Tag Archives: Gladiola Overdive

The Past is Epic

Don Winslow’s City of Dreams is the second installment in the Danny Ryan trilogy. As with City on Fire, the first installment, Winslow continues to be inspired by Homer and Virgil, as he sprinkles quotes from the Iliad and the Aeneid throughout. For example, City of Dreams opens with this from the Aeneid: “Of wars and a man I sing, An exile, driven on by fate.” Referencing these ancient epics might be a gimmick, but it works because the quote describes Danny Ryan as much as it does Aeneas, though I would argue the series, so far, has more in common with the Odyssey. Let me know when I start sounding pompous. Oh, wow, that was fast.

The story opens with a potential bang. It’s 1991 and Danny Ryan is in the California desert. He’s on his knees and someone is holding a gun to his head. So suck it, Homer, that’s how you start an epic. Virgil, meanwhile, is wondering how we got here. Fortunately, there’s a flashback to provide that answer.

Danny and his small crew of Irish mobsters are fleeing Providence, Rhode Island, after losing a gang war to the Italians. His wife has just died of cancer, so his infant son comes with him. His elderly, alcoholic father is along for the ride too. They make it to San Diego doing off-the-books jobs. Life is tough, but at least he’s still alive. Soon a shadowy government figure gives him an opportunity to make some real money – the kind that could provide him a new life. It sounds too good to be true. No one ever gets a new life, right? “You might get a fresh start, a second chance, but your old life stays with you.” Danny should say no but he says yes. And so the story goes until Danny lands in the desert giving the side eye to that pistol.

The futility of trying to escape your past is the major theme here, and many of the characters, at least the ones who didn’t die in City on Fire, return. To the reader’s delight, that includes Danny’s mother. She’s a modern-day goddess who knows the secrets of many powerful people.

Lots of things happen, and lots of poor decisions are made as Danny travels to the desert. His brief foray in the movie business is chief among those poor decisions. To Danny’s great surprise, Hollywood is making a movie of the gang war he barely survived. Anyone who’s seen a Martin Scorsese movie knows Hollywood “gets off” on the “exploits of real-life gangsters.” There’s much humor here, but for Danny there’s also unneeded publicity. More poor decisions are made.

Hollywood is all about reinventing yourself, and Danny tries but he’s no movie star. He runs all the way to the city of dreams to get away from his past, “But nothing is more persistent, more patient, than the past. After all, the past has nothing but time.” City of Dreams is a great read and a welcome installment in the Danny Ryan trilogy. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do; it leaves the reader wanting a third installment.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Nefertiti N.Y.C.

Crook Manifesto is the follow up to Colson Whitehead’s splendid Harlem Shuffle, but the 1960s are now in the Wayback Machine. This is New York City in the 1970s. Harlem is still Harlem, but the rest of the city is following its faltering lead. ”You knew the city was going to hell if the Upper East Side was starting to look like crap, too.” As always, the city is in transition. In one neighborhood it’s “Jews and Italians out, blacks in” and in another it’s the Spanish replacing the Germans and Irish.

Fortunately, Ray Carney is still around, but he has transitioned too. He’s focused on his Harlem furniture business. He no longer fences jewelry. But “crooked stays crooked,” and it’s not long before Carney returns to his side hustle. ”What else was an ongoing criminal enterprise complicated by periodic violence for, but to make your wife happy?”

The story is divided into three loosely-connected parts. The first one opens in 1971. Carney has promised his teenage daughter tickets to the sold-out Jackson 5 show. But Carney knows a guy – a crooked white cop – who supposedly has tickets and will give them to Carney if he helps the cop run some “errands,” a euphemism for robbing everyone the cop can think of, because he’s being investigated for corruption and he’s about to leave town.

Part 2 takes place in 1973. Carney is an investor in a Blaxploitation film wonderfully called Nefertiti T.N.T. There’s a problem. The female lead has disappeared. ”They were making a movie about dirty Harlem and then the real thing came up and bit them in the ass.” To the reader’s delight, this brings Pepper back. Pepper is Carney’s mentor, a father figure who (sometimes) protects Carney from himself and other criminals. Pepper knows what he’s doing, and he’s hired to find the actress. 

In Part 3, it’s 1976. The bicentennial is being celebrated with the crass commercialism New York City excels at. Harlem’s criminal gangs have transitioned in the intervening five years as well. Carney and Pepper have inadvertently contributed to some of those changes. When a flippant remark from an old rival pisses Carney off, he lights a match causing a conflagration that burns what’s left of old Harlem to the ground.

Carney is immensely likeable and relatable. He’s a family man. Sure, he’s also a part-time criminal, but he lives by a code. ”A man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not, a crook manifesto, and those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches.” He’s the thread that successfully pulls the novel’s three parts together, but let’s be clear: The novel’s glue is New York City, and it steals every scene.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Thanks for Nothing

Vladimir Nabokov is the master of the paranoid, deranged, unreliable (take your pick or choose all three) narrator. If Lolita didn’t convince you, Pale Fire will. It’s a comedic feat and a delicious confection, but mostly it’s indelible.

Charles Kinbote is our narrator with the questionable judgment and perhaps unsound mind. Some describe him as insane, a remarkably disagreeable person, or a monstrous parasite of a genius. He describes himself as John Shade’s closest friend and most trusted advisor, even if they’ve only known each other for a few months and no one ever thought of them as friends. Their friendship “was the more precious for its tenderness being intentionally concealed.”

Shade is one of the great poets of his generation. He has almost finished his magnum opus when he dies. Kinbote takes possession of the unfinished poem and decides to edit it and provide helpful commentary and notes. Since the poem was Kinbote’s idea, he’s the most qualified person to finish it. Plus, it’s about Kinbote and Zembla, his home country. So who better? The English department at Shade’s university believes the poem has nothing to do with Kinbote or Zembla, a distant northern land no one has heard of. They think the poem is auto biographical and deals with the death of Shade’s daughter, the “waxwing slain.” These professors have written a letter in which they argue the poem has fallen into the “hands of a person who not only is unqualified for the job of editing it . . . but is known to have a deranged mind.” So who’s right?

Pale Fire is a delightfully strange novel. It consists of three sections: Kinbote’s foreword; the poem itself, also named Pale Fire; and Kinbote’s Commentary and Index. And let’s not forget that the story pointedly opens with a quote from James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson and ends with a murder. So who’s story is being told in Pale Fire? If there is a biographer, who is it? Is Shade a wavelet of fire compared to Kinbote’s bonfire? Or is Kinbote a pale phosphorescent hint trying to shine near Shade? What’s real here? Whether you’re able to answer those questions or not, Pale Fire is a remarkable journey with many laughs along the way.

Thanks for nothing, Gladiola. Aren’t you supposed to answer questions and not ask them? And why should I read about an unreliable guy with a shaky grasp of reality? Is this even literature? Because I only read literature. I’d better let Nabokov take over from here. “Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average reality perceived by the communal eye.” I hope that helps.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

High Fidelity – Music and Misery

Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity is narrated by Rob, a list maker whose love for music made him think it would be a good idea to purchase a failing record store. That’s the least of his troubles. He can’t commit to anything, which frustrates his girlfriend, Laura, so much she leaves him, though it would be more correct to say he drove her away. Recounting his other break-ups, he wonders “What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?”

He believes he’s a decently average guy, but he’s a man-child who believes a lot of stupid things. Proof no.1: he thinks “it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.” Proof no. 2: he’s concerned that it’s not “possible to maintain a relationship and a large record collection simultaneously.” But the stupidest thing he believes is that he’s a decently average guy. He’s just a selfishly average guy, and that’s hard to like – though oddly women do seem to like him. It strains credulity, but here we are: expected to care whether Rob succeeds in winning Laura back. It’s a big ask, because Laura clearly should keep running.

Here’s the problem. Rob’s self-inflicted wounds and failures to launch would be more understandable and relatable if he was 25, but he’s 35. Gradually, he realizes that “it’s not what you like, but what you’re like that’s important.” Why did it take him 35 years (no, I’m sorry, he’s now 36) to reach this rather prosaic conclusion? Why is he stunted? Do we care? Why is this book 323 pages long? Haven’t these issues been examined ad nauseam for 100 years at least?

Granted, the story was published in 1995, and it’s set in the mid-1990s when slackers were as cool and interesting as they were ever going to be. But they’re rather dated and stale now. They don’t hold up 25 years later. We still have self-absorbed and selfish people, and they’re still annoying and exhausting; we just give them a different label. Here’s one: uninteresting. Rob’s journey towards self-discovery is funny at times. He does have excellent taste in music and books. But it’s a long journey, and the path has been traveled many times before and since.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Banning Together

As an editor of perhaps the second best literary journal you have never heard of, I would like to say: we love words. That’s probably pretty obvious. So let me go one step further. There’s only one thing we love more than words, and that’s banning words.

So we whole-heartedly support the proposed “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida – because the best way to deal with sensitive or complex issues is to ignore them. Even better – take away the words necessary to discuss the matter. That allows the most hyper-sensitive people among us to dictate what we can talk about. And everyone feels better.

Words that begin with G seem to be particularly problematic. Therefore, I would like to propose some other G words that should be banned.

Glad – because it is frequently seen associating with Gay. They don’t mean the same thing necessarily, but they do hold hands often and sometimes kiss. And no one wants to see that.

Gazpacho – because soup should never be served cold. Plus, it is too easily confused with Gestapo, and nothing should interfere with the constant use of Gestapo – particularly when used to describe the tactics of anyone who disagrees with you politically.

Groovy – you may quibble with the other suggestions above. But, come on, everyone can agree Groovy should be banned. That word is an abomination.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor