I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (JUNE 2012 EDITION)

[defrog]

I write book reports. Isn't that interesting?

JUST FINISHED

The Corpse Wore Pasties by Jonny Porkpie
Jonny Porkpie, the real-life Burlesque Mayor of New York City, takes a page from Kinky Friedman, playing himself caught up in a fictional murder mystery. A burlesque dancer with a reputation for stealing other people’s acts dies onstage after drinking a prop bottle of poison that turns out to be real. With the police looking no further than Porkpie (the show’s host who handed her the bottle during her act) as a suspect, he must turn amateur sleuth to find the real killer. Porkpie’s real-life experience in the burlesque scene gives the story some welcome authenticity (and plenty of double entendres), and while the investigation itself is a bit amateurish, that just makes it more believable. Good fun.

JUST STARTED

Black Glass by John Shirley

Billed as the “lost cyberpunk novel”, Black Glass was an idea developed by Shirley and William Gibson back in the 80s, then shelved and forgotten about for decades until, a few years ago, Shirley dug it out and Gibson said, “It's all yrs.” Check back here next month to see how he did.

RECENT TITLES 

Go East, Young Man by Sinclair Lewis
A collection of short stories and essays that’s billed as Lewis’ take on “class in America”, but actually they seem to be less about class itself and more about Lewis’ usual preoccupations with materialism, greed, conformity, art as a social advancement tool and kids being forced by their parents to be successful in the name of keeping up appearances, etc. It starts off shaky with a self-deprecating third-person bio (written by Lewis himself) and an unpublished intro to Babbitt, but once the stories kick in, it’s pretty good. It’s also striking to note how much of what Lewis wrote about close to 100 years ago still seems relevant today. 

The Cutie by Donald E Westlake
Hard Case Crime reprint of one of Westlake’s earlier novels. A rich man’s mistress is stabbed, and the suspect is Billy-Billy, a dope dealer junkie for the mob who woke up at the scene. A mob fixer named Clay smells a set-up, and must find out who’s behind it before the cops catch Billy-Billy, who will talk too much about the mob’s operations if he ends up in a cell. All of which puts a different spin on the gumshoe genre, and the story takes some nice twists near the end. A bit dry, but still good. 

Who Killed Art Deco? By Chuck Barris
Yes, that would be Chuck Barris as in the Gong Show and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. Art Deco Jr is the son of rich businessman (and anti-Semitic homophobe) Art Deco Senior. When Junior comes out of the closet, takes a lover then jilts him for another man, he ends up dead. After the police rule it a suicide, Deco Senior hires Jewish private eye Jimmy Netts to find the murderer. It’s dark satire, of course, but I confess I didn’t get much out of it. The story is okay, but the Deco family is too stereotypically right-wing, and Barris’ humor can be a little mean for my taste. 

Slouching Toward Nirvana by Charles Bukowski
More posthumous poetry from Bukowski, and if you know his work, you have an idea what to expect. As such, there’s no real surprises here, and not that many standouts. Still, it’s Bukowski, so I dig it.

Bottoms up,

This is dF