Reading with Bill 2 - James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke
Yes, this is yet another American crime writer. So what was it about Professor Bill Speck and the USA?
Partly, Bill was happy to credit his Americanophile nature to an exchange visit which he made as a young member of the RAF cadets. I cannot recall him telling me if this was the ATC and attached to his Bradford Grammar School or not. Nor can I fix this visit to the USA in time, but probably shortly after WWII. Later Bill was to be a great friend and collaborator with the American historian Mary Geiter, (see  her piece on 'American Bill' elsewhere on this blog).
But back to the matter at hand. Bill insisted I read Burke, the Louisiana  author and I'm glad he did.
I've forgotten which book was my first. It could have been 'The Lost Get-Back Boogie' or 'Cadillac Jukebox'. But I have in front of me now 'Dixie City Jam', my latest good read.
The flawed detective 'hero' is Dave Robicheaux.  Robicheaux is a reformed alcoholic but is most informative about the bayou, American jazz, (a shared passion with Bill), and has a keen social conscience, (also shared with Bill). In this story Roicheaux tangles with modern 'Nazis' bent on salvaging a Germand U-Boat and gives as good as he gets from hoodlums of the Irish and Italian communities. Dave Robicheaux has dependable friends like Clete who says on p.255 of my Phoenix paperback printed in 20015:

'Let me take y'all to supper tonight'...

'That sounds very copacetic', I said.

My second day in Vietnam a hard-nosed gunny gave me some advice about 

fear and memory and all that stuff:

"Never think about it before you do it, never think about it after it's over" ' 

'No kidding?' I said.

'I tried',  he answered, and held up his palms and made half-moons of his evebrows.'

Later in the novel, on p.327 Dave Robicheaux meets Hippo Bimstine behind the counter of one of Hippo's drugstores:

'Hippo had the confident and jolly appearance of a man

who could charm a snake into a lawnmower.

"Another nice day," he said.

"It sure is", I said.

"So why the dark look? You dump some money at the track? His smile was inquisitive and 

full of play.

"I guess I get down when I find out a friend has tried to blindside me".

"What are you talking here?" He tried to look me steadily in the eyes.

"Max Carlucci's been saying peculiar things about you  Hippo".

"Consider the source".

"I am. He's got no reason to lie. He says Tommy Lonighan told him you

removed some stuff about the nazi U-boat from the public library".

"I'm under arrest for library theft?"

""Buchalter and his buttwipes used up my sense of homor, partner".

Music is often a feature of the Ribichaux novels. On p.348-9 a chracter called brother Oswald Flat tries to explain why an evil man can't love music but is interested in it for some other reason:

"Music's one club. Hit's like belonging to the church.. Hit don't matter which room you're in, as long as you're in the building. You with me?"

"You know some jazz musicians??"

"I'll have a go at hit from a different angle", he said. "I used to record gospel at Sam Phillip's studio in Memphis. You know who else recorded in that same studio? Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins,Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Lee Swaggert. You want me to go on?

"I think Will Buchalter [ the sadistic baddie] has some kind of involvement with historical jazz or blues. But I don't know what it is". 

Violence and hard language have their part in Burke's novels but always in context. And to offset this is the love of his wife 'Bootsie' and daugher Alafair. More importantly, the storylines are very good and the battles between evil and good are significant.

LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS

by

James Lee Burke

[please forgive me for these notes gathered some years ago and kept on the old computer in my shed!]

…A group of tourists were walking by, talking among themselves about either A Streetcar Named Desire the play by Tennessee Williams, or the original streetcar itself, which today sits like an immobile and disconnected anachronism on a cement pad down by the river.

            The dishevelled man stood up and began waving his arms at them, ‘That streetcar didn’t go out to Desire,’ he yelled, ‘It went out Elysian Fields. It was the last car that still run out to Elysian Fields. All these streets here was Storyville. It was full of coloured whorehouses and women who killed themselves with morphine. Hey, don’t you go in them crypts! The kids from the Iberville Project climb over the wall and bust people like you in the head. Are you listening to me? This ain’t New Orleans. You’re standing in the city of the dead. You just don’t know it yet,’           p.110.

I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union’s impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin’s leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with new York publishers. Or if a person really wishes a lesson in the subjective nature of official information, he can always call the IRS and ask for help with his tax forms, then call back a half hour later and ask the same questions to a different representative.

            So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discerning the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing?

            After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup,   p.113.

…’We’re the good guys. The problem is nobody else knows it. But that’s their problem, not ours,’he said…

            Clete had made a point, one which I don’t think was either vituperative or vain. Legal definitions had little to do with morality. It was legal to systematically poison the earth and sell arms to Third World lunatics. Politicians who themselves had avoided active service and never had listened to the sounds a flame thrower extracted from its victims, or zipped up body-bags on the faces of their best friends, clamoured for war and stood proudly in front of the flag while they sent others off to fight it.

            The polluters and the war advocates are always legal men, as the Prince of Darkness is always a genlemen.

            The John Gotttis of the world make good entertainment. The polluters and the war advocates can be seen at prayer, on camera, in the National Cathedral. Unlike John Gotti, they’re not very interesting but they cause infinitely more damage,      p.342.

How had Hemingway put it? The world was a fine place, and well worth the fighting for…I thought perhaps the world was more than just a fine place, that perhaps it was a domed cathedral and we only had to recognise and accept that simple fact to enjoy all the gifts of both heaven and earth,            p.366.

[acknowlegdements at the end of 'Last Car...'

I would like to thank Leslie Blanchard at the Iberia Parish Library and Vaun Stevens and Don Spritzer at the Missoula public Library for their friendship and generous help over the years.]

 

If you like the Robichaux novels then, like me, you may want to follow other Burke characters into the world of Montana.

Reading with Bill

Bill’s appetite for work was great. He adopted the motto of Robert Southey: ‘In Labore Quies’ – rest in labour, [see Bill’s fine biography of Southey: ‘Robert Southey – Entire Man of Letters,(2006),p.109]. And please note that Bill was working in the archive at Whitehaven on the day he died. But Bill was never po-faced about work; he enjoyed it, as he did his reading for ‘leisure’. One of life’s joys was sitting drinking an ale in a pub and reflecting on reading the detectives. Bill did listen and liked to read other people’s recommendations. Yet, as ever with Bill, the giving seems mostly to have been his. So, Bill liked to point to the books by Sara Paretsky and James Lee Burke and we followed.

Firstly, there’s Sara Paretsky.

As it happened, this interesting lady came to speak in Carlisle Central Library on Sunday 20 March 2011 to promote her latest book. Bill couldn’t be there, but I was very pleased to attend and make my scribbled notes.

‘Bodywork’

'Bodywork' is Sara Paretsky’s 14^th novel.

[Sara stands in front of a tall black microphone. She is elderly with grey hair but very slim and is wearing tailored broad black trousers with a faint pin-stripe and above this an expensive silk jacket of red and white and around her neck a similarly coloured,  flowing scarf. One hand is placed on her left hip and she stands in a pose fit for the catwalk. She has a sharp, long face and a large mouth, but she speaks well and in a pronounced but not unpleasant American accent….ICM]

“It is good of you to turn out on a grey day and perhaps when football is on your TV.  I must confess myself, despite being an avowed feminist, to loving male sports. I am a total sweatsox. But this is but one of the many contradictions we learn to live with.

               Though you know I live and write about Chicago it is from rural Kansas that I came. Our house was of the 1860s and had a dirt basement floor. ‘Bleeding Kansas’ is her novel about that area, with horror as the central character. And another contradiction, for though her V.I.Warshawski is a very physical investigator well up to hitting back at the boys as much as she gets, she herself, Sara,  was afraid of the many spiders that ran in her basement, (mostly not poisonous).

               Chicago became her adopted home in the 1960s. the city was at its worst for racial intolerance, yet also at its best in working intensely for good, (Sara was herself involved in social work). Chicago has beautiful lakefront architecture on Lake Michigan, whose many buildings are much visited. But behind the façade there is also the mob, which thrives on goods on the move like garbage, laundry and liquor. Her husband says that the city has got into her blood.  She has some grittiness of her own and tweeted the new mayor with the words: “remember if you break it, you mend it!” The city has 3 millions inside the city limits and 12 millions in the six counties around. This is the setting for the confrontational V.I.Warshawski. Incidentally 22 January 1981 saw the first of her books appear and thus we are at the 30^th anniversary of the “first of the independent detectives”.

               Rex Stout was where I started with Nero Wolf.

               But I worked as a marketing manager in insurance at a time when jobs for women were so limited. I recall a co-worker whose Mum phoned every morning to ask her if she’d met anyone yet? And we knew that if we answered this call to head her off then our co-worker would merely have to face the question later in the day.

               For about eight years I’d thought of writing about a detective like Philip Marlow, only a woman. I’d written lots but in small amounts. I was fantasising really. I have a linear mind. I begin then get to the middle and then the end. I find that the only way to write is write on the page. You do it on paper.  I never smoked but I tried a character who did, Minerva she was called. She drank rot-gut. You should never do this. I’d have been better writing about chocolate, which I do partake of.

               One day my boss who was horrible to men and women alike was addressing us. He did deals with companies behind our backs and without telling us. He blind-sided us regularly. Well Fred, I’ll call him, spoke to me and I answered in one way, but above my head was a bubble with my real thoughts about him in it. It was then that I thought of a writing about a woman who deals with ‘turkeys’ and can speak her mind. In other words I was having private thoughts on company time.

               Well I just jumped in with her. I hadn’t worked out her family or relations with anyone. But I was determined that she’d drink Black Label whisky not rot-gut. She loves single-malts and of course Johnnie Walker, the blend.

               Age sucks! I think you’ll agree that we cannot handle things as we did. I now  take a Johnnie Walker once a month. V.I.Warshawski’s indulgence in clothes is mine too. But though I like the look of them, high-heels are an exception.

               Father’s father was an Eastern European and came to America in 1910 and ended up like many Jews in the garment trade. He proved to have a gift for couture and ‘cutting’ was his skill. At Ellis Island the spelling of PARECKI  became as it is because it is pronounced this way.

               Incidentally ‘Breakdown’ is the new book I’m currently struggling with, (only you will be among the few who know if this work makes it into print).

               So my grandfather gets written into a role. He makes frocks for V.I.. They’re of the best. That’s how she affords them.

               ‘Bodywork’ the novel I’m promoting today is about a performance artist in an edgy night-club Club Gouge, (pronounce Googe tho’ my husband, Courtney, insists on ‘goudge’). A young cousin of an Iraqui war vet.works as a waitress and falls foul of the Ukranian mob. Nadia dies on the first page!  The vet. gets the blame but is innocent and he wants V.I. to prove who the real criminals are. Surprisingly the Chicago Police don’t agree with V.I. Incidentally the only possible partner for V.I, was an Afro-American police-sergeant.

               Curiously V.I. is ageing but not quite as fast as me!  She was 30 in the first book and is now 50. At my age in real life there is a lot of loss and pain. I cannot take this in the novel so that there is no way that Lottie her friend can be less than 80, but she isn’t. The dog ought to be 26. But suspend your disbelief please.

V.I.’s mother is supposed to be a refugee from Fascist Italy. V.I. herself still gets in fights, but is not quite up for it as much as she used to be.

PUBLIC READING OF EXTRACT FROM BODYWORK

QUESTION AND ANSWERS:

1.Kathleen Turner played V.I. in the movie, but who would you like to play her?

Yes, it’s true that Kathleen is dark and I think that I prefer Jamie Lee Curtis, despite her size. Martha Burns who acts on the stage and is not so well known would fit. The trouble is that Disney has the rights to the character now.

2. Do you feel obliged to have more violence in your books?

No, there’s no pressure from my editors to write about brutal things.  It’s just that V.I. is a very physical person. She does the things I’m not strong enough to do. It is my need to feel better!

I’ve often thought that we are becoming de-sensitized to violence through the endless repetitions of the news, particularly on TV. Showing the Japanese Tsunami over 30 times in succession makes it no more real than someone blown up in a Matt Damon movie?

3.Are your stories based on real scenarios?

Yes, they are related to real-life events that I feel need more attention. Unless I feel strongly about something I cannot write about it. In my Hardball book I take real cases of tortures perpetrated by the Chicago Police. There was some tacit assent to this in the community. Boys will be boys after all. But one of my good friends is a Human Rights official, so trusted that, though a Jew, West Bank Jews and Palestinians recognise his merit. Interestingly he tells a story about being arrested by the authorities in Kenya for 36 hours and being relieved that they took from him his belt and shoelaces for that suggests that you’re not about to figure in a staged suicide. I am, of course, relieved that I write behind my own locked doors and am only pretending while he is often not.

               There were allegedly 300 cases of torture by the Chicago Police before a Cook County Examiner noticed that one victim had a burn mark around the ear. This was one of the places where an electrical terminal was attached and the other to the testicles. Whoever you are and whatever you are, you shouldn’t be treated this way. In the event most of the guilty in the force just got off and only one has served time, in fact four years for perjury. And I disapprove of torture being done in my name in detention centres around the world. I felt I had to write that book.

4. Have you any friends in the Chicago City Police?

Indeed some in the Department are friends because of my books. I did a ‘ride’ alongside a sergeant in a squad car and toured the clubs on a Saturday night, (South Side?). Because the bars are licensed until 5 a.m. many get drunk as 10 skunks. Oddly the incident that sticks was a ‘domestic’ in a cab. After being called to this fight it was decided that the man and woman should be sent home in separate cabs. The man involved demanded that the officer get him a cab:

“you’re a public servant!” In fact the police do have to put up with a lot and they aren’t given enough credit.

BOOK SIGNINGS & a statement:

“you may have noticed this tattoo I have, (she rolls up her sleeve). Well you can collect one free and affix it to yourself! No it’s not permanent and says ‘Bodywork’.

                                             See http://www.saraparetsky.com/                                                                     

Bill the Fell Walker

Heughscar Hill

 6 September 2006

Ascent from Pooley Bridge 

It is shocking to adjust to the loss of a good companion. At his funeral in Carlisle on Tuesday 7 March 2017 we heard of the many sides to our friend: 

fine academic historian;

 family man; 

cat-lover; 

chairman of RSPCA in N.E.Cumbria; 

luminary of the Historical Association, (Secretary of Cumbria Branch most recently);

and cyclist.

It was my privilege on returning to live in my northern homeland in 2001, to accompany him on a good many walks. Often, as we strolled and he entertained with his fine talk laced with historical and literary references, I mused that I ought to try to be a Boswell to his Johnson and organise what I was learning about him and from him. It was not to be, but  I can gather in this modern way something of the man from my experiences of him and even, perhaps, invite you to contribute your memories?

As one speaker recalled of Bill, "he drew you in". On this day illustrated above, Bill drove us to the Askham area and, before setting off on our walk, we visited the home of his good friend and ex-colleague Hugh, the psepholigist. Naturally, I learned, but have promptly forgotten so much of modern politics and this art of number counting.

At this time Bill was publishing his book 'Robert Southey- Entire Man of Letters'. He persuaded me to take the photograph of the effigy in Crosthwaite Church. Of course I was flattered to be asked. I was encouraged to help with the proof-reading too. Again I felt happy to be involved. Southey and surely Bill's motto: 'in labore quies', or rest in labour was drawing me in.

I will return to walking in the Lakes with Bill on another page. For example, he persuaded me to go to the top of Scafell Pike on 14th May 2008 to celebrate his 70th birthday. I have noted in my copy of Wainwright's Book Four, 'The Southern Fells', that we set off walking at 10:30 a.m. and got down again at 8:30 p.m. Maybe it was on that occasion that we stopped for a beer near Keswick and he watched me with some awe down a pint of 'Sneck-Lifter' without it touching the sides!

But over to you now....please

Ian C.Mason, FHA   9 March 2017.  Email: iancmason@virginmedia.com