FIRST HEARINGS: JOE R. LANSDALE
What: First Hearings with Joe R. Lansdale
When: Thursday, July 2, 7:30 pm
Where: The Wild Detectives, 314 West 8th Street, Dallas 75208
Hosted by: Charles Dee Mitchell,
More Info: Contact WordSpace@WordSpace.Us, 214-838-3554
A recent reviewer said that it seems like Joe R. Lansdale has written about a thousand novels. That’s an exaggeration, but the man has written a lot of books — books that have earned him the reputation as the master of East Texas Gothic and gotten him compared to Mark Twain. And yes, he can make those two things work together.
Lansdale is best known for his crime novels featuring Hap and Leonard, two aging , East Texas good old boys who get into bad situations with very bad people. Those novels are funny, vulgar, and marked by outbursts of outrageous violence. In 2016, Hap and Leonard will appear in a six-episode series on Sundance Channel.
This new novel, Paradise Sky, is a sprawling Western that offers a highly fictionalized life of Nat Love, the African American cowboy who became famous as the dime-novel hero, Deadwood Dick. The action moves from Texas to Arizona, up to South Dakota, and back to Arkansas. Along the way, Lansdale takes on every major trope of the Great American Western and plays
them to hilt. Nat Love is an engaging narrator who brings to life his short stint as a Buffalo soldier, his time as a bouncer at the Gem Theater in Deadwood, South Dakota, his friendship with Bill Hickock, and his battle with a psychopathically vindictive enemy who pursues him halfway across the continent. And since this is a Lansdale novel, you can bet it is also funny, vulgar, and marked by outbursts of outrageous violence.
This will be a great summer evening at The Wild Detectives.
