The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

     A while back I picked up The Library of America's Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s in order to read Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice.  It included five other novels, and I enjoyed reading them in between other books that I was reading.  So I've recently purchased Crime Novels:  American Noir of the 1950s, and this book, The Killer Inside Me, is the first that I've read. 
     Apparently some folks have made it into a movie that is coming out on June 8th.  Casey Affleck will play the main character, Lou Ford, and I think that that should be pretty good casting.  He was pretty creepy as the coward Robert Ford. 
     This book, The Killer Inside Me, was so-so, but the author did a good job of writing-in a shady, mysterious past for the main character.  Pick it up if you want an easy and enjoyable read, but there are a lot of better books out there.
     It gets 4 out of 10 stars.

A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell

     Since this book, A Buyer's Market, is the second book in a cycle of twelve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, I won't comment too extensively.  I have been told that the full effect of these books is not fully felt until they all have been read, and I will withhold a final summation until that distant day arrives.  I have been unofficially reading through several "best of" book lists for the past few years.  It's 'unofficial' because I hate making declarations, especially publically, that I don't actually fulfill.  I have no timeline, and I won't be sad if I don't complete it.  These twelve books find themselves placed at number forty-three on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best novels of the 20th century.  I don't believe that the editors of this list have actually read all 100 books, and I want to read them so that I can say they are bogus with some semblance of authority. Or at least more authority than I believe that they have.  (My further thoughts regarding reading and lists can be found here.)

     However, the thing that struck me while reading this novel is how similar the books and authors on these lists really are.  There are so very few that are truly unique, and unfortunately the authors and print industry all scratch each others backs so they are caught in a pattern of self-affirmation.  Why are so many books like this about authors and artists struggling to make it?  Even those I regard as fantastic do it.

     I recently read Of Human Bondage, a book by Somerset Maugham which I hope to review soon, that was written before these series of books was begun.  Of Human Bondage takes place at approximately the same time period as the first two books of this series.  They are both about a young male struggling to find his identity in life.  They both begin with both boys in English public school.  The protagonist of each travels to Europe to study language by living in a boarding house.  Both characters are involved in art to some degree.  Both characters spend time in Paris.  Both are hopelessly and ineffectually in love with some girl who doesn't measure up.  Both books even include the word "perspicacity," a word which I have encountered in no other printed source outside of a dictionary. 

     I don't know anyone who has read these books, and I am doubtful that someone who is just interested in reading for pleasure will have the desire to complete the series.  At least the first two books don't offer a lot of incentive for finishing.  The story just has too much dialogue and too little intrigue.

    

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

     Jon Krakauer is a great writer. I can still distinctly remember my first introduction to the 1996 Everest disaster documented in Krakauer’s book, Into Thin Air. I was camping out at about 7000 ft on Mt. Fuji in Japan with a couple of guys I wouldn’t trust to carry my bag. Instead, I trusted them with my life. We were attempting to climb up Fuji and to ski down. Before you are impressed, Fuji is really just a very tough hike, but the conditions that day didn’t inspire any sort of confidence and at the time I had been skiing about four or five times in my life. As we were huddled in our tent the day before our ascent, a huge thunderstorm broke out and lightning was stabbing down all around us, and those two bums started discussing mountain-climbing.  The story that they told was of the Everest disaster.

     Approximately one year later, I stood in my kitchen deciding to read the first page or so of Into Thin Air and ended up reading the first four chapters without moving. I couldn't stop. I was riveted. The story alone is captivating, but what really did it was the feeling of horror as I saw that I had some of those same desires to conquer mountains that led to all that tragedy. Krakauer brought it all to life for me. His abilities as a writer and the fact that he was a first-hand witness to the disaster and all the minutia that led to the deaths of so many have sealed Into Thin Air as one of my favorite books. It is raw and wonderful.

     I really like Jon Krakauer’s books, and this is one of the reasons that I was so disappointed when I read his latest book, Where Men Win Glory. His writing style is still superb, and there are portions of the book that are completely gripping. Unfortunately, my disappointment lies in Krakauer’s departure from subjects that are intriguing to one that is less so.
     Many people are familiar with the story of Chris McCandless thanks to the recent film based upon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild. Another of his books, Under the Banner of Heaven, tells the story of a brutal double murder that took place in Utah. In each of these two books, Krakauer excels at asking why. Why would a young man who had recently graduated from an elite university disappear and leave what looked to be a promising future only to be found starved to death in Alaska a couple years later? Why would two brothers kill their sister-in-law and niece and claim that God told them to do it? When he wrote those two books, he managed to tell a very well-researched and informative story that left it up to the reader to make judgments about the people involved. That is fantastic writing.

     However, in this book Krakauer left those things behind. I was expecting more of the same detached story-telling that revealed some of the virtues and shortcomings of Pat Tillman and his decision to join the Army. I knew little of Pat Tillman other than what was in the headlines. He left a NFL career to join the military to fight terror. He was killed sometime later in Afghanistan by what turned out to be friendly fire, and I was aware that there was some fishy business around the incident as well.  Unfortunately, this book isn't really about the complexity of Pat Tillman.  Instead, it is about the shortcomings of the Bush administration and the U.S. Army.  This is a book with an agenda. 

     My dislike isn’t political because I am sure that his story is true in its main points. However, authors don’t know everything and always omit some of what they do know. I live in a region of the world where I hear almost every day how bad Bush and his buddies were, and I am aware that about half of America has similar feelings. Yet, when the author would leave Tillman to talk of Bush, I wanted to scream, “Shut up and tell the story!!!!” I am about 33 years old, and 20 years ago, I quit expecting leadership of any sort to be anything less than seriously flawed. I still complain, but I don’t write books about it. The subject of the failure of government is so unbelievably ragged-out and uninteresting that I am amazed that Krakauer thought it worth his time, and his diversions into the misdeeds of the Bush administration actually detracted from the more interesting story of Pat Tillman and the choices that he made.
     In his research for this book, Krakauer used very few sources.  The family of Pat Tillman, with the exception of his wife, Marie, declined to be interviewed by Krakauer, and this certainly limited his ability to focus on him. This was probably because Tillman’s mother wrote a book on the life of her son.

     To me Krakauer was a unique author. He picked subjects that few people knew anything about and wrote about them with skill using terrific research. After reading this book, I want to ask him, “why?” Why did you leave writing about those things? Why don’t you go back to what you are good at?

     Taken together, the limited research and the tired subject matter, tainted this book throughout. I wish I could edit an abridged version of Where Men Win Glory for my friends because some of sections covering the actual life and death of Tillman and the first few days of the war in Iraq are vintage Krakauer, harrowing. However, until that day, I recommend that you borrow the book if you must read it, or just wait until Reader’s Digest releases a condensed version.  They did with Into Thin Air.