Left Coast Cowboys

The hype everywhere is that the teen vampire 90210 movie, Twilight, is opening and expected to be HUUUUGE. Excuse me, I’ll pass. And that’s despite being a secret vampire fan. Not that I dress in Goth gear and wander around clutching an Anne Rice novel. It’s just that there’s something about vampires. I never miss a vampire movie. The only genre I like more is Law & Order derivatives. If Dick Wolf ever gets around to making “Law & Order: The Undead Squad”, I’ll think I’ve died and gone to Transylvania.

But the thought of Twilight, books or movies, leaves me colder than vampire flesh. A few excruciating excerpts and this review on Heretical Ideas from friend Michele Catalano were enough to warn me that I wanted nothing to do with these moody, mopey, angsty teen bloodsuckers.

Besides, we all know by now that the whole premise of Twilight is a parable of abstinence. For vampires? Vampires are ALL about sex. That’s why I’ll take my vampires in the steamy, libidinous woods of Louisiana. Yes, that’s right, my vampires of choice are in True Blood, the great new HBO series that unfortunately comes to its dramatic season finale tomorrow night.

Truth be told, the Sookie Stackhouse novels the series is based on (Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead and about a dozen more books with “Dead” in the titles) don’t offer writing of much higher calibre than Twilight. It’s kind of embarrassing to be caught reading them. I read the collection alone in a barn in Sonoma while winemaking for six weeks. I plan to unload them at the nearest used bookstore before anyone can comment on the disintegration of my reading list. In other words, these novels won’t have pride of place next to my Jane Austen collection.

But at least author Charlaine Harris gets the sex right. There’s loads and loads of it. Seems the undead have sex ALL the time. Kinky sex. Sex in crazy places. Sex in close proximity to swamps and alligators. Apparently, once you are undead, there’s no need for Viagra or a sex manual. You are, as James Brown would put it, a Sex Machine.

I'll pass on the mopey, morose teen vamps mooching around the rainy Pacific Northwest.

When HBO got their hot little fists on this property they juiced it up even more. And added wickedly sly black humor into the mix. In other words, the HBO series True Blood is the Harris novels on steroids AND viagra with a Liberal East Coast college education and a well developed snark.

The sweaty, hot sauce doused Southern vampires of True Blood are just so much more...er...hot blooded.

Let me backtrack in case you missed this one. The True Blood series is set in the steamy woods of Bon Temps, Louisiana, peopled by tough working class gals, blustering Southern sheriffs, philosophical Cajuns, oversexed Southern boys in cowboy boots and, of course, scores of the undead (plus a few shape shifters.) Our heroine is a plucky waitress at a swampside honky-tonk who just happens to be able to read minds. The premise is that the Japanese have discovered a synthetic human blood, True Blood, that has allowed the world’s vampires to come out of the crypt, as it were, and try to mainstream. Some are doing this with more success than others. (One vampire equates a diet of True Blood as “a lifetime of sipping Slim Fast while watching a parade of Filet Mignon walk by”.) Complicate this all with the fact that vampire blood apparently has the effect on humans of a massive concurrent dose of Viagra, Ecstasy, LSD and steroids. It’s become the illegal substance of choice in True Blood World and “vampire drainer” seems to be the upward career path for those who were formerly running Meth labs. Then there’s the Southern mega-church that is leading the holy crusade against vampires. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues.

So you keep your dopey, mopey teen vamps with their unfulfilled desires skulking around the damp, cold Pacific Northwest. Sunday, I’ll be watching a steamy Loo-zee-ana orgy of Southern Fried Vampires, gals in Daisy Dukes and sweaty Southern boys in bandanas. Then watch my hands shake as I go through painful withdrawal until the start of Season Two.

Taking my semi-regular power walk in Sonoma this weekend, I had a chance to check out some of the sights off the square that I usually drive past. One of the things that caught my eye was the historical plaque on The Blue Wing Inn, one of the oldest buildings in Sonoma. The plaque says the adobe building was built by the industrious General Vallejo in 1840 “for the accommodation of emigrants and other travelers”. Given the grief Vallejo was experiencing with the gringos pouring in looking for gold, he was probably hoping that directing them to an inn under his control would make it easier to keep an eye on these troublemakers.

There’s also a laundry list of famous people who stayed at the Blue Wing. Including, of course, Kit Carson. Travel around the West and you’ll find that Kit Carson showed up just about everywhere that anything was happening. And caused it to happen. (Asked once if he’d really been all the places and done all the things he was said to have done, Kit Carson replied, “Well, if you read about it, it must be true.” Carson was famously illiterate.)

But what really gave me pause was that Joaquin Murietta and his cohort “Three Fingered Jack” were listed on the plaque as having stayed at the Blue Wing. Given that we have more historical evidence proving the existence of King Arthur, I’m wondering how it was established that “The Robin Hood of Old California” was proven to have stayed there. I’m guessing he didn’t sign the guest book.

Whether you think Joaquin was a Robin Hood or just an early 19th Century version of a hood, I guess, would depend on who you were. Mexicans and the Hispanic Californians told stories about how Murietta avenged the many wrongs the Gringos were perpetrating by robbing from them and giving to the peasants. (It is said the legend of Zorro is based on Murietta.)

Contemporary “picture” of Joaquin Murietta

The Chileans and Native Americans even tried to appropriate him by claiming respectively that he was a Chilean who came up for the Gold Rush or a Cherokee. The Chinese weren’t asked to weigh in, but according to contemporary accounts, Murietta or some Mexican bandit killed 17 or so Chinese miners in the act of robbing various gold fields. They probably weren’t among his fans.

Zorro may have been inspired by Murietta’s legend.

What we do know about Murietta, is that we know absolutely nothing about him. There were Mexican bandits operating at that time. And many of them were identified as belonging to gangs led by some guy named “Joaquin”. In fact, Joaquin’s gang was alleged to include five Joaquins. At one point, every unsolved crime against a Gringo was said to be the work of a “Joaquin”. (The Gringos might just have well have said, “Well, Jose did it.” Perhaps “Joaquin” was the most common Mexican name at the time. And they could have added, “Well, they all look alike.”)

Historians have also pointed out that in mapping all the crimes allegedly perpetrated by “Joaquin Murietta”, you would have to conclude that he rode a horse faster than today’s fastest sports car to get between all the places it is “documented” that he robbed on the day he was said to have robbed them.

What is documented is that the new California governor (a Gringo, as by this time, the U.S. had “appropriated” California and dispossessed most of the original Hispanic and Native American inhabitants) was sick of this guy “Joaquin” or “Jose” or whoever he was and offered a large reward. A former Texas Ranger, interestingly named Harry Love, took up the challenge, cornered some Mexicans in a canyon not too far from Monterrey and shot them full of holes. Then just to stake his claim to the reward, he cut off the head of “Joaquin Murietta” and pickled it in a jar of brandy. For extra credibility, he also pickled a three fingered hand, said to be that of Murietta’s associate “Three Fingered Jack” (who was, according to accounts, named, surprisingly, not Joaquin, but Manuel.) Love also just happened to mention that as he shot “Three Fingered Jack”, another Mexican stepped out and said something to the effect of, “Wait, I’m Joaquin Murietta. I’m the guy you want.” At which point, Love promptly shot him.

Okay, who’s going to argue with the Native Sons
of the Golden West? They say Joaquin Murietta
stayed here at The Blue Wing Inn.

With this “proof”, Love took the head and hand on tour in the major settlements of the area, including San Francisco, charging a dollar a peep. Not only did he make a tidy sum at this game, but he carefully kept the jar away from the gold fields where someone who had been robbed by some Mexican named “Joaquin” might have been able to identify the head or say, “No this isn’t the guy”. (As for the hand, given the amount of manual laber people did with axes and cranky farm equipment and the number of guns that misfired and blew up in people’s hands, there were probably a lot of “Three Fingered Somebodies” walking around California at that time.)

However, about 17 people, who were conveniently far from the scenes of any of Murietta’s purported crimes, publicly “identified” the head as that of Murietta. No one ever investigated to see if they were paid to add drama to the exhibit along the lines of the fake medicine show man who pays someone to be “cured”. Contemporary accounts also state that one Senorita declared that she was Murietta’s sister and the head was NOT his. There is also a contemporary account of a group of Mexican horse drovers who claimed they were jumped by Gringos who stole their horses, killed some of their party and cut off the head of one of them. Coincidence? Hmmm.

What is in the contemporary accounts is that dozens of people up and down California claimed to have seen Murietta long after that pickled head was making the show circuit. (By the way, the head was apparently on exhibit until the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, when it was lost.)

Which brings me back to The Blue Wing Inn. I’m not about to argue with the Native Sons of the Golden West. These guys do a bang up barbeque on Sonoma Square during Bear Flag Days and I don’t want to get on their bad side. But I’d like to know where they found the “evidence” that Joaquin Murietta stopped here on a brief vacation to Sonoma.

I’ll just echo Kit Carson: “If you read it, it must be true.”

Since we are immersing ourselves in Western Living this week, I brought the entire “Border Trilogy” of Cormac McCarthy, who is probably best known as the author of No Country for Old Men. Now that I’ve read all three, including All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, I’ve realized that three novels are WAAAAAY too much Cormac McCarthy in any short period. Don’t get me wrong. I love Cormac McCarthy. He produces some of the most beautiful, even mythic writing in America today. And I mean MYTHIC. If Homer were alive today and working part time as a ranch hand in one of the border states, these are the novels he’d be writing. But mythic can be pretty intense if you enter it thinking you are just going to get a nice couple of cowboy tales. For my money, McCarthy does what Hemmingway could only dream of doing. Produce prose so beautiful and so visual you can see each scene in detail, while using short sentences, minimal adjectives, little punctuation and lots of terse dialogue. But the subject matter! It’s the West of legend where cowboys are heros, bad men are evil beyond all reason and a few good lawmen try to protect the former from the latter. My brain is still reeling from the Trilogy. If you thought the movie, No Country for Old Men was intense, you should read the book. Then you should tackle the Border Trilogy which is that intensity times more than three.

Things I’ve learned from Cormac McCarthy:

1) Most cowboys are as consumed with a quest as Don Quixote or any of King Arthur’s knights.

2) Finding the Holy Grail would be easy compared to some of the tasks these cowboys set themselves. (How about transporting a wild and injured wolf over the border into Mexico to return it to the wilds? With nothing but your sixteen year old wits and a good horse. See The Crossing for details.)

3) There is always at least one cowboy in the bunch who has a “Horse Whisperer”-like ability to communicate with animals – especially horses, wild dogs and wolves.

4) You can travel through most of the back of beyond parts of Mexico without a peso in your pocket. People in dusty towns there will shelter you, feed you and take care of your horse. Without even asking your name.

5) Mexican women, whether they are wealthy rancher’s daughters (All The Pretty Horses) or doomed epileptic prostitutes (Cities of the Plain) are impossibly beautiful and will cause somebody’s death –either yours or that of someone close to you.

6) In contrast, many of the older cowboys in the book, especially lawmen, will have non-nonsense, loyal American wives and will be fully aware that these women are the ones who allowed them to survive and thrive for so long.

7) While Mexican villagers and most Vaqueros are Christlike in their desire to share everything even if they have nothing, run if you should meet a Mexican officer, official, Federale, bandido or pimp. They will try to kill you in horrible ways for no reason.

Every blind Mexican is an amazingly poetic prophet. No matter what you are running from or what you have to do, you must stop and listen to their very long, detailed stories of their cryptic dreams. They will predict your future.

9) Doesn’t matter if it’s the late Thirties, the early Fifties, the Seventies or today, the border areas are the land that time and justice forgot. People still get around by horse, Mexico is still a dangerous and lawless place and the West is still mythic. You’ll probably die in horrible ways, but you will do so with honor.

Meanwhile Cormac has me looking at aspects of our little corner of the West in a whole different way. Is that lizard a harbinger of doom? Does that creosote bush hide a wild canine – wolf or dog – that will set me off on an impossible quest? Is this area actually a former crossing for Native Americans? Because in McCarthy’s world, ghosts of those long-gone people always come back at you in a dream. And most importantly, is that Mexican on the corner or sitting in the cafe blind? Because you have to know they actually SEE everything. Ask them. That is, if you want to know they kind of future that would be in store for you in a Cormac McCarthy type of world.

Don’t ask me how I accomplished it, but somehow I managed to graduate as an English literature major without ever having read William Faulkner. I have a vague recollection of perhaps reading part of one of his short stories and really disliking it. But I’m not sure if that really happened. I’m also not sure what made me think, through the years, I wouldn’t like Faulkner. I’ve always loved Southern Gothic tales — especially when the atmosphere of the book or play is humid and dripping with Spanish moss and there is a wise, all-seeing Black character acting like a Greek chorus to the self-destruction of the Whites. (I read every one of Carson McCullers’ books twice for Advanced Placement English until I think my teacher begged me to do a book report on another author.) I guess all that Southern decadence and decay just seemed so fascinating to me having never been in the Deep South.

As I planned our cross-country roadtrip (see the blog here) which took a huge detour down through Mississippi to New Orleans and back up the other side of Big Muddy through Louisiana, I told myself, it really was time to crack open a Faulkner novel. Still, I resisted even though we’d be traveling right through Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County (actually Lafayette County), land of Snopeses, Compsons and Sartorises.

A month after our return, I decided I had to do it and figured I might as well just plunge right in with The Sound and the Fury.

Okay, full disclosure time here: first, I scanned through the on-line Cliff Notes. Normally it’s a matter of honor not to resort to the cheater’s way out. I’ve only done it once, when — halfway through Joyce’s Ulysses and having started the book way too late in the assignment to read carefully — I realized I had no clue what was going on. This time I decided to confront “stream of consciousness writing” head-on and read the synopsis first, then tackle the book.

Best decision I ever made! Freed of having to try to impose a timeline and some sort of “who did what” sense on autistic Benjy’s sense memories and jumbled impressions, I could just enjoy the language. And what language! This is not a book you read to find out what happens (although knowing what happens didn’t stop it from being a page turner.) You read to find out how each character reacts to what happens or how each character’s psyche is changed by what happens. I couldn’t stop reading. Then I read whole sections again, just to make sure I hadn’t missed any of the wonderful imagery. Ironically, the parts I ended up liking least are the two sections with the most straightforward narrative and timelines: Jason’s section and the “omniscient narrator” segment. Autistic Benjy’s and mentally distraught Quentin’s sections were the most rewarding for putting you instantly in the smells, sounds and gut feeling of an event in a way that made you overwhelmed with it as if YOU were actually experiencing it.

Although I read at least a book a week, I seldom have that wonderful feeling of suddenly finding an author whose writing suddenly compels me to immediately buy and read everything he or she has written. It’s like discovering some new and wonderful place. Except, everyone else seems to have discovered it before me.

In searching the web for tidbits on Faulkner and his work, I stumbled over the fact that Oprah had “assigned” everyone THREE Faulkner novels for their summer reading of 2005. (And Oprah can make the Flatbush telephone directory a best-seller if she makes it a Book Club Selection.) So all of America has presumably read Faulkner ahead of me (or at least those novels on Oprah’s reading list). They also probably understood it all better than I did, thanks to Oprah’s amazingly comprehensive multi-media on-line study guide for The Summer of Faulkner.

Who IS this woman? And why is she so far ahead of the rest of us? Okay, I’m not Oprah, but get some Faulkner today!