San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics
January 6, 2009 @ 3:38 am
One year later I walked through the gates, but my celebration was cut short the same day. Dear Cardholder didn’t place and Undisclosed Sum came strong out of the gate but finished dead last. Some old habits die hard and others not at all. That afternoon at the track dumped me twenty grand into Hoyle’s pocket. Hoyle knew I was good for it because I keep my word but Hoyle didn’t want to look weak. Skinner Jones and his brokering skills were the only things keeping me above the dirt. His driver had been kicked back on a parole violation so Skinner offered me a job…
-from The Numbers Game
I’m not sure whether Johnny Temple is a bass player moonlighting as a publisher or the other way around. In either case, he had a brainstorm ’round about ‘02 to put together a neo-noir love letter to his home town of Brooklyn. Under the editorial guidance of Tim McLoughlin, Johnny Temple’s Akashic Books released an anthology of short crime fiction by local authors about their beloved stomping grounds, a sort of blood-stained literary map of Brooklyn. Since it’s release in 2004, Brooklyn Noir has grown into one big, bloody snowball, with a huge roster of cities in the U.S. and around the world added to the series. In 2005, they released San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis, which included stories from the likes of David Corbett and Will Christopher Baer. Four years later, San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics is just a few weeks away from its release. Like the title says, it’s a collection of classics, as in stories from guys who may sound familiar, like Dashiell Hammett, Jack London and Frank Norris, as well as some local heavyweights who are happily still among us. Peter Maravelis once more to put it all together and, in a moment of either foresight or dementia, included yours truly in the final section, Part IV: Desolation Angels. My latest single, The Numbers Game, is right between Seth Morgan’s Street Court (an excerpt from Homeboy, one of my favorite novels of all time) and William T. Vollmann’s The Woman Who Laughed (Vollmann is one of a handful writers as prolific as Stephen Graham Jones). That’s some formidable company, to say the least.
On Thursday, January 22nd at 6:30pm, I’ll join a panel discussion hosted by Peter Maravelis at the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute’s fourth annual Noir Literary Night, which just happens to be the day before Noir City 7, Eddie Muller’s annual Film Noir festival. Ten days of vintage celluloid back-stabbing, black-bagging and bad luck. Peter Maravelis, Don Herron and I will be there on Saturday, January 31st to sign books. I’ll post more details soon, as well as word on the San Francisco Noir 2 official release party in February.
-Craig
Watching the Watchmen
November 4, 2008 @ 4:50 pm
As appropriate as anything I’ve got for Election Day, I posted an old column of mine from the Santa Barbara Independent to my Articles & Stories section. Watching the Watchmen was my first attempt to dive into the USA PATRIOT Act and see what all the fuss was about.
Word,
Craig
Rare First Sedition
September 30, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
In a sort of backward approach to commemorating Banned Books Week, I’m reposting one of my favorite curve balls: a ‘book review’ I wrote for the Santa Barbara Independent, which originally appeared on June 24, 2004.
In anticipation of our forthcoming Independence Day, I took to spelunking the political science shelves for some appropriate reviewing material. Imagine my complete lack of surprise when confronted by a wall of inflammatory volumes from both the Left and the Right, written with crystal-clear hindsight and assailing the evils of the opposite end of the political spectrum, asserting the corruption of mass media by the other party, along with the occasional Green, Anarchist, or Libertarian author insisting that every other viewpoint has it wrong.
One of the most compelling books I did find was by far the most seditious. While not stating any party affiliation, the author pulls no punches in the opening pages by succinctly declaring the duties of a government, and the rights of the people should a government be derelict in its duty: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, [italics mine] and to institute a new Government.” Later in the same paragraph, he states, “It is their Right, their Duty, to throw off such Government [again, the italics are mine], and to provide new Guards for their future Security.” In our post-9/11 America, this is a title that I’m absolutely certain would have me detained (at best) by airport security were I to quote from it aloud in conversation at a check-in gate.
In The Declaration of Independence (Cato Institute Edition, paperback, 60 pages, $4.95), author Thomas Jefferson departs from the current political debate with his assertion that a change to the existing political system is not enough; rather, it is the obligation of the governed to build an entirely new system once the old one fails in its duties to the people. Using simple, clear, and rational language, Jefferson enumerates the crimes of his government and its leader in order to quantify the aforementioned dereliction of duty. Jefferson states, “He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous of Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a Civilized Nation.” And later, “A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”
This is a bold premise, but what makes it especially compelling is that Jefferson does not come across like some lunatic demagogue. Quite the contrary, a close read reveals him to be idealistic almost to the point of naive. When he states, “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” he makes it clear that a government does not grant any rights to its people, rather, the people erect government to protect the rights they are born with and under no circumstances can be denied, and his vision of unalienable rights is so vast that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are only among those rights.
Equally striking is Jefferson’s notion that just as the government is accountable to its people, its people are accountable to those populations outside of their own society. “…decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Read that again. Decent respect to the opinions of mankind. That runs absolutely contrary to our own current administration’s dismissal of world opinion regarding our current foreign policy.
After a close read of the Declaration of Independence, I can’t help but admire Jefferson for envisioning a place where meat-eating sport hunters, vegetarians, Burning Man participants, born-again Christians, homosexuals, and middle-class suburban families can coexist, fully acknowledging each others’ God-given rights, united in their duty to create a government to protect those rights. With all of the finger-pointing, mass-media noise, and pre-election hysteria, Jefferson’s road map for a republic is a breath of fresh air. It will be interesting to see if his ideas can be put into practice, and to see if such a place can truly exist.
Fight the Power.
-Craig