Murderati

Eight Thousand Stories in the Semi-Naked City

by J.D. Rhoades

First off, thanks to Rob Gregory Browne for filling in while I was at the beach. We had a great time, and I got to catch up on my reading (about which more in future posts).

You may remember last year about this time, I was getting ready to head for the beach and wondering if I should just leave the laptop at home and not write for a week. I ended up leaving the computer, but taking the notebook, in which quite a few ideas, character sketches, one-liners, dreams, and other flotsam and jetsam got jotted down.

This year, I busted my tail getting my WIP in submittable form, getting in a short story that I'd promised,  doing a couple of guest blogs, writing enough newspaper columns to get through the vacation, and generally working it so there was no deadline hanging over my head and no project due after I got back.   

But even when I'm not officially writing,  I noticed something. If you're a writer, there are some things you can't turn off. One of those is the habit of wondering about, then spinning stories around, the things that you see.

People always ask writers, "where do you get your ideas?" But, if you think like a writer, ideas...stories...are everywhere. Sometimes it seems like everything you see is an invitation to say to yourself, "I wonder what that guy's story is?" then let your brain rush in to fill the void.

For example, we saw:

* A young couple who came into a very nice seafood restaurant with their toddler, sat down at a nearby table, ordered tea....then before their order was even taken, got up and rushed out, in the middle of a thunderstorm so violent that the mother had to pull her jacket over her and her little girl's head to protect them from the driving rain.

* A beautiful blue-sailed catamaran  bounding joyously along the waves in the morning, only to be seen later being dragged, sideways and half submerged, behind a small motorboat that was laboring hard to pull the disabled cat.

*The mysterious phone calls to the  beach house at 8:30 in the morning. When I finally stirred myself  go out in the living room an answer one, I got a recorded message stating "This is attorney Melvin Weinstein trying to reach (pause) Samuel A. Jones (pause)*. I have been trying to get in touch with you for some time. It is VERY IMPORTANT that I speak with you. Please press '9' to connect." When I pressed '9' to tell them they had a rental beach house and there was no one there by that name...silence, then a dial tone.

* A huge freighter that paced back and forth on the horizon for a day and a half, neither coming in to the Port of Wilmington nor sailing away.

* Two large  hand-made, but neatly lettered signs along the beach road  proclaiming 'NO MOORE, MAY MOORE!"

Where were these folks going in such a hurry? What happened to the catamaran and the people on it? Why is Melvin Weinstein after Samuel A. Jones? Why couldn't the freighter come in or sail away? Who's May Moore, and who's had enough?

So have at it, folks! Post your own ideas of the stories behind those weird occurrences. I'll tell you what I and the kids came up with in the comments.

*names changed

Word of the Day

I was out with the family for our evening walk  when the conversation turned to a popular young-adult book series about vampires.

It seems that, in said series, the vampires can walk in daylight without ill effect, don't have fangs, and try to avoid killing humans. In fact, they drink mostly animal blood. "Yeah," my son said, "they really nerfed the curse."

"They what?" I asked.

"They nerfed the curse."

"Nerfing" as it turns out, is apparently an expression from video and computer gaming where an antagonist,  weapon or artifact is dumbed down or reduced in destructive power by the developers in later versions of the game.  Sometimes, the idea behind nerfing is to better balance the game, to avoid the phenomenon of "when you get the Sword of Kumquat, it's all over, everyone else might as well quit." But sometimes nerfing takes all the challenge out to the point where the game is  a boring cakewalk.

So what does this have to do with crime fiction? Well, how many times have we seen a message board post or amateur review in which someone has said, "Well, I don't like it if there's too much violence." "I won't read anything where a child is put in danger." "I won't read anything where an animal is hurt." And god forbid you should kill off a series character. Some of the things I've read from blogs after that's happened make Stephen King's character Annie Wilkes look like a poster child for mental health.

Ah, hello? This is CRIME FICTION. Crime is violent, at least if it's being done right. And villains, surprise surprise,  do villianous things, including threatening women, children and small cute animals. And sometimes the good guys die.

But there's also the question of balance. You want to make the antagonist powerful and deadly, but not so deadly he or she can't be believably overcome. You want to make him or her nasty and evil, but not so much so that they're cackling, hand-rubbing cartoons.

Likewise, you sometimes want your protagonist to be a bad-ass, but not so much that he lacks any vulnerability at all. For instance, I love Lee Child's work beyond all reason, but there's a bit in, I think, ECHO BURNING, where it says "Jack Reacher had never lost a fight." First thing that popped into my head when I read that  was "well, guess he's not gonna lose this one, either, so much for suspense."  In later books Reacher did, from time to time, make mistakes, and even allow himself to think that,  maybe this time. he might not make it (or, more often, that the damsel du jour might not).  And that's why Lee's books get better every time.

But hey, I could be wrong. How about it? Writers, have you ever felt pressure, internal,  editorial, or otherwise, to nerf? Have you ever read a book in which you felt that the author nerfed the bad guy? And can you tell I just really like writing the word "nerfed"?

Guest Blogger Julia Spencer-Fleming (In Bed)

This morning, good friends and gentlepeople, it is my singular honor to have as Guest Blogger  the lovely, talented, and exceedingly cool Julia Spencer-Fleming. Y'all make her feel welcome.

I’m taking Marcus Sakey to bed tonight. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. “Julia, he’ll keep you up half the night. When Morning Edition switches on at 6am, you’ll feel like something the cat dragged through the bushes backwards.” It’s true. But I just can’t help it. He was so good the first two times, I can’t resist.

Besides, he was the one who sent me the ARC of Good People.

 

Usually, I try to avoid too much pulse-pounding action at bedtime. My most frequent evening companion is Will Shortz, whose undemanding intellectual rigor--An adult elver? Intact, as in a pharaoh’s tomb? Deco artist’s pseudonym?--lulls me into such a stupor that I frequently bash myself in the face with the falling 50 New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles.

Sometimes when I settle down on my pillows and crack that spine, it’s a first encounter. If your editor asked me to blurb you, I may never have heard of you before taking you to bed. There’s an element of risk involved. If you don’t hold my interest, I’ll have to put you down and go find someone I know I can count on. I’m as good a sport as the next writer, but I prefer, when possible, to pick my nighttime companions for pleasure, rather than for business.

When stressed, I want a read I can rely on, and I’ll go back to old favorites I can lose myself in time and again;

                                                                                                                                                          

Lois McMaster Bujold, Suzanne Brockmann, Jennifer Crusie, Robert Heinlein. You’ll notice none of them are known as mystery writers. That’s because when the world begins to pile on, I want to lay back and be entertained, not compare my performance with someone who might very well be doing it better than me.

On book tour, I like to bring Lee Child along. Really, who wouldn’t? The O’Hare connection was late, the bookstore only stocked seven paperbacks, the library audience consisted of the Director’s mother and two maiden aunts; I know once I crawl up onto that Hilton Serenity Bed with its Serta Suite Dreams ® mattress and five down pillows,

                                                                    

Lee will make all the bad things disappear. One memorable night in Omaha, when I was rooming with Edgar finalist Denise Hamilton, I stayed up until 3am, locked in the bathroom with a brand-new Lee Child, a towel rolled against the bottom of the door to keep from waking Denise.

Once in a while, when I’m face-down in the latest manuscript, writing eight-nine-ten hours a day, I don’t want to leave the world of Millers Kill. I want to think about the characters, write about the characters, dream about the characters. On those occasions, I turn to myself. Yes, I’ll read my own books. What? It’s perfectly normal.

 

  One thing’s guaranteed--I know I’m going to like it.

What about you, dear Reader? Who do you enjoy taking to bed?

Julia Spencer-Fleming's Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series has won the Dilys, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, Barry, Nero Wolfe and Gumshoe Awards.
Her most recent accomplishment was having Putnam Editor-in-Chief Neil Nyren, writing for some blog, say he expected to see her on the New York Times Bestseller list. Her upcoming book, I SHALL NOT WANT, will be published in June by St. Martin’s Minotaur. you can find out more about her and her work at www.juliaspencerfleming.com

I'm Not Saying I Condone It, But I Understand

(Image courtesy http://xkcd.com)

by J.D. Rhoades

By now I'm sure you've heard the story:

A lady named  Deborah Anne McGillivray  writes a romance series about beautiful hot blooded noblewomen with names like  Aithinne and  Tamlyn and studly Knights with names like 'The Black Dragon" and such as that. Not my usual cuppa, but that's not important to this story.

After reading the second book in the series, a reader named Reba Belle goes to Amazon.com and writes a three star review, which is actually pretty mild. I mean, check it out...we've all had worse.

Ms. McGillivray (hereinafter referred to as DAM) makes her first mistake. She goes on the Amazon.com site and starts arguing with Reba in the comments.

Now, I mean, really. What is the point of that? Does DAM expect Reba to suddenly have a Road to Damascus moment and go "Holy Shit! You're right! This book is the greatest work of literature in the English language!" Ain't gonna happen, ma'am, sorry.

Then, things go from odd to bizarre. DAM apparently writes to her Highland Press author group and claims to have, and I quote,  Reba's "name, her husband’s name, her children's names, her grannies and great grannies name. Her address phone number and email lol - quite interesting." She demands that other group members "vote this bitch down", i.e. rate her review as "abusive", which apparently causes Amazon to auto-delete them without even reading them.

Okay, so there can be no mistake and no misinterpretation of what I'm about here, let me state some things which I consider absolutely without question: DAM may be a lovely woman if you meet her in person, but what she did  was freaking psychotic. If someone flames you on the Internet, it's a natural reaction to hit back. God knows I've done it enough. But searching out someone's personal info and threatening to use it against them over a lukewarm book review is nuts. Cuckoo. Bat-shit crazy.

I mean, I'm not saying collecting someone's personal info is always wrong, but that sort of thing should be saved for when someone's threatening or harassing you or your friends. I'm just saying.

See, here's the thing: I know there are some readers who sincerely just don't care for a book, and they and their opinions  deserve to be treated with respect. But (and I know there are certain elements who are going to flame me for this) there are some people out there in the Interwebs who are just nucking futs--insane dysfunctional  geeks who are going to hate you for obscure reasons, no matter what, and who are going to post the meanest thing they can think of because their anonymity keeps them from getting a bop in the nose. How do you tell the difference?

Obviously, the best response is to play it safe. Assume everyone you see is sane and sincere. Say "thank you for your input," if you say anything at all, and move on. I also try to hold in my head certain basic principles:

Whatever you do, somebody isn’t going to like it.
The Internet gives everyone who has access to it a voice.
People who are angry, disgruntled, or, as I said,  just plain nuts are more likely to write about it, especially on the Internet.
Therefore, you can expect more bad Internet reviews than good ones. If you’re getting more good than bad, you’re beating the odds. Rejoice.

At least that's what I try to do. But what is it about Internet reviews that makes it so hard to resist the temptation to bite back?  Patricia Cornwell once asked her fans via her website to go to Amazon and post positive reviews because, she said, "she had reason to suspect that someone (or a group of someones) might be mobilizing people to attack me through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, etc., to hurt my sales and reputation." Said someone or group of someones, she hypothesized, might include the Bush Administration and the Billy Graham family (with whom she'd been friends for years). Uhhh...what? A few years ago, Anne Rice stirred up a fuss by not only responding, but by posting her home address on Amazon.com and offering a cash refund to Amazon reviewers who didn't like BLOOD CANTICLE. Now, I'll grant that it's got to be pretty hard not to want to respond to reviews with titles like "What's that I smell? Another piece of first draft drivel?" and "I WANT TO BURN THIS THING!" But posting your home address--well, see "nucking futs," above.

In the long run, it's just not smart to attempt to bite back. As Tess Gerritsen recently discovered to her chagrin, there's a certain subset of bloggers, reviewers and commenters  for whom every amateur review, blog post or comment, no matter how wrongheaded  it may be, is above questioning by the ink-stained wretch who spent months of his or her life creating the work. If said wretch doesn't just grin and bear it, or if, like Tess, they even make a joke about it, they're alleged to be "demeaning and offensive to readers" and/or they're accused of  thinking readers "are smart enough to spend money on your books but not smart enough to offer reasoned critiques."

It's an odd form of reverse elitism where everyone can comment except the author who wrote the work , but there you are. The customer may not always be right, but that's the way to treat 'em.

One issue this raises, though, is:  if  the Amazon review and rating system is apparently so easily gamed, is it of any use any more? If you can mobilize a relatively small number of your buddies to take down bad reviews, or conversely to flood the place with good ones, of what use are they? (Not that I'm trying to discourage my friends from going to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and saying lovely things about my books, mind you. If and only if, the spirit moves you, please, feel free, and do so with my thanks).

All that said, I bet we're all still going to read them.

So how about you? Writers, do some of your Amazon or other Internet reviews make you want to hunt the reviewer down and bop them right in the nose? Have you ever had trouble resisting the temptation to at least post back? Is that from sincere respect for others' opinions or fear of retaliation?

And readers, knowing what you know now, do you really put any stock in Amazon reviews anymore?

The Last Line

by J.D. Rhoades

As you no doubt are aware, legendary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died on March 18 at the age of 90. This post won’t be another Clarke eulogy; there’s no way, after all, that I could do better than Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s tribute here. But in reminiscing about the things I loved in  Clarke’s work, I  started  thinking about one of the things he did better than almost anyone else: Arthur C. Clarke could write a killer last line. 

• The Ramans do everything in threes. 
• Though he was master of the world, he was unsure what to do next.
  But he would think of something.
• Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out. 

Mickey Spillane was once quoted as saying that “The first line sells that book. The last line sells your next one.” And the Mick had some doozies: 

“How c-could you?’ she gasped. I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
“It was easy," I said. 

And who could forget: Juno was a man! 

We've talked  here about great first lines in crime fiction, including the one that opens James Crumley’s THE LAST GOOD KISS. But the brutal kiss-off in the last few lines of that one are pretty stunning, too: 

“You’re dead,” I said. “Go home before you start to stink.”
I guess he did. The last I saw of him, he was stumbling out of Rosie’s place, stumbling over Fireball’s grave. 

And there's' a certain perfectly noir hopelessness in the  last lines of THE MALTESE FALCON: 

“Iva is here.”
Spade, looking down at his desk, nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” he said, and shivered. “Well, send her in.”

And outside of the genre, there are these classics:

• He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

• And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

• "Well, I'm back," he said.

 

So what are YOUR favorite last lines? (Oh, and if they're from something recent, rather than  classics like the ones above, and the last line telegraphs the ending, have a heart and put the word SPOILER FOR____  in the first part of your answer.)

And as an extra special bonus, a contest. But this one's a little different because it may take a while to resolve. This next last line is from a book being released in the next three months. When you figure out what it is, e-mail me at jdrhoades@nc.rr.com, and you'll get one of the first promo copies of BREAKING COVER.

The line is:

We'd already waited long enough.

Shall We Play a Game?

by J.D. Rhoades

Okay, the weather’s getting warmer, the first buds are appearing here on flowering trees and shrubs, my wife’s recovering nicely from the scare we had a couple weeks ago, and it’s Daylight Saving time again.

Yes, I’m one of the few people I know who likes DST, and wishes it could be all year round. I like having some sunlight left when I leave the office. Having the clocks change means there’s more time in the evenings to take a walk or a bike ride, sit out on the deck with a guitar and a cold drink, or whatever. I’m willing to put up with a day or two of time change lag for that.

On the whole, things are looking decidedly more cheerful here inside my head, and I’m feeling frisky, and not at all in the mood for a serious post about craft and such.

So let’s have some fun and play a game. This is one I like to call “iPod Roulette,” and it’s a great way for us to all get to know each other better (and maybe discover some new music). You don’t necessarily need an Apple iPod to play it…any Mp3 player or computer music player will do, so long as it has a “Shuffle” feature that allows you to play random songs from your library. It goes like this: (1) Hit Shuffle. (2) In the comments, post the first twenty songs that come up. (You can forward through if you don’t want to listen to all of them before posting).  (3) Be honest.

This last part is crucial. C’mon, we’re all friends here, and if you secretly have Tom Jones singing What’s New Pussycat in your music library, no one will laugh at you. Much. Well, okay, we’ll probably laugh. A lot. But it’ll be warm, friendly laughter, not like that time when I read my love poem out loud in English class and everyone knew it was about…never mind.

Ready? Okay, I’ll start: 

Van Morrison, Moonshine Whiskey

Todd Rundgren, It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference

Clannad, Siuil A Run

Richard Thompson, Nearly In Love

Jimmy Buffett, Tampico Trauma

Adam and the Ants, Goody Two Shoes

Steely Dan, Throw Back the Little Ones

The Wallflowers, 6^th   Avenue Heartache

Little Richard, Ooh! My Soul

Elton John, Take Me to the Pilot

Enya, Wild Child

Jethro Tull, Wond’ring Aloud

George Thorogood, Move It On Over

Buddy Guy, Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues

Muddy Waters, Rollin’ and Tumblin’

Electric Light Orchestra, Telephone Line

Talking Heads, Life During Wartime

Grateful Dead, Black Peter

Randy Newman, Bad News From Home

The Beatles, Hey Bulldog 

For those of you without iPods or other computerized musical players, feel free to weigh in on how they’re destroying human interaction as we know it. Or gripe about Daylight Saving Time. Or tell us about your favorite new-to-you music. It's spring, and I'm in too good a mood to argue.

 

 

 

 

Dirty Lives and Times

I recently finished a book called "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon." It's a collection of reminiscences, a sort of oral history, by the people who knew him: his kids, his writing and playing partners, his friends, quite a few ex-girlfriends, etc. 

Now, I've been a Zevon fan since his self-titled album came out in 1976. I'm one of the few people I know who actually owns a copy of  Transverse City.  The man's music has had a major effect on me and, I think, on my writing.

But in reading this book, I can only come to one conclusion: the guy was a raging asshole,

I'm not talking "lovable scamp" here. I'm talking about mean, selfish, manipulative, egomaniacal, emotionally and on occasion physically abusive, and a pretty horrible dad to his kids, at least when they were little.  

To be fair, Zevon did improve some once he quit drinking. The book also details moments of great tenderness and generosity on his part. And I give him all due respect for telling Crystal Zevon. his ex-wife and mother of his kids, to write the book and to tell it all, even the bad stuff. But on the whole, while reading the book, I just kept thinking “this was a guy who really needed his ass kicked, perhaps more than once.”

And yet… 

The guy was also a freakin' genius. If all you’ve heard of Warren Zevon is his novelty hit “Werewolves of London,” you really ought to check out  the three albums that kicked off his career (Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy, and Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School) as well as his last three (Life’ll Kill Ya, My Ride’s Here, and the phenomenal The Wind, recorded in the last year of his life.) There are plenty of over the top gonzo anthems, like “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” “Excitable Boy,” or “Basket Case” (written with Carl Hiassen): 

My baby's gonna celebrate

I'm being dragged through the nuthouse gates

Got my straitjacket on and I'm taking her place

My baby is a basket case 

But Zevon could also write songs that could only be described as brutally compassionate. like his noir take on Marilyn Monroe, “The French Inhaler”: 

Loneliness and frustration

We both came down with an acute case

When the lights came up at 2:00

I caught a glimpse of you

And your face looked like something Death brought in in his suitcase

Your pretty face

Looked so wasted,

Another pretty face

Devastated… 

(Makes “Candle in the Wind” look kind of candy-ass, doesn’t it?) 

Nothing I’ve read about Warren Zevon can detract from my love for his music (well, most of it. The aforementioned Transverse City is just a mess). But the book got me thinking about how many great artists were, to say the least,  very hard on the people around them. Jackson Pollock springs immediately to mind, as does Jerry Lee Lewis. And there are some people I know for whom finding out the sordid details of an artist’s personal life detracts from their enjoyment of that artist’s work.  I actually once heard a person I'd already regarded as pretty literate say she hadn't read Fitzgerald because "why would I read some drunk?"

How about you, ‘Rati? Has your perception of an artist's work ever been affected by your knowledge that he or she was a world-class asshole? What is the connection, if any, between being a great artist and a terrible person?

And, if I was a bigger jerk, could I sell more books? Because I could be, you know (and yes, I know I’m leaving myself wide open here; take your best shots).

 

The Gravel Road of Broken Dreams

by J.D. Rhoades

“Down these mean streets a man must go…”

    So begins one of the most famous quotes in crime fiction, from Raymond Chandler’s essay, The Simple Art of Murder. For years, though, those mean streets were in a limited number of places, all of them big cities. Phillip Marlowe had L.A. Sam Spade had San Francisco.  Mike Hammer (and most everyone else) had New York. Spenser had Boston. For the longest time, it seemed only the metropolis was where the action was, crime-fiction wise, at least on the hardboiled end of the spectrum.  You'd think the only big crimes were in big towns.

    Those us from outside the sprawl  knew differently, of course. It’s not just urbanites who have it brought home to them that  “murder is an act of infinite cruelty.”  For every mean street, there’s a dozen dirt roads just as mean, if not meaner. Not to mention your mean desert highways, your mean mountain roads, and your mean bayous.

    Eventually, crime fiction began to reflect this.  James Crumley gave us Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue out of Montana. James Lee Burke gave us Dave Robicheaux from  New Iberia, Louisiana. Stephen Hunter gave us  Bob Lee and Earl Swagger, of Blue Eye, Arkansas, and points west.  The list goes on and on: CJ Box, Nevada Barr, Daniel Woodrell,  the amazing Lori G. Armstrong….and let’s not forget our own Pari and Toni, who  set their books in small towns in the Southwest and Louisiana, respectively, and Louise, who spends a good part of her fictional time in the Arizona desert. 

    And, while I’m on the subject, just let me say I’ve read a couple of as-yet-unpublished crime novels set in rural areas: Anthony Neil Smith’s YELLOW MEDICINE and Ed Lynskey’s  PELHAM FELL HERE.  Both of them are flat out fantastic. Dark,  gritty, and as merciless as a farm foreclosure. When they come out, grab 'em.

    Obviously, this is a subject near and dear to me, because most of my books are set in rural and small-town North Carolina. That’s what I see, those are the voices I hear, so that’s what I write.

    I wonder sometimes, though. While there are a lot of books set outside the major cities, and a few achieve success, the real heavy sellers—your Crais, your Connelly, your Lehane, your Pelecanos—seem to be mostly working within the classic metropolitan  locales. Sometimes it seems as if the farther you go out into the country, the harder it gets to hit that big bestseller.

     Is it just that there are more readers in big cities and they’re more likely to identify with an urban detective than they are with a small town or rural one? Are editors and reviewers more likely to warm to a gumshoe  that works the mean streets they could take a cab to (if they dared) rather than a sleuth  with mud on his boots?

City 'Rati, Country 'Rati: Where y'all from? And does it affect what you read? And what are your favorite crime novels from off the beaten track?

January Blues

by J.D. Rhoades

First off, I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes sent to me here and elsewhere in the last couple of weeks. They were greatly appreciated—and greatly needed.

See, my birthday notwithstanding, January’s always  a tough time for me. I don’t know what it is exactly. Maybe it’s the cold weather (Yeah, I know, it’s colder where you are. Thanks for the information. I’m still freezing).  Maybe it’s the bare trees. Or the fact that everything seems to be colored gray, black or brown. Post-holiday let-down may have something to do with it. It’s most likely a combination of all of the above.

Whatever the cause, January’s the month when every regret, every fear, every hurtful word ever said to or by me, every failure, every humiliation and embarrassment, comes to roost on my shoulder and whisper in my ear. And those bastards are heavy.
 

I am not, as you may have surmised, a barrel of laughs in January.

But here’s the thing: I feel like hell, but I’m writing like crazy. I finally got a handle on the main character in my current work in progress, and it’s taking the book in a new direction that I really like, one that’s a lot edgier than before. When I can grab the time, I’m blazing through a thousand-plus  words in an hour and a half. There are pages and pages of notes in my notebook about not only the WIP, but a half dozen other ideas for other projects. I'm throwing off ideas like sparks.

It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened. When I wrote The Devil’s Right Hand, I was tremendously depressed that my first book had sunk without a trace. I was in a funk. But the words kept flowing.

Nor am I the first person who’s noted a link between depression and creativity. There’s the long, long list of great writers and artists who suffered from depression: Hemingway, Van Gogh, Woolf, Tolstoy, etc. (This is the point where the black bird on my shoulder whispers “you ain’t them”).

Psychologist Eric Maisel wrote a book called The Van Gogh Blues in which he theorizes that artists tend towards depression because, more than other people, they look for “meaning” in their lives, and when there’s not enough of that, they have a “meaning crisis” which brings on depression. He doesn’t explain, however, why depression can actually seem to stir creativity. (Or maybe he does. I gave up on the book after a chapter in which Maisel used the word “meaning” thirty-two times on one page. I don’t see the efficacy in replacing depression with severe annoyance). Psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison theorizes that many creative people actually suffer from bipolar disorder. So when I answer the question "Why do you write?" by saying "mental illness," I'm only half  joking.

A few years ago, I actually did seek professional help and went on medication for the depression that was, at that time, eating me alive. I don’t remember much about that time, which worries me. I do remember that it was shortly after I gave up the Wellbutrin that I started writing creatively again after not doing it for over 15 years.

This leads me to the inevitable question: Would I trade blissful happiness for not being able to write as well--or at all?

So what about it, fellow ‘Rati? Do you think you write better when you’re depressed? Is there something seeeeriously wrong with us? Or is it just me?

If You Only Knew the Power of the Dumb Side....

by J.D. Rhoades

After five thousand years of civilization…we could all use a break.

-Tagline from a forgotten 70’s movie.
 

Oy. January. January may actually rival August for my least favorite month, despite (or maybe because of) my birthday being this month.  The fun of Christmas is over,  the bills for same are rolling in, and it finally got cold in North Carolina.  So when those midwinter blues set in, it's time to shake them off with something fun. But this kind of malaise requires a special kind of fun: dumb fun.

The other night, we rented “Grindhouse.” If you’re not familiar, “Grindhouse” was a movie released last year by directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that was intended to be a tribute to those great low-budget features of the late 60’s and 70’s, the one’s that played in the low-rent, low-class theaters like the old Sunrise in my home town. You know the ones I mean: the ones where your feet stuck to the floor with every step because they rarely, if ever, mopped the place. The ones where you threw Atomic Fire Balls at the screen whenever the film broke, which was about every other movie.

Actually, “Grindhouse” is two movies, in honor of the fact that the old cheap-seats cinemas were running double features more often than not. In this case, the two movies  are Tarantino’s “Death Proof” featuring Kurt Russell as a homicidal stunt driver, and “Planet Terror,” Rodriguez’ entry in the killer-zombie-virus genre.

About “Death Proof”, the less said the better. I didn’t know it was possible to be that bored by a Tarantino movie, and I’m a huge Tarantino fan. But “Planet Terror”-- now that was some great lousy cinema, right  there. It had everything a low budget horror flick needs: scantily clad women, zombies, gore, more zombies, stuff blowing up for no apparent reason other than it looked cool, zombies blowing up, homicidal lesbian doctors, and a one-legged stripper who replaced her hastily engineered peg leg with an assault rifle that propelled her high in the air when she fired the grenade launcher attachment at the ground.

In short, “Planet Terror” was dumb. It was GLORIOUSLY dumb. I laughed till my sides were sore.

Now I like a smart, sophisticated entertainment as much as the next feller. But lord help me, every now and then I just like something dumb-but-fun. And in mid January, when the cold winds whistle ‘round the corners of my old pile of an office building, and everyone but me seems to be coming down with something, it just seems like a good time to turn off the frontal lobes and indulge in some nice mindless cheesy amusement.

Note: This is the sort of thing that some people refer to as “guilty pleasures,” but I don’t believe in feeling guilty about my pleasures. So I just call them what they are: dumb, but fun. So here we go.

In music, the epitome of dumb-but-fun is the Ramones. Ramones music wasn’t exactly what you’d call complex. What it was most of all was propulsive. Everything was geared to create a sense of urgency, from Joey’s staccato, machine-gun repetition of lyrics ("Twenty-Twenty-Twenty-four hours to go…"), to bassist Dee Dee Ramone’s warp-speed bass to guitarist Johnny Ramone’s buzz-saw guitar attack.

It was the lyrics, however, that really made the Ramones what they were. Joey wrote words like "Guess I'll have to break the news/That I got no mind to lose/ all the girls are in love with me/I'm a teenage lobotomy," and the mathematically challenged verse "it’s the end, the end of the Seventies/It’s the end, the end of the century…"  And Joey hung onto the mike stand as if the band’s sonic assault were about to blow him off the stage and delivered lines like "The KKK took my baby away" with a total seriousness that, paradoxically, made them all the more hilarious. The Ramones were rock and roll made goofy.

But, you say, this is a site about reading and writing. What about books? Oh, there are plenty of dumb books around. But for sheer outrageous mindless amusement value, it’s hard to beat the Destroyer series of pulp adventure novels by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.  In the series, which must be over 200 books by now, police officer Remo Williams has his execution faked by a secretive government organization called CURE. After this, he becomes a secret agent, and  a disciple of Chiun, the only living master of the oriental martial art of Sinanju. And what a martial art it is: “A master can hold his breath over an hour, rip steel doors from their hinges, dodge bullets, overturn a moving tank, outrun a car, seem invisible - you get the idea. They have mastered the full potential of the human body.” Oh, and there's a bonus, since of course the Sinanju training turns you into the world's greatest lover. But you have to be careful, because most Western women will not be able to bear the intensity of Sinanju style lovemaking and will, in fact, go insane.

Now that’s dumb. But fun. Largely because the books refuse to take themselves too seriously, and the banter between the haughty Chiun and Remo is hilarious.

So, fellow Murderati and assorted spectators--chime in. What are your favorite examples from music, literature, and film that are dumb dumb dumb, but fun, fun fun?