Some reading recommendations
Adam's Notes for October 26, 2023
Shameless Self-Promotion
I’ve got a short story out this month, “The Grave Robbers of Eidelhelm” is featured in Hellarkey 2 from Malarkey Books.
It’s a sort of throwback to sword and sorcery fiction, hopefully with enough horror elements that it fits with the rest of the project. The main character, Josse, is one of the core characters in a novel project I’ve been working on. Otherwise I just wanted to throw in as many of my weird obsessions as I could think of in two thousand words.
Two quick annotations I’d like to make about the story: the name of the fish comes from a naming convention/running joke in the novel, where fish are always named after a type of fish and a description at least vaguely related to poverty (so in the novel there’s vagrant vendace, wretchfish, sockeye serfs, etc). Second, the name of the god invoked by the mendicant-sturgeon is meant to resemble the word Amalberga, a reference to Amalberga of Terse, a Merovingian saint whose symbol is a sturgeon.
Anyway, just a couple of little pointers to show you where my head was at in a pair of seemingly arbitrary choices in the story.
I want to thank the editors Eric Williams, OF Cieri, and Lauren Bolger, and also Malarkey Books publisher Alan Good. Malarkey Books is one of my favourite small presses, and I’m thrilled that now I can say I’ve worked with them.
You can purchase a copy of Hellarkey 2 here.
Pepys Show
On October 16, 1660, after eating anchovies with his brother Tom, Samuel Pepys went to the Cockpit Theatre but left when he saw the play was John Fletcher’s Wit without Money. It’s a play from about 1614, and was one of the few plays performed during the English Civil War and Interregnum. Wikipedia calls these performances guerrilla theatre and notes “The play was staged at the Red Bull Theatre on 3 February 1648; unable to sell tickets openly, the actors had tickets thrown into the gentry's coaches. Another performance, on 29 December 1654, was broken up by the authorities.” Pepys walked out of a performance of the play in 1663, saying he didn’t enjoy it much. So, interesting performance history but not a great play. Pepys went home ‘by water’ (Pepys’ new job allowed him to expense trips by boat along the Thames) and on the way read two more stories from a book also containing Paul Scarron’s The Fruitless Precaution, which he had read in bed the night before.
On Monday, October 22, Pepys has to send his roast beef out to have it cooked, due to the renovations in his house. After dining, Pepys goes to hang out with his patron, his cousin Lord Edward Montague, the Early of Sandwich. They discuss the tricky religious situation in England, as in what’s to be read from the pulpit. Pepys stays the night, sharing a room and a bed with Mr. Shepley, one of Montague’s servants. Pepys complains he “hardly get any sleep all night, the bed being ill made and (Shepley) a bad bedfellow."
Then, in the morning, when they’re up and getting dressed one of Shepley’s pistols, “charged with bullets”, goes off while he’s holstering it. Pepys comments, “it pleased God that, the mouth of the gun being downwards, it did us no hurt, but I think I never was in more danger in my life, which put me into a great fright.."
On October 24, Pepys meets the inventor Greatorex at an alehouse, buying a presumably fancy pen from him. Greatorex also shows him some ‘lamp-glasses’ which will help with reading in bed, and Pepys vows to buy some, but I don’t think he ever does.
On October 30, Pepys goes alone to watch The Tamer Tamed at the Cockpit. This is another play by John Fletcher, a riposte to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. An earlier revival of the play in 1633 caused an uproar due to its “foul and offensive matters” and two of the actors had to make apologies for causing offence with their performance. A new prologue was added to the play to de-politicize it. Pepys doesn’t tell us anything about his viewing of the play, except that he found it “very well acted.” Afterwards he brought his servant and a friend out to have a drink at the Hercules Pillar tavern on Fleet Street, where they read over the King’s declaration on matters of religion, which Pepys believes is well-written and likely to please most people.
Some Book, Music, TV, and Film Recommendations
The Short-Timers and The Phantom Blooper by Gustav Hasford. Decided to read this pair of Vietnam war novels after listening to the recent Radio War Nerd episode about them. The Short-Timers was adapted into the movie Full Metal Jacket, but the movie has nothing on the book. There's actually two separate sniper scenes in Short-Timers which get merged to one in the film, and the training stuff is over relatively quicker in the novel.
The novel, at its best, feels like it has a drumbeat under it, propelling you forward. The ethical dilemma of the novel's climax is fantastic: the second sniper scene in the book is way more intense, Joker’s best friend Cowboy gets shot by a sniper and the sniper lets him live because it draws his friends out to try and save him (this is in the movie, as I recall), but in the book the sniper, never seen, kills like five more guys who come out to try and save Cowboy until Joker kills Cowboy himself, then tells a crude joke about Cowboy’s corpse just so that he can put the incident behind him.
Also, the bit where Joker is confronted about his peace pin is better in the novel. The Short-Timers is subversive in a way that very little in American culture is ever allowed to be, read it and you’ll see how Kubrick chickened out. Maybe the only downside of The Short-Timers is how you don’t get to see the Vietnamese in any detail, but that changes in The Phantom Blooper.
The Phantom Blooper begins with Private Joker on a military base on the point of mutiny—he and his friend Black John Wayne are cutting out the tongue of a sergeant who would send them on a dangerous mission when they are overrun by Vietnamese troops, among whom is the eponymous Phantom Blooper, an American defector armed with a ‘blooper,’ a grenade launcher. This first section is similar to The Short-Timers, it’s a lot hard boiled language and over-the-top action leading almost to a sort of hysteria like something out of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s WW1 novels. But then something strange happens. Private Joker is knocked out and wakes up a year later, a prisoner of the Vietcong. But this isn’t the Hanoi Hilton, it’s a small, placid village, removed from the front lines. There’s a softness to this section that really surprised me given the rest of Hasford’s writing. Joker helps with the rice harvest, with an English class, with making grenades out of coke cans. He goes with the Vietcong on a night raid and an undercover mission, but the tension isn’t in the action so much as resolving Joker’s feelings about the war. In all his time as a marine he knew he was fighting for the wrong side, but now that he’s with the Vietcong he doesn’t want to kill his countrymen either. It’s really something, seeing Hasford work out his feelings about the war without ever turning to an essayistic mode of writing, just by showing you the sort of things he must’ve seen during the war. There’s a pleasant, soap opera-like melodrama to the village life sequence, but it all comes crashing down eventually. The carnage returns to the novel and this time it’s worse, because now Private Joker is able to give humanity to people on both sides of the fighting. It’s an indictment against American Imperialism and a gripping adventure story. The third and final section suffers a bit, involving Joker’s post-marine life and his reintegration into society.
But still, highly recommend these two novels. And if anyone knows how to find Hasford’s third and final novel, A Gypsy Good Time, please drop me a line.
If We Burn by Vincent Bevins. A great walkthrough of the decade of contention that was the 2010s, with insights so clear they read almost as aphorisms. Which isn’t to say that his conclusions and analysis are straightforward and easy. In fact they’re often conflicting. I think he’s right that any movement going forward needs to have something of a cadre system, but beyond that, I don’t know. I hope everyone reads this book soon because it deserves to have a conversation around it.
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. Wasn't my intention to read this in a single sitting, but I did.
The first half is set in the 1940s, follows an Israeli army commander in the desert who organizes the gang rape of a Bedouin girl. It turns out to be based on a real event. The second, longer section of the novella is about the logistical nightmares of a Palestinian woman hoping to research this crime.
It's all told with a language that reminds me of Hemingway, or better yet Dashiell Hammett. That is, it's all stuff like stage directions and straightforward description that manages to convey deep emotion better than if the author had tried to name the emotion directly or by resorting to more lyrical methods. It doesn't lead you anywhere but you still end up exactly where the author wants you. Minor Detail is going to haunt me for a long time.
Shibli was due to receive an award for the novel at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but the event was called off due to cowardice on the part of the organizers after Germany cracked down on showing support/solidarity with Palestinians.
On a related note, I made a small donation to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund this week. Other reputable charities working in Gaza include Medical Aid for Palestinians, ANERA, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. I hope you’ll consider doing the same.
Acosar by Jonathan Olfert. A fun short story in Sword and Sorcery Magazine. A tale of court intrigue taking place not in any court but in a richly atmospheric caravanserai camp.
Forest Swords released a new album, Bolted. I’ve heard Forest Swords described as Boards of Canada meets Ennio Morricone, and that feels apt. I’m not as big on Bolted as I am on previous Forest Swords albums Engravings and Compassion, but all three are worth a listen. There’s something very evocative in this music that transports my mind to another time and place. Also, check out this great remix of his song Thor's Stone, which features Lee “Scratch” Perry mumbling incoherently about being Thor and using his energy and magic hammer to fight white supremacy and capitalism, or something.
Frasier (2023). It’s nothing compared to what it could have been if David Hyde Pierce was involved, but I confess I mostly enjoyed the first three episodes. Given time, it might find some of the charm of the old show.
The Long Good Friday. A classic British gangster film from the 80s. Great original score. Stars Bob Hoskins as a crime boss desperate to figure out who’s trying to take down his organization. The ending is unforgettable.
The Lower Depths. A 1936 film directed by Jean Renoir, about life and love in the flophouse. A bit aimless at times but there’s some good comedy and camarderie between a thief and the recently bankrupt baron whose house he burgles.
Lastly, my brother Kyle runs Phee’s Original Goods, a leathercrafts shop back home in Cape Breton. He and his wife Robyn make wallets and belts and bags and other leather goods. If you have any questions about his products, they’re pretty responsive to the chat function on their shop’s website—Mom used to use it to get ahold of Kyle when he wasn’t answering his phone.
Looking forward to: Jean-Patrick Manchette’s No Room at the Morgue and Tiffany Morris’s Green Fuse Burning. I signed up for Edelweiss and Book Siren to get early copies of these books, got approved for both, but then couldn’t get the files onto my kindle. I’ve preordered them both, though, which is something I don’t normally do, hopefully I’ll be able to report back soon.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, especially if you’ve made it this far. This has been Adam’s Notes for October 26, 2023. My name is Adam McPhee, and you can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Goodreads.