"Wish I had me a nickel for every puss I cut off," he went on, carefully reinscribing the circle with his knife. "An ol' Indian trick, y'know, an' us Kings are probably more Indian than white. Funny thing is the woman don't hardly feel it - you don't feel nothin' do you?- till a long time afterward. That's maybe because it's mostly muscle, you know, an' stretchy: got more give to it than a mile o' cat gut. Why I seen a fella stretch a gal's puss clean over her head, an' then let it snap shut around her neck. Man, oh, man, what a sight to see!" His body shook with laughter. "That gal was flingin' herself around like a chicken with its head off: strangled to death by her own tokus."

And from the same site, Jim Thompson’s ten best novels.

Nothing More Than Murder (1949)

Thompson's first noir classic and a variation on the old double indemnity shocker. Joe Wilmot and his wife Elisabeth (a woman with "trouble spelled all over her") jointly own and run a profitable smalltown movie house. Their marriage is empty and passionless and made more complicated when Carol Farmer, a business student, comes to lodge with them. Despite Carol's singular unattractiveness compared with Elisabeth, Joe has an affair with her: Elisabeth finds out (she craftily encourages the liaison) and blackmails the couple to fix an insurance scam in which she supposedly dies (substituting an innocent victim in her place) and nets the lucrative pay-off. Murder, arson, blackmail and suicide combine to make an exciting edge-of-the-seat thriller.

The Killer Inside Me

Perhaps Thompson's finest book. Stanley Kubrick called it "the most chilling and believable first person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." The main character, Lou Ford, a smalltown sheriff, suffers from "the sickness," a psychopathic need to kill. Ford conceals his true identity under the guise of an inept, wise-cracking lawman: in truth he is one smart cookie (he reads psychological treatises and solves calculus problems for enjoyment). He is also a schizophrenic thug with a compulsive need to control, and if necessary, destroy, others. Thompson also invests Ford with a sickening, black humour: "I think I've broken the case," says Ford, after he's just secretly snapped the neck of one of his key witnesses held in custody! This disturbing, compelling masterpiece redefined noir.

Savage Night (1953)

A bizarre gangster novel which pays homage to the hard-boiled style of writers like Dashiell Hammett. Savage Night tells the story of Charlie "Little" Bigga, a pint-sized hitman who is blackmailed out of retirement by "The Man" to kill Jake Winroy, whose testimony as a key witness in a racketeering case threatens to expose the mob. Features all the usual Thompson ingredients of human depravity: lust, blackmail, murder, and a particularly gruesome rape scene where the consumptive Bigga ravishes Ruthie, a one-legged girl!

A Swell-Looking Babe (1954)

Thompson uses his experience as a former hotel bellboy to supply the authentic background to this novel about Bill "Dusty" Rhodes, a bright, good-looking young nightporter who finds himself embroiled in the seductive Texas underworld. The babe of the title is the vampish blonde bombshell, Marcia Hillis, working a scam with gangster Tug Trowbridge to rob the hotel. Look out for Oedipal images of incest and patricide. A disturbing tale of lust, avarice and murder presented in a third person narrative.

A Hell Of A Woman (1954)

Once again, deadly and alluring femme fatales grip Thompson's febrile imagination. Frank "Dolly" Dillon ("Dolly," incidentally, was Thompson's bellboy nickname while Dillon was his Communist party alias) is a salesman who comes across a depraved old woman who prostitutes her attractive niece (Mona) for downpayments on goods. Frank is attracted to the girl but is still married to his trampish wife, Joyce. Mona discloses to Frank that the old woman has a hidden hoard of cash ($100,000) and together they plan to kill her, setting up an unsuspecting alcoholic hobo to take the fall. Things are complicated by the suspicions of Frank's wife and his creepy boss, Staples. Expect blood, infanticide, pumpkins(!), blackmail, more twists and turns than Spaghetti Junction and the disintegration of the narrator's personality on the final page. Gripping stuff!

After Dark, My Sweet (1955)

The compelling tale of an escaped mental patient and ex-boxer (William "Kid" Collins) who gets mixed-up with a crooked ex-cop ("Uncle Bud") and booze-sozzled, spiky femme fatale (Fay Anderson). Together, the threesome hatch a plot to extort ransom money from a wealthy family by kidnapping their son from school. "Kid" Collins, however, is set-up by his treacherous accomplices as the fall guy in this taut, gripping novel of avarice, lust, betrayal and ultimately, sacrificial redemption.

Wildtown (1957)

Lou Ford returns but this time as a more humane, benevolent figure (and obviously at a time pre-dating The Killer Inside Me).

The action is set in the seedy location of Ragtown featuring David "Bugs" McKenna as a prickly, paranoid ex-con who accepts a job as a hotel detective. McKenna believes he has been hired to knock off the infirm, wheelchair-bound hotel owner by the man's glamorous young wife. Bugs accidentally kills the embezzling hotel accountant and is then plummeted into a dark world of easy sex, bloody betrayal and multiple double-crosses. Nasty!

The Getaway (1959)

What starts off as a simple bank heist yarn eventually mutates into an horrific nightmare when the book's two major protagonists, Doc McCoy and his wife Carol, find sanctuary in the kingdom of the enigmatic dictator, El Ray. After escaping capture by enduring two days in underground caves and being holed up in a mound of farmyard dung, the McCoys find that the mysterious El Ray's kingdom they flee to is no safe haven. In fact, it's hell on earth, where fugitives have to pay for their liberty with added financial and psychological interest. It's a place where one's worst imagined fears become incarnate. The effect of Thompson's grim metaphysical musings at the book's conclusion still divides the critics (both film versions dispensed with the book's original, arguably unfilmable, ending). A disturbing masterpiece.

The Grifters (1963)

The classic tale in which Jim Thompson gives the lowdown (with the help of sadistic mobster, Bobo Justus) on how to serve oranges to a person you don't like! Roy Dillon, the son of Lillie, a racetrack collector for the mob, is master of the "short con." He has a romantic entanglement with another expert grifter, Moira Langtry, who sells sexual favours to her landlord in return for the rent money. Together, the three characters get caught up in an incestuous, double-crossing menage-a-trois culminating in betrayal, infamy and murder. Another Thompson masterpiece.

Pop.1280 (1964)

Lawman Nick Corey is fat, lazy, foul-mouthed and an irritating practical joker. His memorable, moronic catchphrase is "I wouldn't say you was wrong, but I sure wouldn't say you was right, neither." But like Lou Ford before him, Corey is a sharp-witted malevolent killing-machine masquerading as a witless, innocuous clown. Set at the turn of the last century in a backwater town, Pop.1280 begins as a raucous, almost farcical comedy but descends into an apocalyptic bloodbath. A dark, disturbing novel that ranks alongside Thompson's best work.

Mostly, though, what puts people off about Cave's work is his ability to make bad guys seem sympathetic. "I've got a new novel coming out, and I've been trying to do that with a rapist," he says, laughing. "I'm trying to make him funny."

The book, which Cave finished mere days ago, is called The Death of Bunny Munro, and it grew out of a screenplay that never got made. Munro is "just not a good guy," Cave says.

"But I've always liked things like those Jim Thompson novels, where you've just got [a protagonist who's] flat-out evil. But there's always something a little endearing about him. And Thompson would draw you, chapter by chapter, into this vortex, where your sympathies are stretched finer and finer. I've always found that interesting in his books."

Nobody can believe que me gusta esta novela.

todobody: sólo te quieres tirar a la autora.
juan: no no, ¿no te das cuenta de que ya no tiene 16 años? Qué poco me conocéis, joder.

16 años tenía María Folguera cuando escribió Sin juicio. 17 cuando le dieron el premio Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid. 19 cuando se publicó el libro y Care Santos le dijo que podría dar que hablar "si trabaja y sabe esperar". 24 tiene ahora y seguramente todavía tiene que trabajar y saber esperar...

¿Saber esperar qué cojones tiene que esperar, joder? ¿El advenimiento de Cristo, la inspiración, el estilo, la madurez (¿la madurez de qué?), que en su DNI figure una edad que para una panda de soplapollas críticos sea equivalente a "solidez"? Aquí no trabaja ni Dios, y menos los críticos, ¿y por qué tiene que trabajar un escritor? Un escritor escribe lo primero que le sale de la polla y es genial y os jodéis y punto.

O no lo es y punto también.

Trabajar. Esperar. Qué estupidez.

Sin juicio. Sinopsis. Una panda de niñatos (pero de niñatos de darles dos hostias) en un pueblo manchego se dedican a lo que se dedican: a hacer el gilipollas. Tontean unos con otros, se enojan, se sienten incomprendidos, beben, fuman, se enrollan. Hacen juicios sobre asuntos tan sub iure como robo de bocadillos y juran decir la verdad, toda la verdad y solo la verdad sobre la revista Superpop. Olé.

Eso es todo, y olé.

Primero quiero decir una cosa. Nadie en toda la Historia de la Literatura (el trozo que yo conozco) ha escrito nunca con 16 años algo así. Desde ese imbécil punto de vista (edad del autor) Sin juicio es genial. Es, de hecho, increíble. El dominio de la narración, de la elipsis y, sobre todo, de los diálogos, resulta sobrecogedor.

Dos. Poniendo el índice sobre el año de nacimiento de la autora, Sin juicio sigue siendo, de lejos, mil veces mejor novela que cualquier cosa que ha publicado, no sé, la primera zorra que os venga a la cabeza.

Entre Menos que cero, de Bret Easton Ellis, y la narración pura de Jim Thompson, esta novela (que como somos como somos y la chica es española, os parecerá a todos los que la leais movidos por el innegable poder de seducción que tiene este blog desde que su genialidad ha sido reconocida por el periódico más rancio de España, una gilipolllez) viene a ser como el Historias del Kronen de la generación nacida en los años 80. O sea, es un libro importante.

Importante porque de la diarrea editorial con los nacidos en los 70, que publicaba cualquer gilipollas así fuera de Segovia o analfabeto o no supiera ni dónde quedaba la biblioteca de su puto barrio, hemos pasado a un conservadurismo despreciable y, así a ojo, no soy capaz de citar un solo autor nacido en los 80 que haya recibido el apoyo de ninguno de los sellos habitualmente más respetables. ¿Qué cojones hacéis que no publicáis más niños? ¿Dónde cojones tenéis puesta la puta cabeza, joder? Dadle un premiazo a un chaval de 22 años de una puta vez aunque su novela sea una mierda. ¿No veis que eso es lo que está esperando esta generación para explotaros en la cara?

Alucino con los idiotas que son los editores.

Lees Sin juicio y dices: es otra puta generación. Joder, juran sobre la Superpop, dicen cosas como "me voy a comer a todo el que pueda en las fiestas", tienen en mente Titanic y La oreja de van Gogh... Son otra habitación de la gran casa de la vida y no les están dejando publicar como Dios manda. (La edición en Visor, perdóname Chus, es una puta mierda.)

María Folguera me parece la hostia.

By: Lector-Malherido

Låt oss först slå fast att "hängmattan" är ett mentalt tillstånd, snarare än en specifik plats. Även om jag har en finfin namnsdagspresent som då och då hängs upp mellan två äppelträd på torpet. Hängmattan är en form av nirvana light, som inträder när den första sommarveckans kvarhängande jobbstissighet upplöses i ett stillsamt, matt hängtillstånd.  U dig?

Det blev en väldigt bra litteratursommar i år. Regnet? Kanske. Solen? Definitivt. Vassaste läsveckan blev den med sextonåringen i Vieste - Apuliens pärla - där inte mindre än fem verk plöjdes ned i den blonda sanden: Woody Allens "Mere Anarchy", William Gibsons "Spook Country", Jim Thompssons hårdkokta, men lätt absurda The Rip-off, Jeffrey Deavers "The sleeping doll" och Lawrence Blocks "The burglar in the library". Idel god inspiration, och ingen bok man ångrar.

Manus, då? undrar du. Förläggare måste väl läsa manus tills ögonen blöder? Förvisso. Men denna sommar har jag faktiskt hållit ned manusläsandet en smula. Det mest lysande undantaget från den ambitionen är ett manus som du får i bokform lagom till nästa sommar. Erik Thulin (skrivit och givit ut Det femte Laboratoriet och Mordbibeln, på Kalla Kulor Förlag) har levererat sin tredje bok som kommer att betyda hans defintiva genombrott. Om inte, är vi helt enkelt inte lämpliga att ge ut kriminallitteratur, eftersom manuset, faktiskt, är det bästa som kommit in till förlaget i hela dess sjuåriga historia.

Ingen sommar utan gamla hederliga svenska deckare. Detta år blev det flera Vic Sunesson. Good ol' Vic har varit en favvo sedan tonåren, och även om språket känns...litet som torpet självt, dävet men charmigt, är glädjen över en oläst och sedan läst Sunesson mycket stor. Förtroliga Band och...vad den andra hette har jag glömt, men bra var den. När återutger rättsinnehavaren (Bonniers?) Vics samlade verk? Om inga planer finns - hit med rättigheterna, säger jag!

Sommarens tragedi är den urtjocka biografin över Hemingway. Har läst hans böcker, senast en återläsning av "For whom the bell tolls", men aldrig tidigare satt mig in i levnadsödet. Hans liv följer samma stämningskurva som min favoritopera, La Boh'eme av Puccini, med en glättig första akt och därefter tätnande svärta.  De som drömmer om att "leva författarliv" bör ta sig en funderare om de vill ha det som Hemingway eller min tjugonåntingårsålderfavorit P.G Wodehouse....jag lutar nog åt det senaste; en död i hög ålder med det senaste manuset i nyporna efter ett långt, bitvis ganska muntert och produktivt liv med förståndsgåvorna i behåll.

På Piratfronten har det varit oväntat lugnt under sommaren. Martina Haags "I en annan del av Bromma" skrattade jag gott åt. Hon skriver som hon är, denna glitterpinne. Roligt, väldigt tjejigt, men inte oläsbart ens för en bärare av rockskägg.

Mäster Jans senaste och påstått sista om Carl Hamilton "Men inte om det gäller din dotter" är en värdig avslutning med mycket pangpang. Jag är avundsjuk på Jans förmåga att driva handlingen utan dialog. Hans deskriptiva partier, fyllda av den blandning av pappa-läser-högt och akademisk semiironi som kommit att bli hans litterära adelsmärke är värda all beundran.

Nya författarkollegan, musikern och bajaren Mikael Fants "Grundläggande Genetik" är precis hur god läsning kul som helst. Han skriver med ett målinriktat, ganska rakt språk där alla män mellan 25 och 60 nog har lätt att känna igen sig. Dessutom är storyn i sig intressant, med varvade tillbakablickar (a la Solstorm) och nutid som kulminerar i en twist som jag nog skall ta med på en författarkurs någon gång som exempel. Den är väl planterad, men löses in med ett ka-tching som heter duga.

Fler Bajare har varit produktiva denna sommar. Per Planhammars "Blekaste Aning" är en riktig djävla höjdare. Intrigen är inte ägnad att kittla, men finns där och fungerar, men språket! Jag baxnar och bugar samtidigt. Per skriver med en inspiration och en...målerism som jag inte hittat på länge i litteraturen. Må vara att hans krönikor på Hammarbys Officiella är vassa och välformulerade, men denna roman! Vilken guldgruva för språklustande. Hatten av.

Vilken var din bästa bok denna sommar?

The lone stranger. The strong, silent type. The man with no name. The anti-hero.

These are the characters I want to watch in films or read about in books. They can be men or women. They can be of any race or religion. The only requirement is to be a badass. They range all over from Clint Eastwood in the Dollars trilogy, to Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Korean films like Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, British Films like Point Blank (well, British director at least), and even Kurosawa films like Yojimbo.

The protagonists in these films have something over characters (see: normal characters) in other films. These characters are always cooler. They are, in fact, the coolest. And the reason for their coolness is their apparent apathy—their lack of a normal conscience. They are slightly morally corrupt. Just a little bit off-kilter. They could kick the normal hero from some other movie's ass, or if that hero starts beating them to a bloody pulp, they'll look up into his eyes, cough out a splatter of blood on the floor in front of him, and smile. They're tough.

These are the characters I love. The ones with no moral compass. The ones who are real assholes, but you love them anyway. And when you watch them or read about them, you get to live that life for just a little bit. For the length of that movie or book, you're them, and you're a badass. For that little slice of your life, you're that guy or girl that no one wants to get in the way of. All you have to do is give a look and people watch out.

The best of these characters (Walker in Point Blank or the Samurai in Yojimbo) never falter in their badass-itude. They go through hell and back, but they're attitude does not change. Their character goes against any conventional wisdom of storytelling. Characters are always supposed to change, whether for better or for worse, but these ones don't. Characters are supposed to learn and grow. These ones do not. The man with no name is exactly the same at the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as he was in the beginning, just richer. These characters defy terms like "character development." The only thing that develops is whether or not they achieve their goal. Walker looking for his ninety-three thousand dollars, the Samurai subverting the rival gangs, the bride out to kill Bill, Tyler Durden trying to bring the world back to zero ... it's all about what they want and how they're going to get it.

It's storytelling brought down to the simplest degree. It's the stripped down language of James M. Cain, or the hard boiled criminals in a Jim Thompson book. It's about having fun and letting loose.

It's about examining the corrupt world around these characters. Because we always like the anti-hero, and there's a reason. They maybe amoral, but they're never as corrupt as the people around them. They're surviving in a corrupt world, not by hiding or by making due or by trying to change it, but by making it work for them. They know the world is shit, but they don't care. They know the angles and they'll get what they want. And maybe this is why we like them so much. Because we see the corrupt world around us too, only we wish we could turn the world around on itself, make it work for us.

But it's also just fun to be a badass.

The most likely of possible ventures is running through this hood for an hour, no camera, no iPod, just feet. There is a slight chance I'll go swimming but I've always found the company you keep during late night trips to public pools is a little strange, and sitting in the sauna shirtless and in shorts sending do-not-talk-to-me vibrations isn't where my headspace wants to be, that situation lacks freedom.

I am free to find cats.

Finished Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, yeah, that is some of the greatest prose ever written. Picked up this anthology of H.P. Lovecraft writings on dreams, a prolific part of that man's amazing volume of fucking crazy literature. The anglophile tone is the only distinction I hold against him, but it really makes it so good because it's overtly American anglophilia, so steeped in New England instead of anything British, but still kind of strange to read, but there is almost always a cat in the story, sometimes cats with what today would seem strange names. Also picked up a volume collecting everything Robert E. Howard wrote about Solomon Kane, prose and poems. Having read a fair share of Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories I'm interested to immerse my imagination in the tales of this Puritan adventurer, and the memorial written by Lovecraft to his friend/pen pal, and co-founder of whatever real strange fiction is.

The rain outside hasn't really kept me inside, but it's changed my mind about what to wear.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. The occasional cliches in the speech of Lou Ford, protagonist in Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, serve to mask the uh, killer inside the character, or it's just his way of fitting into the normal way of things. When he says some cheesy figure of speech it is the most understated way of blending in with the poor normals around him, and scaring the shit out of the reader, this dude is fucked up, and the story is told in a disturbing first person narrative where you're supposed to get inside Lou's mind, that's the effect of the style. One hundred years of Paradise for Jim Thompson please, but I mean, he knew he'd be more popular in death, I don't think tastes had to catch up to his prose, more like realizations about the human condition had to catch up, face facts, count the last century's loses after a great war, a depression, than another great war, then a fucked up spending spree followed by the fucked up cold war, with some Vietnam and counterculture thrown in. People didn't all of a sudden get Thompson, his genius became too fucking obvious to mistake it for anything else, ordinary people are and do fucked up things, so let's sell that back to them.

Getting stoned and researching or listening to anything related to Integrity is not advised. In the soberest of times this shit gives me strange vibrations, Dwid is obviously a super crazy genius from another dimension that worships and loves Don Ho as the anti-christ. Give him/them money or whatever, how they are even still alive boggles the mind that lives in this body for now, I for sure thought the war on terror would have targeted that particular psychonaut.

In that mother's basement: no good piece of shit hood, you should really take a better look at yourself, see that gold toothed grin is wearing out, no effect, everyone says the same thing, get fucked.

In that high tower: this is intense, can you please just let me borrow a feeling, not the half used ones, a fresh one, this smile goes for miles and I'm tearing up ready for the chuckle and guffaw.

In that particular dark wood: hold this hand, I'll nail them together, never live this down, leave this town and let them make a legend out of rumors while sitting on the porch wishing to be born again.

In that sunny field: can we make a portal to our own dimension, something made of two halves of great brains, great plans, and great hangings, the good kind without ropes.

I have a softish spot in my soul for cats of all kinds, this means I can spend hours here. Come on, do it.

Fucked Up are on Matador Records now, it makes sense, they rule, especially this new song No Epiphany. I want the new record now, not in a couple months.

As usual I've been meeting some cats on the streets, it is how I roll.

There is those two menacing siamese cats from a disney movie, then there are the wonderful siamese cats in Japanese wood block prints, then there is this cross eyed siamese that I'm sure is smarter than it looks, but serious hijinx must follow this cat around, I'd like to interview it's owners (my across the street neighbors) to confirm this.

This cat is totally from outerspace, it has to be, and something about it screams rock and roll.

There is this old dude in my hood, he's like 100 years, I'm sure of it, wrongly accused/assumed to be a stray, he was catnapped last week. The jiffy-marker on cardboard signs asking for him back obviously made their point because homeboy is back in the hood, doing what he does best: sleeping on the sidewalk.

Oh yeah, and check out the cat food I found!

"This should be one of the greatest Grindhouse nights ever."  Brian J. Quinn, Grindhouse Film Festival Coordinator

Tonight's bill of fare is STANLEY (1972), a WILLARD-like tale of an angry Everglades loner (in this case, a Seminole Vietnam veteran played by Chris Robinson) who is wronged by a cadre of seedy fashionistas (led by THE GODFATHER's Alex Rocco) and has his revenge by sending out a legion of lethal snakes.  And in IMPULSE (1974), William Shatner plays a Lonely Hearts conman/killer working the Florida backwater who must contend with a conninving little girl and Harold "OddJob" Sakata as a fellow trickster who goes by the name of Karate Pete.  The one and only time I saw IMPULSE, it struck me as having been made from a long-lost Jim Thompson novel, chockablock as it is with venal and thoroughly dispicable characters.  Of STANLEY, I remember a scene in which a guy dives into a swimming pool filled - he realizes only on the downward arc of his high dive - with squirming snakes.

It is my job to go to movies and write about them. If the movie is a work of art, I must try to rise to the occasion. If it's just an entertainment, then my job is to suggest how well you might be entertained. But how should I approach STANLEY?  Roger Ebert, June 1, 1972

As if this gnarly double feature weren't enough of an enticement in and of itself, William Grefé will be in attendance himself, signing autographs and submitting to an audience  Q&A.  Joining the director will be his STANLEY screenwriter Gary Crutcher, star Chris Robinson and producer John Burrows, MAKO: THE JAWS OF DEATH/WHISKEY MOUNTAIN actor John Davis Chandler (also great in various Sam Peckinpah movies and the under-appreciated ONCE A THIEF), STING OF DEATH star Joe Morrison and, schedule permitting, an as-yet-unannounced Extra Special Guest from the cast of IMPULSE.  Now given that Ruth Roman and Harold Sakata have long since passed away, you just might be able to figure out the identity of this Mystery Man... but you won't know for sure unless you show up tonight.

Click here to read Roger Ebert's review of STANLEY.

Besides everything...

My friend Brandy has the coolest collection of anything, I feel like I'm in a time machine set for "anywhere but here" when I'm over, check her new Madonna shirt next to her vogue sheet.

Coco was kind of showing off a new pose called no-limbs, I LOVE THIS CAT.

Usually when I try and take pictures of this place a lonely/crazy guy always yells at me to ask what time is it and shouldn't I be home, he must think I'm 12 years old, he also gives me high fives, we do the terrorist fist jab, then he goes "you rock my eterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnity". He wasn't around.

My experience with a milkshake.

Homeboy was kind of nervous, but didn't have the speed or energy to run far, he kind walked around me in circles, and once I pet him he got comfortable.

He got relaxed, and now that I think about he is giving a What's Michael? vibe.

Last night an Icy Box saved my life uh, or like, helped me out or something. It's 250GB, whisper quiet/loud, has these weird blue lights, whole other distraction.

Words I always misspell: definitely, weird, misspell, and schedule.

Oh my, got that new The Clipse Present the Re-Up Gang, solid pure uncut white stuff! Most impressed by the track Street Money, Bring It Back, and Emotionless, but fuck all that shit, I have to admit that right now Good Time by the Brazilian Girls is rocking back and forth inside my brain in-between my ears.

I used to be in love with this website called Freaky Flicks, it just listed links and information about mostly obscure and foreign movies (I'm talking Melville's Le Samourai, Chris Marker movies, Antonioni's Red Desert, Peter Greenaway's The Falls), you could find torrents through it without having to bear with looking at more popular torrent sites or even opening another tab (or window if you cruise that way). So a few months ago it changed, turned into a members thing, and wasn't really something I wanted to join to share illegally uploaded/downloaded international works of cinema art, so I almost forgot about it. Yesterday I found most of the torrents are up on isohunt so I can watch shit that changes my perception of everything.

Reading: some Garth Ennis era Hellblazer, Dear Diary, and The Killer Inside Me.

Going for: a walk.

Long story: I maybe turn my laptop off once a month, or when I'm transporting it, but generally it is busy even when I'm not actually sitting in front of it, you know, downloading shit, like right now I've got a torrent of Scanners coming in (not dl'ing if for the Cronenberg, but for the Ironside), or like, it's playing music* while I'm sitting in an arm chair reading Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. For the past five days my house has been super hot, so my room has been too, despite remote controlled fans and open windows, and because I'm always juggling with my 2GB (AT THE MOST) of free memory, my friendly computer gets all HAL on me.

Hot days = Hot nights

Proof: oh, just some clouds and testing of the senses. At least some breeze. Now there's an overactive brain, so loud and thirsty, solved a thousand problems. Hold onto yours ears but nothing good/great. The good ideas got saturated and I know there's something strong enough holding them here, no conflict (not even the "bleed" gets in the way) to stand up against, this means no psychic wars for once in/and forever.

*Chemical Brothers: Saturate; Wale: Nobody; Year Future: Black Sun; Savath and Savalas: Apnea Obstructiva; One Day As A Lion: Ocean View; Led Zeppelin: Moby Dick/Bonzo's Montreux; Unwound: Treachery.

Long list of library borrows (in no particular order):

The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

The Orignals - Dave Gibbons

Sin City: Family Values - Frank Miller

Sin City: Booze, Broads, & Bullets - Frank Miller

Divine Right: Book One - Jim Lee & Scott Williams

100 Bullets: Samurai - Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso

100 Bullets: Six Feet Under - Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso

DMZ: On the Ground - Brian Wood & Riccardo Burchielli

Supreme Powers: High Command -J. Michael Stracynski & Garry Frank

Deadman: Deadman Walking - Bruce Jones & John Watkiss

The Highwaymen - Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, & Lee Garbett

Criminal: Coward - Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

X-Men: Pheonix Endsong - Grek Pak & Greg Land

Black Sunday - Director: John Frankenheimer; Screenplay: Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross, & Ivan Moffat

Prime Suspect 6: the Last Suspect - Director: Tom Hooper; Writer: Peter Berry

Snatch - Director & Writer: Guy Ritchie

Purple Rain - Director: Albert Magnoli; Writers: Albert Magnoli & William Blinn

A very excellent cover version of Bjork's Army of Me by Liars has been on repeat for around an hour.

Somewhere I read a description of Martin Hannett's production on the Happy Monday's album Bummed as clausterphobic and I finally realized the sensation I'd been experiencing all these years.

Spurts of hot weather - temperatures well into the 90s - will occur for the next
few weeks. There's nothing unusual about that. However there a widespread outbreak
of 100 degree heat is not in the cards, and that is unusual. There will be spotty 100
degree temperatures but not covering the entire area like we have had the past couple of
summers.

Moisture will be typically sparse. We're into the summer dry spell and with a little luck -
and higher than normal humidity - we won't see a significant dry-up.

But what about this August weather pattern? You may have noticed some late season
flowers are alread out. Are they sensing a change in the air? Well, the weather pattern
across the Northern Hemisphere from Asia to western Europe is very August-like.
Chilly air is already building across the North Pacific and the Arctic. Snow will be be
likely at the higher elevations of the Canadian Rockies, and the rain-snow line at
lower elevations is creeping south of the Arctic Circle. These are events that usually
do not occur until August 10 to 20.

What does it mean? It could forebode an early fall and a long winter. Economically,
a long winter would be a disaster if the price of heating fuel continues to be sky-high.

TRIBUNE COMPANY PRESS RELEASE
June 9, 2008

Tribune Statement Regarding Wrigley Field

CHICAGO, June 9, 2008 – Tribune Company today issued the following statement regarding its negotiations with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (ISFA) on the disposition of Wrigley Field:

"Tribune and ISFA have been unable to come to terms on an agreement to transfer ownership of Wrigley Field into a public trust. As an employee-owned organization, Tribune has been clear and unwavering in its commitment to a transaction that is favorable to the public, to the company, and to the Cubs. Unfortunately, ISFA’s proposal did not meet this criteria and would, in fact, violate the policies of Major League Baseball. We continue to see a strong benefit for the state and the city in public ownership of the ballpark, but we cannot execute a transaction at the expense of our employees or in violation of MLB rules."

Looks like Big Jim Thompson has really lost his touch. Or should we now start calling him Little Jim?

I was pleased, of course, to see John Dickson Carr there.

Above all, he should be read and remembered for the unmatched imagination and inventiveness of his mysteries and their brilliant solutions.

Seems reasonable. Although quite what else you would be doing reading a detective story is beyond me. What's that? Gritty portrayal of low lifes? Away wi ye tomfool trendiness! Psychological motives? Never darken my door again! Artistically textured dialogue and grim realism with a troubled and in all likelihood corrupt cop? Whistle for it you impenitent heretic! An exploration of the thin line that divides the criminal from the crime solver, both requiring each other so that they may exist, crime not really being crime, but a plea for understanding from the true criminal, the authoritarian detective? Go boil your head!

Jim Thompson aside.

In fact, just thinking about Jim Thompson has made me want to read all of his books again immediately, with their ineluctable nexus of police, media, psychological delusion and small town envy, the complicated plots all delivered in the simplest and most hard-boiled prose. Yes - I said ineluctable nexus. According to his brief entry 

Thompson is one of the most revered of pulp writers, with new academic studies and books proliferating. 

How sad.

Next!

What no GK Chesterton? How did the Father Brown mysteries not get on there? Some sort of MASSIVE JOURNALISTIC BLUNDER clearly. Not least among the virtues of these wonderful short stories is Chesterton's remarkable ability to describe landscapes and skies.

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any other of the children of men. For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense of doom in the Calvinist.

From The Honour of Israel Gow, one of his finest. The 'olive and silver' evening seems to sum up that is good about the Father Brown stories - the painter's hand, the verve and daring, the poetic accuracy, the ability to capture unique skies and moods, landscapes and mysteries, the mixture of the mundane and the apocalyptic and yes, also the cleverly articulated Catholocism, and the mostly deft and amusing sententiousness. Depending on your taste the latter are the most quickly wearing parts of his writing. But he does do them very well.

Anyway, that's all by the bye really. He should be on the list.

I was pleased, well perhaps mainly surprised, but also pleased, to see Bruce Montgomery on there as well. Unlike Chesterton I'm not really sure that he could be described as a good writer, but I'm interested in him for a few reasons. The first of these is that I think I own a book once owned by him; a first edition of Paleface by Wyndham Lewis, bought for £15 back when I was a bit cuckoo for Lewis. As you open the spartan cover, you are presented with a lovely Lewis-illustrated page (why couldn't he get the strange loveliness of his painting into his writing? Or at least very rarely) and inside the front board of this particular edition is written, in a sharp but neat and sloping hand

Bruce Montgomery, 1942

Here's another reason I'm interested in him; this would be when he was at St John's, Oxford, hanging out with Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin -

I must first have seen Bruce Montgomery on my first morning in St John's in 1941 coming out of his staircase in the front quad to go to the bath-house. [...] I felt rather like a recruit getting his first sight of a full colonel in red tabs, spurs, etc.: here was an undergraduate, the real thing. This man, along with an indefinable and daunting air of maturity, had a sweep of wavy auburn hair, a silk dressing-gown in some non-primary shade and a walk that looked eccentric and mincing, though I found out later that it was the result of a severe congenital deformity in both feet that could still result in a joint going 'out' without warning.

That from Kingsley Amis's Memoirs, in its chapter on Montgomery. It's well worth reading. Montgomery seems to be one of those people who display precocious talent, in his case for music and writing, but who, almost wilfuly it can seem, fail to live up to other people's expectations of them. Montgomery wrote numerous quite successful detective stories, and as well as more serious compositions, wrote music for some of the Carry On films.

According to Amis, of all people, Montgomery became an exceptionally heavy and tiresome drinker towards the rather premature end of his life. I suppose people will choose the metaphor they wish - compensation, oblivion, replacement, but maybe he just liked drinking a lot.

I had more or less forgotten that he wrote under the name Edmund Crispin but was browsing the green-spined crime and detective fiction Penguins in a charity shop when I found a book by him called Buried for Pleasure. I snaffled it up. The blurb was promising:

Edmund Crispin's real name is Bruce Montgomery, and he is a composer as well as a writer. His recreations are swimming, excessive smoking, Shakespeare, the operas of Wagner and Strauss, idleness, cats. His antipathies are dogs, the French Film, the Renaissance of the British Film, psychoanalysis, the psychological-realistic crime story, and the contemporary theatre. His favourite detective novelist is John Dickson Carr.

The book is bizarre; the crime and detection plot frequently seeming mere framework for Montgomery's many obsessions and irritations. His detective is the Oxford don Gervase Fen, and a large part of the beginning of the book is taken up with his decision to run for parliament in a small, insular borough of an inderterminate rural location, purely it seems to provide a bit of 1930s-ish scenery and also the closed society necessary to this type of crime thriller; you know the thing: weekend at manor house, small village, international train journey with sleeping compartments and dining car, exclusive holiday resort, remote castle.

After quite a lot of Fen arriving, eyeing up the local female talent, getting the machinery of his campaign into place, with plenty of digressions to give room for flippant humour, the reader begins to wonder, at least this one did, whether this was intended as a crime and detection novel at all, the only thing designating it as such being the reassuring green and white bands of the cover.

The writing is uncontrolled and self-indulgent, bearing every sign of having been hastily written. It's disastrously faceitious, knowing, cliched, careless, unconvincingly artificial, with absolute no indication of editing or revision at all.

It was clearly more fun for him to write than it is for us to read. But taken as an expression of personality it is extremely entertaining. The plot is risible - the murder is committed using the hackneyed device of sending poisoned chocolates. Although in a sense this device is crucial, it was already so worn that a character in John Dickson Carr's White Priory Murders uses it as a method of egregious misdirection.

In fact, all this is merely to allow Montgomery to address any issues weighing particularly heavily on his mind. At one point Fen comes across a crime writer testing out the practicalities of a scene in a local field. Fen suggests that doing this must enable him to some extent to get 'inside the mind of the murderer'.

An expression of mild repugnance appeared on the man's face. 'No,' he said, 'no, it doesn't do that.' That subject seemed painful to him, and Fend felt that he had committed an indiscretion. 'The fact is,' the man went on, 'that I have no interest in the minds of murderers, or for that matter,' he added rather wildly, 'in the minds of anyone else.' Characterization seems to me a very overrated element in fiction. I can never see why one should be obliged to havev any of it at all, if one doesn't want to. It limits the form so.'

Admirable sentiments, for nothing is as inimical to adventure and excitement than characters, and the same goes for science fiction and thrillers. The exploration and development of character in such books creates asthetic disproportion, like putting a trailer on a sports car, and encumbers the writing.

The haphazardly accomplished electoral elements of the book are clearly only present to allow a rather enjoyable rant about politics:

What is referred to as the political good sense of the British,' Fen continued, 'resolves itself upon investigation into the simple fact that until quite recently the British have been politically apathetic, paying as little attention to the bizarre junketings of their elected legislators as they decently could. It is this which accounts for the smoothness of our nation's development in comparison with the other countries of Europe; and our fabled spirit of compromise - now virtually extinct - has derived from nothing more obscure or complicated than a general indifference as to the issue of whatever controversy may have been in hand; though we, of course, have in our vanity ascribed it to tolerance. Propaganda, however, has altered all that, and politics nowadays engender heat, dismay, fury and a variety of other discreditable emotions in every section of the populace. We are forever at each other's throats; the safety-valve of our apathy is twisted and broken beyond repair. Only here and there does it survive, and I am happy to note that this constituency is one of its last strongholds. I congratulate this constituency on the fact. And I strongly advise this constituency, when confronted with the reformers-by-compulsion who assert it is everyman's duty to take an interest in politics to kick those gentry downstairs. For such an asseveration there is no single justification to be found, whether in morality, metaphysics, expediency or sense. Do not allow yourself to be cajoled into supposing that political apathy is dangerous. Dictators such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin are raised to power, not by apathy, but by mass fanaticism. That, darlings, is the danger, but you are so busy gaping up at me and wondering if I have gone out of my mind that I could talk for a week without convincing you of it.

The are elements, sadly infrequently displayed, of what would be the hallmark of Kingsley Amis's humour; a sort of hyperaware cynicism as to the minutiae of people's behaviour. Here a psychologist named Boysenberry is trying to recruit Fen to help him find an academic placement at Oxford:

'Then I must wish you the best of luck,' Fend responded with as much heartiness as he could muster.
'Ah, but it's not all a matter of luck, is it?' By now Boysenberry's unyielding cordiality had grown positively macabre. 'A lot of good can be done, you know, by a word in the right place.' And with this insinuation the effort of tactfully shooting his bolt became too much for him, and from sheer nervousness his voice rose to a kind of shout.'

However, genuinely hilarious moments such as this are few and far between, and the comic urge is confined by and large to a somewhat wearing persistent atmosphere of high spirits of farce - perhaps his main debt to John Dickson Carr.

The book lacks coherence of tone and is in all honesty totally gimcrack, but despite this, no, because of this, I enjoyed it so much that I've just got out Love Lies Bleeding from the library, and a biography as well, and leave this pleasant spot with a promise to report back when I'm done.

One last post from Bangkok and then we can move on to Indonesia! So much has been written about Jim Thompson, the American secret service agent who settled in Bangkok after the Second World War (New York being far too dull for his liking) and who brought beautiful Thai silk to the world, revitalizing what had been a cottage industry until then. Its popularity exploded after being featured in the costumes in ‘The King and I’, and Thompson was made.

His story is all the more intriguing for the fact that he disappeared without a trace during an afternoon walk on Easter Sunday, 1967, while staying with friends in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Theories accounting for his disappearance abound, from a CIA kidnapping, being attacked and eaten by unidentified wild animals, a staged disappearance, to falling down and disappearing into a ravine/animal trap. The latest theory for which there is apparently ‘fresh’ evidence faults a fatal accident with a Malaysian lorry driver who subsequently hid his body. Either way, he is gone, but his beautiful house in Bangkok just off Siam Square is still there, and his disappearance adds an extra edge to a visit.

The house is often touted as being typically Thai-style, however the reality is that it is a mish-mash of styles and features. Six traditional teak houses were cannibalized, dismantled, and floated downriver to create this one. Although he had trained in architecture, the houses were more difficult for Thompson to reassemble than he had counted on, and apparently he had to go back to Ayutthaya to find a group of carpenters who still practised traditional building methods to solve the problem.

Some of the features he included were the turning inside out of some wall and decorative panels so as to be able to appreciate the carving better from the inside, the staircase being inside rather than outside the house as is traditionally the case, and the use of an intricately carved Chinese pawnshop wall to separate different living areas. Despite all of these, the house comes together beautifully well and must have been a joy to live in. My favourite was the living area (pictured above) facing wall-less onto the garden and the klong, with the perfect daybed in the centre.

Of course you can pick up his silks and other products from the shop conveniently located in the same compound, but if you are keen on buying more, or just on a bargain, a trip to the Jim Thompson Factory Outlet on Sukhomvit 93 might be in order. There are other branches too, in Phuket and Pattaya. I got a beautiful piece of bright blue lining silk to give an old winter coat a new life for just 300 Baht a metre.

C’est à ce passage précis que l’honnêteté commande à l’auteur d’avouer mon incompétence crasse en matière de philosophie. Oui, amis du beau verbe et du gai calembour, cette introduction poisseuse ne visait qu’à poser le problème. Pour sa solution, demandez à Freud ou à tout autre qui n’est jamais là quand… Mais je persiste : je n’y connais rien et aucune vérité ne sortira de ces lignes, même si je leur collais les électrodes. Alors pourquoi ?

Parce que je me demande ce qui fait le succès d’œuvres (soyons larges : films, livres, BD, spectacles, sentez-vous tous invités dans ce billet) décrivant par le menu des sévices dont nous n’imaginerions même pas vouloir être le témoin, ne serait-ce qu’indirect – et je ne parle pas de les subir. Quelle jouissance y a-t-il à effleurer ainsi l’horreur pure ou cradingue, sans même être sûr que le méchant va payer à la fin (dirty end) ? N’importe quel psychologue de comptoir va me tousser des mots techniques avec ses 5 potes (pauvres catarrheux, ils s’y mettent à six) qui expliquent tout. Yeeeees ! On sait : on en a besoin pour supporter ce pour quoi on ne peut rien (je résume). Mais n’aurait-on pas plutôt besoin que tout cela cesse ? Plutôt que de trouver des moyens détournés pour supporter, je veux dire…

Alors changeons d’angle : pourquoi un auteur qui sait dans quelle encre tremper sa plume et dans quel dico pêcher ses mots – un bon technicien, quoi – se sent-il d’aligner des pages de meurtres sanglants, d’arnaques tordues, de guerres vicieuses et de viols itou ? À part le fait que ça se vende, au moment de l’écrire ça doit être dur pour le gars, non ? En plus, demeure toujours en lui (l’auteur) cette idée affreuse que ce meurtre, cette torture, cette ignominie fondatrice de son roman (de son scénar, de sa BD… voire de son musée, oui, rappelez-vous, le musée des tortures, aux Halles, à Paris, avec même l'odeur de la chair brûlée), ont peut-être déjà été décrites ailleurs. Aaargh ! doit-il se dire, le soir après le soufflé de chandelle, non seulement c’est moche ce que j’écris, mais en plus c’est du déjà lu… Alors pourquoi, hein ? Pourquoi n’invente-t-il pas de belles histoires d’amour, qui même si elle sont déjà lues feront au moins rêver de bisous là et de frissons ici, plutôt que de charcutage d’orteils à la lampe à souder.

Je ne sais pas, je vous l’ai dit au début. D’autant que moi-même, aussi fier sois-je de mon roman sans haine ni violence, je me surprends parfois à écrire des horreurs. Ça me prend comme ça, sans colère particulière. Un vrai défouloir (de tout ce que je voudrais faire dans la vraie vie ? Mickey m’en préserve !) sans frein ni retenue – ce qui redonde et superféte un max. J’ai ainsi martelé le visage d’une femme à coup de fer à repasser, flingué un pauvre italo-américain au lendemain des obsèques de sa mère, réduit toute une armée de fantasy en chair à pâté, et même achevé l’humanité dans un massacre dégoulinant de religiosité… et je n’en suis pas plus fier. Suis-je méchant ?
Je suis sûr que Stephen King ne ferait pas de mal à une mouche, que Jonathan Littel est particulièrement bienveillant, qu’aucune des 1275 âmes de Jim Thompson n’est noire, et ainsi de suite. Pourtant, devenir auteur semble devoir commencer par une bonne descente à la cave, avec une pioche pour creuser un peu plus profond dans le sombre.

Mais je me demande encore : quelle genre de vie on s’invente, à se raconter de telles histoires ?

"It makes no sense to talk about it unless or until we have a deal," Thompson told the Sun-Times. "It just keeps stirring it up again. It opens up the dialogue for people to criticize something that's not a deal."

In other words, once it's a done deal, the taxpayers can complain all they want. Even as they're writing the check.