Joe Nocera And Harper Lee

You might recall that I recently called out New York Times's Op-Ed writer Joe Nocera. This pertained to his foolish reasoning that the presence of a small watch maker in Detroit signaled some great come back for that city. Perhaps I was too hard on Nocera. It looks like he nailed the Harper Lee situation.  He had the courage to describe frankly what those around Harper Lee did to her when the published the first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird as a new novel.  In pertinent part, Nocera observed:


So perhaps it’s not too late after all to point out that the publication of “Go Set a Watchman” constitutes one of the epic money grabs in the modern history of American publishing.

Atta boy, Joe. Keep calling them like you see them. Maybe there is hope for you after all.

Nocera's Gem

I Wish I Had Said That

I signed up for an online course in film noir put on my Turner Classic Movies (TCM). As part of the process, they email me a film clip each day.  Accompanying the clip is a discussion of the movie.  The other day the film was DOA starring Edmund O'Brien. The clip was curated by a fellow named Richard Edwards.  His take on DOA involved a general break down in order as chaos increased. He wrote:


As Robert Porfirio mentions in his article on Existential motifs, in a film like D.O.A.
we find ourselves in a meaningless, purposeless and absurd world. The threat of imminent death hangs over this film. While we (and the film's staging and camerawork) are constantly on the move, we have no certainty of our destinations. Walking into Los Angeles's police department, as Frank Bigelow (Edmund O'Brien) does at the beginning of this film, might be less of a quest for solutions and justice than a moment of resignation to the inevitable. The police station seems less of a place of security and more like a bureaucratic way station with long dimly lit corridors. We are beginning to find ourselves, over and over again, at the end of the line in the 1950s. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the plight of Frank Bigelow. As in the other Daily Doses this week, we (as well as audiences of that time) still want to hold the belief that there is somebody in charge of this decaying and violent world, but "a sense of malaise" and dread has now spread and doesn't seem containable. We can longer be certain that the police, or detectives, or ordinary people can hold back the anxiety and paranoia of the 1950s

When I read that description, I thought: Exactly. That is precisely what I have been trying to convey in all the Hofmann/Garvin novels (indeed, all my novels.) The two detectives spend their days trying to make sense out of a senseless world. Without intending to do so, they are on the front line of the battle against entropy, the last hope for order. Think of the novel Heroes in this setting and compare it to the classic hero's quest. Think of Smoke, where the arson fires get more and more complicated that they cannot be anything short of supernatural. Against such a destructive force, we send out two men, two ordinary men who try to make sense of it all. 

Sadly, it looks like Robert Porfirio's 1976 essay No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir,” is not readily available, Too bad: sounds like a great read.

  



































































 

Meridian Availaible on Amazon

Meridian has just gone up on Amazon. The e-book is available now. The paperback should be on  Amazon within a few days.   Teddi Black provided another outstanding cover.  It is worth noting that she won an award for the cover design for Harvest.  I hope readers will like Meridian. Please feel free to send me any comments or questions. Happy reading.

Land, Ho!

NPR had another one of those "only in Detroit" stories this week. This one was about the so-called land bank in Detroit.  According to NPR, the land bank in the Motor City takes ownership of properties that no one else wants.  At present, there is a modest 88,000 properties available.  This amounts to a staggering one-quarter of all the property in Detroit.  You  need to take a moment to let that number take hold in your mind.  Try to think of any other place where not only is fully one fourth of all the property abandoned, it is owned by the land bank because absolutely no one else wants it.  To their credit, the land bank is trying to find suckers to buy these places.  The current plan is to offer discounts to City workers. So far, the land bank has sold 300 parcels.  Let's see, 300 into 88,000 means that the last plot will sell sometime around when the sun burns out.  Little wonder, too.  Even if you bought a house from the land bank for $100.00, you are just getting a headache.  You would have to drop tens of thousands of dollars into the place just to make it livable. Then the tax collectors will be knocking on your door (if you have one.) The first time you leave your neighborhood to go grocery shopping in the suburbs (remember, no chain grocery stores anywhere in Detroit), the local vandals are going to go in and steal every last thing you put into your new house.
When you hear stories about Detroit coming back because a hip restaurant opened downtown, keep the land bank in mind.  When they get down to around only 50,000 or so abandoned parcels that no one will buy, maybe we can pop the Champagne corks.




NPR Story On Detroit Land Bank


Shop Now For Your New Home

Shit From Shinola

It's almost as if the watch maker in Detroit could not resist the obvious when he set up shop in Detroit.  Why not go for the punch line when naming your company? I say that because it appears that national writers checking in on the Motor City are obsessed with the fact that a small company is making a few thousand watches there.  The latest to run down this rabbit hole is Joe Nocera in the New York Times.  He wrote an op-ed piece that the Times published on June 2, 2015.  The thesis of Nocera's article seems to be that Detroit is coming back to life. Why? Because Shinola has less than 400 employees making fewer than 200,000 watches a year in Detroit.  And it's not just the New York Times.  The National Geographic magazine ran an article about Detroit in their May, 2015 edition. As with the Times, National Geographic is besides itself in wonder at the comeback for the Motor City. This time it is because a few hardy souls have started a few micro-businesses here and there.  Stories like this are filled with condescension. It's like hearing the effusive praise an adult gives a small child for having dressed himself. These stories are also insulting to the people of Detroit. By supposedly praising the "can-do" spirit of the few people still there, these writers just wish away the crippling decline of the City.  Sure, the whole place is a vast, ruined wasteland.  But, how about them watches? Is it possible that people like Nocera literally cannot tell shit from Shinola? How degrading for a City that was the arsenal of democracy, one of the wealthiest and most beautiful places in America. How smug for a few out of towners to pat the people there on the head and say, we really like what you have done with the place.  Forget the 80% of the population who fled. Ignore the tens of thousands of acres of abandoned land covered with burned-out structures, like some sort necrotic pox.  I think this is how the dying must feel when silly relatives and friends keep telling them how good they look. Trust me, those doctors don't know a thing: you are going to beat this. Mark my words.
If there is way back for Detroit, which is doubtful, it has to begin with an honest assessment of how bad it really is there. No company in the world can sell enough watches to change the fate of the place. So, if you want to help, stow your blithe, condescending praise and offer some real solutions.


Nocera's Nonsense


National Geographic Article on Detroit

Forget Me While I Dream Of You

Meridian is working its way towards publication. Teddi Black and I are working on the cover. I can't say for sure when, but you should be able to get the book from Amazon within a month.  An old-time song called Forget Me Not appears throughout the novel. If you would like to listen to it, you can do so at the link below.  You will need Real Player, which is available for download for free.


Forget Me Not

Old Documents Come To Light--Update

Back in January of this year, I promised to make public the ancillary files I created while writing my novels.  It took a while, but I finally got around to it.  If you want to know more about my process of writing these books, you can click the link below.   You can look at the character sketches and timelines and other files for each novel. This includes Meridian, which I have not even published yet.  It does not include Home, which I won't have out until this fall.


Happy reading. Let me know if you find anything notable or interesting.


Click Here For The Documents