Audiobook preview
Naked Came the Florida Man. Tim Dorsey. Serge Storms book 23 of 26. William Morrow, 2020. 336 pages.
Tim Dorsey is considered by readers and writers of Florida-based fiction as the master, maybe the creator, of "Florida Man" fiction, writing outrageous, unbelievable stories of Florida's unbelievable characters. Following Tim Dorsey's death a few months ago, I read his first Serge Storms novel. While I liked it and recognized some great writing, I wasn't sure about his leading character. I just read the 23rd Serge novel, published in 2020, Naked Came the Florida Man, and I found it much more enjoyable.
Serge Storms is an incredible character, an anti-hero. He is an obsessive, misanthropic, schizophrenic, homicidal psychopath, but he has a very strong sense of morality and justice, in his own way, if that makes any sense. He absolutely loves Florida, its history, its nature, and its people - at least those people who don't violate his moral code. He constantly shares this love and knowledge with his drugs-and-alcohol-impaired traveling companion, and thus with the readers. Are you familiar with the animated duo Mr. Peabody and Sherman? Well, picture Mr. Peabody as a homicidal psychopath and Sherman constantly doing drugs. But it's funny and entertaining, I swear! Serge Storms books are great fiction for history lovers, especially lovers of Florida history. Dorsey's books are packed full of real history and information; they're like Florida guidebooks. His most outrageous plot elements and scenes are often based on actual Florida events and people. I've learned lots of tidbits of Florida info and about sites that I've added to my list of places to visit. It's obvious that the character of has developed over the course of Dorsey's books, and I want to read more.
Author Michael Finkel is attracted to seriously narcissistic and manipulative sociopaths and the stupid women who love them, and he forms relationships with them, starting with hand-written letters, that result in them telling all to him. I'm not sure what that says about him, but it makes for incredibly interesting books, like this one.
Picture an art thief, and you probably pictured an egomaniac stocking a private vault with works for his own viewing like in the movies. Or maybe you picture brazen robbers sneaking in at night and defeating high-tech security measures. Or maybe armed men tying up guards and slashing paintings from their frames like in the Isabella Gardner Museum heist in Boston. I bet you would never in your life picture a lazy, spoiled, unemployed-and-living-on-handouts, twentysomething Frenchman named Stephane Breitwieser. Nevertheless, over about 10 years from the 1990s into the early 2000s, Breitwieser and his girlfriend stole about 300 pieces of art from over 200 museums across Europe, with an estimated value of $2 billion. They chose mostly local and regional museums with little to no security, bought tickets, and stole in broad daylight, often with guards or visitors in the room. His intent was never to sell and make profits. They displayed the art in the attic bedroom they shared over his mother's house, purely for their own pleasure. The acts and how they were committed is incredible enough, but then when you read what happened to the art and how European courts have treated the pair (and Breitwieser's mother), your mind will be blown. Equally mindblowing is the sheer scale of art theft in the world and how little stolen art is ever recovered.
...And Your Ass Will Follow. George Clinton. Audible Original, Words + Music, Volume 39.
The Mothership lands. Live, Houston, 1976
If you love music and audiobooks and are an Audible subscriber, you may have already discovered the "Words + Music" series there. Each volume is about two hours long and features a particular artist discussing his/her life and work, complete with lots of music samples.
This particular volume features legendary funkster George Clinton who blended everything from doo-wop and soul to funk and rock and sprinkled in bits like songs he heard at friends' bar mitzvahs to create the one and only Parliament-Funkadelic sound, becoming one of the most influential and sampled artists in history. He talks about the musical influences that literally surrounded him growing up in his New Jersey neighborhood where he interacted with diverse people and cultures and knew people famous and becoming famous from Sarah Vaughn to Dionne Warwick to the Shirelles. He talks about his own musical journey from assembling a group in junior high to rejection by Motown to the Mothership. It's a fun ride. Check this one out or look for your own favorite artists on Audible.
Author talk
Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York. Francis Spufford. Scribner, 2017. 320 pages.
It's November 1746, and a young man named Richard Smith arrives in New York City from London. He has no connections in the colony and seemingly no business, but he does have a line of credit worth a thousand British pounds sterling, almost 2,000 pounds in New York currency (or whatever crazy mix of paper, coins, and trade goods New Yorkers call currency at the time), an absolute fortune. He's very guarded and secretive about his background and his intentions. He's also a little off-balance himself, having to adjust from the huge metropolis of London to the small backwater town that New York was in comparison. His strange and closed-mouth character instantly raises red flags among the New York merchants and politicians that he meets. Who is he? What does he want? Is the money real? Is he a con man, a criminal? Does he plan to use his money -if it exists - to involve himself in the unsettled commerce and politics of the city, on one side or the other? These are all questions that the author leaves hanging in the readers' minds for most of the book as well, only providing answers at the end, and the answers are genuinely surprising, once revealed. The ending was impossible to predict, but not too incredible or crazy to accept.
Spufford is a British author who has written several nonfiction books, and this was his first novel. It won several awards and paced on several Best lists. It's a very interesting depiction of colonial New York. Golden Hill is kind of in the picaresque genre, like Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, and Candide, rollicking adventures of a rough, dishonest, but likable hero, complete with romance, intrigue, and swordplay. However, like Candide, Richard Smith is not dishonest, just naive. Or is he? The reader really doesn't learn the truth until the end. It's a fun adventure.
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