The North Coast times-eagle., May 01, 2001, Page 13, Image 13

PAGE 11
NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , MAY/JUNE2001
SHE SAID
It is not
the time to talk
of politics
and Picasso,
your next novel
or the weather
in old Mexico,
but of what
are we going
to eat today
and how we're going
to pay the rent
next Monday.
f
'MICHAEL MARSH AT LEISURE' BY D. BREWER (GILMORE GAZETTE, 1981)
PAPERBACK
DOSTOEVSKY
When Jim Thompson died in 1977, not one of his 29
novels was in print in this country. He began wnting vtfien he
was 14 but it was not until 1941 at the age of 35 (and had been
married for 10 years with 3 children to support) that he made a
decision that should have changed his life.
As the story goes, Thompson went to New York and
talked a publisher into giving him a subsidy and a typewriter with
the promise of a forthcoming book. Two months later, Now & On
Earth, his first novel, was delivered. Two more books followed
All three were published in hardcover None of them sold. They
were the last Thompson hardcovers published during his life.
What followed was Cropper's Cabin in 1952, the first
in a long line of onginal paperbacks. At this time original paper­
backs, with the exception of a few, were crime stories: crime
stories with the standard slash & trash cover art that promised
sex and violence and delivered no sex and usually 2nd-rate
violence. Paperbacks were the low-rent district of the book
business, the side street where the property was merely
maintained and no improvements were expected. Cover prices
were 25 to 35 cents, depending on the number of pages. The
only advertising was by word of mouth. Critics and reviewers
ignored them.
The format for crime stories quickly became a
standardized format. The protagonist was a generally a hero
type of unusual stature, who would somehow get mixed up in
a crime, preferably a murder. Over a period of pages, our hero
would solve the crime apd propably become romantically
involved, if not sexually, with the woman in the case. In the end,
no matter how much rhuck our hero has had to wade through, he
somehow transcends it all because justice, as blind as she is,
has been served.
Thompson did not follow the format
For openers, there are no heroes in Thompson's stories.
The protagonists are usually losers; the door-to-door salesman,
the 3rd-rate con-man wrtio has never made a decent score, or
the hotel night clerk who is about to lose his job
There are always hotels in Thompson's stories. They are
either transient or resident hotels; they are "the kind of place that
if they don't let you spit on the floor at home, you could go there
and do it." The hotels are focal points, places where the home­
less and the hopeless drift to and then try to escape from, yet
there is no real escape. Thompson's world is like one gigantic
cheap hotel.
Geoffrey O'Brien called Jim Thompson the dimestore
Dostoevsky. This is a fairly apt title In Thompson, there is all
the darkness of Dostoevsky blended in a heavy mix of the
wonderful world of mid-America and served in a dirty cola glass
across a cracked countertop at the comer drugstore This is the
America of the postwar 40s and “50s, a time of growth when
Ronald Reagan worked for GE and touted the "progress was/is
our most important product" on black&vtfiite TV every Sunday
evening. Superficially it was a bright world of sunshine and
happy days; high gloss and veneer were popular Thompson
knew how thin the veneer was, how quickly the gloss would dull
and that the brighter the sunshine, the harsher the shadows. It
somehow seems fitting that his books would be mass marketed
at a quarter apiece with pornographic covers and sold in truck
-GILMORE GAZETTE. Issue 22 (1987)
UNIONTOWN
218 WEST MARINE DRIVE
ASTORIA, OREGON 97103
(503) 325-8708
Dec 2, 1982. Newport. Oregon
after K E Rantala*
*
stops
NOTES ON KRAPP
THE DARK MAN
Who is the dark man.
Where did he come from.
Why do his hands tremble
when slicing bread.
Is gray his better color,
dead meat his favorite dish.
X-MASS
In the 2nd week
of December
of any year
and armed
with the
knowledge
that everything
changes and
that nothing
is ever quite
the way
it used
to be
And why when
looking in the mirror,
he turns off the lights,
and closes his eyes.
(*K E.Rantala is collecting a
retrospective of Marsh's work.)
FOR K.E.R.
There is a woman
in the north
carving totems
in small wood.
Her knife moves
making cuts
years before this time.
Pieces of dry wood
Indian and Finnish
in nature with
an influence
of drunken Irish
scarring their surface.
She moves her scalpel
like a pen putting
words on paper,
pieces of small paper
she sends me
every now and then.
Words that help
keep us alive.
The seasonal
music comes
across as
a traditional
attempt
to relive
the past.
■
t. ’<? 9ftC c
But it
only makes
suicide seem
a viable
alternative.
The Whale's Tale is crowded, almost too crowded
for comfort, and at times like this I wish J. wouldn't carry her
357 magnum in her purse. It's too much of a piece and too
bulky for any kind of inside work Have to give the cops credit
for adopting the 38 snubnose way back when.
There's a raised area in one comer with fumiture/props,
and now Michael McCusker.
McCusker begins messing around, fiddling as if he was
undecided when to begin. Eating a banana and throwing the
peel on the floor, picking it up, fumbling with a desk, and on
He picks up a stenographer's notepad and fumbles with it as
only a journalist without a pen wll do.
McCusker as Krapp (or as McCusker) begins something
of a disgruntled monologue, somevtfiat short: he fumbles again
(fumbling wth a reel-to-reel tape recorder, c 1950s) and he and
the audience begin to listen to a tape.
"Mother at rest at last," says McCusker's recorded voice.
Beckett by way of Camus. 'The black ball.... " the tape continues
and Beckett as unreasoning as he is, takes the set, except
McCusker can’t help ad-libbing ("Should have got a cassette"),
not uncommon for writers masquerading as actors.
Krapp's name (pronounced with a short a) is obviously
intentional and Beckett "live" performed is enough to make one
regret a diseased liver. I don't believe anyone has bothered to
accuse Beckett of being entertaining.
McCusker's role as an actor is more interesting than the
character he plays, although he seems quite comfortable in the
role of Krapp.
Krapp finishes and exits while I'm scribbling notes.
I've missed the end of Krapp's Last Tape. Having read Beckett
I don't feel as if I've been denied much.
r A short break and rearrangement of scenery while 1
write in my notes such things as "Working on nothing important
now," and "Just deal with the time creeping along like cigar
smoke across a tabletop," and I know I'm in trouble. Railroad
Women (by Helen Ratcliffe, featuring Helen Patti, Issa Hessel
and Ann Tracy) is excellent and I wonder why women hate their
daughters, is it so simple that they see themselves as 20 years
younger? Incredibly funny lines (about a man with warts, salt &
pepper shakers, etc.) are spoken with uncommon ease
J. tells me later that she was entertained, had not
expected to be, and that the players were surprisingly good.
She tells me, say something good about those girls — Girls!
J. shows her age at the oddest times.
-NOTE, Dec 10,1982
THE EGYPTIAN MERCENARY ARMY
BY JOHN PAUL BARRETT
There are people we meet in this life whose personal­
ities stand out so profoundly as to render them unforgettable
long after their physical bodies are gone We tell stories about
them, invent myths, and sometimes when we're alone, we recall
parts of conversations we've had with them Michael Marsh was
one of those persons; not necessarily because he was "larger
than life," but perhaps because he was simply larger than his
own life, which ended May 22, 1991.
One afternoon Michael Marsh and a half-dozen other
Reuben's 5 regulars were sitting at a table, drinking, telling tales
and laughing One of the group was Marsh’s close friend the
writer and poet Arthur Honeyman, who has (along with a brilliant
mind) cerebral palsy, which causes his body to spasm and
makes his speech practical only after editing and only after
some exposure and patience on the part of the listener
All at the table knew one another well: except one. a
somevtfiat drunken fellow who had apparently sat uninvited at
the table and was a bit obnoxious, though apparently tolerable
in a tavern context — to a point.
Art Honey man was attempting to get a few words out.
when the undesirable visitor interrupted Art by turning to Marsh
and saying, "What's wrong with him?"
At this point in my mind's eye I can clearly picture
Marsh's thick eyebrows narrowing The man's rudeness and
downnght stupidity in not directing his question to Art himself
was clearly unforgivable
I see Marsh leaning back in his chair, taking a major
slug of red (death) wine, adjusting his large dark beard, and
then beginning the epic tale of how the soldier of fortune Arthur
Honeyman had sustained and miraculously survived an endless
litany of grave wunds and injuries while serving as a combat
operative, mostly wth the Egyptian Mercenary Army
Marsh told about Art's Special Forces training with the
Rangers; how he had been a Long Range Reconnaissance
Patrol LURP, a Green Beret, and a member of the Underwater
Demolition Team (Frogman. SEAL. etc ). He related in great
detail the saga of how Art had been blown apart by a grenade
and nun over by a tank in the desert during a brief stint with the
French Foreign Legion, as well as how Art the Assassin had
also been shot, tortured and tossed from an airplane, all in the
mercenary service of the Egyptians, mostly, and on and on
and on and on Marsh spun the tale, like Rumpelstiltskin spinning
gold — for all but one, the Rube, now stunned and reeling,
overwhelmed
The others were dying as they choked to hold back
laughter while Marsh unreeled the never-ending story, straight
faced, possessed with the intensity of a fanatic, a wamor in the
heat of battle
And further yet the epic narrative juggernaut rumbled
I imagine Marsh's diabolically grinning face red with bloodlust
and his eyes wide
Art was spasticating more than ever from the laughter
The Rube must have thought he was having some sort of fit —
vtfiich he was. as uncontrollable tears of laughter and saliva
rolled down his ecstatic face
I've often imagined how it must have felt to have been
Art under those circumstances, how I might have felt about
Michael Marsh as I listened to him telling some fool a prepost­
erous and hilarious story of how I came to be the way I am
The story ended when the boneheaded interloper got
up and wandered mumbling out the door, numbed into senseless
submission by Marsh's flamethrower onslaught of sheer sponta­
neous storytelling ability to create a story vtfiich survives him
So he died a few years ago, leaving some of us (and we
are legion) infected like vampires: moon-bitten fools, from which
the world will never be safe
John Paul Barrett is the author of Sea Stories I & II (Of
Dolphins & Dead Sailors Sungods & Sundogs) and I'll Be Home
in Half An Hour He is publisher of Gaff Press in Astoria
Arthur Honeyman, the Egyptian Mercenary, also
publishes his own books through Wheel Press in Portland
He is author of Sam & His Cart (which was made into an award
winning movie). The Claws & The Horns. Portrait in Poetry. The
Follies of Sexism in the Civilized World, and many others
Bill Bertin is a poet and ex-manner who lives in Astoria