James Keelaghan: October 2022 Artist of the Month

 

JAMES KEELAGHAN

Second Hand

Borealis # 276

 

 

 

Like most artists, the Covid lock-down kept Canadian troubadour James Keelaghan closer to home. He used his time to connect more deeply with his kids and managed to make his way into Montreal to record Second-Hand. The title does triple duty. James poses on the cover with an instrument that you might think is “used,” as it has enough wear to be a Willie Nelson upgrade. It’s a sort of visual pun, though, as it’s really a Larkin he has played since 1984. “Second Hand” is also the ironic title track, and evocative of “My Skies” from an eponymous 1993 album. I call it ironic because–as in “My Skies”–Keelaghan actually wants listeners to experience the world first-hand. “Second-Hand,” though, is shot through with deeper, more personal yearnings.  

 

Keelaghan has long been a quintessential folk artist who keeps audiences spellbound with story songs, alluring melodies, and a baritone voice that is, at once, sweet and robust. He generally prefers to keep things simple and doesn’t resort to sonic trickery, but he took full advantage of the Borealis studio on Second-Hand, not to mention the talents of his longtime pal, David Woodhead. Woodhead wields his bass like a lead guitar on “GatheringStorm.” It’s a song that will resonate with all of us who long ago left our hometowns and experience decidedly mixed feelings when we pay visits to changed landscapes. Instead of a sugarcoated nostalgia trip, Keelaghan offers a ledger of benefits, losses, and values that endure. That’s quite a feat in three minutes and twenty seconds.

 

There are other unexpected treats. He kicks off the record with the hopeful “Walk On,” but serves it as if it’s a cousin of the famed jazz/blues standard “St. James Infirmary.” Later there is a fine cover of Jesse Winchester’s “Eulalie.” Keelaghan croons his way through the “Gave It All Away,” a wistful song of loss with a lovely melody. You might detect some stylings evocative of Old Blue Eyes, which is probably not coincidental from a guy who once gave his dog the name Sinatra. Still another surprise is “La Cattiva Strada–The Road to Ruin,” his translation from the Italian of a 1975 song of those who made bad choices and seek redemption.

 

Longtime fans–and I’ve been one since his Larkin was shiny and new–will find plenty of “classic” Keelaghan. He personifies his native province on “Alberta” to the degree that one could easily wonder if his is a mash note to Western Canada or a lover. And what would a Keelaghan album be without a bit of righteous anger? “Just a Letter” has a waltzing wrapper, but the song takes up the cause of a friend who was sexually assaulted when she was younger and now suffers the yearly indignity of a request for her feelings on his parole request. There is no parole for the doomed man in “Before the Morning Sun,” a powerful tale of a man who takes his view of justice into his own hands and offers no apologies for it.

 

In all, there are ten splendid offerings and the album ends with the gorgeous “The Benefits of Surrender.” After an opening riff evocative of that of his famed weepie “Jenny Bryce,” he settles into a confessional of his need to let go of self-constructed exteriors: I’ve been building walls instead of hanging windows/Hunkered down and hidden, I’ve been living in limbo.

 

By my reckoning this is the first Keelaghan collection of new material in 13 years. I sincerely hope he was working on still more songs during the lockdown. I don’t want to wait so long for the next installment.

 

Rob Weir

Chalk and Other Ephemeral Art

 

I was walking downtown last week when I spied the ghost image of a piece of chalk art from a late summer display. I had forgotten that I took some pictures of this year’s chalk art fest, perhaps because most of the work wasn’t as striking as that of previous years.

 

Below are some shots I took, but first let’s consider ephemeral art. It has been in the news the past few years because of a stunt the street artist Banksy pulled. He produced a work titled “Girl with a Balloon” that fetched a million pounds sterling at a London auction in 2016. It had a shredder built into the frame that sliced the art work to ribbons. Amazingly, the buyer did not demand a refund. Now, we know why. It went back on the auction block in 2021 and Sotheby’s got a stunning $25.4 million for it, proving that being rich doesn’t necessarily come with ten cents’ worth of intelligence.

 

On another level, though, it’s not like Banksy invented ephemeral art, that which is made for its own sake and not built to last. Environmental artists like the amazing Andy Goldsworthy use organic materials such as vines, leaves, and other vegetation that have a short lifespan. Or perhaps you’ve been to the beach during one of those jaw-dropping sand sculpting contests; or just ogled the sand castles and forts built by kids.

 

There are other forms of ephemeral art, including carving fruits and vegetables. October, of course, is the month for creative pumpkin carving–just like early fall agricultural fairs where people get creative in making figures out of butter. Or the winter in which chainsaws will fashion magic from blocks of ice.

 

You name it and someone has made art from it. Corn stalk mazes have become a thing and I’ve also seen people coax patterns and figures from mowing their grass or raking their leaves. Some barbers do the same with hair. Flower arranging is ephemeral, and even shorter-lived materials such as ice cream and chocolate are creatively arranged.

 

Perhaps the two most creative of all have spiritual roots. Karesansui is associated with Japanese Zen Buddhism. It involves raking small pebbles into patterns and has to be tended constantly as weather alters it, but the raking itself is a form of meditation. So too is the making of mandala art, the use of colored sand among Hindus and Buddhists. These elaborate geometric figures are meant to be destroyed shortly after they are completed.

 

I’m rather glad I forgot about my snapshots until now. So maybe this year’s chalk art was not as uniformly remarkable as that of past years, but does it matter? It was never made to last. Both Ralph Waldo Emerson or TS Eliot have been credited with variants of the quote, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that counts.” It’s likely neither of them came up with it; it’s an ancient practice. Not all art has to hang on walls.

 

 

 

    

Tin Men a Capsule of a Changing America

 

 

TIN MEN (1987)

Directed by Barry Levinson

Touchstone/Buena Vista, 112 minutes, R (language, booze, drugs, infidelity)

★★★★

 

 

 

I recently gave a talk at the Three Sisters Sanctuary, whose roadside entrance features a giant tin figure. So, naturally, I viewed the 1980s comedy Tin Men. In this case, the term tin men references a long-gone practice of door-to-door salesmen (almost always men) trying to entice homeowners to re-side their dwellings in aluminum. I recall two tin men hit my childhood neighborhood in the 1960s, which was weird given that we and everyone else in the neighborhood lived in down-market rented concrete block duplexes. No sales there!

 

Tin Men was the second film in director Barry Levinson’s Baltimore quadrilogy; the first, Diner (1982) is considered his masterpiece, but Tin Men is also funny and a slice of 1980s social history. Bill Babowsky (Richard Dreyfuss) drives his brand-new Cadillac off the lot ­and straight into a Caddy owned by a rival, Ernest Tilly (Danny DeVito). This touches off an escalating vendetta between the two at a time in which older it’s-a-man’s-world norms are crumbling in ways paralleling aluminum siding sales. Yet, Levinson’s Baltimore is a place where second wave feminism has just begun to send ripples across the Chesapeake Bay and there’s no sign of the tidal wave on its way. After exhausting bar confrontations and innovative ways to antagonize each other Babowsky, a confirmed playboy, ups the ante by seducing Tilly’s wife (Barbara Hershey). There’s a layered story about how this develops, though I will say that it was supposed to be settled by a pool match, but very little is settled between two guys so hardheaded we suspect their noggins are made of granite.

 

The domestic part of the movie now seems dated, but this is the part where I say that history is what it was, not how the squeamish would reinvent it. Levinson’s take on Baltimore’s delayed embrace of change was especially true of working-class families of the 1970s/early 80s, many of whom saw feminism as middle-class nonsense. That too was about to change; comedy aside, Levison’s film is about what is fading and emerging.

 

That was true of salesmanship as well. Door-to-door sales practices were rife with high-pressure tactics, dishonesty, and outright fraud. In part this was because many of those pounding the sidewalks were paid entirely or mostly on commission. You don’t have to be an economist to know that no sales = no paycheck, a condition Tilly knew firsthand. It’s no wonder that regulatory agencies investigated unfair labor practices on the part of both sales staff and the companies for which they toiled. Tin Men is, thus, the story of a “sunset industry,” the term given to work in the process of disappearing.

 

The history lessons aside, Tin Men is an amusing movie. Few actors play the short guy with a sharp tongue, swagger, and irreverence with the verve of Danny DeVito. In Tin Men, though, Richard Dreyfuss is a worthy adversary. He’s oily, arrogant, and stubborn, though not quite as emotionally bullet-proof as he believes. Barbara Hershey is also quite good in a tough role. On one level she has to play pawn to male games, but she deftly shows how stupid male tricks left the door open for subtle and clever manipulation. In other words, the battle of the sexes wasn't as one-sided as advertised.

 

If you can cruise past bad 1980s clothing, shopworn values, and the very idea that a big Cadillac once conferred status, Tin Men will both edify and make you chuckle.  For what it’s worth, the soundtrack is from Fine Young Cannibals. They too were all the rage in the early- to mid-1980s.

 

Pay attention to what Babowski and Tilly consider next when their tin men careers come to an inglorious end. Stagflation loomed on the horizon, Caddies were out, and adjustments were necessary. 

 

Rob Weir   

The Big Heat: A Film Noir Classic

 

 

THE BIG HEAT (1953)

Directed by Fritz Lang

Columbia Pictures, 90 minutes, Not-rated.

★★★★

 

 

 

The Big Heat is widely regarded as a film noir classic. In my mind, at 90 minutes it’s a bit cramped, but there’s no denying the skillful touch of director Fritz Lang (1890-1970). He was dubbed “Master of Darkness” for both his chosen subject matter and his preference for black in the age of black and white movies. The Big Heat is also remarkable when you think that the then 63-year-old Lang made this film nearly 30 years after he directed Metropolis, which might be the best dystopian film ever made.

 

The Big Heat is cut from different cloth, shrouds. Homicide Sgt. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) investigates the alleged suicide of fellow homicide officer Tom Duncan whose wife Bertha (Jeanette Nolan) says was in poor health. Several things don’t add up. Why is everyone in such a hurry to close the book on Duncan? Why does Tom’s mistress Lucy Chapman (Dorothy Green) insist that Tom was perfectly healthy? What kind of guy about to off himself leaves a note for the district attorney rather than friends and family? Why can’t Dave see the contents of the note?

 

In a good film noir, questions like these portend murder. Bannion is suspicious and how can he not be when Chapman joins Duncan in the Great Beyond–with cigarette burns on her body? To Bannion’s nose everything smells like the work of mobster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby). Yet superiors order him to close the book on the case. Of course, he won’t; even when the case is moved out of his jurisdiction. When Bannion accuses higher ups of ignoring evidence and corruption, he is suspended and his badge is revoked. As if that’s going to stop him after a car bomb kills his wife, Katie (Jocelyn Brando).

 

The free-lancing Bannion is certain he’s on the right track when he’s in a bar and observes Lagana’s chief punk Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) extinguish a cigar on a woman’s arm. Bannion challenges him and his lowlife buddies. That catches the attention of Stone’s girlfriend Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame), whom we infer has herself been on the wrong end of Vince’s anger. But which side is she on? The Big Heat has more femmes fatales than an NBA locker room has castoff sneakers. Moreover, aside from Bannion and his war buddies, there aren’t many men who can be trusted either. Threats to Bannion’s daughter are the icing on an explosive cake.

 

The term gritty is apropos for a film that could only make an undertaker happy. If Bannion is right, he truly is a man on his own. In his mind, everyone from the police commissioner on down is beholden to the mob. The drama hinges on Dave’s ability to stay alive and, he thinks, the content of Duncan’s note.

 

Glenn Ford is terrific as a man metaphorically dancing on the edge of the razor in his bare feet. He’s angry, but also scared. As well he should be. Lee Marvin is chilling as the amoral Vince Stone and, for once, the women in the film get to play major parts. Gloria Grahame shines in a role that requires her to walk a tightrope with no safety net to catch her. You can rest assured also that any film directed by Fritz Lang and cinematographer Charles Lang (no relation to Fritz) will be stylish and moody.

 

The only thing that mars the film is that it should have been longer. Sydney Boehm’s screenplay based on a William McGivern novel requires viewers to juggle a few too many characters. Though McGivern’s work was brief (200 pages), Boehm’s truncated script strips away depth, not enough to rob characters of their personalities, but enough to provide temporary confusion over their respective relationships.

 

As for Dave Bannion, is there any hope if the establishment is rotten to the core? Has he allowed his grief to make him paranoid? Losing a friend, a wife, a few witnesses, and worrying about a kidnap plot on your daughter could make you so. Watch and find out who is left standing.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

Oddball Comedies

 

The film genre known as screwball comedy was a sort of predecessor to situation comedy. In this piece–a follow-up to my review of Seducing Dr. Lewis–I offer suggestions for probing “oddball comedy.”

 

Oddball comedies are the antithesis of formulaic mass market movies. They can be sweet and uplifting, but they trade in absurdity, improbability, irony, satire, and surrealism. They are a blend of the Apollonian (intellectual) and the Dionysian (sensual, untethered from the commonplace, inverted perspectives).

 

Here is a smattering of oddball comedies to try, listed in alphabetical order:

 

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Through the Window and Disappeared (2013): Phew, that’s a mouthful but it sets up the entire movie. When Allan’s cat dies, he’s shuffled off to the old folks home but Allan wants no part of it and goes AWOL. Elephants in Sweden? Why not? Not much goes right–for the bad guys! A caper film the likes of which you’ve seldom seen.

 

Amélie (2001): There are actually people who don’t like this film and all I can say is get over yourselves. This tasty morsel directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet is worth watching for its first five minutes alone. Add Audrey Tatou oozing coquettish cuteness, an unconventional love story, and absurdity on Montmartre and it’s on my all-time favorite films list.

 

The Big Lebowski (1998): “That rug really pulled the room together,” says Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski to the thugs who just peed on his carpet. I’ll watch anything from Joel and Ethan Coen, but what a cast of crazy and crazed characters: John Goodman as a bowler who won’t roll on Shabbat, Steve Buscemi as a clueless fall guy, John Turturro setting back gay rights by a decade, Julianne Moore au naturel, and inept baddies and all one can say is, “The Dude abides.”

 

Blazing Saddles (1974): This Mel Brooks classic is both hated and beloved. Those who don’t like it say it’s broad and crude; its defenders (such as I) applaud its dark lampoon of westerns, its silly songs, and its anarchic qualities. Some parts might offend the terminally PC, but Brooks wanted you to see the ridiculousness of ethnic stereotyping.

 

Brazil (1985): Can dystopia be funny? In the hands of Terry Gilliam, the cartoonist for Monty Python, nothing is sacred. Some have called Brazil a colossal mess; others a send-up of 1984. Put me in the second category. It’s amazing how funny ductworks can be. Ditto consumerism gone mad. For the record, it has zilch to do with its namesake country.

 

The Castle (1997): “What do you call this?” asks Darryl Kerrigan. “Chicken,” replies his wife, Sal. “Ahh, but it’s what you’ve done with it,” Darryl replies. He’s a simple man whose "castle” lies at the end of an airport runway and he doesn’t want to part with it. Take every bit of logic, turn it upside down, and you’re still short of the hysterics embedded in this Australian comedy. How about lines like, “Dad’s even more proud of him now than when he was in jail!” You’ll be singing, “We’re going to Bonny Doon” when this one ends. This might be my favorite offbeat film.

 

Comfort and Joy (1984): Pathos and absurdity mix in this Bill Forsyth film set in Glasgow. Can a break up film be a feel-good Christmas movie? Aye, lads and lassies. Bill Paterson is a DJ trying to recover his mojo. He proves what dribble AM radio can be. Queue Mr. Bunny and an ice cream war.

 

Delicatessen (1991): You have to have an abiding love for the offbeat to watch a comedy about cannibalism. This post-apocalyptic French film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet is practically a Gallic Sweeney Todd. Believe it or not, it’s preposterous and wacky, its subject matter notwithstanding. Hey, a guy’s gotta eat.

 

 
 

Duck Soup (1933): All Marx Brothers films are blueprints for absurdist comedy, though Duck Soup is my favorite. If you think about it, puffed-up leaders, militarism, and war are absurd to their very core. The battlefield costume changes alone are worth the price of admission. Ditto Harpo walking through an active battle zone with a “Help Wanted” sign.

 

Eagle vs Shark (2007): This was Taika Waititi’s first film. It’s uneven, but who mixes cosplay, geeks, a singer who fails to connect, and fast food with Claymation interludes? Love and sex in the Land of the Weird.

 

Fargo (1996): “Ahh, jeez Marge, you gotta have your breakfast.” Forget the TV show; this Coen Brothers black comedy makes a wood chipper murder victim seem funny–in a twisted way. Anything with Frances McDormand, the Queen of Droll, is worth watching.

 

A Fish Called Wanda (1988): Stars John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. It’s obstensibly a double-cross heist film with Monty Python qualities. It features Cleese as a bumbling Lothario. That alone is funny!

 

Hunt for the Wilder People (2016): This film from New Zealand director Taika Waititi is a comedy-drama shot through with absurdism. Ricky, a foster child, and Hector, a cranky survivalist, hightail it through the New Zealand bush with child services in pursuit. You meet a lot of wacko people in the middle of the wilderness. This one is funny, but also poignant and sad in places. It’s unorthodox throughout.

 

The Jerk (1979): “Waiter, take this away and bring us some new wine.” This Steve Martin vehicle is a screamfest of looniness from start to finish. Carl Reiner directed this tale of love among the reality challenged, a dog named Shithead, and an invention gone wrong.

 

The Lobster (1995): This pan-European surrealist black comedy takes us to a future society in which unmarried people get 45 days to tie the knot or they are turned into animals. And you thought the dating scene was fraught with trauma! It might sound stupid, but it won the Jury Prize at Cannes, sports an all-star cast, and how-did-they-come-up-with-that turns.

 

Local Hero (1983): This film established Bill Forsyth’s reputation for showing Scotland as both charming and strange. Offshore oil sends a Yank from Houston to a remote Highlands village to forge a business deal. Mythic elements and a lilting brogue add to city slicker versus country bumpkin play acting.

 

Malcolm (1986): There’s nothing like a flaky inventor to stir things up, especially one with a childlike imagination who’s pretty far along the spectrum and whose love of trams leads to law-breaking. This unusual Australian comedy also advanced the career of the Penguin Café Orchestra.   

 

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): Another Terry Gilliam directorial effort that turns King Arthur legends on their collective heads. If you’ve never seen it, watch zis film or I will have to taunt you again. Coconut shell horses, Castle Anthrax, a Trojan Rabbit, the Holy Grenade of Antioch, and the Knights Who Say “Ni” are among the things you’ll encounter.

 

O, Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000): Another Coen brothers’ film, this one starring George Clooney. Some viewers didn’t get its humor, but it makes a lot sense­–well nonsense–if you brush up on your Homer and know that it’s mostly a parody of The Odyssey set during the Great Depression. Be “the one the capacity for abstract thought” and enjoy this film. Wonderful soundtrack as well.

 

The Adventure of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994): It’s as if the Aussies have a near stranglehold on oddball comedy. How about a drag queen road trip comedy set in the Outback? It sure is an antidote to Mad Max.

 

 

 

Rushmore (1998): Wes Anderson often drives me to distraction because most of his films are half brilliant and half of a lazy college sophomore’s term paper. Rushmore is his most complete venture into eccentricity. Jason Schwartzman is a 15-year-old kid who’s part huckster, part genius, and part spawn of Satan. This film also rebooted Bill Murray’s career as a laconic character that he can’t be bothered with what makes sense.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Seducing Dr. Lewis is for Lovers of the Absurd!

 

 

SEDUCING DR. LEWIS/LA GRANDE SÉDUCTION (2003)

Directed by Jean-François Pouliet

Wellspring Media, 108 minutes, unrated (language, adult situations)

In French with English subtitles

★★★★★

 

 

 

Movies like Seducing Dr. Lewis remind us of why independent cinema beats the pants off of mainstream movies. This small and exceedingly quirky comedy won an audience award at Sundance in 2004, was cited for excellence at Cannes, and won six Genie awards (the Canadian Oscars).  So, naturally, it was remade in English (2013) and set in Newfoundland rather than Québec, and France made another version two years later. Don’t be tempted; the original is all you need. 

 

This film couldn’t be more appropriate for a blog titled off-center views; it positively crackles and cackles with offbeat whimsy. The village of Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne is a village located on an island miles into in the Bay of St. Lawrence and accessible only by boat.* The steep decline of fishing has left Ste-Marie’s 120 residents in a bad way. Each week the men line up to collect their welfare checks at the bank managed by the nebbish Henri Giroux (Benoît Brière). Because it’s Canada, they are in no danger of starving, but everyone would rather work, both for their self-esteem and out of boredom. A souped-up and funny exchange between Giroux and de facto village leader Germain Lesage (Raymond Bouchard) in which he produces a permission note to collect the check for a long-dead resident alerts us that the film’s humor is coming at you every way except straight-on.

 

When Ste-Marie residents hear of plans for a plastics factory, they begin to lobby for it in ways that will put you in mind of shenanigans of the Scottish film Local Hero. Several problems. First, Ste-Marie is 80 residents shy of the firm’s population cutoff; second, a resident doctor is needed to sign off on the contract and care for the line workers. Third, the plastics firm point man wants a $50,000 bribe. A little in-one-door-out-another farce and sleight of hand swells the population, but recruiting a doctor willing to relocate in the middle of nowhere is another matter. Not even the bend-the-truth advertisements of Germain and his laconic best friends Rolland and Simone Lesage can make that happen. Nor is it easy for an island filled with welfare recipients to find $50,000.   

 

Meanwhile, in Montreal, Dr. Christopher Lewis (David Boutin) is pulled over for speeding in Montreal by a cop who was once the mayor of Ste-Marie-la-Mouderne. When Lewis reaches into his glove box for his registration, a packet of cocaine falls into plain view, and Lewis is up the St. Lawrence without a paddle. Luckily, the cop is willing to ignore the coke if Lewis agrees to spend a month on the island to minister to Ste-Marie’s long-ignored health needs. (The fact that his specialty is plastic surgery is irrelevant!)

 

If you suspect city slicker versus islander folksy country wisdom jokes, you’re on the right track, but think in terms more surreal than homespun. Germain, his wife Hélène (Rita Lafontaine), the Lesages, and the entire village conspire to convince Dr. Lewis to sign aboard for a three-year stint. All manner of weird enticements appear: faux love of cricket by hockey-loving residents who wouldn’t know bowls from the Dead Sea Scrolls; a lucky money-dispensing gnome; and faked interest in fusion jazz. Locals also tap Lewis’ landline phone to determine his other interests and let it be said that they misunderstand at a greater degree than they comprehend. About the only real attraction for Lewis is Ste-Marie’s attractive-but-aloof postmistress Éve (Lucie Laurier).

 

Will Lewis stay? Will the factory be built? where will the islanders find fifty grand? Will Germain. et. al. level with Lewis? Will Henri be replaced by an ATM? Those are the wrong questions and the answers scarcely matter. Watch this film with an eye toward wallowing in absurdity. You just might receive a heartwarming bonus or two.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Ste-Marie is actually Harrington Harbour in northeast Québec and is located on a peninsula, not out to sea.

Halibut on the Moon, Lesson in Depression or Just Depressing?

 

 

HALIBUT ON THE MOON (2019)

By David Vann

Grove Atlantic, 260 pages.

★★★

 

 

 

Halibut on the Moon was deaccessioned rather quickly by my local library, so I had to track it down for an interlibrary loan. I admit that I was mostly intrigued by the title, but now I understand why it had such a short shelf life. Not many people want to read about a guy contemplating suicide, even if the tale is fictional. I get that, though I give author David Vann credit for capturing the despair and hopelessness associated with chronic depression.

 

One wonders if any part of the novel is autobiographical, given that the protagonist is 39-year-old Jim Vann. Jim has been living in Fairbanks since his second marriage to Rhoda ended in divorce. Alaska, with its painfully short winter days, is not the best place for a gloomy person to live–especially in a home he’s never bothered to furnish. His younger brother Gary convinces him that he needs to come to get over his woes by spending time with his family in California. Jim has two children, David, and Tracy, to his first wife Elizabeth, plus a sister (Ginny), and both parents scattered between Santa Rosa and Lakeport, the latter where Jim was once a dentist like his father. Like many, Gary treats “family” as if it’s a magical incantation rather than one of the things that might fuel depression. The psychiatrist Jim sees in Lakeport is incompetent, but he’s at least smart enough to start him on medication immediately. The kicker is that the drugs take at least two weeks to kick in and Jim carries a .44 magnum with him because he’s not sure he can take his anguish any longer.

 

Jim is the epitome of a hollowed-out man. He’s intelligent but he trashed his career, repeatedly cheated on both wives, frequents hookers, owes the IRS $365,000, can’t sleep, doesn’t believe in anything, and is especially contemptuous of his family’s Lutheranism. Nor does he possess many filters, so even those trying to help him vacillate between sympathy and repulsion. All he wants to do is call Rhoda and have sex with her. He can’t even articulate why, as he doesn’t find her very attractive and family members try to tell him that she’s “poison.” Perhaps she’s just the only thing remotely interesting in Lakeport, a small town of about 5,000 souls in which nothing much happens. Jim even has to scale a fence to get to its namesake shoreside.

 

For sure Jim is several fries short of a Happy Meal. He shoots a scrub jay and talks of cooking it. The book’s title is a preposterous tale he tells his kids of sending an astronaut halibut to the moon, where it flies. The meds mess with him; he’s manic one moment and fingering his gun the next. He imagines he should be proud of his Cherokee ancestry, though he can’t muster much enthusiasm about that or anything else. Mostly he ponders suicide and views himself as a breathing ghost   

 

The open question is whether Jim will become a non-breathing ghost. Halibut on the Moon is an interior novel told from Jim’s point of view. It’s a short book that’s long on troubled thoughts, an apt lens through which to view someone who can’t see beyond his pain and isn’t sure he wants to. Still, dwelling upon Jim’s dark, angst-ridden, and disjointed thoughts parallels his conflicted self-awareness, but it makes the book a will-he-or-won’t-he one-trick pony. In essence, Jim is on a roller coaster between life and death perched on the crest of a steep piece of track; “stalled” is a challenging place for readers along for the ride.

 

Should you nonetheless read Halibut on the Moon? It depends. If you think of it as didactic, you will attain a deeper understanding of a mental state you never wish to visit. You will also get the message that telling a profoundly disturbed person to snap out of it and be thankful for what he has is a ludicrous piece of advice. If you’re reading for pleasure, that’s another matter altogether. Either way, though, be cautious of thinking of family as a panacea.

 

Rob Weir