{"id":3012,"date":"2019-05-29T22:22:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-29T21:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=3012"},"modified":"2020-04-22T02:35:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T01:35:35","slug":"dennis-etchison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=3012","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Etchison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

About fifteen years ago I was given a book to review by the then editor of <\/strong>Vector<\/strong><\/em> – it was <\/strong>Fine Cuts<\/strong><\/em>, by Dennis Etchison. It was the first book I’d read by him, but in a (too brief – he didn’t write enough) binge I immediately tore through the rest of them. There was something about his slightly sly, slightly sparse style that really appealed to me. Since he’s passed away today, I thought I’d dig out that old review and put it up.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fine Cuts<\/em> by Dennis Etchison (PS Publishing, 2004)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have never been to the USA, yet through television, film and books I have the idea that I know many of its cities intimately. They\u2019re not communities or centres of commerce, they\u2019re movie stars \u2013 no more substantial and no less the fruits of conscientious image manipulation. And, like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood they may appear in different stories, they may get cast in different roles, but they always play themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fine<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have a soft spot for New York, that I imagine as a braggart that blusters and boasts to disguise a sentimental core. Washington\u2019s capitol might shine like a beacon but it can\u2019t disguise the fact that its foundations are in the swamp. Las Vegas would fiddle while Rome burned if it wasn\u2019t busy looting everything not nailed down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, of all the American cities, Los Angeles has the firmest grip on my imagination. It shines like a jewel in the films of Michael Mann (Heat<\/em> and Collateral<\/em>) but, like a dame in a Chandler story, it\u2019s really as dangerous and duplicitous as Jake Gittes\u2019s Chinatown<\/em>. Los Angeles burns through natural resources (oil on its freeways, water on verdant desert lawns, human talent in its business) with a reckless disregard for renewal while poverty and racial tension gnaw at its foundations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a terrible city and yet it is also irresistible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In story after story throughout Fine Cuts<\/em>, Dennis Etchison captures this weird, scary but compulsively fascinating place perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must confess that I was completely unaware of Dennis Etchison before receiving this book to review so I should point that many of you may already be familiar with the stories contained here. Fine Cuts<\/em> contains no new work by an author whose output falls some way short of prolific. The twelve stories included in this volume by PS Publishing first appeared between 1973 and 2001 and most (perhaps all) have previously been collected elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, as a jumping on point for\nnew readers, this volume is very rewarding and I think even those familiar with\nEtchison\u2019s work may find the decision to group these particular stories \u2013 all\nof which share Hollywood and the associated media industry as a setting or\ntheme \u2013 rewarding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is nothing gothic about Etchison\u2019s writing style \u2013 his prose is spare, almost invisible but his stories have a knack for getting under your skin, upsetting your equilibrium and re-emerging from your subconscious days later in disturbing and unexpected ways. Perhaps my favourite of all these stories is \u201cThe Dog Park\u201d which, on the surface, is simply about a man returning to a park to look for his lost pooch, but Etchison invests it with a powerful sense of loss and desperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That idea of having lost\nsomething \u2013 missed opportunities, wasted talent, vanished innocence \u2013 and being\nunable to escape the consequences of that loss permeates these stories. In\n\u201cDeadspace\u201d, \u201cWhen They Gave Us Memory\u201d, \u201cInside the Cackle Factory\u201d, \u201cThe\nSpot\u201d and \u201cDeathtracks\u201d the characters become trapped in relationships or\npatterns of living from which they cannot drag themselves free. In \u201cCalling All\nMonsters\u201d and \u201cThe Late Shift\u201d Etchison traps his characters in their own\nbodies, to quite chilling effect. This is a landscape where no one wins, even\nthose that have made it big \u2013 like the former child-star in \u201cThe Last Reel\u201d,\nthe actress in \u201cI Can Hear The Dark\u201d or the game show host in \u201cGotta Kill \u2018Em\nAll\u201d \u2013 soon come to realise that success is fleeting and that it is without\nsubstance or worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the sun-bleached skull of a\nsteer in the Californian desert, Etchison\u2019s characters are stripped bare, their\npretensions torn away, their hopes shredded until all that\u2019s left is a brittle\nshell. But these aren\u2019t dour stories. I found that I read most of them with a\ngrin on my face \u2013 Etchison has a sardonic wit that surfaces (albeit sometimes\nquite nastily) in almost every tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The humour is one key factor in\nleavening what might otherwise be a rather stodgy collection. The other is that\nno matter how much Etchison highlights the soul-sucking banality and\ninsincerity of Los Angeles,\nhe returns again and again to describe in intimate detail the city and its\npeople. He is clearly, in his own way, in love with this city and seems no more\ncapable of escaping Los Angeles\nthan the characters in his stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About fifteen years ago I was given a book to review by the then editor of Vector – it was Fine Cuts, by Dennis Etchison. It was the first book I’d read by him, but in a (too brief – he didn’t write enough) binge I immediately tore through the rest of them. There was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[15,10],"tags":[160],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-MA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3012"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3044,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012\/revisions\/3044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}