Literary Blogpourri

Is it me, or as Robert Crais gets older...





...he looks more and more like Robert Forester?


Except for the eyes, of course.

What, Max Cherry, no Pinocchio clock?

Proud mama Patti Abbott posted the upcoming UK cover for her daughter's novel "Die A Little"

I'm terrible at Six Differences and most of the time if I am real lucky, I'll get five.



My first impression was that the British cover turned the original painting into an exterior shot. Uh, wrong. My next mistaken impression was the Brit cover was much further away than it actually was.

Patti pointed out that they changed the font and coloring of those letters. The UK font really belongs on an action comic cover. The original font gives the cover dignity and a proper vintage feel.

The one thing that I did note correctly was that lightened the cover more than a couple of shades. Dammit, it's neo-noir, how can they take the scuro out of the chiaroscuro? Che cazzate.


Christian Slater has a show coming up on NBC in the fall and he says...

"Let's see, I'm essentially playing two very distinct characters - Henry Spivey and Edward Albright. Henry is an everyman. He's got two kids, goes to work, regular. Edward Albright works for this top secret government organization. He's an operative, and Edward knows about Henry. Henry doesn't know about Edward, but the implant that's been put in his brain begins to malfunction, and the two personalities begin to merge, which is what happens in the first episode."


Note that the Dr. Jekyl half of Slater's character has the last name "Spivey." So I would say, "Uh, NBC? Change the Edward Albright character to Drexl Spivey and you have yourself a loyal viewer, right here. Not really, but it would mean that I would watch more episode than I originally would have.

"True Romance" is my favorite Tarantino script and certainly outside of Jackie Brown, his most Leonard-like script of all. Also note that this is the sole Drexl image I could find on the web, I'm going to have to learn how to vidcap one day.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules Is Worth A Read

The Missus gave me "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing" for Christmas. It is a compact, well written book. It is terse and not only because it lacks "hooptedoodle," but also because it is just a well-written article (it was originally an article in the New York Times) that was formatted (though it seems, not expanded) into a book.

While Leonard explains why writers should do away with extraneous sentences, he quotes a character in John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday"-

"Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle.... Spin up some pretty words mabe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."

What really binds this almost sparse book together, are the illustrations of Joe Ciardello, whose stylings you might have seen in the New Yorker or Rolling Stone. They are the broth and rice that makes a complete meal of the stew that Elmore cooked up.

Though this book has probably cured me of using "suddenly" and "all hell broke loose," I will most likely be unable to kick my regional dialect/patois habit. This writer here is currently suffering the same affliction as Elmore paraphrase-

Joesph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.