u/submarining

i felt weir was extremely successful in making what happened far less important than that it happened. beautiful depiction of the sublime, from the minute miranda unhooks the gate and a fleet of parakeets take flight; the looming rock cut against lizards and bugs, people, horses with bits; sufficiently removed from the confines of proper society for a gentleman to share his coachman's beer, for young women to remove not only their gloves but their shoes and stockings too. surveillance and social oppression was, for me, the strongest thematic — and how this dissolves upon contact with the sublime. the gardener, saying some plants move: why expect, of people, roots and rigid stems? always, the assumption is that something happened to the girls and women

lends itself to myriad interpretations — i am curious about what stood out to others

the blurb describes sallis as 'an unsung genius of crime writing' — being wholly unfamiliar with the genre, the most i can say is i felt sallis achieved what he wanted to. like the perpetually-drunk detective lew griffin, the long-legged fly is bleak, dirty, upsetting; but shot through with a strong sense of obligation towards people and their innate right to, if not a better life, then at least a little bit of peace. (se7en as a natural frame of reference: 'Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.')

not a detective story, but a story about a detective — griffin's life unfolds in four parts, piecemeal, through four missing-persons cases he is implored to investigate. the novel is 190 pages long and spans almost three decades. each part comprises a series of vignettes, with hours or weeks between them. i found this format highly effective, immersive: griffin himself is prone to wandering, forgetting, institutionalisation. big questions go unanswered in the book, as in all the characters' lives; relationships and their outcomes remain murky. sallis has a great sense of what to elide. i liked seeing lew change while new orleans, a character of its own, stays the same senseless cesspool.

my highlight: lew's brief but deep foray into domestic bliss. he loves and loses. i dreaded a backslide into rage and alcoholism that never came — lew, against expectations, changes for the better. sallis sets all this up beautifully, with a surprisingly delicate hand. the prose matures with lew; i quite liked, towards the end, 'she followed the laws of perspective down an embarkation tunnel.'

virtues extolled, the buy-in was steep: it was not until well into part one, at least 40 or so pages, that i began to enjoy myself. the prose often feels comically self-serious here —

>He was wearing a corduroy coat over a denim shirt, chinos bagged out at knee and butt, pant legs out too long, cuffs frayed. They'd all seen better days, clothes and man alike. Harry had always been a sharp dresser, people said; they even used the word natty. But now skag and his own errant heart had got him.
"Carl?" His voice was an emphysematous whisper.

— and a recurring issue is sallis' clumsy handling of a black narrator. i am not ideologically opposed to a white author writing from a non-white perspective, but ending a morose chapter with "The night was black like me." is a choice way to do it.

the long-legged fly is peppered with authorly fumbles, but lew griffin's world is truly compelling once it falls into place — indubitably aided by this being an easy breezy two-day read. if in search of missteps to ridicule, the cornucopia overflows, but what sallis gets right is good enough to stick.

Saw someone carrying a tote bag with this logo stitched on, and I’m wondering what it is. It looks almost exactly like :=> but the arrow is larger with a more obtuse inner angle