Publishing from the grave, Michael Crichton style

If you're an author, be careful what you leave lying around. In the event of your death, anything might make it to print. For Vladimir Nabokov, it was a pile of index cards, now published as "The Original of Laura" -- it's so faithful to the original that part of the book are reproductions of the index cards themselves, which can be punched loose and stacked.

There is no such artifact to accompany the posthumous novel from Michael Crichton, "Pirate Latitudes." The completed manuscript was found by an assistant on a computer after the author died last year from throat cancer. 

A buccaneer saga set in the Caribbean in the 17th century, "Pirate Latitudes" is closer to Crichton's historical romances -- "The Great Train Robbery" (1975) and "Eaters of the Dead" (1976) -- than his better-known work like "Jurassic Park," "The Andromeda Strain" and "Congo." Reviewer Tim Rutten writes:

If you're on an airplane for a flight of several hours and not in a particularly demanding mood, "Pirate Latitudes" would be a reasonably agreeable companion. The setting is the crown colony of Port Royal in Jamaica. Hunter, our dashing privateer, is an American -- coincidentally a Harvard man -- born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. When asked by an attractive woman whether he's a Puritan, he replies, "Only by birth." You get the picture. Meanwhile, a treasure ship has arrived in the heavily fortified Spanish port of Matanceros, and Hunter is asked to capture it.

The plot unfolds, with a sassy pirate wench who bares her breasts to distract her enemies during swordfights and more. But swashbuckling isn't the point.

"Crichton had a remarkable career on its own terms and, somehow, respect ought to be paid," Rutten writes. "The point here is really a question: Are a writer's heirs really entitled to strip-mine his papers for every conceivable nugget of value?"

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Michael Crichton on the set of the 1978 film "Coma." Credit: MGM

Nick Cave on his monstrous, funny Bunny Munro

With the publication of "The Death of Bunny Munro," Nick Cave has graduated from one-off novelist to staring into the pitiless void of a multi-novel career. Poor guy -- but that’s what you get for not sitting content with your lot as a rock star.

In his first novel, "And the Ass Saw the Angel," (1989) Cave drew upon his inimitable mix of the profane and the biblical that has informed his music with many formidable outfits -- his mainstay act, the Bad Seeds, his early venture, the Birthday Party and, most recently, Grinderman, which will tour next spring in support of a new album.

For his second novel, Cave has fine-tuned his obsessions and delivered an iron-black comedy, sharply observant and secretly brimming with morally alarmed sentiment. It's the tale of Bunny Munro, facing down death after the suicide of his depressed wife. Munro never lived with conscience or care but his final spiral has a darker twist: It threatens to suck in his young, adoring son, Bunny Junior. Munro’s choice of poisons are sex, sex, sex – and anything snortable or swallowable.

Margaret Wappler caught up with Cave by telephone while he was in New York; she called upon the author to explain.

Jacket Copy: How long did it take you to write "The Death of Bunny Munro"?
Nick Cave: First draft took six weeks by hand in a notebook. On a six-week tour, actually, around Europe and America with the Bad Seeds. I wrote it backstage, in hotel rooms and so on.

JC: Wow, you must have an incredible capacity for focusing.
NC: Well, it was a story that I was happy to enter and get inside. To be on tour can be mind-numbingly boring. The actual traveling and the airports and all that stuff. Everything is geared up for those two hours on stage in the evening. It was actually lovely to enter a different world.

JC: How would you characterize the relationship between your music and your writing? Do ideas from one feed into the other?
NC: It’s all done by the same person, but the process is different for sure. The actual process of writing a song is different than writing a novel. Writing a song, of all the things I do, is the hardest and most difficult thing for me to do. But it’s something that I have a real pride about, in that I’ve written a large body of songs. Good ones and bad ones but a lot of them. And I’m pleased with that aspect of things.

JC: What was the first germ of the idea for the book?
NC:John Hillcoat, who directed “The Proposition” that I wrote the script for, asked me to write a second script, which I was really happy to do because it was a real pleasure to do the first one. And we had a successful kind of relationship. So I asked him what he wanted it to be about and he said, I want a film about a traveling salesman.' So both of us went and interviewed some traveling salesmen or people working in that profession. We looked at various kinds of documentaries about these guys and discovered that there was an underworld of womanizing and hard drinking and that kind of thing. I guess that was the initial idea. I think John found these people attractive to make a movie about. And I just took that particular character and blew air into him.

JC: It’s interesting that that’s how Bunny started because the fact that he’s a traveling salesman is a minor thread of the book.
NC: It’s not the thing I’m interested in writing about. That’s what the collaborative effort brought out between me and John. John had certain things that he wanted to film and I had my own interests.

JC: How would you describe the character of Bunny Munro?
NC: I’m not sure I can do that in a few words, but the success of the character for me is that the reader can see something of themselves in him. The character is ultimately monstrous, but they can identify something of themselves in him. Or, in regards to the female reader, they can see evidence of something they’ve suspected all along about the male psyche. I’m getting a strange response from women about the book. It’s been called by some women a great feminist novel. By other ones, pure misogyny. So, who knows.

JC: Was it taxing to write from Bunny’s point of view?
NC: A lot of that Bunny Munro stuff is comic but it was actually quite difficult to write. Not difficult to think of what to write, but to adopt a certain way of thinking. You have to inhabit the character to a degree while you write something. You have to start visualizing the world from his point of view, and he’s got a certain kind of eye for detail. He’s very much obsessed with the physicality of things. It’s a relentless point of view. In that respect, it was difficult. You mention the comedy. I’m sure that helped lighten up Bunny. 

More... on Bunny Munro, writing and Kylie Minogue's hot pants... after the jump.

When can we read John Sayles' new book?

 

The manuscript clocks in at 1,000 pages and bears the sadly ironic title "Some Time in the Sun." It would be the fourth novel from John Sayles -- would be, that is, if it had a publisher. Josh Getlin reports:

"I've been done with it for six or seven months, and it's out to five or six publishers," he said quietly [to a New York audience who attended a recent reading]. "But we haven't had any bites yet."

John Sayles, Oscar-nominated creator of "Return of the Secaucus 7," "Lone Star," "Matewan" and other movies, is having trouble getting a book deal.

Those who are more familiar with Sayles' film work might be surprised to learn that he is also a National Book Award nominee, for his 1977 novel, "Union Dues." When that book was reissued in 2006, Sayles told NPR, "There is that tension always that I want to create between what's this beautiful thing in the background and what's being said in the foreground, and is there any match to it."

In "Some Time in the Sun," Sayles explores the 1898 war between the U.S. and Spain over the Philippines. In that conflict, Getlin writes, Sayles saw "an eerie precursor of U.S. military exploits in Vietnam." His article continues:

"Some Time in the Sun" -- like his films -- blends vivid human portraits with historical events and brilliantly captures individual voices. In addition to his raucous newsboys, it spotlights African American and white soldiers fighting in the Philippines, fast-buck artists who help create the motion picture industry, and features cameos by Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, Damon Runyon and other historical figures.

Until -- or unless -- the book finds a publisher, that's all we're likely to read of it.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

'Drink Play F#@k': Doesn't the title really say it all?

In his 195-page tome, humorist Andrew Gottlieb pumps out a funny take on what men are looking for in life. It’s Bob Sullivan’s story: a fully jilted, newly divorced New York liberal who sets foot into the world, after years of lockdown domesticity. His journey takes him (and us) to Ireland to get smashed, to Vegas to throw dice and to Thailand to … well, enjoy the pleasures of the opposite sex.

What Bob finds, however, is not what you might expect at the beginning of what seems like an obvious parody of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love."

Here’s Gottlieb, discussing his book with Jacket Copy:

JC: First of all, your book is clearly a play on "Eat Pray Love." It is nearly the husband of that book taking his own journey. Did you love or hate "Eat Pray Love"? Does your book mock or embrace it?

Gottlieb: I had this idea I was aware of the widespread success of "Eat Pray Love." And knowing of the success of that, I thought it would be funny to do it from a guy’s perspective. I admire "Eat Pray Love’s" intentions, but it was a hard read for me. I didn’t want to mock it; I just thought it would be funny because there’s another perspective to tell a completely different version of the same story.

JC: Why did you write this book?

Gottlieb: Beyond being funny, I thought there was something more significant and profound that could be told from a guy’s perspective.

JC: It’s a fictional tale of Bob Sullivan, a newly divorced guy. Tell us a bit about your main character.

Gottlieb: He’s like a lot of guys I know. Guys talk about grandiose stuff — if I could do this or that.…Bob was hemmed in for so long that he lost his wanderlust. But Bob learns he doesn’t need total crazy reckless freedom. He still wants someone to share his life with. Someone to have fun with. Once you stop worrying about what’s going to make you happy or have fun, you find out what really makes you happy and have fun.

JC: What are we supposed to learn from Bob’s failings and triumphs? Anything?

Gottlieb: I would never presume to teach anybody anything. But what’s interesting is that while it is so different from the original, and as different as men and women are, we all want the same things. You want to share your life with someone who makes you feel good.

(More after the jump)

Denis Johnson's 'Nobody Move': Third time's the charm

The third part of Denis Johnson's serial novel "Nobody Move" is out in the September Playboy, and starting next Tuesday, we'll be back on the case, with Richard Rayner, Carolyn Kellogg, Tod Goldberg, Susan Straight and I weighing in on this newest installment, as well as the project as a whole.

What's the latest with Anita and Jimmy? Will Gambol ever get his revenge?

Stay tuned. We'll let you know. ...

— David L. Ulin

Photo by Chor Ip via Flickr

Nobody Move: stay tuned for next month

Richard's comments about the next installment of "Nobody Move" seem like a perfect place to wrap up phase one of our conversation, and look ahead to phase two.

So nobody move -- we'll be back next month to discuss the second part of Denis Johnson's serial novel, and to see where the story goes from here.

David L. Ulin

The medium and the message?

I first read Denis Johnson's "Angels" when I was in graduate school in Amherst, Mass., the novel having been loaned to me by someone housesitting for an older professor. I was only 23 and blown away. I knew all those people in "Angels," though I wished I hadn't grown up with them, and I was stunned that someone had written a novel so deeply immersed inside their heads.

So reading this first installment of "Nobody Move" is strange because, once again, we're completely immersed, and it's a good thing. Since I've been reading a lot of noir lately — my favorite being that of Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley and now Raymond Chandler, because of Judith Freeman's fine nonfiction book about him — this was perfect.

And it's so damn funny. The dialogue is funny, perfect just like Chandler's. The details are hilarious — the log motel and the restaurants and the river.

But I agree with several things Carolyn and David have pointed out. First, why can't we see the scene where Luntz shoots Gambol? Why would Gambol have been on that kind of ride and let him put the gun in the glove compartment in the first place? (Again, I wish I didn't know people like this, or rides like this.) If Gambol's supposed to be too tired to do it right, I'd like to know.

Second, the whole serialization thing is strange. I love the way the headline trumpets On Deadline!  Publishing History Begins Now.

But not really, given Dickens and Hardy and so many others, including the recent novels serialized in the New York Times Magazine.

Anyway, a month will pass, and I'll read again passionately, because I love Johnson and his style and his inimitable humor, which is beyond black and into some other netherworldly shade. But I probably will have to keep this story around.

Which brings me to Richard's comment about his son wanting the magazine. Yeah, only I live in a house with three feminist teenage girls, all of whom are taller than me. All very beautiful. All of whom gave me the most dubious, deadly looks when I mentioned that inside the FedEx envelope was Playboy. "I tell my grad students some of the best fiction in history has been published in Playboy," I said. "We just read a T.C. Boyle story in class that was originally in here."

They gave me the classic teenage answer. "Why?" Deadpan.

When I showed the cover to them (one is a college girl who reads Details, Esquire and about 10 other magazines and whose favorite magazine in the world is GQ), they all said quizzically, "People still read that?"   

I cut the story out and threw the rest of the pages away, mostly because the  cartoons were so bad. But I can't wait to see what happens with Anita. She's way better than a cartoon.

Susan Straight

A man in a barbershop vest walks into a bar

I wasn't sure what to expect of a serial hard-boiled noir in Playboy from Denis Johnson, but it wasn't a guy in a checkered vest singing barbershop. Lutz starts out as an anti-noir character, the kind of nebbish Bogart played at so well in the bookstore in "The Big Sleep." But of course, Bogart was still Philip Marlowe behind the facade, and similarly, Luntz isn't a putz underneath, at least not a wimpy one. We don't see the scene where he shoots the much-bigger Gambol — an interesting omission, evoked only by the wonderful passage Richard cites — but we wind up convinced that he's got the guts to take action.

I'm not sure what purpose the barbershop bit serves, other than to give readers an early misimpression of Luntz, and to stick him in that goofy getup for the violent and seductive scenes that follow. At this point, I find it a little hard to believe that gambler Luntz would join a barbershop group, and I hope there's some narrative payoff. I don't want it just to provide a quirky, Tarantino-like juxtaposition; I want it to make some kind of twisted sense.

Maybe that kind of tension — how can this fit? — is what keeps a reader hooked between serial installments. Sure, we're curious about Gambol's fate, and what will happen between Luntz and Anita, but it's the question of whether the author will pull everything together that keeps us intrigued. Sometimes I wonder whether Dickens threw in a random character every now and then just to keep things interesting, challenging himself to make sense of everything in his allotted space (a mere 18 episodes — 900 pages).

David points out that the dialogue doesn't always work, but I disagree. I love Johnson's characters' crosstalk — often they seem to be in two entirely separate conversations. And it's not like the characters don't notice. "This is starting to sound like one of those messed-up conversations," Anita says to Luntz. As both David and Richard have pointed out, in moments like this, it seems as if Johnson is having some fun.

Carolyn Kellogg

Photo by Tammy Green via Flickr

Dickens, Collins ... Denis Johnson?

There’s something odd about the idea, isn’t there? That’s to say, the form of the serial novel doesn’t have the currency it did when Charles Dickens (above, left) and Wilkie Collins (above, right) were banging out monthly installments against a deadline for those magazines that Dickens ran and eventually owned. Such an undertaking has a gimmicky feel, and, in the case of the recent John Banville/Benjamin Black story in the New York Times Magazine, we were faced with a definitely wonky widget.

That said, the combination of Denis Johnson and Playboy feels much more promising. Was he winking in the direction of his own book, "Stars at Noon," when, early on in this first extract, a character says in a bit of dialogue: "Almost noon?" As usual, Johnson takes characters who start at the end of their tethers, a character situation that lends itself naturally toward noir and the pursuit thriller. Which is obviously, I hope, what we’re getting here — Denis Johnson channeling Elmore Leonard, with bits of "The Sopranos" thrown in, and making the gumbo his own.

For me, the thing got going with the scene break from the car so we get the look back at what just happened: "Standing at the pay phone, Jimmy Luntz punched a nine and a one and stopped. He couldn’t hear the dial tone. His ears still rang. That old Colt revolver made a bang that slapped you silly." It’s a lovely piece of writing, delivering a narrative surprise with observational acuity and making us smile besides.

Then there’s the scene where Luntz is trying to tie the tourniquet on the leg of the guy he’s just shot. "With surprising energy, Gambol suddenly tossed away his white hat. The wind caught it, and it sailed a dozen yards into the trees. Then he seemed to lose consciousness." He’s such a good writer. The sex scene at the end was great, and I look forward to seeing what Anita Desilvera gets up to with those Magnums she has stashed in the trunk of her car. Somehow the two main characters, Luntz and Anita, made me think of the kids in "Angels," Johnson’s first novel, now grown up in some spectacularly damaged way. At this point I’m definitely along for the ride — but then the set-up is probably the easiest bit of what Johnson is attempting here.

My 13-year old blinked when he saw me reading Playboy. "Hey, can I borrow that after you?" he said. He said he’d check out Denis Johnson too.

Richard Rayner

Serial killer: Denis Johnson’s 'Nobody Move'

Editor's note: On Friday, Playboy published the first section of Denis Johnson’s “Nobody Move,” a serialized work of fiction that will come out in four parts. Jacket Copy will review “Nobody Move,” installment by installment; below, our take on Part 1.

My wife is appalled at Denis Johnson. “Why Playboy?” she wants to know. She’s referring, of course, to the venue for Johnson’s latest project, “Nobody Move,” a 40,000-word “novel” that the magazine is publishing as a serial in four installments; the first, in the July issue, has just come out.

As for me, I’m more interested in the way “Nobody Move” might help further eclipse the line between mass culture and literature, between the throwaway nature of periodicals and the lasting weight of art. Although serials are not as uncommon as they once were — see Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City,” Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Stephen King’s “The Green Mile” and Michael Chabon’s “Gentlemen of the Road” — they require novelists who can think like journalists, who can write on deadline, who aren’t afraid to make a mess.

This is cool, exhilarating even, especially in a world in which literary culture is often far too insular, like a form of trivial pursuit. Johnson is one of those rare writers who wants to walk both sides of the line here, to go after a mass readership with work that challenges at every turn. That’s one of the things that attracts me to “Nobody Move,” the idea of Johnson’s bleakly existential vision woven in amid the naked women and advice columns on how to live the good life, as if he were the voice of the collective unconscious — or, more accurately, of the collective id.

Not only that, but “Nobody Move” comes billed as a noir, that darkest of American genres, the literary equivalent of the blues.