Category: crime fiction

The last great White Elephant

January 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

In 1986 or thereabout I bought the Carver stories above from a shop in Plymouth whilst visiting my sister. It was the start of my obsession with all things ‘Americana’. I moved on via Granta’s Dirty Realism collection to a whole series of American authors including Lorrie Moore, Bobbie Anne Mason and then backwards towards the Deep South ( a title of a Paul Binding book I still own). Along the way stopping off in a whole number of places revealed to me by these authors. My mental map of USA is formed by them as I have only actually been there once for three days for a conference in New York City.

The subject in a lot of cases were outsiders, renegades..working class trailer trash. The characters who in the last few days have stepped out of ‘wilderness’ America and into all our front rooms as led on by the new Barnum they tried to occupy the centre-ground. The warriors of the marginalised wilds.

Trump’s misguided revolution is a drive-by shooting or a mall massacre on a huge scale. Every misfit and shamen of the dispossessed risen up like a biblical flood not forgetting the Jim Crow preachers and snake oil hucksters and medicin men waiting to profit from the carnage.

Watching this unfold like a sequal to a new series of Justified complete with guns, white supremacists and jingoistic cops leaves a hollow feeling…..

Art imitating life or the other way round?

The American Dream seems somehow tawdry and washed out right now….the idolisation of small town freaks and clowns somehow deeply compromised by their depiction.

There are many predictions of further unrest but frankly a United States Marine against spear carrying shaman is fanciful…..armed highly organised militia with military background far more realistic. Hopefully the above the sideshow to Barnum T’s assault on democracy but who knows what tigers he has in his circus cages or skeletons in the Pentagon…..the next few days will tell.

Hopefully it will be Trump’s Skeleton history stands in line to see not democracy’s….

First fiction for work-shopping: ‘Flying Fish’

November 8, 2014 / / 0 Comments

 

The first chapter involves all of the above :-)

I have finally after 30 years of thinking about it produced 2000 words of prose fiction which a relief as I had built up a mental block of ever actually doing it because I have been so immersed in art and poetry. The document has been sent to my class for discussion Tuesday evening so I am not posting the actual document until after the work-shopping.

I not sure it short story length already maybe 7000 do-able but it could be the start of a novel! Not quite the story I expected either but that the beauty of the internet one can find wormholes that set you off down a new path. In this case the mention of ‘spies’ in Norfolk set me off on a completely different angle to the original plot:-).

I was a big fan of action stories as a kid and consumed vast amounts of Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, W.E.Johns,Ian Fleming, Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley etc etc.

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Who would have thought that would come back to me now but it is fun…. 🙂

Daily Short: John Romano – King of the Wild Frontier

October 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments 
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Available online here:
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/king-of-the-wild-frontier-0000346-v21n6

I recently picked up the Fiction issue of Vice magazine. http://www.vice.com/magazine/21/6

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Recommend these annual issues all of which are available online.

They have a tendency to lean toward the Lad/Ladette market but contain some interesting works. Especially from the film/fiction crossover area. This year’s issue also contains Nabokov’s unpublished Lolita screenplay and an essential Robert McKee interview…interesting stuff.

Amongst the more than interesting is this short story with photographs by Martin Parr ( allegedly… I cannot see the Pigs Head being in his style maybe more a late editorial decision to ‘Horse’s Head the story which unnecessary).

John Romano is a scriptwriter for TV (Hill Street Blues to his credit) and film and has a resume that includes Lincoln Lawyer (with Michael Connolly) and is an ex English Professor (Columbia)  with one academic tome on Charles Dickens and Realism to his name. So no slouch and boy can he write…

Originally from Newark N.J. he lives and breathes the classic New Jersey Crime Family story and the wealth of detail is such in this short that it hard to tell if memoir or fiction or a rich mixture of both. Nothing is forced in the telling it glides as smoothly as the battered lime-green Buick Riviera which literally delivers the body-punch of the story and then its knock-out blow. I can say no more without giving the game away but please read this story. I cannot find reference to any more fiction online or otherwise and I suspect J.R. has a novel up his sleeve somewhere. This is brilliant writing in anybody’s book and would be a more worthy winner of the BBC short prize than the whole shortlist. He is presently working on a film for TV on the American Taliban about John Walker LIndh that Steve Earle sung about on Jerusalem…should be some film.

This is classic american writing at its best. There is not a word out of place and small working-class folk tales assume a menacing import only to be turned literally upside down. If I ever write something worthwhile it would have to go some to equal this.

Romano’s daughter is also a novelist/painter…..so it’s a family affair.

This is how ya do it.

For a fascinating insight into the literary qualities at work in American TV go here:  http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/forums/art_of_prime_time.html

http://videolectures.net/mitworld_romano_ptt/

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