I just finished rereading DIA DE LOS MUERTOS and what I said
when I first read it still stands: febrile insanity. The
scene of Calhoun, suffering from hemorrhagic dengue fever,
eyes bleeding, sweating blood, system racing because a
veterinarian gave him a shot of horse amphetamines, pushing a
500 pound man on a refrigerator dolly up a hill, where he
meets a gang, gets stabbed, and shoots one of the gang up
through the jaw, is a classic. That's not the half of it,
though: everything that could go wrong, does; everyone is on
the take; it's the Day of the Dead and Tijuana is starting to
riot, fascists are starting to kill people they hate, a bank
is robbed, Calhoun shoots people in the street, Chinese women
vomit heroin at the border, everything is out of
control.
Kent, you mentioned wanting to do a novel that was collapsed
into one day
(almost), and how a novelist has more power over time than a
film-maker. Also, you said, "perhaps the picture of Tijuana
that seems to be the blue print for all cities now is 'new'.
(What one economist called private opulence and public
squalor.)" Did you start with the idea of Tijuana in one day
(the Day of the Dead) and then take it from there? Did the
people-smuggling follow from that, or was that something you
wanted to write about first?
Every now and then we debate definitions of "hardboiled" and
"noir." The Jack Bludis Heresy says that hardboiled is tough,
and noir is screwed, and that's all there is to it. There's
some hope here and there in DIA, such as the boy who wants a
father and almost has the chance for a family, but it doesn't
get anywhere. The family wouldn't have worked anyway.
Calhoun's chasing money down the drain and getting more into
trouble every hour. Everyone is screwed.
But wait, some of the people who make it into the US aren't
screwed. The young Guatemalan couple in particular--they
might have been killed if Calhoun hadn't taken them over, but
whatever happens to them in the US, they have guts, and they
have each other.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : www.miskatonic.org : www.frbr.org
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