IT'S NOT A SECRET IF I DON'T TELL ANYONE #12: John Ridley's THE DRIFT! !!
Published at: March 11, 2002, 9:24 a.m. CST by staff
Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Frank Bascombe. Sportswriter. Book reviewer. New Yorker. Six months ago this morning, he and everyone else in that city lived through something that the rest of us experienced as the most surreal television show in history. Watching CBS's terrifying and hypnotic 9/11 documentary last night, I couldn't help but think of all my friends who are out there in New York still, for who life goes on, and I am amazed by you all. God bless you in your efforts to maintain a sense of normal life in the face of something that redefines reality itself for so many of us. Here we are, on this six month milestone, and what do I find in my mailbox? A column from Frank, right on time, just like normal. And even something as simple as that makes me feel better about the world at large.
My best to everyone in New York this morning, and my thanks to Frank for his continued excellent work for us here at AICN.
In the coming months, we're bound to see a few welcome sights, like an upturn in the economy and better books on the shelves at your local bookstore. Since 9-11, the world has been turned on its ear, and the book market has taken a huge hit. Just look at the airports where many books sit, waiting for air travellers who never arrive. Is the answer going to be in a book? Will you feel better somehow or content with the new world order after picking up something from your local library? Maybe, but it's certainly not the first thing you think of. Over the next six months, the book buying public will see a landslide of titles, most of which should never have gotten past the mail room of the local strip mall bookstore. Oh, well... a bad economy means no book sales, and that forces publishers to be more efficient, not only with how many copies they print, but what they publish. Perhaps John Grisham will retire, since Stephen King seems to be waffling on his retirement threats. Don't hold your breath, and until then...
IT'S NOT A SECRET IF I DON'T TELL ANYONE
ALL I COULD GET by Scott Lasser
This book better pray, and pray hard, for this is not a time when you should be resting on your laurels (one of my father's favorite sayings). The book world is suffering a customer drought, and this slim mess of words won't wet anyone's whistle; Scott Lasser needs to be brought to the front of the class for this one. Don't take this the wrong way, Scott, but shame on you for trying to fob this "Wall Street Yuppie Makes Good" story off on anyone. This is his second book, and although his first one found minor league success, he should have taken a few more writing 101 classes down at his local YMCA before sitting down at the laptop to tap this one out.
He wrote his first book about a minor league baseball team that makes it all the way to the playoffs, only to lose, all while being funded by a local funeral home. Sounds like the ingredients for a Bob Costas Lifetime Channel Sunday night movie. That book was called Battle Creek. I guess if you are a baseball fan, it doesn't matter if the book is good or not; if it's about baseball, little league coaches are already handing it out as required reading to their local little league team. Still, onwards and upwards, I always say.
All I Could Get starts off with a supposedly promising premise; thirty-something good-looking father of two, husband of the year, decides to move his family off to NYC to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If you want to call that promising, then be my guest. Barry Schwartz starts working as a bill trader for a very big firm on Wall Street, and after two years, he's still following the rainbow. At the beginning of this story, Barry briefly introduces all the characters by relating old college stories about how they all played a major part of his life. He's just here to make it all come together.
What really bothers me is that Lasser shows no emotion whatsoever; his characters are just mouthing the words he's written for them. They are all cut-out characters; not a single one is on fire or has any kind of substance. Gretchen, who he ends up cheating on his wife with, is a fox from back in the college days that he never got between the sheets with. Dino and Chip McCarthy are his car pool buddies, while Court Harvey is the guy who would be playing second base for the New York Yankees except he broke his leg playing football in college and now sits around as the head of the Government Desk at this banker and broker palace of cash. He's Barry's boss, a bit of loser, but Barry still digs him because (you guessed it) Court has M-O-N-E-Y.
This whole book is about Barry's search for a truckload of hundred dollar bills. Along the way, he manipulates his wife, Gretchen, Court, his friends. He finds a way to screw Court Harvey over so hard that his only way out is a resignation. His wife takes the kids and goes to Colorado to live the fresh-air fund life. Oh... and Barry has a brother who soaks him for cash every twenty pages who's spending it all in Vancouver on drugs. Barry's brother dies and his mother (whom he's described as a saint) is left holding the bag. Barry decides it's better to stay in New York so he can stick a shank into Court Harvey, determined to get the big office and the huge promotion, than to go to the funeral for his brother.
I used to know a pool hustler who can now be seen on ESPN regularly, and his story is the same as Barry's, except that his Wall Street was a down-and-out pool hall in downtown Manhattan. This guy beat everyone, and I mean everyone. Top player, top gambler, and maybe just a bit of a degenerate. His mother died and he didn't even go to the funeral. He was too busy at a tournament to go to the service. These people Lasser describes do exist, and they live their lives just like everyone else. And, yes, we know it takes all kinds to make the world go around, but do we really need 243 pages of Barry's story to realize that he's a fake money grubbing asshole who cares for nothing other than his own forward progress?
Let me leave you with a section of the book that sums up the asshole edge of what Lasser is trying to project. A gang of suits walks out of a top steak joint in New York City and a new hire makes everyone bristle with an act of charity to a homeless man. As a result, he is penalized by one of the more senior members of the group:
"Listen Putz. First of all, he's just going to drink it up. Second, you give him money, it encourages him to beg, which is a pain in the ass for everyone. And, most important, you get nothing for it. Nothing. You want to give to the poor, give to an organization. At least you get the tax write-off. Don't you get it Duane? You don't give money away. You just don't. It's a bad habit. You'll never make it as a trader that way." Duane stands mute, eyes wide, still baffled that giving money to a beggar can make him a bad trader.
This book will arrive in your local stores shortly. The only thing going for it is its cover, which portrays a glowing image of the now vanished World Trade Center towers. Buy this book if only for the cover, then take the jacket off, frame it as a remembrance, and skip the junk between the covers.
BIG IF by Mark Costello
Hold on, stop the presses, everyone stay in their seats, remain calm.
What you are about to read may impress you and get you to pre-order this book from Amazon.Com. Mark Costello wrote a book a few years back called Bag Men under another name… John Flood. Costello is a federal prosecutor who lived in Boston at that point. Now I think he's a New Yorker, which is nice. This first book was a smashing failure. It was not the book's fault; it's very, very good, very well written, and it had some nice buzz, but it somehow failed to get proper book buyer attention.
Costello can forget that bad experience now because with BIG IF he will, and I can almost guarantee this, get all the right people to read this wonderful book and that should translate into sales. The seduction starts with Jonathan Franzen's quote on the front of the advance reading copy, which should end up on the finished book's cover. By now, you might think I'm having an affair with Franzen, but alas, I'm not. He's just got a really strong literary mind, a very sharp wit and his quote really helps
.
BIG IF is set in the most relevant and honest time imaginable, the months before 9-11. Center Effing New Hampshire is a town between the ocean and I95, filled with lobstermen and the guys working at the Air Force base in Pease, the same guys who are flying the bombers. Vi and Jens Asplund are the wildly creative children of Walter and Evelyn. Mom floods the house with flowers and raises her children. Dad, well, he's an insurance adjuster, and a man who just doesn't see the world with rose colored glasses. Besides not believing in God or Christmas carols (sounds fine to me), he likes to cross the word God off of the money in his wallet and replace it with "Us" so it now reads, "In Us We Trust." His money circulates all over town, along with the legend of Walter Asplund. Jens is a kid with a dash of Max Fisher in him, a kid after Wes Anderson's heart. He loves the weather, he loves science, he digs the sounds the bombers make on the trips to Greenland, and he's got a Ham Radio that lets him, when the solar flares are just right, talk around the world. These kids are into everything, and it's a wild and exciting opening to a book that is so profoundly filled with juicy stuff it makes you want to read it twice. The kids see New Hampshire and the world through the trips they take with their father to accidents he needs to adjust. In the first chapter alone, you'll find several unforgettable scenes where the family witnesses some really amazing and horrific events.
Vi and Jens grow up and turn into the things that most people don't expect of their children, like a computer code writer developing online computer games or a Treasury Agent for the Secret Service. You wouldn't guess it, but Vi considers her job at the Secret Service one step above a postal worker. She finds a path out immediately, working V.P. protection with a hard edged boss who's swimming in her own domestic upheaval. Gretchen demands regular duty on the D.C. watch for the V.P. but is sent into a six-day work week covering the V.P. all over the map. Specifically, she's about to bounce off to New Hampshire for Super Tuesday.
Meanwhile, in the background for each character, good and bad, is some of the most incredible character development I've seen in years. Tashmo, an older salt from the Carter and Ford days, is a major hound for the ladies. He was on hand when Reagan got it and was in the woods at Camp David hunting down tree huggers that were sweating Carter. Lloyd Felker, who orders Gretchen onto the full time gig and away from her Ritalin loving son, is a super agent who has developed some insane methods for stopping an assassination attempt on a head of state. Of course, he's also come up with every possible way to beat those plots while running the V.P. protection crew. Tashmo, who you'll all love as much as Vi and Jens, gets between the sheets with Felker's wife, and an incident that is retold from many different perspectives, gets more than he bargained for.
When Tashmo retires, he hopes to jump in with a retired group of agents running a security-consulting firm. One of the clients demands coverage on Hinckley when he's out on furlough, and these guys shadow him, hoping to help him achieve the ultimate dirt nap. They were all bum rushing the big man when the shots were squeezed off behind the hotel. This book goes into such depth that you're hardly given any time to come up for air as it covers everything from fraud in the Russian mob in New York to the finer points of right to lifers in New Hampshire. Finally, Jens' wife gives everyone a two-sided version of being a volunteer for the V.P., pollster extraordinaire, as well as being a real estate agent selling mansions to Dot.Com wealthy wives. Mark Costello has achieved a superhuman reality, covering topics with smarts and savvy that need to be peeled back and examined. He's made the Secret Service and the people in it relevant and sharply drawn with his overwhelming talents as a monster literary magician. If this book does not remind you immediately of James Ellroy or Douglas E. Winter's fantastic thrill ride Run, then you need to get caught up, but if it does, and it will, then you will love, and I mean LOVE this book.
THE DRIFT by John Ridley
You guys know this writer. You saw U-Turn, Oliver Stone's stumble down the dark and tasty roads of modern day forgotten America. It took place in that place you always drive past but never stop at. John Ridley wrote the book that U-Turn was based on (his first was Stray Dogs) as well as the screenplay Stone used to make the flick. Stone made his movie, Ridley wrote his book, and inbetween something just missed. Ridley is a Hollywood guy, but not a Hollywood writer. He gave David O. Russell the story for Three Kings, which kicked some serious ass. Then came Love is a Racket, such a fuck you book with such a nice sharp edge; pick it up wrong and you'll get cut. After that he came up with Everybody Smokes in Hell which rounds out his trilogy of slick, Robert-Crais-on-crack, Chandler-on-Mad-Dog-20/20, nice-guy-always-finishes-last stories. Waiting around for Ridley is not something you'll get used to; he writes like a demon. Here's an aside just to give you something personal on him. His wife is a professional gambler. True, that has no bearing on his writing talents, but I just think it adds to his myth. Everybody's got have a myth.
The Drift is an oxygen tank of dirty fingernails, and a place you'll be oddly happy you got thrown into when you're finished. Charlie is a black man working in Corporate America. He knows it's a whorehouse, but he's gonna lay down and get some and walk out later. His wife has other plans, though, and before we know it, Charlie is running from those plans. After a few too many drinks, too much drugging, and some down right unmanly behavior, Charlie loses the cat, the dog, his chickens, the hens, and the donkeys. Charlie walks right off the farm, and into the life of a hobo.
He rides the rails; simple, dirty, and extremely dangerous. The life expectancy of a person on the boxcars that slowly snake around this country is short. The life expectancy for an educated black man with a sharp wit and a quick tongue is even shorter. Charlie is raped, robbed, and beaten down to a stump. Fortunately. he gets some much needed help from another man who found himself in this same situation a few years back. Chocolate Walt gives Charlie the ace in the hole - "George Plimpton," a weapon with a secret. Soon enough, it's whispering it to Charlie. Walt also gives Charlie something else, his railroad name: Brain Nigger Charlie.
This is not the only time you'll hear this term, and everywhere Charlie goes, he finds that he's got the edge thanks to "George Plimpton." Walt sends Charlie on a trip down the mean rails of the Pacific Northwest to find his niece who, after hearing Walt's tales of life on the rails, decides to head out herself. Charlie is a black man traveling in the white world, where everyone is a racist and or a member of the KKK. There are some gangs of banged out drug-addicted screw-ups and a few people who are totally bottomed out. Charlie is looking, traveling, dropping X, and getting closer to Walt's niece Corina. Charlie is taking revenge for being in this place. He's taking it out on everyone he talks to. He lives it, and he wants you to know it.
This book can at times be a tough chew, but stick with it. Ridley is as talented as any crime writer working today, bar none. In fact, he's got a leg up on Leonard, Crais, Cornwell, and Pelacanos, just to name a few. After a series of books that skirted around the current American social climate and proved his narrative talents, Ridley finally delivers a savage commentary on what this land is really all about. Race; Black and White. This will never go away, not until man has wiped himself clean off this mortal coil. With The Drift, Ridley has revealed what we don't ever like to talk about, that it's always about two things, money and race.