2026 July 17 • Friday

Decades ago I read Charles Willeford's The Burnt Orange Heresy. I remember being blown away by it but other than that it had something to do with art and a painter, I couldn't remember much about it.

It's a short book so I decided to read it again.

The basic story is about an art critic named James Figueras who has worked hard to establish himself as one of the few solidly respected, influential and powerful operators in his world.

It's a hustle and requires a certain amount of choreography but he's actually sincere, a true believer in art with knowledge, taste and passion.

He's also a serious writer. Words are his medium and they're as important to him as paint is to a painter.

Jacques Debierue is a famous and famously reclusive painter, a legend in the art world and one of its most important and defining figures, whose work encompasses several of the major schools of the twentieth century and indeed seems to have inspired their very creation.

It turns out that Debierue is living in Florida and a millionaire art collector will set Figueras up with the opportunity to interview him and see his current work.

This would be the scoop of all scoops and would level Figueras up to unassailable heights. It would be the proverbial golden ticket.

The only catch is that Figueras has to steal one of Debierue's paintings for the millionaire art collector.

This isn't a moral or ethical problem for Figueras, merely a logistical one.

I didn't mind reading this book again but I wasn't as impressed with it as I was the first time.

Willeford's prose style is smooth and witty and understated, but a lot of the book depends on an attitude toward "art" that was, I think, left for dead a long time ago.

A blurb on the back of the book, from the Nashville Tennesseean, asserts boldly that "Nabokov would smile and approve" but I'm extremely confident that Nabokov would have thought this novel was worthless garbage and wouldn't have gone much further than the first few pages.

I myself don't think it's worthless garbage but it is very dated in its "art" talk as well as its tedious misogyny. The main female character is a depressing cartoon and not actually a realistic person but a couple of lazy writing devices: a way for the author to dump tons of exposition on the reader, by having Figueras constantly spewing hundreds of words to her so that she/the reader can have the necessary information, and a catalyst for plot movement.

The ending of the book, which I had found so thrilling and satisfying decades ago, no longer even makes sense to me.

I didn't mind reading it, but I'll be surprise if this is one of Willeford's best.
2026 July 15 • Wednesday

Billy Hayes was trying to smuggle some has back to the United States from Turkey, for recreational use. He got caught. And sentenced to jail for decades, possibly life.

In collaboration with William Hoffer, Hayes wrote the book Midnight Express about the experience, the shame and terror and increasing desperation.

It's harrowing and well written and extremely absorbing. I can't imagine ever being tempted to try something like what Hayes got arrested for after reading this.

Hayes forms friendships and some closer relationships with fellow prisoners, who come from various different countries, including the United States. In recounting the development of these connections he allows us to see the best in people, a much needed balance to the filth, violence and insanity that pervades the narrative.

Having gambled against the system and lost big once already, Hayes tries to extricate himself from his predicament by the book but after years and years of setbacks and no progress, he turns to planning an escape.

There aren't many books like this one. And it's hard to imagine a writer of fiction coming up with some of the scenes you'll find inside. I recommend it.

The first line is "Some twelve miles west of Istanbul, beyond the outskirts of the city in the flat farm country near the coast, is Yesilkoy International Airport".

2026 July 13 • Monday

Giorgio Moroder's great synth score for Midnight Express is the 917th Soundtrack of the Week.

Moroder was assisted here by Harold Faltermeyer, who would also find a place in synth score history with his Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and epic "Axel F" theme.

The Midnight Express soundtrack album starts with a long piece called "Chase", with a relentless disco backbeat, synth textures oozing in and out and an exciting adventure melody that has fanfare qualities.

"Love's Theme" is a sensitive piano-driven number with eletronic keyboard and strings adding lushness. This sounds like something that Angelo Badalamenti might have been inspired by.

This true story takes place in Turkey and with "Theme from Midnight Express (Instrumental)", Moroder flirts with the modality usually associated with that part of the world, but mostly keeps things in a major scale. The weaving synth and string lines and ascending harmonic movement create a sweeping romantic atmosphere.

Bluesy synth guitar kicks off "Istabul Blues", which has a female vocalist, heavy drums and a melody very similar to "Lovesick Blues" and, I guess, a zillion other songs. The lyrics are specific to the story ("They gave me thirty years" etc.).

Billy Hayes spends a lot of his prison time walking in circles around a wheel, usually with other prisoners but sometimes on his own. There isn't much to do. Moroders "The Wheel" is the eeriest and most ominous track, with blaster beam-like stabs, high chittering noises and cloudy synth bursts.

"Istanbul Opening" is a powerful and mysterious track that signals the location by hinting at those Turkish modalities and then going into a serpentine melody played on piano and an ill-sounding keyboard.

The "Cacophony" cue does indeed match its name, being varied noises and sonics thrown together, a mixture of electric and acoustic both, with bubbly synths intersecting what could be cymbalom or just the inside of a piano.

Finally there's the vocal version of "Theme from Midnight Express", which is lovely and moving.

2026 July 08 • Wednesday

The paperback edition of John Buell's The Shrewsdale Exit is presented as a post-Death Wish exploitation novel and it does indeed contain all of the requisite elements. But it isn't really that kind of book.

The cover gives the impression that the whole book will be about a family being terrorized by a motorcycle gang. All of this happens in the first chapter.

Most of the violence occurs off page and the reader learns of some specifics indirectly and clinically. This phlegmatic and understated approach intensifies the impact and the horror of the attack. The very, very old observation of the effectiveness of leaving much to the audience's imagination is reinforced for the zillionth time. Readers of this book might never forget the phrase "sexual savagery".

So what does happen in this book? Well, in one of at least two extremely improbable events that show rather too explicitly the author's hand directing the plot, main character Joe Grant survives the encounter with the bikers while his wife and six-year-old daughter do not.

For a while the book follows the steps of a police procedural while also mapping Grant's having to face his friends and family after surviving this atrocity. He then does what the heroes of Death Wish-type stories do: gets a gun and goes hunting.

But he's actually really bad at shooting guns, having never done it before. Sure, he practices, like they all do, but he still isn't very good. He manages to track down the bikers and lure them into a trap but doesn't do so well and actually ends up in jail himself, charged with attempted murder, while the bikers go free.

This was an unexpected turn of events and I've already said too much about the book's plot.

It's an attempt to take this familiar story in an unfamiliar direction, toward redemption and rebirth instead of vengeance and retribution.

It's very well written and I applaud the effort. In the end it's more impressive than enjoyable or satisfying, though.

The first line is "They decided to pull in at the Howard Johnson's".

2026 July 06 • Monday

Bill Green's music for the 1974 Australian biker movie Stone is the 916th Soundtrack of the Week.

The first track, "Eco Blue/Toadstrip", starts out with some ghostly legato tones that might be electric violin and then goes into an avantgarde mix of electronic sounds and didgeridoo.

Then the beat kicks in for "Race", a groovy number with guitar and keyboards going nuts over a couple of different rhythmic ideas. It's very "biker movie" and a high point of the genre, as is the movie itself.

The next two tracks are both only 46 seconds long, with "Head Off" being more on the sonic noise end of things, with electronics emulating motorcycle sounds, while "Pigs" is like a deranged electro-samba march.

Strings create a surprisingly tender and lovely atmosphere for "Cosmic Funeral", with the band coming in at the very end to add some rock color, which segues nicely into the rock/classical, electric/acoustic, chamber music with drums and bass love theme for "Amanda".

Not eclectic enough? Here come banjo and harmonica for the cheery country tune "Septic", followed by a bluesy solo electric guitar piece called "Smoke".

Finally our hero and titular character "Stone" gets a cue, a laidback acid rock piece with some killer grooves.

"Undertaker" is a slow electric blues track with wah-wah guitar and electric piano, followed by "Gravedigger" a high energy acid rock cut.

Echoey solo acoustic guitar playing creates an exotica-tinged mood for "Swim" and then we're in a more traditional rock band zone with "Klaude Kool and the Kats", no fuzz or distortion and with acoustic piano.

The record takes off again with the highest intensity track, the acid rock screamer "Toad" and then things slow way down for the lushly textural and otherworldly atmospheric "The Death of Dr. Death", which features something like zither or dulcimer or auto-harp.