the Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man. I've been reading a lot of crime fiction of late, so maybe it's finally time to get to them.

As for movies of Hammett books, the Coen Brothers Miller's Crossing is clearly an homage to Hammett, a pastiche/conflation of Red Harvest and The Glass Key.

[king ubu]

Parts of Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We?" - some creepy shit... some good observations.. some paranoia... all put through a nationalist popularization and over-simplification programme...

[BruceH]

Couldn't stop myself from moving on to The Thin Man next. Oddly, while reading Nick Charles's dialog I DON'T picture William Powell...I wouldn't have predicted that.

(BTW: "Miles Archer"--"Lew Archer" What's up with that?)

[Jazzmoose]

As for movies of Hammett books, the Coen Brothers Miller's Crossing is clearly an homage to Hammett, a pastiche/conflation of Red Harvest and The Glass Key.

Yeah, there was so much of The Glass Key in that movie, I was somewhat offended that they didn't credit the story to Hammett in the movies.

On a related note, I just found a copy of Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers by Jo Hammett today for fifty cents. Don't know if it's any good yet, but I figure the phots are worth more than that at least!

[Jazzmoose]

As for reading, I just finished Ever Since Darwin, a collection of essays by Stephen Jay Gould that I highly recommend for non-science majors like myself. Entertaining and educational.

[Kalo]

BruceH Posted: May 17 2005, 02:04 PM

(BTW: "Miles Archer"--"Lew Archer" What's up with that?)

I'm absolutely sure that that was an intended tip of the fedora from Macdonald to Hammett.

BTW: if you haven't read the Macdonald Archer's yet, then what are you waiting for? Start with The Galton Case, The Chill, or The Zebra-Striped Hearse. Then read the rest in any order. They're all good, though of course some are better than others.

Thomas Berger, one of my favorite 20th Century America authors and not generally lavish with compliments, praised Macdonald sdpecifically for his voice, "for the purity of his American language, for his keeness of eye and precision of ear."

He was a master.

And unlike many authors confined to the Mystery ghetto, he's eminently re-readable. It's the characters and the writing that count.

To paraphrase Edmund Wilson: who cares whodunit?

[Kalo]

jazzbo Posted: May 9 2005, 10:35 AM

Re: the Falcon: Anyone else feel that perhaps Guttman (right name?) (the sinister fat man) and his gunsel were sort of used as a springboard in the imagination of Rex Stout for Nero and Archie?

Interesting theory, Jazzbo.

It seems simpler to observe that Nero Wolfe and Archie are a variation on Holmes and Watson.

[jazzbo]

Sure, they are, so many are (Muldar and Scully being most recent famous imitations) but. . . Reading the Falcon through about six years ago for the third time or so gave me this suspicion.

[jazzbo]

Bruce H, talk about movies that followed the book, how about "The Grifters." Man much of that was word for word!

[kinuta]

Loved ' The Grifters', the movie that is. haven't read the book.

Currently at the end of Donna Leon ' Friends In High Places'.

[Chrome]

Loved ' The Grifters', the movie that is. haven't read the book.

All of that classic Jim Thompson stuff is excellent ...The Killer Inside Me, After Dark My Sweet (that was a decent movie, too), Pop. 1280, The Getaway (another pretty good movie [the Peckinpaugh/McQueen version]), A Hell of a Woman, etc.

[jazzbo]

I've read nearly every Thompson piece. . . . That guy amazes me; excellent writer. (Oddball, but that's part of the appeal).