East Texas Fall Foliage – from My East Texas http://myetx.com
Hunting is not a sport. If the animals could shoot back, then it would be a sport. It is justifiable only for food, and for no other reason. After that, it’s just killing for the sake of putting a lid on what still simmers deep in our primitive hearts.
I think I've developed an addiction to Joe R. Lansdale. Since discovering A Savage Season - the first volume of the acclaimed Hap & Leonard saga - I haven't been able to put him down. And for many good reasons. The stories (with Mucho Mojo and The Two-Bear Mambo at the top of my list) revolve around the characters of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, two good men and best friends who live in the fictional town of Laborde, East Texas.
The idea of an overlook in East Texas, especially if you’ve ever been to Colorado, someplace with mountains, is pretty funny. What it means here is a high hill, and not all that high.
Both accomplished fighters, they make quite the pair: Hap is a broke white idealist in his forties, scraping by on odd jobs in a half-hearted attempt to pull himself together during a seemingly endless midlife crisis. He chose prison over fighting in Vietnam and still tries his best to stay away from guns (with poor results). As his girlfriend Brett puts it, he does “what has to be done and for the greater good” - but never stops feeling guilty about it.
Though I agreed that guns didn’t kill people, people killed people, guns sure made it a lot easier and far more successful than hunting down victims with a pointed stick.
If Hap dislikes guns, Leonard has no problem using them. He is a gay (and proud to be: “I’m so queer queers call me queer”) black Vietnam vet. Blunt, stubborn, and perpetually pissed-off, he won’t tolerate any racist or homophobic attitudes. Naturally suspicious and distrustful of all types of authority (including the clergy), he's certainly not the guy you want to mess with:
Someone survives a hurricane, it was God’s mercy. Someone drowns, it was God’s will. I don’t like him. He’s a bully.
A huge fan of vanilla cookies (“actually his favorite is vanilla anything”) he’s always there for his best friend, ready to bail him out, often with a fair share of sarcasm and cynicism.
As a series of unpleasant crimes occur in their small world (where all sorts of buried secrets tend to surface), they find themselves tackling violence, depravity and murder as self-appointed amateur sleuths. Equipped with an extra dose of moral fiber and a sense of justice, they’ll always do the right thing, no matter the consequences - and regularly get into trouble.
What Leonard and I had were some windbreakers. Mine was blue. Leonard’s was beige. We made a point of making sure we weren’t wearing the same colors. It’s hard to be convincing as tough guys when you’re wearing matching outfits.
East Texas - “Everything opposite of what the TV and movie viewer thinks Texas is about” - is portrayed as a brutal, unjust world, plagued by corruption, ignorance and racism. Grovetown - the fictional setting of the The Two-Bear Mambo - is an enclave of KKK types (“or offshoot of it, calls itself the Supreme Knights of the Caucasian Order, or some ridiculous handle like that”) where Afro-Americans are still humiliated, injured, and tortured to death. East Texas is also a picture of economic inequality, gross poverty, urban alienation and decay:
It was a strange oasis of green in the midst of a disintegrating neighborhood that was a slice of human pie neither completely rural nor urban, a world unto itself.
Black children with blacker eyes wearing dirty clothes sat in yards of sun-bleached sand and struggling grass burrs and looked at us without enthusiasm as we drove past.
The stories - told from Hap’s point of view - vary widely. They can be hilarious, poignant, exciting, and scary, all at the same time.
And then we came to a bridge that looked as if the headless horseman ought to be on the other side of it.
They’re not for everyone. Definitely not for the hypersensitive, due the amount of sex and violence - sometimes verging on brutality - shown on stage (along with the public display of Hap & Leonard’s martial arts skills).
He managed a laugh, like a leukemia patient trying to be cheery.
Add to that a lot (a lot) of swearing in all forms and styles, and the fact that the subject matter is often vicious, morbid, dark and twisted (though Lansdale’s ability to show that human depravity has virtually no limits can be illuminating).
But if you can get past the outward coarseness (which may take a little effort...) you’ll find yourself caught up in cutting-edge compelling fiction, animated by a cast of memorable characters: guys who can be rough and ill-tempered, but also brave, heroic, smart, and funny. And if you like one of these stories, you’re likely to like them all.
The secretary was thin, young, silver-blond, and so goddamn cheery I wanted to strangle her.
The other guy, the one the size of a moose, had an expression about as illuminating as a potted plant, but lacking the warmth.
She was a blond woman with a nice build and the attitude of someone who had never met a sense of humor.
And Lansdale's unfailing 'sense of humor' - brilliantly combined with horror, drama or pity - is a common thread throughout the books:
I attempted to look pleasant but a little dense, like a dog listening to a talk on nuclear physics.
The preacher finished up a prayer slightly longer than the complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and signaled to lower the coffin.
There was a rim around the drain in the tub that was either rust or dried blood from when the last depressed occupant had slashed their wrists. Home Sweet Home.
His “minor” characters - so essential to the enjoyment of the stories - are artfully introduced. Sketched with a few powerful strokes, their physical descriptions (kept to a minimum) paint vivid pictures in which every little detail is actually the most revealing:
He was the only man in the place wearing a suit. It was a nice, dark gray suit, expensive in a JCPenney’s best sort of way. He had gray hair, perfectly combed, not mussed by his hat. It was held in place with enough hair spray to make an evangelist proud. He wore a bright red tie. It was tacked with a gold horseshoe to a crisp white shirt. He had on gray lizard-skin cowboy boots. He had a muscular build, with a slight paunch. His skin was very pale. He looked very proud of himself.
A woman in her sixties, carrying about two hundred pounds, and not carrying it well, wearing a multicolored, loose-fitting dress that had all the style of a horse blanket, sort of sprang up in front of me. She had blue hair and loose dentures and too much powder and rouge on her face. She looked as if she ought to be somewhere else, baking cookies.
On his right was an attractive, well-dressed blond woman who looked like she had trained to be the Queen of England, and might have been, had the job not been taken. Pushing his way between them, as if not really invited, was a blond kid of eleven or twelve with enough meat on him to loan to two others.
In his slang-filled, fluid narrative style Lansdale moves easily through genres: comedy, suspense, mystery, horror - and switches brilliantly between the serious and the humourous. And there's more - fast-paced action is interspersed with enchanting, poetic (even romantic) descriptions of the East Texas landscape, leading up to passages of rare beauty:
There was the dark East Texas woods, topped by the sky, which was a peculiar blue this day, made all the more beautiful by the golden brightness of the sun; the clouds flowed across it like lilies cast upon a great and tranquil ocean. Off to the right was a creek. You could hear the water gurgling, like a happy woman humming.
Above all, Lansdale is a real page-turner, one that can captivate and charm you - and best tried when you don't have any plans for the day, as you’ll want to keep reading until the very end. However, more than the endings – which, after a load of horror, can be on a slightly somber note – I find his openings to be the most powerful.
We all know that first impressions are crucial to any reader’s (and agent’s or editor’s) decision, and that no writer can afford a weak beginning. But with Lansdale it’s not just about piquing interest. It’s about grabbing the reader's attention - and grabbing it so tightly that in no time you're caught in the middle of the story, overwhelmed and literally swallowed up by it.
And, speaking of first lines, that’s where the best storytellers come in - whether it's a stream of pure existential nonsense, in the words of Hap Collins:
I hadn't been shot at in a while, and no one had hit me in the head for a whole month or two. It was kind of a record, and I was starting to feel special.
Or a start in medias res, that plunges you into action from the very first sentence:
When I got over to Leonard’s Christmas Eve night, he had the Kentucky Headhunters turned way up over at his place, and they were singing The Ballad of Davy Crockett, and Leonard, in a kind of Christmas celebration, was once again setting fire to the house next door.
Or simply the perfect line, so unexpected and beautiful, a real treat for true lovers of the English language:
It was July and hot and I was putting out sticks and not thinking one whit about murder.
Enjoy! 😊
