Batman: Year One (1987)

I had a pretty good time revisiting this Barman story written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. I happened to have the four Batman comics on hand (#404-407) as opposed to any of the later graphic novel reprints. It was interesting to see all the extras—advertisements, promotions for other comics, and letters from readers (which often included street addresses!). But the print job was murky and often difficult to read. The main arc is about the arrival of Commissioner Gordon to Gotham City, where eventually he makes his alliance with Batman. It also shows how Bruce Wayne developed and took on the role of Batman. Miller’s narrative style is brooding, dense, and creative. I don’t think he came up with some of the best ideas himself, but he uses them well. One narrative thread, in boxes colored yellow, is Gordon’s internal dialogue. Another, in white boxes with cursive lettering (particularly hard to read), represents Batman’s and/or Wayne’s thoughts. Lots of basics to the legend are here: the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in a street crime, the whole “I will become a bat” scene, and some focus on Catwoman. Robin would not come until after this first year. Probably because Miller is involved, Batman’s fighting style is loaded up on martial arts technique. Mazzucchelli’s art is evocative but almost primitive, with simple lines and heavily saturated color. It’s possible it is better in one of the graphic novel treatments. I don’t like Year One as much as the previous year’s The Dark Knight Returns, written and penciled by Miller with his Daredevil inker Klaus Janson. I also liked it more the first time I read it many years ago. But it is solid Batman fare even if some of its elements are overused by this point. Year One was an important part of the renaissance of the dark Batman, signaled in many ways by the attachment of “the” to his name: the Batman. It’s worth looking into because Frank Miller’s work is genuinely worth looking into. If I say I’m a little tired of the Batman now it’s mostly because this dark Batman has been so overdone in the years since, in the movies as well as the comics. I miss the goofy Batman that predated the 1966 TV show, which was also goofy but in a different, “campy” way. For the dark Batman, Year One remains essential.

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

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1987)

I first read this Lester Bangs collection edited by Greil Marcus when it was published. At the time I was much closer in age to the Bangs who wrote these pieces and more sympathetic to the wild man style of rock criticism. The collection is framed by a great prank: two letters purporting to be from Bangs writing from heaven which open and close the book. One was sent to Dave Marsh and the other to Wayne Newton, to be forwarded to Marsh. They sound like Bangs, who is trying to figure out what MTV is. He says God doesn’t think he should know. Then, after Marcus’s gentle introduction to the work of his friend, the first piece bears the title of the collection, a piece Bangs worked on for years. It’s all over the place, as Bangs often was, devolving into a faux history of the Count Five, who scored a #5 hit in 1966 with “Psychotic Reaction.” They did not actually release most of the albums Bangs describes and ascribes to them. He made them up, but they do chart the early history of rock music (post-rock ‘n’ roll) in an interesting way. There are more flights like that here, but also a fair amount of workaday rock journalism. His taste is too slippery, eccentric, and/or perverse to put much stock in. Sad to say, some parts have aged badly. There are way too many N-words for me to be comfortable with now, and he’s not much better on women. But all that is forgivable—most of us thought racism was dying out then and fair game to mock openly (see also Randy Newman in the ‘60s and ‘70s). Coming back to Carburetor Dung wasn’t quite the thrill I was hoping for. Still, despite the occasional cringing and slogging, Bangs remains close enough to a force of nature to be reckoned with. This collection includes the titanic mid-‘70s face-off with Lou Reed, along with scads of record reviews, think pieces, feature articles, and extremely oddball fanzine or previously unpublished write-ups. He reminded me more of Hunter Thompson than he has before. He might have even put the thought in my head himself, from an early reference where he compares himself favorably to Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and Thompson. That might be a window into where Bangs saw himself in the literary scene at large. This collection remains a must for anyone foolishly considering the pursuit of a career in rock criticism. It’s one of the landmarks.

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

RoboCop (1987)

USA, 102 minutes

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Writers: Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner

Photography: Jost Vacano, Sol Negrin

Music: Basil Poledouris

Editor: Frank J. Urioste

Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Dan O’Herlihy, Miguel Ferrer, Robert DoQui, Ray Wise, Jesse D. Goins

People seem to have some problems categorizing RoboCop. I have always thought of it as a slightly tongue-in-cheek (because patently ludicrous) crime / action show. Wikipedia calls it “science fiction action,” Amazon classes it with the labels “action,” “drama,” and (of all things) “serious,” and IMDb lets loose with a torrent of labels: “cop drama,” “cyberpunk,” “dark comedy,” “dystopian sci-fi,” “gangster,” “one-person army action” (good grief, this is a genre?), “superhero,” “tragedy,” “action,” and “crime.” I was happy to see at least a “dark” comedy in the mix, but I think it’s a real stretch in this perfectly cartoony setting to go for “serious” (never mind “tragedy”).

It’s formally a tragedy and serious because a human being cop, Murphy (Peter Weller), is killed in the line of duty and then surreptitiously and implausibly reanimated as a cyborg with no memory of his humanity. But he is a super-excellent cop, the hope for the near-future Detroit envisioned in the ‘80s to eradicate crime altogether. Director Paul Verhoeven is playing it for laughs all over the place. The lifts from Terminator are obvious, intentionally so. Robocop’s triangle-shaped body is an exaggeration of the ripped male ideal. His thudding footsteps are heard constantly in the sound design when he is on the move. (Note that the subtitles spell it without the capital C for the character and I am following suit.) The fights go on too long and they are too extreme, verging on slapstick. And the fact, in this near-future sci-fi tale—certainly it is science fiction, I’m not sure why I resist that label too—the fact that corporations can steal a man’s body with impunity and do what they want with it is rushed past so willfully it comes to feel like another joke.

“Mother Hag” (1987)

This story by Steve Rasnic Tem is not my usual cup of tea, but there’s little denying how effective it is. It basically works like a fairy tale, with orphans and a stepmother and various magical effects. What I like is that it feels like a pretty good approximation of a fairy tale, with modern sensibilities kept at bay—not entirely, but to a respectable degree. I also like the vision of the witch. Interestingly, I haven’t really found that many witches in this horror short story project of mine. But this story is very witchy: “Mother Hag was described, depending on who you talked to, so tall she rose to the ceiling, so small she was quite invisible and treacherous; black, pale, or quite blue; covered with warts or scabs; wide as a barnyard, narrow as a crack; naked as the winter fields, cloaked in midnight; fingers of clay or fingers of red-iron; drinks blood, tar, or wine; has pointed or blunt teeth, clean-shaven or whiskers, sunken or bulging eyes, wrinkled or gigantic breasts, cracked or a haunting, deep voice.” Now that’s a witch! It reminds me of the way the movie The Blair Witch Project makes its witch compellingly terrifying. Yet the story also undercuts itself a little with the fairy tale tone and events, such as a peddler’s bag as vast as a cave. On the other hand, witches are practically fairy tale stuff by definition. I’m willing to give Tem the benefit of the doubt to some degree. And things get extreme in various ways toward the end. Mother Hag starts to look like she might be all persons and all things. Vast and deep levels of incest are casually introduced. Things happen that are not pleasant. There’s a kind of Hansel and Gretel brother and sister who are strong supporting characters, if not main players. The boy comes to an end he doesn’t deserve and, if I’m reading this right, the sister’s fate is even more weird. It feels to me like the story goes further than it should have, but that’s OK too. It is richly dark like I always hope fairy tales will be but rarely are. “Mother Hag” is more like an ironic “fairy tale” than the real thing—you know it’s modern, you pretty much always do—but nevertheless it works very well.

Tales by Moonlight II, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson (out of print)
Story not available online.

“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
Story not available online.

Prince’s Sign O’ the Times (2004)

I wasn’t sure what I’d be getting with Michaelangelo Matos’s treatment of Prince’s big album of the ‘80s—you never do with these 33-1/3 projects, I’ve learned—but I was impressed on many levels. Matos hails from north Minneapolis and grew up in a family that was aware of Prince Rogers Nelson from the start. I’m from Minneapolis and environs too, and lived there until 1985, but I had a lot to learn about my hometown, including the racism that made it hard for Prince and company to make headway in making music. A lot of the nightclubs Matos talks about I’d never even heard of, and those were my times. I’m embarrassed, to say the least. I knew most (not all) of the Prince biography given here. But what impressed me most was Matos’s breakdown of the album, which I’ve always respected but somehow never felt I could get close to. The title song, for one thing, a protest number, has always struck me as lame and forced. I was happy to see Matos largely agrees, though he points out its virtues too. A lot of the early part of the book involves Matos’s personal experiences with Prince and Minneapolis. It’s interesting and done well. I appreciated the landmarks and specific events, such as an arena show in 1983. I’m also learning these personal takes are often part of these projects and don’t always work that well, but Matos had more than usual going for him. On the other hand, with a publication date of 2004, it is an early book in the series, with some aspects that seem dated and unnecessary now, such as a discussion of “rockism.” I would count this among the better books in the series simply because it is so good on an album that has long been so enigmatic for me—and an artist too, I must admit. Matos’s personal revelations are harder to judge. They seemed in line with lots of others in the series. But the details on Prince and especially on Minneapolis (or the Twin Cities) offered countless ways for me to connect with this one—and they were practically on every page. If you know Minneapolis in the ‘80s you won’t want to miss this one. It’s also basically essential for anyone with any interest in Prince or the album. Recommended.

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

Bring the Family (1987)

John Hiatt’s eighth (!) album may or may not be his best—I know I’m not the only one who thinks so—but at least, as Wikipedia notes, “not a Hiatt performance goes by without a generous helping of its songs.” It’s the home of “Thing Called Love” and “Memphis in the Meantime.” It features Nick Lowe once again, though this time not producing, and also Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. The songs by all accounts were mostly written in the shock of Hiatt’s recent sobriety, sometimes more self-consciously, sometimes less. I realized coming back to Bring the Family the last few weeks that I will never be able to judge it very objectively (though I am trying here!) because it is just one of those albums. It was a kind of lifeline and provided a soundtrack at a notably painful time when I needed to do some soul-searching recovery of my own, going through a separation and divorce and hitting a reset button on my life in a way I never have before or since. There are other albums I associate with those times, which seemed to just float up and became important—Diamond Life, Don’t Tell a Soul, King’s Record Shop, Spike—but none landed quite the way Bring the Family did. I see better now, attempting to judge, how Hiatt often pushes the boundaries of acceptable cliché, in, say, “Have a Little Faith in Me,” or in the album finish of “Your Dad Did,” “Stood Up,” and “Learning How to Love You.” Recovery songs all, they can verge on self-pitying or confessional, the insights perhaps more fuzzy than sharp. But I was fully open to all of it on nakedly emotional levels and it’s not exaggerating to say this set sustained me, often on a daily basis. I started seeing Hiatt in performance when I could during that time. His taste in sidemen, as on this album, always reflected a priority for high levels of musicianship, but Hiatt’s awkward stage manner eventually came to hinder them too much for me. I take Hiatt as a boomer album artist and actually quite good at it when you start paying close attention to them. I may need to look up a few more while I’m at it.

Sister (1987)

Sister was long the null Sonic Youth album in my experience—the proclaimed favorite of many SY fans even today, but the one that never particularly seemed worth second listens whenever I tried it again. So this will have to be something of a mea culpa and I’ll make it quick. Maybe it was lost on me in the backward-casting incandescent glow of Daydream Nation, which brought me back to the band after writing them off years earlier as hopelessly enamored of pigfuck noise, in-your-face attitude, and little more (maybe now I have to revisit Confusion Is Sex and Bad Moon Rising again after all this time?). Plus, honestly, I don’t know how you call anything else but Daydream Nation their best. I was charmed by the loopy experimentalism of EVOL and even The Whitey Album but nothing about Sister ever particularly stuck. So I sat down with it recently for a few weeks and played it a lot and finally must agree it’s a good one. The song titles alone are remarkably evocative, these clipped and cryptic two-word constructions: “Catholic Block,” “Cotton Crown,” “Tuff Gnarl,” “White Cross” (which seems to be about low-grade speed). At one point, I couldn’t seem to get enough of the admittedly rapey “Pacific Coast Highway,” which comes roaring in like a pack of clowns in a jeep playing banjos. It’s comical and it’s menacing and it’s introspective and then it pummels on a return, with Kim Gordon playing the role of the Green River Killer (as I imagined it, suitable for the timeframe) making the pitch to “come on get in the car, let’s go for a ride somewhere.” Maybe a virtue for Sister lovers is the relative brevity of these tracks, which barely break five minutes if that, as compared to the oceanic workups of the double-LP Daydream Nation. Sister might also be the album where the attack of the strange tunings is most thoughtfully honed. From the opening “Schizophrenic” on they are in high form, moody, wounding, always slightly wrong, and feeling unique from track to track. They sound strange but you’re not always sure why. The more I hear Sister the more I realize how little it sounds like anything else except themselves in an unusually purified mode. Well, “Hot Wire My Heart” seems to preen with its influences, sounding like “Sister Ray” in the verses—is it an elliptical source of this album’s title?—and “Sweet Sweet Heart” (or something by the Vibrators from Pure Mania). It works great. The whole album is good. Don’t miss it if you can.

"Errand" (1987)

The last story in Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From collection—and possibly the last he wrote—is kind of a switch-up. It presents itself as the story of Anton Chekhov's death from tuberculosis in 1904 at the age of 44, perhaps anticipating his own imminent death at the age of 50. "Errand" appears to be factual but is not when read closely. The confusion is apparently deliberate because much of the story actually is factually accurate. Chekhov died in 1904, for example. I say it's obvious but it's not that obvious. Janet Malcolm has all the details in her book Reading Chekhov, pointing out how many of these confabulated details have seeped into other accounts of Chekhov's death, even formal biographies—the champagne, the layout of the room, observations of the physician and others who were there or might have been. Apparently a lot of people read this story and assumed Carver knew what he was talking about and these vivid but fictional details stuck with them. It's a shame in a way because it makes Carver look a little like a charlatan pulling it out of a hat. But no doubt it was intended as an homage and a secret desire (or not so secret) to be as great of a story writer. There's a scene within a memory of some seven years before the death, where Tolstoy visits Chekhov in the hospital and tells him he likes his stories more than his plays. Did that even "really" happen? I don't know. It feels like a dream but seems plausible, partly because I agree with Tolstoy in this anecdote. "Errand" never quite makes it to being typical Carver but comes closest after Chekhov dies, when the widow Olga Knipper is sending the bellboy for a mortician and giving him directions. In fact, it shifts into something else entirely toward the end, focusing on the bellboy and giving him some sort of epiphany around the champagne cork, which has fallen to the floor. The widow practically takes over narrative duties from that point in a strange kind of phantasm, seemingly from anxiety over whether the bellboy can carry out her complex and sensitive instructions. It's tantalizing to wonder whether "Errand" was the one-off it mostly appears to be, a strange meditation on death near his own end, or some new aspect to his work that would have seen further development.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)

"Menudo" (1987)

I like this story by Raymond Carver, but it probably bears comparison with John Updike's philandering suburban dwellers. It also hits really close to home if you know Carver's biography or anything about his first wife. The ex-wife in this story ("Molly") is obviously her. Molly's New Age chatter and other details, as reported by the first-person narrator, may be exaggerated but the story is never kind to her. Still, the premise is instantly affecting, even gripping. Our man has been having an affair with the married woman across the street. Her husband found out she was cheating, though not with whom. At the same time, or recently, our guy's second wife discovered his affair, though also not with whom. He won't tell her even as she keeps guessing and he lies when she guesses right. Amanda, the neighbor he has been sleeping with, has been given an ultimatum by her husband to leave within the week. Amanda wants to marry the narrator. He doesn't think he wants that but he doesn't know what he wants. He can't sleep. It's 4 in the morning. He sits in his kitchen and watches the lights in Amanda's place. She evidently can't sleep either. But he can't call her. His wife is in the house with him and she's having her own sleeping problems and mad enough already. Mostly the story follows the narrator's distraught thoughts and memories, many about his first wife. He's trying to sort out what it all means: love, commitment, change. He and his first wife grew apart even as it was the great love affair of their youth, if not their lives. His present wife and Amanda don't feel like deep commitments. Now he's middle-aged. His first wife has changed forever. He has nothing. As usual with Carver, it is vivid, strange, sharply thrown in our face. The narrator is not looking for advice. He would snarl at us if we tried. He is looking for relief. Suddenly he is middle-aged and he still doesn't know what he wants. It's a great portrait of a desperate state of mind, but also painful to read in its treatment of the first wife. I think it's also good enough it has a chance, circumstances allowing, of outliving us all.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)

The Joshua Tree (1987)

I was pretty much fed up with U2 by 1987, and thus largely missed out on this album beyond the inescapable, which is to say I actively avoided it. It's kind of strange when I put together the pieces. I had been quite enamored with the band just a few years earlier, especially after seeing them live in 1983 (though an arena appearance two years later on basically the same material was much more anemic). Coproducers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are two I happen to trust on sight by brand, in spite of the many known problems associated with either and both. And I am nutty for the Pet Shop Boys cover of "Where the Streets Have No Name." I have heard it hundreds of times more than the U2 original. Recently I saw someone on the internet claim that The Joshua Tree has the best three-song opening sequence on an album in history—"best three-song opening sequence on an album" could only be an internet exercise but somehow that sent me back finally to attempt some assessment of U2's monster mega album, which ultimately moved some 25 million units. Others can argue for it being their greatest; All That You Can't Leave Behind (also produced by Eno and Lanois btw) is still my perhaps eccentric answer to that question. I will give it up to the original internet poster for the first three songs on The Joshua Tree. Pretty damn good 1-2-3 all right. I always liked "Streets," as I said (and who cares if it takes more than a minute for the first song on the album to properly kick in?). More recently "With or Without You" and especially "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" have started to hit with some force.

Wordy wordy titles! Let me get that out of my system—especially for a band that goes by two conjoined characters. Then let me just admit "Still Haven't Found" works on me in a way somewhat beyond my understanding, let alone my ability to control. Sure, you can read it as moon-spoon-June treacle on a level: "Woe is me I just want a girlfriend / better job / new car / whatever," the mewling singer might be wailing on casual listens (casual listens turning into forced auditions in the spring of 1987 when it became a #1 hit). Like, maybe he needs to get his credit rating up? But if you've ever had the feeling you still haven't found what you're looking for, and have had it for years, then you will know what this song is about. Not sunglasses. It's coming from an emo place comparable to the one that produced R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts," for example (and too many plain phony power ballads). It is just more artful and on-the-nose about it.

The rest of the album is varying degrees of professional and often compelling wankery. It's not hard to let it play to the end, even if only fragments of hooks distinguish themselves here and there. Eno's presence is felt in various small ways, not always good. The loose-wristed guitar playing of The Edge ("The Edge," Nelson laugh: "Ha Ha") often strays toward a More Songs About Buildings and Food feel. "Running to Stand Still" has slide guitar pasted on like the price sticker on the cover of a book. That reminds me of the themes attempted here, which I think it's appropriate to quote Wikipedia on: "through sociopolitically conscious lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery, it contrasts the group's antipathy for the 'real America' with their fascination with the 'mythical America.'" Yeah, OK, no thanks. Already heard all about it from Greil Marcus on the Band. This pompous bombast haunts it all and not easy to see past it—I'm not even sure how much I'm going to listen to The Joshua Tree ever again (beyond "Still Haven't Found," the new semi-intermittent regular). But it's not a bad album. I can't see why anyone would call it a greatest anything ever, except even my own touch points with it can feel strangely more vital than ever now. That's something.

Solved! (1987)

Richard Glyn Jones is a busy anthologist who might be best known for "Mammoth Book" collections: The Mammoth Book of True Murder, The Mammoth Book of Killer Women, and The Mammoth Book of Women Who Kill are three of his. I don't know them—the only place it seemed like I ever saw those Mammoth Books was at Half Price Books and I haven't been there in a while. I found out about Solved! in Bill James's book on true-crime literature. It's a sequel of sorts to another Jones collection (Unsolved!, natch). The idea is famous writers writing about famous crime cases, with or without conjecture about whodunit. It's a bit misleading that way—the last piece here, for example, is Harlan Ellison's short story about Jack the Ripper set in the future. Jack the Ripper is not a solved case and we don't know that he was transported to the future. Still, for the most part they are interesting cases, interesting treatments, or both. In his introduction Jones says the collection is built around the three longest pieces, by Arthur Conan Doyle, Damon Runyon, and Erle Stanley Gardner: "the tripartite core of this collection and [showing] the writer as detective, reporter and judge." Again, yes and no. Doyle's piece does more to clarify the gap between mystery fiction writers and crime investigation. He might have guessed right about the solution to an open case, but he doesn't seem that credible and the police ignored him completely, though at least that was likely self-serving. Doyle's piece is best at showing how police have been self-serving for a long time. Damon Runyon's series of newspaper reports on a sensational murder of the 1920s has some intrinsic interest, but reads like someone typing in a hurry. Erle Stanley Gardner's treatment of Argosy magazine's so-called "Court of Last Resort"—a kind of early Innocence Project—is good stuff, though the case itself doesn't hold that much interest, alas. Robert Graves writes about the poisoning of the Roman emperor Claudius. Other writers appearing here include Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, and Edgar Wallace. Jones shows up with excited headnotes for some of the pieces, not all. The book has more than its share of typos and other printing errors. The result is that it feels like a hurry-up job rushed to market. A lot like those Mammoth Books at Half Price Books always looked, in fact. But I like the scope of this and its literary ambitions, however misplaced. And as true-crime, it's perfectly adequate for the most part. As each writer settles into relating the facts of a case, or most of them, I soon feel the reveries of reading true-crime overcome me. Not bad.

In case it's not at the library.

"Helping" (1987)

Read story by Robert Stone online.

Robert Stone's story is an absurdist and vaguely comical tale of an alcoholic relapse. It's gnawing at something deeper, but I'm not sure I know what that is any better than the two central characters, Chas Elliott and his wife Grace. He is a social worker giving in to burnout. She is a Child Protective Services lawyer. She wants to help but needs the layer of legal formalities to shield her from raw human drama. Chas is also a Vietnam veteran. At this point, I'm tired of Vietnam veterans and recovering alcoholic stories. I appreciate that the focus here is on the relapse, as that is one of the hardest and most mysterious sides of addiction and recovery. But I don't think it has much more to offer than the usual self-dramatizations. There are some exchanges between Chas and Grace that are bitter and caustic, but not particularly believable. They seem too disconnected from their evident rage, too poised and cool and articulate. The drama of alcoholism was popular and widely embraced in the '80s. We saw another example in a story earlier in this collection, Richard Bausch's "All the Way in Flagstaff, Arizona," which I didn't find much more convincing than this. Partly it's the literary aspects, so deliberately thought through, such as the many meanings and tones of the one-word title in the Stone story (or the parallel ambiguities of using "in" instead of "to" in the Bausch). Am I saying they're too good to be good? Well, yes, in a way. The drama in "Helping" is strange and hard to understand from the outside looking in, which is where Stone puts us. The attitudes of Chas—you can't understand if you're not a Vietnam veteran and/or recovering alcoholic—are difficult to separate from Stone's, if indeed they are different at all. They probably are. The two novels by Stone that I know—Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise—are very good as I recall. And "Helping" is obviously worked over and thought through to an admirable degree. I'm just not sure that the drama of alcoholism (which more and more seems to me related to narcissistic disorders) offers enough to support the long and artful exercise of this story.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. Tobias Wolff

"Cody's Story" (1987)

Story by Robert Olmstead not available online.

An obvious source for Robert Olmstead's story of two loggers eking out a living in a long-term partnership in 20th-century American wilderness is Jack London. Most American story writers with nature themes inevitably hark to him, at least since London's time. And this story is set well after London's time. G.R. and Cody not only make use of a horse (Buck, a pretty good character in his own right), but also "a 100-horsepower fully articulated John Deere skidder equipped with grapple, winch, and arch." Whatever that is—I only know it isn't 19th-century. G.R. and Cody know the wilderness and the lumber market well enough to get by. They have been partners for years, if not decades. Now G.R. is starting to slip a little in the area of mental function. He forgets conversations and brings the same things up over and over. He's responsible for the horse, who is slipping into old age and will likely need to be dealt with soon. At the time of the action of the story, such as it is—it's more brooding backstory overall—it's winter, which means special precautions for the frigid conditions at night. They live in a horse trailer with the horse, who is also a significant source of heat. There's no mention of what it smells like. G.R. questions the precautions several times, which both annoys and alarms Cody. After the two have spent the morning cleaning and maintaining their chainsaws, Cody goes outside to hunt deer in the afternoon. He falls asleep and has a long nap. It's almost nightfall when he wakes. He slips on an icy surface and has a strange, dreamlike accident, from which he is fortunate to suffer no harm. Back at the horse trailer, G.R. again wants to know why they are taking the precautions. Cody doesn't mention the accident. In the night they wake and it is so cold they decide to huddle, sleeping next to one another for the warmth, something they do when needed and are comfortable with. It's a tender and lonesome moment when G.R. raises questions once again that he has asked multiple times. Cody's story, the title, seems to be a realization that all things pass and fall away. Everything is temporary, including their business, Buck the horse, and his long-time partner, sharing body heat with him to make it through a bad night.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. Tobias Wolff

Radio Days (1987)

USA, 88 minutes
Director/writer: Woody Allen
Photography: Carlo Di Palma
Music: Woody Allen mixtape
Editor: Susan E. Morse
Cast: Woody Allen, Julie Kavner, Michael Tucker, Seth Green, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, Danny Aiello, Josh Mostel, Wallace Shawn, Don Pardo, Kenneth Mars, Tito Puente, Larry David, Jeff Daniels, Kitty Carlisle, Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton

This charming Woody Allen picture may be somewhat overlooked because it's a tricky one to categorize. Or maybe because it doesn't seem that original. Director and writer Allen has basically taken the flashback sequences from Annie Hall 10 years earlier and blown them up into a neat little feature, just under 90 minutes like most of his movies. It's closer to an essay-film than anything, a sentimental memoir of childhood years built around anecdotes and songs connected with that early instrument of mass media, the radio. Allen touches on radio theater dramas such as The Shadow (or his version, "The Masked Avenger"), daytime gossip shows, news featurettes, quiz shows, and more, including, at one point, a hit parade of the songs that played.

The structure is freewheeling, friendly, open—deceptively easygoing, with a very sharp screenplay that moves like a stream from anecdote to tall tale and back again. His family is full of characters, a mother (Julie Kavner) and father (Michael Tucker) who present an interesting contrast to what we would see in another 10 years in the documentary Wild Man Blues. I guess "idealized" covers it. They sure look like nice parents through the prism of this movie. There is also extended family: an Aunt Bea (Dianne Wiest), perennially single, and more aunts and uncles, grandparents, neighbors, teachers, and hangers-on, kooky characters all. Woody Allen's voice is all over it as the narrator, but the screenplay is as tight as anything he's done, he's never in the frame, and it often feels like sitting around talking to him, or listening, as he holds court.

Rock Critic Murders (1987)

This hard-boiled detective novel is a little bit more, and a little bit less, than you might think. Jesse Sublett is a lifelong denizen of Austin, Texas, a bass player, songwriter, and founding member of the Skunks. In the '80s, he established himself as a writer—journalist, essayist, and crime fiction novelist. Here he is working self-consciously in the hard-boiled tradition of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. Our intrepid gumshoe hero is a bass player working a day job in a collection agency as a skiptracer—delicious jargon abounds all through. His name is Martin Fender, and if that makes you groan, note that the drummer in the band is named Billy Ludwig. The band is getting back together for a reunion gig, but the star guitar player and heart and soul of the band, KC, is kind of depressed. Then he turns up dead of a suicide. Then so do a couple of local rock critics. It spools on from there: there's a hot chick redhead who is nothing but trouble, a missing kilo of cocaine, a shady real estate deal, sinister Mexicans. It's regionalized to the environs of Austin, and has no new ideas about the hard-boiled dick tale. But Sublett has got the midnight noir deadpan down pretty well, and that carries it. For me it started off a lot better than it ended, which is often the case with hard-boiled detective fiction. What intrigued me, of course, was the rock critic thread, and it is a rich one, unfortunately seen only in glimpses. I wish there'd been more of these guys. The first time two of them show up, just before they are murdered (gone too soon, alas), is a window into a certain point of view. One is grossly fat, patronizing, and full of himself. The other is a nervous runt. Their utter uselessness as human beings is only underlined by their garish exit. Later, outside a nightclub, a few more rock critics are seen, and they could well be as loathsome as the victims, but unfortunately they fall back into the shade too quickly. I wanted more rock critics! It does feel like there is some obscure score settling going on here, as Fender's contempt for them is utter and total. Fender (and Sublett) are coming at it from the musicians' side, so there is a lot of nice detail about studios, band rehearsals, nightclub management, and general touring and performing experience. Sublett has gone on to write more novels in a series featuring Fender— Tough Baby, Boiled in Concrete—plus some true-crime and what looks to be a very interesting personal story in a memoir, Never the Same Again. So I came for the rock critics, but maybe I'll end up staying for something else.

In case it's not at the library.

Poison (1987)

It's possible that Ed McBain might have been trying a little harder in 1987, when he published not one but two novels in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, neither of them shorties. In fact, I think the second that year, Tricks, is one of his best. Poison, the first that year, is worth a look too if you are so inclined. It's focused on a case of serial murder in which all the victims have been involved with one woman, Marilyn Hollis, who immediately following her introduction becomes involved with one of the detectives on the case, Hal Willis. The other detective is Steve Carella, and there are few appearances by any of the others. It's mostly about the case. Well, honestly, I think it's mostly about setting up a major love interest for Willis, who I've rarely seen foregrounded so prominently. He is the detective who is routinely described as almost too short for the job, and some kind of expert in martial arts. Hollis is certainly bigger than life here, a former prostitute with a big sexual appetite and an exotic and mysterious past. The mode of most of the murders is nicotine poisoning, which affords some interesting trivia (as well as the title of the book), but one of the murders is by knife (oh, that again) and an attempt is made on Willis with a gun. It's fair as mysteries go—the who-did that did the whodunit is in play early, things point to that person, but the narrative distracts so it's all done well that way. I'm starting to think my favorite character in this series could well be the city itself, Isola (Italian for "island"), McBain's stand-in for New York City. Or maybe it is the months of the year. The more the stories feel grooved into place and time the better I like them. Here, it's a mystery story and love story that did not have to be the 87th Precinct. But that's OK, because this reminds me, among all else, that McBain is also a very good mystery writer. So I enjoyed it on that level. For the 87th in '87, the place you want to go first is Tricks. But Poison is a pretty good fix too.

In case it's not at the library.

Robert Cray Band, "Smoking Gun" (1987)

March 21, 1987, #22
(listen)

I am a fan of Robert Cray and his one and only hit is no exception, not least in that it comes from probably my favorite album by him, Strong Persuader. I like to think of that album, and Cray more generally, as one analog to the Beatles' work of the mid-'60s in terms of the broad and varied approach taken to love and relationship song to song, which I informally dubbed the puppy love song project. Call Robert Cray, especially on Strong Persuader, the all grown up love song project. As with the Beatles, the scope is appreciated only across the songs, as each one is more or less a unique point unto itself. For example, in "Right Next Door (Because of Me)," the singer is the outside disrupting agent in a married couple, who live in the next apartment, from which he can hear them fighting. The singer has been sleeping with the woman. He hears the man accusing her of being unfaithful. He listens to the fight and fills in the circumstances for us with a blend of regret and satisfaction. He takes no action. In the #22 hit "Smoking Gun," by contrast, the singer is the cuckold realizing he is in an adulterous marriage. In the classic spectrum of grief, denial is giving way to anger, though by and large it is still just simmering anxiety. But the singer seems to know if he presses the issue now he's liable to catch her with "that well-known smoking gun." I like the way the lyric traffics in one of the most difficult aspects of these situations—the images one conjures (or, God help us, sees). The singer is not yet the abject figure of "I Guess I Showed Her," a bruised cuckold now living in a motel (to make another comparison from the Strong Persuader album). But he's surely on his way, though the guitar playing suggests the person in this song may have the greater portion of rage about him.

Tricks (1987)

I read this novel from the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain back when it was still pretty new, but had forgotten everything except the harrowing decoy stakeout in pursuit of a serial slasher / rapist. At this point in the series McBain is so good that he can make it look easy. Set on a warm Halloween that brings frigid temperatures with evening, it's premised on goofs around the word "tricks." Trick or treat—it's Halloween. The serial killer targets prostitutes, posing as a john. A stage magician suddenly vanishes and hours later pieces of his dismembered body begin turning up. A crew of midgets in costume is holding up liquor stores, and killing clerks and bystanders. And Andy Parker looks up a 60-year-old good-time girl named Peaches and ultimately turns a few tricks of his own. Et cetera. The centerpiece in Tricks is the stakeout and ultimate confrontation between Eileen Burke and the killer. Burke previously was attacked and raped on a similar operation, so here she is haunted by that. The character of the serial killer is an interesting one, reminiscent of Jim Thompson figures in the way he charms with an endless barrage of streaming jokes, which are often actually funny. It's an interesting device—a good trick, if you will—at once chilling and utterly engaging. Tricks is a real page-turner, as they say. In fact, it's one of McBain's best. At the same time, I will again take the opportunity to say, the details of violence (notably what has to be classified as his knife fetish) and a too-frequent resort to rape as a plot device work to undermine interest. They are the stock devices of genre fiction, hardly exclusive to police procedurals. The fascination, such as it is, is a play on deepest fears. When people talk about exploitation drama, this is what they're talking about: the exploitation of our basest fears. McBain's regular resort to them has to be counted as a weakness. On the other hand, we are always looking for fascination too, so there's that.

In case it's not at the library.

Sign ☮' the Times (1987)

Out of curiosity, I wonder what the consensus presently is on best Prince album? I know a lot of people were very high on Sign for some time, but I have a feeling most of the affection has settled on Purple Rain (or, in some circles, Dirty Mind). I have always admired and respected Sign but never exactly loved it. Let me try to explain. It often feels a little like work to take it on, and not only for its generous double-LP 80-minute dimensions. There are other reasons. For example, the worst song here is the first one encountered, and the title song no less. A fetching aural landscape (as also was "When Doves Cry," remember) but more of a novelty and/or inert art object, and ultimately tiresome I think. No need to go into the belabored attempt to be topical, I hope. I don't doubt Prince wanted peace on this earth in 1987, still does, and always has, but he's a little fatuous about it, don't you think? There's a downside to spending your life locked into a studio. Then there are what I think of as The Lessons in Funk—"Housequake," or "Hot Thing." This is great stuff, but is it my imagination or is there something a little clinical here? I guess there's a downside to putting on a clinic too. He studied his James Brown, George Clinton, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, and Little Richard well. Prince Rogers Nelson is the Tiger Woods of funk and soul and rock 'n' roll and always has been. He knew where to fix his gaze and absorb, and he's loaded with talent. And it is indeed brilliant music to be found here, absolutely ... stop to listen close ... sure enough, hands in the air like I just don't care. So why don't I get to it more often? Partly I think there are actually a good many lesser lights besides the title song. I don't like "Starfish and Coffee" or "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker," and "The Cross" is the kind of business I don't want to be involved in (wonderful grinding bottom or no). In other cases the songs themselves are patchy: "Play in the Sunshine" and "It" have very nice moments but can be lackluster about getting there. "Slow Love" is a good one, the kind of torchy sex song he does on a regular basis and often pulls off (which also means it isn't necessarily indispensable). "If I Was Your Girlfriend" is weird in a good way and charming. "U Got the Look" works pretty well too, and "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" is about as big as the 9:02 allows. My favorite on the recent visits was "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and its soaring hook, which sounds to me like it could have played on Purple Rain, although maybe (or maybe not) I could do without the proggy break (thus making it another patchy song, though at 6:29 it has the room to breathe too). I have to admit, I tend to favor the next album over this, Lovesexy, which I thought better achieved the seamless suite of everything he is going for (see also, names above), sans huffed-up topicality, which feels more like making it mighty real to me. But I expect Sign O' the Times (with or without embedded peace symbol) is pretty far up the Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ladder, yes?