Having never had a blog, I see the material as notes on what I'm reading now, with occasional sidetrips. Whatever else it turns out to be, it's going to be idiosyncratic.
Currently reading:
- Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
- Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, Robert Stone
About to read:
- The Mistress's Daughter, A.M. Homes
So, Robert Stone. My introduction to Stone was Children of Light, which I've seen described as his worst book and the only work of his I've seen remaindered. So much for critics: it remains my favorite Stone work. Take one Gordon Walker, a fragile, glib, selfish screenwriter-actor who's separated from his wife and invariably cranked on coke, add him to a movie set where his presence is unwelcome, and have him try to recreate a halcyon romance with Lee Verger (Luanne from the bayou to her friends), a schizophrenic actress on the comeback trail and just as fond of a toot--well, the equation equals a trainwreck it's hard to look away from. Children of Light contains a favorite Stone leitmotif: the sinister married couple who seem to have been together forever. Here, that couple is Patty and Walter Drogue Jr., respectively a trophy wife before the phrase was current and the director (both first seen naked in a hot tub in the equally naked company of Walter Drogue Sr., a Hollywood legend, and all of them cracking wise). It's a book full of sordid delights and economy of description, with a harrowing ending and humiliating coda. Something for everyone, in other words.
As a not-fan of memoir (although I'm willing to make exceptions), I found Prime Green mainly interesting for the fictional origins it reveals: the real-life Maoist horoscope-writing hack who appears in Dog Soldiers: "Don't be afraid to ask for a raise, Sagitarrius! Your boss always keeps some of the value of the labor for himself!" We learn that Merry Prankster Neal Cassady's parrot is the model for the highly annoying fictional character Willie Wing's parrot in "Porque no Tiene, Porque le Falta, from Bear and His Daughter. Presumably Neal Cassady is equally the model for Willie Wings--much pickled, I'd guess. Or possibly not.
Distillations from real life transmuted to compelling fiction fascinate a certain turn of mind (which I possess), but this fascination is pretty closely related to the fascination with gossip--not, I'd guess, the reason an author would hope you'd read his book. The sharpest insights in Prime Green often come from hindsight: Stone writes that he bore witness, "unwittingly, to a worldwide development," the so-called "War on Drugs." The ensuing havoc, the "damage to American and foreign jurisprudence, the outlaw fortunes made, the destroyed children, and the gangsterism are all well known." And
