I know
That this world exists
That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field
That something about it is problematic
Which we call its meaning
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
I believe that a certain feeling of amazement that anything should exist at all, was sometimes experienced by Wittgenstein.
– Norman Malcolm
I told Wittgenstein he was mad and he said God preserve me from sanity.
– Bertrand Russell
YPSILANTI
Man steals, abandons car
A man abandoned the car he stole from a store parking lot in Ypsilanti when he discovered a woman sleeping in the back seat, police said.
The woman was unharmed , and police were able to identify a suspect from the store surveillance video and arrest him.
A man reported his 1992 blue Honda, which had been left running, was stolen from a store parking lot about 12:40 a.m. Thursday. He told police his girlfriend was sleeping in the back seat.
Police began looking for the car and found it parked at an apartment complex. The woman was awake inside the car and unharmed. Police believe she slept through the entire incident.
Police identified the suspect, a 42-year-old man from Ypsilanti Township, from surveillance video at the store. A store clerk later told police the suspect was back in the store. Police arrested him. He was held at the Washtenaw County jail.
Flaubert clearly saw the real, the devastating emptiness of men’s hopes and dreams and aims and plans as they so often work out. What he did not always sufficiently convey directly in the path of realistic truthfulness is a sense of the fact that people may have a very good time, may really heartily enjoy their depressingly commonplace actions, as seen from other points of view – actions undistinguished, vulgar, stupid, and in the long run utterly futile even in respect to the pitifully worthless ambitions which inspired them – actions of which the one redeeming virtue is perhaps the very fact that their futility was not realized and the enjoyment of them thus made possible.
— John Garber Palache
Print the Legend, Craig McDonald, Minotaur Books, $24.99.
Considering that it revolves around Ernest Hemingway’s 1961 suicide by shotgun, I suppose it would be indelicate of me to say that Craig McDonald’s Print the Legend blew me away, but in the noir spirit of the book I’ll say it anyway. Most of the action takes place four years later at a 1965 academic conference about Hemingway in Idaho, close to the scene of the crime. Slimy University of Michigan professor Richard Paulson, his spunky wife Hannah, Hem’s friend and fellow manly writer Hector Lassiter and shadowy FBI agent Donovan Creedy all come together with widow Mary Hemingway and a gaggle of fatuous academics to struggle for the great man’s legacy and shed light on his death.
Everyone has their own agenda, Paulson trying to prove that Hemingway was murdered, Creedy seeking information damaging to J. Edgar Hoover, and Lassiter looking to bolster his own literary reputation as well as protecting that of his friend. Things get wild and wooly quickly, McDonald effortlessly spooning Hemingway fact and legend into a mix that includes booze, stolen and forged manuscripts, LSD, gunplay and murder – the most shocking scene of all occurring in our very own Ann Arbor after pregnant Hannah’s return.
The academic world is novel territory for noir fiction, but McDonald makes it his own with truly impressive originality and ingenuity. While not quite achieving the immersive period authenticity of Megan Abbott or the twisted, dark vision of James Ellroy, McDonald carves out his own patch of the neo-noir landscape in Print the Legend, and, like Hemingway himself, does it with breathtaking brio.
YPSILANTI
Man accused of assault
A man told police his roommate assaulted him, slashed a rear tire of his Dodge Stratus and wrote a curse word on the driver’s-side door after he lost in a video game, Ypsilanti police say.
No word on what video game was being played.
1.
I get a job as a sort of glorified file clerk in Pam’s office. Things go well at first, but then we get an attractive young intern, and she and I become friends, laughing and hanging out. I’m still totally able to fulfil my less than taxing duties, but I can tell from Pam’s frequent dagger glances that she’s not very pleased with this development, and one morning without warning or explanation I’m transferred to grounds and services, where I wind up wearing coveralls, driving a little truck and picking up recycling.
A week or so later I’m on my rounds and there’s Pam, waiting for me by the mixed paper container. She’s in tears, confessing that she engineered my transfer out of jealousy, sobbing that she’s felt sick and guilty about it ever since. I put my arm around her and tell her that I’m in the middle of my rounds, but if she’ll ride with me we can talk about it.
As we jolt along I say the truth is that I actually like my new job and the pay is better, but my only regret is that I no longer have the pleasure of seeing her every day. This calms her down and she even gives me a hand with the largely automated collection process.
The crisis seems to have finally broken through the reserve which had always inhibited the attraction between us before, and we speak frankly about how much we’ve missed each other, and even make plans to get together later off campus.
Finally I circle back to where we began and when I stop the truck we kiss and embrace feverishly, that moment marking the real beginning of our affair.
2.
We meet for the first time as putative lovers in the cliched confines of a motel room. I’m there first, and grab her the moment she comes through the door, but after a few kisses she pushes me away, saying she wants to take things slowly.
No problem
I say, opening the bottle of wine I’ve brought. We sit at the little round table, drinking out of water glasses, talking as easily as when we were just friends, but seemingly at a loss as to how to proceed as lovers.
Eventually I propose that we play a game of strip poker without the poker, each of us taking off a piece of the other’s clothing in turn. It’s both funny and very, very exciting, and by the time we’re both naked we jump eagerly into bed.
