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A must for writers and those who love fine writing
Book Review
By Derryll White
Crumley, James (1969). One To Count Cadence.
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
– Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’
Surely soldiers gripe in Heaven…. no one understands the reward for virtue… only the penalty for guilt.
– James Crumley
James Crumley is an American writer born in Three Rivers, Texas. He lived and taught in Missoula, Montana. Crumley was never recognized as a writer in the top echelons, but his work was influential with writers that did make it, such as Michael Connelly and Robert Crais. I guess I am part of the cult following, as I really like his noir novels ‘The Mexican Tree Duck’ and ‘The Last Good Kiss.’
Crumley is a writer who reads a lot both classic and contemporary, thinks about it, and then allows this material to spill over into his own work setting both tone and context. He is very particular about his words and this trait also informs his writing and style. I like it a lot.
Sergeant Jacob ‘Slag’ Krummel had his wife leave him for the civil rights movement, something he couldn’t understand. For another man, he could get that, but for a social ideal? So he re-enlists in the U.S. Army where everything except a wife is issued to every man. Krummel felt himself to be a descendant of warriors, professional killers invested in honour above all else. A little weird, but 1962 and there it is.
Crumley delves into some very base human values here. What is it like to kill a fellow human? How much do we owe someone – to keep them safe, whole, functioning? They are not easy questions and a lot of writers don’t ask them. I appreciated Crumley’s answers.
‘One To Count Cadence’ is the most literary dissertation I have read, for sure. Crumley embraces the academic shield, writing for the art of the activity rather than the commercial possibility. There are areas where an editor would have trimmed and whole passages that would probably have been eliminated in crafting this work into a commercial possibility. However, what the academic freedom offered was a palate from which the writer could explore, in depth, the anguish of being a soldier, a warrior, a man. James Crumley embraced that and, I believe, produced a work of rare beauty and deep exploration. It is hard to be Sgt. Jacob Krummel, but in honest moments all of us embrace some of his world.
Crumley is definitely hard on America and hard on man in general. He has little time for the meaningless wars although he understands the transformation, the fulfillment that some men find there. But the sum total of ‘One To Count Cadence’ is a beautiful, articulate statement of what it is to be a man and write. It makes so much more sense to me than Ernest Hemingway ever did. Not for everyone, but I think a must for writers and those who love truly fine writing.
Fuck ‘em all but nine –
Six for pallbearers,
Two for roadguards,
And one to count cadence.
-Old Army prayer
****
Excerpts from the novel:
PHILLIPINES ARTISTRY – Novotny reached to the only odd piece of furniture in the room, a chest-high mahogany cabinet, and eased the volume down. The cabinet was rich Filipino mahogany, with carved jungle scenes on every flat surface which, when examined very closely, revealed a large number of couples, triples and daisy-chains in various stages, states and forms of – intercourse is not strong enough; fucking too crude for the artistry of the carving; copulation too limited; so I choose – cohabitation, for the figures did forever live in the wood, I had to laugh: a sexual stereo system able to handle LPs, 45s and 78s, tapes, AM-FM radio and Freudian nightmares.
MEMORY – But I didn’t hear what Novotny was saying then: I had my own enemy, blacker and vaster than time – memory, or history as it is popularly called. I named it my enemy then, hating it as the Roman soldier who pierced Christ’s side must have hated Him. Salvation is a hateful thing: surely the memory of man proves that.
A MAN – Such was Joe Manning, Joseph Jabez Morning, hanging between the sun and the moon, a man of great tides. Like all men without roots, direction or patience, he was a revolutionary, not a rebel but a revolutionary, or destroyer, a reacher for all or nothing for anyone. (It would be easier, so much easier, this history I record, if Joe Morning could have been a bad man, an evil heart, but he was good and in his misguided virtue drove me to the evil of excess and even to murder and in the end passed the avenging, burning, falling stone of revolution to me.)
WAR – It wasn’t easy to shoot at men, or a grinding noise and light which betrayed where men are. I had never thought that it would be otherwise – but it was so frightening, as if I had to cross that time and space and stand stupid and scared and shooting at myself. I was numb, but all the nerves of my body were on fire, fire.
ACTION – The enemy had risen out of darkness, had stood erect and dared me, and if he paid a price, it seemed only what he owed for the honor of standing. I had been afraid but had acted, and the action transcended, as ever, the emotion. Morality did not matter, nor mortality, only the act, the duty, simple and clear.
TRANSCENDENCE – “Maybe that’s why man invented God,” he said as I walked up behind him. “They saw dead men and understood that dead men weren’t men any more. They had to have something in man they couldn’t kill, something holy in man alive, some place for man dead to go. Something that couldn’t die. Couldn’t die.” He had been waiting for me.
HISTORY – Once upon a time (yes, once upon a time, for this too is a fairy tale as all history is, and it, even more like history, makes its truth not from fact but from belief and yes, I do believe)…
OWNERSHIP – “You’re in the Army, and they have your permission to do anything except cut your balls off. They can demand your life for no other reason than the fact that some dumb bastard wants it. You don’t have to like it, don’t have to believe in it, or even try to understand that armies are this way because they have to be, but you have to do what they say. Or pay for it.”
MAN’S ACTIONS – If politicians, revolutionaries, reformers, preachers and priests, generals, Gold Star Mothers and the Daughters of the American Revolution, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Sons of the Republic, if they had to field dress and butcher and eat all the useless dead they contract with warriors to produce, then… God, how the beef market would fall.
MEN – “Write her. Men don’t understand what they do to women. You’re all bastards.” She arranged a smile on her face, then walked to the next bed.
HISTORY – If, as they say, the writer’s duty is to force order on the chaos, then the historian must force chaos wherever he finds order.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
