Benjamin Whitmer's Blog, page 31

Bouchercon reminder

Just a reminder of what I'll be doing at Bouchercon for the next few days. In case you're there and bored.

Thursday:

9:00 P.M. – 10:0 P.M.

BAD SEED-Majestic A,B,C

Sex, Violence, and Everything That Makes A Book Great

Craig Montgomery (M), Christa Faust, Chris Holm, Craig Johnson, Scott Phillips, John Rector, Benjamin Whitmer, Jonathan Woods

Friday:

11:30 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.

HOT ICE-Landmark 1,2,3

Caper novels

Benjamin Whitmer (M), Eoin Colfer, Sean Doolittle, Chris Ewan, Peter Spiegelman, Keith Thomson

Saturday:

11:00 A.M. – 1:00 P.M.

Book room, Subterranean Books table

Book signing

Gary Philips, Benjamin Whitmer

The rest of the time, y'know, the bar. And I'm fighting a cold, so I could probably use a bourbon.

Hint, hint.

Hemingway's Thompson submachine gun

(Timeline mine.)

Morning:

[image error]

Noon:

[image error]

Afternoon:

[image error]

Backstory from MachineGunBoards.com:

How did a Thompson submachine gun cause a big rift between Hemingway and Mike Strater during the summer of 1935 in Bimini?

Hemingway acquired the submachine gun from the International Sportsman, William B. Leeds, who was in Bimini aboard his yacht MOANA. Mike, nicknamed the `President,' fishing aboard the Pilar, hooked a 12-foot marlin. While moving the fish towards the boat, the sharks zeroed in on it. Ernest, with his new toy, began to give the sharks bursts from the machine-gun on the pretext he had to defend the marlin from them. The effect was just the reverse. A feeding frenzy ensued. It took another hour to boat the marlin. What was left weighed 500 pounds. A photograph showed over half of the marlin was gone, and what was left was a hollow shell. Hemingway even wrote an article in Esquire Magazine in July, 1935, titled "The President Vanquishes," where he estimated the weight of the fish at near two thousand pounds. But he failed to mention a Thompson sub-machine gun or a shark frenzy. Strater was enraged. Ernest had helped to destroy the biggest marlin Mike had ever hooked.

And this from the Wikipedia summary of The Old Man and the Sea:

While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

The funny thing is, these things make me like Hemingway more. Never less.

Quote

From a Bookforum piece on Dwight Macdonald.

"As smoking gives us something to do with our hands when we aren't using them," Dwight Macdonald wrote in 1957, "Time gives us something to do with our minds when we aren't thinking." What leads us here, Macdonald asks, to the banal, boxed trifles of popular journalism? What, exactly, is to be gained by a three-hundred-word once-over of "World News"? Do we seek, as Macdonald concedes to be Time's singular benefit, "practice in reading"? Perhaps we crave immersion in a warm bath of facts, to "have the little things around, like pets," to collect "them as boys collect postage stamps." Macdonald spent years laboring in the fact-friendly Luce empire as a writer at Fortune, no doubt watching his paragraphs hacked apart, the perfect verb sacrificed on the altar of snappiness, the clauses chopped into the staccato anti-rhythms of "readability." Buy it if you like, was Macdonald's position. But don't call it edification.

Yes, they really can do whatever they want

After much public outcry earlier this year over some of Denver PD's more vicious assaults on Denver's civilian population, not to mention the news that they lead the nation in excessive force complaints, a couple of officers were finally fired.

The two officers were caught on video beating a kid coming out of a bar with no provocation and then lying about it in their official report in an attempt to trump up charges against him. (Trumping up charges being something they do best.)

Well, those two officers have been reinstated.

From 9News, thanks to West Denver Copwatch.

"They didn't deserve termination," Nick Rogers, president of the Police Protective Association, said. "At the end of the day, you actually have human beings who were out trying to protect the public and were doing it and were darn good cops at the time. They will come back and they will be good cops again."

Rogers says Garcia should be "ashamed of himself" for judging Murr and Sparks on nine seconds of video, along with the media. While the city is expected to appeal, Rogers said the union "will stand behind them until the bitter end."

Late Tuesday, new Manager of Safety Ashley Kilroy said she supports Garcia's decision to terminate the officers.

"I cannot and do not tolerate excessive force in our city's safety agencies or departing from the truth by any of our employees," Kilroy said in a statement.

The beating victims, Shawn Johnson and Michael DeHerrera, told 9NEWS they're confused, shocked and sick to their stomachs over the reversal.

"I don't think I need someone to say, 'Yes, Shawn, you were right, your civil rights were violated and these cops were out of line.' I don't need to hear that because I know what happened that night," Johnson said. "But I do expect people who are put in certain position to protect me, to protect me when I can't protect myself."

"It was finally clear what was right and what was wrong and everybody agreed that they were wrong," DeHerrera said. "So now to put that back up into the air is just ridiculous."

Immediately after they were arrested April 4, 2009, they were charged with misdemeanors and faced jail time for allegedly interfering with officers and not following orders. The young men had been kicked out of a bar after one of them used the women's restroom.

Johnson was considering cutting a plea deal when their attorneys learned city cameras had captured their arrests on camera. The video showed the officers tackling and hitting the men repeatedly with a metal weapon while they were not resisting. Police records later showed the officers lied on their reports.

The video also showed DeHerrera calling his father for help. Anthony DeHerrera, a Pueblo Sheriff's Department deputy, was upset at the panel's decision to put the officers back on the force.

"I'm shocked, appalled, disappointed. We can't believe it. There are knots in our stomachs," Anthony DeHerrera said. "I guess we had it wrong. Denver Police can do whatever they want to whomever they want and get away with it."

"I'm in fear for Michael's safety now with that these two knuckleheads are back on the street," Anthony DeHerrera said.

As we all should be. Because, like the rest of the Denver Police Department, they're accountable to no one, and knowing it, they'll happily beat you into a pulp with no provocation whatsoever.

Here's the video. I've never heard a good explanation as to why the camera pans away just as the cop's really laying into the kid, but everything you need is here.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Denver swastika house

Per this post on Denver swastikas, Alex sent me this picture from a house on Irvin Street. He puts it being built in 1905, according to Denver property records.

[image error]

Pike to be translated into French for Editions Gallmeister

This is the best news I've had in a long time: the French translation rights for Pike were recently purchased by Editions Gallmeister.

Per their initial email that set the ball rolling:

Editions Gallmeister is an independant french publishing company which was established in 2006 and is exclusively dedicated to the publication of contemporary american literature. After only 5 years of activity, Gallmeister is renowned for its american list of literary fiction, crime fiction and nonfiction books, both in our hardcover and trade paperback imprints. Our authors have won great acclaim in France and received some prestigious awards. Our list includes the following writers : Edward Abbey, Rick Bass,  Ron Carlson, John McPhee, Doug Peacock, Alan Tennant, David Vann (Prix Médicis 2010), William G. Tapply, Trevanian, Tom Robbins, Terry Southern, Larry Watson, among others. Among the writers that will be published in 2011 and 2012 are Mark Spragg, Bruce Machart, Tim O'Brien and Larry McMurtry.

I get queasy just thinking about being included in that list. But, man, I couldn't be happier. Nor prouder.

For no good reason

Or no good reason I want to explain, anyway.

Picking Cotton

[image error]

Hunting Indians in Florida with Bloodhounds

[image error]

Young fellows in front of pool hall, Jackson, Ohio

[image error]

Barry Graham — video interview

Keith Rawson interviews one of my favorite writers, Barry Graham, for Spinetingler Magazine. Lots of great talk about class and crime fiction, including an excellent argument for why the terms "working class" and "middle class" are horseshit.

In between reading for my upcoming Bouchercon panel, I finished up Graham's The Champion's New Clothes last night. I'll be honest, I don't really know much about boxing, nor mixed martial arts. I watch bouts when they're on at somebody's house, but that's about it. I think the last fights I followed were the the three between Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward.

But, of course, liking the kind of fiction I like, I've read a fair amount of boxing books. And I'll put The Champion's New Clothes up there with the best of 'em. It's not really a crime novel, almost more of a romance. But it's a Barry Graham kind of romance, so there's plenty of blood, sex, and fuck you humor. Meaning, it's a blast, and as you expect from Graham, one that comes fully fleshed out with complex themes and real characters. At $2.99 on the Kindle, you can't go wrong.

Crimes in Southern Indiana, out today

[image error]

I meant to say this earlier — it's been one hell of a day, and I've been offline — but Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana drops today. Meaning, if you don't have it already, let's pump those sales numbers and show the world working-class noir is where it's at.

Here's my blurb for the book, and I stand by every word:

Say you're driving down a country road, midnight, a beer in your lap, and you corner into a two-car head-on collision that's one of the most horrible things you've ever seen, so horrible that you've just gotta stop, and then, say, when you've gotten out and you're poking around the body parts trying to figure out what's what, you turn your head just right and catch the way the moonlight lays glittering over the twisted metal and bloodslick asphalt, and you're struck breathless by the eerie beauty of it all.  That's what Frank Bill's writing is like. It's that stark, that brutal, and just that beautiful.

This is horseshit, however; Frank Bill's a far better writer than Steinbeck.

Quote

From The Weekly Standard, this about Obama's appointment to lead the NEA. Which, as you'd expect, has everything to do with political hackery, and nothing to do with the arts.

Not a brainiac, Landesman first broke into public consciousness with a speech declaring that Obama is "the most powerful writer since Caesar." The claim wasn't as ludicrous as it first sounds—Landesman meant that the president was the most politically powerful person since Caesar who could also be thought of as a writer—but it was still pretty ludicrous.

"This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt," Landesman said, "and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln." Good thing he inserted that indispensable fudge word "arguably." Obama is indeed the first president to have written his own books since Teddy Roosevelt, but only if you don't count Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and, arguably, Bill Clinton. And Obama couldn't be the first president to write his books really well since Lincoln because he, -Lincoln, didn't write any.

Looks like Obama's just as disappointing when it comes to culture as he is at everything else. My favorite is the "Principles of Civility" nonsense which now seem to be core NEA doctrine.

I won't bother trying to come up with a list of American authors who probably couldn't pass a civility test but are still considered pretty great. Because, well, I can't think of one author considered pretty great who could pass a civility test.