REVIEW
Kinky Friedman
God Bless John Wayne
Faber (0571 17732 8)£8.99 paperback
I think we can take it as read that Country and Western is the most simplistic and syrupy kind of music to come out of America. Hence the joke - Question: If you dropped a steel guitar and a mandolin from the top of the Empire State Building which would reach the ground first ? Answer: Who Cares?
And yet Kinky Friedman actually plays that stuff. But he plays it ironically and has given us one of the three best song titles of all time:
" They ain't making Jews like Jesus anymore" , " Get out of the coal hole grandma (there's plenty of slack in yer drawers)" and "The day it was raining virgins I was locked in the dunnee with a puff".
So now the Kinkstah is back again as Ironic Private Investigator. Within a couple of pages he has the reader embroiled in a mystery. It's the mystery that confronts every reader of the ten minute egg school of writing. Just how do these private dicks make a living? There's hardly a fictional `tec worth his salt who makes a red cent from any case he takes on and Kinky Friedman is no exception. Not that Kinky Friedman is actually fictional. No, he really exists. Well, he'd have to wouldn't he, otherwise I'd be reviewing blank pages wouldn't I? But I suspect he doesn't get up to the escapades he writes about. If he did his books would be non fiction. I'm glad we sorted that one out. So, anyroad, I'm always asking myself - where did he get the money to buy all those cigars? How does he manage to pay his rent? Those kinds of questions.
REVIEW
Kinky Friedman
Armadillos and Old Lace
Faber (0571 17462 0) £5.99 paperback
In Armadillos and Old Lace Kinky, in wistful mood, sojourns on his father's ranch in Texas and gets involved, for no fee, in a serial killer's romp through the little old ladies of the Lone Star State. In God Bless John Wayne he takes on the case, for no fee, of the search for the mother of his pal Ratso. You see a pattern emerging? Why, oh why, oh why can't Mr Friedman come clean and admit that he makes a very good living from his made up stories involving real and made up characters? If an Agatha Christie novel is a plot in search of real characters, then Friedman's books are wisecracks in search of justification. Of the two approaches I much prefer the latter, although it can lead to some rather weak narrative progressions. My interest in what happens next was not terribly high and there are few surprises thrown in to keep the reader on his toes. Most of the twists in the plot are opportunities for one liners, to which one's eye is inexorably drawn ahead of the preceding build up.
That's Kinky's way.
What you do get, apart from the wisecracks, is a concern for suffering humanity that raises the stories above the commonplace. We learn about the author's preoccupations and find out that, beneath his brash exterior, Kinky is an educated and sensitive soul. He ruminates in God Bless John Wayne;
"In my more reflective moments, I had to admit that I was often rather hard on people, particularly those I liked to think of as my friends. Don't get me wrong. I was capable of kindness and acts of generosity toward others; it was just that something inside of me always balked at thinking of myself in that way. What the hell, I thought. We are what we are if we're anything at all."
Wise words. Kinky is a sardonic gangster because that is his nature. But, despite appearances, he's a giver in a taker's body.
Ant the wisecracks? As in all such cases, some are crass but more are excellent. Even the not so good ones are better than you'll find in most other books in this genre. I'm sure he's made his old group The Texas Jewboys very happy. I couldn't recommend one book over the other, but don't try Armadillos and Old Lace in this paperback edition if you're the slightest bit myopic. It has the tiniest print you'll find outside an Everyman reprint of the classics for Lilliputians. (JRC)