“For Esme – With Love and Squalor” (1950)

[spoilers?] I’m not sure I have ever realized before what a nearly perfect short story this is by J.D. Salinger. Strike that “nearly.” Salinger takes his faith in children as the best of humanity and combines it with war experience for a powerful evocation of trauma and how it works. As a World War II soldier Salinger participated in the D-Day Normandy invasion, storming the beach. If the Utah Beach sector looked like what we saw in the opening of the movie Saving Private Ryan, it’s useful to keep in mind. This story is told as the before and after of that event, Salinger coming to terms with his own experience, or trying. In the first part of the story the first-person narrator, the soldier, is in England on a rainy day, finishing up training for the invasion. He has some time for himself and gets out of the rain in a tearoom. There he sees a girl he had seen moments earlier in a church, at a choir practice. She stood out to him. She’s 13, with her 5-year-old brother in tow. They are orphans. This is Esme, a serious girl absorbing the hard lessons of life. They strike up a conversation. He tells her he is a short-story writer. The bravery of it, even to a 13-year-old, is bracing. She asks him to write a story for her sometime. This part of the story is often funny. “I prefer stories about squalor,” she tells him. She is wearing a chronographic watch her father gave her. He died in the war. The scene in the tearoom is warm and charming. In the second half of the story, after Normandy, the narrator switches to third-person. “This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story,” he writes, “and the scene changes. The people change, too.... I’ve disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.” Of course, that’s not true at all. We see him coping to hold himself together emotionally and failing. He has a stack of unopened letters he’s not looking at, but a package from Esme catches his eye. She has sent him her father’s chronographic watch and a letter. The watch has been smashed in transit, which I believe may be the saddest things I’ve ever read. But her letter is very cheering—the kind of cheering that makes you cry. It’s all a sudden rush of a roller coaster right at the end and it left me wrung out in all the best ways.

J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
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Further (1995)

I spent a lot of time listening to this album by Flying Saucer Attack wondering how many other albums (specifically second albums like this one) contain the word “further.” The internet helped a little: the Chemical Brothers (seventh album), Geneva (first album), Richard Hawley (ninth album), Outasight (third mixtape), and Solace (first album). I also found The Further Adventures of Bruce Cockburn, Further Complications by Jarvis Cocker, and Further Joy by the Regrettes. I’m sure there are many more (and don’t forget the Merry Prankster bus, Furthur). I don’t know all those acts but the title is certainly a natural, especially for an outfit like Flying Saucer Attack, British purveyors of space-rock and/or noise-rock and/or shoegaze. Listener’s choice. In fact, the noise quotient from their first, self-titled album from 1993 has been plainly toned down and shaped up here for interludes that don’t necessarily involve gravity or physics. I have to say the band pulls a dirty trick on “For Silence,” a 7:39 piece that starts with a mellow vibe from the bottom of a well and goes about two minutes. Then a break of silence that feels long before it ramps up and trundles into a feedback montage that soars and drifts and only grows in majestic strength, until finally it is abruptly cut off like someone pulled a plug. Hey, man, I was getting into that! My favorite track, or at least my favorite sound effect, could well be “Here Am I,” with a mysterious recurring sound that feels like loneliness itself, an isolated monster weeping in the wilderness. But “To the Shore,” which immediately follows, may objectively be the best workup here, if only for its imposing length of 12:08. Typically, it starts slow and gradually defines itself as a rhythmic groove, finally bringing in their favorite ingredient, feedback, and maintaining a hypnotic space that swirls and expands and soothes. It’s basically everything I come to Flying Saucer Attack for. Also, you can play this album at any volume and it always works well, though different elements work better at different volumes. You’ll have to experiment with that yourself to see how you like it. Me, I like keeping it around for regular listens. It fits certain moods in a way few others I’ve encountered can.

Killer of Sheep (1978)

USA, 80 minutes

Director/writer/photography/editor: Charles Burnett
Music: Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington, Faye Adams, Arthur Crudup, Little Walter

Cast: Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry, Jack Drummond

Killer of Sheep was the first feature-length picture by one-man band director, writer, cinematographer, and editor Charles Burnett. It was made as Burnett’s master’s thesis for the UCLA School of Film. It’s relatively short and episodic, with little narrative arc or perhaps more accurate to say with many little narrative arcs, a probing look at life in Watts during the 1970s, when it was shot. Henry G. Sanders stars as Stan, Kaycee Moore is Stan’s unnamed wife, and Jack Drummond and Angela Burnett are their unnamed children. The picture won praise and appreciation when it was shown in film festivals in 1978 but, because the music rights had not been obtained, and the picture is full of music, it failed to get a wide release and languished for some 30 years.

Stan is a simple, decent, hardworking family man trying to get along in the obviously dire conditions of Watts. He applies himself patiently to life—fixing up his rundown house, in need of many repairs, and working a day job in a slaughterhouse. Which gets us to the nonmetaphorical implications of the title. Literally, Stan is a killer of sheep. But I suspect the sheep themselves bear metaphorical implications, not least because I think it would be more likely to run into cows and pigs in a slaughterhouse. Sheep are eaten too, of course, but are also raised—and kept alive—for their coats as a source of wool. The slaughterhouse scenes here can be unpleasant, explicit, and difficult to watch, notably one where the coats are being stripped off corpses impaled on hooks. But those scenes are only a small part of the picture.

“Haunted” (1987)

I was impressed by this Joyce Carol Oates story, which shifts tones so swiftly and deftly it’s almost dizzying. It ranges from the coming-of-age story of two 11-year-old girls to a fairy tale, a ghost story, and a true-crime story, all with bolts of calculated erotic charge. The first-person narrator, writing as an adult, recounts these childhood incidents, not sure exactly what might have happened. She’s not even sure why she’s writing about it. But we can sense the damage she has suffered. Much of the story reads like a reminiscence of childhood, but there are worrisome undercurrents. Families who don’t like one another. People who move away from the town and are never heard from again. Abandoned properties—either by foreclosure or by death. They are the haunted houses—houses left unoccupied and ripe for rumors, especially when they are decrepit and crumbling to wreckage. Oates captures that sense of childhood boredom and adventure perfectly. But the rambling sentences and rushed-together way of telling it constantly remind us something is gnawing away at the narrator. The ghost in the haunted house, when it finally appears, is startling, vivid, arresting, the erotic charge planted here with skill. The story has numerous very nice touches of the gothic. The apparition is closest to a witch, with evident mental powers to control her victim. The power of knowing a person’s name is played particularly well. I love everything about the scene with the ghost. It truly made me uneasy. Then it reverts to the childhood story again even as, against her will, the narrator remembers how she betrayed her friend. She played her perfectly to goad her into going into the haunted house alone. In the ghost scene, there’s also a sense it could be a real person boldly manipulating an impressionable kid. Oates has a wonderful way of stepping around all the things that might be possible in these scenes, often by tonal inflections. When the second girl turns up dead and murdered, the language takes on the tone of true-crime, going all just-the-facts-ma’am on us, even as the narrator is obviously emotionally torn to shreds by the memory and the totality of it. It's altogether an electric jittery style, with long breathless sentences and multiple shifts in view. Our narrator might even be crazy and the events recounted all delusion.

Joyce Carol Oates, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque
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Bad Brains (1992)

I found Kathe Koja’s second novel enthusiastically recommended on booktube—note that it has nothing to do nor even seems familiar with any punk-rock band from D.C. Koja’s first, The Cipher, won a bunch of awards and, even though her story in The Weird (“Angels in Love”) did not impress me much, I decided to give Bad Brains a shot. The premise is that the impoverished main character, Austen, has an accident—takes a fall—and suffers serious brain damage. It is a kind of bravura performance here by Koja. It’s hard to tell how long Austen is in the hospital. It’s at least weeks, possibly months. He has multiple seizures every day until they are finally under control with drugs. These scenes in the hospital are confusing and alarming. Koja’s allusive, detailed prose is well-suited to the harrowing situation. Austen’s situation is close to dire even after he is stabilized. He is a bit of a sad sack, divorced two years but not yet over it. He’s a painter with some interesting ideas and a best friend who owns a gallery and encourages him. But mainly he is poor, sick, and spiraling down. He hits the road with a new friend who is almost as desperate. Things get strange as Austen’s spells of delusion and hallucination have a persistent element—something that is silver. Koja is flirting with one of the most dangerous elements in all fiction, a character who is insane. Because with insanity all bets are off and anything can happen. Don’t you know they’re C - R - A - Z - Y, after all. Koja manages the problem pretty well, with a context that feels real enough we can push against it. Keeping the narrative open to the ooky-spooky supernatural maintains a nice edge too. Her writing style can veer toward the fulsome and she lost me a few times, especially near the end. But the uncanny works well with the material, especially when it stays more in a naturalistic mode. It’s best on seizures and meds and the kind of poverty that forces you off health insurance when you need it most. And I’m glad the supernatural is here too. It helps the narrative fly free and makes its creepiness a good complement to the situation of the starving artist. When you’re teetering at a line between life and death, access to healthcare is more than a winning lifestyle choice. Bad Brains may have been oversold to me a little, raising my expectations too high. But it’s still pretty good, it won a Bram Stoker award, and a lot of people love it. It never scared me but it has good ideas and was never a slog.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Picaresque (2005)

I owe it to myself to look further into other albums by the Decemberists, but for whatever reason—maybe because it was the first by them I heard—Picaresque, the band’s third, is the one I go to when I’m looking for a certain flailing acoustic thrash groove partially out of Jeff Mangum that does not let up. The Decemberists manage that just right, producing songs of five minutes and more that roll for the horizon with commitment. You’re likely to find sailing vessels and peasants all over the place, because mostly we’re living in the old world here. “The Infanta” (5:08) is a great way to kick off these proceedings, thunderous, soaring, promising. And for the most part the band and album come through on that promise. Colin Meloy is a creative writing major from Montana who moved to Portland and started a band. He writes all the songs and sings and thrashes on the rhythm guitar. The vocals are somewhat nasal and distinct, as if he were just coming from a session at the library and weary, but I got used to them. And he’s not the only one who sings—all members of this five-piece chip in backing vocals and harmonies, including the female drummer (Rachel Blumberg) and the female keyboardist (Jenny Conlee). The total effect can be beautiful and rousing and these songs can be full of great drama too, like the best olde folk sources and murder ballads (though they stray occasionally into the bombastic for brief moments). They are mainly structured to tell stories, especially in the longer ones such as “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” (8:46) and “The Bagman’s Gambit” (7:03). I’m not sure about specific folk sources, which I usually assume are Anglo-Saxon if they’re in English, but some of this music feels Slav to me or possibly from elsewhere. The high points are either tuneful or locked in a groove or both: “The Infanta,” “The Sporting Life,” the romantic “We Both Go Down Together,” “The Engine Driver.” Whither the Decemberists today? They’re up to nine albums now but the gaps between have been getting longer since 2011. Honestly, I can’t wait to get back to their catalog for sure—but part of me worries about disappointment, forgetting how reliable Picaresque is. I must remember I will always have it.

The Straight Story (1999)

UK / France / USA, 112 minutes

Director: David Lynch

Writers: John Roach, Mary Sweeney

Photography: Freddie Francis

Music: Angelo Badalamenti

Editor: Mary Sweeney

Cast: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Everett McGill, Anastasia Webb, Barbara E. Robertson, Kevin P. Farley, John Farley, John Lordan, Harry Dean Stanton

Director David Lynch had a well-deserved reputation for making weird movies but it’s tempting to argue this is the weirdest of all. It’s also one of his best. The opening title credit is a good place to start: “Walt Disney Pictures Presents: A film by David Lynch.” It seems to pit opposites against each other in some ways, but it’s important to remember that Lynch always prized wholesome elements and details in his pictures, and contrary to popular opinion it was not ironic, cynical, or mocking. The Elephant Man is a good comparison point, but it’s there in his most famous work, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Dr.—even Eraserhead, where the grotesque monster baby is treated with a good deal of tenderness. They all show moments of human decency. They can even make you cry when they catch you the right way.

That’s The Straight Story too. Based on real events (barely noted until the very end of the picture), Alvin Straight, a man in Laurens, Iowa, learns that his estranged brother in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, has had a stroke and may not have long to live. At one point in the picture Alvin explains to another that he is a stubborn man. That’s the only thing that remotely explains these circumstances (which really happened, remember). His eyesight is too bad to drive. He won’t take a bus or accept rides from anyone else. As he keeps saying, he has to do this “my own way.” That way is to take his riding mower, halfway on and off the shoulder of the narrow highway and topping out at no more than 20 miles an hour. It is some 300 long flat Midwestern miles at the harvest time of year and it takes him weeks.

Nickel Boys (2024)

Nickel Boys is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel, based on the infamous revelations of the Dozier School in Florida, a reform school that turned out to be highly abusive of its wards, up to and including unmarked graves of boys murdered and buried there. Their parents were told they ran away. The Nickel Boys story focuses on two Black teens sent to the fictional Nickel Academy in the mid-1960s, during the height of the Civil Rights era and the beginning of US involvement in Vietnam’s civil war. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) strike up a friendship that helps them endure and survive the harsh miseries. Director and cowriter RaMell Ross indulges so much film school technique getting there (though note he never studied at a film school) that it’s tempting to call the picture experimental. The roving, fluid, handheld camera, pointed everywhere and going in and out of focus, plunges us into the story directly, into the cold water at the deep end. Nickel Boys is so impressive to watch that in many ways the details of the narrative come by osmosis. The camera often just embodies Elwood’s point of view and as often hovers close to him, right behind, like someone crowding him on the subway. It comes unstuck in time as well, as Kurt Vonnegut might explain it, following Elwood 10 years after these events and in the present day as well, before returning to Nickel in the ‘60s again and further hopping around. Nickel Boys has little time for explanations, it’s definitely confusing, but Ross distributes his clues lucidly enough to help us keep up, which by itself gets to be thrilling in a way. I’m not always sure what the creative camera contributes to the story—a second viewing may help with that—but it’s certainly pure dazzling cinema, exuberant and celebratory, never dreary as these stories too often threaten to become. Numerous black & white clips from the 1958 picture The Defiant Ones, with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as escaped convicts shackled together, seem to be making the point. Unfortunately, the high technique battles a little as distractions from the larger themes and dramas of racism and brutality, and how far we have not come. It might be exactly what Ross was intending because I came away from Nickel Boys with the sense of having experienced something intense, something more than just another sad story from the workaday South.

Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack (2015)

This 33-1/3 by Andrew Schartmann is one of the more offbeat and creative entries in the series. Schartmann tells us early that the totality of music on this “soundtrack album” for the video game Super Mario Bros. amounts to about three minutes—closer to 90 seconds if you are scrupulous about removing redundancies. That’s a pretty short album. The videos on youtube can run to three minutes each, but they obviously have all the redundancies and more. I quickly realized the only way to hear or experience the “album” really is by playing the game, which I’m pretty sure I never have. Schartmann dwells less on the game anyway, and more on the music, in highly technical ways. He discusses computer requirements in 1985, which didn’t leave much in the way of resources for game music. And he also talks about the music in terms of composition, chiefly, but also historical context. When going over the “Underwater” theme, for example, he has occasion to deliver a quick history on the waltz. Having never played the game, I found myself mostly at a loss, but nonetheless rarely less than fascinated. I presume Schartmann has at least played the game, if not obsessed over it for hours and hours as the best video games demand of us. My sense is his experience is much closer to the latter, as this text very much feels like the work of someone who has gone deep into the game. It’s as if the three minutes of original music has been absorbed at cellular level across the hours of exposure in varying game contexts. Most of this book is over my head—Schartmann is a professor and student of composition and theory presently at the New England Conservatory. The book is basically a novelty, comparable to John Darnielle’s short stories for Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, and others in the series. You might even want to classify it as a stunt or gimmicky. But it is serious in its intent, however tongue in cheek it might seem. It’s a great place to think about what an album is and it’s a great chapter in the history of video games. Plus it has a nice bibliography with many tempting titles on the history and/or theory of video games. Put this one on your short list for the series.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

“Professor Nobody’s Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror” (1985)

Let’s call this rut a groove and go with it, as we used to say at the old college paper. This very short story by Thomas Ligotti is similar to his “Notes on the Writing of Horror,” published the same year. They’re meta. Both “Notes” and “Little Lectures” feel like exercises involving writer’s block, perhaps. He is stuck on a story and, stymied perhaps for the moment, begins to think aloud about what he is doing. Instead of telling a story, he is turning over how things about horror fit together, speaking from a distance and somewhat ironically, about his chosen genre. “Notes” packed some narrative around the musings, while this one feels more abstracted and fragmented—like notes for lectures. The piece is short but it’s also dense, a quality that can be something of a hindrance reading Ligotti. He hits a lot of high points in all his stories I’ve read, but he is often difficult. Still, I like his mindfulness here and yes these are interesting thoughts, with sections labeled “The Eyes That Never Blink,” “On Morbidity,” and “Pessimism and Supernatural Horror” (multiple “lectures”). It’s interesting to a certain extent but also feels fragmentary and incomplete—even considered with “Notes.” Both pieces specifically notice how surprisingly hard it is to define horror and how it works. They can only nibble at the edges. That seems to be the point here. It spins off into philosophic realms on the uses of the supernatural in horror tales, which I have to admit had little interest for me beyond knowing such an inquiry exists. I’m less interested in knowing about horror and much more interested in the slippery business of feeling horror. Is it anti-intellectual to be into the pure sensations of things? Ligotti makes me feel a little that way. He may be too cerebral for me. I really want to call “Little Lectures” an essay, but I know it plainly has fictional elements—voice and point of view are aesthetic decisions. It’s playful. It’s interesting. It’s even fun. But it has little intent to scare or unsettle us at all and doesn’t really illuminate that much about horror either, with too many rational thoughts and ideas. It’s just a goof and a lark.

Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
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“White Nights” (1848)

This long story by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a love story much as perhaps only he could do it—unrequited, of course. The setting is late June or early July in St. Petersburg, which is far enough north that the darkness hours of night are very few or nonexistent (hence “white nights”). Our first-person narrator, another no-name, wanders the streets in his loneliness. Loneliness, loneliness. He sees a woman leaning against a railing and crying. There’s something about her. He’s intrigued but walks by, respecting her privacy (he will not always be so good about respecting boundaries ... what man in a romance ever is?). Then he hears her scream. A man is harassing her and he steps in to help. They strike up a conversation. He tells her about his loneliness, probably not the best next move. I have to say he comes across in many ways as what we now call an “incel” (involuntary celibate), with strange and strangely urgent ideas about women and men. He never crosses the line—he is too passive, like many incels in the clutch—but he comes close to it in his head. He describes the incel’s fatal passivity by putting himself in a category of “dreamer.” A dreamer is essentially passive and a lot like “a nice guy.” Those themes were incidental more or less when Dostoevsky was writing, although they also suggest that “incel” is a very old way of being. Altogether these two meet for four nights, talking about things like his loneliness, her lover who may have abandoned her, their life stories. It’s a classic “nice guy” story as he is forced to reckon with the fact that it will only ever be a friendship, which makes him long for her even more, etc. We all know this story. Once again, though he must go on at some length to do it, Dostoevsky manages a very precise portrait of this kind of incel / nice guy fantasy doomed to bitter disappointment, because women, they decide, don’t like nice guys, etc., etc. Our narrator here may yet be capable of rising above it, but that’s not clear at all by story’s end. All the romance here—and it is here—is supplied by the setting, the long nights of daylight. Dostoevsky, in counterpoint, is his usual slightly bitter realist. It creates a wonderful tension. Great story.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.
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Black Narcissus (1947)

UK, 101 minutes

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Writers: Rumer Godden, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Photography: Jack Cardiff

Music: Brian Easdale

Editor: Reginald Mills

Cast: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, May Hallatt, Sabu, Jean Simmons, Judith Furse, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird, Nancy Roberts, Eddie Whaley Jr.

Black Narcissus was filmed entirely in Ireland and the UK, which is somewhat unexpected for a movie so determined to be about its location in the remote Himalayas. Watching closely, it’s not hard to make out the various matte paintings decorating the cinematic mise en scene unto the mountainous horizon—that is, if you’re not already distracted by the spectacular glowing technicolor of cinematographer Jack Cardiff. All I took from this movie the first time I saw it many years ago was that it is amazingly vibrant with color, and has something to do with nuns.

Both IMDb and Wikipedia classify this Archers team picture—codirectors and cowriters Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on a 1939 novel by Rumer Godde—as “psychological drama.” In a sense that’s true—Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron skillfully gobbling everything in sight) is having a heck of a spiritual crisis, which being sent to this unlikely site in the Himalayas only exacerbates. The picture is about setting up a convent from scratch with a small team of nuns, in a building that once housed the harem of an Indian royal, poised on the precipice of the edge of a deep valley. I mean like literally on a cliff, with minimal protective fencing. It’s a wonder there is not a parade of Vertigo-like falls.

Monkey Man (2024)

Monkey Man is the first feature by director, cowriter, and star Dev Patel, better known as an actor for his performances in Slumdog Millionaire, The Green Knight, and many others. He also gets some help or maybe just inspiration from co-producer Jordan Peele. Monkey Man is standard action fare, with a story approximately as old as spaghetti westerns or the Bible. As a child, the Monkey Man (Patel, credited as “Kid”) witnessed the death of his mother at the hands of a corrupt police captain. It takes a while to find out, but he’s on a tortuous path for vengeance. Mother killed in front of his eyes, a lifelong quest for revenge. “My name is [Monkey Man]. You killed my [mother]. Prepare to die.” Stop me if you’ve heard this before. He’s poor, living on jobs waiting tables and as a fighter in no-holds-barred boxing ring matchups, where he wears a monkey mask. The Monkey Man is small but he’s fast. Bigger opponents often just miss him and can’t land any blows. But he is regularly humiliated, because he is the scripted loser in these bouts in the ring and always required to take a dive (getting a bonus if he bleeds). Monkey Man boasts lots of active and handheld camera work and any number of well-choreographed fistfights, with some gunplay but mostly the hand-to-hand combat. In the grand old kung fu tradition he is able to take on dozens at a time and rarely misses taking them down, though he does get his own many beatdowns. Attempting to escape the scene of one of his crimes he’s hit by a sniper, bangs off a roof, and lands in water. It looks like a puddle, but it’s quite deep. Finally he is rescued by a strange cult. A drug scene follows in which a wise old man (or shaman, perhaps) administers him something and guides him through a place that is mythical and legendary and full of personal memories of his mother and so on. He is soon ready to fulfill his destiny as ... Hanuman, the Monkey Man. This will involve lots of fighting. He trains for it coached by a tabla player. All the chicks where he’s staying, even the older women, dig that training the most—a ridiculous scene, but hold on, Monkey Man moves fast. You won’t be surprised by anything in this story (making me think Peele’s influence was minimal) but you might find some entertainment in the hypnotic fighting scenes. I know I did.

The Trees (2021)

My first-time Percival Everett (who just won a Pulitzer, you know): I chose The Trees. I didn’t know how recent it was and barely knew how prolific he is. Aside from all the general raving about Everett, all I knew was that The Trees had something to do with lynching. I had no idea it is basically fitted to the template of a thriller and I had no idea how funny it was going to be. It hit me in much the same way that Elmore Leonard novels can. The pace is fast—over 100 chapters, all very short—and the language is laconic and precise. I suspect Everett may have wanted to call this novel Rise, because that’s the title of the first and only section. The story starts in Money, Mississippi, and mostly it stays in Mississippi, though it ranges wide across the US. Money is where Emmett Till was visiting his uncle in 1955 and where he was murdered. The series of bizarre murders in The Trees starts there. White men are found murdered with Black men. The white men have been severely beaten and had their testicles removed. The Black man—it’s often the same corpse—has been beaten too and is holding the white man’s testicles. Later, the corpse of the Black man disappears from the morgue, only to reappear at the next crime scene. Among other things, this is a great mystery story. Police are baffled. Racial tensions start to run even higher when the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation sends two Black detectives to work the case with the locals. The Trees respects most rules of the mystery / thriller narrative although there are a lot of stretchers along the way increasingly toward the end. I had a great time with this one—once started, reading it was all I wanted to do until it was done. It’s funny, droll and acerbic, and it is full of the pain of the history of lynching in this country. The laughs don’t let anyone off the hook. They just draw you further and further into a landscape that is terrifying when it’s not hilarious. Now I’m looking around thinking about a next Everett.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.