The New Old West

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Novelist James Lee Burke

How is it that a good Catholic boy from the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast became one of the best novelists in America? I have just finished reading his Rain Gods (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009) and consider it one of the best books I have read this year. I have always loved his Dave Robicheaux mysteries set in Louisiana Creole country, but his novels about the Hackberry family in Texas are several notches above them in quality. (See the quote from the novel in yesterday’s blog.)

The Old West ain’t what it used to be. There isn’t any more “Shall We Gather at the River?” or “My Darling Clementine” or pioneers on the trail. Something has happened to make the American Southwest a darker place. First and foremost, since the end of World War 2, it is the route of choice for heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, and other drugs to enter the United States. A corollary: Several million people also crossed the border from the south without going through immigration.

There is also the consciousness that we stole a large part of Northern Mexico in the 1840s under the presidency of James K. Polk. We followed up by a concerted program of genocide against the Indians in the succeeding decades and are now following that up by official intimidation and deportation of peoples who have flowed across the border, many of them decades ago. Let’s face it, our history in the desert lands of the Southwest is no less than villainous.

I was first conscious of the New Old West when I viewed the rough cut of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch at Warner Brothers Studio in 1969. Then I read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (New York:Random House, 1985) and saw the good guys and the bad guys in an entirely harsher light. Then I read James Lee Burke’s Feast Day of Fools in 2015 during a Mexican holiday—which, incidentally, was also set in present-day Texas with the same hero, Sheriff Hackberry Holland.

Smoke and Mist

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I am three quarters of the way through James Lee Burke’s Rain Gods (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009). It is one of the author’s Hackberry Holland novels set in Southwest Texas. I am also beginning to think that its author has exceeded the limits of the genre and approached the level of literature. The following quote is what goes through the mind of a strange mass murderer who calls himself the Preacher as he sits cradling a Thompson submachine gun on his lap.

He did not know the hour and never wore jewelry or a watch when he worked. He did not measure the passage of time in terms of minutes or hours but in terms of events. There were no vehicles on the county road. There was no sign of activity inside the house he was about to invade. There were no insomniacs or early risers turning on lights in the neighborhood. There was a fire burning in the grass, and horses were nickering in the darkness, the smoke providing a plausible explanation for their sense of alarm. The sky was booming with thunderous explosions; not those of dry lightning but the kind that promised serious rain, perhaps even the type of monsoon that gave back life to a desert. In spite of the acrid tinge of smoke inside the mist, the night was as lovely and normal as one could expect during the late summer in Southwest Texas.

Preacher stuffed his trousers inside the tops of his boots and up-ended his Thompson in one hand, the other gripping his cane, then began walking through a thicket toward the ranch house in the distance, his face as impervious as molded plastic to both the brambles and the rain.

“Farewell to My Soldier Friend”

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As I grow older, I become more and more enamored of ancient Chinese poetry. One of the all-time greats was Tu Fu, also known as Du Fu, who was born in AD 712 and died in 770. This poem is called “Farewell to My Soldier Friend.” The translation is by Chao Tze-chiang.

Farewell to My Soldier Friend

The Jo River flows to the land’s end;
The Yang Pass looms on the horizon.
Now you will cross the sand-bar;
There smoke didn’t rise for months.
To show your valor, take no care for life;
To be a marquis, do not count the years.
In winter, keep your horse from being lost,
Or snow will bury his broidered saddle.

The Communion of Saints

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Today, on a hot and humid afternoon following a rare September rainstorm, Martine and I attended the Greek festival at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Long Beach. We love the church with its rich iconography and display of saints, many of which were unknown to me with my Roman Catholic background.

The four saints in the panel above are Gerasimos, Anthony, Athanasius, and Dionysios. The first and fourth are likely celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Four years ago, I wrote about discovering an Eskimo saint, Peter the Aleut, whose icon is shown on the back wall of the nave. This time, I discovered a Saint Aphrodite, who is totally unrelated to the Greek goddess of love and beauty.

Saint Aphrodite?

According to Wikipedia, Saint Aphrodite was a virgin who was martyred for her Christian beliefs during a local persecution in Adrianople, Thrace, around the year AD 305. The Orthodox Church celebrates her feast day on September 1.

I mentioned Saint Dionysios above. Wasn’t he named after a Greek deity as well? The saint was also known as Dionysios of Zakynthos, According to Wikipedia:

In his early life, Dionysios joined a monastery a few miles off the coast of Zakynthos. After a while living there, he was encouraged by his fellow monks to be ordained as a priest, which he did. He eventually decided to travel to the Holy Land by way of Athens. After arriving in Athens, he was made Archbishop of Aigina despite personal protests in humility. In about the year 1589, the Patriarch of Constantinople made Archbishop Dionysios the Archbishop of Zakynthos, he stayed in this position until a permanent Archbishop arrived. After this, he returned to his island monastery where he lived out the rest of his life until his death on December 17, 1622.

This doesn’t sound like much, but he probably made a good impression.

“The Hardships of Travel”

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Tao Yuanming (365-427) is one of the great poets of China. I have been reading a translation of his poems by Bill Porter (under his pseudonym Red Pine) and came across this unnamed poem. It talks about the hardships of travel in China around the year 400 AD. I, who yearn to have the money to allow me to travel and find myself stuck in Southern California, am in a slightly different situation.

People sigh about the hardships of travel
I’m just learning about them now
about the size of mountains and rivers
and the unexpected dangers of both
about crashing waves that echo across the sky
and relentless winds that never cease
the more I travel the more I long for home
why am I stuck where I am
I’ve been thinking about how much I love my garden
and why haven’t I said goodbye to the world
how long will my good years last
and why did I ever question my heart

Blinky Blinky

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A Whole New Level of Communication Between Motorists

In the State of California, there are three reasons for using the hazrd lights on your automobile. The following is from the California Vehicle Code § 25251 (2025):

(2) When disabled or parked off the roadway but within 10 feet of the roadway, or when approaching, stopped at, or departing from, a railroad grade crossing, turn signal lamps may be flashed as warning lights if the front turn signal lamps at each side are being flashed simultaneously and the rear turn signal lamps at each side are being flashed simultaneously.

(3) To warn other motorists of accidents or hazards on a roadway, turn signal lamps may be flashed as warning lights while the vehicle is approaching, overtaking, or passing the accident or hazard on the roadway if the front turn signal lamps at each side are being flashed simultaneously and the rear turn signal lamps at each side are being flashed simultaneously.

(5) To warn other motorists of a funeral procession, turn signal lamps may be flashed as warning lights on all vehicles actually engaged in a funeral procession, if the front turn signal lamps at each side are being flashed simultaneously and the rear turn signal lamps at each side are being flashed simultaneously.

Drivers in the state have, however, adopted other reasons for using the emergency flashers. They can be interpreted as follows:

  • “I am a timid soul and not at all a sophisticated driver. Please do not kill me.”
  • “I am not at all sure what I am doing, so please cut me some slack until such time as I make up my mind.”
  • “The rain or snow or fog is cutting down on my visibility, so I’m just going to be super conservative until we’re out of the soup.”

There are others, but these are the most common interpretations that I’ve been able to divine.

The Film Screening Cooperative

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UCLA’s Melnitz Hall

When I was in the graduate film program at UCLA around 1970, I served as the second chairman of the Film Screening Cooperative (FSC). I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was actually a seminal film society. We invited director Budd Boetticher to screen and talk on the subject of his film Arruza about Mexican bullfighter Carlos Arruza. We also had some wild programs, most notably a quintuple feature of Edgar G. Ulmer films.

Among the voting members of the Film Screening Cooperative were:

  • Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the husband-wife team who wrote American Graffiti
  • Thom Andersen, a filmmaker, critic, and film teacher who served as the first chairman of the FSC
  • Steve Manes from USC, a screenwriter (Mother, Jugs & Speed), author, and magazine columnist
  • Alain Silver and James Ursini, who collaborated on numerous books on film, particularly Film Noir
  • Charley Lippincott of USC, who was closely associated with George Lucas

The films were screened at the luxurious theater connected to UCLA’s Melnitz Hall.

It was at Melnitz that I was badly spooked on February 9, 1971, the day of the Sylmar earthquake that was ranked at 6.5 on the Richter scale and cause extensive damage and fatalities across Southern California. That evening, I attended a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936) at Melnitz. Just when Hitch showed an anarchist sabotaging the electrical system of London, we all felt an aftershock; and all the lights went out.

Internet Friendships

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The Reality of Internet Friendships Depends on How Old You Are

I have posted thousands of blogs on the Internet over the last eighteen years, yet I have no close Internet friendships. Is this a problem? For me it is not, as I take friendship very seriously. At my advanced age, I do not believe that someone who has never met me reads what I write and sees in me a real friend.

Every once in a while, I get a message from a stranger, usually a female, asking to chat with me. “About what?” I think. My posted blogs are as far as I will commit myself in print. I have no wish to start a clandestine relationship with someone who is possibly trying to mess with me. The relationships that are important to me are those with Martine, my brother, and my in-person friends, usually people I have known for a long time.

Younger people tend to be more active in seeking out Internet friends. I can understand that: They are more likely to measure their happiness by the number of mutually gratifying contacts they have made. I, on the other hand, am not interested in answering questions about how I feel. In my blogs, I make no secret of how I feel. Why would I need to carry on conversations on the side, so to speak?

If you read my blogs regularly, you know that I have been affected by the summer heat wave that seems only now to be releasing its grip. When Martine and I have gone through rough patches in our relationship, I have written about them and how terrible they made me feel. For instance, Martine left me for several days in 2017. Here is what I wrote when she returned. How would that go over in an e-mail format?

On several occasions, women have messaged me to converse with them. Don’t they realize that I am most frank in my blog posts? I don’t really want to meet up with them. They don’t really have any idea who I am, and they very likely have not read many my my blogs. They could go all the way back to 2012 on WordPress and see how I have felt on an almost daily basis over the last fourteen years.

The End of a Heat Wave

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Today, for the first time in more than two months, the temperature in Southern California is close to normal, with cooler days to come. Of course, it will still be humid; but that is because the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii is churning out typhoons and cyclones as if they were sausages. Even though these are a thousand miles (1,609 kilometers) southwest of us, the winds carry much of the moisture our way.

What this means is I will be able to go places without sweating and stinking excessively. Combined with my broken collarbone at the beginning of June, the hot weather has kept me close to the ocean most of the time. In three months, I have been able to go to the central library downtown only three times—and it took a lot out of me to do so.

Martine and I will celebrate by attending the Long Beach Greek Festival this coming weekend.

“The Mystery of All Mysteries”

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Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991)

He wrote in Yiddish, yet he was one of the greatest storytellers who have ever lived. I have just finished reading his collection Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories and, for the first time in my life, I found all of the stories within to be great, with no falling off in quality from beginning to end as is usual. The following excerpt is from his story “The Unseen”:

On his last night, Nathan dreamed that Roise Temerl [his beloved first wife] and Shifra Zirel [his abusive second wife] were one woman with two faces. He was overjoyed at her appearance. “Why have I not noticed this before?” he wondered. “Why did I have to go through this trouble and anxiety?” He kissed the two-faced female, and she returned his kisses with her doubled lips, pressing against him her two pairs of breasts. He spoke words of love to her, and she responded in two voices. In her four arms and two bosoms, all his questions were answered. There was no longer life and death, here nor there, beginning nor end. “The truth is two-fold,” Nathan exclaimed, “This is the mystery of all mysteries.”