Sandman

OMFG, as they say on the Internet. I have been totally immersed in reading the beautiful, artful, lyric work of Neil Gaiman & Co. I know that I read these comics on paper many years ago, but my memory of them is dim.

These stories and drawings of the adventures of Morpheus, god of Dream, one of the Endless (including Destiny, Death, Despair, Delirium, and Desire -- and one mysterious other?) are nothing less than classic mythology rendered in a breathtaking, gripping, modern form.

I do think that the graphic storyteller is a very underrated artist in this time, and that future generations (should there be any) will look back at them as we do now at artists who were scorned or ignored during their lifetimes. We now sell paintings and other work by such people for millions and millions of dollars.

And my heartfelt thanks to http://htmlcomics.com for making these works and so many others available.

Survivor, by Chuck Pahlaniuk

This book by the author of Fight Club has a very similar tone to its better-known cousin. I suppose that's what they call "voice."

Tender Branson begins this book by explaining that he's hijacked an airplane, let all the passengers and crew go, and is now heading for a crash in the Australian Outback. This is the ending, right at the beginning of the book. The pages are numbered backwards. Yep. The last page is page 1.

But I can forgive all this cleverness. I read every word, and thoroughly enjoyed this book, the story of an innocent, raised in a strange religious cult and released to the outside world to work as a type of slave for the enrichment of the Creedish elders. (I think that's a clever name for a cult.)

The details of the cult's beliefs and organization come out in the story, but this begins to be overshadowed by a high-powered sendup of the "real" world's fixation with celebrity, hyped by and pumped out through the "media." When Tender Branson becomes famous as the last (save one, actually, as we discover) surviving member of the Creedish, who have committed mass suicide (or are being serially murdered), he suddenly acquires an agent, becomes famous, and begins changing into a super-celebrity, preaching and praying to multitudes, and rapidly turning into something completely manufactured and unreal.

Since we already know the ending, we are entertained by the suspense of knowing that all of this must fail, and watch carefully to see how it is done.

I look forward to reading some more of Mr. Palahniuk's work.

The Cult, the official Chuck Palahniuk website.

The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley

Well, I didn't know it, but James Crumley is dead.

I just heard about him, and he's been dead over a year. Just my luck.

The Last Good Kiss is a pretty good read. I got a little put off at the beginning by its overblown language, but I started to get used to it.

Then I got put off by the constant drinking and fighting, it was starting to give me a hangover.

The plot twisted enough to make me read to the end, and I might just try another book by the late Mr. Crumley.

Books Should Be Free

Lots of free audio books at http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/.

Thanks, Orin.

Recent Reading

In an effort to try to at least keep up the record, here are some things I've been reading lately:

• The Simeon Chamber, by Steve Martini - An early one, involving some California history, WWII, and the Hearst Castle.

• Time Bomb, by Jonathan Kellerman - these never fail.
  

• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison - her first novel, and really excellent

• A Monstrous Regiment of Women, Laurie King - second in the series started by Beekeeper's Apprentice

• Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk (read online, probably bootleg) -- Wow. Now I've started to read Survivor, another novel by Pahlaniuk.

• A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle - this is a surprisingly enjoyable book written by an English journalist who moved to Provence with his wife, their adventures establishing a home in this singular area of France. I suppose the book could also be entitled How Two Rich People Managed to Survive France, and it did recount an embarrassing number of drunken driving episodes, but I did enjoy it nonetheless.

Black Money, by Ross MacDonald

Vintage Crime 1996, copyright 1965. ISBN 0679768106. 238 pages.

I recall being introduced many years ago to Ross MacDonald's work by someone who said MacDonald was a latter-day Raymond Chandler. I suppose that was true, latter day being the 60s rather than the 30s, but that was a long time ago. (Incidentally, the author's real name was Kenneth Millar. Click on the title of this entry for a link to a detailed article about Millar/MacDonald's life and work.)

In Black Money, Lew Archer is hired by a wealthy young man who has lost the girl of his dreams to a man who appears to be some kind of a scoundrel. Martel claims to be from France, a political refugee unpopular with the DeGaulle regime. Young Virginia Fablon is very much taken with Martel, and cannot be persuaded to see him as anyone other than who he claims to be.

Virginia's father died in what was judged a suicide about seven years before this story takes place. Her mother is beginning to find it difficult to maintain a lifestyle such as that enjoyed by her neighbors in this seaside country-club community of the rich.

When Archer begins to investigate Martel, he is met with threats, and soon senses a greater mystery than the simple seduction of young Virginia by this mysterious and unlikely man.

As one always expects in MacDonald's work, there are great characters, a deviously complicated plot, and plenty of gritty observations from the narrator, Lew Archer. This is the hardboiled detective formula at its very best, and every page is a pleasure.

The lobby of the hotel was the mouth of a tourist trap which had lost its bite. There were scuff-marks on the furniture, dust on the philodendrons. The bellhop wore an old blue uniform which looked as if he had fought through the Civil War in it.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King

Picador Books, 1994. 346 pages. ISBN 978-0-312-42736-8

A wonderful novel in which we are introduced to young Mary Russell, a British orphan of some means, who meets Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has become a retired gentleman living in the country and keeping bees. Russell becomes, as one would guess, his apprentice.

This sort of thing could be done very badly. The Apprentice is done extremely well, and is an absolutely delightful read. There are more books in this series, this is the first, one wonders if they will be as good.

Holmes and Russell have several adventures together in this book, culminating in one enormously complicated effort to identify and capture a master criminal who attempts to kill Russell, Holmes, and Watson (yes, Dr. Watson lives, too) during the course of events.