Blue Cheer

Ed Lynskey has published a number of notable short stories over the past several years so I was interested in reading one of his novels. If the landscape of Blue Cheer (Wildside) is somewhat familiar--backwoods (in this case West Virginia), a homegrown terrorist group, a number of physical confrontations--the writing itself demonstrates that there are truly no old ideas, just old treatments. Lynskey is both a skilled stylist and a wise reporter of human madness. His storytelling is smooth, realistic and full of large and small surprises. This manages to be in equal parts a novel of action and a novel of character. Hopefully Blue Cheer will bring Lynskey the larger audience he's deserved for some time now.

-----------------------
Brazoria mayor ends battle to ban racial epithet | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "By RICHARD STEWART
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

After facing intense opposition against a proposed ordinance that would have outlawed the use of the 'n-word' in his town, Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley announced Thursday he would drop the proposal altogether.

Ed here: I'm against banning laguage of virtually any kind and that includes sending Isiash Washington, jerk that he is, into some kind of Orwellian rehab where he gets his brain washed. I think we have to be very careful of this impulse to make everybody politically correct. But the gun we're turning on the Washingtons now can just as easily be turned on us someday. Any actor who can't get along with cast or crew should be fired but not sent to some shrink who'll bombard him with bromides and pretend that the guy is "cured."