The subtitle of Dirty Snow should have been, Take That Camus! While not a specific counter-punch to Camus’ L’Étranger, Simenon’s dark story of a murderer with no regrets shares a similar bent, neither pulling any punches with the reader. Maybe that is why the book, along with Simenon’s The Widow, which was published in the 40s as well, is so often compared to Camus first masterwork. While L’Étranger is infused with Camus’ humanistic worldview and the influences of his Algerian upbringing, Dirty Snow one-ups the score with Simenon’s cold remove and stripping of existential underpinnings. There is no philosophy to be had here — the world is an ugly place and that’s the short of it.

To call Dirty Snow bleak would be an understatement. It makes Simenon’s own The Man Who Watched Trains Go By read like a Sophie Kinsella novel. You leave this book covered in a disgusting film of human degradation (and yet somehow, all credit to Simenon, eagerly along for the ride). This is a testament to Simenon’s skill at trapping us in the head of man we detest, unable to look away as he drags us through one vile act to the next. There is no letup. We are never given leave of his gaze, never allowed a moment to gasp for clean air. And when the tables are finally turned on this horrible creature, we see the downfall through the antagonist’s eyes, causing our perception of him to change.

Set in an unnamed country occupied by an unnamed aggressor post an unspecific war, the book introduces us to one Frank Friedmaier, a young man who would like nothing more than to make his mark by murdering one of his fellow human beings. And down the toilet of human emotions we go. Frank is in some ways the definitive Simenon antagonist and we’re stuck with him, because there is no protagonist for readers to cheer on. A thug and a petty thief, he is cold, self-centered, childish, and hell-bent on being the black hole in the lives of anyone he comes into contact with. From the moment in the opening chapter where he jams a blade into an officer from the occupying forces, there is no turning back. Having lost his “virginity,” Frank is unleashed. His ego inflates, leading to more emotionless acts of cruelty that he inflicts on anyone in his path.

Simenon’ genius — and what ultimately sets Dirty Snow above L’Étranger in my eyes — comes in the final third of the novel. It was only a matter of time before Frank butted heads with the occupying forces. And here we discover who the true bad guys are. That scumbag Frank, who we’ve grown to hate in the first 2/3 of the book, now seems small compared to these oppressors and what they do to their captives on a daily basis. Simenon is almost responding directly to Camus: sure, anyone can be a murderer, but there is always a bigger thug with a larger stick waiting in the wings. Having been written in the time of Gulags and Nazi camps, Simenon reminds us that there is murder and then there is Murder.

A slight spoiler warning here: At the end of the book, there is a weird note, which William T. Vollman points out in his afterword (and somewhat defends). While some may take this as a poor attempt at a silver lining, I think one could see another reading of it: Frank is out of his head. What he sees is not there, having been pushed to the limits by his aggressors, and knowing full well what fate awaits him. In those final moments, he is dreaming of the only positive future he can conjure. Whereas Meursault found happiness in the indifference of the world, Herr Friedmaier finds no such solace.

Pair with: Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 2 by Earth – The perfect bleak soundtrack to Simenon’s stark, snow-bound nowhere Eastern-bloc country in occupied territory.

It is not surprising that readers, even if they are devout fans of Kōbō Abe, don’t take to The Face of Another in the same manner as The Woman in the Dunes or some of his other novels. It may be because of the uncomfortable feeling a reader gets being stuck in the narrator’s head for an entire novel (much like Camus’ The Stranger). The story is built on the premise of a wife finding her husband’s notebooks which are filled with solipsistic meanderings, repeated excursuses, counter-arguments directed at her, and endless musings about identity and self. But you can forgive the man — after all, he’s had his face horribly scarred and burned in a laboratory fire. He is isolated and alone, even from his wife. But he has a plan, a carefully schemed revenge, and it starts with getting a new face. Thus, Abe takes us into fascinating exploration of identity and self.

The scientist, who is as scarred psychologically as physically, has it in for his wife. The main charge being that she no longer is sexually attracted to him, in spite of her continued devotion. We find out his plans soon enough — to construct a new face for himself out of life-like artificial skin. So much of his journal is absorbed in the beginning with this quest for a new face. Like Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, we follow him step-by-step, the meticulous planning and experimenting until finally we have the entrance of The Mask. The novel then shifts into an identity tug-of-war, The Mask becoming a persona, a separate entity that wrestles with the narrator for control of the same body. And yet, and this is the genius of the book, in spite of the scientist’s new found freedom (no longer being forced to go about in bandages like Claude Rains), he struggles to act. There is an impotence, not dissimilar to his inability to provide sexual pleasure to his wife, that afflicts the narrator. So rather than running amok in his new identity, he struggles to even begin his plan. As his wife later states, “All you could manage was to wander through the streets and write long, never-ending confessions, like a snake with its tail in its mouth.” This leads to, I think, the frustration of some readers with the book. They often feel as if the novel loses its way during these chapters. But the point, perhaps, is that even with this new entity, The Mask, the narrator is still himself, still struggling inside his own skin. His identity can change, but it doesn’t give him the freedom he craves.

The pace picks up in the final third of the book and rewards the steadfast readers who stuck with the story. When the Mask finally puts the scheme into action, things only get worse for the narrator. His struggle to regain himself, absurdly through the actions of the Mask, becomes a folly. In the end, the tables are turned on the scientist. Abe does this cleverly, even turning the narrator into a witness to his own defeat, watching the Mask carry out the scheme that leads to a less-than-desired result. The point Abe leaves us with is that while our faces are an important part of our identity, they are not all.

One note: if you’re even intrigued by the story, do check out the excellent film adaptation by Hiroshi Teshigahara with Tatsuya Nakadai doing a stellar job as the scientist.

Having already been a fan of Caleb J. Ross from his short story collection, Charactered Pieces, it was nice to see him make a big leap with his first novel, Stranger Will. In fact, he jumped himself right into Ira Levin territory with this macabre tale of evil that lives right next door (if not right inside the protagonist). It’s been a while since I have read a solid, eerie tale of actual human depravity — let’s face it, most writers are too zombie and vampire obsessed these days — but Stranger Will hits the mark perfectly. As Levin did with Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, Ross sets Stranger Will in a our world, one too familiar, where a slight twist, a nudge in the wrong direction send’s the protagonist Will into the presence of secret movement that exists just beneath the surface. Their plans… well, without giving anything away, are as nefarious as the old folks in Levin’s satanic opus.

In terms of mood, Ross hits it perfectly. There is a dark grime to the story, similar to the fluids that Will cleans up as part of his job as a crime-scene janitor. The author is daring enough to never let the slack off the line, dragging us further and further into the bleak plot. As you read, you come away with the impression that the sun never shines in Will’s hometown of Brackenwood. Picture rain soaked pictures such as David Fincher’s Se7en and you get the atmosphere. If I seem light on plot details, it’s because I don’t want to give away the main hook, the nefarious deeds Will suddenly finds himself involved in courtesy of one Mrs. Rose, an elementary school principal with a tight grip on Brackenwood. But it involves a bit of “correcting” by strangers in the guise of homeless men. The plot, is taught, well-crafted, and 2/3 of the way in hits you with the right-hook to the head where you suddenly realize everything that came before was just a warm-up for the real action. And Ross, never winks, never let’s down his guard — very important for this kind of tale. He could have tried to temper the darkness with humor, but that would’ve undercut the atmosphere. As written, there is no letup for the reader.

If I had one wish for the book, it would be that in parts the author didn’t overwrite. Ross is a good writer, he doesn’t need to oversell the story or the mood. Certain parts, in dialogue or description, felt as if the author really wanted us to respect his writing (which we already do) rather than serving the story as they should. The only blackmark I could level against the book goes to the publisher who didn’t serve their author well by doing a crap job on the copyediting. Too many damn typos that after a while do start to distract from the story. To their credit however, they did a great job on the cover.

Regardless, Ross has outdone himself on this one. So much so, I think the next book will be another bar raiser for him. And I hope it is a dark, sinister, and eerie tale to top Stranger Will. Ross writes the macabre better than most.

I’m not sure which came first: the photography or the writing. What I do know is that Kristin Fouquet’s love of photography infuses her storytelling. Her tales have that feel of old photographs you discover in a thrift store bin — you don’t know these people, but you can see their lives boiled down into that moment. It’s because of this that the stories in Rampart & Toulouse and her previous collection Twenty Stories never feel over-told. They unfold simply and capture that poignant moment for the character. You don’t need to know the rest. Everything is in that snapshot.

“Becoming Obsolete” and “Paris is the Pretty One” — two of the short stories in this collection that also includes a novella — both capture that quality in Fouquet’s writing. The former is a tale of refrigerators and New Orleans social hierarchy, the latter is a story of two sisters and a horror-show trip to Paris. For the characters in each, there is a line of demarcation, a point of no return that comes to them not as a sudden surprise but a moment they can only accept with resignation. The author doesn’t force them upon the reader, but with some confidence, lets us see what ultimately becomes obvious to the character, even if they are powerless to change that fateful day.

In all these stories, there are wonderful scenes that Fouquet conjures up, never forced, suddenly unraveling in the midst of a story. A woman standing in her bedroom window, watching a bottle of wine in she left in the courtyard, waiting for it’s intended recipient to appear. A Soprano, dressed in a robe and towel, waving her arms while practicing an aria in the privacy of her Paris apartment, unaware of the spectator watching her from across the street. A procession of ad hoc mourners singing “Sweet Sue Just You” as they march from the St. Louis cemetery in New Orleans, honoring a woman they never knew.

Like a perfect photograph, Fouquet’s stories leave one feeling as if they’ve only caught a glimpse of these lives, but that’s enough to tell the tale, and to know the fates.

Jesuachristo, the prose! More than any other writer I have read, Salter could do so much with so little. He has a scalpel-like precision with his prose — it is always just enough, nothing more. Quite a few writers should read Salter if for no other reason than studying how a few simply crafted sentences can say more than endless flowery paragraphs that serve more as literary gymnastics than good writing. The opening chapters of A Sport and a Pastime, where the narrator is travelling via train through the French countryside, read like a Van Gogh painting.

“Canals, rich as jade, pass beneath us, canals in which wide barges lie. The water is green with scum. One could almost write on the surface.

Hayfields in long, rectangular patterns. There are hills now, not very high. Poplars. Empty soccer fields. Montereau — a boy on a bicycle waiting near the station. There are churches with weathervanes. Smalls streams with rowboats moored beneath the trees…. The pattern of fields is passing, some pale as bread, others sea-dark.”

You can see the canvas in those lines, but also get that sense of velocity. And Salter never falters in his precision throughout the length of the novel. Some may grow weary of his delivery, but even at moments where it feels as if the train is going off the tracks a bit, Salter will deliver a single paragraph, so perfectly crafted and beautiful, you’re reeled right back into the story.

As for that story, A Sport and a Pastime could almost be read as Henry Miller trying to rewrite The Great Gatsby. Sex abounds in a lurid tale of a young upper-crust American dropout who falls for a simple French country girl as his mistress — “the real France,” which is more his obsession than the girl herself. Salter, however, is better in his depiction of sex than Miller ever could be. Miller was obsessed with every gritty detail, whereas Salter, being a more confident writer, could give you flashes and glimpses that spoke more to passion and the emotional tie between the characters than where they were placing their body parts.

We’re told of their romance by a much older narrator who reveals that the events are a confusion of his own perceptions and dreams. This is where Salter one-ups Fitzgerald. The narrator admits that this is more a jealous fantasy of his young counterpart’s life than a clear record of actual events. Occasionally their paths cross, but the narrator, whose own love life is stale and uneventful except for lusting after divorcee, is obsessed with that life he cannot live, the interior life of two younger people caught up in one another.

However, the catch, without revealing anything, is that the narrator has age and reality on his side. That French girl is not as perfect as the American would hope. She is the real France, which he’s not quite prepared for. And the narrator knows where this fling is headed. He’s been there, and even in lusting for it as much as the American wants his perfect French lover, he knows both are futile endeavors.

James Salter discusses the relationship between writing and travel from an old Paris Review interview:

INTERVIEWER: Does the travel help your writing?

SALTER: It’s essential for me. There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I’m used to traveling. It’s not a question of meeting or seeing new faces particularly, or hearing new stories, but of looking at life in a different way. It’s the curtain coming up on another act.I’m not the first person who feels that it’s the writer’s true occupation to travel. In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural. Furthermore, many men of ancient times died on the road, and the image is a strong one. Kings of Arabia, when they are buried, are not given great tombs. They are buried on the side of the road beneath ordinary stones. One thing I saw in England long ago struck me and has always stayed with me. I was going to visit someone in a little village, walking from the railway station across the fields, and I saw an old man, perhaps in his seventies, with a pack on his back. He looked to be a vagabond, dignified, somewhat threadbare, marching along with his staff. A dog trotted at his heels. It was an image I thought should be the final one of a life. Traveling on.

Don’t let the title of this book, or the those of the 20 poems in this collection, fool you. Hosho McCreesh is razor sharp in his poetry. Not a word is wasted. And flying through all 20 in one sitting, you get caught up in McCreeh’s view of the world. It’s soaked in whiskey-and-wine and the disappointment of every challenge that we’ll never be able to overcome. Yet, it has a beauty to it, like a good Mark Lanegan song.

In the first nine poems, McCreesh has an axe to grind. Not with you, or me for that matter, but with us. In McCreesh’s eyes we’ve pissed it all away, or are incapable of redeeming the pile of crap that was handed to us. It’s dark, hell-bent, screaming, confrontational poetry, and in most hands it would be an clichéd and ridiculous homage to Bukowski. But McCreesh has heart and as angry as he is, he empathizes with us. He knows we can’t help it:

“We are forced to search out
small fires, a little light,
some warmth, &
a little bit of
madness
to help drag us through
all this so-called
sanity
It’s usually not much.
It usually doesn’t last
But it helps…

In the second batch of poems, McCreesh gets optimistic, but in his own cynical way. Sure, we’re still screwed, but there are the small victories. And again, it is McCreesh’s economy with words that wins you over. Such as the simple argument he makes in “Seems Everyone These Days Wants Some Magical Cure for Death…”

I want a
cackling, drunken
cure
for lives
poorly
lived…”

Amen to that brother.

I was lucky enough to catch the showing of Brett Amory’s new “Dark Light” series of paintings at the Jonathan Levine gallery in New York City this past weekend. Quite amazing stuff. I was completely hooked by Amory’s use of shadow and light — scenes of lonely denizens drifting in and out of the lamplight, past rundown stores, as they move down rundown streets. Think Edward Hopper’s darkest hour.

Check out one of the video interviews with Amory posted on the Levine gallery blog.

So To Speak – Brett Amory, Episode 1 from lenny gonzalez on Vimeo.

Believe it or not, I am not the first writer in my family. Granted, I don’t come from literary stock. The kids in my generation were the first family members to actually make it to college. And even my own writing history is less than traditional — no MFA, no creative writing classes, not even a single writing workshop. I just had a crack at it as they say.

But I was not the first…

In 1975, Mario J. Della Torre, Sr., a cousin of mine who in that strange Italian twist was the same age as my parents, published his magnum opus, With A Ferry Boat They Robbed The Bank — Italian Style. Two years in the making, this comic crime-caper told the story of Meme, Co-co, Pepe, and Senor Dadone, a pack of feisty Italian immigrants who want to stick it to the man by robbing a bank in New Jersey. They make their getaway in… you guessed it, a Ferry Boat on the Hudson River. Not just a crime novel, there are endless inside nods to the Italian-American community. And comedy, New Jersey Italian style:

Just then, something happened which you would never expect at a Bank robbery. Co-Co had developed severe gas pains. He had to go to the toilet.

“Where’s the john?”, he yelled. “Quick, I can’t hold it back much longer.”

The Senore turned to the teller, “O.K., Mr. chief teller, show Co-co the men’s room, and be quick. We can’t hang around here all day.”

Poor Co-Co just about made it. The odor was unbearable. He must have had fried onion sandwiches the night before.

Crisis No. 2: Co-co started shouting. “There is no toilet paper.”

“O.K.”, the Senore yelled back, “Flush the john, or we are all going to pass out.”

The Senore snapped open one suitcase, and took out 4 $20.00 bills. “Here. Tell Co-co to use them for you-know-what.”

As with my own publishing efforts, it was a bit of a DIY effort: Adele Della Torre did the cover design (which sadly I don’t have with my copy — but I can tell you it was pink and featured a painting of a ferry boat), and Guy Della Torre did the interior illustrations of the characters. It was published by Pageant-Poseidon Press of Elizabeth, NJ, but I have no idea if that was a self-pub house or a legitimate publisher.

I’m currently working on the screenplay adaptation. I see Zach Galifianakis as Co-co and Harvey Keitel as the Senore.

This is a rare and hard to find gem. The very first album by Wino’s post-Spirit Caravan outfit, The Hidden Hand. It was only released on vinyl in Italy via Beard of Stars Records (Meteor City released the CD version in the US). And what a stellar album it is. Obviously fueled by the breakup of his previous band, Wino returned with a sound that was a little less doomy but a bit more hard-charging. The tempos are a bit faster than Spirit Caravan and the Hidden Hand had a much looser feel, driven by the chemistry between Wino and bassist Bruce Falkinburg (who also produced the record). As expected, Wino’s guitar playing is unmatched. “Sunblood,” “Tranquility Base,” “Bellicose Rhetoric,” and the title track are packed full of beefy riffs. Over three albums these guys would keep getting better. Sadly, that was it, as The Hidden Hand broke up after the release of The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote. Thankfully, Wino’s now back with Premonition 13…

Song samples and images below. You can check out more found vinyl here.

The Hidden Hand – “Sunblood”

The Hidden Hand – “Tranquility Base”