The Battle of Words

 "She became the first openly queer woman of colour and only the second Latina to ever win an Oscar."

My brother sent me this absurd phrase taken from an article in The Guardian which maintains the most ridiculous gender politics at every turn. They weren’t finished, not by a long shot:

“Troy Kotsur also won best supporting actor for his role in the film, making him the second deaf actor to bring home an Oscar”

“Sian Heder, Coda’s writer-director, also won best adapted screenplay becoming the first woman to bring home the award by herself since Emma Thompson in 1995”

“Campion is only the third female director to ever win the Oscar for best director”

 “Riz Ahmed also became the first Muslim and first person of Asian descent to win live action short for The Long Goodbye”

 I guess that when we finally run out of these categories, we will all be free, finally. Hallelujah! Until then, I can't wait to hear what other boxes they will put people in while building their fortress of inclusion. Midget Mexican rodeo clown? Asian transgender Amway salesperson? Aboriginal bi-curious stockbroker? When they have completely exhausted their list—and don’t hold your breath because they seem to have a bottomless reservoir of groups in peril—I guess we will just start all over with white dudes. I'm already dizzy just considering it.

 I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t need a lecture on inclusion from a dude whose normal beat is slobbering over the latest Batman movie. In fact, I don’t need a lecture from anyone, not on this topic. The people who may need educating are being pushed further away by this constant and silly torrent of gender and race politics while pushing the focus away from what really matters: economic equality.

 I can’t imagine a worse place to learn about that issue than Hollywood and the filth they shove down our throats on a daily basis, mostly propaganda about rich assholes, as if the lives of the working class hardly amount to a story worth telling. I’d guess that about one hundred percent of the folks gathered for the awards had been on a private jet in the last week, and then they want to lecture us about climate change, the second biggest issue facing the world today (the only reason why climate change isn’t more important than income equality is because if we don’t reign in the hyper-rich oligarchs of the planet, we’ll never effectively battle climate problems).

Learning Spanish: The Never-Ending Story

“Who doesn’t speak Spanish?” is the punchline in this scene from the comedy series “You’re the Worst.” I am bombarded on Facebook with advertisements for Spanish courses for English speakers, and most of them are completely stupid, making outlandishly stupid promises about how quickly and easily you can pick up Spanish. I’ve never found learning Spanish anything like easy and quick, but in my defense, my IQ is probably very low.

 

The same is true about learning piano, at least at my age. The thing is, I’ll never make it to Carnegie Hall—few musicians do—but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the hell out of playing at whatever level I find myself at today. The same is true for learning Spanish. If I had my own course, I would make outlandish promises as well, like that you can learn Spanish in 60-70 years, if you work hard at it. That’s right, even you! Maybe even me!

 

There is no finish line, there will be no banner unfurled proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” when you take on learning another language. What you will get is the daily frustrations of how impossible the task can be, but you will also get the reward of communicating with someone in another language, a remarkable act that I have always found thrilling.

If you can read this, I will buy you an ice cream.

Lush Life by Richard Price

I normally don't mix my book reviews with this blog, but this book blew me away.
 
Lush Life by Richard Price
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a novel that I couldn’t recommend too highly to anyone who would love it as much as I did. To anyone who wouldn’t appreciate this rather long, rambling police procedural I would advise them to take a pass, if this makes any sense. If you didn't like this book it's not like you failed some sort of IQ test, I totally get it if you didn't. I did, a lot, like why didn't this win the Pulitzer back then? Because it's the wrong genre?

If your idea of a great novel doesn’t involve a 100 page interrogation scene, then this isn’t for you. I would have never thought this would make for compelling fiction until I finished it, but once I had I think that I was overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of the passage, like I had just seen some sort of magic trick. How did he do that?

If you’re looking for a crime novel, you probably didn’t have this book in mind. There is a crime and great efforts are made to solve the mystery, but the murder is water under the bridge. Does it even fucking matter who did it? Ike will still be dead and his father still blind with grief.

I won’t mention how great Price is at writing dialogue since everyone else does that, and his dialogue is so great that I don’t even feel qualified to praise it, but he’s has an uncanny ability to sum up a situation with a single phrase and he does this so many times in the novel and many times I had to stop reading to soak it in, like someone dumping the clutch and stalling out. You find one in this lengthy sentence describing the crime:

De hecho, se disponía ya a recuperar la pistola, a quitársela a Tristan de la mano agarrotada, cuando de repente, pum, demasiado tarde, el tipo, con una bala en el pecho, levantaba la vista por el impacto como si lo hubiera llamado alguien desde una ventana, luego caía sin volver a bajar la mirada siquiera, y Tristan se agachaba junto a él en el acto, como para darle un bocado en la cara, exclamando en un susurro «¡Oh!», al mismo tiempo que Little Dap exclamaba en un susurro «¡Larguémonos!» y se lo llevaba de allí a tirones, y entonces volaron los dos hacia el sur por Eldrige, corriendo tan deprisa hacia los Lemlich que Little Dap veía las persianas metálicas de las tiendas a los lados convertidas en un borrón.

The two detectives are probably too clever for their own good, and they proved it when they leaned on Eric Cash for the murder, going all in from the first few questions at the crime scene. They run their games on the kid and go all out until his friend wakes up from his stupor, corroborates, and they realize that they’re back at square one.

The narrative quickly spiders out like glass shattering. Survivor’s guilt? The remorse of bad fathering after it's way too late? While Yolanda whispers hope to anyone who she feels needs a push in the right direction, a pitiless investigator with a heart. To have heart to spare in her line of work is quite an accomplishment.

I read the Spanish translation by Carlos Milla Soler which must have been a monumental task. Chapeau to him. The audiobook narrated by Bobby Cannavale is a minor masterpiece in itself. He brought this novel to life like I have never heard before, much like Price brings this corner of Manhattan to life for the reader. Dialogue is sort of the private domain of Richard Price and for my money no one writes it better, so a really great audiobook is warranted here. It’s like Cannavale put in at least as much effort as the author in pulling off his performance.

Noirville: Tales from the Darkside

I have a short story called "Visiting Day" in this collection.

Short Stories From The Darkside

Towards the end of 2017 Fahrenheit Press launched a short story competition to showcase talented crime fiction writers from all around the world.

Our crack panel of judges whittled down the hundreds of entries we received to the 15 stories contained in this anthology. We believe these authors represent some of the most exciting crime fiction being written today.

The paperback edition will be published on March 30th 2018 and you can now pre-order your copy direct from us.

Click here to buy a copy (eBook or paperback).