Train Dreams: The Real "Wild" West in Novella Form

 

 

Train Dreams (2011)

By Denis Johnson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 116 pages.

★★★★

 

What a good idea! Farrar, Straus and Giroux has recently put a series of rebound novellas on the market in paperback and e-editions. Most of them are just under or just over a hundred pages, perfect for reading in the car or on the beach. You can zip through and not worry that you’ll put them down somewhere, get busy, and forget what you’ve read. 

 

 

 

Train Dreams feels like an old Wobbly tale from the early 20^th century. It takes us out West, mostly in Idaho and Washington State when civilization was still raw outside of the cities. Robert Grainer is a day laborer on the railroad. Ever see old black and white images of high rickety-looking railroad bridges that look like they were randomly constructed from two-by-fours that couldn’t possibly bear the weight of a steam locomotive? One over Robinson Gorge in Washington State was so scary no engineer would brave it. The engineer put a wedge on the throttle so it would cross slowly, waited for the train to get to the other side, and then walked across and caught up with his train. Grainer left Minnesota and repaired such structures.

 

In 1917, he was involved with a railroad crew that hated the Chinese and he nearly killed one. If you’ve ever heard any old Wobbly stories—Wobblies were members of the Industrial Workers f the World–the situation is akin to dozens of anti-Chinese riots that took place in the West. Grainer was shocked by his own behavior and decided to live in the boonies. This short novel from Denis (sic) Johnson tackles American individualism on the primal level. It is filled with rough loggers, bridge builders, waggoneers, prospectors, brothel women, carnival scam artists, and Indians friendly and not.

 

After leaving the railroad crew, Grainer meets an old coot named Arn Peeples. Arn is a waggoner and colorful doesn’t begin to describe the whoppers he tells. Arn claims to like hot weather, the hotter the better. In his telling Arn once worked on a peak that was “only eleven or twelves miles from the sun.” Arn also spins a yarn about a man (maybe him) who was shot by his own dog! When Arn dies, Grainer takes over his hauling business. He does well for a time, but things always turn slant for Grainer.

 

He eventually builds a rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere near the Kootenai River maybe in Idaho but perhaps in British Columbia; his crowd never paid much never mind to borders. He acquires a wife named Gladys and they have a daughter named Kate. He is a man of few words and his life takes another turn when he’s on a long haul and the cabin burns. He reckons that when the fire started Gladys tried to put it out with kerosene. So now he’s resigned to being a childless widower. 

 

Grainer roams anew and meets many more characters, though he always returns to the cabin site. His world is one of men who smell bad because they seldom wash (and never in the winter), swear, drink questionable liquor, tell crude jokes, and regale each other with stories that might (but probably don’t) contain a kernel of truth. Did you hear the one about the prospector whose dynamite froze, so he tried to thaw it out in his stove? Grainer goes to a carnival where some of the boys get it in their heads that the promised pulchritude of the women probably involved a lecture on sex. And maybe that’s not completely wrong.

 

In this passing-of-the-West novella, nothing is too outrageous. Grainer rebuilds his cabin and something quite eerie occurs. Somehow, Robert makes to 1968 before he dies. I emphasize that this is a very male-centric novel that is sometimes off-color. It might remind you of something from Wallace Stegner with his filters turned off. For me it both took the doilies off of American individualism and the American West. For every person who made it rich from mining, prospecting, ranching, hunting, or living amidst nature, there were scores of Robert Grainers.

 

Rob Weir

 

Ragnar Jonasson's Gripping New Mystery Tale

 

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Writer

By Ragnar Jónasson

Minotaur/St. Martin’s Press, 320 pages.

★★★★

 

In 1926, mystery writer Agatha Christie disappeared for a dozen days. She showed up unharmed, but never explained her absence. Some have done extensive detective work and believe they have cracked the mystery, but it remains open for speculation.

 

What, pray tell, does this have to do with the new novel from Iceland’s most popular mystery writer, Ragnar Jónasson? The Mysterious Case of the Missing Writer pays homage to Christie and is written in the so-called Golden Age style popularized by Christie. It is sparse and sprinkled with humor, though devoid of Christie's ability to somehow imbue murder with an ineffable sweetness. In other words, Jónasson is a hard-boiled mystery writer. Another departure is that whereas Christie preferred a controlled approach to her mysteries, Jónasson’s work is complex, right down to moving between three time frames: the 60s, the 70s, and 2005. He even cribs from two earlier works, White Out and Death at the Sanatorium, but doesn't bother to explain back stories. (You don't need to read these first to understand Case of the Missing Writer.)

 

Helgi Reykdal works for the Criminal Investigation Division in Reykjavik, a job that would stress out just about anyone. His mind is overloaded and is trying to recharge his batteries at his family's bookstore in the countryside outside of the capital. Helgi is relatively young as detectives go, and harbors a secret he wishes to remain private. His previous girlfriend, Bergthora, was violent. What his colleagues think if they knew Helgi  was found to have been battered by Bergthora and is under a restraining order? He doesn't even want his current girlfriend, Anita, to know the details. She's everything Bergthora was not: kind, calm, affectionate, curious, athletic....

 

Helgi is brought in from the wilds, as it were, because Élin Jónsdóttir is missing. His job is to find the famous crime novelist before word gets out, social media explodes, and the public works itself into a frenzy of fear and rumor. There may be nothing to any of this, but the disappearance is reported by her best friend Lovisa, a retired judge, who suspects something has happened with Élin because she failed to show for their weekly gabfest. The public imagines that Jónsdóttir has a jetsetter’s lifestyle and would cast suspicion on every glamorous or important person in the nation. Lovisa, however, reveals that despite what people believe, Élin is a shy homebody of rigid habits. Her publisher, Rut, confirms Lovisa's concerns and reasons for them. Even Élin’s accountant finds it out of character for her to simply drop out of sight without a word to her closest confidants.

 

On the other hand, Jónsdóttir publicly announced that her 10th murder mystery, Deadline, would be her last book. Helgi can't help but wonder why an aging mystery writer would need anyone's permission or advanced notice to go out on her own for a bit; after all, that’s what he did. But the more Helgi probes, the more he's inclined to entertain the probability that something deeper is afoot. The ideal situation would be that Élin is acting in accordance to plots in her books and has pulled a fast one by claiming she was done with writing. Is she holed up somewhere working on a new book? Or, as Helgi increasingly fears, has she been murdered?

 

Try cracking all those nuts if you are Helgi. He is back in Reykjavik, is being badgered by higher ups to solve the case, and is falling deeply in love with his new girlfriend Anita, who fears that Bergthora has been stalking her at work. She's not wrong about that! Bergthora insists that Helgi is still in love with her, and that they have sex together when Anita is busy. That's not true, but Helgi has little time to deal with this as he is hours away from resolving the Jónsdóttir case. He insists that Bergthora as annoying, but not a threat. He promises to deal with her very soon.

 

Will Helga find Élin? Will he lose the intelligent Anita to his workaholic lifestyle? Is Bergthora a sociopath? Find out for yourself in this gripping page turner. Jónasson’s book is well plotted and finishes with an absolutely shocking conclusion. Maybe you'll anticipate it or maybe you won't. Either way it lands like a left hook when you're looking right.

 

 Thanks to Minotaur and NetGalley for a review copy. This book will be published in September but can be ordered now.

 

Rob Weir

 

Devil in a Blue Dress: Worth Seeing but a Better Read

 

 

 

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Directed by Carl Franklin

Sony Pictures Releasing, 102 minutes, R (violence, language, brief nudity)

★★★

 

It's hard to believe that Devil in a Blue Dress was released 30 years ago. This Denzel Washington vehicle is a stylish film, that often looks a lot better than it is. Call it a film noir in color, neo noir, or a crime drama. It's based on a Walter Mosley novel. He's one of my favorite writers, but his books are often complex in the sense that there are a lot of characters. This sometimes means that there's too much going on to capture in a movie of under two hours. Director Carl Franklin might have done well to delete a few of them to present a truncated tale involving Mosley's favorite detective Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Denzel).

 

The story is set in Los Angeles 1948. It has the right look, but let's not confuse it with The Big Sleep or Chinatown. Rawlins has just been laid off from the aircraft plant and he needs money for his house, car, and stylish wardrobe. He lives along Central Avenue in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a neighborhood filled with well-kempt homes, low-life bars, juke joints, and flashy but often legally ambiguous clubs. He's approached to find a white woman named Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals). Easy has no interest and looking for a white woman, but he keeps getting strong-armed by the LAPD, a white PI,  and creditors who collectively seem like the Keystone Kops. At times it's difficult to know whether to call this film a crime drama or a comedy, though humor is common in Moseley's novels. In one awkward scene Easy is having an intimate moment with Coretta James (Lisa Nicole Carson), when the LAPD invite themselves into his living room to “encourage” him to look for Daphne. DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) also badgers Easy. He’s the white PI who has hired Easy because, for some reason, he can't find Daphne on his own–possibly because he’s afraid of the neighborhood, though Easy suspects ulterior motives. He is also hustled by an old friend Joppy (Mel Winkler) for reasons that are not explained in the film, at least not for quite some time.

 

If you can't convince someone to do what you'd like them to do, resort to blackmail. Easy reluctantly calls in an old friend from down South named Mouse Alexander (Don Cheadle). Rawlins doesn't like to use him very often, for the simple reason that Mouse is a bit psycho and wants an excuse to shoot someone! (He will get his chance.) Easy is even more suspicious when he unearths a few leads that any competent PI should have been able to collect.

 

When in LA, assume political strings will be pulled. There’s a mayoral election and Easy is approached by the incumbent  Mattew Terell (Maury Chaykin) who is obviously trying to pry information from him. Coretta tells Easy that Daphne is staying with gangster Frank Green, but before he can follow up he is arrested for Coretta’s murder, something he knows nothing about, but try explaining that to two homicide agents. Yet he walks free. Nothing seems to make complete sense to Rawlins. Enter Todd Carter (Terry Kinney), a billionaire who dropped out of the race when Daphne, his fiancé disappeared. He offers Easy big bucks to find her. Because of the movie’s elided action, a subplot about pictures of naked boys comes at us pretty fast. So too does Carter’s rejection of Daphne when he finds out she is biracial.

 

Washington plays Easy Rawlins with cool smoothness, though he perhaps overplays it as he often comes off as more detached than hard-boiled. Cheadle comes close to stealing the show with his manic energy and walk-the-razor’s-edge volatility. He actually won a few best supporting actor awards (though not an Oscar). Comic relief is also added by an unnamed “mad gardener” who would level every tree in Easy’s neighborhood if given a chance. In his own way he’s as crazy as Mouse. I also wondered if Daphne was a hard role for Beals to play. She is, in life, a biracial woman born to an African-American father and an Irish-American mother. She has often spoken of experiencing discrimination as a child.

 

By the movie’s end, Easy Rawlins has his own detective agency, so it’s also an origin story. My tag line for Devil in a Blue Dress is “okay movie, much better novel.” I may have said that 5-6,000 times before!

 

Rob Weir