Matthew Wayne Selznick

Take that, literati… then go out and read “Always Coming Home,” and shut the fuck up about it, already.

Died Friday, June 29th, 2007.

While Fred Saberhagen was best known for his Berserker series of short stories and novels, for me, he was the guy who wrote the Earth End series (Empire of the East, The Books of the Swords, and The Books of Lost Swords.) I read Empire of the East in an omnibus edition and the Books of the Swords as they were released in the eighties, and loved them. I never did read the Books of Lost Swords… it’s time to track ‘em all down and give them a going through.

The one character that stands out for me from the Books of the Swords is Draffut, the massive, caninoid, diminished god. He predated Argent in Matt Wagner’s Grendel series by a few years, but I always wondered if Saberhagen’s creature influenced Wagner’s.

Farewell, Fred. Thank you.

A while back, Henry and I did a book swap. He wrote up “Brave Men Run” almost a month ago. I am horribly late returning the favor.

Rather than tell you what “North of Sunset” is about, check out the Lulu page (where you can also — and should — buy the book!) for reviews and a synopsis. You’ll find a lot of high praise and favorable comparisons to Chandler and Flaubert there… all deserved.

I finished the book about three weeks ago. Since then, I’ve had trouble deciding just what I wanted to say about it. The fact that I’ve been uncertain of my own opinion of the work is, I think, a testament to the book’s effectiveness. I think I’m ready to give it a go.

“North of Sunset” builds pace at an exponential rate. It starts slow, piling on the point-of-view characters until I was very, very ready for the first third of the book to be under my left thumb. Once things started to happen, though, I devoured pages with eager hunger… but I was left with a disappointment I didn’t initially understand.

Took a little digesting to figure it out.

“North of Sunset” is a satire, a statement, a vision of celebrity and the freedom prison it creates, as well as Western culture’s role as both warden and conjugal visitor. The book is full of characters, but it isn’t really about any of them.

That’s not a criticism. It’s a reflection of my own preferences in what I like to read, and what I like to write. I look for sympathetic characters, good or bad. The people populating Baum’s book are, with the exception of one minor character, nearly bleached of any sympathetic qualities. That lack was the reason for my feeling of disappointment. However…

…that’s the point. In the “Hollywood Noir” world Baum asks us to embrace in order to stage his play, people require the superficial approval of the anonymous masses more than they need to act morally. As a reader, I found myself waiting for justice. It never came. Message received.

Ultimately, regardless of this reader’s literary prejudices, “North of Sunset” succeeds. It’s an engaging read, in part because it feeds on our desire to experience the amplified passions of its characters. The fact that this is the same impulse that fuels the cult of celebrity is delicious irony, a meta-message with the reader as collaborator.

Neat trick, Henry. Nicely done.

All this fuss over “The DaVinci Code,” “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” Mary Magdalene, the Knights Templar, blah blah blah!

Seriously. Arguing over whether Jesus died (childless) on the cross and was resurrected in three days is like asking if Heracles is really the son of Zeus, or if Osiris was really resurrected by Isis after Set chopped him up.

I’m just saying.