Another Fine Harry Bosch Novel

Harry Bosch is a fictional friend of mine, and I have been missed him. Not that I haven’t been busy reading.  I’ve read the New Yorker Fiction Issue, a number of  college textbooks for teaching rhetoric and composition, and a smattering of poetry–because what is life without poetry? I’ve read books on constructing sentences and Daniel Deronda, in case I am asked to teach about images of women in literature.  I’ve read books on dog training, veterinary medicine, and articles on various specialty aspects of poodle-dom for the manuscript on poodles I’m preparing.  But last night, I wanted my old friend Harry Bosch to overcome terrible odds and have justice prevail. In two sittings he did.

But the other part about Harry is that he’s a topic of conversation between my father and me. At 84, my dad doesn’t have many interests left.  His hands shake so he can’t paint the intricate uniformed miniatures or construct the ships and airplanes as he used to. He doesn’t get the opportunity to dance much and when he does, he tires easily. But he can read.  A few weeks ago, we made the trip to Murder By the Book, our favorite mystery bookstore here in Portland.  We filled a sack with books–some new, some used– because you’ve got to have the latest Michael Connolly (Harry’s creator), and Ellery Queen isn’t writing anymore.  My father read the stack of books in two weeks and passed them  to me.  This week, we need to go back to Murder by the Book and select a new passel of books.

For my dad, not much seems just anymore.  His friends are dying or gone. He has to use a cane  to get around.  He tries to make the best of it, but every day he feels he’s losing the battle.  He’s tired of the cold and damp here and wishes that he were in a place where there are tall long-leaf pines and sunshine, where the humidity is so high that you could drink the air, but the air is too hot to swallow, and where the  nearest Civil War battlefield is fifty miles away and not thousands.  But, as long as he’s turning the pages of the books that he pulls from our book-shopping sack, the world seems  better.  He forgets where he is.  Justice prevails and heros are safe for another day.  That’s one of the pleasures of reading mystery and crime fiction.  We can rely on Harry, my dad and I. No matter what his faults, Harry Bosch is a true arrow in a time when few people seem to be.

Recently enjoyed:

• A Song I Knew By Heart by Bret Lott
  An unusual story, a first person narration by a widow who moves with her dead son’s wife back home to Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

Photo credit: Liz Santee

The Emily Dickinson poem, There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, appearing in The Writer’s Almanac, pushed me over the line. I’ve been a spectator of death-wrestling for a few weeks. I learned over the holidays a childhood friend died last February. Her husband’s note on a return Christmas card was shocking because I couldn’t imagine that I would not have known, prepared, said goodbye. I’m trying to remember all the things we did together in our aspirations to become folksingers.

My old dog is dying of heart failure. Each time I pet her, her spiky fur and increasingly bony body demand notice. Her barking and refusal to come downstairs–where she has sat under my desk every day for seven years until her diagnosis in mid-December –is this a lack of oxygen to the brain, or is it her taking control to conserve her energy? I look into her eyes and wonder.

A great friend of mine is a palliative care doctor. When things are too much, we talk. Not about the patient, but about the circumstances of the death, the importance of getting everyone there to say goodbye, to say what they want before the opportunity is gone. Over the holidays, death seems worse, as if there were a more appropriate time.

Oddly, I can’t think of a short story I have written that doesn’t have death at its core. My favorite concerns a young cosmetologist who prepares her hero’s body for the grave. But there are others–the nun who commits murder to save Holy Mother Church’s reputation, the herbalist who provides a murderous tea for wives to use on their abusers, a pharmacist who assassinates one of his patients each year. This last one takes place in November.

Winter is, I guess, the quintessential time to contemplate death. (Leave it to a perfectionist German dog to do everything right.) On Saturday, a friend and I will dig the burial hole in the back yard. I’ll have to measure Onyx’s length, but I figure it will need to be about 4′ x 3′ x 4′. Her shroud will be a bamboo fiber sheet that I slept on until it had holes. Until it’s time, a tarpaulin will line the grave so that the sides don’t collapse in the rain. I don’t want to hurry Onyx’s death, but a terrible anxiety takes over when I think her grave will not be ready when the time comes for its need. I don’t want to put her body in my chest freezer until I can dig one, or be talked into cremating her. For some reason, I need to know where her body is, that she’s in a place that honors her body while she becomes part of the earth.

Writing stories about death must be a rehearsal, or a way for this writer to confront her deepest fears: the not knowing what’s on the other side or whether my life will have had any value. Accommodating Onyx’s new insistences–her refusal at the stairs, her need to eat many small meals, her eight trips outside each day, her wanting to sleep in a new location, her return to overzealous guarding behavior–both of us are preparing, rehearsing, seeing if we can “do this.” As in that first short story I wrote, maybe we learn who we are when we prepare a body for burial.

There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House
by Emily Dickinson

There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,
As lately as Today –
I know it, by the numb look
Such Houses have — alway –

The Neighbors rustle in and out –
The Doctor — drives away –
A Window opens like a Pod –
Abrupt — mechanically –

Somebody flings a Mattress out –
The Children hurry by –
They wonder if it died — on that –
I used to — when a Boy –

The Minister — goes stiffly in –
As if the House were His –
And He owned all the Mourners — now –
And little Boys — besides –

And then the Milliner — and the Man
Of the Appalling Trade –
To take the measure of the House –
There’ll be that Dark Parade –

Of Tassels — and of Coaches — soon –
It’s easy as a Sign –
The Intuition of the News –
In just a Country Town –

Bruce’s short-short stories make me think about the elements of story and what makes a story satisfying.

To fit reading into my schedule, I have to trick myself–not that I’m too busy to read, but that I get distracted.  So,  I subscribe to Bruce’s annual short short’s, stories that take a few minutes to read when they arrive by email about three times each month.  Here’s a sample of Bruce’s work.

Dinosaur

When he was very young, he waved his arms, gnashed the teeth of his massive jaws, and tromped around the house so that the dishes trembled in the china cabinet.  “Oh, for goodness sake,” his mother said.  “You are not a dinosaur!  You are a human being!”  Since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time that he might be a pirate.  “Seriously,” his father said at some point, “what do you want to be?”  A fireman, then.  Or a policeman.  Or a soldier.  Some kind of hero.  But in high school they gave him tests and told him he was very good with numbers.  Perhaps he would like to be a math teacher?  That was respectable.  Or a tax accountant?  He could make a lot of money doing that.  It seemed a good idea to make money, what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family.  So he was a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted that it made him, well, small.  And he felt even smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant, but a retired tax accountant.  Still worse, a retired tax accountant who forgot things.  He forgot to take the garbage to the curb, forgot to take his pill, forgot to turn his hearing aid back on.  Every day it seemed he had forgotten more things, important things, like which of his children lived in San Francisco and which of his children were married or divorced.

Then one day when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him.  He forgot that he was not a dinosaur.  He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling the familiar warmth on his dinosaur skin, watching dragonflies flitting among the horsetails at the water’s edge.

(c)  Bruce Holland Rogers.  Used with permission of the author.

If you liked the craft Dinosaur demonstrated, consider subscribing to his short-short series $10.oo/year to read something, then write something that shows the influence of  fine storytelling.

Coolbroth Fronk turned and looked at Bob Dollar. There passed between them a cold and immediate animosity.

What could be more clear?

• William Faulkner wrote the The Big Sleep screenplay–the original Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Faulkner “peeled the onion,” layer after layer using dialog and Bogart’s face to expose Bacall’s character. That was bea-u-tee-ful.

• In Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Jack Nicholson looks eerily like Robert Wagner.  Check out the scene near the end when Nicholson lies down and we see his face straight on. Does anyone agree with me that Jake tried to save the Faye Dunaway character and failed: hence, tragedy. Or, do you agree with my buddy Nancy, that the end had no punch and the hero did not push the action. Vote please.

[polldaddy poll=4180053]

• Brideshead Revisited, the movie based on the Waugh novel, I loved. Period movies rock. For you who have read the book and seen the movie, do you feel the movie followed the novel’s spirit?

• Sideways and The Royal Tennenbaums. Hated them.  The best part about the Tennenbaums was the concept. Sideways. Simply boring.

When a reader or viewer says, “boring,” the criticism usually means either lack of escalating  suspense or lackluster characters that no one likes.  Those criticisms remind me I’m revising a few similar bumps in my novel’s pages. Back to work.

I’ve heard a good writer can create audience identification with any character. I didn’t believe writers, Bruce Horak and Rebecca Northan, could succeed with Cancer.  They did—at least for long enough. Horak and Northan gave the  audience access to the character Cancer’s emotions,  making this stranger understandable to someone like you and me.

Cancer, the character, demonstrates human concerns: he makes drinks and serves his guests, is self-conscious about his appearance, and wants to be loved. Horak’s costume is amazing and unimaginable. The play’s tempo of “reveals” about Cancer’s character is a study in anticipation. Horak’s Eddy Izzard-like performance makes the audience feel sympathy for Cancer—until the plot turns.

Next time I hear that a reader can’t identify with one of my characters, I know what to do– give ‘em the Horak treatment.  If Horak can have an audience relate to Cancer, I can solve my own character problems.