That's what we're here for, Griffin. To bear witness, to take notice. Ever doubt that, you just look into a child's eyes. When jumping into a book by James Sallis, especially the ones in the Lew Griffin series, I've learned not to expect that he'll be interested in focusing very much on plot. I don't read them for action, but I do read them for Sallis's evocative writing, and for the characters themselves. I've mentioned before that one of the most fascinating things about the Griffin series is the malleable chronology, the blurring of history and the parallels (which essayist Richard Martin calls "echoes) in Lew's life. In Bluebottle, the fifth and penultimate novel in the series, time is at it's most malleable here than in any of the previous books as Lew remembers a time in the seventies, after he was shot and lost a year of his life and memory, and the subsequent search for the white woman he was with at the time of the shooting. Chekhov insists that once a story is written we cross out the end and beginning, since that's where we do most of our lying. What you have here, then, is all middle: all back and fill, my effort to reconstruct the year missing from my life, to hold on to it. Sallis jumps back and forth and up and down through time as Lew recalls various aspects throughout his life, but it never felt too confusing. And there are many echoes of characters and situations from other parts of Lew's narrative, and sometimes it causes you to either doubt Lew's memory, or wonder at the significance. For example, the woman he's searching for, Dana Esmay, is eerily similar to Esmé Dupuy, the white journalist who was with Lew during the shooting in Black Hornet that is almost a straight parallel to the one here. There are more examples of this throughout all of these books and it makes for fascinating reading. There are some interesting plot elements this time around, like the missing writer that Lew ends up searching for, a man who begins to write his masterpiece by researching a white supremacist group, and might have ultimately began to commit fully to their cause. I never found out exactly what it was that had hurt my friend so–something working in him a long time, that finally found purchase. In future years I'd come to recognize similar things scrabbling for footholds within myself. They were already there, of course, even then. Sometimes at night I heard them breathing.
Working my way through this Lew Griffin series from James Sallis it has slowly become apparent that I am deeply effected by his work, on an emotional and spiritual and, almost certainly most important for existential noir, a gut level. The way Sallis discusses the meaning of life through the lens of his sometime PI, sometime author and at a consistently high level elevates him above just about everyone else I can think of who has written or is writing within the noir genre. First book aside, which functioned perfectly as its own contained universe, this is the high point of the series to date and sadly there is only one left for me to devour after it. A time jumping examination of fractured memory and contemplation of self and the mark you leave on the world; and in some ways I am left with the impression that perhaps this is a fever dream, that the events towards the end of The Eye of the Cricket have left Lew far more damaged than we were led to believe, this could even be alcohol based dementia or his death bed ramblings or from intensive care, such is the unreliable nature of the narration and the overlapping of details with previous cases. Just the same it's a powerful little novel that will forever cement Sallis a place in my personal literary canon.
What do You think about Bluebottle (1999)?
Loved it, as I've loved each of Sallis' Lew Griffin books. Griffin is an educated black man with a ceaseless work ethic and blind care for all people. He takes on cases with no regard for his own life, but he'll gladly acknowledge the people he loves in the process: It's for this that these novels are so enjoyable. These aren't the "mysteries" in which the protagonist is solely driven by whatever work falls into his lap; rather, Griffin is motivated by parallels he finds to his own life. (In this case, getting shot, as Bluebottle begins, is an outlier, but he picks up "side jobs" that hit him more subtly.) It's for this reason that his fondness for literature (many valuable allusions throughout) acts as a gift and a curse: it's a gift for all readers; a curse for his mind, as he always knows when to dig deeper, even if it may bring him personal harm.So if you're looking for something hard-boiled, this isn't the place. It is, however, if you want a unique writing style and a conversational narrator who can talk you through his pages swiftly. You'll be through Bluebottle before you know it, and you'll want to read the next in the series immediately.
—Tyler Collison
