Rogue Nation #10

01/10 April 14

TE N A F N DA RIEN B ‘ O N JOH

L.A. ISSUE

UEZ G I R D O R LUIS J. REY G H P L RUDO

EILL N ‘ O Y TON

www.rogue-blogue.blogspot.de

Liebe Freunde der Nation, zum 105. Geburtstag von Autor John Fante ist aus der zehnten Rogue Nation eine Los Angeles Ausgabe geworden, mit Autoren die aus L.A. stammen und/oder über L.A. schreiben. Die Texte sind allesamt in ihrer ursprünglichen englischen Fassung geblieben. So war es mir am liebsten. Ich hoffe, die Enttäuschung, dass keine Übersetzungen dabei sind hält sich in Grenzen.

Vorweg darf natürlich Johns Sohn Dan nicht fehlen, mit seinem Text übers Schreiben „That‘s not Writing – That‘s Typing“. Weitere Autoren dürften euch ebenfalls viel Freude bereiten. Der leider schon viel zu früh verstorbene John O‘Brien hat mit „Better“ ein wirklich fulminanten Abschluss seiner Romanreihe über verlorene und dem Alkohol verfallene Protagonisten hingelegt. Obwohl er an diesem Titel bereits parallel zu „Leaving Las Vegas“ (1990) arbeitete, wurde „Better“ erst 2009 veröffentlicht. Beide Bücher können als Abschiedsbriefe von John verstanden werden, der sich 1994 das Leben nahm. Einen Auszug aus dem ersten Kapitel von „Better“ findet Ihr ab Seite 6. Ein weiterer Autor, der die Abgründe von Los Angeles in einigen seiner Bücher aufzeigt ist Tony O‘Neill. In seiner Story „Bill Bailey“ geht’s wirklich mal wieder ziemlich böse zu. Wie böse, erfahrt Ihr ab Seite 10.

Abschließend eine kleine lyrische Auswahl von Autor, Dichter und Ex-Gangmitglied Luis J. Rodriguez, der mit Büchern wie „Always Running“ und der Fortsetzung „It Calls You Back“ großartige Memoiren über seine bewaffnete Zeit auf den Straßen von L.A. schrieb. Dazu kommt Ed Wood Biograf Rudolph Grey (schon in der sechsten Nation mit einem Essay und einem Gedicht vertreten). Er gibt uns erneut einen lyrischen Einblick die die fremde Welt von Ed –und Hollywood.

Ich wünsche nun viel Vergnügen mit der zehnten Nation. Merkt euch die Autoren und lest noch mehr von Ihnen…

Cheers, Marc

JOHN FANTE * 08. April 1909 + 08. Mai 1983

2 Photos on pages 5, 15, 16, 20, 23

by Takashi Ueki

THAT’S NOT WRITING – THAT’S TYPING

by Dan Fante The most difficult burrier for anyone beginning their first novel is, of course, their negative and corrosive thinking. There’s no substitute for the torture of self-doubt. It will cripple the new writer and render him immobilized. Self-doubt is the darkest Dantean circle of Hell.

The next snarling troll waiting under the new novelist’s desk is the need for inspiration.

A substitute word for inspiration is self-sabotage. When I began to consider writing my first novel I realized that my mind had somehow acquired the notion that I must be inspired before I began typing. It was my noggin’s perfect placebo for inaction and failure.

My inspiration affliction first struck me when I finished reading, The Old Man And The Sea, By Hemingway. The simplicity and beauty of that novel left me profoundly affected. I had an almost desperate desire to write and I began having fantasies about leaving the banality of my secure sales job and fleeing to the Sierras, to a cabin where I knew that if I could only be alone, absent all distractions, I would most certainly become inspired to begin my opus. My deviant filibustering brain had created a baseless formula: Inspiration, it informed me, would be a bi-product of solitude and intense concentration. If I just had the right circumstances – if I could get the planets to line up the way I needed them to – I’d be on my way.

Before I began my first novel I took a course that required a written assignment to pass, a short autobiography. A couple of the guidelines for completing the thing were interesting: “Do not look back at what you have written. Write for ten consecutive days, one hour per day. No less – no more.”

After completing that paper I had an ah-ha moment. It was simple yet profound: Novels are written page by page, one page at a time. Up until then I had considered the thought of writing a four hundred page book to be daunting – unnerving, but writing one page a day was a suddenly manageable concept. I have kept to that formula for the last twenty-five years. Some days I write five pages, some days three, but most days there is just one, or a good part of it. I do it six days a week. For me successful writing is a bi-product of me separating my fearfulness and doubt from my own tactile ability to move my fingers on a keyboard. And long ago I stopped waiting for the phantom of inspiration. That fickle imp visits writers all too rarely.

All an author needs is one good idea and fifty cents worth of discipline. My ideas for novels invariably evolve from reading other writers. Reading good writers gets my juices flowing.

So here is Suggestion #1: Write like the writer you most admire. Before beginning your novel spend some time dipping into the books that turn you on, the ones that made you consider writing in the first place. Then, as you begin typing, emulate that writer’s style.

Imitate how he or she writes.

Is this hubris and plagiarism? Not at all. When I started what became my first novel I emulated Hemingway. The guy had been a newspaper writer. His style had no frills and

3

moved in short, punchy sentences. That approach had great appeal for me so I wrote the way I thought Hemingway would write.

Then, in writing like Hemingway, a powerful secret was revealed: It is impossible to imitate another writer. You can only write like yourself! My own style emerged. And surprisingly, the first page of my first novel did not sound like Ernest Hemingway. It sounded like me. And of course my subject matter was completely my own.

Suggestion #2: Start now! If you have been considering writing a novel you almost surely have a notion of your main character in your mind. Start today. Eliminate all distractions and begin by writing something about your main character is doing, some action that will jumpstarts your story. It’s absolutely okay to not have the story line cemented in your imagination.

Having it is helpful but not necessary. That will come as you write. Just start with your main character.

Several times I’ve begun a story with my guy in a cumbersome situation like waking up in darkness and not knowing where he is. By putting my main character in challenging circumstances my imagination begins to discover ways to get him out of those circumstances.

More writing follows naturally.

All writers evolve their own process but first and foremost that process involves doing.

My father, the Los Angeles novelist and screenwriter John Fante, eventually come upon a very unusual way of writing his novels. As a young man he would use the same technique that I described above – the one that I use today. He would begin with a strong main character and a vague (or sometimes strong) overall concept for his novel. But then, over time, my dad’s process changed. After his fourth or fifth novel he began working the entire book out in his head – word for word – before putting it down on paper.

I do not recommend this. I call it the John Fante, You- Should-Be-Institutionalized, method.

It would take my father three or four months to accomplish his task. He would not write a word but suddenly become uncommunicative and withdrawn. When asked what was wrong he most always would snarl and say he was thinking, and demand to be left alone. That was the beginning and it would go on for weeks. We would see him staring out his office window by the hour or walking around our yard kicking rocks, muttering to himself. Soon enough our family would identify these symptoms and begin to distance ourselves from Mr. Hyde. His friends stopped calling. His favorite dog would detour when he saw pop come up the front walkway to our house.

But then, much like a painful breached birth, in a flurry of mad angst and energy, John Fante would sit down and spill his novel out on paper, usually in about two weeks. Word for word - like a mental photo copy.

4 Late in his life, after he had gone blind, my father dictated his final novel, Dreams From Bunker Hill, to my mother who transcribed it, text perfect, commas and all, just this way.

--------------Suggestion #3: It’s okay to write badly. I make a lot of mistakes when I begin a novel.

Invariably, when I start out, I am also a terrible typist. I’m not sure why this is but I assume it is because I want to spit my ideas out on paper before I forget them. And I usually discover that I’ve forgotten how to punctuate too.

In writing my first or second novel I would often pause and think to myself: “Christ, that’s just awful! You ought to be back parking cars or driving a cab!” I’d sit there at my desk staring at what I had written and try to talk myself out of taking sixty Ambien.

Anyway, there you have it. That’s the approximate process for most successful writers I know. Eventually we all had to discover that one vital secret: To just keep going. Failure – not living up to my own lofty literary standards – is inevitable. So what! I just do it anyway.

Now here’s the payoff: On this journey there will come times when you achieve something magical. It will be completely unexpected and impossible to replicate. There will be days when diamonds by-the-dozen tumble from your fingers and dance in a grand ballet across your page. You will feel a unity of mind and spirit and you will become aware that you are a channel for something inside and outside yourself. I warn you now. Prepare yourself. On those days you will be the happiest person alive.

DAN FANTE ist der Autor von „Fante – A Memoir“ und den Büchern „Chump Change“, „Mooch“, „86‘d“, „Spitting Off Tall Buildings“ und „Short Dog“. In der 5. Rogue Nation erschien sein Gedicht „For Mark“ (natürlich nicht dem Herausgeber gewidmet, dennoch fand er es des Namens wegen passend).

Mehr Infos zu Dan Fante unter www.danfante.com

5

BETTER (Leseprobe aus Kapitel 1) von John O’Brien Double Felix is semireclined. From where I stand—perhaps ten feet behind him—I can hear the whine of his headphones, excess noise that even his ears cannot collect. True to form, he has the volume control of his tape player set too high, but I won’t mention this to him; Double Felix is the sort of person who resents concern, or so he claims. Anyway, disturbing him is rarely a good idea, so I turn and walk from the room.

“I see you, William,” I hear him yell after me. “I see your fat fucking face reflected in the window.”

Rather than respond to that, I pull shut his door and continue down the hall. I should mention here that “your fat fucking face” is merely one of Double Felix’s many terms of endearment.

My face, as well as the rest of me, is angular, almost gaunt. I have the sort of face that one expects to be adorned with a modicum of gratuitous facial hair, perhaps an anemic goatee, or an adolescent mustache, though I do not and would never have either. I did once spend some time with a black glass marker and a mirror; the effect was unconvincing.

Passing the familiar array of six doors, two of which stand open, I arrive at the end of the hall where I exit to the deck. Here I will stay until morning—a relatively new habit of mine— feeling the airborne chill of the Pacific Ocean sweep over my body, linger in seductive spirals, and grow ever more to the point as it waits for sleep to take me. It is then, as I lie innocently, making stupid barks and gurgles in protest to my dreams, it is then that the wind will turn malicious and send its bite to my bones. I will awaken and shiver, clutch myself and curse. Though the door behind me is unlocked and a bed awaits in my name, I will stay here and watch for the sky to lighten.

In the morning I will join Double Felix for vodka on his balcony. We will have our regular palaver, perhaps joined briefl y by one of the female houseguests wearing one of Double Felix’s shirts, or an outcall hooker clad in lace and wondering if Double Felix meant it when he asked her to move in. “Do you live here too?” she will ask of me, her eyes searching mine for either a clue or a warning sign. “What has Double Felix been telling you?” I will respond, trying to look mischievous. Seeing I want to sleep with her, Double Felix will then chuckle, and so give his blessing.

Our house—I mean his house, for we are all guests of Double Felix, myself the most tenacious—sits on a cliff in Los Angeles, overlooking the Pacific, just northwest of the city of Santa Monica. Most of the nearby roads are known as canyons, circuitous strips of black and yellow cut to deferentially follow nature’s compelling leads, and I have yet to find a straight line that leads here, much less a shortest distance. It is my understanding that Double Felix purchased this house some years ago. I would have sworn he built it himself, for it matches him and he it to a degree seemingly beyond coincidence; but perhaps that can be only a result of a chance purchase, as no man could possibly know himself that well. I can’t say exactly why I fi nd this house so appropriate for Double Felix, but I do know I feel very much an element in whatever it is he has wrought here.

Taken as a piece of real estate it may not be overwhelming, but it is certainly atypical. None of the rooms resemble actual shapes—the type that are found in geometry texts and mimicked in most construction; no, these rooms are squashed-pointed ovals and semicircular rhomboids. The largest room, referred to as “the big room” by Double Felix, is the part 6 of the house that one enters. It spans almost the entire length of the house on the inland side, and so has no ocean view. Between it and the cliff, starting on the right or north, are:

Double Felix’s bedroom and private balcony; six guest rooms, each with walled, private balconies; and a large wooden deck. All these are connected through ornate double doors to a long hallway which ends on the south side of the house at the kitchen, an industrial-looking place full of cast-iron and aluminum cookware hanging from immense steel racks; all of it, like the kitchen itself, about twice as large and half as busy as it needs to be. Outside, there is no yard or landscaping, and barely enough blacktop to qualify as a driveway under local ordinances. We are as remote as one can be in this area, due mostly to the huge fence that runs the perimeter. We live in relative seclusion from the nearby residents.

Of course, accommodations such as these are not cheap to acquire or to maintain, especially for a man with no apparent means of support. My concern about this matter, and indeed my interest, has long since vanished, but back before the basis of our arrangement became clear to me, I was insanely curious about the source of Double Felix’s wealth, which, judging by his immoderate generosity, I imagined to be substantial. “Double Felix,” I said, marching into his bedroom very early one morning, “if I’m going to agree to live here at your expense [he had recently made the offer—actually it was always there, on the table, as it were, and he just confi rmed it verbally] then I must insist on knowing something about the source of my good fortune. I must know how you pay for all of this.” I folded my arms and glared at him, trying to look as though this matter of honor and integrity, if not resolved, would send me marching off without a damn into a fi lmic fog. “William,” he responded, tired and amused as always, lifting his head from between the legs of a girl whom I did not recognize, “what follows is a list of facts. Please listen without responding or reacting, and when I am done reciting this list, please leave my bedroom and allow me to fi nish what I have started here. One: you needn’t agree to live here. Two: if you wish to stay you will make me happy. Three: this house is for your use. Four: you may inquire about my assets as often as you wish without fear of angering me, but I will never acknowledge your questions. Five: we have money, and I am always happy to give you some. Six: you are feeling concern over issues within yourself that will one day seem trivial to you. Seven: you are not here because of my money, but only one of us knows that.” He stopped. Turning back to the waiting vagina, he paused. “Thank you for your time, William. Please leave now and return for Morning Vodka in sixty minutes.” And I did just that.

Double Felix’s bedroom, where he spends much of his time during the day either preparing for or recovering from one of his many naps, and where even now he sits with his legs crossed at the knees and his ears in the delicate forcepslike pinch of his featherweight Japanese headphones, is more or less in the shape of a teardrop; no, a half-teardrop; better yet, like the cross section of a runaway drop of lab mercury that has just been fecklessly prodded by a spoon in the hands of a red-faced student; asymmetrical, fl at and round, found and made. The wall that is curved most overtly is really just a series of oversized windows that stretch from the fl oor to the ceiling and look out on the ocean. There are also two glass doors which open to Double Felix’s private balcony, and it is here where he and I spend our mornings. The decor is simple and the room sparsely furnished, though in the context of these things it is clear that no expense has been spared. There is only his bed, two overstuffed lounge chairs, a small table, a built-in bar, and an immense but uncluttered steel desk that holds a single lamp and several neatly kept stacks of papers. Double Felix forbids anyone— including me—to look at these papers, and I at least have always respected his wishes.

Double Felix loves his bedroom, and spends much of his life there, though he is not 7 totally reclusive. I think he feels it is the one place in his house that he has reserved for himself, that he has total control over. I say this because the only times that I can recall him

being moved to anger were when the evening’s festivities spilled out of the big room and into his bedroom. Many times I have seen Double Felix crowded in some remote corner of the kitchen, trying to have a conversation through the pushing, shoving, crowding chaos of one of our parties. But he tolerates this rather than retreat to his vast, empty bedroom and risk leading the crowd along with him. Thus he swallows whole the confusion along with the rest of us. Once or twice, when unusually drunk, he has even forbidden himself from entering, choosing instead to nap in an empty guest room. (He has never told me this; I draw the conclusion strictly from my own surreptitious observations.)

The big room is a place to fi nd someone, and Double Felix often drifts in for light talk and television. Though actual parties do not occur all that often, Double Felix keeps enough guests in the house to maintain a nice selection of talking/eating/sleeping partners, and the big room is the hub. Double Felix has referred to it as “the place from which we commence our satellite activities.” A full wet bar runs the length of the shortest of the two straight walls; the third and longest wall runs in concavity from the room, carrying with it Double Felix’s collection of erotic murals, painted tastefully and adeptly by a talented former guest whom I never met. The room is replete with high-end con sumer electronics, offering more ways to view a video image or listen to one’s favorite audio medium than could be exhausted in a week. Double Felix enjoys this equipment and insists on installing it himself - he is surprisingly skillful with tools – yet he is the first to laugh it off should a clumsy or drunken guest damage something accidentally. “Time for an upgrade!” he might say, placing his arm around the embarrassed culprit and leading him to a topic changer. More than anything, Double Felix hates to see people feeling uncomfortable or bad about something, especially something as trivial as a stereo or a television.

Across the hall from the big room are the six guest rooms; in fact, mine is the door that lies directly opposite the door to the big room. Nearest the deck (Double Felix moved me there in an attempt to lure me back to sleeping inside), it is virtually identical to the other five guest rooms. Long, narrow, chutelike areas, they each have a private bath on the hall side and a walled balcony on the ocean side; simple furnishings, a queen-size bed, a full bar, and the usual electronic conveniences, including a private telephone line. I have known guests to spend days in these rooms, their through-the-door acknowledgments to Double Felix’s daily “how ya doin’” knock serving as their only interaction with the rest of us.

“What is this garbage?” I asked Double Felix one day, exasperated that he should be so willing to support a particular guest who had rarely blessed us with his presence. “It’s all right, William,” he said. “These things don’t last forever. Besides, where else could he get away with this?” “Well, we’re not running a detox ward here,” I responded. “Exactly,” he said. As with so many of my complaints to Double Felix, this left me feeling ashamed, and I retreated to my room, where later that night I first got the idea of sleeping on the deck.

On the deck I watch blink from my view the last, tiny, optically illusory, rapidly plunging, fl oating little oval of the sun’s tippy-top, leaving the residual glow of dusk. I hear activity from inside the house, from the big room; but there is no party tonight—no major party—just the regular gathering of the guests and any friends that they may have clinging around. Like socks out of the dryer, these friends can be, often staying way too late and doing their best to remain inconspicuous, only to be eventually discovered and pulled from under a sweater or off the ass side of someone’s panties. I stand and walk to the bar out here, mix myself a gin, and regard my usual chaise lounge. It is getting uncomfortable as the supporting straps, 8 unaccustomed to the overtime, stretch past the intended parameters of the frame. I shall have to find the courage to rotate to another; there are many to choose from out here. Sunny days

find this space filled with hungover men and barebreasted women. Content with the moment, though undoubtedly preoccupied with more eventful or promising ones, they recline and take their solar nourishment, consider the sublime curse of this place that has found them. Indeed, a deck full of the sort of women Double Felix keeps about the place can be a most distracting sight. Many are only too happy to embrace this environment with its condoned nudity and promiscuity, and though I have never witnessed what would normally be called an orgy on the premises, there have been times when I’ve been awakened by and invited to join an overly responsive coital couple enjoying the cool air of my outdoor sleeping quarters; but that is not my style. I have known women of my own selection on this deck, though I prefer to limit those activities to my room and reserve this, inasmuch as I can, as my own private plenum. Simple oak, some superfluous reclining apparatus, an abundance of gin, a rail of no substance, this is where I sleep; it is outside the house.

“William?”

A voice from behind, accompanied by the familiar click of the French doors, beckons. It is Laurie, our most recent housemate. She came to us as a friend of a friend at the last big party and simply failed to leave afterward. Double Felix, discovering her on a sofa the next day, offered her the use of one of the two empty rooms. This was to the surprise of no one as Laurie is quite fetching, though that is not strictly a prerequisite for an invitation by him. That was two days ago, and I suspect that Laurie, enjoying herself, is feeling guilty about not yet sleeping with Double Felix—I happen to know she hasn’t—but again, this is not required behavior.

“Laurie dear,” I say, not yet turning, hoping that my quick recognition of her voice will be impressive, “what can I do for you tonight?” Diffidently she steps toward me, almost tiptoeing. “I’m sorry to bother you out here—I understand that this is your space—but you seem to be close to Double Felix, and I was hoping I could ask you something.”

I turn to face her and am struck by her genuine beauty. Her long brown hair, looking an exquisite mess, looking like it’s always disheveled as if by design, dances in the breeze. Like so many interesting women she looks at once the daughter and the mother, an expression of simple acceptance and complex pride governing her even features, sparring with a very real sexuality that she seems not quite comfortable with.

“No, no,” I say, “I have a room. I merely sleep out here, but you are always welcome.”

Motioning her to follow, I spin back to my chaise and sit on its end, a regrettably condescending pat falling from my palm onto the vacant spot beside me. “Drink?” I ask stupidly, as if this offer is the reason I walked away from the bar to the chaise.

“Just a sip of yours.”

This is a good sign. She seats herself next to me, and now very encouraged, I say, “You know, Laurie, I’m very glad you’ve decided to spend some time with us. I think you’ll find Double Felix to be an accommodating host.”

I think I see a frown skate across her face. I must sound stupid, that solicitous talking-to-a-girl quality in my voice. Even I can hear it. I haven’t heard myself like this for years, and I wonder what it is about Laurie that raises this unfortunate, boyish ghost in me.

JOHN O‘BRIEN hat neben dem hier vorgestellten Buch „Better“ ebenfalls „Leaving Las Vegas“, „The Assault on Tony‘s“ und „Stripper Lessons“ verfasst. Er verstarb 1994.

9

BILL BAILEY

by Tony O’Neill That morning there was a vague uneasiness of the guts, a portent of something awful. The sense that I had somehow offended the gods that judgment had already been passed. The frenzied scrambling for information that follows a sustained black out. That morning death was everywhere. It was in the air. It clung to my clothes like last nights cigarettes. I stunk like a butchers window; I reeked of death from the inside out.

I was in a bar. It could have been any bar in the world. It could have been up in the hills of Lima with cockroaches as big and brazen as Shetland tanks. It could have been some furtive hole in a Utah side street. But this bar was in Hollywood, not that it even matters one bit.

I was drinking because there was nothing left to do. Even at four in the afternoon the bar was as dark as death and it could easily have been midnight. I sucked on my beer and read the funnies. I noticed her ass before I noticed the rest of her. She was on her way to the bathroom. She was a little unsteady, wearing black leather boots and a dress that clung to her in the right places. When she walked the cheeks of her ass rose and fell perfectly. It was a heroic ass. She was a gleaming machine and the ass was the piston, the heart of it all.

Up, down, up, down they went until she was out of sight.

“Hey Luke,” I called.

Luke was taking the glasses out of the dishwasher, idly looking at the television. Tyra Banks was on there; thank Christ the sound was turned down. He came over.

“Another?”

“What’s the girl over there drinking?”

He looked over to where her purse was, then back at me and said, “Lupita? Whiskey sour.”

“Send one over, and tell her it came from me.”

“Whatever you say, man.”

When she emerged from the bathroom I got a look at the front of her. She was dark skinned, with long curly black hair. She had teeth that seemed too big for her mouth, and too much make-up. The rest of her could not live up to the promise of her ass. If it did, she wouldn’t have been as old as she was and still drinking alone in a shit hole like this. If it did, I wouldn’t even have had a shot.

She was at the far end of the bar, bathed in the sickly orange glow of the cigarette machine.

She didn’t look over to me. She took in the new drink that Luke had left on the bar, and unsurprised she took a long gulp from it. Then Luke came over to her, and leant over. I watched them from the corner of my eye, playing it cool, sucking my beer down. I felt her eyes on me. I sensed some strange intimacy between Luke and Lupita. Maybe she was his.

Luke was balding but he had good teeth, by God, good strong healthy white teeth and that counts for a lot these days. Especially with women. Teeth and money. Women were a mystery to me.

A little while later, I ordered another beer. I looked over at Lupita. Her glass was empty.

She looked at me, cool and indifferent. Trapped, I sent over another drink.

This went on for a while. The bar started to fill up with the early drinkers. A construction worker with a gimp neck and a stutter who drank vodka, straight. A couple of dusty, thirsty looking Mexican boys. When she received the third drink from me she sent Luke over. 10 “Hey, Joe. Lupita wants you to come keep her company.”

“Send me another beer over there,” I said. I left my newspaper on the bar, and made my

way over. She smiled. She had bad teeth, so maybe I was in luck after all. She patted the stool next to hers, and I sat down.

“I was waiting for you to introduce yourself,” she said.

“I was waiting for an invitation.”

There was no more small talk. We already knew each other’s names. We already knew that we were alone, and that we liked to drink. Lupita smelled of strong perfume and she wore a wedding band. I pointed to it and said, “Is he still around?”

“No. Not for a long time now. Would it matter to you if he was?’

“Not to me. It might matter to him, though.”

The beer arrived and we drank together. Lupita leaned in to me and placed her hands on my thighs. She squeezed me.

“Do you work out?” she asked.

“I run.” I told her, “I’ve been running for as long as I can remember.”

After a couple of hours the place was getting full and my cock was like a rock. Lupita had been kneading it like dough all night, and I kept thinking of that ass and how it was going to feel against my face.

All of the seats at the bar were taken. Two assholes next to me were talking about sports.

Insufferably dull people are interested in sports. Further down the bar was a regular called Mickey who had busted, snaggled teeth and could quote long passages from Kierkegaard if you got him started. He had a photographic memory. Whenever a tourist came in, Mickey would harass them into betting that he couldn’t read and memorize a page from that day’s newspaper. He always won. One of the sports assholes elbowed me accidentally.

“You wanna get out of here?” I asked, “Maybe get a bottle, pick up some blow and go back to your place?”

“Goodness,” she said, “Sounds romantic. You drink wine?”

“Sure.”

“I got some good red wine in my fridge.”

“Then let’s go.”

We were driving over to pick up the coke when she started in with the story about the dog.

“Ever since those fuckers moved in to the place next door, I can’t sleep. All night the fucking thing barks. It’s a pit bull or some shit like that. A puppy. And it’s loud! All fucking night… yap, yap, yap. I haven’t had a decent night’ sleep in two months!”

“You should complain.”

“I have! They don’t give a shit. Mexicanos! They got a bunch of kids running about the yard barefoot, the father’s drunk all day, and the mother is six months pregnant. They don’t give a shit about whether I can sleep or not.”

“Shit, I’d just take care of it myself.” I said.

“Take care of it? What, shoot it?”

“Nah. Let it out. If it’s a puppy it’ll probably never make it’s own way back.”

“They’d call the cops!”

“They’d never know.”

We rode a little way in silence. Then full of booze and bravado, I said: “Fuck, I’ll take care of it, baby. What separates your yard?”

“Just a hedge.”

11 “So he escapes. Happens every day.”

I pulled the car up outside the maze of apartments that my connection operated out of. She

leaned over to me and planted a long, wet kiss on my mouth.

“You’d really do that for me?”

“Yeah, baby. Sure!”

She smiled, and my dick got hard again. The ass, the ass, the ass, I thought. I left her in the car and cut out to score.

Lupita’s place was a run down bungalow on De Longpre Avenue. She rented the house at the back, and had an overgrown, unkempt back yard. As she let us in, I could hear it already, yap, yap, yap yap. It was the kind of noise that could drive someone to extreme action.

“You see?”

“This will be your last night of it.”

We tossed the grocery bag on the couch; I had bought a cheap cut of chuck steak to lure the dog with. I got comfortable, and Lupita went to uncork the wine.

“You got a real nice place here,” I lied.

“Thanks.”

“Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Go ahead.”

In the bathroom I took a long piss, and pocketed some Xanax and Ambien from her medicine cabinet. When I came back she was barefoot; knees tucked up by her chest on the couch, drinking her wine, showing off her calves. I sat down next to her and ran my hand up them. They were fine calves, smooth and firm. It was already close to midnight.

I took a gulp of the wine, started cutting up the coke, and we discussed the kidnap plan.

At 1am it was all quiet, apart from the yapping of the dog. Lupita told me that the dog’s name was Bill Bailey.

“Bill Bailey? What kind of a name is that for a dog?”

I thought about little Bill Bailey, loose in the streets. He wouldn’t make it far with a name like that, I supposed.

Drunk, high and horny I snuck out of Lupita’s place and stuck my head over the hedge.

There he was scampering around the back yard, tried by a rope to one end of a decrepit clothing line. The grass was in bad shape, the occasional clump of green amidst the bare dirt and heaps of dog shit. The crickets kept a steady pulse, and there was Bill Bailey growling and yapping at the fireflies that danced and whirled about in the murk. I took a look at the rope around his collar. It looked pretty long. I ducked down and cut out of Lupita’s yard and onto De Longpre Avenue, with the chuck steak in my hands. I began to creep up the next-door driveway. I came to a locked gate but it was low, so I reached over easily and unlatched it from the other side. It swung open. Cautiously I pressed myself flat against the wall and edged my way towards the back yard.

Peeking around the corner I could see Bill Bailey staring towards me, emitting a low growl. He could sense that there was a stranger on the premises. Then he started to yap again. He was a pit bull, a cute one too, and I started to feel bad. I had a dog myself when I was a kid, a real brute called Major who escaped when I was 13, and was smashed by a truck. I was devastated. Now I was going to turn Bill Bailey loose. I thought about Lupita’s ass again. Oh Jesus. I ripped off a piece of the steak and tossed it towards him.

The puppy was well used to kids I guess. When the raw meat landed a foot or so away from him with a soft splat, he panted, wagged his little stump of a tail, and ran over to it, 12 sniffing excitedly. He was a playful little bastard. With the rest of the meat in one hand, I crept towards him with one hand outstretched, whispering “Hey Bill… good boy….

There’s a good boy…. You want some more, huh, Bill? You want some more, boy…?”

When I was close enough I let him sniff and lick at my bloody fingers. He gave me a few playful nips, and I didn’t flinch. I knew how to handle dogs. I started to rub his fur.

Slowly, cautiously, as he sniffed my hand and turned his attention back to the meat I found the collar and slowly worked it loose. It fell to the ground with a light rattle. Bill Bailey was free.

When he finished up with the meat, I showed him the rest, and he obediently followed me towards the open gate and the sidewalk. It was time to let him take his chances in the streets of Hollywood, just like the rest of us. * “Where’s the dog?” Lupita asked, when I got back in.

I shrugged. “He’s gone.”

“Oh baby!” She ran over and planted one on me. This was it, enough foreplay. It was time to get what I had come for.

“You got blood on you!” she cooed, “Did he bite you?”

“Nah. It’s from the meat. I’m gonna go clean up. I’ll see YOU over THERE,” I told her, nodding towards the bedroom.

“Oh, yeah daddy!” she replied. She grabbed the bottle, and I slapped her ass a little as she left, leaving a little red stain on her pants.

She was naked on the bed when I walked in. Her knees were together, her body half twisted to the side as she cut up the last of the coke on the nightstand. That long curly hair fell about her shoulders, and my eyes moved down her body, the ribs, the little paunch of her gut hanging away from the rest of her torso, the hips, one cheek of the ass pointed towards me. I pulled my shirt off.

“Leave that shit alone.”

I grabbed her by the knee, and turned her towards me. Spreading her apart. Lupita lay back, resting on her elbows, legs spread, tits laying flat against the corrugated surface of her rib cage. She looked at me, grinning, shameless. I looked in between her legs, then back at her face, as if expecting an explanation. I felt dizzy, nauseous.

“You waiting for a written invitation?” she asked. I just stood there, soundlessly. I looked at the ragged hole between her legs. It was blood red, like raw meat. It hung open, hinting at terrifying, unfathomable depths. The lips hung loosely around the entrance, slick and meaty. Thick, curly black hair surrounded it, more hair than I have ever seen on a woman. It crept out of the crack of her ass like a lengthening shadow, a pubic mane that surrounded the pussy, and crept down the inner thighs, up towards the belly. Thick, prickly, bristly hair. I felt my prick do limp in my pants. I got on the bed, ashen, to get a closer look. There was a musty, animal smell emanating from that mass of hair, and I could feel Lupita laughing at me as I made my first attempt at entering the ancient, powerful hole that gaped open in front of me. If she’d had a beard as well, you could have stuck her in a cage and charged a buck to stare. The hair spread out from her cunt in all directions, simultaneously reaching towards the belly, the hips, down to the knees.

“Turn over,” I croaked.

13 She did. I was finally face to face with that ass. Its shape was perfect. Just round a firm enough. But from the crack of it, that thick, pungent fur was spilling out. In the area

around the asshole it was as thick as horsehair, becoming softer and downier as it spread out to the cheeks, still covering the whole ass in a soft, black coat.

“Is this how you want me, daddy?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. I looked at my shriveled prick. I looked at that bloody gash between her legs. I wordlessly tried to shove the still-soft prick into her, but it was useless. Some life came into it as I put my hand on it, but as soon as I pushed it towards that dark place it retreated back inside of itself. I was shoving a limp, lifeless piece of flesh against her bristly hole. Somewhere outside of her apartment I could hear the Gods laughing.

“Wait,” I said, turning her over again. I swear, the fucking bitch was grinning at me. I’d be goddamned if I was going to mentioned her cunt first. She smiled, mocking me.

“What’s the deal with you and Luke?” I demanded.

She just looked at me.

“What deal?”

“Are you fucking him?”

She shrugged, “What’s it to you?”

I imagined Luke, with his perfect teeth and receding hair, yucking it up about Joe the sucker and Lupita’s cunt with Mickie, the Mexicans, the gimp neck, and the sports assholes. Wait till she tells him about Bill Bailey too. Jesus fuck!

“Is it because of his teeth?”

“He does have nice teeth,” she conceded.

“I knew it!”

I got off the bed, and paced angrily.

“Listen,” she said, “If you don’t want this then get the fuck out. I’ll get myself off.”

I looked back over at her.

“You and Luke must think you’re real cute!” I spat.

“You’re crazy!” she yelled, “Fuck off then! Go!” In the rush I couldn’t find my underwear. No matter. I sat at the wheel of the car, cursing myself. In the backseat was a tied garbage bag with Bill Bailey’s corpse inside. Yeah, that’s right. I had to cut his throat because he wouldn’t leave the backyard. I thought of that ragged hole surrounded by fur again.

I killed Bill Bailey for the promise of an ass. You cannot judge me. I would do it again. I would have killed a newborn child for an ass like that: plucked it straight out of it’s mothers arms, held it by the ankles, and clubbed it against a wall until it came apart in my hands.

I turned the key. Bill Bailey never had a chance. Not with Lupita and her ass scheming and plotting against him just over the hedge. I put the car into drive and the dashboard light told me that it was half past two as Bill Bailey and I drove towards Sunset, the killer and the murdered sharing the guilty silence of comrades, grimly driving toward the dawn.

TONY O‘NEILL ist der Autor von den in Deutschland erschienen Titeln „Sick City“ und „Black Neon“. Weitere Titel in Englisch erhältlich. In der ersten Ausgabe der Rogue Nation erschien ein Interview mit ihm.

Mehr Infos zu Tony O‘Neill unter www.tonyoneill.net

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MACHU PICCHU – OR WHAT I SHOULD HAVE BECOME WHEN THE ANCIENT STONE WALLS AND THE CLOUDED HEIGHTS NAMED MY BLOOD

by Luis J. Rodriguez memories of childhood rise up like a twisted vine, mocking the granite sinews of this adult body & the solid layers of lies that have become my face, demanding a lightness of foot and of fears as antidotes to the round-bellied night crawler I’ve succumbed to—this clown in tattooed skin, a priest without prayers, the wrinkled figure in soggy coat on a scorched plain fire awakens me although I’m cold inside, surrounded by carcasses of embattled loves and blistered stories, always ending with betrayals and dismissals, with the turning away of the most emblazoned eye; they are the settled unholy ingredients in the bottled angst I’ve traded on street corners, poetry bars, living room arguments, and between the multi-tracked songs that singe the cluttered paths of my lunacies I can’t hide, I can’t run, the ruins speak to me in whispered cadences, with scrolled breath, blurting out curative threats, words that bob in a rushing mud river, ripping the flesh of cruel invectives, addressing me like a worried mother, a tired frog outside my window, while laying me down on a ground crawling with spiders and my best intentions I learned to live on chicken & vegetable soups, long walks, coca leaves inside my cheeks, chicha morada, the way the natives did for thousands of years, with few calories, yet still energized, awake, strong…and even the wooded hills and high attitudes are less formidable, less monstrous, more like brothers, like leaves, like a welcoming breeze.

Machu Picchu, you were always in my crowded dreams, in the faded colors of my worn clothes, on the folds near my eyes, always a tree branch to cling to, a father when my own father ate the hearts of his children, as a brother in the heroin-nights of my downtowns, even when I had never seen you I’m here and I sense this open citadel helped shape my hands, my mouth, the many constants of my inconsistencies, and whatever death melody I played but never died to

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Machu Picchu ... – Page 2 a place, an embrace, a cauldron of history I never knew I had, Machu Picchu survived the thousands for my steps to seal this pact, to communicate what winds and tortured rain cannot do, as a meditation in stone, moss and cloud, with two-inch colibri and saddened flower to accompany me, climbing the heights of this carved womb on a grinning mountain to the depths of my own negations and hypocrisies, to whatever song suggests my slow and languid tearing out of my skin.

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ERSCHEINT ANFANG 2014: PULP 35 Jim Nisbet Der Krake auf meinem Kopf EUR 13,80, 978-3-927734-48-7

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www.pulpmaster.de

MOONLIGHT TO WATER

by Luis J. Rodriguez (For my youngest sons, Ruben and Luis) Ruben recalled the day I brought mama and his baby brother home when he was six.

In the back seat of the car, he said, was an Asian looking child, hair sticking straight up on his head.

Chito—short for Luisito—looked this way because he’s part Raramuri and Huichol, but mostly all universe.

Ruben must have wondered about the galaxy of stars, bird songs and stories that had been dreamt to fashion such a boy.

When Chito arrived I’m sure Ruben knew his world would never be the same.

Until then, Ruben had been our only child.

To mom and dad, he was the screech of car brakes, a sigh to a bad joke, the glove to our ball, and now this—a bewildered boy gazing at a sweet-faced earth child wrapped in a light-blue blanket.

I asked Ruben what he thought about his brother.

Eyes gleaming with a six-year-old’s clarity, he answered: “Oh, I already knew him —I saw Chito when I was in mama’s stomach.”

I gave Ruben a look I often offered in reply to his amazing observations.

Somehow, though, the statement rang true.

His younger brother was in the wings, preparing to part, the next one, patiently abiding his turn.

As they grew older, Chito followed his brother’s every move, entering wide-eyed into Ruben’s dense sphere, sharing the same music, games, imaginings.

Ruben never hurt or exploited him, as older brothers often do.

The boys connected from the start, like hummingbird to flower, like breath to poems, like moonlight to water, brothers since the womb.

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FEVERED SHAPES

by Luis J. Rodriguez (For Jose Montoya, David Henderson, and Pedro Pietri and the first poetry reading I ever attended, Fall 1973) I wallowed in a needled-spawned world, addicted to dope and the crazy life, and yet there I was—in Berkeley for my first poetry reading.

I was eighteen—with a bullet, as they say.

Earlier I had flown on a plane for the first time.

Sure I’ve survived half a dozen gun assaults, cops knocking me around, ODs, blades to my neck in jail cells, homeless in dank streets, and beat downs in barrio brawls—but flying?

That scared me to death.

I sat there in a crowded cafe, not knowing what to expect.

Poetry? I’d never heard this before.

Oh, I had written lines: vignettes, images, fears, thoughts.

I didn’t know they were poems.

I had no idea what a poem was.

First up on the mic was Jose Montoya, with Chicano prayers of old pachucos, and strained loves and guitar solos, and Indian hands in corn flour.

Then David Henderson took the stage, gleaning urban black streets, racist stares, Black Panther fury & Southern cooking.

Finally, Pedro Pietri came up—Nuyorican word meister, flashing El Barrio’s experiences with poems located in phone booths & real life wisdoms that made us laugh and shake our heads.

I had never heard words spoken this way, more music than talk, more fevered shapes than sentences, more Che and Malcolm than Shakespeare.

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Fevered Shapes – Page 2 These poems came for me, lassoed my throat, demanded my life’s savings, taking me for a sunset ride.

These poems were graffiti scrawls along the alleys & trash-strewn tunnels of my body, the metaphoric methadone for the heroin hurling through my bloodstream, the lifeline I already had inside and didn’t know.

These poems were pool sticks, darkened gangways, a swirl of sunrise after the graveyard shift, a blood-black yelling behind torn curtains, a child screaming and nobody coming to help.

They were a women’s scent after a night of lovemaking, a sweet touch of hand to face, cascades of hair on a pillow, a moan during an elongated kiss.

These poems were shadowed intents, startled doubts, sorrows without grief, the moon without sky, unknown melodies… the falling inside that happens when you push razor onto wrist.

They came for me as I sank into my suicide, while fidgeting in a chair, inching under the skin, as I wondered why I even came.

Jose, David, and Pedro —I was never the same after this.

They came for me and I’ve never let go.

They came for me and I’ve perspired poems ever since. They came for me—and all my addictions, my sorry-ass lies, my falling masks, my pissed-off wives, neglected children, angry friends, and back-to-back failures could never, ever, take them away.

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HEAVY BLUE VEINS: WATTS 1959

by Luis J. Rodriguez Heavy blue veins streak across my mother’s legs, Some of them bunched up into dark lumps at her ankles.

Mama periodically bleeds them to relieve the pain.

She carefully cuts the engorged veins with a razor And drains them into a porcelain-like metal pail Called a tina.

I’m small and all I remember are dreams of blood, Me drowning in a red sea, blood on sheets, on the walls, Splashing against the white pail in streams Out of my mother’s ankle.

But they aren’t dreams.

It is Mama bleeding—into day, into night.

Bleeding a birth of memory: My mother, my blood, By the side of the bed, me on the covers, And her slicing into a black vein And filling the pail into some dark, forbidding Red nightmare, which never stops coming, Nevers stops pouring, This memory of Mama and blood and Watts.

Bestellungen und Texteinsendungen unter rogueblogue@gmail.com Herausgeber: Marc Mrosk

Das ROGUE NATION MAGAZIN erscheint monatlich und kostet pro Ausgabe 120 Euro.

WORDS

by Luis J. Rodriguez The thing is I wanted to be a writer even before I knew what writing was about.

I wanted to carve out the words that swam in the bloodstream, to press a stunted pencil onto paper so lines break free like birds in flight —to fashion words with hair, lengths and lengths of it, washed with dawn’s rusting drizzle.

I yearned for mortared-lined words, speaking in their own boasting tongues, not the diminished, frightened stammering of my childhood, but to shape scorching syllables with midnight dust.

Words that stood up in bed, danced merenques and cumbias, that incinerated the belly like a shimmering habanera.

Words with a spoonful of tears, buckshot, traces of garlic, cilantro, aerosol spray, and ocean froth.

Words that guffawed, tarnished smooth faces, and wrung song out of silence.

Words as languid as a woman’s stride, as severe as a convict’s gaze, herniated like a bad plan, soaked as in a summer downpour.

I aspired to walk inside these words, to manipulate their internal organs, surrounded by blood, gray matter, and caesuras; to slam words down like the bones of a street domino game, —and to crack them in two like lover’s hearts.

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PERHAPS

by Luis J. Rodriguez Perhaps when the stories are lost and the dream is a dry river and what makes the flesh sing is a long-gone prayer, we may find our true names; Perhaps when the earth’s rotation stops, when the moon has wilted, and the sun’s rays scorch down this squandered ground, we may uncover our inner eye; Perhaps when the poisons that once were our sustenance and the radiation that once gave us light, now foster our insatiable hungers and an abiding darkness, we may know what really feeds and guides us; Perhaps after we’ve created so many borders, so many walls, and conjured up even more laws to make even more lawless, we may realize it’s ourselves who’ve been made illegal, it’s our spirits we’ve alienized; Perhaps when parents lose their final grasps on their children, they will finally grasp that their sole purpose is to bring loved, healthy, and understood children into this world—to reseed and remake the universe, better and more holy each time; Perhaps when the wars in the names of countless Gods that look and act like those who evoke them finally end, we may realize that God is the unnamable, unobtrusive wind that caresses our cheeks, the rain that falls on us all, and the very air that enters our lungs, our blood and brains so we can name whatever God we want; Perhaps when all the textbooks and written histories and science papers cease, we’ll understand that nature, and our own natures, are the source of all knowledge, language and histories, and we’ll always be able to re-write them, re-imagine them, and re-weave them into the world; Perhaps when love has become the embers of what we hate, the residue of what we’ve destroyed, we’ll know that love is the stream that flows through each and every one of us, the water we thirst for in the deserts of our days, the ocean from which all our tears, full of salt and unmet desires, surge and flow.

LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ hat mit seinem größten Erfolg „Always Running“ zum ersten Mal meine Aufmerksamkeit geweckt. Ein gnadenloser Rückblick auf kriminelle Jahre auf der Straße. Mit „It Calls You Back“ setzte er diese Geschichte fort. Weitere Titel sind u.a. „The Republic of East LA“ und „The Concrete River“.

Mehr über Luis, sowie seine Stories und Gedichte: www.luisjrodriguez.com

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HAUNTED AVENUE

by Rudolph Grey IN THE IRON-BLASTED AIR SLOW WAVES - DISTANT VOICES FADED TRANSMISSION FROM MARS, FROM VENUS WE KNOW THEY'RE HERE THE SPACE PEOPLE "DON'T KILL THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG NO, DON'T DO THAT" FADED TRANSMISSION MORE TWISTED TAPES MASTERWORKS THROWN IN THE GARBAGE IN DUMPSTERS IN DUSTY VAULTS MASTERWORKS UNSEEN NOT EVEN FORGOTTEN BUT NEVER KNOWN TOUGH LUCK IN THE TIME TRAP -DON'T GO THROUGH THAT SCREEN! DON'T DIVE OUT THAT WINDOW TUNE IN - TUNE OUT YOU WATCH THE MOVIES THE MASTERWORKS NEVER MADE NO CITATIONS, NO MEDALS OF HONOR ON A WAVE OF BROKEN LIGHT BEYOND TIME, BEYOND SPACE IN DIMENSION X IN THE SANTA MONICA STUDIO IN THE BURNED OUT LOT IN THE ASHES CERAMIC SKULLS PLASTIC PHILODENDRONS MELT BLACK-GREEN MINISKIRTS GO UP IN FLAMES

A LINCOLN COFFIN PINK NEGLIGEES A YELLOW NOTE PAD CRUMBLING RUBBER OCTOPUS THE SACRED GORILLAS FADED MASTERWORKS FADED FACES IN THE BURNED-OUT LOT BUBBLING FRAMES, NEGATIVES SMOKE AND SKULLS A STATUE OF CHRIST A MARBLE CHINESE DOG THE SPIRIT-GOD REVOLVES AROUND THE RED ROOM WITH THE GHOSTS OF GO-GO GIRLS 23 "PULL THE STRINGS!"

INSATIABLE (from Ed Wood's 1973 short story)

by Rudolph Grey HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE SHIRLEY PLAYED HER FIDDLE HER MIRROR TOLD HER SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL SHE LIKED WHAT SHE SAW AND SHE WAS INSATIABLE HE TAUGHT HER TO BE INSATIABLE TAKE THE HEAT LET LOOSE THAT FIRE GASP THE TABLE SHE THOUGHT THE TABLE WAS SHAKING MAYBE IT WAS SHE DIDN'T GIVE ONE DAMN HER HANDS TREMBLED SHE DIDN'T DARE PICK UP THE MARTINI GLASS SHE KNEW SHE'D SPILL IT SWEAT WET RIVERS NYLONS FLUFFY BLACK GARTER BELT LONG NYLON HOSE SOGGY NYLON HOSE

THEY DIDN'T GIVE A GODDAMN IF SHE GOT HER JOLLIES OR NOT AND WHERE IN HELL WAS JIM? WHAT WAS HE DOING? AT THAT VERY MOMENT? HE WAS OUT THERE AND SHE WAS RIGHT THERE IN THE ROOM SHE HAD TO GET OUT OF THAT ROOM HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE SHIRLEY PLAYED HER FIDDLE INSATIABLE

RUDOLPH GREY ist der Biograf des Trashfilmers Edward D. Wood Jr., dem die Rogue Nation die sechste Ausgabe widmete.

Rudolph veröffentliche in dieser Ausgabe einen Essay und ein Gedicht. Rudolphs Buch „Ed Wood: Nightmare of Ecstasy“ erschien in deutscher Sprache 1995 im Heyne Verlag und ist leider nur noch antiquarisch erhältlich.

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ROGUE BOGUES Er hat vielleicht mehr Bücher geschrieben, als manch anderer gelesen hat.

Connelly gehört zu jenen Autoren, die sich schon seit Jahren mit ihrer Schreibe eine goldene Nase verdienen, aber das hat er sich auch verdient.

Seine Bücher strotzen vor Kraft und hoher Erzählkunst. In „Black Box“ holt er seinen Lieblingsermittler Harry Bosch wieder aus der Versenkung, um ihn ins totale Chaos der Rassenunruhen in L.A. im Jahr ´92 zu schleudern. Ein Mordfall voller Tücken und doppelten Böden. Connelly in Höchstform. Er gehört ganz zurecht zur Elite amerikanischer HardBoiled-Crime Autoren.

Michael Connelly, Black Box / Droemer Verlag, 448 Seiten, ISBN 978-3426199909, 19,99 Euro

Auch wenn ich mit einer gewissen Skepsis an dieses Buch herangegangen bin, klang die Story doch so interessant, dass ich es versuchen musste.

Katja Eichinger hat als Journalistin schon viel in ihrem Leben geschrieben, aber kann sie auch einen spannenden Roman schreiben? Ja, das kann sie. Mit ihrem Solo hat sie mich mehr als überzeugt. Ein Debüt, dass Hochachtung verdient. Es schreit, es schlägt, es ist voller Energie. Dieses Buch müsst ihr lesen, es kann verregnete Sommertage retten! Chapeau, Katja! Großartiger L.A. Roman!

Katja Eichinger, Amerikanisches Solo / Metrolit Verlag, 256 Seiten, ISBN 978-3849303365 , 19,90 Euro

Eines der ganz besonderen Fundstücke des Frühjahres! Als hätten Quentin Tarantino und Bud Spencer ein Kind gezeugt, es Percival getauft und ihm den Auftrag gegeben einen schrägen Western zu schreiben, der einfach auf jeder Seite zündet, wie eine Rakete in der Silvesternacht. Das Ergebnis ist God‘s Country. Ja, und der Herrgott wäre erfreut. Ein Western mit gelungenen Dialogen, einer Story, die nie langweilig wird und Protagonisten, die einem sofort ans Herz wachsen.

Scharf geschossen, gut gezielt. Besondere Kaufempfehlung!

Percival Everett, God‘s Country / Edition Büchergilde, 260 Seiten, ISBN 978-3864060359, 22,95 Euro

Ein schauriger Mordfall, ein Privatdetektiv, eine brennende Bibliothek und Schnee im Sommer an der Adriaküste. Nikolaidis, von dem ich vorher noch nie was gehört habe hat einen Kurzroman geschrieben, der sich fast jedem spannenden Thema widmet. Ein historischer Thriller, ein klassischer Noir mit Pulpeinschlägen, ja sogar ein Mystery-Abenteuer.

Frage ist, ob er das ganze Durcheinander auch unter einen Hut bekommt.

Ihr könnt gespannt sein. Das Buch verspricht viel, unter anderem eine Ankunft. Wer kommt? Was wird? Soviel ist zu verraten: diese 140 Seiten haben es mal so richtig in sich. Absoluter Geheimtipp!

26 Andrej Nikolaidis, Die Ankunft / Voland & Quist, 144 Seiten, ISBN 978-3863910662, 16,90 Euro

Erinnert doch ein wenig an den Autoren Chuck Palahniuk. Aber eingefleischte George Saunders Fans werden sich wahrscheinlich überhaupt keinen Vergleich gefallen lassen. Man liebt ihn oder hasst ihn oder man liest sich seine Stories durch und fragt sich, ob da irgendjemand 20 Tassen Kaffee in einer Viertelstunde konsumiert hat.

Voller Melancholie und Polemik schafft Saunders in seinen Geschichten eine ganz andere Welt, die uns aber dennoch so vertraut erscheint. Ein präzisier Erzählstil, der mitreißt und verblüfft. Das 10-Punkte Programm zur Erlösung. Schöner sind nur tätowierte Schmetterlinge!

George Saunders, Zehnter Dezember / Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 272 Seiten, ISBN 978-3630874272, 19,99 Euro

Es ist definitiv einer der kuriosesten literarischen Trips des Frühjahrs, aber egal was da noch an schrägen Geschichten kommen mag, Wongs Zombie-Spinnen werden eines meiner persönlichen Pulp- Highlights des Jahres bleiben. Ganz sicher. Schon der Klappentext verrät, die Protagonisten John und David wohnen am Arsch der Hölle und ich sehe gerade den Belzebub, wie er am Kamin sitzt und sich beim Lesen vor Staunen nicht mehr einkriegt. Also, lest es selbst und erzählt es weiter!

David Wong, Das infernalische Zombie-Spinnen Massaker / Metrolit Verlag, 416 Seiten, ISBN 978-3849300760, 18,00 Euro

Und wieder ist Parker unterwegs und muss sich mit leichten Mädels und harten Jungs rumärgern. Nachdem der Eichborn Verlag auch schon Richard Starks (alias Donald Westlake) „The Hunter“ als deutsche Graphic Novel herausgebracht hat, ist nun das Syndikat dran. Cooke ist wieder als Zeichner an Bord und liefert einen weiteren hochwertigen Noir-Comic in der Parker-Reihe. Man wartet gespannt auf die deutschen Graphic Novels von „Slayground“ und „The Score“. Einfach genial!

Darwyn Cooke, Parker – Das Syndikat / Eichborn Verlag, 160 Seiten, ISBN 978-3847905622, 19,99 Euro

Zum Schluss noch etwas aus der realen Welt. Schon Stefan Schuberts (einst Polizist und Hooligan) Buch über die Hells Angels gab einen sehr guten Einblick in die kriminellen Machenschaften einer gut organisierten Gang. Mit „Gangland Deutschland“ möchte ich euch ein ähnliches Sachbuch ans Herz legen, dass aufzeigt, wie sehr Teile des Landes unter dem Einfluss von Gangs zu leiden haben. Ohne zu übertreiben liefert Schubert ein eindringliches Protokoll über den fortwährenden Krieg zwischen Staat und Gangstern.

Stefan Schubert, Gangland Deutschland / Riva Verlag, 240 Seiten, ISBN 978-3868833263, 19,99 Euro

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