While Life Intervened, I Kept Reading

Hmm. That hiatus was more lengthy than I expected.

The last thing I've read has been Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. I unexpectedly sympathized with its reviewer in Esquire. Yes, the reviewer said, it's Johnson, it's good, but I never want to read another book about the Sixties. (The reviewer's tone was sullen, as if some loved one were tied up in a backroom somewhere, someone about whom the reviewer felt ambivalent and who would be released only when the review was in the editor's hands.)

Unlike Already Dead, which may be my favorite work by Johnson (it has a much wilder streak of black humor and a stronger sense of place than Tree), many parts of Tree seemed sustained by sheer professionalism. Tree's protagonist is Skip Sands. Skip has been put at a huge disadvantage by his creator: his big entree into fighting communism on the ground is reworking a huge collection of file cards on myth and intelligence. His uncle, a legendary colonel whom Skip reveres, has arranged this job. Skip's frustration is believable and palpable, but he's been boxed in by the author and, more than 400-plus pages later, his fate begins to wear.

The appearances by the Houston brothers, Bill Jr. and James (here in a sort of prequel to Johnson's first novel, Angels), thus are very welcome: both of them are avatars of unintentionality, boxed in by class and inclination, stomping through the world, punching and getting punched. What they stir up never smells very sweet, but they get the air moving around. A little less welcome are appearances by Kathy Jones, a high-strung Jehovah's Witness and the only major female character, who eventually (much later, in the epilogue) gets from Skip the precursor to what they call on Jezebel a Crap Email from a Dude: a letter that is touching, wistful, and, given the stretches of distance and time, useless.

However. This is Denis Johnson. There is a certain authority in Johnson's writing that keeps you (meaning me) reading. The writing, as ever, is amazing. You keep reading for its sake, and not the story, necessarily.

Less recently read, also with somewhat less pleasure than I've read his previous works, was Ken Bruen's Priest. Mostly a non-fan of Irish writing (possibly because I'm ignorant of what's out there), I devoured earlier Bruen books. Speedy and lean, they were quick reads in the best possible sense. Speed and darkness: a wonderful combination. To all appearances, Bruen has singlehandedly made Irish noir a going concern (and I note with amusement that the literary John Banville, whose books I probably should read but somehow never do, is now writing in this genre).

Bruen's descriptions of the contrast between his Ireland of memory and the new Celtic Tiger, an Ireland that might as well be a foreign country or on another planet to someone who knew Galway when, are fascinating, and Jack Taylor, the protagonist of all the Bruens I've read so far (save for American Skin), is a sympathetic guy, despite the usual drinking and drugging and assholery that's now requisite, or so it seems, for main characters in detective fiction. So far, so good. However. Take Bruen's previous Jack Taylor installment, The Dramatist. [Spoiler alert.] The Dramatist had a dramatic, not to say melodramatic, ending, in which Taylor, given the sacred charge of looking after a child, lets his best friends' small daughter fall to her death. A sick joke? Or not? [Spoiler alert off.] I came to Priest with a not-altogether kosher reason for reading: Okay, Bruen--how are you going to make me want to read about this guy now? And, yes, there's a similar situation in Priest, the same but different, a joke sprayed on with blood.

Another reason I seem to be delighting less in the series is the frequency with which Bruen points out how very Irish is this quirk or that way of saying something. These Irish-isms seem to be signaled with a capital 'I' in a way I hadn't noticed in previous outings. Is Bruen having his readers on? ("You want Irish, gentle readers? I'll give you Irish.") Or is maundering about the Irish character some sort of trait in real Irish life and thus a sign of place? Having never been to Ireland, I don't know. Maybe Bruen has done such an thorough job of explaining the new Ireland and Galway that now, when something is Irish, I don't need to be told. Someone should be told, possibly, but it isn't me.