Best Reads, August and September

September hit the ground running with some personal business that could not wait, so here are my best reads for both August and September. (Because I know, deep down, you were disappointed when I skipped the August recounting.)

Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell. As good as I’d hoped. Woodrell has the gift of underplaying everything in such a manner it increases the effect. His writing has a backwoods poetry that distills the personalities of the characters and defines the good and bad of the clannishness found in this part of the Ozarks. (“working in the hot fields from can to can’t;” “nobody thought he’d live to see noon until he did.” Both of those are on the same page.) Writes female characters as well or better than any male writer I’ve read, and better than a lot of women. The ending is perfect, and leaves an opening for what could be a wonderful sequel, should Woodrell feel so inclined. The kind of book I wished was longer. Not because it seemed to be in any way incomplete, but because I didn’t want to stop reading.

Difficult Men, Brett Martin. This one got its own review several weeks ago. It’s worth a second mention.

The Way of the Warrior 1, Bernard Schaffer. A brief, quasi-memoir from a retired Philadelphia area cop that is not what one might expect. Schaffer is not an advocate of the increasing police “us versus them” mindset, and makes some compelling arguments for how policing and community relations can be improved. A quick and worthy read.

The Right Madness, James Crumley. I almost took this off the list because I read it a month ago and didn’t remember the story. I read a review and remembered what it was that moved me to put it on the list in the first place. Crumley’s books aren’t really about the plot, as he tends to get carried away and lets things circle back onto each other until the reader is left scratching his head. Doesn’t matter. Crumley’s plots are primarily scaffolds on which to hang the characters, dialog, and writing, all three of which are in fine fettle here.

Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler. Chandler’s masterpiece, at least until I re-read The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye. My favorite of the three is almost always the one freshest in my mind.

Crime Always Pays, Declan Burke. A more detailed review is coming. For now, imagine Elmore Leonard telling a story devised by Donald Westlake, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how much fun this is. Burke has as much or more range as anyone currently writing in the genre.

Difficult Men

Difficult Men is Brett Martin’s brilliant and entertaining look behind the key shows of what he calls the Third Golden Age of television, a period spearheaded by HBO with the prison drama Oz laying the foundation from which The Sopranos would become a phenomenon.

The title has double meaning. The programs that make up the core of Martin’s third golden age focus largely on the lives of forty-ish men in crisis: Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Walter White, Don Draper, and several cops, politicians, and drug dealers in The Wire. Those are the guys the public saw. The men responsible for their creation were forty-ish themselves, and they were, by and large, the truly difficult men.

The biggest takeaway, for me, was, “Why would anyone want to write for television?” Even if you overcome innumerable hurdles and are lucky enough to get on a first-rate show, you may get to work for a David Chase, a David Milch, or a Mathew Weiner. Chase never got over the idea he was too good for television. Weiner comes off as an arrogant an asshole ever to draw breath. Milch is such a whack job he makes James Ellroy look as eccentric as Jimmy Carter.

The stories of how all these men achieved their positions are fascinating. How events, timing, critical masses of people, and the pure luck of pitching the right idea to the right network at the right time came together to create something special. How HBO owned the franchise until it got a little complacent and FX leadership decided maybe that network didn’t have to be an afterthought at Fox, after all. AMC’s good fortune when looking for a program with gravitas, but not a crime show, which had done the heavy lifting to that point. Martin talked to a lot of people in position to know, and what they told him was too good to have been made up.

Not all the showrunners were off the rails. David Simon comes across as argumentative, but fair, and extremely loyal to both his people and his vision, which could cause friction. Shawn Ryan (The Shield) called in personal favors from friends for his pilot and to keep the cast together—casting his wife as Vic Mackey’s wife because “I know I can get you back”—and using the guerilla film tactics born of budget necessity to create something special both onscreen and off. Vince Gilligan appears to be a mensch. So, no, one does not have to be a neurotic asshole to be a big success, though it doesn’t seem to hurt.

Difficult Men is a great read for any fans of any of the shows cited, and for anyone curious about how shows get made—or, more often, don’t get made—in Hollywood. A quick read, written by Martin in an engaging manner with the perfect distance from the subject matter. Not so distant he looks down on his subjects, yet not so close he fails to recognize the lunacy. This is pretty much a pitch perfect tale.

One last thing. Despite giving David Chase every opportunity to justify the ending of The Sopranos, when all is said and done, it was still chickenshit.