Is anyone else reading the Hoke Moseley books for Willeford
month? I just finished SIDESWIPE, the third, some of which is
lifted from NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY (1962), which I read last
year. Like MIAMI BLUES it goes back and forth between Hoke
and a charming criminal psychopath, here Troy Louden. For
those reasons it all seemed familiar, and I started off not
liking it as much as the two previous Hoke books, but by the
time I was done I liked it most of all.
Hoke has a breakdown and retreats to what he imagines as the
calm, peaceful, solitary life of an apartment manager on an
island near Miami. He can't get away from it all, though. His
Aileen daughter follows him because she and her sister love
him and are worried about him, the tenants bother him,
there's crime, and he just can't get things uncomplicated.
Louden, in the parallel narrative, has pieced together a
family of his own, with Pops, a dull-witted retiree off a
Ford assembly line, Dale, a stripper and prostitute with a
perfect body and a face that was beaten to a pulp, and James
Freitas-Smith, an artist who paints in a "nonobjective"
style, which seems to mean just plain ugly. The two
story-lines end up meeting at the end, but in sideways sort
of way, not any obvious slam-bang. Hoke, who was happy as a
clam at the end of MIAMI BLUES that he hadn't been made
lieutenant, is now back on the job, having learned
"there was no way a man could simplify his life," and
planning on getting a promotion. His daughters are well,
Ellita's had a son and can stay home and raise him, and if
the retreat to the island hadn't worked out, it had been a
worthwhile experiment.
There's quite a bit about food in this book, and I noticed
it's all tied to families. Dale cooks up enormous, delicious
meals for Louden and the other two men; when Hoke is on his
own he plans to make chili once a week and eat it for five
days running. Pops Sinkiewicz, who had a simple life until
his wife left him and he got involved with a madman, is
reduced to making tomato soup from a can, and not even the
way his wife made it, with a bit of whipping cream. Aileen is
anorexic and throws up after every meal she has with Hoke.
(Art and books are also mentioned much more than in the
earlier books.)
Much could be written about the book, and volumes could be
written about Willeford's life and books. Why isn't it being
done? The man's one of the major American writers of the last
century, and while he seems to be getting more attention each
year, it's not enough. Don Herron's book on him isn't enough.
If he hadn't written about cops, criminals, psychopaths,
cockfighting and modern art, he might get more attention, but
then he wouldn't be Willeford. Surely there are few other
writers of his calibre who have led such interesting lives,
either, and documented them in books like A GUIDE FOR THE
UNDEHEMORRHOIDED. If you haven't read any Willeford, by all
means, please start. You won't regret it.
Here's Hoke's impression of Pops Sinkiewicz, an extremely
boring, law-abiding man who worked for decades painting lines
on cars in Detroit, being sickened every day by the paint
fumes: "He looked at the old man's lined, pigeon-gray face,
and shook his head. Hoke knew an old lag when he saw one, and
he could tell, just by looking at this old con, that the man
had spent most of his life in prison. When they finally got
his record, it would probably be three feet long."
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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