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Michael Sedano

Abraham Rodriguez.
NY: Akashic Books, 2008.
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-56-9

What do you do when a barefoot woman in a wet minidress sneaks up the fire escape? If you’re a male writer with writer’s block, you start writing inspired prose. If you’re a male painter with painter’s block, you start painting superb new work. If you’re a burned-out ladies man and you wake up with that woman naked in your bed, you wonder if she’s an alcohol-induced hallucination, roll over and go back to sleep.

Until you wake up and she’s still there, her minidress drip-drying in the shower, and you still can’t remember where she came from.

That’s the basic set-up and some of the outcome of Abraham Rodriguez’ unlikely detective story, South by South Bronx. The woman is real. She’s fled a mysteriously powerful operative-- maybe he’s CIA? At any rate, he’s a killer who’s just slaughtered the woman’s lover and wants to capture millions of dollars the dead lover consigned to the woman. That the killer planted the woman in the lover’s business only to have the woman double cross the killer instead, adds exciting complication to the story of the artists helping this lady in distress.

Add into this mix of characters a disaffected cop, good friends with the dead guy, the dead guy’s brother, and their crime family, and Serpico-like alienated from other cops. When the powerful killer drafts the detective to track down the woman and the money, you have a convoluted and parallel chase, one that couples a reader to another question--with an easy answer: what do you do when a great new noir mystery novel falls into your hands?

Read it voraciously. Turn every page anxious to learn the next complication and plot twist. Odd stuff. Humor. Paranoia. A great "summer read" any time of the year.

Although presented as a sex object to open the story, this woman’s no fool. There’s that pistol in her purse, for example. She’s fully aware of the killer’s power and manages to play the artists against the killer against the cop. The cop, meanwhile, distrusts his own motives only a little less than he mistrusts the powerful outsider’s motives. Moreover, the cop is busy playing his own game against the killer, against his dead friend’s family, and is after the money for himself. Or is he? Much of the pleasure of noir fiction comes from conflicting expectations like those played out here, and the fact something is happening every minute to keep the story advancing.

If you, as am I, are not a New Yorker and don’t know what “Bronx” refers to, Rodriguez does the favor of drawing out the exposition with language, characterization and setting. In West Coast terms, this part of New York City is what East L.A. is to El Lay. Except substitute Puerto Ricans for Chicanos, and give characters public transportation instead of cars. And fire escapes.

Rodriguez provides ample local color to make the novel a treat for the ears as well as the imagination. Rodriguez constructs a grammatical style built on sentence fragments and mid-thought irruptions that suggest the jumpiness of various characters’ moods and intentions. The author peppers the earlier pages that way, then as the story matures, uses the style sparingly for good effect. More obvious is his typographical convention, a serif font for the story of the woman and the artists, a sans serif for the detective’s side of the chase. Rodriguez trusts his characters and uses “he said, she said” tags sparingly, interchanging conversation to narration, from third to first person, keeping the reader oriented and on edge. It all works to propel the story to a satisfyingly tidy finish. It’s a good mystery, so enough said.

Publisher Akashic Books opened the 2008 book with an April through May splash, so hopefully your local bookstore has copies in hand for you. Visit the publisher’s webpage for purchase information if your local independent bookseller somehow is out of the loop or uninterested in your money. I like how Akashic defines itself on its webpage, “reverse-gentrification of the literary world.” Abraham Rodriguez’ third novel certainly offers proof of the sincerity of Akashic’s claim.


Note. A couple weeks ago, I reviewed Roberto Bolaños' The Savage Detectives. Several writers expressed perplexity that I seem not to have revered the writer his due. Asi son las cosas, but maybe I'm the only one impatient with the late writer's work. For instance, I came across the following in an email from Media Bistro:

MONDAY JUN 09, 2008
OMG, I Forgot to Write a "Hot Galleys of BookExpo" Post!
I knew there was something I forgot to include in last week's BookExpo America coverage...

So, yeah, everybody wanted to get their hands on FSG's thick galleys for 2666, the posthumous novel from Roberto Bolaño—in fact, I heard rumors that every single mockup of the three-volume slipcase edition of the 900-page novel that went on display in the FSG booth was swiped by eager readers (who would eventually discover that their ill-gotten gains were filled with blank pages).


Nine hundred pages, three volumes? Uau, talk about magnum opus. At any rate, here we are, the second Tuesday of June 2008. Until next Tuesday, thanks for visiting La Bloga.

ate,
mvs

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ANOTHER YEAR OF WAR

I'm an American boy
raised on promises ...*

The eternal war based on a lie continues. Five years and counting. We round off the carnage to make it somehow more easy to take. Four thousand dead American soldiers. Ninety thousand dead civilians. More than a million Iraqi deaths caused by the American invasion. Every month, according to some estimates, more than twelve billion dollars are wrenched from us to pay for the demolition of the Iraqi country and people. At current rates, the Iraq War adds $120 billion a year to the national debt. Somehow, the War in Afghanistan is forgotten.

To "celebrate" the ongoing war, the President repeats what war mongers have always said about war: "The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary, and it is just. And with your courage the battle in Iraq will end in victory." His audience was made up of Pentagon brass, soldiers and diplomats. They applauded the hollow words.

But the war is no longer the politicians' topic of choice. It's the economy, stupid. And, surprise, surprise, race is a hot button when a black man runs for office. Or we are urged to ponder who we want to answer the White House phone at 3:00 a.m. How does one prepare to answer a call that could lead to Armageddon? I don't think speeches and banquets and meetings and focus groups and polls provide the training for such a call, but what do I know.

The Iraq War rumbles in the distance, occasionally making us raise our heads, curse under our breaths, spit in disgust. Our country appears willing to challenge history in the upcoming election, and even long time cynics are buoyed by the significance of this challenge, yet we cannot escape the black hole of shame created by the war President and his henchmen. They refuse to acknowledge their mistakes and they lack the courage to correct their decision, to take a stand for peace and, therefore, any grace from the historic election will slip away on an oily stream of blood. The country reaches out for a shining moment, offered for nothing more than ignoring a candidate's race or gender, for only accepting Jefferson's simple words that we all are created equal. But even that basic, tardy gesture will shrivel in the glare of the truth about this war and the motivation for it. Five years and counting.

*apologies to Tom Petty

BRONX BY SOUTH BRONX
Abraham Rodriguez
Akashic Books (April 2008)

Akashic sent La Bloga the following announcement about Rodriguez's much-anticipated new novel:

"When Puerto Rican ladies' man Alex awakes one morning to find a mysterious woman in his bed, he assumes he's suffered another embarrassing blackout. He soon learns, however, that Ava is no one-night stand -- in fact, he's never met her before. As her story unfolds, and her reason for appearing in his bed emerges, it is not just Alex's life that she risks, nor her own, but the entire character of the South Bronx."

Abraham Rodriguez was born and raised in the South Bronx. His first book, Boy Without a Flag (Milkweed, 1993), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Spidertown (Penguin, 1994) won a 1995 American Book Award and was optioned by Columbia Pictures. The Buddha Book was published in 2001 (Picador). He currently lives in Berlin, Germany. Rodriguez's national book tour to promote Bronx by South Bronx begins April 19 in Olympia, Washington, at the Olympia Timberland Library, and ends May 7 in the Bronx, Longwood Gallery (Bronx Council of the Arts). More info on the website.


LIL' SILENT
Houses on the Moon Theater Company and the National Lawyers Guild present De Novo Part 1: Lil' Silent, a new documentary play that tells the stories of undocumented youth in U.S. immigration custody. April 2, 6:30 p.m. CU Law School, Wittemyer Courtroom, Boulder, Colorado.

In 2002, a fourteen-year-old boy named Edgar Chocoy fled his barrio in Guatemala City, when MS-13, the largest gang in Central America, put a hit on his life. He traveled over 3,000 miles through the desert and across the borders of three countries in search for his mother, who had left him at the age of six months to work in the United States. Detained by the Department of Homeland Security in Alamosa, Colorado, Edgar, whose nickname was Lil' Silent because of his timid demeanor, spoke clearly and loudly about his fear of being deported: "I'm afraid to go back. They'll kill me." A pro bono immigration lawyer helped Edgar argue his asylum case in front of a federal judge in Denver but the judge was not persuaded and ordered Edgar to be returned to his country. He was murdered seventeen days later. In De Novo, Part 1: Lil' Silent, Houses on the Moon Theater Company chronicles the true story of Edgar and other undocumented youth, many thousands of whom make the harrowing journey across the border and through the U.S. system of justice each year. Admission is free. Reserve your seat at [email protected].

FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING
Acentos, the Bronx Poetry Showcase, announced a Fifth Anniversary Celebration, March 25, 7:00 p.m., at the The Bruckner Bar and Grill, One Bruckner Boulevard (corner of Third Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard), Bronx, NY. Here's the rap:

"Acentos' Fifth Anniversary show is happening this coming Tuesday, March 25th. If past history is any indicator, the craziness will ensue very early, and you should get there early too.

"Our featured poet for the evening is none other than the director of NYU's Spanish-language writing program, Lila Zemborain... and she has a fantastic, brandspankingnew book that will be available for sale that night.

"Familia, if you've been a part of this series in the last five years, you know what shenanigans we have in store for Year Six. We are moving ever forward in our mission to shine the spotlight on Latinos and Latinas in American poetry, and as always, there are big plans simmering on all four burners. Come help us
celebrate, reminisce, plan, and throw down the fiesta as only the Acentos crew can! The open mic signup is promptly at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30 SHARP, y'all...."

Later.

By Kirsty OUP-UK

It has recently been a time of great political change in my native Scotland. For the first time since power was devolved from the central UK government in Westminster to the new Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in 1999, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has taken over power from the Labour Party. In the news this week is the White Paper introduced by the SNP in a bid to call for a referendum on whether Scotland should break away from the United Kingdom and become an independent nation. With so many eyes on Scotland this week, I thought it would be a fitting time to bring you this excerpt from our book Scotland: A History, edited by Jenny Wormald. From an essay by Richard Finlay called ‘The Turbulent Century: Scotland Since 1900′, here is the passage discussing Scotland from 1979 until 1999, when the Scottish Parliament came into being again for the first time since the Act of Union in 1707.

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