Some years ago a friend lend me a copy of the novel The last good kiss by James Crumley. It came out the same year I was born, 1978, and I had never heard of it before. The copy was in Swedish and quite new, published by Modernista, a company known for translating American classics or more niched hits.
I really like The last good kiss. It’s what you could call a hard boiled crime novel, but unordinary and well written. Dark and funny.
I recently found out, hadn’t bother to look it up before, that Crumley wrote a couple of other novels. I’ve gotten hold of one them: Dancing Bear. It was published in 1983 and the paper back copy I bought online from a second hand bookstore called Bokbörsen.
It’s a thriller too. A middle aged man who fought in the Korean War is working as a security guy. He’s bored and poor and is trying to stay out of trouble, but one day he gets an odd offer he can’t refuse. An old lady, who used to date his now dead father, wants to hire him to find out why a man and a woman are having a rendezvous in the park next to her house once a week, the one of them driving different cars every time. She just wants to know what that’s all about. Then all turns hell.
I like it so far. Crumley is fun reading. He’s got style.
I usually do this in swedish so please be patience, the writing might not be the greatest. But I want to do this in english just to pay some respect to the people behind write.as and the writing.exchange community. I’ve been blogging for many years, mostly personal stuff about everyday life and things I see and think about. I’ve tried all the big services; Wordpress, Blogger, Medium as well as Postach.io and Posterous. I like the promise that Posthaven have made and I am a paying Posthaven user since last year or so. I have a blog going over there you’re welcome to check out if you’re into reading swedish.
This last week I got my eyes on Write.as and couldn’t stop myself from signing up. This is simplicity at it’s best! No hassle so far. And the Snap.as service for pictures (I really thought I would find it annoying) is actually neat.
In my work as a journalist focused on a web audience I am not close to #deletefacebook but I find Facebook to be more and more a professional tool than a way to hang out with friends and be personal. However I find the discission of avoiding Facebook, Twitter and the big internet giants interesting. Via Write.as I got to hear about Mastodon and the fediverse, two things I’ve never heard of before. Maybe because neither of them seem to be a big thing in Sweden, yet.
So, now I have introduced myself. If you all go happy bananas of this I might be doing english blog posts again, otherwise I think I’ll stick to my native language.
I am writing this piece on my Iphone sitting at the kitchen table in the small old house in the countryside that me and my wife and three kids are renting for weekends and semesters. It’s a place where the urban distractions are none, where there is no water closet (just an old fashioned outhouse), no shower and no tv. It’s fantastic. This is what i looks like.
