Is the whole experience of 'politics' as we try to figure it out-- like a Detective Story with twists and turns and it's your job to dig deep, real deep. Look a little beyond the usual suspects. Don't settle for the popular explanation unless you have explored the opposition. What is the opposition?
Last night my friend/landlord lent me a Detective Story to read. A couple of nights before He had given me another one a French classic by a dude named Simenon written in 1932, it kept me turning pages but it was a little weak. 'The Madman of Bergerac' with Inspector Maigret. OK but eh..
So he sent me into the world of Ross McDonald, author of Drowning Pool, this one is bad, in a good way. This author had this California Noir thing working. Another of his books was made into the great Detective movie of the '60s 'Harper' with Paul Newman... Drowning Pool written in 1950.
'I turned on my back and floated looking up at the sky, nothing around me but cool clear Pacific, nothing in my eyes but long blue space. It was as close as I ever got to cleanliness and freedom as far as I ever got from all the people. They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn't touch the Ocean. they poured their sewage into it but it couldn't be tainted.
There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in sealevel couldn't cure. .....'
' I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by an obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble. I clipped that pitch off short and threw it away. Night streets were my territory and would be till I rolled in the last gutter.' ......
'His face was moist and pallid with malevolence. For less than a day he had been rich and free I'd tumbled him back into the small time, perhaps into the shadow of the gas chamber.'
'You're going to take a ride in a little one, and don't try for a break, Reavis, or you will limp the rest of your life" ('Limp the rest of your Life... ' When are we going to have a Police Force which can handle that alternative instead of shooting to kill --my quotes)
'He told me to do an impossible thing, but he came along quietly to my car. "You drive" I said "I haven't had time to look at the scenery."
Thats so rotten when people tell you to do impossible things...
Ross McDonald lived in Santa Barbara and besides being a prolific author he devoted himself to 'conservation and politics' being active in working against the oil rigs off the coast of SoCal. Phil tells me he also befriended Warren Zevon the brilliant 'Werewolves of London' rocker after Zevon looked him up one day while he was living down there, he was a passionate reader of Ross McDonald books.
I might have to pick up another one of his books... that was a good read.
The SF Chronicle.. looking at Obama's legacy, says the killing of Osama Bin Laden was 'a milestone of justice'. Do you think? Are you willing to accept that story?
No comments:
Post a Comment