I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PJ HARVEY-Dry (1992).

This first PJ Harvey album was a revelation in 1992.  It was angry and loud and awfully disconcerting. And, perhaps most importantly, it showed a strong woman, unafraid to point fingers at foolishness around her. (Yes, I miss the 90s).

It was also raw and abrasive and, at times, scary.  The opening track featured discordant music and vocals that were more than a little uncomfortable.  “O Stella” has more uncomfortable vocals with super cool and slightly off harmonies.  The guitar is a great distorted mass and the bass is low and heavy.  A great track.

“Dress” is one of the least abrasive tracks musically, which really lets the lyrics come to the fore. And her lyrics are wonderful throughout the disc–she attacks conventions of femininity and flips expectations.  And although “Dress” has a very simple chorus–just the line “If you put it on”–it is catchy as anything.

But it’s not all loud songs, either.  The wonderfully titled “Happy and Bleeding” features some intriguing quiet guitar work and whispered verses.  It grows in strength but never wails like the other songs.  For real wailing, “Sheela-na-Gig” is your song. Terrifically rocking and obscene, it’s a funny, clever awesome alt rock song.

Harvey experiments with falsetto (although nothing like she will on Let England Shake) on “Hair,” a cool twist on the Samson and Delilah story.  “Plants and Rags” makes exquisite use of a creepy violin to bring some extra sounds to an already cool song.

It’s a stunning debut and showed that Harvey was a fearless singer.

[READ: February 27, 2011] Misadventure

This is Millard Kaufman’s final novel (after the very cool Bowl of Cherries).  The Afterword (written by Kaufman’s son) seems to suggest that Millard actually wrote this back in the 60s.  There are elements of this book that make me thing that he did write it in the sixties (and then obviously updated particulars to make it contemporary).  It just feels circa the 60s and it feels like the book of a younger man (Kaufman was 92 when he died).

The story opens with a dead body and a real estate agent.  And it quickly develops into a tidy noir fiction with double-crossing and undermining and all kinds of interesting twists.  I don’t read noir or “mysteries” as a rule, so this is kind of a novel novel to me.  Accordingly, I can’t compare it to the genre.

Jack Hopkins is a real estate agent with Fleet & Fleet, a struggling real estate agency (this part seems updated for the 2010s).  Their main competition is Tod Hunt, a man who sells all the big multi-million dollar houses in California.

As the story opens, Jack is inspecting a huge house on a cliff.  He is awaiting the arrival of the owner.  When she arrives, she is unfailingly beautiful and incredibly sexy and, as happens in books like this, they have crazy sex.

The ties are quickly formed when we learn that this woman is Darlene, Tod Hunt’s wife.  And the plot quickly forms when she tells Jack she’ll give him a handsome sum if he’ll kill Tod so she can be free (ostensibly to be with Jack, but who knows, really).

The plot twists nicely when Jack finally meets Tod.  Tod Hunt wants to buy out Fleet & Fleet (which suits Jack fine as there is talk of a lucrative position in Mexico for him).  Tod turns out to be not the homicidal bastard that Darlene claims.  He is charming and friendly, and he takes a quick liking to Jack (which makes Jack somewhat reluctant to off him).

After some negotiating vis-a-vis the buyout, Tod reveals to Jack that there is a young Mexican woman with whom he’d really like to have a future, but he’s afraid of what his wife would get out of him.  So, perhaps Jack could do Tod a solid and kill Mrs Hunt?  (Tod doesn’t know that Jack “knows” Darlene).

So, you can kind of see where this story is leading.  Except that Kaufman throws in all kinds of interesting extras.  Jack is currently living with (but not married to) Gayle.  She is unhappy (and eats plaster) and is very suspicious of all of a sudden late nights and phone calls that Jack is getting.  She is also hanging around with Jerry Fleet, Jack’s co-worker and the son in Fleet & Fleet.

There’s also a mysterious island in Mexico that Tod Hunt owns.  Cursory surveillance reveals goats, monkeys, hot young ladies, manacles and drugs.  The book also features a strange hippie-type guy with a boa constrictor, a real-estate agent who is indecorous with a a gold toothpick, a policeman who is a bit out of his element and an old man with some useless property who Jack has taken a liking to.

The story gets convoluted (as good mysteries do) so that just when you think things are figured out, Kaufman pulls a fast one on everybody.  There’s some gruesome violence, although nothing too explicit, and there’s one scene for which Kaufman will burn in hell, but at least Jack feels bad when he does it.

This book would make an excellent screenplay (which is unsurprising since Kaufman was a screenplay writer).  And I’d love to see it made into a film.  As with any good mystery, it was  total page turner and I really couldn’t wait to see how it was resolved.  Good stuff.