RAYMOND CHANDLER

"What kind of work do you do mostly?"
"Anything that's reasonably honest," I said.
He nodded. "Reasonably is a word you could stretch. So is honest."
I gave him a shady leer. "You're so right," I agreed. "Let's get together some quiet afternoon and stretch them."
_________

"Who?"...
"Quest. Q as in quintessential, U as in uninhibited, E as in Extrasensory, S as in Subliminal, T as in Toots..."

__________

"You'd be surprised how difficult some of that Mozart is," he said. "It sounds so simple when you hear it played well... Mozart is just music. No comment needed from the performer."

__________
Inside the double doors there is a combination PBX and information desk at which sits one of those ageless women you see around municipal offices everywhere in the world. They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don't have to please anybody. They are safe. They are civil without ever quite being polite and intelligent and knowledgeable without any real interest in anything. They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.

--(The Little Sister)

___________________________________

"Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?"
"It takes about three years."
"Three years?" He looked shocked.
"Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses."

__________

I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read them often, only when I run out of things to dislike.

__________

They had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops' eyes. They get them at the passing-out parade at the police school.

_________

The car was never found by any police. It was stolen sometime in the night, driven most probably to El Paso, fitted with new keys and forged papers, and put on the market eventually in Mexico City. The procedure is routine. Mostly the money comes back in the form of heroin. Part of the good-neighbor policy, as the hoodlums see it.

__________

...My voice seemed to echo off into the distance and get small and lonely.

_________

He leaned back in the big chair he was sitting in and took me to pieces with his hard gray eyes.

_________

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right.
To say goodbye is to die a little.

_____________

--(The Long Goodbye)

THE LADY IN THE LAKE
--Raymond Chandler

"I don't like your manner," Kingsley said in a voice you could have cracked a Brazil nut on.
"That's all right," I said. "I'm not selling it."

"Police business," he said almost gently, "is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of me. So we have to work with what we get--and we get things like this."

"One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?"
Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. '"Did he say 'whom'?"
"yeah, but don't hit him," I said. "There is such a word."
"I often wondered where they kept it. Look, buddy," he said to the clerk, "we want up to 716. Any objection?"

__________________________________

Just finished JACK KEROUAC'S "Maggie Cassidy"...

MADNESS VISIBLE: A Memoir of War
Janine di Giovanni



Before we left with a group, moving up the hill to the front, Jon said that he was proud of all of them when they left, but he felt bad sending some of them off. He new, maybe, that some were going to their deaths. You could always tell, he said, who was going to make it and who was not, by some strange look in their eyes.

Srebrenica massacre

This is what it feels like to watch someone else's agony: no matter how many times you listen and record someone's story, no matter how many refugees you see crossing over a mountaintop wearing plastic bags on their heads to protect themselves from the freezing rain--you do not get used to it.

He dropped me at the hotel and screeched off, as though my desire to get to Serbia or Montenegro were contagious.

You can forgive but not forget... we think that love is greater than hate... but it is a small step to go from hate to love; love to hate. It is a very thin line.
--Zeljko Kopanja, editor, in Banja Luka, August 2000

10,615 persons, out of whom 1,601 were children, were killed in Sarajevo. More than 50,000 persons were wounded, a great number of whom remain invalids. The siege of the city lasted from May 2, 1992 to February 26, 1996 or 1,395 days, which is the longest siege in the modern history of mankind.
--Suada Kapic, from a "war" map of Sarajevo, 1996


__________________

Just finished THE DEMON OF DAKAR by Kjell Eriksson. Well-written.

THE WAR FOR LATE NIGHT
Bill Carter

(On top of that, one Fox executive had turned up onstage so drunk that he couldn't pronounce the word "Tostitos.")

Jay wasn't displaying any overt signs of anger, but Lorne Michaels believed he was too professional to ever allow himself to let that out in public... Michaels could only guess the source of Leno's displeasure. "They made him come in, they made him do it. He had to sing for his supper, he had to audition again, and it was just all in a hostile room."

Conan was not only cagy but was totally transparent and upfront, qualities that were no advantage in a negotiation.

...but as even one senior NBC executive conceded, "You can't trust network executives; they go back on their word."

"Depend on it sir: When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." --Samuel Johnson

Knowing and recognizing television was like knowing and recognizing candy bars, Lorne Michaels reasoned. You anticipated what you would get for your dime or quarter or dollar (depending on how old you were.) Snickers? That was the one with nuts. If somehow that relationship changed, because the wrapper made it odder or more expensive looking, you might get confused and think maybe that wasn't the candy bar you wanted after all. It might still be a good one, of course, but it wasn't the one you knew. If it had the look of having gone upmarket, maybe you'd look around for a different candy bar.

The classy answer is, "'Oh, well, that's a silly question to ask, because somebody already has that job.' That's what you say if you're classy.

"What does Jay have on you?" Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. "What does this guy have on you people?" What the hell is it about Jay?"

__________________

DENIAL AND DECEPTION: AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF THE CIA FROM IRAN-CONTRA TO 9/11
Melissa Boyle Mahle

Christine Cabon is a French military officer best known for her part in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior...

Speaking at a university forum in 1993, Gates stated that at the time of his confirmation, 60 percent of the CIA budget was devoted to Soviet issues. By the time he left, Russian issues accounted for only 13 percent of the budget.

...Yasir Arafat had jeopardized Gulf Arab financial backing for the Palestinian cause when he chose to tailgate Palestinian popular opinion and support the Iraqi position during the Gulf War.

In a show of Islamic solidarity Sudan changed its visa laws in 1991, allowing any Muslim into the country without a visa.

1993
On January 25th, during the morning commute, chaos broke out in front of the gates of CIA headquarters. Lansing Bennett and Frank Darling were murdered as they sat at the traffic light, waiting to turn into the restricted drive leading into the CIA compound.

Black Hawk Down - Mark Bowden

There is an old saying in the Directorate of Operations among operations officers: If you don't like a case, for whatever reason, but do not have a good reason to terminate it, polygraph the agent. The test can be engineered to ensure that the agent fails.

Named 'Project Bojinka,' the cell planned to simultaneously blow up twelve airplanes as they flew across the Atlantic.

"Against All Enemies" - Richard Clarke's memoir

"Inside The CIA" - Ronald Kessler

"See No Evil" - Baer

_____________________

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED
Jonathan Safran Foer

"There were parts that I did not understand, but I conjecture that this is because they were very Jewish, and only a Jewish person could understand something so Jewish. Is this why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?"

"I'm looking for my voice... I want to do something I'm not ashamed of."

And then, in one of his moments of mental clarity, Shalom-then-Kolker-now-Safran called to her through the wall: I'm still here, you know. You promised you'd pretend to love me until I died, and instead you're pretending I'm dead.

____________________

DARKNESS VISIBLE
William Styron

Jean Seberg, ex-wife of Romain Gary.

Italian writer Cesare Pavese, who in parting wrote simply: No more words. An act. I'll never write again.

____________________

STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS
Jesus Hopped the A Train

ROOFTOP:
I useta go home and have nightmares 'bout gettin' stuck up inside a whale--my pops useta beat my ass wit' a slipper talkin' about "Ain't no whales in Harlem, fool, go back to sleep, this is a workin' family!"
_________

ROOFTOP:
The real question here ain't "Do I think I'm more important?" The actual fuckin' question is, "Do YOU think I'm important ENOUGH?"

____________

MARY JANE:
...I sat Angel down and informed him that the D.A. had filed for first-degree felony murder and that the charge carried a mandatory sentence of "Life without the Possibility." And Angel looked at me, and said, "Without the possibility of what?"

_________

MARY JANE:
What's God's plan for you?

ANGEL:
Chicken wings and beer.
_____________________________________

SAVAGES
Don Winslow


Dope is supposed to be bad, but in a bad world it's good, if you catch the reverse moral polarity of it. Chon refers to drugs as a "rational response to insanity," and his chronic use of the chronic is a chronic response to chronic insanity.
__________

Elena knows that love makes you strong
And love makes you weak.
Love makes you vulnerable.
So if you have enemies
Take what they love.
__________

Chon: "In my world, there's only he do or he don't ism because when it comes down to a man getting it done, either he do, or he don't."

___________
"I've accepted Christ as my personal savior."
"--it didn't turn out that well for the guy. You know, the crucifixion thing and stuff."

______________

"Are you going somewhere?"
"I'm thinking France."
"What's in France?"
"I dunno, French stuff. The French."
___________

An electronically altered voice says, "Let me speak with Mr. Let's Cut the Shit."
"I'm here."
"Let's cut the shit, shall we?...."
"No problem.
"Really? Because it was a problem before."
"It's not now."
"Good. Now let me speak to Mr. Fuck You."

___________________________

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Zainab Salbi

Early on in Saddam Hussein's reign, a woman could occasionally express a contrary opinion as long as she joked, cried, or sounded like a bit of an airhead.

...though [Saddam Hussein] legalized honor killings in the 1990s...

I remember hearing about a businessman who had been executed for raising his prices in violation of a law no one understood. The amazing part was not his murder, but the act that the Mukhabarat had apologized to the family afterward, saying they had made a mistake because he hadn't violated the law after all.

"He charms people, he seduces them, and then he harms them."

Uday, the elder of Amo's two sons, would later become infamous worldwide for his "rape palaces" where he raped and tortured women. ... Uday invited the daughter of a friend of my mother's out on a date, and her parents were so upset they arranged overnight for her to be married to a cousin in Dubai. She left the country almost immediately.

Between the world of right-doing and the world of wrong-doing there is a meeting ground.

_______________________

NAKED PICTURES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE
by Jon Stewart

As Karl Marx wrote, "Religion is the opiate of the people, and who couldn't use a little opiate now and again."

_____________________

My Father's Body
by William Matthews

First they take it away,
for now the body belongs to the state.
They open it
to see what may have killed it,
and the body had arteriosclerosis
in its heart, for this was an inside job.
Now someone must identify the body
so that the sate may have a name
for what it will give away,
and the funeral people come in a stark car
shaped like a coffin with a hood
and take the body away,
for now it belongs to the funeral people
and the body's family buys it back,
though it lies in a box at the crematorium
while the mourners travel and convene.
Then they bring the body to the chapel, as they call it,
of the crematorium, and the body lies in its box
while the mourners enter and sit
and stare at the box, for the box
lies on a pedestal where the altar would be
if this were a chapel.
A rectangular frame with curtains at the sides
rises from the pedestal,
so that the box seems to fill a small stage,
and the stage gives off the familiar
illusion of being a box with one wall torn away
so that we may see into it,
but it's filled with a box we can't see into.
There's music on tape and a man in a robe
speaks for a while and I speak
for a while and then there's a prayer
and then we mourners can hear the whir
of a small motor and curtains slide
across the stage. At least for today,
I think, this is the stage that all the world is,
and another motor hums on
and we mourners realize that behind
the curtains the body is being lowered,
not like Don Giovanni to the flames
but without flourish or song
or the comforts of elaborate plot,
to the basement of the crematorium,
to the mercies of the gas jets
and the balm of the conveyor belt.
The ashes will be scattered,
says a hushed man in a mute suit,
in the Garden of Remembrance,
which is out back.
And what's left of a mild, democratic man
will sift in a heap with the residue of others,
for now they all belong to time.

______________

WHITE NOISE
Don DeLillo

"I am the false character that follows the name around."
________________

"In the middle of it all is Hitler, of course."
"He was on again last night."
"He's always on. We couldn't have television without him."
"They lost the war," she said. "How great could they be?"
________________
"Am I going to die?"
"Not as such," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Not in so many words."
"How many words does it take?"
__________________

Who in this room would believe me if I said that the suicide rate hits an all-time record among people who live near high-voltage power lines?
_________________________________

THE NATURE OF YEARNING
David Huddle

American History
Young, they meet and tell each other
everything, exchanging childhoods,
as members of different tribes
present gifts at their first meeting
to signal their desire for peace.

The boy grew up with hog-killing,
had a knife-fight in high school,
jumped from airplanes in Germany,
and interrogated farmers
who denied they were Viet Cong.

The girl knew about monsoon heat.
In college she'd gone to India
for a month and stopped being the girl
who spent summers at the club, swimming
and playing tennis with her sister.

Talking this way, he sees her life
as what he was raised to want.
She sees his as the struggle
she's been denied. Her tenderness
comes freely; he wills his into shape.

Years later, when they are raising
children, the woman can't always
remember not to tease the man
with a kitchen knife in her hand,
and the man still hasn't learned

how to chat politely at parties.
But they don't mind remembering how
when they first met, he couldn't hear enough
about her birthday sleepovers,
nor she about his fucked-up army pals.

____________

Quiet Hour
Sometimes after dinner
they dawdle long after

the kids have excused
themselves. Then their

talk pleases them, what
her boss told her today,

a small thing he repaired,
something a teacher said

to their oldest. Tonight
it would be easy to ask,

When should we separate?
Who'll stay in the house?

How are we going to share
the children? She could

say, Do you know how hard
it's been living with you

all these years hating you
so much? He could tell her

he's thought of leaving
every day. From the air

they could pluck these words,
then maybe the forgiving ones

would come, too, I know
I haven't been, you did

the best you, and we tried,
we really, or maybe what came

would be the deeply bitter
you son of a, you goddamn.

So the words they choose
for these last moments

of sputtering candlelight
hold the weight of their

separate lifetimes, what
future their children may

expect, and finally whether
death will be cruel or kind

to them: I guess I'd
better do these dishes. No,

you're tired, I'll do them,
you just stay put.
_________________

FAIR GAME
Valerie Plame Wilson
Fox News stayed true to form in the wake of four out of five guilty verdicts with a news crawler saying "Scooter Libby found not guilty of lying to FBI investigators."

Everyday when CIA officers got up and went to work... they asked this million-dollar question: What is the mission? What am I supposed to do today, tomorrow, for the duration of the assignment? And does anybody out there really care?"

________________

BLOWING MY COVER
Lindsay Moran

______________________

FREEDOM
Jonathan Franzen

...when she considers her sisters, who are now in their early forties and living alone in New York, too eccentric and/or entitled-feeling to sustain a long-term relationship, and still accepting parental subsidies while struggling to achieve an artistic success that they were made to believe was their special destiny.

Ray grinned as if she'd been amusing. Joyce unfolded her half-glasses to examine the dessert menu while Walter blushed and Abigail, with a spastic neck-twist and a sour frown, said, "'Ray'? 'Ray'? We call him 'Ray' now?"

...because, when you got right down to it, it entailed telling him she didn't want him the way he wanted her: that craving sex with her mate was one of the things (OK, the main thing) she'd given up in exchange for all the good things in their life together.

___________________________

THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES
--Ben Mezrich

Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime.

FDR had been rejected from the [Porcellian] and had called the incident "the greatest disappointment of his life."

In one class--one of his stupid Cores called Art in the Time of Augustus--he'd supposedly fallen so far behind that he'd almost forgotten about an exam that was going to be worth a large percentage of his overall grade. He'd had no time to study for the damn thing--so he'd reportedly figured out a unique way of dealing with the situation. He'd created a quick little Web site where he posted all the artwork that was going to be on the exam and invited people in the class to comment--effectively creating an online crib sheet for the test. He'd essentially gotten the rest of the class to do the work for him--and he'd aced the exam, saving his grade.

_________________________