Books I Read July 29th, 20024

Books and books and books.

The Mongolian Conspiracy by Rafael Bernal – An aging killer for the Mexican government finds himself entangled in international intrigue above his pay grade in what I gather is a classic of Mexican noir. Violent and well-written, though it isn't anything you won't have read before.

The Flander's Road Claude Simon – There was a thing that he did (the writer, the one in the laundromat, the one doing his laundry) which was when he (the writer) was writing a review for a book that he (the writer, or I should say the reader) had read that week, and it (the book) was written in the peculiar, orotund, overflowing, exhausting style of say a Claude Simon (or of a William Faulkner, or of a Proust), he (the writer) would write the review in a similar style, which is to say, without using a proper period for a hundred or five hundred or perhaps even a thousand words (not that he counted them one by one (he being the writer), often eschewing entirely the details of the plot which, if we are to be honest, in this sort of book, generally are not the relevant point but oh well why not try it a cuckolded cavalry officer in WWII dies in a suicidal charge on a Panzer, has his history dissected by three of his soldiers over the course of the next several days, weeks, years, dissected in the same identical, interminable, inexhaustible style, which, let's be fair, he (the writer) knew what he was getting into when he picked this book up, he (the reader) had read Claude Simon before (not to mention Faulkner and Proust) and even enjoyed him (Claude Simon) on occasion but he (the reader) confesses to finding this particular book (Flander's Road) to be a little bit weak sauce, if we're going to be absolutely honest (and why not be?) even though it (the book) has a fascinating backstory in so far as the writer (Claude Simon) was a cavalryman during France's disastrous WWII retreat, and thus was drawing from personal experience in his depiction of the blood and mud and filth ridden eponymous road. Still, it ain't Absalom, Absalom.

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck – A crew of drunkards and ne'er do wells find adventure, immortal fame in this tragic and peculiar re-telling of the Arthur myth. A favorite of mine from when I was about fifteen, sweet and sad and wistful. Like if Sutree wasn't miserable.

Act of Passion by Simenon – Another of Simenon's desperate bourgeois discovers the true meaning of love in leaving his family, murder. Shades of Jim Thompson in the intersection of sex and savagery, another of Simenon's innumerable minor masterpieces.