‘Mr. Heathcliff?’
And what did I do?
‘What the devil is the matter?’
‘Take a glass of wine?’
‘Not bitten, are you?’
‘Your health, sir?’
‘What are ye for?’
‘Is there nobody inside to open the door?’
‘Why? Cannot you tell her whom I am, eh, Joseph?’
‘Do you intend parting with the little ones, madam?’
‘Ah, your favourites are among these?’
‘Were you asked to tea?’
‘Were you asked?’
‘Half an hour?’
‘Do you know that you run a risk of being lost in the marshes?’
‘Perhaps I can get a guide among your lads, and he might stay at the Grange till morning—could you spare me one?’
‘Are you going to mak’ the tea?’
‘Is he to have any?’
‘Get it ready, will you?’
‘Where is she—my amiable lady?’
‘Is that it?’
‘How must I do?’
‘Are you not afraid of being carried away bodily, whenever you mention the devil’s name?’
‘Then, if you hear of me being discovered dead in a bog or a pit full of snow, your conscience won’t whisper that it is partly your fault?’
‘How so?’
‘Who? … Which would you have?’
‘Are there no boys at the farm?’
‘And who is to look after the horses, eh?’
‘I wonder what you’ll have agait next? Are we going to murder folk on our very door-stones?’
“You the one who threw down Mr. Klees?” the sheriff said.
“He’s just back from the war,” Ma said.
“Thank you for your service,” the sheriff said. “Might I ask you to refrain from throwing people down in the future?”
“He also threw me down,” Harris said.
“My thing is I don’t want to go around arresting veterans,” the sheriff said. “I myself am a veteran. So if you help me, by not throwing anyone else down, I’ll help you. By not arresting you. Deal?”
“He was also going to burn the house down,” Ma said.
“I wouldn’t recommend burning anything down,” the sheriff said.
“He ain’t himself,” Ma said. “I mean, look at him.”
The sheriff had never seen me before, but it was like admitting he had no basis for assessing how I looked would have been a professional embarrassment.
“He does look tired,” the sheriff said.
Read all of “Home” by George Saunders at The New Yorker. Collected in Tenth of December.
I took my daughter to the bookstore today—she has the day off school—and let her pick out almost as many books as she wanted. (She had trouble carrying more than six, so that’s where we stopped).
Meandering out, I spied this 1997 paperback printing of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (I love how UK trade paperback editions often seem blockier, denser, more squarish than US editions). Anyway, the book isn’t particular rare, even for a first edition, but I hadn’t seen it before (even a pic). I took a quick pic and walked away.
And then walked back of the copy of IJ after purchasing my daughter’s books—only to say to myself in a reasonable voice, No, you already own a copy, no, no, you don’t need another book, especially one you’ve already read, already own. So I walked out of the store with my daughter.
And then went back inside to buy it (or rather use my trade credit—swollen from unasked-for review copies of books I have no interest in—to acquire it).
I have no sentimental attachments to the ubiquitous beclouded-covered copy I bought a few years ago (purchased to replace a copy I did like (one with annotations, one I actually wished I still had) that I had lent to a friend who never read it or returned it (and then moved))—so maybe I’ll give it away or take it to my office or something.
James W. Hall’s Going Dark. Got a review copy last month and somehow got shoved to the bottom of another pile. Mea culpa. Publisher Macmillan’s blurb:
Earth Liberation Front is a loosely-knit national organization of radical environmental activists who take a “by any means necessary” approach to defending the planet. In the last decade, ELF has been responsible for almost a hundred million dollars in damage mainly through arson. The FBI ranks them, along with other eco-radicals, as the number one homegrown terrorist threat. And Flynn Moss—Thorn’s newly discovered son—appears to be among ELF’s members. “no-holds-barred action…A fine thriller on every level.” —Booklist Flynn has naively fallen in with an ELF cell in Miami, where he’s engaged in non-violent protest against one of Florida’s largest nuclear power plants. But soon Flynn uncovers another, darker plot among ELF operatives—one that involves a radioactive catastrophe rivaling Chernobyl or Fukushima. With a growing sense of dread about his involvement in such a scheme, Flynn summons Thorn to help him escape from Prince Key, the remote island off the shores of Miami where the ELF group is camped. But just as soon as Thorn leads the fight to save Flynn, he reaches a frightening realization: In order to protect his son, he must join the eco-terrorists and help them complete their deadly mission. And time is running out in Going Dark…
Denis Johnson’s new novel The Laughing Monsters is excellent.
Okay: Too short a review? Well. Look, I read it over the weekend, and got a copy of the audiobook version to listen to this week, and then I’ll write a proper review, but here’s publisher FS&G’s blurb, followed by a few quick impressions:
Denis Johnson’s The Laughing Monsters is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game.
Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years’ absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country’s civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless.
Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He’s probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago.
Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko’s stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko’s fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko’s clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.
The Laughing Monsters is not the plot-driven spy novel it pretends to be. The novel’s plot is a shaggy dog story, an excuse for Johnson to riff on how adventure tips into madness, how conflicting identities jam up against loyalties.
Johnson is clearly following Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, sure, but there are also heavy hints of Moby-Dick here, and even Blood Meridian (McCarthy clearly is the descendant of Melville and Conrad, of course). But mostly Denis Johnson is following Denis Johnson in The Laughing Monsters.
The Laughing Monsters is also very-much about writing itself: Nair is a writer, and much of the novel takes the form of emails he sends (or writes without sending), notes he scratches on lined paper in dull pencil, and half-mad confessions. Ultimately, the voice that narrates the novel is Nair’s internal composer. The driving force of the story though is Michael Adriko, the charismatic trickster who seems to be creating the plot as he goes along.
More to come, but again, short version: Great stuff.
Biblioklept 