New Yorker 2011So, we’re a month into 2012. How’s it going? Off the junk food yet? On the treadmill? Jumping on and off the scale like it’s burning your feet? I hear those growns— I mean, groans. I’m with you.  It’s SO HARD. As Oscar Wilde quipped: I can resist everything except temptation. 

When everyone in your house gets cozy on the couch to watch the game with peanut M & M’s and pretzels, it’s painful.  But when they entice you— “Come sit down! Have some cheese and crackers!” that’s diabolical.

Because, probably like me, you’re tempted: “Maybe… just one?” Right. One leads to two leads to the whole bag. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. William Blake 

Whether we’re breaking a bad habit, or building a good one, it’s human nature to resist change. Change is anxiety provoking. And if the change is “good for you”? Health food makes me sick. Calvin Trillin 

When I manage, from the darkest depths of Mordor, to retch a “No thanks!” I amaze myself.  Proudly, I wait for an admiring look from Hubby. Maybe I’ll even get a “Good for you!” Instead, I get a snort, a dirty look and a muttered, “Buzz kill.” 

Devastating. How to choose? It’s a lose-lose. Either we support our health, and lose our mate(s). Or, we lose our health, and support our partner(s) in crime. Now you know why people keep drinking and drugging.

It’s a two way street though: Just as our loved ones affect us, so we affect them. When we jump up and down on our shared social web, “Hey! I dieting! I’m exercising! Why don’t you?!” the resulting wave throws them off balance. They don’t like that. 

Let’s get real. We’re surrounded by friendly enemies.

"I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong." Donald E. Westlake 1933-2008Yesterday, while doing time in the seasonally long checkout line at the supermarket, Christmas muzak forced itself in my ears: It’s the MOST wonderFUL TIME of the YEAR….  Ha. More like, over-rated. No, over-advertised.  

What’s a synonym for advertise?  Hypnotize. Via TV, radio, facebook, google, twitter, tablets, phones, you name it, vendors use it to do it. From Black Friday through New Year’s Eve, everywhere you go, eddying masses of shopping-bag-encrusted people with glazed eyes at half-mast get in the way. Especially in parking lots. Oh joy.

From behind me in the queue, a woman’s voice broke up these festive thoughts, “Did you get the croutons?”

A second female voice answered, “Capons? I thought we were going with turkey. Do they even carry capons here? Awfully fancy.”

The first voice said, impatiently, “Croutons!”

The second, “Coupons?”

The soundtrack changed to Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose, and if you ever saw it and I was at the OJ Bar & Grill, standing at the bar with Dortmunder, my favorite thief, waiting for Rollo, the meaty, blue-jawed bartender to notice us. Meanwhile, the regulars at the bar talked amongst themselves. Oh joy!

Overhearing the regulars at the OJ is the best of all possible interludes in this best of all possible worlds: a Dortmunder caper by Donald Westlake. (Also in this, the real world.)

As you know, Westlake is my favorite author.  The reasons are many, and here’s another. In every stream of action there are lulls, during which people around us talk, and who listens? Westlake. Master alchemist, he takes this dross and makes comedic gold.

At some point in every Dortmunder caper— Oh, when? The anticipation!— the gang meets in the back room of the OJ. Which means passing by the bar where the regulars take sloshy slugs at life’s pressing conundrums. And miss.

Let's listen. We gotta wait for Rollo anyway.

When Dortmunder walked into the O.J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at four minutes before six that evening, Rollo, the bulky, balding bartender, was painting MERY XM on the extremely dusty mirror over the back bar, using some kind of white foam from a spray can, possibly shaving cream, while the regulars, clustered at one end of the bar, were discussing the names of Santa’s reindeer. “I know it starts,” the first regular said, “’Now, Flasher, now Lancer, now—‘”

“Now, now, wait a second,” the second regular said.  “One of those is wrong.”

For Terry

I call my mom, aged 86, every week to ten days. I know I should call more, but that’s all I can stand. 

First Week June: Let The Games Begin

“Hi Mom. How are you?”

She carps, “Baby Sis still hasn’t printed out your blogs for me to read. I don’t know what her problem is.” 

Baby Sis works a sixty+ hour week as a high-powered criminal defense attorney for the feds, and puts in another forty between home and parenting two young children with her equally busy architect hubby.  Maybe she sleeps. She and Mom live in the same megatropolis.

“A blog is an online magazine, Mom. I’ll be glad to send you the pieces I’ve published to mine.”

“I know what a blog is! No, don’t bother. Baby Sis will do it.” 

Mom doesn’t “need” a computer, e-mail or the Internet. Her time is too valuable to waste on learning such nonsense. Besides, she knows everything already. 

I print off and mail Mom the year’s collection of posts.

***

And now a word from our sponsor!

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***

Back to the arena, where Mature D is interviewing Little D. 

Mature D:  So little girl, you threw down the gauntlet! Will Mom dish up some approval, do you think? 

Little D: I hope so!

Mature D: Knowing Mom, not likely.

Little D: Really?

Donald Westlake (1933 - 2008)

“And what are you reading, Miss ---?” “Oh, it is only a novel! replies the young lady: while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.  It is only… some work in which the most thorough of knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.” Jane Austen 

Born the year prohibition was repealed, Westlake’s writing career took off in 1962 with the publication of The Hunter, (written as Richard Stark), the first Parker novel, a ground-breaking noir masterpiece, and didn’t slacken till he had the nerve to die in 2008 with close to a hundred books behind him and some still in the oven. 

No more Westlakes. It’s cause for wailing, gnashing of teeth, and obsessive hunting in used bookstores for out of print books. 

Westlake wrote quirky, smart stories about quirky, smart people living full lives outside the law. Sure, they go down quick and easy as escapist trash. But to think they are trash would be a mistake, like falling for Columbo’s dull bulb act.  Single-handed creator of the comedic caper and noir crime fiction, Westlake is THE Grand Master. 

You can read him for belly laughs. (And you should. There is nobody funnier than Westlake.) You can read him for the worldly vitamins and knowing minerals missing from your diet. You can read him to figure out how he does his magic. However you read him, his writing is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Here is the first sentence from Watch Your Back!, the thirteenth novel in the Dortmunder series: 

When John Dortmunder, a free man, not even on parole, walked into the O. J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue that Friday night, the regulars were discussing the afterlife.

Already I’m laughing.

This is a guest post from author Elle Garrell Berger. Enjoy!

* * * * *

I am much too busy.  And I'm not alone.  Today, the traditional greeting "How are you?" prompts an unsettling, new response. 

Gone is the old standby, "Oh, just fine" and the somewhat more honest, "Mmm, things could be better."  Even the grammatically questionable, "Real good," seems to have given way.  Our new answer follows a deep intake of breath, audibly exhaled, and dramatized by a roll of the eyes: "Busy."

Bucolic. Zen flow. At peace with the world. That’s how this city girl felt last Friday twilight strolling to pick raspberries at Essex Farm, the thriving CSA farm we belong to. From the pavilion where members pick up the week’s veggies, dairy, eggs and such, it’s under a mile to the raspberry field. A pleasant walk over cover-crop grasses, clumpy clods of dirt and small sinks of squelchy mud.  

I pass row after row of blue-green and purple-red cabbage, ferny-topped carrots and red-green-leafed beets, stands of dark green broccoli, forests of feathery asparagus and rustling corn. The two straight raspberry rows stretch south forever before t-boning on Rural Route 22. A few action-figure-sized members hunch over the bushes down there, cars parked by the side of the road. By walking through the fields, I have the north end to myself.

I sweat and squat, plucking ripe berries exposed between leaves and hiding under them, a treasure hunt that stains my fingers deep red. I pop them into my mouth and drop them into a quart cardboard box, into my mouth, into the box, a lovely rhythm.

In the humid air, the sounds of Indian summer swell and fall, fortissimo and pianissimo. Cattle low unseen from a field far away behind a scrim of trees, crickets saw, bees airplane-buzz, and mosquitoes screech and howl as they dive-bomb me from all directions. They are so aggressive, and my swats so frantic, I slap the glasses off my nose.

But nothing can stop me— I am consumed by pick-your-own lust.