New classics: 99 MILES FROM L.A. (P. David Ebersole), BOUNDLESS AS THE SKY (Dawn Raffel), ROCKED IN TIME: Confessions of a Radical Theater Artist (Charles Degelman)

Classics have an impact on new books, whether intentional or not, and it is fun to read surprising twists on older literary forms. The James A. Cain classic crime novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, is certainly an ancestor of P. David Ebersole’s inventive and darkly hilarious crime novel, 99 MILES FROM L.A. (Pelekinesis).

The action of this book takes place in L.A. and Palm Springs. The title’s an allusion to the role of Palm Springs in the heyday of big studios and stars under contract. Contract players were required to go no further than 100 miles away from L.A. (theoretically they might be needed on a set) so they fled to Palm Springs to avoid studio scrutiny. A destination for anonymity and forbidden love, bungalows and “love nests” flourished along with a population to serve them. Impoverished Mexicans crossed the porous border to work and return with cash and goods. That historic comes alive in this hard-boiled crime story. 

Elegantly written, 99 MILES FROM L.A.’s erotic energy is emotionally real and a send-up of romantic cliches, which the narrators ironically acknowledge, especially the “hero,” a sweet crooner of Johnny Mathis. Unlike Postman, the eroticism is bisexual and begins at a bar, not a diner. Both novels feature a plot against a rich husband by a miserable wife, but Ebersole’s characters are contradictory. The trophy wife is “too clever by half,”the romantic crooner a disillusioned music professor, the quietly charismatic Mexican bartender speaks no English. And the family business isn’t a restaurant but the drug trade.

The group’s plan is complicated by motives conscious-unconscious; behavior tender-inhuman, obtuse-obvious, silly-horrifying. The story told by a trio of unreliable narrators, has a Rashomon effect adding to the stakes. What happens is shocking, unexpected and entirely right. I can’t wait for the movie.

Dawn Raffel’s BOUNDLESS SKY (Sagging Miniscus Press) opens with a quote from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities–”If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop.”

ROCKED IN TIME: Confessions of a Radical Theater Artist by Charles Degelman (Harvard Square Editions) is the third volume of a trilogy that began with Gates of Eden, and A Bowl Full of Nails.  This Resistance Trilogy is set in the political and social movements of the 1960s and 70s in the United States. Fiction based on fact, this novel recreates the era  from a variety of viewpoints of race, sex and class. The basis of the struggle, what was accomplished at what cost, and what it was like to be on the cultural ramparts of historical struggle are explored.