Monday, January 23, 2012

Raylan

Raylan: A Novel (Elmore Leonard)
- Highlight Loc. 1360-80  | Added on Saturday, January 21, 2012, 04:03 PM

“You ever look for the Nazi lovers beat you up?”

“Two of ’em are gone, overdosed. The third guy,” (US Marshal) Nichols said, “by the time I found him was a crackhead, his tats hard to read. I stood him against a brick wall, put on leather gloves while I’m lookin him in the eye. I hit him one-two, both sides of his jaw. He went down and I stood lookin at him.”

Raylan said, “He remember you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Something you had to do before you got too old,” Raylan said. “It’s a shame he wasn’t a wanted felon.”

“So I could shoot him he resisted.”

“I meant you’d have a reason to hunt him down.”

Nichols said, “You’ve shot and killed a man?”

“Yes, I have,” Raylan said.

“An armed fugitive?”

“More than one,” Raylan said.

“It doesn’t matter how many, does it?”

“Not a bit,” Raylan said. “Once or twice I might’ve been lucky.”

“You get to where you have to pull—”

“Knowing you better shoot to kill,” Raylan said.

Nichols gave Raylan a nod.

They knew each other.

12 comments:

Tulkinghorn said...

"Nazi-lovers" needs a hyphen," Tulkinghorn said.

"What a pointless comment."

Tulkinghorn said, "So I could keep the talk going you want."

"Asshole."

David Chute said...

"You think this stuff is easy but you've just proved it isn't."

"Touche," Tulkinghorn said.

Tulkinghorn said...

No he didn't.

What he said was that any sufficiently developed style is in danger of self-parody.

All the more so when you've been doing it for, what, sixty-five years.

Hard to know what to say about that last line, because it is simultaneously so cool and so silly. This means that it's not at all different from lots of other things that I love (Tolkein, Lovecraft, come on down!) but if you're not there, you're not there.

David Chute said...

Indeed.

David Chute said...

At the very least, Olyphant and Co. are better at bringing this sort of thing to life on a csreen than anyone since Budd and Randy. So if you still have a taste for that sort of thing, here it is.

Tulkinghorn said...

The wonderful thing with DVD being that you can correct errors of judgment about what's worth watching...

Bailed on Alcatraz about 3/4 of the way through the first two hours... WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) one thing and the idea that I can watch it later if it turns out to be any good another. The seams holding past and present together just a bit too easy to see for my taste.

David Chute said...

So you missed the cool surprise at the end of episode two. I'd advise toughing it out at least that far.

Christian Lindke said...

Cool surprise?

Surprise? Maybe. Cool? Meh.

As a twist it was minutely forshadowed, meaning that it fit narratively, but it also oozed of being forced.

It was the time traveling equivalent to "and their names were Adam and Eve."

Then again, fans of BSG got exactly that and seem deeply satisfied.

David Chute said...

As the groundwork for future entanglements, promising and therefore still cool.

And the Adam & Eve comparison is a stretch. I mean, really.

Not to mention the ongoing discovery of Sarah Jones.

Christian Lindke said...

I don't think the Adam and Eve comparison is a stretch at all. First, that's exactly what the end of BSG was and second what is the time travel question that gets asked more than any other?

What if so and so met so and so's...

I'm sorry, but I find the question much less interesting than you do.

So far the show has very much followed the "Fringe Formula." This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it is ... you know ... a formula.

I'm waiting for the catch, the hook, the something that wasn't in Journeyman.

I'm looking for my "Behold the Man" moment. The reveal that the protagonist of the book travels back in time and "becomes Jesus" is at the beginning of the story. It's not the twist, it's the set up.

Had the reveal been in Act 1 of episode 1, it would have worked. As the stingy twist at the end of Act 5 of the second episode? Not so much.

As for the other "twist," it stretches credulity that Alcatraz would even hire that individual in 1963.

David Chute said...

The Nagra character exists in both the past and the present, unless I'm misreading it. Doesn't directly contradsict anything else we've seen that returneees can travel to the present while remaining in the past. So I'm holding out hope for the time being that the relationship between the past and present will get interestingly bizarre.

Actually, though, the "Fringe"-like qualities are what worry me the most. There are already signs of it settling into a "returnee-out-for-revenge of the week" formula. The assumption appears to be that this is what Amercian Yahoos want from a TV series.

David Chute said...

Of course, it could SEEM complicated simply because I'm confused. Not unheard of.

Lean Rippy, BTW, is a favorite from the lamented Saving Grace who should be cast in everything.