We had a truly
soaking weekend here in Valencia. It must have rained more in the past two
days than in any good year here. I spent almost the entire weekend reading and
finished three books, all of the same nature. Crime fiction isn’t really my
thing, or at least that was what I thought but perhaps now it is. I think that
my problem was that I didn’t like bad crime fiction—and I still don’t—but one
book I read sort of turned me around on the genre.
Galveston by
Nic Pizzolatto is a noir pulp masterpiece. I loved this book. It's the second
best book I read this year behind Mario Vargas Llosa’s La Fiesta del Chivo
so that's pretty good company. This was one of the few times since I’ve had my
eReader that I really wanted a paperback in my hand. I’d like to have a copy of
this, preferably with an old time drawing of a guy with a gun and a gal on his
arm.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what is wrong with most TV series and this only
pertains to those that began with promise and went south at some point. I think
that it is vital that the creator know from the very start just how long is
needed to tell the story. You can’t expect to drag out a series to make more
money and think that the story can be watered down indefinitely. I’m not the
biggest fan of True Detective but I liked the fact that it had a very definite
timeline. Galveston is as tight as a great short story and there is hardly a
line that could be removed without taking away from the whole.
The set-up scene was better action than I’ve come across in a long time. It’s
believable, frantic, and terrifying. Violence isn’t fun like you see it
portrayed in most films. Violence has consequences so wipe that fucking smile
off your face, for starters. No one is smiling in this scene which our narrator
tells us lasted all of five seconds.
From here we have the classic getaway with a not-too-experienced prostitute.
They are just getting to know each other as Roy drives into the rest of his life,
wherever that may be and we think it won’t matter much anyway seeing how he’s a
goner already.
She faced me and laid her knees on the seat. “It’s starting to feel like I
never needed a drink as bad in my life as I do now.”
“Well, you’re young yet.”
Broken people in a squalid landscape with no way out except the only way
possible in this kind of story. While most of us haven’t lived in this seedy
world we’ve probably driven by it and made a point of not stopping.
She took us southwest and eventually into vine-clotted dells, past trailers
scabbed with rust. Another gas station was fronted by broken foundation stones
where the pumps had been ripped out, glassless windows, almost entirely
overtaken by weeds and kudzu. We passed the school football field, and leaving
the town proper, a black billboard posted off the road read in white letters
HELL IS REAL.
OK, maybe that last bit was over-kill but I loved the “scabbed with rust” part.
Roy and Rocky don’t have the faintest glimmer of hope but at least Roy sort of
knows what hope means. He even considers it if not for himself perhaps for the
two girls.
It was the sort of place for people with nowhere else to go, a motel where
the occasional guest checked in to commit suicide, people too absorbed in their
own failures to pay much attention to us.
It’s a pretty creepy joint but it’s a great place to park a reader while we
wait for the shit to hit the fan, and it always does.
¡¡¡Spoiler Ahead!!!
There was only one place in the narrative where I pushed the book back and
questioned the author, when Roy won’t testify against Stan to save the girl. I
just thought that he would have wanted revenge more than saving the kid who was
probably going to be a mess anyway. Brilliant resolution. I finished the last page
in a café near my house. I just set my eReader down on the table and I wanted
to clap out loud except I felt like someone knocked the air out of my lungs.
