Review: On the Berm of Paradise
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 16, 2012
The Long Drunk is a story of people living on the streets of Venice, California. The climate is good for sleeping in hardscrabble patches between trendy restaurants and low rent apartment buildings. The food is good scavenged from the dumpsters in alleys behind the eateries. The cardinal rule is never to sleep in the same place two nights in a row. That way, the players are seen as homeless and transient in the eyes of themselves, residents, and authorities. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose and the means to grab some more booze.The problem that Eric Coyote describes in his novel is that everyone has something to lose, regardless of his condition of sanity and sobriety. Consider the situation of Murphy, a former college football player who loved to party as a young athlete and still managed to get drafted into the NFL. In any drunk's life, though, the party becomes more important than continuing to function rationally. Murphy ends up on the street, filthy and stinking, and guzzling anything with alcohol in it.What did Murphy have to lose? He loved his rotti, Betty who saved his sorry behind on a beach that was being bulldozed to minimize storm damage. The two bummed together for years after that. Murphy and Betty are not isolated; no man with dog is an island. Murphy and Betty hang loosely with a collection of losers who effortlessly form a bohemian society in the Venice border world. The caravan of fools comes together when Betty is injured and Murphy can't pay the vet bill. Murphy sees a reward flier and decides to solve a 6 month old Venice murder that no one can figure out.Reading a Raymond Chander novel for inspiration and instructions on how to be a private eye, Murphy stays partly sober during the day (roaring drunk at night) and sets out to ask questions of people who may know something about the murder. Maybe he'll get lucky and find evidence the police have not discovered. Murphy's adventures in crime solving and his association with his street crew are described in funny and serious scenes with no excuses given or sermonizing by Coyote. A bottom line is this: booze takes away cares of the future and regrets of the past leaving the bums existing in the immediate moment of each day and night. The problem here is that the shortened time line of the characters does not bring them closer to rational experience but rather makes them react impulsively to events, and exist in a state that is not themselves.The Long Drunk is the "ultra noir" Book One of The Homeless Detective Trilogy. It is fun and fast-paced with quite a bit of street language and violence as you would expect in a story of homeless drunks. Even though the characters lived somewhat successful pasts, they are now living in degradation on the berm of paradise. You too can live a drunk's life, without a debilitating hangover, by reading this novel. If you like hard-boiled and ribald detective stories, give it a try.