needs more demons? perhaps, but not as many as before.

Moriarty delivers a plot compelling enough that I was able to read this book on the subway without getting motion sick (a rarity). Some plot points are a tad predictable — it is immediately clear that Sacha’s pride must lead to a comeuppance — but I found the ways even the requisite elements unfolded satisfying; and there were plenty of unexpected thrills (and chills; there is a dash of horror in Moriarty’s mix). Sacha is both engaging and a little off-putting, a neat trick. Moriarty does an excellent job of portraying the world through his eyes, so we see how he comes to decisions most readers would probably disagree with to some extent.

I loved the complexity of Moriarty’s milieu. Sacha’s life is impacted by economic disparity and prejudice, but the novel isn’t preachy in the least. The role of magic in society has some obvious metaphorical parallels (Prohibition and intellectual property issues both came to my mind) but it also works on a straightforward literal level. I also loved the integration of some folkloric elements that haven’t been done to death in recent years.

It is clear that Sacha’s gradual-coming-of-age will occupy more than one book; he does some significant growing up in this one, but he’s got a way to go. Moriarty ties up Sacha’s first major case with Wolf and company well enough, but leaves some things decidedly unresolved. Often this annoys me a bit, but in the present case it just leaves me very impatient for the continuation of Sacha’s story.

needs more demons? nohow.

This seemed like a good reason to learn more, so I decided to read a few of the many books about Google.

I started with Steven Levy’s. It isn’t a corporate puff piece, but with direct participation from key players like founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and longtime CEO Eric Schmidt, it’s the closest thing to an “official” Google book. It’s not entirely uncritical of Google, but it’s tone is generally favorable. It’s divided into eight parts, covering Google’s history, Google’s Internet ad innovations, Google’s culture (including the initial Gmail privacy flap), Google’s physical infrastructure, Android and YouTube, Google’s ethical and privacy dilemmas in dealing with China, Google’s (and more significantly, ex-Googler’s) relationship to domestic politics in general and the Obama campaign/presidency in particular), and Google’s efforts in social media spaces.

It generally seems well-sourced and -supported, with copious footnotes. Levy occasionally speculates on things that are not public knowledge, but in general his guesses seem pretty rational.

Overall I found it credible, readable, and informative, and often engaging and entertaining.

needs more demons? no.

And in the solid construction of every one of those lost houses in that ancient photograph there had been left over the time, skill, money, and inclination to decorate their eaves with scrollwork; to finish a job with craftsmanship and pride. And time, too, to build huge wide porches on which families sat on summer evenings with palm-leaf fans.

Reading an old book preoccupied with its own past, I felt like Steven Wright putting instant coffee in the microwave: I almost went back in time.

Finney’s ordinary people generally encounter some strange element or occurance that transcends the need for explanation. There’s something distinctly not un-Twilight Zone-ish, about the plots and moods of these stories, but there’s a key difference. Serling and the writers he worked with crafted morality tales, but in “Galesburg” one finds amorality tales. Not immorality tales (although bad apples don’t necessarily get a comeuppance) but not overly concerned with delivering a message either. I was a little bugged by a couple of the protagonists’ attitudes toward women (especially the narrator of “Love, Your Magic Spell is Everywhere,” who gets a pair of comic-book-ad-style X-ray glasses that really work) but in general this volume didn’t require too much historical perspective. (Or maybe I’ve been watching too much Mad Men.) But Finney’s prose is crisp and colorful, and even when his tales clearly telegraph their conclusions, I found most of them satisfying.

At least two of the stories in this book have a connection to Finney’s later work: “The Coin Collector” forms the basis of his novel The Woodrow Wilson Dime; “The Intrepid Aeronaut” seems like an early treatment of themes Finney would explore at greater length in The Night People.

needs more demons? no.

Neville doesn’t compromise the authenticity of her teenage narrator’s voice an iota, but she nonetheless conveys more than he is explicitly aware of about the social structures he lives in (and which threaten to constrain his friend Tom). This adds depth that this adult reader certainly appreciated, but Neville is quite subtle about it — there are no omigawd-social-consciousness! hammers being swung around.

If I’d run into this in my early teen years, it might well have been one of those books I literally wore to pieces.

needs more demons? no.

Klausner also seems to feel compelled to imbue I Don’t Care About Your Band with some sort of social relevance. Sometimes I think she hits on a genuine insight, but scattered throughout are cringe-inducing bits of armchair sociology derived from from observing a small population with an intrinsic selection bias. Few things get my dander up like sweeping generalizations about gender and sex role behavior, e.g., the “only women can be bisexual, men can only be in the process of turning gay” trope, which gets aired here.

* some versions of this pull-quote substitute Cat Power, which would have made me somewhat less likely to read the book.

needs more demons? just a few

…a car horn rendition of “La Cucaracha” sounded outside. I looked out the sidelights of the front door to see a white van with foot-long wrought-iron ants welded along the roof, making it look like a giant motorized sugar cube at a picnic. The termite guy.

His name was William Watson, and he was carrying a black vinyl binder at least six inches thick. “Call me Bill,” he said twice, once as he shook Greg’s hand, once as he shook mine. Bill was a short, skinny man of about sixty with a well-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and ears that were as gnarled and meaty as tree fungus. He listened to our tale of the previous night’s insect horror with his eyes turned toward the floor, his head cocked as though he were an oncologist and our complaints might hold the first subtle signs of a malignancy larger than we were prepared to face.

I liked Novak’s debut novel Five Mile House, which shares protagonist Leslie Stone, a troubled ex-cop with a lot of baggage. Innocence demonstrates exactly the sort of progress I’d hope for from an author continuing to improve her craft: it’s more nuanced and subtle, more solidly structured, told in a more authoritative set of voices.

The end was a tiny letdown, with most of the plot threads gathered up just a little too neatly and too quickly. The one significant stray thread is likewise a hair too expected, like the question mark floating into a film’s “The End” title card.

In general, though, if I enjoyed every suspense novel as much, I’d read more suspense novels.

needs more demons? no.

The basic ingredients are the same: historical fiction, hardboiled whodunnit, comedy of manners, political intrigue, and romance. But the proportions are quite different this time around. In particular, the prominence of whodunnit elements is so reduced that the book barely qualifies as a “mystery novel” in the traditional sense, although the mystery sub-plot is too well integrated to be gratuitous. (And although Falco spends comparatively few calories trying to build links between corpses and killers, The Iron Hand of Mars gives him puzzles of other sorts to wrangle.)

The Iron Hand of Mars even features some armed-parties-tramping-through-the-woods-looking-for-things action which almost gives it a fantasy novel vibe — except that a clash over who wins the contract to supply an army base with tableware is the sort of nuts-and-bolts conflict which Davis excels at depicting, and which few fantasists would deem worthy of consideration.

Finally, Falco’s distinctive narrative presence holds everything together. He’s a wise-cracking private investigator (informer, in Roman parlance) in the classic mode — wry, self-deprecating, observant, and incisive (apart from the requisite blind spots). He’s also a Roman citizen who dwells in a richly detailed, complex, and credible social environment. The seamlessness with which Davis melds these disparate elements continues to astound me.

Needs More Demons? Nope.

In her acknowledgments Crystal Zevon writes,

Over the three years [of writing the book] I … fell in and out of love hundreds of times. There were weeks when I was sure I’d hate him forever; nights when I’d cry myself to sleep missing the sound of his voice; and many moments when I wondered how I could expose what he’d asked me to expose … I’d made a promise to tell the whole truth — “even the awful, ugly parts.”

I suspect that many readers will have an experience similar in character, if less intense and personal. I’m glad I read Miles Davis’ autobiography Miles first; that was a formative experience for me in resolving conflict between enormous respect for a musical talent, and repugnance at the man behind that talent sometimes being a real shit. There were many points in Zevon’s story before he got sober where it was hard to have any sympathy for him at all. Even the sober Warren Zevon was hell on anyone he was romantically with, and often hard to deal with for most who knew him. It seems unlikely, for instance, that the world would have had any of his “comeback” records from the mid-80’s on, if not for the perseverance of Andy Slater:

..when [the record company executives] got to Warren, somebody said…”We’re going to terminate him.”
I stood up and said, “Terminate him? He’s the best artist we have.”
There’s all this harrumphing and one of the principles said, Slater, he’s 180,000 dollars in debt [to the I.R.S.], he doesn’t live her anymore, he has no record deal, and he doesn’t want to work.” I said, “Yeah, but he’s a great artist. And he’s the best writer here.” This guy says, “Then you manage him.”

After weeks of coaxing, Slater gets Zevon started on the road that led to his album Sentimental Hygeine, and his first substantive experiences with sobriety. Throughout their association, Zevon continues to use Slater hard:

I got a call from Warren. He said, “I’m in big trouble, Andy. You’ve got to help me. This girl is pregnant. I’m not in love with her, and I don’t want to be with her, and she’s going to have the kid. You’ve got to come here and explain my life to her.” I said, “Okay.”

but ultimately, even Slater gets fed up:

When I went to rehab, Warren was finally in good financial shape, sober, had a healthy touring base, and was about to release a new record. I called him from treatment… I said “What’s going on? How’s the record? blah blah blah.” He said, “Yeah, it’s going fine. I’ve got to talk to you about something.” He says, “Look, Andy, I just got off the phone with Irving [Azoff]. He said that if I fire you … he’ll really work my record and I’ll get better promotion and marketing… I think I’m going to do it.”
I hung the phone up, and thank God I was in treatment…It was devastating to me because here was somebody I had been friends with for almost ten years. I had … made it my mission to get him back in the record business when he was drunk and living in Philadelphia. I had taken him to rehab three times…Then, when I had a problem, he wasn’t there.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is subtitled “The Dirty Live and Times of Warren Zevon.” Like all of the chapter titles, it’s a phrase drawn from one of Zevon’s song titles. Crystal Zevon admits to drawing a veil over the most baldly pornographic of Zevon’s reminisces, but there are racy bits a-plenty:

I invited Jeanette over and we made love, wonderful. Feel great. Went to the tanning place. Sure enough, there was Susan & before I knew it we were fucking on the carpet, then on the tanning bed.

But in addition to the typical trashy rock star excesses of sex, booze, and tax woes, and the less typical excesses of Calvin Klein gray shirts, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead offers more than the usual share of insight into Zevon’s artistic process. And that’s ultimately what makes it a compelling and moving read.

Needs More Demons? Ye gods, no.

Matlock’s musical contributions to the band also fascinate me. I’m convinced that the strange alchemy between Matlock and Steve Jones is at least as important to the band’s enduring success as Lydon’s characteristic sonic sneers and McLaren’s image-mongering. Matlock wrote lovely pop songs and Jones stripped away the fiddly bits and reduced them to their elemental essence. (The fantastic EMI documentary Never Mind the Bollocks has many examples of this process in action).

Matlock (with help from co-author Pete Silverton) proves a breezy and entertaining narrator unburdened by false modesty. He’s got about as little patience for the myth that the Pistols couldn’t play as I do. He portrays McLaren as more of an opportunist than a master manipulator, and since he worked in McLaren’s shop even before it was renamed Sex, his is presumably a well-informed opinion. His account of the infamous Anarchy tour is markedly different than the others I’ve read; he was insulated from the press furor and mostly remembers being dead bored in hotel rooms.

A brief quote will give you a feel for the book’s flavor, and also show why Matlock didn’t ultimately fit well with the band:

…What they were interested in was prostitutes. It was all, let’s go and get Glen a tart. It may sound like I was a party-pooper but I wasn’t interested. One, I had my eye on a girl at the Paridiso [the club where the band was booked]. Two, I had a couple of songs to work on and one of the songs I wrote there turned out to be “Rich Kids” which sold 100,000 copies, thank you very much. So sod going off after a tart.

I read the original 1990 edition, but glenmatlock.com indicates that Matlock has revised the book with new material covering the recent reunion tours. Dang. I might have to read it again.

Needs More Demons? Not really.