Blood & Whiskey #29
Ben Fountain's epic, enthralling '90s Haitian saga; the most important man you've never heard of (via McKenzie Funk); new mystery from Tim Johnson. Also: Seattle’s beloved mixologist, Murray Stenson.
Hello friends and readers,
I had the chance to see two authors at my local Seattle bookshops recently: Ben Fountain (at Elliott Bay Bookstore1) and McKenzie Funk (at Third Place Books2). I mentioned both books last week, but apparently have more to say…
Ben Fountain’s previous novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, ranks among my favorites of the last decade. The new one, Devil Makes Three, is a different beast altogether — and it is a bit of a beast, weighing in at 500+ pages. At Elliott Bay, Fountain discussed his decades-long interest in Haiti, dating to the early 1990s, just after the coup that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, followed by scores of visits and one previous attempt at a Haiti novel, that ended up in a drawer. Devil Makes Three takes place just after Aristide’s been deposed. It’s a twitchy, lawless, occasionally bloody time in Haiti. We mainly follow the personal and professional ups and downs of Matt Amaker, an American whose scuba shop becomes a victim of the post-coup chaos. His partner, Alix, comes from a prominent Haitian family; Matt loves Alix’s sister, Misha, who’s home from college (Brown). CIA agent, Audrey O’Donnell, who goes by Shelly, falls for Alix, and later tries to recruit Misha. Entanglements and violence and lies and deceptions ensue. This is a book I wish I had a week on a beach to consume. There’s SO much packed in here, from vodou to treasure hunting to the age-old colonial drubbing. As one character puts it: “So many foreigners come here with big plans. They think they’re going to transform Haiti, save it … and usually end up doing more harm than good.” If you like Graham Greene, this one’s for you.
On the micro-level, the book is littered with highlightable lines, scattered like gems. Over Port-au-Prince, a dull orange haze hangs “like a fulminating cloud of Cheetos dust.” The city is a scab — “a dun-colored chancre at trhe lip of the sea.” By day: “Herons stood in the irrigation ditches, still as golfers crouching over a money putt.” By night: “Frogs and insects whirred and rattled like a symphony for kitchen implements.” And: “The waning moon had all the shine of day-old oatmeal.” In Haiti, we’re told, all conversations have “something to do with goods, profit, buying and selling, sharp deals.” As Matt and Alix and Misha and Audrey pinball off each other and the mayhem around them, we meet the buyerrs asnd sellers, both sinister and absurd… One dude’s giggle sounded “like lotion squirting out of a tube.” Another was so tightly wound, “Someone needed to slap a warning on his forehead: Contents Under Pressure.”
Ultimately, this is Fountain’s love letter to “the rot and rubble, the sheer apolalyptic grottiness of Planet Haiti.” It’s also timely, a book for now.
Another book for this endlessly strange moment in time is The Hank Show by journalist Mackenzie Funk, who explained at Third Place Book how he came to discover the man, Hank Asher, whose bizarre back story and savvy ascent to wealth and power occurred at the expense of our privacy. Asher was a house painter turned entrepreneur turned drug smuggler turned DEA informant who then stumbled his way, bizarrely, into a new career in data brokering. As Funk explains it: every tech company’s method of tracking our every move — our purchases and finances, our likes and dislikes, our homes, cars, traffic tickets, travels, social secutiry numbers, relationships, and, basically, every stupid thing we’ve ever done — can be traced back to Asher’s 1980s/90s launch of the first of many data collecting/tracking/manipulating/sharing companies. Asher made millions if not billions, and we’ve all suffered the results. Still do.
Funk calls Asher “the most important person you’ve never heard of.” He died in 2013, but Funk brings him fully to life here, a outsized human whose opening line was often, “Who the fuck are you?”
Also started reading and am really enjoying:
Distant Sons, by Tim Johnson — I loved Johnson’s previous books (Descent, The Current) and this one’s off to a great start, set in a small Wisconsin town where three boys disappeared in the 1970s and where two newcomers arrive and stir up the past and the town’s fragile peace. Johnson is a beautiful writer who understands hard-working, blue collar America.
A rec from brother-in-law: The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power and Deception on the Eve of World War I — about the life and 1913 disappearance of Rudolph Diesel, inventor of the internal compustion engine, which were used in the German submarines of the coming conflict. Diesel was headed to London to help Britain with its submarine program when he vanished. “Equal parts Walter Isaacson and Sherlock Holmes.”
Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek and Edan Lepucki’s California.3
I’ve been reading James Baldwin and John Steinbeck for a podcast project. More on that next time.
Wife’s reading: Mating, by Norman Rush; The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty
And if I had more time and fewer obligations I’d be rewading new books by Christian Kiefer, Ed Park, Tim O’Brien, Claire Keegan, Tod Goldberg, Daniel Silva, David Joy, James Ellroy, Viet Than Nguyen and James McBride.
At the risk of making the newsletter irrelevant, Time magazine published a chronological list of the "100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time." Happy to see a few faves on there, from classic faves (Raymond Chandler, Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith) to more recent faves (Walter Mosley, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Louise Penny, S.A. Cosby). Also a reminder of authors I’ve yet to read (looking at you, William Kent Krueger).
Cocktail of the Month
Sharing this beautiful ode (from whiskey guy
) to Seattle’s cocktail king, Murray Stenson, who recently died. Murray was a Seattle legend who influenced my evolution from bourbon-rocks guy to cocktail-er. I probably ordered fewer than a dozen cocktails from Murray over the years but he always remembered my name - and my drink (some version of a Manhattan).
The Berlioni (with thanks to
)Sharing this one because it’s a perfect example of an adaptable cocktail. You can swap out the Cynar (the artichoke-based Italian amaro) for other amaros or aperitifs. I tried it two ways: 1. with Seattle-made Sennza Finne’s “Autumn” amaro (from my excellent neighborhood Molly’s Bottle Shop), and 2. Meletti.
#1 was nicely bitter, great for fall; #2 was mellower. With Cynar is perfect, too.
1-1/2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce Cynar
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
Orange twist
Combine liquids in ice shaker; shake and serve straight up in a coupe glass or in a rocks glass with one large ice cube. Garnish with the twist.
That’s all folks. Till next time…
-Neal
Find me @ Instagram; sometimes Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads.
Interviewed by podcaster and the Civic Poet of Seattle, Shin Yu Pai
Interviewed by indefatigable Seattle author, journalist, teacher, etc., Kristen Millares Young
I’ll be interviewing Angie Kim and
at the Portland Book Festival on November 4: https://pdxbookfest.org/event/kim-lepucki/
I am so excited to read Devil Makes Three! Thanks for this review. Ben Fountain is not only a talented writer he is also just the loveliest person!