Hollywood – or at least the Hollywood John Fante knew, all cigar-wielding moguls, scriptwriters passing one another on the road, on their way in and out of bars, the doorways lit up under neon signs like electrified siren calls, the dream of the Golden West, palm fronds biting the sky (blue of course) – has a tight hold on my imagination.

A hold that’s fuelled by nuggets like this, pruned from a cursory roam around the Internet after an initial pointer from Covenger & Kester.

Bezzerides’ most famous script was Kiss Me Deadly, which was a masterful film noir and influenced many directors in France shortly after its release. Bezzerides transformed the novel by Mickey Spillane into an apocalyptic, atomic-age paranoia film noir. When asked about his script, and his decision to make “the great whatsit” the Pandora’s Box objective of a ruthless cast of characters, Bezzerides commented: “People ask me about the hidden meanings in the script, about the A-bomb, about McCarthyism, what does the poetry mean, and so on. And I can only say that I didn’t think about it when I wrote it . . . I was having fun with it. I wanted to make every scene, every character, interesting. A girl comes up to Ralph Meeker, I make her a nympho. She grabs him and kisses him the first time she sees him. She says, “You don’t taste like anybody I know.” I’m a big car nut, so I put in all that stuff with the cars and the mechanic. I was an engineer, and I gave the detective the first phone answering machine in that picture. I was having fun.”

#A.I Bezzerides #Hollywood

I read Tony Judt’s ‘The Memory Chalet’ this month, a collection of essays dictated as he lay dying and utterly immobilised. This is reason enough to marvel but I found less sentimental reasons for appreciating the book.  His precision of expression and adroit balancing of personal, impressionistic recollection and socio-political pronouncement are a testament to the craft of writing. Each word feels carefully weighed so that nothing might be said to be superfluous (to me, perhaps the highest praise).

Such writing is the result of endeavour, and of the hard slog of detached appraisal, editing, and excision. The Memory Chalet affected me deeply. It made me reflect on the laziness of my writing, but it also inflamed that itch for expression. Over the years, many half-baked notions of what form that expression might take have flitted through my mind. Slowly, those thoughts have coalesced around the idea of poetic recollection and reflection – short pieces that might one day be stitched together to form a cohesive whole. Imagine if W.G Sebald had kept a blog and perhaps that comes close.

The Memory Chalet made me want to write and write properly – with care and undistracted attention – so that I might give form to the daily melange of impressions and experiences. So that I might know myself a little better. And so that I might become a better writer.

#the memory chalet #tony judt #wg sebald

The Long Goodbye is an excellent read. The story hums along nicely enough but it’s Chandler’s melancholic observations, voiced by various of his characters, that were most affecting:

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn’t have one. I didn’t care. I finished the drink and went to bed.”

“I own newspapers but I don’t like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honourable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandle, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what that depends on.”

“He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway.”

#instagram #raymond chandler

The above is a trailer for a documentary by Grant Gee in which he retraces W.G Sebald’s route along the Suffolk coast – the setting for his novel The Rings of Saturn. I’ve tried and failed to express the depth of my admiration for Sebald on this blog before so I won’t try again. I’m very much looking forward to tracking this down and watching it.

Details of the film’s release dates can be found here while The Guardian has several excellent articles and reviews – here, here and here.

Pitchfork has details of the soundtrack, composed by The Caretaker, whose An Empty Bliss Beyond This World is one of the most unearthly records I’ve ever purchased.

#grant gee #patience (after sebald) #wg sebald

A recent post on the excellent Covenger and Kester has made me aware of the work of Edward Gorey, an American writer and illustrator who almost never left his Cape Cod home, was an avid consumer of pop culture (he was a big fan of Cheers), and rarely missed a performance of the New York City Ballet.

A choice quote from his Wikipedia entry:

“Because of the settings and style of Gorey’s work, many people have assumed he was British; in fact, he only left the U.S. once, for a visit to the Scottish Hebrides.”

#edward gorey #illustration

“I mean, the guys who are running newspapers over the last twenty or thirty years have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. It’s even more profound than Detroit in 1973 making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car. Except it’s not analogous, in that a Nissan is a pretty good car and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it’s great for commentary and froth, doesn’t do very much first-generation reporting at all. The economic model can’t sustain that kind of reporting. They had contempt for their own product, these people.”

Just one standout quote from an interview containing many.

#david simon #journalism #the wire

This trilogy of books by the little-known writer Michael de Larrabeiti had me entranced as a ten-year-old. The Borribles are runaway kids, battling to stay out of the clutches of the grown-up world. Their ears grow long and pointy (their chief giveaway) and, once they’ve gone underground, they cease to age.

My memories of the books are hazy. I remember they lived underground, wore various headgear to hide their ears, and the catapult was their weapon of choice. If you have kids, seek these out and give them a treat they’ll treasure. (Though they will of course begin to resent you as the embodiment of the establishment.)

The covers above are taken from this wonderful Flickr set of Borribles imprints.

#Michael De Larrabeiti #The Borribles

Thr phrase Mickey Mouse is a well-established way to describe something small-time, inconsequential or amateurish. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list here but this is my personal favourite; Gary Oldman’s rogue cop in Leon:

Interestingly, Charles Bukowski detested Mickey Mouse:

While we’re talking about Bukowski, this is a lovely reading of one of his most beautiful poems, The Japanese Wife:

#charles bukowski #gary oldman #leon #luc besson #mickey mouse

I came across this today, from an interview Artzar once conducted with the American poet William Bronk:

Are you familiar with the Internet, the World Wide Web?

BRONK: I know there are such things. My archives at Columbia and the University of New Hampshire are indexed on the Internet. From time to time somebody will say to me, “Oh, I saw one of your poems on the Internet the other day.” I don’t know who put it there or why.

#poet #william bronk

Montmorency, carrying a stick.

Two disreputable looking curs, friends of Montmorency’s.

George, carrying coats and rugs, and smoking a short pipe.

Harris, trying to walk with easy grace, while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag in one hand and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.

Greengrocer’s boy and baker’s boy, with baskets.

Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.

Confectioner’s boy, with basket.

Grocer’s boy, with basket.

Long-haired dog.

Cheesemonger’s boy, with basket.

Odd man, carrying a bag.

Bosom companion of odd man, with his hands in his pockets smoking a short clay.

Fruiterer’s boy, with basket.

Myself, carrying three hats and a pair of boots, and trying to look as if I didn’t know it.

Six small boys, and four stray dogs.

Jerome K. Jerome