The Tree of Life by Hugh Nissenson

 This unusual short novel (159 pages) is all the journal entries from 1811-1812 of Tom Keane a white man settler in northeastern Ohio. He chronicles in brief what is going on in his community. He tells us that Ohio has been a state since 1803. That’s fine for the white people, but there are still a lot of indigenous people there, where they belong.

He makes note of his business, his trade, most of these involving things he trades the whiskey from his still for (80 proof). He also relates his sex life, when he masturbates and what he thinks about when doing so. He also uses Lattiece, a freed black woman trying to get to Canada, as a whore. She has developed a taste for whiskey and he gives her a pint now and then and “fucks” her. 

He is a bit of a drunk himself. Tom is also an artist. He draws and some of his images are included in the book. Including the cover image of one of the Indians. 

He is courting a widow who is twenty years younger than him. 

John Chapman, now known as Johnny Appleseed is a friend of Tom’s and a member of their little community. Chapman is a quirky man who prostlitzes the work of Emanuel Swedenborg. He also is vegetarian and doesn’t drink. But many of the others do. Tom tells us about drunken militiamen who slaughter the Indians. 

A war begins, The War of 1812, in which the British and the Indians are in some sort of alliance. Much of the action in the book is about the brutality on both sides. The torture and the scalpings.

The reader is left with the hardship and struggle of these new state settlers and which presents a horrifying picture of the type of people, often drunk, who killed off the indigenous “savages”, took over the land, and in a very brief time made the overpopulation country that is the USA, the horrifying global military power hungry country that it is. 

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

 The first person nature of this book makes it and destroys it.

It is a pulp fiction entertainment from 1952. A novel written to sell. 

It is sensational and lurid, no doubt just right for reading boys back in the 1950s and beyond. It is the subjective story of a serial killer, so presumably an early article of pop culture’s exploitation of and fascination with serial killers which has become big business in mainstream corporate moving picture entertainments, Netflix, etc. 

Lou, the first person narrator, is a deputy in the sheriffs department of an oil boom town in west Texas. He is the son of the town doctor who is referred to but dead for a while. Lou still lives in doc daddy’s house which has the old man’s doctor’s office attached to it. 

Since it is first person and the entire story is told from his perspective. All we know is what he is able or willing to tell us. Therefore being a psycho killer and all, he is an unreliable witness and perpetrator of events. Since he is all we have the tendency is to take his story at face value. Judging by that, the story and events don’t entirely make sense. He seems to be getting away with much more bad behavior than is actually possible in a smallish city of 48,000 people. This could be off putting to a reader who wants to trust what is being told. One might judge the novel as not so good because of that. 

Ultimately it’s not a real pleasant experience reading this book. 

Hell of a Woman is a good deal better. It is first person as well, that guy is somewhat more a victim of circumstances and easier to go inside with. Both that guy and Lou are somewhat smarter, more educated or well read than the other characters. They contain a bit of arrogance and superiority because of that. 

What does the reader expect from fiction?
Entertainment, using up boring old time?
Potentially this book provides some of that.

Insight about the human condition and how to live and grow?
Maybe the reader should look elsewhere for that.

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

 The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Directed & story by Bob Rafelson
Screenplay by Jacob Brackman

Atlantic City, NJ was a resort long past it’s most prosperous days in the early 1970s. In desperation of renewal casino gambling was legalized there in 1977, following that another sort of big buildup of new casino hotels, then Trump, then another downturn to present times.

One of the most interesting things about The King of Marvin Gardens is that it was shot in Atlantic City in 1972. That location shooting was quite extensive.

The cast is all star new Holywood of the day: Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, with young and doomed Julia Anne Robinson, who died in an apartment fire in 1975 at age 24.

  It is the story of a couple of brothers. David (Nicholson) is a wannabe novelist who is a late night Philadelphia radio storyteller, sort of like Jean Shepherd. He has a dreamer older brother Jason (Dern). Jason is the kind of guy who is always looking for a big score. He thinks he’s a potential big business man, but actually is a small-time, petty operator with low level organized crime connections.
So Jason summons David to AC to get in on the big deal he has going on. He thinks he is going to buy an island in Hawaii and build a resort there.
He is living with two women. 40 year old Sally (Burstyn) and the younger Jessica (Robinson).
  Through the course of the story they run around and play in the off season AC while Jason tries to put together the big deal.

  The movie is mostly character study with fine performances and a lot of good old American hopefulness and dreaming in the dark.

  This is a classic New Hollywood movie, post Easy Rider. Actually it has a good deal in common with Easy Rider; a couple of young men trying to get out of the rat race by winning grandly at the American Dream. These guys don’t make out a lot better than the biker guys in Easy Rider do, but their characters are much more developed which makes it a more interesting movie to watch than Easy Rider and without all the counterculture youth music exploitation.