Un grande libro, un hardboiled scritto in maniera mirabile come solo Il Grande Sonno di Raymond Chandler è riuscito.Se dovessi indicare, come nelle altre recensioni, una canzone, vengono in mente Isaac Hayes e il grande Marving Gay con lo splendido video di Inner City Blues (cliccate perchè merita)Se vi piace questo tipo ti musica allora L'ultimo vero bacio è il vostro libro altrimenti leggetelo lo stesso perchè e semplicemente fantastico !Scritto nel 1978, è un romanzo complesso ed articolato, pieno di ritmo, traboccante azione, stilisticamente perfetto , in grado di trasformare in odori e suoni le parole e gli ambienti pieni di fumo, bui e sporchi nei quali si muove a suo agio il detective C.W. Sughrue . "Libertà significa solo non aver niente da perdere, proprio così, e la notte è piccola per noi, troppo piccolina" e non è un caso che siano le parole uate da Fred Buscaglione (o è il contrario ?)Ottima la traduzione di Luca Conti per Enauidi di cui vi do un lungo assaggio che, da solo, vale una recensione :Alla fine lo beccai, Abraham Trahearne: lo beccai che beveva birra in compagnia di un bulldog alcolizzato, tale Fireball Roberts, in una sgangherata bettola appena fuori Sonoma, California, intento a spremere anche le ultime gocce di un bel pomeriggio di primavera. Erano quasi tre settimane che Trahearne vagabondava in pieno delirio alcolico; un omaccione in uno stazzonato abito di tela cachi, simile a un vecchio soldato reduce da una lunga campagna e tutto preso a centellinare una birra dopo l’altra, come a volersi togliere di bocca il sapore della morte. Il cane si era sbracato sullo sgabello lì accanto, a mo’ di piccolo e sfinito commilitone, e di quando in quando rialzava la testa per bere una sorsata di birra da un lercio portacenere piazzato sul bancone. Nessuno dei due mi degnò di un solo sguardo, mentre mi infilavo sullo sgabello che separava il bulldog dagli altri due avventori, due loschi e sfaccendati meccanici che ragionavano di sussidi di disoccupazione mai arrivati, dei loro più recenti arresti per guida in stato d’ubriachezza, di luoghi in cui poter ancora recuperare la catena di trasmissione di una Chevro-let del 1957. Quei volti bitorzoluti e quegli accenti nasali uscivano dritti da altri luoghi, da altre epoche. Dalle tempeste di polvere degli anni Trenta, da una vecchia carretta fatta in casa, un camioncino Model T avviato a scomparire nel tramonto. Quando mi sedetti, mi lanciarono il tipico sguardo della gente di campagna, gli occhi stretti come fessure, e mi esaminaro-no ben bene, neanche fossi chissà che rottame pronto a fornir loro qualche pezzo di ricambio. Li salutai con un allegro cenno del capo, per annunciare che sì, l’aria di un relitto umano ce la potevo pure avere, ma mica ero ancora pronto per la demolizione. Ricambiarono il mio tacito saluto, chinando la testa con espressione vacua e pensosa, come a voler insinuare che, sì, va bene, ma a mettere in piedi un bell’incidente non ci voleva nulla. Già sbatacchiato da fin troppi chilometri su strade sbagliate, li lasciai al corso dei loro pensieri. Ordinai una birra alla donna dietro il bancone, una tipa di mezza età che si scosse dalle sue fantasticherie per accennare un sorriso assonnato. Non appena udì stappare la bottiglia, il bulldog si scosse dal suo torpore alcolico, ruttò come un drago e tirò su le strette natiche, per poi ondeggiare su tre traballanti sgabelli - tra i fumi di birra rancida e di fiatate canine - col chiaro obiettivo di propormi un affare: un bacio umido e bavoso in cambio di una sorsata di birra. Non abboccai, e lui decise di alzare la posta sbavandomi sul gomito mezzo ustionato dal sole. Trahearne abbaiò un secco ordine e schizzò una piccola quantità di birra nel portacenere. Il bulldog mi rifilò un’occhiata dolente e un sospiro, e trotterellò verso quel magro ma sicuro bottino. Nel togliermi dal braccio la saliva del cane, con un cencio bagnato che avevo trovato sul bancone e che era stato usato chissà quante altre volte al-lo stesso scopo, chiesi alla barista se c’era un telefono pubblico. Lei indicò in silenzio i meandri polverosi e grigiastri che si aprivano dietro il tavolo da biliardo, là dove un telefono di colore nero spuntava a mezz’aria da ombre cineree. Quando gli passai davanti, Trahearne aveva messo un robusto braccio attorno al collo tutto pieghe del bulldog, e gli recitava una serie di versi nell’orecchio mozzo. «Davanti a una scogliera ci troviamo, quasi infranta oramai… davanti a questo forte vento del Pacifico… questo… fetore salato di balena… ah, cri-sto… ma che testoni siamo stati, amico mio, ma come ci siamo ridotti… pu-re noi finiremo nella merda…» Poi sfoderò una risatina senza senso, come un vecchio che brancola alla ricerca degli occhiali. Parlava da solo? Non poteva fregarmene di meno. Anch’io parlavo da solo, e da un bel pezzo.Era proprio quel che facevo, in effetti, il pomeriggio in cui l’ex moglie di Trahearne mi aveva chiamato; cazzeggiavo nel mio ufficetto di Meriwether, Montana, che vantava una splendida vista sul cassonetto traboccante, dall’altra parte del vicolo, giusto dietro il discount, e cercavo di convincermi che l’aver poco lavoro non era un grosso problema, anzi mi andava quasi a genio. Poi era squillato il telefono.
James Crumley’s private investigator CW Sughrue finds himself searching for a runaway young woman, missing for ten years. But this is not how it started out; he was hired by a woman to find her ex-husband, Abraham Trahearne before he drinks himself to death. A confrontation in the bar that results in Trahearne being injured in hospital puts Sughrue in a position to look for this missing woman.This hard-boiled novel is told in a way I don’t think has been done enough in a pulp crime novel. A parallel narrative exploring the problematic relationship between Sughrue and the wandering alcoholic novelist, and the three femme fatales in Trahearne’s life, just to make things more complex. Apart from that, you have the usual elements that make up a hard-boiled novel; alcohol, money, love, sex, power and violence.Somehow James Crumley has a refreshing voice for this genre; I’m not sure if it is just that I’ve not read enough hard-boiled novels set in the seventies or there is something else there. I would put Crumley somewhere between Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson; he doesn’t have the plotting skills and wit that Chandler has but he isn’t as violent and philosophical as Thompson. The narrative, while in a first person point of view, manages to switch between making the reader feel like they are in the same room trying to piece this mystery together, and then all of a sudden you are inside CW Sughrue head reading all his thoughts, emotions and memories. This isn’t easy to do but Crumley does this so seamlessly that you don’t really notice it happening. This narrative, mixed with the cynicism and low regard to society is what I think makes this book so refreshing.This novel deals a lot with sex; Sughrue’s personal integrity and professional ethics are corrupted by the sexual desire towards Catherine; a desire she uses to manipulate him. Trahearne hasn’t been able to be creative because of his sexual desire with Melinda and his attraction towards his mother. Then there is Betty Sue, who just has a sexual desire towards everyone in the book. It’s important to know at the core of this books portrayal of sexual desire is the cynical belief that such corruption is unavoidable and even inevitable.The Last Good Kiss also deals with the idea of identity and trying to escape your past, but ultimately realising you can’t run. Betty Sue hides her true self between layers of masks and other identities; she is running from her sexually exploitative time in San Francisco but it all comes back in the end. Trahearne can’t escape his infidelities, alcoholism and his ex-wife’s fury. All of them fail to realise that the past defines the present. Their mistakes in the past do not have to define their future but helps them grow; this book just ends up being a twisted celebration of life’s obstacles shaping our personality.Admittedly I found myself being bored in parts of this book and wanting to skim read, but I persevered and found some interesting elements that stopped this from being a generic crime novel. CW Sughrue, is an alcoholic ex-army officer turned private investigator and that dark past is what makes me want to keep reading the series, just to discover what he is running from. The Last Good Kiss has been described as the most influential crime novel of the last 50 years, influencing people like Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and even Neal Stephenson; that alone is an impressive reason to check this book out. While I think I prefer Jim Thompson for style and message, James Crumley is an author I plan to explore more of.This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
Do You like book The Last Good Kiss (1988)?
This is supposed to be a classic of the hard-boiled detective novel, which is a genre I very much enjoy. C.W. Sughrue is a hard-living bad-ass who makes his money trying to find runaways and repossessing cars and TVs. Initially in the story, he is hired by an ex-wife to find her husband,who has run off on a drinking binge that she fears might kill him. Sughrue's travels take him over the backroads from his home in Montana ultimately to Sonoma, California, where he finds his man, the famous author Abraham Trahearne. A drunken friendship is immediately formed. While drinking in the bar in Sonoma where the two meet, the female barkeeper hires Sughrue to search for her daughter, who vanished in San Francisco a decade ago. Trahearne insists on going with Sughrue before heading back to his home. So the search is on for the mysterious daughter Betty Sue Flowers, and in the course of the quest the motivations and demons of each man are exposed.For such a highly thought of novel, I found this to be a limp and unconvincing plot, populated by a bunch of losers. Underwhelming.
—Scott
A true classic of the crime fiction genre, and for some reason I just got around to it. The book introduces C.W. Sughrue, a Vietnam vet who is now a private dick, usually working boring jobs doing repossessions and divorce cases. As the novel opens, he's finally tracked down Abraham Trahearne, a famous drunken writer who Sughrue was hired to track down before he drinks himself to death. While on the job, he takes another assignment from an old barmaid to track down her daughter, who ran away from home ten years prior. So, accompanied by Trahearne and an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts, Sughrue searches for a girl he's mysteriously drawn to, a girl he only knows from a faded, crumpled photograph.This book inspired almost all of the contemporary crime writers working today. One of the big reasons why it was so influential is because it took your standard detective novel and turned it into something more, with it's brilliant, poetic prose that, before then, would usually be reserved for more "serious" fiction. Sughrue is a great character, also influencing the modern detective characters today, with his mix of not only toughness, humor, and rough charm, but also with a tender empathy that drives his search for Betty Sue and his friendship with Trahearne. Thankfully he's so likeable and gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, because I really didn't like any of the other supporting characters, especially Trahearne. But along with Sughrue, it was Crumley's vivid writing that kept me turning pages, inherently hard-boiled and lyrical at the same time. "Nobody lives forever, nobody stays young long enough. My past seemed like so much excess baggage, my future a series of long goodbyes, my present an empty flask, the last good drink already bitter on my tongue."
—Richard Vialet
P BRYANT'S 18 RULES FOR HARD-BOILED PRIVATE EYE NOVELISTS1) The hero of your hard-boiled private-eye genre thriller shall be irresistible to women, mostly. Say about 80%, no need to stretch credulity. He will shag at least four women he encounters during the story and will also gently, sensitively refuse to shag a fifth one, not because he's tired out but because it wouldn't be the right thing. He has morals.2) All the women are sexually bold. They all sleep naked.3) He will take a good few beatings - broken fingers, ribs. Obviously nothing that's going to put him in traction for 6 weeks but enough that we know he's very tough and he suffers. Shagging and suffering - very important in the life of the private eye.4) He will have a perpetual handy store of tough one-liners but will have an unexpected intellectual streak such as a love of chess or TS Eliot or Ludwig Wittgenstein.5) He will plough on through the corkscrew plot twists and not know what the hell he's doing but his instincts will guide him to a just if messy conclusion.6) He will rescue someone from something and it will go horribly wrong. This will show that he's human.7) He will have a quirk, like a comical pet, such as a bulldog who drinks beer, or being a laplander. Anything. But get that quirk.8) He will have no friends and especially no girlfriend - if he had a girlfriend then he'd be cheating when he shags the five women he encounters during the story, and we do not want our readers thinking our hero has no morals. He is a very moral guy.9) He will drink so much during the course of all this that an actual human being would have been hospitalised by page 35.10) He seems as the story starts to have no cases on the go, nothing is doing at all. We have to wonder how he makes ends meet. But maybe, given his sexual prowess, he moonlights as Dick Bold in the Naughty Nurses series from Cinema Triple X - come to think, there IS a resemblance. 11) There will be a person in the story who completely reinvents herself, to the point that when we meet them again on page 125 in their reinvented state we have no idea who they were. (So Diana Sonnderling was really Betty Ann Grot? And Pope John Paul II was really.... Dan Brown?? Or - no - the other way round!!) The identity revelation is a Big Plot Shock and either resolves everything or further complicates it, whatever.12) There will be an older, really sexy woman. Much will be made of the fact that she's Older. But Sexy as Well. This will be piled on with a trowel.13) The bad guys will spend money like water. They'll never run out. If they write off several cars in pursuit of the hero, several more will appear, as if by magic.14) The first lot of bad guys are not the real bad guys, even if they seem really bad.15) The police, the judges, the lawyers, the coroners, they're all on the payroll. 16) Drugs and porn generate vast amounts of money so somewhere at the bubbling plot spring of the story there will be drugs or porn.17) Someone has a guilty secret which will turn out to be very significant to all the plot corkscrews. Usually this is an illegitimate daughter but it could be that the person used to be Dan Brown. 18) Everything must be very believable otherwise by page 125 your readers will already be thinking now, is this a one star book or a two star book? Hmm - one, two? Well, I didn't hate it THAT much. Okay, it's a nice day, I feel pretty good, so two.
—Paul Bryant
