That’s the one with “I Travel,” on it, right? Probably my favorite Simple Minds song. I may need to revisit it sometime. I remember disliking nearly everything but the debut but their third may surprise me.

I wrote a paper in grad school about Day of the Locust and gave a presentation on it but damned if I remember all that much of the four West novels after a quarter of a century. Aside from Homer Simpson, the rapes, and overall misanthropic spirit.

I never noticed that final line, either. It’s a foreshadowing of his 1986 Zuckerman series novel, The Counterlife, which consists (mostly) of long stretches of extended arguments between a brother who left for Israel and another who stayed in America. And I mean, long, shrill rants that go on for pages upon pages in a way that no actual person would speak in normal conversation in real life and are clearly some variation of the author venting his own half-baked political thoughts that Roth entertains half agreeing/disagreeing because he gives time to each side of the argument. That is a HUGE problem for me in a lot of later period Roth novels - I doubt an editor would let him get away with half this shit if Roth was a new writer and wasn’t already an established legend. As you may guess I wasn’t a big fan of that particular book.

Has there ever been a major artist with NO deep cuts like Michael Jackson? There’s literally no point in buying or listening to the actual albums.

I’m currently binging Richard Stark’s Parker series. (Donald E. Westlake, who wrote a lot of other novels under his real name. He chose Stark because it reflected the pared down, basic prose and approach.) These are all short and hella fun (200 pages or 4-5 hours on audiobook). Pulpy noir paperbacks written during the Mad Men era centering around the blank, amoral titular protagonist, these were obviously a big influence on Tarantino & Leonard and the whole heist, criminal-as-“hero” genre in general. I may need to see the movie Point Blank with Lee Marvin sometime. I’m up to #9 (there are 16 in the original series that ended in the early 1970s, then Westlake did a reboot in the late 1990s with 8 extras until he died . I’m definitely going to finish the first run but not so sure about the final eight.)

Like most 21st century readers, I got drawn into the series by the excellent graphic novel adaptations by the late Darwyn Cooke, which cover the arch of the first trio of books + standalone #5 The Score (which would make an awesome Michael Bay movie as they try to rob an entire town in the Rockies). (+#14 Slayground which I haven’t read yet.)

https://www.tcj.com/you-either-take-my-word-for-it-or-you-dont-revisiting-darwyn-cookes-parker/

I’d rank Westlake at the top of the noir pack as a writer, certainly much better than Mickey Spillane (but then, that’s not saying much), right there with Hammett, Chandler, Ross McDonald, and Leonard. BTW the header is a riff on the opening line of one of his novels.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/13634.Richard_Stark

(After reading that first article, footnote #10, I now get the Anton Chigurh homage in No Country For Old Men. But he’s equally a Jim Thompson archetype and my first impression when watching the film was The Misfit from Flannery O’Connor.)