The New Centurions, by Joseph Wambaugh

This book, which was published circa 1970, is quite dated, but nevertheless I devoured it. The writing pulled me into seamy early 1960s Los Angeles, seen through the eyes of three young policemen. The story begins in the Academy, and progresses through five years of experience, through the Watts riot of 1965.

My friend Marshall loaned me this book, a very old paperback copy with extremely dark and brittle pages. This was not a shortcoming, it lent to the ambience of the story, taking place in a dim, smoky, black and white world of heat, humidity, and uncomfortable clothing.

So many cigarettes, cigars, and pipes were smoked that I was suffering from literary bronchitis by the end. It's odd how, in 2013, one recoils at the use of the word "Negro," once considered a respectful term for an African-American person. At least, as a white person in that time, I was taught that it was respectful. I don't believe that it's considered to be so anymore.

What an excellent novel, and a terrifically entertaining read. It's the first Wambaugh I've read, and I look forward to many more.

Watts Riot, Wikipedia Page

The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly

Mickey Haller, aka "The Lincoln Lawyer," has been out of commission for a couple of years. When he decides to begin practicing again, he's surprised by inheriting the caseload of an old friend, Jerry Vincent, who has just been murdered. Haller finds that, among other cases, there is a high-profile murder defense of a Hollywood film mogul. As he delves into this case, it becomes very complicated, and dangerous.

Connelly is a master of this type of writing. I've enjoyed a few other of his novels, and ripped through this one at speed. Harry Bosch, the taciturn LAPD detective, figures importantly in this book, and plays a role in the interesting denoument.

Here are the opening words of this book, which are repeated at least twice later on:

Everybody lies.
Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The vicitms lie.

Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King

This book contains four stories:

• 1922 -- Murder on the plains, and its consequences.
• Big Driver -- a writer returning from a public appearance has bad luck on the road.
• Fair Extension -- in which one of literature's more classic characters makes an appearance.
• A Good Marriage -- a wife finds out more than she would like to about her husband.

Stephen King is someday going to be known as a great writer of our time. Unfortunately, I think he's been given short shrift by the literary community, probably considered a "genre" writer, and isn't seriously considered to be among the current greats. No matter: I have spent some genuinely wonderful hours reading King's work, and this book was everything I could have hoped it to be. 

King has perhaps matured, or cooled down, or become a little less fantastic in his storytelling; but I wish to say that such great works of fantasy as "It," "The Stand,"  "Salem's Lot," or "The Shining" lose nothing by their inclusion of forces and beings from dimensions not normally experienced in reality. For that matter, "The Shining" was not driven by fantasy so much as alcoholism, and a terrible dementia no less real for having been vividly described. 

Full Dark, No Stars contains almost no ghosts. The gentleman in "Fair Extension" may be fantastic, but his existence has been fairly well accepted by human beings for many centuries. Instead, this book has, in King's own words, "ordinary people in extraordinary situations." (from the Afterword) 

I have tried my best in Full Dark, No Stars to record what people might do, and how they might behave, under certain dire circumstances. The people in these stories are not without hope, but they acknowledge that even our fondest hopes ... may sometimes be vain. ...nobility ... resides ... in trying to do the right thing ... when we fail ... hell follows. (ibid)

I know from other readings that King has a background of New England Protestant religion, and whether or not he personally believes in Hell, I know that its geography is familiar to him. King is a journeyman writer, who has literally written more books than I have been able to read, and I admire him beyond measure.

I can't recommend this book strongly enough. Go get it, and read it. Enjoy.

To Read; 25 March 2013

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes (began reading on 13 Dec 2013)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos.

All That Is, by Janes Salter

Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City
by Robin Nagle  [Barnes and Noble Link]

Poets to read: Weldon Kees, Kathleen Rooney

Cynthia Huntington

Nikky Finney

Sara Miller:

I wish I could keep my thoughts in order

and my ducks in a row.

I wish I could keep my ducks in a thought

or my thoughts in a duck...

“Countermeasures,” by Sara Miller

Short stories: Carol Shields

Mary Roach 

I suppose that's enough for now.

18 April 2013 

On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths, by Lucia Perillo

Poetry. Copper Canyon Press. 978-1-55659-397-0

I have seldom read a book of poetry from cover to cover in less than 2 days, but I plowed through these. What pleasure. I read about Lucia Perillo in a copy of The Nation magazine and thought she sounded good. She is.

From "My Father Kept the TV On:"

while the books lay open, scattered facedown
like turtles sunning, the jackets hunched, with a little
hump in the hunch from the trough of the spine...

If I'm going to choose my nostalgia, it is a no-brainer
that I'm going to side with books, with the days
before the lithium-ion battery, but after
Philip Roth and John le Carré were born books not too
highbrow or too low, but sometimes thick
and overdue. Books the fathers read to escape us...

*****

Recommended

V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness
various stories

All of Us, by Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver's collected poems, maybe all of them, are in this volume.

*****