Dearest Readers,
Since I last blasted one of these quasi-columns your way Queen Elizabeth died at the age of 90-something (I think 96, but since in all honesty I couldn’t care less I see no reason to check). Oddly, I didn’t find the death of the nonagenarian ruling class figurehead tragic, despite the lemming-like celebrity worship mindset that took over coverage of her demise.
Hence I didn’t waste time on the post-croaking media frenzy aside from reading a very sharp, informative, and droll Fintan O’Toole piece about the old imperial icon keeling over for good. O’Toole’s new book on recent Irish history looks killer, unfortunately there are already hundreds of titles on my “for later” cyber shelf at sfpl.org (the S.F. library’s website being my default go-to place online). There are already just too many books I want to read before I croak, he wrote while dramatically smiting his brow. I do make a point of reading what O’Toole writes for the indispensable New York Review of Books, though. He’s a superior journalist, with admirable deep-dive chops and style to burn. Those Irish guys and gals can sure craft some lovely paragraphs! Something about the literature they put in the water, Guiness, Jameson, and John Power in Dublin, I guess.
The Queen’s demise got interminable attention, but how many of you read an obituary for Barbara Ehrenreich? That great author, activist, and personal hero of yours truly threw off this fucked-up planet’s mortal coil on September 1. There was a nice tribute to her in The Guardian which began, “Born and brought up in Butte, Montana, a blue-collar mining town, she came from a family whose gospel had only two rules: never cross a picket line, and never vote Republican.” More than you can say about any dead royals, to state the obvious!
Originally trained as a scientist, with a PhD in cellular immunology, Ehrenreich became a ground-breaking journalist who eschewed the phony objectivity of boring mainstream hacks and, to steal a turn of phrase from Alexander Cockburn, her old colleague at The Nation magazine, wrote with great fizz. Most famous for Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a now-classic account of her efforts to survive on several minimum wage service sector jobs, Ehrenreich authored an impressive list of other essential titles, including The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics and Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, and a dystopian science fiction novel, Kipper’s Game.
Ehrenreich once said of news coverage of the tens of millions of have-nots in this country, “I think the real issue here is [that] the mainstream media’s […] theory of poverty, which they can’t help but come back to, is that it is a character failure, it is manifested by laziness or promiscuity or addiction or something. Well, there’s an alternative theory of poverty that some of us have been trying to get across, which is that it’s not a character flaw, it is a lack of money. And […] that it’s caused, ultimately, by the pathetically low wages so many Americans earn.”
The divine Ms. E. also wrote, “In America, only the rich can afford to write about poverty.” Enraged by the dearth of deeply-researched, empathetic and social justice-inclined reporting on poor people, she founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to fund, and provide editorial support for, journalists spending weeks, or even months, researching the realities of working class life in the U.S. Writers and activists mentored by Ehrenreich are keeping that successful project going; alas, the need for it gives no indication of diminishing in the near future.
Ehrenreich was smart and serious as a heart attack about her bulldog-like dedication to laying bare the depredations of runaway capitalism. She was also frequently hilarious. Alissa Quart, a colleague on the poverty reporting initiative, recently recalled her saying, “The thing about getting old is that doctor’s offices are just so boring.” Another great Ehrenreich quote: “Money does not bring happiness — only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence.”
Barbara’s son Ben Ehrenreich had this to say about his impressive mom: “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.” Who could ask for a better way to be remembered?
No prominent Trumpers have expired recently, which in my view confirms once again that there is no God. Unfortunately, to say the least, good friend of The Green Arcade, stellar crime novelist, raconteur, and all-around great guy Jim Nisbet died on September 28. I had the good fortune to meet Jim thanks to his friendship with my employer. He quickly proved himself to be the most fascinating person in the amazing mix of writers, artists, and political movers and shakers I’ve met working at the bookstore. Jim was one of a kind, a blast to talk to, wildly erudite, and funny as hell.
Jim’s good pal and comrade-in-noir Eddie Muller sent out a touching tribute to a few friends, calling Jim “one of the most unique voices in noir fiction,” with a style “unsparingly dark, unapologetically cerebral, acerbically funny, utterly unpredictable.”
I’ve gone back to Jim’s oeuvre since his passing, first re-reading Dark Companion, which, despite love love loving Lethal Injection and The Octopus On My Head, I used to say was my favorite Nisbet. Little did I know how severely I would be pole-axed in awe when I followed up that little book with The Spider’s Cage and The Price of the Ticket, both unique blasts of bravura storytelling. This morning I finished Prelude to a Scream, a grisly San Francisco story definitely not for the faint of heart in which it turns out that black market organ harvesting is a rather slippery business.
Jim wasn’t a mystery series guy. He wrote about criminals, unfortunate decisions, and darkness which sometimes crosses over into horror, but you’d be at a loss to find much in his work that’s dovetails with mainstream formulas. You’re also not going to find financially successful but tiresomely predictable hacks like Robert B. Parker delving into astrophysics or other scientific fields, digressions about which Jim effortlessly wove into his bent narratives.
Gent Sturgeon, another of Jim’s many friends, recently noted the similarities, not least an often insanely abstruse vocabulary, between Cormac McCarthy’s writing and Jim’s. Though Jim’s style was very much his own, when I think of his work two other idiosyncratic crime novelists come to mine: the late French wild man Jean-Patrick Manchette and Mexico City dweller Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Their output, like Jim’s, transcends genre limitations and pigeonholing; all three write at a high literary level that is madly inventive, packed with dark humor, and never boring.
It’s a shame Jim didn’t get some of McCarthy’s commercial success. Though he achieved fame and big-time respect in France, Jim never caught on in the U.S., supporting himself by working as a carpenter. His day job included designing what he called “electronic furniture,” consoles and cabinetry specifically designed for audio and video production studios (in addition to myriad other interests, Jim was a dedicated jazz guitarist).
I wish I’d gotten to know Jim better but I’m grateful for the time I spent in his presence. I’ll always treasure the hilarious, brilliant messages he sent me. Having Jim give me a poem about the aftermath of the disastrous 2016 U.S. presidential election to run in my little magazine Namaste, Motherfucker! was a wonderful thrill and truly an honor. I also hugely appreciated it when he was nice enough to plug my mag in the email newsletter he circulated to a wide list of writers, readers, and culturally clued-in friends and acquaintances. I wish I could pester him to tell me more about the times he hung out with Taibo, or ask for his favorites from the 1980s paperback line of Eastern European writers he’d recommended to me. Had he read Love and Garbage or Under the Frog? I’ll never know, alas. Big-time condolences to Patrick, Eddie, Gent, Jim’s siblings, and his wife, Carol Collier. Viva Jim Nisbet!
Since everyone loves a travelog, or so they* say, I must mention that last month I drove south from Mean Old Frisco to visit my sister in Altadena, a scenic burg nuzzled just a brief blast of freeway pedal to the metal action northeast of Hollywood. I was pleasantly surprised that despite reserving the rental car in advance I still had to waste an hour and a half standing in line. Full transparency: “pleasantly” would be the wrong word, but then there’s no accounting for sarcasm. Some good came out of that tedious interval, however, as I wound up with a vehicle that had satellite radio (besides, if you don’t bring a book to disappear into while stuck in a line and then get pissy about the wait you’re more than a little lamé). Also, when my turn finally came the guy behind the counter asked me about my El Vez (aka the Mexican Elvis, aka Robert Lopez) t-shirt and wasn’t faking his guffaws at the political satire meets rocking camp in the El Vez lyrics I hipped him to. I felt confident that I had planted a seed which will blossom into another offshoot of El Vez fandom, an even more inspirational feeling than sending out a thousand Hallmark cards. It’s indeed gratifying to have one more example of the power of positive thinking.** I must try to always wear a crazy-ass Spanglish El Vez promotional t-shirt when speaking to service sector employees. Brown Power and social and economic justice don’t have to be boring! Join the El Vez Army!
The trip took almost two hours longer than it would have if I had done the Road Warriorre-enactment that is the dreaded I-5. Nonetheless, since I value what few shreds of sanity I have left, I’m glad I took Highway 101 for a change. Almost no trucks, not to mention interesting countryside instead of the flat, boring yawnsville that is the Central Valley and stellar views of the Pacific instead of the cow slaughterhouses which decorate I-5, make it the right route for your next north to south California trip. Hot tip of the column!
In addition to Highway 101’s varied terrain, the many hawks circling overhead were quite a perk. I’d watched The Birds just a week before at The Roxie, so it was a relief to not experience terror at seeing those giant winged creatures above me. I’d already made it through several days of watching gulls with no PTSD (that is, I had no PTSD, I suppose it’s possible the gulls did), so in all honesty my steely even keel wasn’t that big a surprise, but we do have to relish life’s little victories, don’t we? After all, Hitchcock himself, at least according to the film’s poster, called The Birds his most terrifying motion picture.
No longer being the coffee-guzzling, road trip-craving whipper snapper I once was (think Little Richard’s fabulous number “Fool at the Wheel”), I was somewhat dreading driving to L.A. by my lonesome. I needn’t have worried. Four years as a Boston cab driver and several more as a ticket scalper’s wheel man (no lie!), not to mention that glamorous stint as a delivery guy for a blood lab (also true!), has left me with an innate ability to eat up the road at about five miles above the speed limit for hours on end. It didn’t hurt that I wasn’t on the accursed I-5, nor was satellite radio a small factor in the fun I had bombing along like one of the motorheads in Two Lane Blacktop, taking only the briefest of breaks for micturation. Before grabbing the rental car I had no idea how that satellite radio thing worked; in my defense, I’ve already noted my years spent driving for a living and, as the yard man Miller (Tracey Walter) in Repo Man astutely observed, the more you drive the less intelligent you are. Not surprisingly, the newfangled (to me, at least) contraption gets it’s signals from a satellite. More to the point, I was pleased to discover that Sirius functions like an old-school car radio, except with about a half zillion (approximately) more channels.
I hate to leave you all hanging, but mysterious figures lurking in the dark recesses of my subconscious keep telling me that most people only read the first two or three paragraphs of anything they receive electronically so I’m going to end there for now and wait until next time to wax rhapsodically about a few DJs and choice songs that enhanced my motoring down the Pacific Coast. Who knows, they might work for you too! Thanks to the four or five of you who’ve read this far, and do try to keep your chins up as we soldier onward into what looks to be a pretty fucking scary future.
Your Humble Narrator,
Ben
*I am not at liberty to disclose their identity at this time, but I can say that they are not the giant ants who sheltered in L.A. sewers in the 1954 sci-fi classic Them.
** As opposed to the power of positive drinking, something I’ll leave with the blurry 1980s (also the title of an inspirational Lou Reed song).
NOTES
I reviewed Barbara Ehrenreich’s book
Bright-Sided way back when it came out, boy do I miss the San Francisco Bay Guardian: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452749-bright-sided
More on Barbara E.’s Economic Hardship Reporting Project: https://www.democracynow.org/2022/9/7/alissa_quart_life_legacy_barbara_ehrenreich
My brief review of the dearly-departed Jim Nisbet’s fabulous novel Snitch World: https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/05/life-and-death-in-snitch-world/