Holy warrior of writing

Crusader's Cross, by James Lee Burke, 2005.

I keep returning to James Lee Burke, whose many novels overflow one of my bookshelves, and whose genius for resonant titles entice me to pick up yet another unread volume. His prose is carved out of compassion, disillusion, and a longing for manifestation of true spirit in an evil world. Particularly the world of his most famous character, police detective Dave Robicheaux. This is a typical Robicheaux tale: the seedy and splendid rural Louisiana setting, the conscienceless low-lifes and ordinary saints, the hero flawed to a fault, battling his demons while trying to put down the depraved bad guys. Burke weaves his skein of vivid descriptions and terse dialogue to portray a world, not merely deliver a plot. The narrative is not airless. There are moments of peace, of beauty, where Robichaux is able to lift his head out of the swampy soupy miasma of criminal undergrowth and look at the sunrise. I think we all can identify with Dave, whether or not we share his alcoholism or penchant for violence. And so I call Jim Burke, Dave's emissary and apologist, a holy warrior for good writing, preserving the integrity of American literature amidst the general degradation of language, as well as hoisting the standard for the neglected human values that Dave defends at no little cost to his own safety. The past, in the form of crimes against blacks, women, and the disenfranchised, is constantly casting its shadows across the bayou in this series of books. It is these shadows that form the real opposition, and menace and theaten to drag down the good man. Thus memory does make martyrs of us all.

Tough men, tougher country

Rain Gods, by James Lee Burke. Simon & Schuster, 2009.
Like the searing heat of his south Texas setting, James Lee Burke's incandescent prose burns into your brain. The aging battle-hardened world-weary sheriff Hackberry Holland that serves as his protagonist in this epic crime story is a principled man ill-fitting in his time who must match wits with an uncommon criminal, the mass murderer and Biblically megalomaniacal man known as Preacher. The narrative moves at crackling pace and the characters are drawn as carefully and sharply as a master craftsman etches burnished metal. Like all of Burke's books, this one is hard to put down, and perhaps is even more powerful than usual in an oeuvre replete with classic American writing that recalls Hemingway and Chandler in stylistic intensity, outshining the best genre contemporaries such as Elmore Leonard and Charles Willeford.
If one is familiar with Burke's best-selling series of novels chronicling the adventures of a Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux, this book will be of great interest because it shares all of the author's usual qualities in a new setting and with compelling characters. Hackberry (great name) is the brother of Billy Bob Holland, featured in another series of Burke's. He appeared one other time in a younger version, in Burke's early novel Lay Down My Sword and Shield. This guy is even more rough-hewn, hard-bitten and haunted than Burke's usual cop/detective main characters.
The immediacy of the descriptions of this barren border landscape create an existential flavor similar to No Country for Old Men, which this book recalls in some ways. But Burke's vision is much more redemptive. With this author, there is a strong moral center in the main character and a focus and power in the writing that carries an inspirational charge. At the same time, there is no victory in a James Lee Burke novel that is not extremely hard won, and Rain Gods is no exception. Reaching the end of this book one wants nothing so much than to kick back with a cold Mexican beer and rinse the parching dust out of one's lungs while waiting for the ultimate cleansing that the novel's title prophesies.

Past imperfect

The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick (1962)
This novel was the first major success for Philip K. Dick, although it was far from the first novel he wrote or published. It was his ninth published sf novel, and it also appeared after he had written 11 mainstream novels, most of which were posthumously published (a few were lost). The Man in the High Castle displays both mainstream realistic skill in description, characterization, and evocation of place, as well as supreme science-fictional sensibility. It won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best SF novel. However, the only sf premise is that of the existence of a parallel time track, one in which Germany and Japan won World War II. Rereading this for probably fourth or fifth time, I was struck this time by the metafictional quality of the oft-criticized ending, which seems to peter out unsatisfactorily. In this ending, we get to meet Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of a novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which portrays a world in which Germany and Japan lost the war. (It's not quite ours, but a lot closer than that of The Man in the High Castle.) He confesses that the I Ching helped him write his book, just as in real life it helped Philip K. Dick write the book that contains the fictional novel. So Abendsen (whose name sounds like a composite of German and Japanese words, and is a kind of shadowy character befitting the German word abend, evening) is a thinly disguised version of Dick himself. It is as if we are suddenly raised above the story to have a chat with the author, and what we find is that the author has no special knowledge about the reality behind his story. He is sort of like the Wizard of Oz. This somewhat self-abnegating posture on the part of the author, an act of self-diminishment, is only disappointing if we are looking for a more conventional ending to a most unconventional story. I find it fascinating, and for me it works.

A Scottish blackbird pie

THE CROW ROAD, by Iain Banks (1992). This is by turns a mystery, a family saga, a contemporary love story, a coming of age novel, and a celebration of the soul of Scotland. All baked together under the author's withering, relentless satiric eye for exposing hypocrisy and telling the truth, whatever difficulties that poses for oneself and others. "Crow Road" is both the residence of Rory, uncle of the book's narrator Prentice McHoan, who serves as a role model to the young man as someone who lives relatively free from society's constraints. Prentice's growth throughout the book is in integrating those values with the necessity to work, love, and live in the world. Crow Road is also a symbol of death, as family members one by one succumb to their various fates, to the consternation of Prentice, and the imaginal figure of Rory after his death continues to mediate for Prentice, reminding him of the frailties and glories of the transient present.
This is perhaps the best of Banks' realist novels that I have read, although Whit still may be my favorite. In any case, it is highly recommended. I also liked the BBC miniseries with the same title. It is a worthy adaptation and is well worth checking out on Netflix.