Gran Sportage

The noises and the door slammings continue in my new neighbors' apartment. There are at least three cars parked there every night, and I still haven't heard a word of English from any of them. I know, I know— that last one makes me seem like kind of an asshole. I bring it up because it's just another wall between us. Oddly enough, however, I did talk to one of them yesterday afternoon. I was reading in my car— yes, feel free to laugh, but it's something I do often these days— and a little boy about three or four started playing in the yard. He picked up the garden hose, which was snaked across the lawn, and then he saw me in my car. He wanted to play with the water. I have a hard enough time understanding children of that age to begin with, but he was speaking in Spanish, which I don't understand at all. The water seemed obvious though. So, I told him that the handle for the water was against the front of the house. He understood me enough to try to turn the water on. However, there are actually two handles for this setup so I got out of my car and showed him the second one. He was delighted when water actually came out, and after a few seconds he ran into the house to tell someone. I climbed back in my car and continued reading. I guess that makes me Clint Eastwood for now.

This afternoon I finished a book titled Hunt at the Well of Infinity. According to my friend Pat, the publisher of the Hard Case crime novels (one of which I reviewed a few weeks ago) approached George Lucas about publishing a new line of Indiana Jones novels. Lucas turned them down, but they had authors lined up so they decided to publish their own series of novels about a treasure hunter and adventurer named Gabriel Hunt. I cannot personally vouch for the George Lucas connection, but had he been allowed to sample one or more of the books, I can see why he turned down the publisher's request. This first book was terrible. It was completely by-the-numbers and could have been plotted by a machine or a software program. The prose was uninspired as well, never once delighting with a well-phrased metaphor and certainly never informed with a shred of authenticity. That is, when the action moves to a jungle setting for several chapters, the author's prose in no way suggests that the author knows the slightest thing about the jungle. It's like people who write about police procedure when their only experience is watching police dramas on TV.

So, having said that, I have to admit that part of me enjoyed reading the book. It's simple pulp hack writing... but I like pulp hack writing. (Don't get me wrong, I more enjoy good writing, particularly if it's well written pulp.) I'm also down with the adventurer concept. More than the actual movies themselves, I love the concept of Indiana Jones. The treasure-seeking adventurer is a great pulp protagonist, and as bad as this first novel was, I'm sure I'll read more novels in the series as they're published. (If they don't improve, eventually I'll lose interest.)

Back in the 80's, before Dale and I were roommates, I read many Mack Bolan books and even subscribed to that series and several others. The publisher was Gold Eagle, an imprint of Harlequin publishing. (The same Harlequin that pumps out romances.) Every month they sent out two Mack Bolan novels, a Phoenix Force novel, and a couple others. (There was a post-apocalyptic series in there.) They weren't great books— not by a long shot— but they were each entertaining for a few hours. The Mack Bolan character is pretty much Charles Bronson in the Deathwish movies. My understanding is that the first few dozen of his books were all about Mack Bolan going after the mob. By the time I started reading them, he was also hunting down international terrorists and the like. There was a virtually guaranteed level of violence to the books, and I still remember some of the more lurid and excessive scenes. Phoenix Force was a squad-based version of Mack Bolan, and the post-apocalyptic series, whose name I don't recall, was a slightly sci-fi version of Phoenix Force.

All in all, the books were fairly irredeemable... but for about a year I read each and everyone of them.

When I began the Gabriel Hunt book, I was immediately put off by how poorly written it is. But, about half-way through, I started to enjoy the Mack Bolan-ness of the book. It was nearly as violent or sexist, but it prodded a part of my brain that occasionally needs prodding. Stay tuned for more.

See you soon!

"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."— W. H. Auden