Day: March 13, 2017

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Two-Bear Mambo, Joe Lansdale

It would be wrong to say that I pitched a PhD topic about series just so I’d have a legitimate reason to read Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard books and call it work, but I do not know that it would be 100% inaccurate. It was cold as an Eskimo’s ass in an igloo outhouse, but it was clear and bright and the East Texas woods were dark and soothing. The pines, cold or not, held their green, except for the occasional streaks of rust-coloured needles, and the oaks, though leafless, were thick and intertwining, like the bones of some unknown species stacked into an elaborate art arrangement Joe Lansdale, The Two-Bear Mambo. It’s one thing to learn the big, macro-structures of narrative that will allow you to tell a decent story – and make no mistake, Lansdale’s got that shit down. But the thing that impresses me, over and over, is his control on the micro level, putting together