Got Around To: "The Fighter" by Craig Davidson

Got Around To: The Fighter by Craig Davidson, 2007, 9781569474655.

I read Davidson's brutal little collection of short stories in Rust and Bone. We received Fighter in Jan of '08 and Jacob the Page read it and said it was good but brutal. I saw it on the shelf a couple weeks ago and took it home. It was good: above average but not fantastic. I liked the two sex scenes.

Paul Harris is a rich, snotty 26 year old Canadian. He has lived a life of privilege under his winery owning parents and can be a real snot. When barhopping with a girl he doesn't even like much he insults a boots-wearing working stiff who was hitting on her. The stiff ends up beating a couple teeth and most of Harris' dignity and self-worth out of him. Harris' intense fear during the beating changes him.

Paul was never happy with his do-nothing job at the winery and was just going through the motions in life: finish high school, go to college, work at the winery, keep the same upper-class pals, eventually marry and take over the business. Instead, Paul leaves his office and starts picking grapes, driving his car aimlessly each night, starts lifting weights and taking steroids. He impulsively stops at a boxing club, joins up, and starts training seven hours a day.

Meanwhile, across the border in Niagara, sixteen year old Rob Tully is a naturally gifted and hard training amateur boxer. His father sees boxing as a Rob's chance to escape a dead-end town. Rob's skills are well known but he only trains for family's sake (his father and uncle are both in the fight game).

Anyway... There are parallels of young guys bucking their planned paths. Meanings of manhood and fear. Family obligation and personal choice. Rob's uncle brain dead from an underground boxing competition at the hands of Paul. Paul and Rob fighting at that same underground club.

That description can sound like a nice, clean YA novel with hugs and kisses in the end. Not so. Paul Harris is self-destructiveness and takes massive beatings hoping to transcend both pain and fear. He goes into a steroid rage almost killing a guy during a paintball game. He steal from his parents, shoots up steroids, gets his nostril capillaries cauterized to prevent easy bleeding, and more. Paul never looks for the guy who beat the crap out of him before. The guy at hand is never an issue - it is Paul's transformation during and afterwards that matters.

Rob is a pretty good kid. He does him homework and trains hard. But, even he comes to a breaking point and mutilates his hands to end his career.

Davidson themes I remember from before: Competing definitions of manliness with fisticuffs versus hard work and supporting your family. The fragility of hand bones and their importance to boxers. Poor people getting by and boxing as a family trade or hobby.

Comic Book: "Gotham Central" by Ed Brubaker, et al

Comic Book: Gotham Central: Book One: In the Line of Duty by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Michael Lark (art), 2008, 9781401219239.

Hey, I just noticed there is an intro by Lawrence Block. Maybe I should read that.

Gotham city cop stories about the Major Crimes Unit (MCU). MCU officers have a dislike of Batman. They want to solve crimes on their own and not ask for the Bat's help. Mr. Freeze kills one cop and the cop's partner wants to get Freeze and begs his superior not to turn on the Bat signal. Mr. Freeze ends up getting caught with help of Batman anyway.

Story two has lesbian cop getting publicly outed. Some fellow cops are assholes about it
and her family are staunch, immigrant Catholics. Cop supposedly outed by a con who is suing her. Con is murdered. Cop is set-up for the murder and arrested. Cop is violently sprung from jail bus and taken to Two-Face's hideout. Psychotic and schizophrenic Two-Face loves cop. Two-Face thinks they are meant for each other after cop visited him in Arkham and spoke kindly to him. Batman rescues cop from Two-Face after sneakily getting info from cop's partner. Cop rejected by Catholic family and consoled by her girlfriend.

Read: "The Forest of Hands and Teeth" by Carrie Ryan

Read: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, 2009, 9780385736817.

This was plugged in a Sunday issue of Unshelved. Most of the plugs in those Sunday strips are YA or SciFi and I could not give a rat's ass about them. Forest is both YA and SciFi. But, it has ZOMBIES!

Mary's village may be the sole human refuge against a world filled with the undead. The village has survived for several generations due to an equally old fence that surrounds and protects it from the zombies. Seen from the highest point in town the forest is endless; and the forest is filled with human eating zombies. There are two fence enclosed paths leading away from the village but both are abandoned and forbidden to villagers. Mary dreams of a life beyond the forest and is driven by her mother's stories of the ocean and cities full of skyscrapers.

Mary lost her father to the zombies a few years before and then her mother is bitten by zombies and turns. Mary's older brother blames Mary for their mother's choice to go into the forest as a zombie rather than be killed. Mary's brother kicks her out of the house and she has to join the Sisters since no one offers to marry her. The Sisters are the town's nuns and also their political and religious leaders and medical authorities. Mary chafes under their control and one day discovers that a girl, Gabrielle, has entered the village through one of the abandoned paths. The Sisters have hidden Gabrielle into their cloister. Meanwhile Mary has fallen in love with her best friend's betrothed, Travis.

Travis' brother Harry offers to marry Mary. Mary is creeped out, upset, and wishing escape. Gabrielle disappears. Gabrielle reappears as a super-fast zombie. Mary wants Travis but is stuck with Harry. A fence breach lets the zombies in. Mary, her brother, a boy, Travis, Harry and a couple others escape to the fenced path. They follow the path for days until arriving at an unknown village. Village is well stocked and barricaded but still zombified. Mary and others stay until fire burns village up. Travis dies. Mary and others escape to another fenced path. End of path is gate into forest. Mary goes into forest. Mary's brother follows along but disappears after falling into a torrential river. Mary goes in river and wakes up on an ocean beach.

Comments:
1-Teen angst with zombies. Mary is looking for escape and freedom from her village. She has no idea what lies beyond the forest - the forest may be unending and filled with the undead - but she believes her mom's stories and wants to find out for herself. After generations alone in the village their are no books or photos to corroborate her mom's stories and and everyone feels that the stories are just that, stories.

2-Mary is in love with Travis but her village's customs require marriage and children through a formal courtship and marriage. Love does not enter the equation, the purpose of marriage is survival of the village.

3-Mary and the others are all about 16 or 18 or so. They are dealing with an immediate and violent adjustment from teen life to adult decisions over life and death.

4- Good book but Mary got on my nerves a bit. She is a head in the clouds kind of gal. Her desire for escape and growth is admirable but she does not clue in to reality very well.

5- Not nearly enough zombie killing. This is about the humans and not about zombies or zombie battles.

Read: "Pity Him Afterwards" by Donald E. Westlake

Read: Pity Him Afterwards by Donald E. Westlake, 1964, no ISBN - just an LC catalog number.

I read about this in a reference book on mystery and detective fiction. The article referred to this as Westlake's last "hard-boiled idiom" novel in his own name. He then started writing hard-boiled books as Stark and Tucker Coe. Stark? Did you say Stark?

Crazy guy escapes insane asylum. Hitches a ride and kills the driver, escapes cops and kills elderly couple. Assumes first dead guy's identity and heads a few hundred miles away to a summer stock theater where the dead guy had an acting gig.

A young actor, Mel, shows up at summer stock hung-over and a day late. He mets everyone. Crazy guy is ingocnito with reader not knowing which actor's name he has assumed. Crazy guy kills and rapes a young lady in the house all actors are living in. Mel finds dead girl.

Police captain shows up. Captain is a summer worker like most people in the resort town. He is determined to solve the case without the help of the State Police. Investigation begins. Crazy guy is ecstatic at fooling everyone. Then kills a night watchman. Crazy guy gets worried. Captain gets worried. Mel gets worried but has boner for a stagehand chick.

Mel and chick get permission to go on lake and head to an island. Crazy guy kills another actor in the house with the idea of taking that guy's identity instead. Captain and crazy guy talk. Crazy guy gives self away. Crazy guy runs. Crazy guy jumps in lake. Crazy guy swims. Crazy guy gets on sailboat and kills naked lovers onboard. Crazy guy lands on island where Mel and girl are. Captain arrives in nick-of-time to kill Crazy Guy before Crazy Guy kills Mel.

Mainly told from the perspective of the three guys listed before. CG is a paranoid and convinces himself of his righteousness, or forgets his deeds, as psychic protection; at least according to his psychiatrist. Captain is actually a college prof. and his amateur skills are stretched. Captain blames those amateurish skills on the death of guy actor in house. Mel is mainly worried about having a job that summer to earn his Equity card and in scoring some action.

A psychological look at the killer. Not a procedural. "Pity him afterwards" refers to the pity people have for a man so mentally ill but who know be must captured or killed to stop him.


Pity was okay, nothing here that really grabbed my fancy. My expectations were too high but I am glad I read it. Westlake's description of towns and little insights into somewhat minor characters is evident in this earlier novel. I like that about his books. He doesn't have any wasted words and seemingly unimportant fluff keeps me interested.

Finished: "The First Quarry" by Max Allan Collins

Finished: The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins, 2008, 9780843959659.

This may be the first Collins novel I have read. It is quite good. According to the bib. on Collins website he started the Quarry series in 1976. Collins did only a few Quarry novels before a long hiatus.

Quarry is a Vietnam Veteran and former sniper recruited by The Broker in 1970 to be a hired killer. Quarry's first assignment is to murder a college professor in Iowa City that same December. (Unfortunately I am unable to come up with any good wisecracks against the Hawkeyes.)

Quarry starts a surveillance on the prof and waits for a time to kill him and destroy a manuscript. The prof is busy either banging or advising co-eds and grad students and Quarry has trouble finding a good time to do the job. Quarry has to worry about a co-ed's ex-boyfriend reappearing. Quarry gets shaken down by a PI who is shadowing the prof for the prof's wife who is preparing a divorce case. Quarry kills the PI. Quarry stands in for the PI and fucks the prof's wife. Quarry follows a female grad student to insure she will not come back when prof is getting offed. Grad student is mobster's daughter. Grad student gets kidnapped. Quarry rescues her by murdering both kidnappers. Quarry fucks grad student. Quarry figures out the student's mob father is the client. Quarry gets into prof's house and destroys document. Prof's wife shows up right after prof does and murder-suicide ensues. Mobster comes to town to check on daughter. Quarry kills the mobster to avoid future trouble with mobster.

Comments:

1- There were several anachronisms in the story. I could be easily wrong of course, since I was not born until 1971, but comments about plastic signs saying "wet floor" and wheelchair ramps outside a store were jarring.
2- Lee Goldberg had that comment about tie-ins and the quality authors who pen them. This is not a tie-in but Collins just did a tie-in novel for the G.I. Joe movie. A part of my instant dislike of tie-ins is that an author must have the plot and characters dictated to him, right? When you're given a piece of crap film and have to novelize it you're already pushed into a corner. I'd like to read one of those books to find out how Collins - or others - handle the situation. Original novels with tie-in characters must give a lot more room for creativity; like taking Monk to Germany and Paris.
2b- What kind of restrictions and rules does a tie-in author have to follow? I checked-in several Hannah Montana books yesterday and got to wondering what publishers require; for those YA and J novels there must be a bullet list like for romance novels.
3- Are there some hidden writer jokes in here about the Writer's Workshop?
4- Quarry is a great character. I'm glad Collins has two other recent Quarry novels plus the movie.

Not too Impressed: "Alan's War" by Emmanuel Guibert

Not too Impressed: Alan's War: the memories of G.I. Alan Cope by Emmanuel Guibert, 2008 (English translation), 9781596430969.

I've run across several comments about how great this book is. It was okay but I do not understand the massive praise. As a war memoir it is interesting but not better than the many memoirs I have read. Maybe the people praising this as a war memoir are all graphic novel nerds who have never read any of the thousands of WWII memoirs out there.

If there is anything to praise it is Guibert's selection and organization of Cope's stories. Guibert became a good pal of Cope and recorded down a lot of Cope's stories. Guibert did do a good job of putting together the narrative text. I could take or leave the artwork itself, but I did like when Guibert would draw just the characters and take out all backgrounds; that was a neat but simple technique to isolate the characters.

Alan joins the Army about midway through the war. He is in training for over a year and serves in different locations and in different jobs. By time he gets to Europe the U.S. Army is in Germany and Cope's unit is on a race to Eastern Europe. Pattons is sending them East fast to try because he wants the U.S. to claim the land. Cope sees very slight action.

The war is a really small part of the story. The meat of the tale is Alan's realtionship's. He becomes a great pal with a fellow trainee. During the occupation he makes friends with Germans: a famous pianist/composer and his wife, a brother-sister accordionist duo and their family, a Nazi's daughter, some Bavarian guys he hikes with.

Cope gets discharged and takes a civilian job with the U.S. Army in Germany. He goes home to California to attend seminary and see his fiance-by-mail. Cope tells several tells of seminary friends, his family, a car crash, travel around CA. Cope decides to go back to France. Cope gets married to French gal. Cope gets different jobs until hired as translator by U.S. Army. Cope grows older. Cope gets divorced. Cope gets older. Cope remarries. Cope approaches retirement starts to think about his life. Cope reconnects with war and post-war friends.

This is just a biography with part of it set during the war. A strong argument for using War in the title is how Cope's service changed his life's direction. Cope's life does take some major turns. His time int eh service assisting an Army minister encourages him to seminary. His time and friendships in France and Germany get him to go return.

Finished: "Conan: the Frost-Giant's daughter and other stories" by Kurt Busiek

Finished: Conan: the Frost-Giant's daughter and other stories by Kurt Busiek, art by Cary Nord, 2005, 1593073011.

I was looking for more of Busiek's Astro City novels. I did not find any Astro stories but this was in the catalog. It's okay, just okay. The story was interesting enough to keep me involved but I did not like the artwork.

A story of a young Conan (about 18 or so I suppose) who runs across some reavers attacking a village. Conan is asked to join the village's warriors in following and attacking the reavers. Conan wants to visit a land way north, Hyperborea, that is supposed to be a land of milk and honey. Conan decides to join the villagers for a while. The villagers split at one point and Conan is the only survivor. Conan is awakened by a naked nymph. Conan follows her and is attacked by her goliath sized brothers. He kills them and chases the girl. She escape's when the Frost Giant god does a big zap of lightning.

Conan rejoins the other villagers. The villagers are betrayed by someone jealous of Conan. They are betrayed to some other monster sized people who take them as slaves to Hyperborea. Conan and the others are drugged and used as gladiators. Hot slave chick gives counteracting drug to Conan to awaken him from his drugged, zombie state. Conan plans uprising. Uprising fails but Conan escapes. Conan kills the two guys who betrayed everyone.