The Gas Face #3
In an otherwise reasonable review of Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke (Believer 10/07), your pal finds this:
Since the beginning of his career, Johnson's had an ear for the gritty nuances of speech, but the dialogue in this book has the stamp of lived-and-learned life, as if we're eavesdropping on real people talking real talk, not the fragmented pseudo-speak that afflicts all too many of our avuncular auteurs.
Mr. Michod gets the Gas Face for this, both for his puzzling insistence that "real" = "good" and his vague shot-across-the-bow on unnamed "avuncular auteurs." (I thought at first that this was a shot at DeLillo, but he's not an auteur, quite, is he? Whoever could he be talking about? Altman?)
By the way, the dialogue quoted in support of this assertion goes as follows:
"Family better count for something. Because nothing else does."
"You got that right."
"You ready for a burger?"
"Does the Pope wear a dress?"
I don't exactly mind this exchange, but it seems like a combination of tough-guy realism (Carver, Ford, Wolff) and the "Let's Get a Taco" scene from Reservoir Dogs. Which is all well and good, except that in being so it doesn't quite seem like real people talking real talk.
In fact, I don't know what real people talking real talk is. I suspect, though, it's whatever Brett Favre and his pals sound like as they hang out in rugged Wrangler jeans during his bye week. Oh, for a transcript of that instead of another White Noise to confound us!
