“A Hall of Mirrors” by Robert Stone

stoneIt’s a Sixties novel written in unadorned, straight-ahead prose.  The style is in the school of Hemingway, with flavors of Uris and Mailer, Ruark and O’Hara. Like the kind of gritty novel that used to bring men and their sons into a mid-century newsstand’s paperback section, where they could get books for less than a buck. Those days are long gone, so for me there’s an element of nostalgia in reading this novel ( from 1964). It reminds me of being a teenager in simple summertimes when multimedia distractions didn’t exist, and there we were with just a book, reading into the late hours, totally bought in, unable to put it down.

The characters include alkies and scarred women, hucksters and dangerous zealots. It’s a New Orleans of political crackpots and attendant injustices, as things purportedly were in that Oswald era.  The principle characters Rheinhart and his woman Geraldine are two drifters who end up in the Big Easy and happen to meet at a fascist-styled work factory. Their modus operandi is to do most anything to keep a roof overhead and survive.

Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia”

swamplandiaAt surface level, the story is entertaining. At another level, it’s visionary and mythic. The book takes place in the Everglades and at times seems mucky and absurd with all the gator show stuff.  Then again, after some reading patience, we see that the setting is transcendent, almost like a surreal Macondo village for one small family. At times the environment is genuinely fearsome, a primordial, superstitious land, a veritable hell-hole haunted by the horrors of Indian history and misguided development.

Russell knows her writing and her novel places us in various levels of reader reaction. It’s a book with well thought-out structure and theme. Various chapters were short stories brought to a united whole. She can cut a phrase and put forth detailed images that nail a setting and create a mood.  They are almost too good, the visual details. One wonders, how long (in a cynical, nihilistic, often numb reader nation, and in terms of literary modes and fickleness for “what works”and what is durable for artistic perpetuity) can such a delicate level of imagistic writing remain as paragon?

Russell brings us along, making the many digressions interesting, and meanwhile subtly getting us to care about the Bigtree family circle.  Then we get into Ossie’s call of the sexual wild and Kiwi’s dire employment at an apocalyptic theme park. When Kiwi leaves home, the chapters alternate between Ava’s 1st person narrative and third person limited for Kiwi.  It’s not orthodox, but it works.

At one point less than half in, I was dismayed and about to set the whole damn business aside for later.   But then came the growing mystery of the dredging boat and Louis and Ossie’s disappearance…then the author brings in a larger than life character, the mystical Bird Man who with  his quiet voice of accommodation becomes Ava’s apparent hero (though he’s far from it). They go on a supposed quest to find the wayward sister and head for a remote area in the marsh called the Underground. Along the way, Ava is confronted by reality versus illusion.  Is It Real or Not?  Is it Paradise or a Land of Buzzards?  Can someone like Mama Weeds really exist out there?

In dramatic parallel we get alternating chapters depicting Kiwi’s misadventures at a macabre theme park over on “the Mainland,” where life is anathema to the Bigtrees. As he works his way up the employment chain from park maintenance to lifeguard (and hero) and eventually seaplane pilot (again a hero), we realize the coming convergence of the two storylines.  All’s well that ends well. Their native home and its sustaining Alligator Wrestling Show does not survive “Carnival Darwinism.” Mainland life wins in the end. The sisters leave their aboriginal culture and have to march in line with the rest of the Mainlanders, wearing uniforms at school with white girls.

It’s tricky to tell where this story is located. Best I can tell, it’s fictionalized to the point where there’s no need to say, but real geographic names and areas (rivers) and landmarks (I-95?) both far and near are mentioned.  The swamp seems to range anywhere between Punta Gorda and Flamingo ( a lot of miles).

What They Wrote With

List of machines used for professional and personal endeavors from 1972 to the present.

royalmanual

Royal manual typewriter, the R. Waters Memorial AP press-room machine acquired during a beer-soaked deal at the Why Not Lounge and used at Cardinal Associates in Charlotte, NC. It has the AP Property# stenciled on the side. It fell off a U-Haul and is irreparably frozen in time. Now ignobly rusting in the toolshed.

  • IBM Selectric (a runaway train with interchangeable spinning golfball and fixed platen; sleek, fast as a hit of speed; once owned one in British racing green and wish I’d kept it for its Jaguar looks).
  • IBM TSO 3270 terminal, and primitive text editor, working off an oversized HAL mainframe in TX (Fluor).
  • DEC VAX UNIX terminal, and RUNOFF text compiler (first in-office terminal, i.e. not shared; came on a wheely cart with fifty pounds of cabling spaghetti and a blinking modem; used happily at Western Geo in Houston circa 1984).
  • Apple iie with add-on’s and WordPerfect (first home computer purchase, at such an exorbitant price I financed it like a car); tank-like but with little memory, two floppy holes, and a green-lettered 40-character screen, later expanded with an 80-column card.
  • Brother Electric typewriter (backup writing machine in the 80s, suitably noisy but a workhorse. Traded it to a dental assistant for a free cleaning.
  • IBM SPF 3278 terminal, and ISIL code (on-site at an IBM contract gig; the PF keys and weird red-starry-green displays proved more confusing than ever).
  • Epson – IBM PC clone, w/WordStar (at an IBM contractor company; the PC was garbage, as was the gig).
  • Data General, CEO word processor module (off the mini, at the Travelers software company; a stodgy system but intuitive; had a comfy-clunky keyboard).
  • IBM XT, w/WordStar (a 2-hole floppy disk special, grinded gears and groaned all day; it did, however, have a nice, tank-solid keyboard; se habla DOS aquí).
  • IBM AT, w/WordPerfect on an actual LAN (faster, but all that coding in WP using f-keys was painful, and keyboards were going lightweight, like typing on plastic hollow box).
  • Macintosh SE, w/Appleworks (FlightSafety’s tool of production – as required by our main client FedEx – and a damn good one in most respects).
  • IBM Windows PCs and laptops for years and years at AT&T; some machines were okay, some awful, all of them mediocre; the company usually gave us stuff near market expiration, like secondhand executive ThinkPads via trickle-down provisioning. MS-Windows OS in endless iterations, ending in my case with Vista, oh what a dog…
  • iMac G4 – Lollipop model, aka Lampstand, 14″ on swivel stick w/hemisphere base, circa 2003, retired 2011 and stored in the backroom closet as a museum piece.
  • Macbook Pro – reliable laptop backup and mobile unit.
  • iMac desktop (have had 2) – present workhorse, an aluminum 21″ slab with a simple wired chiclet keyboard. I’ve worn out the lettering on the S key. Otherwise durable, having endured food crumbs, sneezes, irate text-pounding, and beer spills.

Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch” Blog-a-Rama
donna_BBCPhoto

photo by BBC

The Beginning 

The hardbound book’s impeccable packaging invites us and signals quality.

The novel’s opening pages with their lengthy lyrical sentences give a powerful impression that we’re in for something special.  Something in the heavyweight league. The exquisite use of language and pace makes me think about how remarkable the audio version of this book would sound.

At the onset we get a vivid description of the narrator’s hotel hideout room and a strong sense of his desolation beside one of Amsterdam’s green canals.  What is his source of despair?  Of course, we also wonder what’s the controversy outside and why he is avoiding it.  Meanwhile the narrator, perhaps because of his solitary situation and the excess of lukewarm vodka, is overcome with thoughts of his mother, who is depicted in stunning consecutive sentences that detail her appearance and demeanor. Then we learn how he lost her and the underlying story launches.

The tired writing rule that one or two character particularities goes a long way, and another rule that exposition interferes with dramatic scene …both are about to be blown to bits by Donna Tartt’s talent.

Part I  

What we have in the book’s opening act is the initial storyline patiently presented, along with a rich startup array of interesting characters, major and minor — though this early in the book it’s impossible to say which are merely minor. Some reappear after the explosion, like Pippa, who Tartt (during her amazing bomb description) telegraphed that we were likely to see again.  Some reappear as dead people memories. Others, including the artfully portrayed Harbour family, and guys like Cable and Hobie…we’ll see how far they go.

It’s interesting to note that any shrinks, educational overseers, or investigators etc. assigned by the state to check on Theo’s welfare are unfavorably described, which is consistent with Theo’s silent disdain towards them. Despite best efforts by the magnanimous (and filthy rich) Mrs. Harbour, her good-humored husband and polite son Andy, Theo is withdrawn and sealed up until he finds Hobie. The return of Welty’s ring to a living connection authenticates Theo’s memory and, adding in the reunion with Pippa (all of this in the “Morphine Lollipop” chapter), his existence takes on a new, more hopeful light.

Tartt, an admitted fan of Dickens, is (so far anyway) doing the Copperfield/Twist/Pip bit: placing a young man in a dire and/or peculiar situation and bringing us along with him as he navigates and grows up. His path is strewn with tragedy and loneliness and a barrage of strangers and renewed acquaintances who assist or hinder his path forward. The big difference is Theo is an American boy in 21st century Manhattan.

Donna Tartt is masterful in these early chapters, unfolding the story in a way in which we are attentive to and empathetic with the new orphan Theo. When we quit reading and turn off the light, the concern for him remains. Others are interesting too, and we want to see them again.  That is, the book is beginning to own us.

Parts II & III  

The contrast between Park Avenue and Vegas is a shock to Theo and to us too. Tartt conveys the stark differences with humor, sharp details, and shredding imagery.  We recognize Vegas’s cheesiness and plastic quality, and the tackiness of his father’s home is signaled right away by the faux elegant name of their cookie-cutter development, presented by the author in faux elegant font: The Shadows in the Canyons.

Theo’s father is a drunk and a bad gambler, and his girlfriend Xandra is a thief and a loser. The contrast in style and behavior to the graciousness of the Harbours is staggering. Our only consolation at this point is that Theo managed to get the painting out of NYC and has it there with him.

It’s really clever that when Theo left, the Park Avenue doormen were his support group. They too mourn the loss of Mrs. Decker and are Theo’s close allies. Theo cleverly speaks Spanish to them. One, the Puerto Rican, says he misses the warm weather and is a “tropical bird.”  Which plays on the painting that the doormen hold in a suitcase for pickup by Theo (which he later unwraps in his colorless Vegas room and sees as contrasting bright and rich — tropical).

Boris’s supposed exploits are excessive and his Ukraine talk is over the top, but sometimes fiction asks us to suspend our doubts and go with things.  Plot-wise he’s functional …(so far –I cant speak for the pages ahead) … functional as the worldly influence kid, an entertaining ingredient in Theo’s coming of age. Does the movie title “Iceberg SOS” foreshadow anything?

Classic scene: Dad’s compensatory holiday dinner at the extravagant restaurant on the Strip. We see more of America’s greed and misplaced values through the eyes of Theo and the Russian Boris, in particular.

The thought came to mind, how does Tartt manage to capture the lives of teenage boys so well?  Maybe she took their three main activities and took off from there: fighting, getting drunk or high, and obsessing on girls.  That’s what Theo and Boris are into. Boris, however, brings more criminal mischief, some homo-erotic closeness, and his own domestic traumas that he tries to disguise. He exudes an overall sense of unreliability and danger, not unlike his bipolar dad.

Odds and ends in Tartt’s Parts II & III tapestry:

  • Climate change. she brings in vivid yet understated descriptions of the erratic weather out West.
  • The economy: the mostly empty and unfinished neighborhood (Canyon Shadows) depicts the fall of housing and death of the boom (Bush Recession) in the expanded exurbia of Las Vegas.
  • Modern Girls into Renunciation: Kotyu.
  • Drug excess: the boys take everything except heroin and drink vodka straight from the bottle.
  • Modern wake: Xandra and her loose pals getting totally messed up
  • Nineteenth century novel type journey: Theo’s bus ride back East with a tiny dog in a box w/crusty yet charitable driver
  • Replacement of cozy old building of value with a new and overpriced greed palace

Part IV 

Past midway, it’s the biggest time jump in the book so far: eight years later.  Could be a moment in the narration to be reflective and have the story decelerate, but Tartt doesn’t go there. She keeps rolling out surprises and moves relentlessly ahead with event after event to keep us engaged. It’s true, though: this series of chapters has a lot of packed tight exposition. But it’s interesting exposition.

So far, the section is loaded with loss: people who are dead, gone, or are not themselves anymore. Pippa has a boyfriend, which makes Theo crazy. The old homestead is gone, the Harbours are shattered, and Boris is still en absentia. There are  problems brewing at Hobie’s shop and some less than honest dealings have put our protagonist in a difficult spot.

Theo falls heavier into drug use. He is threatened by the sharper Lucius, who has figured things out. The story jumps again, and Theo is engaged to the vapid Kitsey, and they shop for china patterns.  We think, here we go again, Theo has stepped into a mess and seems to make it more of one.  He is now less favorable a character to us (our sympathetic mood changes, that is) because he has money and free will and keeps getting in his own way, making mistakes that cause us to want to shake him.

Things look foreboding as he runs into Boris, and they proceed to some heavy vodka drinking in the Village…

Part V –

Theo’s dark descent into despair appears to be over. Theo’s world is momentarily stabilized by his engagement to Kitsey, a relationship cultivated by her mother, Mrs. Harbour.  Not all is as it appears. Again, Theo is in and out of other people’s hands, blown around by circumstance, his fate coming through no real control of his own. This is best demonstrated in the engagement party where he is a role player but not a person, entangled in a high risk situation. Only in the prior scene, during his movie and dinner with Pippa, do we get to see him truly as the Theo he would want to be…and what he is capable of feeling for another. Yet even making small decisions is something he finds difficult. He is sitting on the fence now, romantically, as if his other problems weren’t compound enough, and his judgment is clouded by long drinking and drug sessions.

Boris eventually brings him into the big league world of art theft and thuggery. He takes him into his world of crime and paybacks, whisks him away from the Kitsey situation, and puts him to use overseas.

Their mission to regain the Goldfinch takes the book out of the milieu of a New York love and adventure story and into a drama of international detective-like shoot-em-ups, replete with criminal desperadoes and a lone witness who spoils everything.  But it works out…the very beginning put us smack into intrigue, so we knew the loop would come around again….

Theo is stranded in a hotel without a passport, and his darkness returns…things rush to a conclusion, yet there are a wealth of epiphanies and reflections at the end…

(NOTE:  Will post the last report after I let everything settle -wpm)

“Subtraction” by Mary Robison

subtrThis is a dialog-heavy novel based on a group of down and out characters who have drifted from the academic Northeast and find themselves miserable in Houston. It was published in 1991. Author Mary Robison has taught English at several universities, including the University of Houston. Her artistic kinship with Rick Barthelme is evident in this book: concise style, irreverent cast, modern pathos storyline, and liberal use of imagery.  Her command of words ascends into realms of poetry. Her images describing rough and tumble Houston (especially to those of us who have lived there) are extraordinary. In the latter part of the book, the snowstorm descriptions in coastal MA are also vivid.  We’re right there with the narrator.

The novel’s most interesting characters are the narrator Paige (the intelligent artist whose progress in life is seized by loyalty to the wayward Raf) and her erstwhile friend Pru (the stripper who uses her perfect body as a machine to survive). None of the characters are admirable. Paige’s husband Raf and  his pal Raymond, both of whom dominate the pages, are almost indistinguishable.Most of the cast are well-educated derelicts with a fixation about getting drunk and getting laid.  Paige’s mom Dottie is a senior citizen stoner. Paige puts up with Raf because of his intense vitality. He’s a Neal Cassady type who draws people in and is moral after all, despite his profligate ways.

We are given a heaping of overheated foul Houston air, low rent squalor, sterile hotels, infidelity, warm beer, a kept woman’s fancy loft, male chauvinism, and Texas-Southern bible-beating right-wing despicableness.

Eventually things cool off as the cast moves back to the coastal Northeast. We go from the indifferent totalitarian to the caring communal.

The effect is like reading Beckett, as suggested in the book:  the vivid imagery might stick around and carry into your dreams at night.

FWIW, I keep thinking…this book struck me as a piece of art that’s ahead of its time. I recommend reading it.

“Anna Karenina” by Tolstoy

anna-karenina-book-cover-011I gave it up once. This time, taking a patient approach, I read from November and finished by the end of the year. The chapters are short, so you can get a few in during the myriad commercials courtesy of the NFL or on trips to the “library” down the hall. At some points the narrative kept me engaged late in the evenings for hours straight. It’s not a fast read by any means, but it is easier to read than War and Peace (something I may never finish). The chapters clip right along and things drag only at the end, in my opinion, after Anna’s fateful day.

Notes & Observations:

As for format, the Modern Library edition (left) proved a good choice. The translation is by Constance Garnett, certainly not the latest, but it’s pleasant, consistent, and has no tricks forcing the language to be over-contemporary. Any footnotes are conveniently included on the same page where a symbol is placed.

Unlike War and Peace, there’s little difficulty remembering who’s who. The major figures are more distinctly drawn. And more empathetic. Basically, the book jumps back and forth between three sets of lovers:  Stepan and Darya, Levin and Kitty, and Vronosky/Aleksey and Anna.  It offers a a contrast between love with abandon (Anna and Vronosky) and traditional hung-up love (Levin and Kitty) and honor (Aleksey).  Russian love can get so all-absorbing and maddening that it’s fatal to some of the cast. It is a subject Tolstoy knew well and wrote about prolifically.

As one of the commenting authors in the afterword section says, Anna K is a novel of manners, or a novel of society. Plot is secondary to the display of characters and their behavior within the milieu of social class structure. 

It’s an instructive book for writers. Tolstoy was at his best here, and could write equally well in any scene, about hunting, farming, politics, or courting. He can surprise us too, when in the midst of his straight-forward functional narrative he throws in some sort of colorful bonus section.  In War and Peace, I was taken unexpectedly by the frank revelations and level of detail in the chapter in which Pierre joins the Masons.  As an example in Anna K, the author gives us an amusing account of Stepan’s journeys and adventures with a visiting Prince, who he is charged with entertaining. Among their late night adventures they reportedly go to a sex show in which “Russian prowess” is displayed. Meanwhile, the landholder and stifled lover Levin works off his frustration when he goes on a grass-mowing binge, swinging a scythe out there with the serfs for three chapters.

The episodes are short and they go on and on like endless cars attached in a long train. The action is greatest within the characters’ hearts and souls, where changes are always happening. It’s deceptively simple, how we read this and get it. But it’s highly artful and a technical magic act on Tolstoy’s part.

McGuane’s Short Story Book “Gallatin Canyon”

mcguaneFurther evidence that persistent ole fiction writers keep on rolling and can get even better with age.

My notes about some of the ten stories:

“Cowboy” – Familiar tale where a roaming cowpoke gets a job for nothing to prove his mettle, faces resistance, learns to be good at it, and eventually supplants those who hired him (young sumbitch becomes old sumbitch). Narrated in Festus vernacular, funny at times.

“Old Friends” – a visitation format in which a former college pal on the lam (Erik) returns to see an old pal (Briggs). Briggs’ life is solitary and rural, but in good order; Erik’s life is fractured. A distant alumni gossip writer and the pal’s mean-spirited ex-wife are external haranguers who further upset Brigg’s tranquility. Oh, and also the loose gal Marge who Erik brings along, a pickup who can’t resist the degenerate Erik but decides to slap Briggs for being, we suppose, polite. There’s a denouement to all this when Erik’s gig is up. His life and Briggs’ life are forever affected.

“North Woods” – A drug-addicted couple hike the deep woods outside Vancouver on a quest to find an object that they can trade for heroin. It’s the new world, and McGuane offers a great line to the effect: if you can look around in the woods up there and see plywood, you’re still an innocent.

“Zombie” – Grim and gothic, a tale of vengeance out in the sticks. Reminiscent of writing by Flannery O’Connor with creepy characters, some who have weird teeth and others far weirder behaviors.

“Ice” – Coming of age story involving a drum major, a promiscuous teacher, and a boy too far out on the ice trying to find his nerve.

“Gallatin Canyon” – The title story indicates there is no escape from business, traffic, angst, tragedy – even in the remote hills out West.

“mitigating circumstances” by Dawn Corrigan

MGnovelI’ve had the good fortune to read an advance copy of my friend Dawn Corrigan’s debut novel “Mitigating Circumstances,” to be released in January 2014 via Five Star.

Part mystery-part adventure and also humorous travelog of the Florida Panhandle, the novel opens with an engaging scene. The facts and action keep coming. We get to know Gale LaRue pretty quickly and like her as narrator. She’s observant, sardonic, and doesn’t waste words.  She’s got the right mix of personal ingredients, locale, and interesting friends and family that have us already imagining a series.

A skilled fiction writer knows how to use details and make characters particular, and Corrigan gives us that. The profiles of the municipal workers in the home office are spot-on and memorable. We know Karen from her Tevas sandals and the fact that she’d rather take time to eat than try to escape. We can recognize the deep-thinking dude in the office who suggests putting out signs to stop the proliferation of signs. Em’s secret cigarette and call for denial tells us things. All the details paint the canvas: the Whataburger references, the drawling good old boys we can see and hear, the spicy adds Gale makes about underwear and “the girls,” and – terrific stuff – Em and Gale’s use of the names of poets and B-film starlets as replacements for more profane exclamations (e.g., “John Greenleaf Whittier!” or “Sara Michelle Gellar!” instead of “Jesus H. Christ!”). There are lots of references to food as a leveling force. Just as Travis McGee likes his one-inch of Boodles gin on ice, so does Gale LaRue savor her Cukoo Juice smoothies.

Corrigan pushes her story forward in an efficient and suspenseful way. In intervening chapters, the narration switches to third person in order to carry scenes necessary to the plot. It’s a technical balancing act for most writers, yet Corrigan makes the shift in POV almost imperceptible.

What I like most about “Mitigating Circumstances” is the writing itself. The author’s command of the language is original and crisp. And Gale Larue’s delivery is funny.

It’s impressive that Dawn Corrigan can write a debut novel that’s refreshingly free of the self-conscious and cloying prose style we identify as coming from workshop schools. She adheres to Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing and leaves out the self-conscious parts that “sound like writing.” Corrigan writes directly and with spirit, take it or leave it.

Italo Calvino’s “The Castle of Crossed Destinies”

RWS_Tarot_19_SunIn this novella a series of tales are delivered by individual storytellers, each of whom reveals a certain display of tarot cards.  Sequentially, each array of cards offers a type of free-association story.  As characters take their turn to present, the indicated actions and events become interwoven. Cards conjoin and overlap. Destinies cross.

Besides the cleverness and intrigue of the fiction, the stories offer those of us interested in the tarot ways to get more familiar with the cards themselves. The group uses the traditional tarot deck in the book’s first half, then a more modern deck in the latter.

Each card is a poem begging for exposition, illustrated with items that tell and have ranging connotations.

The author presents a revealing afterword section describing his usage of the tarot. Everything is on the table in this book. You just have to join in and piece the meanings together.

“I always feel the need to alternate one type of writing with another, completely different, to begin writing again as if I had never written anything before.” – Italo Calvino

Two from McGuane and McCarthy

Novel:  “Ninety-Two in the Shade”

Screen Shot 2013-11-14 at 10.28.21 AM This is an early Seventies book from Thomas McGuane’s Key West days: a yarn with a fair share of conchs, crackers, tourists, and salts. The story’s suspense element involves a skiff war between rival fishermen guides.The boat duel takes on a “High Noon” sort of stubborn seriousness and asks for the reader’s benefit of the doubt.

Otherwise this is McGuane’s canvas of Key West with all its beauty and its warts, and much of the description stands the test of time. The book is comical in most parts, and the writing is rich, even if occasionally it flies too high.

The story features the dissipated Tom Skelton (who lives in a junked fuselage, cf. Barthelme’s re-usage in “Tracer”), Tom’s eccentric father and grandfather, and the violent Nichol Dance as Skelton’s mortal rival. The insatiably willing Miranda, who the author tries to portray as something other than a mere receptacle of sex, doesn’t quite rise to a character beyond that (the froo-froo baking business doesn’t fly, nor does the mention of her being a geography teacher). We get an eclectic mix among all of these characters of both dumb and erudite dialog, woven into both stupid and clever actions.

The author has long since moved to Montana and writes about dysfunctional westerners rather than Florida stoners. His recent story in the New Yorker “Weight Watchers” is a good one – more about trades and occupation than diet.

Movie “The Counselor”

Screen Shot 2013-11-14 at 10.29.33 AMCormac McCarthy skipped the writing a novel part and went straight for the big bucks with a screenplay. Artfully directed by Ridley Scott, the movie’s a balanced story of good and evil, love and lust, and three men’s ruination by greed and by women. The film offers a realistic depiction of life along the US-Mexico border near the hell hole called Ciudad Juarez. Lots of subtleties and complexities are amid the bling and squalor. There’s even a cautionary diamond and a pair of cheetah. Philosophy permeates the dialog in some occasional high-fallutin’ language. The visuals and photographic details are excellent.

Brad Pitt plays a Texan-type to perfection, with an overly eager eye for the gals and a suit that’s too tight. His character gives us the movie’s biggest social commentary line: “It’s all shit.”  In the looming irony department we notice that Michael Fassbender’s  lawyer character is incapable of everything, including being a counselor. In over his head, he is the one who gets all the advice and who seeks help from other abogados (lawyers). Penelope Cruz plays the yummy and vapid little innocente woman, and Cameron Diaz (now of windshield fame) plays the voracious c__, a hunter with everyone in her sights. Cartel captain Javier Bardem plays a likeable, boozy character in this movie instead of his usual role as a murderous figure of holy terror. Except for the opening scene, which was awkward, it’s some good flick.