I'm Not Alone, I'm Not Alone

“Here, in other words, is a long-range backstory—a device that, in…recent times, has grown from an option to a fetish…In all narratives, there is a beauty to the merely given, as the narrator does us the honor of trusting that we will take it for granted. Conversely, there is something offensive in the implication that we might resent that pact, and, like plaintive children, demand to have everything explained.”

---Anthony Lane (in this week’s New Yorker)

Read, etc.

Never finished: Bandits, Elmore Leonard

If I take a book on vacation and don’t finish it during the trip, I’m never gonna finish it. Don’t know why. Sorry, Elmore.

Read: Lush Life, Richard Price

I hadn’t read Price in decades. This was great. No heroes, no villains, apt title.

Bought: the first six Richard Stark reissues from University of Chicago Press

--but only five shipped. Where’s The Jugger? Don’t make me ask again.

Reading: Casino Moon, Peter Blauner

You know how I always complain about writers changing-up between first- and third-person in the course of a book, and how much I hate it? Blauner does that here, but -- this is crucial -- he’s good enough to get away with it. Better than good enough. Recommended.

The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit

Well, this is just ridiculous:

Detroit Noir contributor Michael Zadoorian, who just last month slapped the world around with his second novel, The Leisure Seeker, has a short-story collection, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit, available today from Wayne State University Press.

Apparently, Zadoorian has decided to challenge fellow Detroit Noir contributor Joyce Carol Oates in some kind of Sheer Output Competition, or something...

(Michael wrote a new short story while I was typing the previous sentence.)

But, seriously...

Detroit's in the news much of late, but it's the same old story, snippets of Barry Gordy hits over footage of shuttered factories. Get the real news from Michael, a fine writer worthy of your attention.

"A Visit From The Footbinder," Emily Prager

The hideous cover of this short story collection really stood out when I first saw it in the paperback rack of a small-town pharmacy in 1984. No fourth-rate Carver wannabe stories in here, it fairly screamed. Emily Prager’s cv -- fashion model and National Lampoon staffer -- closed the sale.

The short stories and novella collected herein are mostly along the lines of what I’d been hoping for when I bought the book: the kind of anti-authoritarian comedy and tone the best Lampoon short stories offered, but more expansive and lyrical, on a more personal level. And genuinely transgressive where the lesser Lampoon stuff was merely gross.

Nothing prepared me for the title story, though, and I’ve never gotten over it.

“A Visit From The Footbinder” has the power and menace and simplicity of style of a great folk tale. As far as I know, it hasn’t been anthologized and taught in college. It should be. If you haven’t read it, track it down.