Over the past week I read a book that I had shelved long ago due to lack of interest. In the mid 1980s and early 1990s I would join and quit the Quality Paper Back Book club on a regular basis. I would pay the three dollars for three books plus shipping and handling, buy one more book and my commitment would be terminated by a note saying “no more”. One of the books I picked up was called Glitz.
Glitz was an Elmore Leonard book and Elmore was hot at that time. Having recently seen Get Shorty again I decided maybe I should check out the source material that is something Leonard had written. Put most basically I was in need of mental floss. My mental floss is mindless reading filled with action and unambiguously good and bad characters; maybe some sex or sexual innuendo should be thrown in. Reading mental floss is a great deal like watching a Jason Bourne movie it only takes two or three hours more. Pulp novels move quickly.
Starting back into the book I realized why I had put it down. Set in Puerto Rico the first chapter makes it seem like the novel will be a Caribbean pot boiler. At the time I got the book I had no interest in such a tale. Miami Vice and its progeny had over-saturated the airwaves with tales of South Florida and the islands. This time because of my desire to just cleanse my brain of reality based thoughts I read on. To my surprise the book rapidly shifted to the stretch of the Jersey coast I know best, that is from Somers Point to Atlantic City. As the setting relocate I felt like I was taking a piece of chocolate out a tin on someone’s desk expecting a Milky Way knock off and finding out I was munching on a dark Ghirardelli chocolate with walnuts inside.
Reading about places like the Black Horse Pike and Shore Memorial Hospital made me chuckle. It was an unexpected trip back to the homeland. I could remember Story Book Gardens was on the Black Horse somewhere and Shore Memorial was where you went when you were banged up down at the beach. In the end I think I spent three evenings with the story, two sitting in my backyard hammock this warm October. It was just what I needed.
The fact that the tale was set in the 1980s reminded me of why I write this blog. A Space True and North exists to capture the stories of the places I have been and the things I have seen. Having read Glitz I am reminded more stories need to be told. I am really going to try and keep this blog current at least for the next few months.
2 comments:
About damn time, too. Your blogging's been missed. Of course, I'm sure you may have to set it aside to maintain your budding political career.
Too late, probably, for me to vote absentee for you, huh?
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