Dave's Fiction Warehouse

Bible: $60. Mussolini glare: Priceless.   W ell, I got my  Trump sneakers  ($400). Ordered a number of  Trump bibles  ($60 a pop plus handling). Up to my ass in  DJT stock  ($62 and falling). So I’m good to go. When Trump starts handing out ambassadorships after the election, I should be near the front of the line. Trump likes loyalty. But he  loves  suckers. So now is the time for all good men (and certain bodacious babes) to suck as hard as we can. Now is the time to buy as much Trump merch as possible, pronto. It will make his day a little brighter. Just put it all on your credit card if you don’t have the cash. (And there’s a good chance you don’t if you’re a longtime Trump investor.) Oh, and word to the wise: Trump will be unveiling a line of Proud Boy Beanie Babies on Monday, so save some of your credit limit for that too. Most politicians just ask for money, and don’t give you anything in return.  Trump does too. But he also offer...

The granddaughters when they were little E very day I get these notifications about what I was doing on this date one or five or several years ago. Facebook and OneDrive and Google Photos all want to remind me that time does fly – and that they’re keeping track. They know I can’t resist another unsolicited photo montage to top up my little shot glass of nostalgia. I don’t mind. Used to be, you’d have to wait until a rare reunion with friends or loved ones before you’d dig out the photo albums. Now the memories arrive unbidden. No special occasion required. Here are the granddaughters at the beach, or at Disney World, or unsteady on their Christmas skates. Here’s us with the dog we loved, that car we drove, that house wherein so many holidays came and went. Here’s Mom when she could still get around OK. Here are these friends we don’t see much anymore.  It’s a daily blast from the past – at least the recent past. Probably a good thing these automated memories don’t predate the dawn ...

The devil wears polyester I was saddened to learn of the death of M. Emmet Walsh on Tuesday. The upside is that it’s now timely to talk about his best role: Private detective Loren Visser in the Coen brothers’ first movie: “Blood Simple.” If you haven’t seen “Blood Simple,” here is the obligatory spoiler alert: Get the hell out of here until you have seen it, then report back with your impressions. I saw “Blood Simple” on VHS before I’d even heard of the Coen brothers. Rewatching it nearly 40 years later, it’s fun to note certain motifs and archetypes that tend to reappear in their later work. Chief among those is the oddball villain who adheres to a strict code of amorality. The Coens later said they wrote the Visser character with Walsh in mind. Visser wears a yellow leisure suit and drives a Volkswagen Beetle. (Another PI with a Volkswagen appeared in “The Big Lebowski”).  He has a west-Texas drawl and an easy manner and a heart of blackest coal. His opening monologue doesn’t e...

Austin Butler flies the unfriendly skies F or some reason my wife doesn’t share my interest in World War II aviation. So I waited until she was out of town to finish “Masters of the Air.” My verdict: It’s pretty good. Come for the thrilling air combat scenes, stay for the history.   Since “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998, we’ve seen quite a few hyper-realistic World War II movies: stuff like “Fury,” “Dunkirk,” and “Hacksaw Ridge.” Then there are the miniseries “Band of Brothers” and “Pacific.” By now a certain sameness has crept into these stories. Apparently, there are only so many ways to depict young men fighting and dying between angst-filled moments in the barracks.  “Masters of the Air” has quite a bit of that too. The characters are mostly predictable and dialog is sometimes wooden. But this series focuses on a different WWII: one fought at high altitude, high speed and in subzero cold. It’s the kind of warfare that had never been seen before and won’t be seen again....

Blossom Dearie at the height of her powers. H appy vernal equinox! I’m a solstice man myself, preferring the extremes of too much day in June and too much night in December. But this day of balance between the two is also great and would suffice. I don’t know about you, but it feels like spring arrived a bit too soon this year. Winter came and went in a few short weeks. I had to deploy the snow shovel only half a dozen times, and probably could have gotten by with less. Winter in this part of the country is not what it used to be. But then nothing is, if you believe certain men of a certain age. Still, what are you gonna do? It’s spring, so I suppose one should clean house and do some yard work and take a walk in one’s shirtsleeves even though the mornings are still a little too chilly for that.  Or one could take a couple of minutes and listen to Blossom Dearie’s lovely “They Say It’s Spring.” (You may have to wait a few seconds to bypass the damned ads.) It’s a tune I often find...

T ake a look at this list of Great American Novels, as propounded by the editors of Atlantic Magazine. Let me know what you think.  Being a sucker for any best-of list, I was naturally curious to see how many of these 136 books I’ve read. I’ve gone through the list twice now and still count only 23! This can’t be right! I guess this is what happens when you read way too many best-selling crime novels. A lot of Really Important books fall by the wayside. About the list: The books had to be published in the United States during the last 100 years, and they had to be recommended by a group of scholars, critics and novelists.  The list came to 136 because The Atlantic thought an arbitrary number would be too, well, arbitrary.  Anyway, if I’m going to take this list seriously, that means I’ll have to find space for, let’s see, 113 Great American Novels that I’ve heretofore overlooked. I’m going to need a bigger nightstand. Not that it matters, but here are the listed books I h...