#667 The Archer- Robert Stone

#667 The Archer- Robert Stone

This is like a Hunter S. Thompson story, but without the humor and with a lot of anger. Duffy is an art teacher who has a small mythology around campus. It is rumored that he once threatened to kill his wife and her lover with a crossbow that he pointed out them while wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and a tweed hat. He didn’t kill them, or lose his job, but he lost his wife and his house.

Now he was on the college lecture circuit. Most of the story revolves around one of these college trips to Pahoochee Sate University. He gets drunk, belligerent, arrested and can’t leave town until his case is cleared. I can believe that this guy—an asshole—did all that. But why do I care. There is no humor, or irony, or even a subtle wink to the reader that any of this is in good fun or for a reason—even tragic self-destruction would be fine. He’s just an asshole! The literary world is full of them—just like they are full of stories that want to sound like Hunter S. Thompson. 

I wasn’t as impressed with this collection as I wanted to be. It’s ok, maybe a 6 out of 10 compared to the other collections I’ve read for this project. It’s weird though, I’ve picked up a few collections that claim to be “raw” or “edgy” stuff, with tough-talking, hard-drinking characters, like Stone, Denis Johnson, and Craig Davidson—usually a genre I really enjoy—all three have fallen short of the mark.

Rating: 7-6-5-5 Total= 23

#547 Misprision of Felony- O’Neil De Noux

#547 Misprision of Felony- O’Neil De Noux

A murder happens in New Orleans. The owner of a corner store was shot and killed in an armed robbery. Unfortunately this has happened more now than it used to.

“Things were different now, AK—after Katrina. The hardcore criminals, who were some of the first to return, had reestablished themselves with a killing vengeance. The murder rate was back up top as new blood carved out drug territories, and the police department, as devastated as the neighborhoods, reeled in turmoil.”

Det. Savary is on the case, but is getting nowhere. He is being stonewalled by the neighborhood, meaning only one thing:

“A local boy did this, but no one was giving him up to the police. It didn’t even matter if Savary was raised three blocks away on Erato Street. The day he started the police academy was the day he’d left the neighborhood—permanently.”

With the help of his FBI friend, Savary tracks down the murderer, and it was a local criminal. Now that the murder is taken care of, he’s going after the culture of silence. Misprision of Felony goes back to English common law. It makes it illegal to knowingly conceal the details of a felony, even if you, yourself are not involved. In other words, rat or rot.

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total= 24