Wild Town and some other stuff
I really need to figure out how to title these posts
Hello everyone, Adam here.
I’m still enthusiastically plugging away at the projects I was talk about last week. Both of them are starting to change in shape as I get a sense of their scope. One of them keeps growing on me as I realize there’s more to it than I thought there was, well the other is maybe a bit stunted.
In both cases my answer is the same, which is to slow myself down. Whenever I’m doing a first draft of something I have an urge to do as much as I can as fast as I can until either it’s finished or I realize it’s not going to work. But not this time. Slow and steady wins the race. I guess that old Hemmingway tip is true, about stopping for the day when it’s going good, when you know what will happen next, so that tomorrow you start from a place of confidence rather than confusion. Although once I stop composing, I still tend to keep working on outlines and stuff throughout the day, either intentionally focusing on outlining stuff or just scribbling notes to myself in between doing other things, whereas I think Hemingway really did just turn that part of his brain off and go fishing or drinking or playing with dynamite or whatever.
Sorry if that was boring. Here’s some stuff I’ve been reading or watching lately that I thought might interest you.
Wild Town by Jim Thompson
It’s hard to go wrong with Jim Thompson, but somehow I’ve managed. Pick one of his thirty or so novels at random and chances are you’re in for a good time, but at this point I’ve read most of them, and I’m at the bottom of the barrel here.
Still, there’s no question Jim Thompson was one of the best to ever do it, and even Wild Town is still readable, with those moments of dark emotional truth popping up once in a while, even if they don't hit quite as hard as they do elsewhere.
Part of it is that the plot doesn’t really cohere or go anywhere. Another thing is this weird tic he has where he keeps insisting that interwar/midcentury bellhops had an honour code keeping their otherwise unbridled aggression in check. Hotels are a classic setting for any kind of noir. They’re liminal places, halfway between the public and the private, where anything might be happening just next door. But Thompson’s reverence for hotels (he was a bellhop as a kid) makes him nostalgic, and the way he remembers them just isn’t recognizable all this time later. Still, I liked the bit where the manager proves he’s not just an empty suit by pulling the elevator flush with the floor. Crazy to think that operating an elevator was once a job that required skill, and it’s now it’s just a button.
At his best, reading Thompson is like riding along in the mind of someone you’d read about in the crime section of the newspaper. He shows you convincingly how people justify the most heinous deeds. And then, just as convincingly, offers these characters revelations that allow their humanity to peek through. Sometimes they redeem themselves, more often it’s too late.
My advice is to skip this one and go read one of his masterpieces: The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, Savage Night, or Pop. 1280.
The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin
This book is about the hard life in Nevada. I think this is what other people get out of country music. Not me though, I can’t stand country music. But give me short, terse sentences about the downtrodden and hard done by? Oh brother, I’m there.
The Teachers’ Lounge (2023)
A Man for All Seasons for the age of iPhones.
There's an epidemic of stealing at a German high school. The admin goes in heavy-handed: it's demanded that the boys put their wallets on the table, and a young Turkish kid is accused for having too much money. But clearly that doesn’t make him guilty.
Carla, the school’s newest teacher, sets up a hidden camera sting in the teachers' lounge to catch the real thief and exonerate the boy. And now suddenly we're in the adult world where people have rights, expectations of privacy, a burden of proof. Worse, the adult is the mother of one of Carla's students. Carla wants to act in the kid’s best interest, but people have already slotted her into the role of the one who has made the accusation in the first place. Acting on behalf of the kid means coming into conflict with her colleagues, and undermining her previous position.
There's a great scene, at first very funny, where Carla realizes she's being ambushed by the student newspaper, by kids looking for a "gotchya" moment, but she manages to keep her cool. It doesn't help. There's an old noir element at play, where characters are punished for straying from the truth. It's not that Carla's lying, far from it, but by refusing to speak she damns herself just the same, and thereby damns the boy, and as time goes on one incident piles on top of the next and the truth of the matter seems to be slipping away as partisan factions coalesce.
At first I kept worrying this would have some lame message about cancel culture or "phones," but there are no easy answers here. But that’s also the problem. The film ends, without the conflict resolved, on a jarring image: the kid is removed from the school by police carrying him on their shoulders, the film’s one note score replaced finally by triumphant music—but who, if anyone, has won here? I’ve seen other reviews calling the kid a Machiavellian manipulator, but that’s just not in the movie at all—and besides, he hasn’t won anything.
The Night Of (2016)
An HBO miniseries from a few years back, adapted from a BBC series by one of my favourite American crime writers, Richard Price, who has a new book out in November that I’m really excited for.
There's a great story Price tells, it’s in an interview somewhere but I think Emmet Matheson first told it to me, where Price talks about all the research he did for one of his crime novels, in this case hanging out with cops, picking up their patter, etc. The novel comes out and he asks the cops what they think, but the cops keep dodging him, giving him the cold shoulder. He thinks he fucked up, worries he didn’t do them justice, worries they feel betrayed because he gave equal weight to the other side, etc. Finally he gets one to talk to him and he says buddy, we're cops, we don't read books.
But yeah, that’s what I love about Price. He puts a ton of research into his novels, and they end up feeling real. And it’s not just cops he hangs out with, it’s drug dealers, neighbourhood kids, people who have lost children, anyone. I’m not as big of a fan of his earlier, more person writing, but I love his crime novels. Definitely check out Clockers, Freedomland, Lush Life, or Samaritan.
Les Sauvages (2019)
I’m only two episodes in so I can’t really judge this one yet. France elects its first Muslim president (maybe––he abides by French laïcité but there’s a scandal where he’s caught refusing a pork sandwich). So sort of like Houellebecq’s Submission without the fear mongering. Anyway, the president is shot on election night by a kid who happens to be the cousin of one of the campaign managers. The manager loses his job and goes undercover in his own family to find out what’s really going on. Honestly, this one isn’t great and I don’t have high hopes for the remaining four episodes. There’s been some incredible cinema that’s come out of the French banlieues (see for example: Athena, La Haine, and Les Misérables), but I can’t see how this one is going to balance that aspect of the show with the presidential/political stuff, and my sense is it’s not going to do justice to either side. Hopefully I’m wrong. Anyway, it’s on CBC Gem.
This has been Adam's Notes for August 15, 2024. Thanks for reading.
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I enjoyed your description of your process, and some aspects of it sounded all too familiar. It’s reassuring to be reminded that other people struggle with the nuts and bolts of how to get the thing done - never the same for any two projects.
I love a good rambling post! Great stuff, Adam. Thanks.