Fri 18 Jun 2010
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: KINKY FRIEDMAN – Elvis, Jesus & Coca Cola.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[10] Comments
KINKY FRIEDMAN – Elvis, Jesus & Coca Cola. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1993. Reprint paperback: Bantam, 1996. The Kinkster #6.
Admit it now: it’s a hell of a title, quintessentially American, and no one but Friedman could — or would — have come up with it. Love him or loathe him, and lots do each, he’s an American original.
Kinky’s got the blues. One of his best friends has died, and it’s hit him hard. The friend was working on a movie about Elvis impersonators, and his father asks Kinky to see if he can find the working copy of the film, which is missing.
Kinky doesn’t figure that will be any problem, but something else quickly becomes one — Uptown Judy (to distinguish her from Downtown Judy), one of his occasional ladies, is missing from her apartment and there are bloodstains on the floor.
Then the dead friend’s assistant who was supposed to have information about the missing film turns up murdered. The Kinkster and his motley crew of assistants go to work trying to make sense of it all.
I’m always at somewhat of a loss trying to write about Friedman’s books. There’s no way in the world to pass along the flavor, and the flavor is what it’s all about. The plots range from very little to pretty weak, and we aren’t talking in-depth characterization or narrative flow. We’re talking about a unique brand of prose. Sayin’s. Aphorisms.
A way of writing, and writing about life, that will strike you either as wise and very, very funny, as it does me; or profanely, obscenely, and misogynistically unfunny, as it has others. It’s said too often and is too often untrue, but trust me this time: he’s one of a kind. Sui generis.
Whether that’s a blessing or a curse is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.
I think he’s a hoot, myself.
Editorial Comment: I never met Barry myself. He lived in Texas, I lived in Connecticut. He attended mystery conventions, I seldom did nor have I since. But we were in DAPA-Em together, and we enjoyed each other’s reviews there, and swapped mailing comments there. We were friends, albeit through the mail and through each other’s zines only.
Barry worked for the Dallas Fire Department until his retirement in 1989, but he didn’t discover mystery fandom for another two years or so. Ah, Sweet Mysteries was the name of the zine that he produced for the apa, each of them running 20 pages or more. Besides his own zine, his reviews began popping up in all of the major, well-known mystery fanzines of the day: The Armchair Detective, CADS, Deadly Pleasures and many others. You name it, he was there.
Not only was he prolific, but he always managed to put his finger on what made each novel he reviewed work, or (in such cases) why it didn’t. Instinctively and incisively, he seemed to know detective and mystery fiction inside out. He had a critical eye, but he invariably used it softly while cutting immediately to the essence of a story.
Barry died in 1996 — suddenly, without any warning. George Easter, who still publishes Deadly Pleasures, almost immediately set up the Barry Awards in his name, to honor the Best in Detective and Mystery Fiction on a yearly basis. See George’s website for more information.
I’m pleased more than I can say that Barry’s wife Ellen has granted me permission to reprint Barry’s reviews from Ah, Sweet Mysteries on this blog. Thank you, Ellen, very much.
June 18th, 2010 at 5:33 am
I never got to meet Barry either, but we corresponded and talked on the phone, as well as exchanging books and opinions. He is sorely missed in the apa and the mystery world at large.
That said, I disagree with him on Kinky. The one book of his I read was the only one I will ever read.
June 18th, 2010 at 6:01 am
Being a Texan myself I find Kinky’s ‘professional Texan’ pose a bit tiresome (anyone who wears a cowboy hat and boots and is over ten years old and doesn’t work around animals is automatically untrustworthy in my eyes — country western singers going to the head of the class) and his brand of ‘downhome populism’ generally about as boring as I do ‘good old boys’ in general, but he is often funny, and I’m reminded of something my cousin once said when she was little and cornered by an elderly lady as to whether she liked her special banana pudding: “It’s awful good if you like it.”
Kinky does indeed write in aphorisms, some of them true and some very funny, but my tolerance for this sort of thing has grown thinner and shorter over the years and I have grown to feel about Kinky as I did about televisions McCLOUD. Frankly being a wit is something best not worked at half so hard. It either comes natural or not at all.
It has never seemed to me to come naturally to Kinky.
But it’s awful good if you like it.
June 18th, 2010 at 7:12 am
Glad you got permission to print Barry’s reviews. They’re still relevant and insightful.
June 18th, 2010 at 8:37 am
I am a fan of Kinky’s “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore.”
June 18th, 2010 at 9:38 am
I quit reading Kinky with, I believe, GOD BLESS JOHN WAYNE which I just could not get through. (No reflection on John Wayne, btw.)
I loved the first four or so though, where I felt the Kinkster was still having a great time writing ’em.
June 18th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Bill
Thanks to you and Scott Cupp for helping me get in touch with Ellen. I appreciate it!
Everyone else
It’s too bad that Barry isn’t here to reply, but I’m afraid (as he anticipated in his review) that I have to be counted among those who haven’t (yet) seen the charm in Kinky’s act.
Which it is, I’m sure. I’ve not managed to get more than a page or two into any of his mysteries, but on the other hand, he must have a love for the genre, or why else did he write so many of them?
Notice that I put the word ‘yet’ in parentheses a paragraph or so back. If Barry enjoyed what Kinky was doing, at least early in the series, and there are maybe 18 of them now, maybe I might, too.
And maybe not, either.
— Steve
June 18th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Here’s another who’s never been able to read through a Kinky Friedman novel. I’ve tried, I think, two and had to stop reading somewhere around the page 20. Just too many jokes, which weren’t funny.
June 18th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Juri
Why am I not surprised to learn that the Kinkster’s style of humor never make it all the way over to Finland?
Were they published there? Could you have read a bad translation? Could he even be translated?
There are some things it never occurred to me to think about before, and this is one of them.
— Steve
June 18th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Steve
In this one case the Kinksters sense of humor didn’t even make it to Oklahoma and a fellow Texan.
Popular as he is I don’t find him that funny in English — or what passes for it locally — I can’t imagine him in Finnish — but then Jerry Lewis is supposedly funnier in French …
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 am
Steve: sorry for late reply, but his books have indeed been translated in Finnish and I think they have been popular. I know several people who like Kinky’s books and humour very much.