SIBR: Books from the Computer-Free Weekend

I stayed away from the computer last weekend and spent most of my extra time reading.  It's amazing how much I could get through when I wasn't checking my e-mail every twenty minutes.  I finished up Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, read McSweeney's #25 in its entirety, and then read the majority of Robert Coover's A Child Again (which I finished up today).  I usually do my "Stuff I've Been Reading" post at the end of the month, but I have horrible recall for the things I read, so I've decided to cover these three books while they're still fresh in my mind.

BOOKS READ:

Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon/The Thin Man/Red Harvest

Red Harvest was the third and final novel in my Dashiell Hammett collection.  The other two, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, were good, but I thought Red Harvest was much better than either of them.  Not only did the book add the phrase "blood-simple" into our lexicon and partially inspire the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, but it also featured one of the highest body counts of any novel I've read.  In fact, one of the chapters was actually called "The Seventeenth Murder".  There were still a lot to go, too.

Red Harvest sees the Continental Op (we never find out his real name) arrive in Poisonville only to discover that the man he was supposed to meet has been murdered.  The detective quickly solves that crime, but he's annoyed by the locals in the process, so he decides to stick around and rid the town of its criminal element.  The criminal element in Poisonville consists of bootleggers, loan sharks, heads of industry, hookers, hitmen, thugs, bookies, crooked boxers, and just about the entire police force.  Why does the Continental Op stick around when he could just as easily head home?  For "fun", of course.  He's a bad-ass...and something of a criminal himself.  Before the book ends, he's breaking laws left and right, planning murders, playing sides against each other, and even taking hits of laudanum.

I understand that the Continental Op appeared in a number of Dashiell Hammett short stories.  I'm definitely going to look for a collection.  I'm not usually interested in the crime genre, but I've been very impressed with everything I've read by Hammett, and I think I'd enjoy the further adventures of his character. 

McSweeney's #25--Dave Eggers (editor)

McSweeney's #25

I'd been putting off reading this collection because it featured a short story by David Hollander.  He wrote a novel called L.I.E., which was, by far, the worst book I have ever read in my life.  I hated it so much that I ripped it in half and threw it in the garbage when I finished.

Fortunately, David Hollander has improved a bit since 2000.  His story in McSweeney's #25 was actually one of the highlights.  That's not saying a whole lot, though, as this issue was something of a dud.  Like many recent issues of McSweeney's, it looked pretty (ahh, shiny gold and silver!), but didn't offer much worth reading.

In addition to the Hollander story, the only other highlights were "The Ape Man" by Alexander MacBride and "A Death in Custody" by Chloe Hooper.  The former was a brief look at the darker side of the Tarzan legend.  The latter was a non-fiction piece about Australian police brutality; it was an update to a story originally published in McSweeney's #21.

A Child Again--Robert Coover

A Child Again

A Child Again is a collection of short stories that update some of our most enduring fables and fairy tales.  In "Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee", Robert Coover looks in on the characters from "Puff the Magic Dragon".  Jackie Paper, who long ago lost interest in his dragon friend, has grown up and become a famous orator.  Puff, on the other hand, spends most of his time setting towns on fire and eating virgins.  In "The Invisible Man", the titular hero gets sick of fighting crime and becomes a thief and a voyeur.  In "Alice in the Time of the Jabberwocky", Alice tires of Wonderland and grows old, fat, and grumpy.  I don't even want to think about the sordid activities Prince Charming engages in with his wife's little friends in "The Dead Queen".

My personal favorite was "The Return of the Dark Children".  That story revisits the town that refused to pay for the Pied Piper's rat-removal services.  Years have gone by and a new generation of children has replaced those lost to the Piper.  Everything is gradually getting back to normal...and then the rats return.

All of the stories mentioned above were inspired and a lot of fun to read.  There were a couple in the collection, however, that I could've done without.  I didn't know the story revisited in "Playing House", so I didn't get much out of that one.  There was also one called "Suburban Jigsaw" that didn't seem to fit in at all.  Still, as a whole, A Child Again was a great collection and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in new takes on some old childhood favorites.   

CURRENTLY READING:

• The Apocalypse Reader--Justin Taylor (editor)
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)