Forgotten books: The Night of the Assassin (The Wild Wild West #3) by Robert Vaughn

At its best, television can link people during a happy event (the inauguration), a tragic event (9/11), or great entertainment (“The Wire” or “Foyle’s War”). At its worse, it appeals to our lowest common denominator (insert the most insipid reality show here). Somewhere in between are our guilty pleasures, those shows while, not great, still give us smiles and escape for an hour each week.

One of those guilty pleasures is “The Wild Wild West,” the 1960s “James Bond on horseback” show that was wonderfully anachronistic and charmingly fun. Robert Conrad’s tight pants and short waistcoat were hardly the stuff of the old west but he looked good so who really cared? Ross Martin’s Artemus Gordon, the consummate actor, was Jim West’s brilliant partner. Except for the episodes without Martin’s Artemus, there’s hardly a clunker in the bunch.

They saved the clunkers for the books. Well, at least one of them.

Eleven years ago, Robert Vaughn wrote three novels based on the series. In a break from my usual pattern (read book #1 first), I decided to read book #3, The Night of the Assassin. Why? Because, according to the back cover, the story takes place here in Texas--in Houston, no less--and it deals with the desire for some Texas secessionist to kill President James Garfield and leave the union. Again. You know, there was a war that settled that little matter. There’s not a need or a justification for Texas to secede. And there’s little reason to read this book.

I wanted to like it, I really did. I was all primed to see what adventures Jim and Artemus had in my hometown. I even checked my brain at the door as I read some of the clunky prose. (It probably didn’t help that I am listening to the gorgeous prose of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion while I read this book.) I checked up on Robert Vaughn and discovered he’s written something like 200 books. This one he mailed in.

The book opens on April 14, 1865. For you non-history types, that’s the day John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. Of course, that’s the day Jim West gets his discharge papers, meets Artemus, and, later, attend the theater at the same time as Lincoln. I get that. But their witty repartee starts that very same day...and they’ve just met. Didn’t jive. Needless to say, Jim and Artemus don’t get their man.

Cut to sixteen years later, 1881. Jim and Artemus are dispatched to Sweetwater, Texas, to investigate some counterfeit money circulating around town. Now, at this point, I’m thinking to myself “Well, Sweetwater’s nearly 500 miles from Houston, a seven hour car ride in 2009. How are the dynamic duo going to get down to the Gulf Coast? Oh, well, the book’s still young.”

They arrive in Sweetwater and investigate. The Texas Liberation Front (TLF), the funny money, and a traveling acting troupe all seem to be in the same places at the same times. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out there’s a connection. Artemus infiltrates the acting troupe while Jim heads out to find the TLF. (Stifles yawn here.)

The typical stuff happens: gun fights (not convincing), night investigations (not suspenseful), flamenco guitar (played by Jim, natch, because he’s Jim West!), and the deployment of gadgets. Now, that’s where the book goes right. The gadgets are cool and have always been. There’s even a primitive computer.

As we pass the halfway point, I started wondering, again, how the heck Jim and Artemus are going to get down to Houston. And where’s that main plot, the one about Garfield, the back cover promised? Shut up, Scott. Don’t think. Just be in the moment. Sighs. Turns page.

Garfield doesn’t step onto the book’s stage until page 134. The entire book is only 181 pages. Now, the historian in me started thinking about what really happened to Garfield. He was shot on July 2, 1881, and died two months later. You’re typical reader isn’t going to know that so I went with the flow. I was curious to see how the real events melded with this fictional story. And I’ll admit it was pretty good. As Jim and Artemus confound the assassins (come on, that’s not a spoiler, you knew it when you picked up the book), the real Garfield is getting shot up in Washington. The scenes cut back and forth at this time and, honestly, it worked well. Jim and Artemus foiled the plot only to have their president get wounded anyway. Would have been nice to have the two men actually be sad about it. All we get is this: “Artemus sighed.” Sighed? Is that all?

Oh, and the city in which the attempted assassination took place? Dallas. Not Houston. Guess that explains how Jim and Artemus are to get to Houston. They aren’t! I’m a tech writer by day and I’d be in serious trouble if I let a book get out with erroneous information on the cover. The actual date of Garfield’s shooting was July 2, 1881. The date in the book: July 1, 1881. Minor quibble but where’s the editor?

The absolute groaner of a quote was made by the Dallas police chief at the end: “And while I am saddened [is that all you can muster?] that President Garfield was shot, I must confess to being thankful that it didn’t happen in Dallas. I’m not sure the city could ever live anything like that down.” The beauty of historical fiction is that you can use quotes like this because we know what happened. But seriously, that’s overkill.

There are two other books in this series and I already own them. I imagine I’ll get around to them. Someday. In the meantime, however, I’m off to my library. I need to check out some of the original episodes on DVD so I can be reminded of how fun the shows were. Lots more fun than this book.

Treason at Hanford: The novel resumed

It occurred to me that I stopped posting chapters of my first novel. Not really sure why. Granted, no one was haranguing me to keep posting the chapters (no, that's not some lame attempt at eliciting comments; just a fact).

But I've decided to start again. Again, not sure why.

You can find Chapter 28 of Treason at Hanford: A Harry Truman Mystery available over at Texas Pulp Writer.

Enjoy.

Schizophrenic writing: Do you suffer too?

Just about every single writing tip can be boiled down to what Stephen King put down in his book, On Writing: "All writers should read a lot and write a lot."

It seems simple, really, and my writing for this blog has certainly honed certain aspects of my writing. And I've never stopped reading/listening to books when I write my fiction. But I do come across a certain schizophrenic aspect of my writing and I'm wondering if I'm not alone.

You see, most of my reading is crime fiction and, of that, most of it consists of hard-boiled material. As a result, I read a lot of shorter sentences with great Pulp Words and Phrases and those seep into my writing. Nothing wrong there. However, when I do decide to read something of a different genre, I discover my writing style shifts. Take my current reading project, Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. It's one of the most elegantly written books I have ever read. He has fun with words and writes flowery sentences that could stand side-by-side with great literature. Now, in my day job (tech writer), I've been accused of writing too flowery often but not in my fiction. As I wrangle words for my current story, I find the hard-boiled self and the flowery self at war with each other. The resulting mess is something akin to verbal vomit.

Anybody else have that kind of war within themselves? If so, what do you do about it? I'd hate to tell myself not to read certain kinds of books when I think everything I read goes into making me a better writer. Maybe I'm just working out something via words, finding my true writer self. Elmore Leonard once said that it took him a million words written before he found his true voice. If that's the threshold...

Two Sentence Tuesday

Today, I break the rule. Here is a three-fer from a piece I started writing a year or two ago. I’ll probably dust it off sometime this year and work up something. In fact, I’ve already an idea about what to do.

Griffin Lynne is the main character. He’s a black, ex-con, trying to go straight but finding the path not quite straight and much too narrow. Griffin is atop his motorcycle in Houston traffic and has just noticed a preppy guy in a late-model sedan, listening to insipid pop music, with a set of golf clubs in the back of the car. Naturally, Griffin thinks him a prick.

Mr. Golf Guy locked eyes with me and smiled, admiring, apparently, my bike and my gear. I got those kinds of looks all the time from preppy guys who think the mere act of riding a motorcycle—Harleys, usually—made them into some kind of rebel. When the hell did owning a bike make you a rebel?

I’m currently reading Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, one of the most elegant novels I’ve ever read. I’m NOT finished (that’s for anyone out there who reads this and then spills some secret you think I should already know but don’t yet). The story can be boiled down to this: The Canterbury Tales in Space. It’s much more than that, really (I’ll review it when I’m finished). There is subtle grace and magnificent, mind-expanding ideas and realities.

Nonetheless, there is a poet character and he’s an acerbic, profane man. When he’s telling his story, he has these words of wisdom for folks, like me, who consider themselves writers

Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one’s immortality. And the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

It’s the first time in my life where I actually want to do acid.

For more Two Sentence Tuesday doubles, head on over to Women of Mystery.

Forgotten Books: It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive by Eric Alterman

Now that we have the most important event of this month behind us (the successful transition to a new president), it’s time to turn our attention to the second most important event of the month: the new Bruce Springsteen album, “Working on a Dream,” landing on store shelves this Tuesday. And to get everyone ready, I’m reviewing Eric Alterman’s It Ain’t a Sin to be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen as part of Patti Abbott’s continuing Forgotten Books Friday project.

For those of y’all who don’t know, Alterman is an unabashedly liberal blogger/columnist/author of books on politics and music. He was the first major columnist hired to blog on a major media outlet (MSNBC.com) and he now writes for The Nation.

But that Alterman is not the one who wrote this book. He is, first and foremost, an enthusiastic fan of Springsteen’s music. Everyone reading this review is a fan of at least one famous person and we’d all like to meet said person. He got his wish in 1998 on the set of the Charlie Rose show. In a humorous introduction, Alterman relates how he met Springsteen before The Boss’s interview and how, when faced with one of his idols, he clammed up. He wanted to relate how much the music meant to him as he grew up. He wanted to pour out all the things he’d done to score tickets. He wanted to reveal that he couldn’t imagine his life without the soundtrack Springsteen provided.

What Alterman did say was nothing much more than “Hello.” And, with a clever wink, he ends his introduction with these words: “Here’s what I wanted to say...” What follows is a book-length love note to one of the most consequential musicians of the past thirty years.

For the most part, folks who read this book are already Springsteen fans. That’s pretty much a given. What’s essential about Alterman’s book is context. He reminds the reader just how dire the circumstances were for traditional rock n’ roll in a time of glam-rock, progressive rock, and other music crowding the AM and FM airwaves. By 1975, when Bruce landed on the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week, one of the most famous quotes about Springsteen was made. The New York Times’ Henry Edwards wrote “If there hadn’t been a Bruce Springsteen, then critics would have made him up.” Alterman turns this quote on its ear. To him, Springsteen was too good to be true. “No responsible writer would dare invent him.”

The book is a musical biography of the Second Most Famous Musician from New Jersey (bonus points if you can name #1)*. Alterman’s takes on Springsteen’s music and career and mixed with a wealth of primary sources--via interviews, new and old, with the members of the E Street Band--and secondary sources throughout the years, infusing this book with a life all its own. It’s one thing for an author to write about the commanding stage presence of the young, shy New Jerseyian. It’s quite another when you discover quotes like this: “...jamming with Springsteen [was] ‘like having Einstein coming over and doing your homework for you.’” It was back in these days when the nickname “Boss” was first applied, something The Boss himself has come to detest.

Each chapter is a period of Springsteen’s career and it’s fun to read the table of contents to get a sense of how Alterman breaks up everything. “A Saint in the City” is the early years, the first two albums; “Tramps Like Us...” is, of course, the seminal “Born to Run” album; and “Caviar and Dirty” the 1990s, post-E Street Band phase. Each chapter starts with a photo and a lyric-of-the-era as an epigram.

The "Born to Run” chapters are certainly highlights of the book. From the exuberant joy of the music to the angry court battles that followed, the years 1975-1977 changed Bruce. According to Alterman, the fairy tale ended on 27 May 1977, the day Springsteen and his former manager, Mike Appel, settled their legal battle. Bruce had “entered [the studio in 1975] a romantic young innocent and left [the court battle] a guarded, distrustful adult.”

In light of his recent efforts for Democratic candidates in 2004 and 2008, one can’t help but wonder if this was the turning point in Bruce’s political as well as social life. I’d say it was, as evidenced by the transformation of his song lyrics. Up through “Born to Run,” Bruce sang about youth, dreams, girls, cars, and rock n’ roll. After, starting with 1978’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” outcasts of a different sort emerged in his songs: killers, war veterans, unemployed workers, or victims of terrorists attacks or police shootings. Repression becomes a theme, chains that hold people in virtual or real slavery. Alterman writes the bleak assessment of “Darkness” that cast a long shadow over the next thirty years: “The songs on Darkness are about the characters Born to Run left behind.”

I could go on and on about the fun facts in this book (“Darlington County” as a "Darkness" outtake? “Born in the USA” as a cut from "Nebraska"?) and I could go on and on about Springsteen (mainly how the repression he wrote about thirty years ago has allowed faith and redemption to spring forth as the major theme of his later work). I am a late bloomer to the music of the Boss. For me, the 1992 albums, "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town," were my first records after having listened to "Tunnel of Love" and finally realized what Bruce was singing about. Ironically, the reprinted edition was published in the same year as the September 11th terrorist attacks, an event that would spurn the reformation of the E Street Band and Bruce’s own response in the album "The Rising." I’d like to see Alterman write a follow-up so that he can capture Bruce in this decade.

But, in the meantime, for all fans of Springsteen and his music, this book is essential reading. Pick it up next Tuesday when you pick up the new CD. Get a nice musical history lesson of the past forty years through the prism on one artist. But, more than anything, read this love letter by one writer about an artist many of us cherish. I’ll just let Alterman’s last paragraph serve as benediction.

The “greatest challenge of adulthood,” Springsteen once explained, “is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.” For anyone who has traveled from adolescence to maturity during the past quarter century, there is no better argument for holding on to one’s idealism--and no better companion for the journey--than the man who spoke those words and, through the power of his music, somehow willed them to life.

*Frank Sinatra

Presidents and Mysteries

In light of yesterday's inauguration comes a fun list of mysteries with a presidential theme over at Mystery Fanfare. Someday, I'd like to add my presidential mystery to that list.

As a historian, it's just a joy when history is made and everyone knows it. More importantly, I love it when folks realize history is exciting and consequential and made by regular folks, not some dry recitation of facts and dates.

Another interesting footnote to history...and my first novel

Via Boing Boing today, there is a story about Hanford, WA, the site of my first novel, Treason at Hanford: A Harry Truman Mystery. It seems they have found the world's first weapons-grade plutonium in a dump. Talk about scary.

When I began writing Treason at Hanford, I conducted some research and discovered most of the websites were devoted to the post-WWII era and, specifically, the clean-up. Hanford is the world's "Dirtiest" (i.e., nuclear dirty) place. That must have been before Chernobyl or Bopal, India. Oak Ridge, TN, gets much more coverage when it comes to the nuclear bombs from WWII but Hanford was important, too, as this story reveals.

Hmm, maybe my story wasn't fiction after all...?

Question: What Does the Inauguration Mean to You?

First of all, I don't mean for this question to be partisan. But I am wondering, for all y'all regular readers (and newcomers!) what does the inauguration mean to you?

All throughout our history, we, as Americans, are trying to fill in the blanks that Jefferson didn't know he inserted in his famous phrase "All men are created equal." Back in 1776, "Men" equaled "white, adult, land-owning" etc. As we grew up as a republic, we started taking away some of those hidden adjectives. After the Civil War, we started adding other adjectives: black men, women, 18-year-olds.

As Joseph Ellis wrote in his Washington Post piece, when Obama takes the oath, he will be fulfilling a promissory note Jefferson wrote in 1776. John Adams would also be proud, as would most of our Founding Fathers and other giants of our history.

But I think Obama is also fulfilling a promissory note issues by Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14th Amendment. Not only that,

America is, and always will be, a work in progress. It's a point of pride that we can adjust our country, right wrongs, and move forward. It's all part of a great conversation, one that we all get to enjoy tomorrow.

Lincoln is everywhere nowadays but his words have special resonance this week. Take this last phrase from the Gettysburg Address: that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Every inauguration is a new birth of freedom. This one seems just a little bit more.

Pen vs. Laptop as told by Joseph J. Ellis

Just found this nice little piece as a part of the Washington Post's The Writing Life. Today is Joseph Ellis, one of our best chroniclers of the Founding Era. He tells us why he continues to study our Founding Fathers and why he always writes his first drafts with a pen.

Here it is. And be sure to pay special attention to the metaphor he uses to describe our nation's founding. I love it.

Inauguration: Lego Style

I visited Legoland (Carlsbad, CA) in June 2008. Arguable the coolest thing is Miniland where they have built many famous structures out of Legos. There is NYC, complete with the new Freedom Tower, Las Vegas strip, and Washington, D.C. (Capital, White House, etc.)

To commemorate the inauguration, they have built a representation of the inauguration. The photographs are here.

Forgotten Books: Doc Savage #1: The Man of Bronze

Superman died (then came back to life). Batman had his back broken (then returned to the cowl). Jean Gray died (then came back as the woman you do NOT want to meet in a bar). Heck, even Patrick Duffy came back to life (after realizing Bobby Ewing really was the best he was ever going to get). All these characters, and more, faced death, got hurt, or realized a bad career move.

They got nothing on Doc Savage. In this Year of More Pulp I’ve started, I decided to start with the man tagged as the first superhero. I’ve known about Savage pretty much my whole life and I’ll admit to a misconception: I always thought his sobriquet (“The Man of Bronze”) really meant the man was made of metal, like Colossus from The X-Men. Nope. But I don’t think Colossus could have done half the things Doc did in his first adventure.

Clark Savage, Jr., AKA “Doc” Savage, stepped onto the pulp fiction stage in March 1933. Street and Smith Publications wanted another pulp hero to go along with The Shadow and they wanted a superman (notice the lack of capitalization). As Lester Dent, the writer of many of Doc’s 181 tales, reminisced years later, Doc “had the clue-following ability of Sherlock Holmes, the muscular tree-swinging ability of Tarzan, the scientific sleuthing of Craig Kennedy, and the morals of Jesus Christ.” Whew! When they wanted a superhero, they really did want a super man.

“The Man of Bronze” is Doc’s first story. I picked up the reprinted version from Nostalgia Ventures, a line of books you can find in many comic stores. The book is nicely presented in two-column format, complete with the sketches that accompanied the pulp magazine back in 1933. The story, as it should, starts off with a lapel-grabber: “There was death afoot in the darkness.” What’s great about his opening is the killer and the reader both get introduced to Doc Savage from a distance. Indeed, when the killer looks through his binoculars, he mistakes Doc’s body for a statue. There is quite a lot of authorial intrusion in this first chapter as Doc and his five companions are introduced. For those of y’all who don’t know, Doc’s friends are:

-“Renny” or Col. John Renwick, engineer
-William Harper Littlejohn, geologist and archeologist
-Maj. Thomas J. Roberts, “Long Tom,” electrician
-Brig. Gen. Theodore Marley Brooks, “Ham,” lawyer
-Lt. Col. Andrew Blodgett, “Monk,” muscle

All these men excel in their chosen field of expertise and all their skills are put to the test in this first adventure. The problem is this: someone killed Clark Savage, Sr., Doc’s father.

No sooner than all six men were ensconced in Doc’s 86th floor headquarters than the assassin fires his rifle, aiming for Doc. What follows is a six chapter action sequence that gives you merely a taste for what lies ahead. I’m used to action scenes lasting paragraphs or pages, not chapters. And one thing immediately stands out: as good as Doc’s Five are, Savage himself is flat-out superior. He does everything right and far better than mere mortals. Doc hangs on a rope about to be cut by the assassin. What does he do? Lets go, plummets, allows the assassin to lose his balance, and then grabs the rope again, swinging effortlessly onto a ledge. It goes like that.

The bulk of the story finds the Super Six winging it down to the fictional Central American country of Hidalgo. Doc’s father left him an inheritance, a portion of Hidalgo for his very own. Now, he just has to go claim it. After getting shot at again and again, Doc and the Five discover a Mayan pyramid of pure gold ore. These Mayans welcome Doc and his friends but the red-fingered warriors are in the sway of an evil man, the very fiend who killed Doc’s father.

I give nothing away when I say that Doc lives (for 180 more books even). The action plays in the best tradition of Saturday morning serials at the movies. At the end of one chapter, one of Doc’s friend is trussed up and thrown into a pit of writhing snakes. Heavens! Cut to the next chapter and you realize the truth: Doc *already* figured that the bad guys would throw his friends into the pit so he, Doc, climbed into the pit, caught his tied-up friend, and let a rock fall to the bottom of the pit, the better to give the bad guys the illusion of victory. There is nothing wrong with this kind of action. I found it pretty darn fun, really. But, I’ll admit, it might get a bit long in the tooth by about book #45, to say nothing of 181.

Lester Dent, writing under the house name of Kenneth Robeson, writes fast, quick prose with lots and lots of good Pulp Words. The tale is never boring. There’s no time to be boring. He brings in some good humor among the men and not a little 1930s-era stereotypes and life outlooks. The funniest aspect of Doc Savage the Hero is how he deals with the one female in the book, the Mayan king’s daughter. Savage is powerful, masculine, without reproach, but utterly flummoxed when it comes to seeing that the daughter likes him.

Dent’s style is definitely an omniscient author. He tells you just about everything and shows only rarely. Don’t know if he changed later on or not but it did take some getting used to. For example, Doc leaves the scene a time or two to hunt for some clue. Dent doesn’t have Doc explain to his friends where he went. In prose, Dent just tells you. Not bad for a “novel-length” story in a pulp magazine but certainly not the way we do it nowadays.

I can’t say Doc Savage is really forgotten but he’s new to me. Plus, I don’t see his books in print. In the volume I have, Nostalgia Ventures grouped the first two Doc adventures together with a nice introduction and a historical essay. They do The Shadow as well. Expect a review on him in the coming weeks.

I don’t think I’ll be able to read all of Doc Savage’s adventures. They’d probably get a bit monotonous. But I’ll certainly plow through a good chunk. I hadn’t had this much reading a book in a long time.

Note on an audio version: I found a podcast of The Man of Bronze by Uvula Audio. It was a good recording and they even included sounds effects.