There’s not a contributor note (that I saw), but I’m pretty sure the same author of “The Heaven of Mercury” has a new story in this week’s New Yorker. I haven’t read the story yet, but “The Heaven of Mercury” was a magnificent novel. Set in a fictional Meridian, Miss., it recounts some seventy years in the life of a disc jockey and obituary writer and his unrequited love for a woman named Birdie.

(I read it recently, and can’t believe I didn’t blog about it. What I would have said is that it’s beautiful and strange and, for a first novel, feels very well constructed. Watson must have let it simmer for a while. It’s the kind of novel that gave me some hope that my old thesis novel, also a small-town drama, might get published yet, so I pulled it out and have been revising it. What more can you ask from a piece of fiction, than that it makes you want to write something yourself? I wondered what Watson’s been up to since then – writing for the New Yorker, I guess.)

Sycamore Review linked to Patricia Henley’s blog, dedicated to women writers. You don’t have to be a woman to visit her site, though. Check out some of her essays, especially the potholder model for short stories vs. novels.

Here’s a fascinating article by a computer programmer who, in the 80s and 90s, wrote the software for CMOs (collaterized mortgage obligations), which allowed firms to start bundling and selling mortgages as bonds. It’s a long article, but well worth the read.

Stone’s first novel is set in New Orleans during the cultural transition of late fifties/early sixties. The protagonist is a stoner-drunk disc jockey who takes a job working of a right-wing talk radio station. The station, in conjunction with New Orleans politicians, sets up a “Patriotic Revival,” a stump event that targets blacks on welfare and champions “traditional” conservative values. This movement is in tension with the New Orleans masses, and chaos ensues.

The novel is ambitious and political, and reminds me a little of Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49″ or “Vineland” in its attempts to capture the spirit of the era–right vs. left, cynicism vs. idealism, political conspiracies, paranoia, rampant drug use. And like “Vineland” (but unlike “The Crying of Lot 49,” I’d argue), “A Hall of Mirrors” feels remarkably relevant today, when you think of Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney and all the problems that arose in New Orleans with Katrina. This is one of those books that you wonder what the author would do if he were sitting down today to write it. Other than updating some of the cultural references, he wouldn’t have to change much for it to be as provocative and ambitious as it was in the early sixties.

This novel bounces back and forth between two characters; the primary character is Bob Dubois, from New Hampshire, who in a moment of depression moves his family to Florida so he can manage one of his brother’s liquor stores, then later south to the keys to work on one of his friends’ boats. The second character is a Haitian woman trying to get to America. Over the course of 400 pages, their lives come together, and all the while Banks is asking questions about what it means to be an American. From a grimy New Hampshire bar, to drug running in the keys, to tall Miami banks built from drug money (one of my favorite lines: the skyscaper’s windows glisten like the sunglasses of a small-town highway patrolman), to a whorehouse in the Bahamas, what is the promise of the American dream, and how does someone with nothing but a willing spirit fare? The book came out in 1985, and is set in the recession years of 1979-1981, so it feels timely to be asking those questions today. What the English major in me likes about this book is that it’s working with elements of literary Naturalism, but, like Hemingway and Faulkner, Banks gives his characters some degree of responsibility, allows them to make decisions, rather than, like Dreiser or Crane, explaining away all their actions purely in terms of environmental determinism.

Bowden is the same journalist who wrote “Black Hawk Down,” which I’ve neither read nor seen the movie, though after reading “Killing Pablo” I’d be interested in reading. “Killing Pablo” is kind of a nonfiction potboiler about the hunt for Pablo Escobar in the ’80s and ’90s. It has its moments–Escobar is an interesting character, and Bowden’s style is like a novelist in its characterization and pacing–but it comes up a little short on details for me. I usually say the opposite about nonfiction, especially biographies. Usually they go into too much detail, details of interest to scholars, but not the casual reader. But Bowden, in choosing to write a fast-paced book, sacrifices details about Colombian history and American foreign policy and the simple minutia of running drugs that I would be interested in reading about. Instead he focuses on this or that Colombian politician making this or that speech, Escobar having this guy killed or torturing that guy, the laws changing thusly, Pablo on the run, etc. For my money, I’d say this is one to check out of the library–worth reading for sure, but not one to put on the shelves with the books you want to impress your friends with.

1) Interest rates fell to about as low as they’ve been since WWII this week. If you have or can borrow $12,000 and have good credit, you can buy a house in the $170-180K range and have your mortgage payments be $1200 a month, including taxes and insurance. (Some FHA loans only require 3% down. That obviously is not for everybody.)
2) If you’re a first-time homebuyer, the government will give you $8,000 as a credit, which you can keep, provided you buy the house before the end of July and stay in it for at least three years. You can amend your 2008 tax returns to get the money now, rather than waiting until next winter.
3) There is enough real estate out there to get pretty close to exactly what you want, provided you shop around. Many houses show up on several realtors’ Web sites.
4) Google maps is the best thing ever, because you can get a street view and see how close a house actually is to a neighbor, or if the street is actually a four-lane highway in that area, or if everyone in the neighborhood has a lowrider truck or a mid-90s Astro van or if cars are floating around on blocks. (Not to be classist and pass judgments, but this is a big purchase, and why not do it right.)