GRIFT MAGAZINE and DEAD END FOLLIES

Hi folks,

Couple of recent publications in which I’m involved. First, is the notice by Grift Magazine that their second print issue of the magazine is now available. I’m very proud to be included.

Grift #2 is available now!

Posted by John on July 14th, 2013 

The second issue of Grift is now available!

Believe me, it was worth the wait. The issue includes an exhaustive (yet incredibly captivating) interview of Les Edgerton, another with Stuart Neville, and a look a the film noir woodcuts of Loren Kantor.

The fiction section is beefed up considerably from the first issue with stories from Erik Arneson, Jack Bates, Matthew Brozik, Lawrence Buentello, Holly Day, Salvatore Falco, Andy Henion, Davin Ireland, David James Keaton, Jon McGoran, Chad Rohrbacher, Helen Maryles Shankman, and Martin Zeigler.

Get it here.

The second is the highly-regarded blog by Ben Lelievre, Dead End Follies

Dead End Follies

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Book Review : Les Edgerton - Just Like That (2012)

Benoit Lelievre

(also reviewed)
Order THE RAPIST here

"Jake"

I said, "Huh?"

"You got three weeks, huh."

He was talking about my parole hearing. "That's right"

"You'll be back, Jake. I can guarantee it."

Everybody always says that. It's jealousy, that's all it is.

If you've followed my coverage of the release of Les Edgerton's THE RAPIST, you know he's an unusual creature in the crime fiction landscape. He is half-writer, half-character. Your run-of-the-mill writer could never imagine a character who has lived through what Les lived. I know what you're thinking. This calls for a memoir, right? Well, Edgerton has one...or he almost does. JUST LIKE THAT is many things. It's a novel, first and foremost, but it's also a memoir, a thinly-veiled true crime book and a user guide to separate what's real from what's bullshit in today mainstream fiction portrayal of prison environment. Fortunately, it's also a pretty good story.

JUST LIKE THAT doesn't really have a beginning or an end, dramatically speaking. It's not a construction, built from a series of events, that reaches a confrontational boiling point. It's just a chunk of time in protagonist Jake Mayes' life where he was in and out of prison. Edgerton mentions in the foreword that several parts of the novel were published as short stories and it shows. Every chapter is so well-defined, it could be a story in itself. Better yet, I'm sure some could craft a novel using one of JUST LIKE THAT's chapters as an inspiration prompt. Since every chapter/stories share the same protagonist and that they are in chronological order, it works fine as a novel also.

You could call JUST LIKE THAT metafiction, I suppose. The foreword and the afterword are an integral part of the novel's enjoyment as Edgerton explain most of this kind of happened and he refuses to tell you what's real and what's fiction. That gives the reader perspective on his own crime fiction culture and adds a layer of fun to the reading process as you're always trying to guess where is the line between reality and fiction. Reading JUST LIKE THAT is an active process. It's not a story that delivers itself to you straightforwardly. It's something that's anchors in reality, in Les Edgerton's persona, and finishes on the pages of the novel. Yeah, I guess it's crime metafiction after all.

"You ever get scared?"

"Well, there's time's when I'm more cautious than others if that's what you mean."

"Fuck it, Jake. I'm askin' you a serious question. You ever been scared of anything?"

Before I could answer and maybe because he really wanted an answer and knew I wouldn't admit it - having fear, that is - he said, "I been scared most of my life, Jake. You believe that?"

There are a lot of quiet, almost intimate moments to JUST LIKE THAT, which were my favorite parts (see what I just quoted). Parts where Edgerton seems to break the fourth wall and explain his philosophy on things himself. I have never seen the borderline animalistic nature of the criminal spirit explained so well. That surrender to your darkest impulses of destruction. It sets the tone for the whole novel, which is light on outward emotion, but not without a heart. That's just how I like fiction. Seldom tender, but never mushy. Male friendship is also a strong theme in JUST LIKE THAT, the peculiar, reticent way men show appreciation towards one another and stick together. 

You can't really put an etiquette on JUST LIKE THAT. Just stick it it on the mystery section shelves of your bookstore and let the readers make up their mind. Les Edgerton often says he went to the Jack London School of Writing, so it makes JUST LIKE THAT his master degree thesis. No matter how you want to call it : metafictional, autobiographical, picaresque or criminal, it's mostly a great story about being a human being in the darkest corners of America. It's not anything precise, yet it's not difficult to love.

Posted by Benoit Lelievre

Thanks, Ben!

"JUST LIKE THAT is yet another  Les Edgerton winner. Mr. Edgerton in his prison memoir conjures up in honest, Bukowski-esque prose a mad dog life lived behind and beyond the bars of institutional correctional facilities. Literature's version of Johnny Cash, America has yet another gifted bard to sing the blues of time served.

I have long believed Mr. Edgerton to be an American original, who has for too long remained one of our best-kept literary secrets. As a publisher I want to put to print whatever he writes, as a reader I want to devour the pages, as a writer, I'd be happy to pilfer just a few of his lines."

-Cortright McMeel, author of Short (St. Martin's), Co-publisher, Bare Knuckles Press, Co-editor, Noir National, International Journal of Crime Fiction

Blue skies,

Les

BOOK REVIEW OF CORT MCMEEL'S NOVEL TITLED: SHORT

Hi folks,

I'm posting something a bit different. Cortright McMeel, a writer I've admired for a long time has his first novel coming out from St. Martin's Press. He asked me to write a review for it for Amazon which I'm posting below. Cort found me several years ago when he founded the national noir magazine, Murdaland, and invited me to submit a story for their first issue. From that moment, we became good friends. He has a dream of creating his own press and came close but at the last minute his financing fell through. We're both hoping he realizes enough from this novel for him to start up his press, which will focus on noir ala Georges Simenon. Cort believes in my work and wants to publish one of my novels as his press's first offering. It would be a distinct honor for me--he's a superb editor and knows the world of noir better than anyone I know.

Anyway, I loved the novel he wrote. It's breathtakingly original and the language is pure poetry. The story is simply, powerful. I hope lots of you glom onto a copy--you won't be sorry.

Here's the review I wrote (which doesn't do it the justice it deserves.).

DON’T “SHORT” YOURSELF—READ MCMEEL’S NOVEL

We’ve seen financial thrillers before—such bestselling novels such as Joseph Finder and James Grippando have provided, as well as accounts of insider Wall Street reporting as Michael Lewis’ (The Big Short) and Harry Markopolos’ expose of Bernie Madoff in his seminal No One Would Listen come to mind—but Cortright McMeel’s first novel, Short, pioneers new territory. Not a thriller in the vein of Finder or a expose such as Markopolos delivers, but rather, Short delivers us a character-driven existential work that goes much deeper than a simple detective yarn or a fact-laden historical work. In Short, we see deeply into the minds and motivations of the characters and all the permutations of greed the human animal is capable of. The characters who people this novel are not only creating a scheme to short electrical power and make obscene fortunes; they are shorting their own spirituality. And… they all lose.

McMeel has created a cautionary tale of greed gone amok, of acts of terrorism as heinous as from any militant jihad, only for fortunes and not souls. A landscape of lust and gluttony, Bibical in its scope. Of the horror of modern society and the moral landscape that has shifted to naked materialism sans any semblance of moral character.

Trader Joe Gallagher becomes enmeshed in a scheme to short electrical power by his boss The Ghost whose machinations include an act of terrorism as heinous as any jihad, and almost succeeds until a tropical storm turns the wrong way and becomes Hurricane Katrina, wiping out all the players in its path. Gallagher has his own agenda and ends up making money, but still comes up short on the ledger of life as he’s fired and loses his wife Celina along the way.

In fact, everyone loses and readers expecting to find a formulaic ending in which characters are changed as a result will discover a much more noir-like finale and one which more accurately reveals the place we find ourselves in the reality of today’s society.

The reader will be rewarded with more than a powerful story. McMeel delivers a original voice that is sure to draw comparisons to some of our best stylists. At turns, the prose becomes lyrical and poetic, as in this passage…

Celina felt comfortable among her old friends. The feeling of being in a nexus of the art world among artists made Celina feel as if she had woken up from a deep sleep. Her eyes and ears cannibalized the room, taking in the various energies, the steely hope of the up and comers, the sucking sound made by the failures and the struggling, the tittering of industry minions and the smug, leering eyes of the wealthy buyers, professionals, middle aged men in pressed pants. She was normally so far away from this and the room began to pulse like a heart beat. Celina was aware of the hunger sweeping over her like it does those recovering from a sickness; the appetite, so long suppressed, returns ravenous tenfold, almost to the point of passion.

…to profound insights…

There is a difference between boxers and warriors. The old veteran’s of the trading floor fought for more than money, more than the game, it was a strange war to them, one that would never end until the trader’s on the other end were destroyed and they were victorious. Theirs was a taste of something that they themselves could not define. The only glimpse of it could be seen when they were up a crapload of money and they had a look on their face that was not of happiness, nor giddiness with riches, but one of relief. That moment which would make any normal man ecstatic, merely served as brief respite for them before they embarked on their next campaign, the result of which would have them losing what they had won or making more. Gallagher wondered if the way trading was for them, a life or death affair, was more of a blessing or a curse.

…and the heart of the matter…

As Stan spoke and praised the Lord and his life and his wife and his luck and his house and his pool and his job and his country and his faith, Milt bore inside his own belly an evil, yellow-fanged, greedy, ugly, growling demon, even more hungry and obscene than usual. Milt felt he saw Stan’s preaching for what it was, a selfish need to exorcise guilt by saving others.

In the end, none of the players escape the insanity. Which is the brilliance of this novel. The author knows the truth of the matter—that learning one is mad doesn’t constitute a cure. This is Camus’ The Stranger written by a spiritual descendant of Kafka and decidedly worth your time.