Have a Jones for Indies?

Many of you have broken into my home to leave little Post-it Notes™ complaining, “It’s all very well and good for you to boast of your proximity to nice independent bookstores – The Learnéd Owl in Hudson, OH; Townhouse Books in St. Charles, IL; Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, IL; and now Vroman’s in Pasadena and Diesel’s, a Book Store in Malibu (not to mention Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks, CA) — but what about the rest of us, trapped in the blasted emptiness of Nebraska or the frozen wastes of Saskatoon, where we do our work on Border’s and we kiss the bloomin’ boots of ‘im what’s got it? Well? What do you say to that?”

First of all, I say that I have retained the services of a local security company to put an end to further note-sticking and to decorate the landscape with those little “armed response” signs which I have so admired on the lawns of our tremulous neighbors.

Secondly, I say: look you, there is no need to go Independent Bookstoreless when here you have a nifty website designed solely to help you find the nearest such commercial operation close by. Go there now — or, more accurately, have it come to your computer screen — by clicking on these words: OH, WHERE IS AN INDIE BOOKSTORE NEAR ME?

Go ahead. See what happens. If you prefer, you may click instead on the “Indie Bound” logo there in the upper right of this post. It is linked to the very same “independent bookstore locator.”

Malibu Bookstore

A large slice of the morning was given over to jaunting around the L.A. area in search of nice independent bookstores. The indie destination was, in part, just an excuse to drive hither and thither, getting lost and learning what’s where, but it was also a serious quest: I prefer to spend my hard-earned cookie dough at indie bookshops. Nay, sir, not a word against the big box stores, Border’s and Barnes ‘n’ Noble — they have their niche in the natural order; yet if there were nothing but those giants and Amazon, we would be mournful book-buyers.

Anyhow, I found a nice indie called Diesel’s, A Book Store over the hills in hoity-toity Malibu. It’s one branch of three — the siblings are in Oakland and Santa Monica — and it fills the bill quite well: light diffused by curved sheets of canvas or parchment or something, enticing table displays of all the new covers. Small, friendly, inducive to that loopy browsing state.

Alas, I forgot to snap a photo of the place, so two miles into my return trip I pulled over and took this picture:

The drive is sixteen miles along a twisty canyon road including a spooky tunnel with rough-hewn walls like something out of Disneyland. A bit of a hike, I guess, but better than the thirty miles — headachey freeway miles — to the enormous (for an indie) and in every way wonderful and just about perfect, and also good Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

UPDATE: Lulu was so enchanted by my description of Diesel’s, a Book Store, that I acceded to her dewy-eyed request to take her there before the world was a day older. Once more I sped, this time with shotgun rider, first up and up, then down and down, the verdant slopes of the Santa Monicas and screeched to a halt inches from the front door of Malibu’s favorite independent book store. This time I came armed for photography and, kneeling on the floor, took this shot of the ceiling so you could see the light shades described above.

Seldom Disappointed

We used to have hardcover copies of Tony Hillerman’s mysteries from Talking Gods on. We liked them enought to buy them as they came out even though we couldn’t really afford them. All have long since disappeared into the great Bardo of Borrowed Books.

So to illustrate this post, my commemoration of the death, yesterday, of one of the best (if not the best) mystery writers of the last twenty-five years, all I could find was this dusty set of four cassettes; recordings of Hillerman himself reading two of his novels: Skinwalkers and Talking Gods.

It’s a real treasure. Usually the reading aloud of an audio book is best left to a professional actor  — a Scott Brick or George Guidall — but this one is an exception. I can’t improve on the back-of-the-box blurb from Library Journal:

“Tony Hillerman reads his own… mystery in a homespun let’s-sit-down-and-have-a-beer-together voice.”

Yup. Just so.

Well, I have lots of dogsbody work to do today, so I’ll dig out the old Walkman and let Navajo policeguys Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee keep me company.

Tony Hillerman, RIP

I Can Read: Back Story

Appaloosa was such a kick, both as film and a book, I decided to see if I could glean equal enjoyment from one of the oodles of detective stories on which Robert B. Parker’s fame is based. But which of the oodles?

I recalled reading on Jimmy Johnson’s Arlo and Janis website, that his comic strip was alluded to in at least one of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser detective thrillers. A Google grouping of “Arlo, Janis and Spenser” led to Back Story. I zipped at once to Mysteries to Die For, a specialty book store in Thousand Oaks, and snagged my own personal copy wherein I discovered how Detective Spenser was hired for the price of six Krispy Kreme doughnuts by actress Daryl Gordon to find the person who murdered her mom, Emily, 28 years earlier.

Well, Spenser proceeds (as his partner, Hawk, says) to “shoot up almost everybody that move in eastern Massachussetts so’s we can find out who killed Emily Gordon.” He also makes lots of wisecracks, including this one in conversation with Hawk (Spenser is a white guy; Hawk a black guy):

“If they come after me, you come lippity-lop to my rescue.”

“Lippity-lop?”

“Yeah. Like Br’er Rabbit. I’m trying to bridge the racial gap.”

“Let it gap,” Hawk said.

This banter, showing up about halfway through the mystery, caused me to realize with surprise that I had already read Back Story. I had read it years ago — maybe 2004? — whenever it was I had learned about it on the Arlo and Janis site. Fortunately for the sake of preserving the suspense, all I recalled from the previous reading was the “lippity-lop” exchange — it made me laugh then and it made me laugh again this time. Also, there was a scene where Spenser shoots three very shoot-worthy bad guys in Harvard Stadium that stirred a faint memory. Not one other detail, or wisecrack, or plot twist, or action scene had remained with me, so I was able to enjoy this repeat reading with the pure pleasure of a first. Maybe four or five years hence I will be able to enjoy it a third time as though it were new.

I ask you: Is that a favorable review or a negative review?

Back Story by Robert B. Parker
(Berkley Trade Pub, Mass Market Paperback, 304pp.)

Appaloosa: The Lil Book

The new Neal Stephenson gargantuan novel, Anathem, was so absolutely satisfying that it sort of left me high and dry in the reading-for-pleasure department. I mean, what could possibly follow such a tour de force? First I turned to Captains Courageous to keep the reading high going by means of the verbal surprises (e.g. “…they laughed themselves hungry.”) that Kipling scatters by the handful on every page. Next, García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude was so thick with wonderous invention that turning the final page was like waking from a dream.

Rudyard and Gabriel had done their jobs well: I was ready to return to reading trash.

A random movie choice pointed the way. Ed Harris’s snazzy cowboy flick, Appaloosa, awoke my curiosity about novelist Robert B. Parker. The guy knocks out about fifty books a year, mostly private eye yarns starring Spenser the Detective. I admit to having harbored a slight prejudice against the blameless fellow because he seemed to be in good odor with the sort of New York Times reviewers who lionize Elmore Leonard to prove they aren’t snobs. But, then, I figured a mystery series featuring a guy whose favorite comic strip is Arlo and Janis, had to have something going for it. So when I learned that Mr. Parker had jumped genres to write the western novel, Appaloosa, on which the movie was based, I bit. Actually bought a paperback copy, I did.

And I’m glad: laconic dialogue so dense with unspoken meaning it’s almost poetic. Action all the more actiony for the dry way it’s related. Not one single wasted word. What I wished Louis L’Amour was but isn’t. Wallace Stegner without all that goldarned literary respectability. It’s cowboys. Cowboys. They shoot bad guys, ride horses, and scratch their heads trying to figger out those women folks.

Appaloosa cheerfully did the job I paid it to do. And look: there are about 3,000 more Robert B. Parker novels standing in line, each one anxious to please.

Appaloosa by Robert B. Parker
(Berkley Publishing Group, Mass Market Paperback, 305pp.)

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
(William Morrow & Company, Hardcover, 960pp.)

One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; translated by a swell fellow by the name of Gregory Rabassa
(HarperCollins Publishers, Paperback, 417pp.)

Two Hundred Years of Solitude

Much of settling into a new home is looking for stuff. Not shopping for new stuff — though there is that — but simply locating the stuff you own already but which has been dislocated by that giant who lifted the roof of the house while you were away and mischievously stirred the contents with an enormous spoon.

One item I sorely wanted to find was my copy of the Gabriel García Márquez nutso novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’d started it on the other side of the Great Divide. It was then randomly boxed by the Packers of Doom and now I urgently required it. Nothing else would do.

Every box marked “books” I opened and searched. I opened and searched every box not marked “books.” I put each book one by one onto shelves, took them off again one by one, peeked behind, and one by one returned them to the shelves. No Solitude.

In desperation I solemnly announced: “I will buy another copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Nay, hang the expense, woman! Just you watch. No sooner shall I bring home a new copy than the old one will magically appear. There is no other way.”

So I went to Border’s and bought a new copy and moments after I returned the old one magically appeared.

I could only sigh and murmur the words of Aureliano Segundo, one of Solitude’s protagonists, who was likewise wonderstruck by fecundity, though in his case, of livestock, not novels: “Cease, cows. Life is short!”

One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; turned into English one word at a time by Gregory Rabassa
(HarperCollins Publishers, Paperback, 417 magically realistic pages)

NW Goes to the Talkies AGAIN: Appaloosa

We keep hearing about the demise of the western genre of movies, but fortunately Ed Harris mustn’t have read the obit.

Actually, not being big fans of oaters ourselves, we only went to see Appaloosa because we felt like going to the movie show and no other nearby films whispered “Come hither.” Also because Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris look cool in the poster — like they had been handmade by God to star in western movies. Also because Renée Zeggellweggler is in it and we just can’t help staring at her weird face. We didn’t expect much from the film.

But what a happy surprise: Appaloosa is very slick flick. Actually the best mainstream film we’ve seen this year. Ed Harris, the producer-actor-director-writer-singer-caterer (also horse wrangler, best boy and key grip), stays on task: telling the story. Imagine that.

The story — a half-crazy marshall protects a town of moderately crazy citizens from the oppression of a totally-crazy cowboy gang — comes from the novel by Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser detective series. It’s dished out in spare, wry dialogue and action scenes that are coherent — that is, you can tell who is doing what and in what sequence — oh, and as a bonus, the action advances the story. I guess it must be hard to do because you see it so rarely.

Even though Appaloosa is a swell shoot-em-up — what last year’s 3:10 to Yuma should have been but wasn’t — you could, if you were goofy enough, take out all the gunplay and still have a shrewd little character study. The four main actors — Mortensen, Harris, and Zeggwillgerlerr, as mentioned above, plus baritone Jeremy Irons as the Snidely Whiplash — are so entertaining you can just sit back and enjoy their crafting of four bordeline-psychos. Especially Ziggwiggler. By sheer force of raw acting-power she can make you think she’s so beautiful (or something) that one hapless gent after another crashes on her reef.

Disneyworld in Miniature

The only way Lulu and I could face the cat-laden trek across the country last month was by promising ourselves a trip to Disneyland as soon as we were settled in CA. Yesterday we made good on that debt.

It’s well we did: If it hadn’t been for the pumpkin theme throughout the park, we would never have known that it was Fall, so subtle are the seasons here in Perfectweatherland. Disney takes the defiance of time a few steps further. Look at this placard above the entrance:

They could put the same placard above the exit.

The fantasy within Disneyland is powerful and immersive. It’s the world as it should be — at least according to the mind of that rarest of breeds: an amiable cartoonist.

Be warned: Universally seductive as it is, the fantasy may not in every way conform to those by which you manage your own life. Not everything is permissible even in Paradise. Enjoy yourselves, but none of this, please. No crazy dancing in the coffin stacking area.

Much happy trudging, much voluntary mind loss, and much Mickey Logo embroidered shopping later, we collapsed curbside on Mainstreet U.S.A. and focussed our attention on strawberry ice cream cones. ($3.09 if you go for the waffle cone as who would not?) We noted with wonder how a bit of the Old Country had found us out here in Arcadia.

Another round of shopping, a Disneyland circumnavigation via toy train and we were properly psyched for what would prove to be our concluding experience before staggering back to the Simba Parking Lot: The marvelous Disney Parade of… well, actually, I’m not sure what it was a parade of. So glorious a spectacle cannot be observed with the naked eye; it must be viewed in the display window of a digital camera. Even thus modulated that much splendor was too much for these Midwestern eyes. I could only view the view through the viewfinders of other people’s digital cameras. No mortal can directly gaze upon the good fairies from Sleeping Beauty and live:

NW Actually DOES Go to the Talkies: Eagle Eye

We actually saw a movie in a movie theater. Not at home, I mean. A nice place, too, over in Calabasas. All shiny and new with faux marble pillars. Only so-so popcorn, but on the plus side they had Coke Zero which they dispensed with a lavish hand. And high marks go to the theater’s excellent sound system. I missed not a syllable of dialogue except maybe where it was spoken over exploding bombs or colliding autos which was pretty much most of the movie come to think of it.

What? The movie? Oh, right. It was the new Shia LaBeouf thriller, Eagle Eye. It’s sort of a paranoia-lite mash-up of Seven Days in May, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Sabatoge, The 39 Steps, North by Northwest, The Matrix, 2001–A Space Odyssey, “The Omega Glory” episode of Star Trek, The Demon Seed and who knows how many other films slumbering none too deeply in the subconscious minds of the screenwriters.

Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan play a couple of Chicago singles — boy & girl — who find romance while being coerced to perform all kinds of rotten crimes by an Anonymous Evil Force which manifests itself as bossy girl-voice on their cell phones. Federal Agent Morgan (Either CIA or FBI. Or maybe NSA. I forget), played with zip ‘n’ dash (and brio) by Billy Bob Thornton is their enemy for half the film, then he figures out that he really ought to be helping boy & girl fight this Anonymous Evil Force that, among other tricks, makes the Chicago El Trains run backwards. Having spent half my life on those awful Chicago elevateds, that prank kinda had me rooting a little for the Anonymous Evil Force.  But when the AEF revealed its plan to kill the President of the U.S. and put Michael “The Shield” Chiklis in charge, well, I switched sides pronto and bellowed encouraging words to boy & girl.

You will be relieved to learn that boy & girl, despite a bumpy start, become sweeties before the credits crawl. They’re all smoochy and goo-goo eyed even though they had just spent a flight from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C. sealed together in a 4×5 cargo container. I’d think such an experience would take the bloom off even the prettiest rose, but then again, maybe they figured matrimony held no possible disappointments for them.

I give the film one thousand and eighty-four stars, but all White Dwarfs.

To Hill and Back

What won’t I do for you, my deserving readers? Today I huffed and puffed up this nearby hill to bring you a photo of our new environs. It is merely a tip of a toe of the foothills of the Santa Monicas, but for this flatlander it was a red-faced, lung-busting challenge. I discovered whole sets of leg and gluteal muscles that had lain dormant in Illinois. But so much the better: our new goal is to sport awesome California Calves such as seen on the intrepid local bicyclists.

The photo looks northeast from this hill — one of the many that give Woodland Hills its third syllable. Those are the San Gabriel Mountains hunching along the horizon. Splayed out before them is the San Fernando Valley which starts to devalleyize right about where I’m standing. Behind me loom the Santa Monicas. Then the Pacific. Then Japan.

Halfway down the combustible southeast slope I paused to take this picture of the hills bordering Topanga Canyon Boulevard. “Topanga Cyn Bl” is a twisty road that zags through the canyon and comes to an abrupt oceanside end 12 miles later. Just the other day we were halted on that route by a polite young L.A. cop to allow a film crew to record the flouncings of some extraordinarily skinny actress whom we did not recognize. Being halted in a canyon for the shooting of a movie delighted us. A few years hence, I suppose, it may delight us less.