Dialogue in Crime Novels; Daisuke Matsuzaka

I said, dialogue in crime novels.

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Are you still with me? Good.

I'm probably not very strong on visual cognition, because the lavish, loving, detailed descriptions of landscapes, houses, rooms, or whatever visual fetishes some authors indulge in quickly lose me, and I am thinking, come on, get on with it… And I don't do much better with a plot either, where three threads is usually one too many for me to handle. Instead, I am a sucker for dialogue, and that's why I still mourn G.V. Higgins' passing away, though he did seem to fall into self-parody in some of his later work. (Dialogue does not travel well, which I think is why his books were hard to find in Japan, even before his death.)

Of course nobody does self-parody better (or worse) than Robert B. Parker in his later Spenser novels. There, the dialogue went from intriguing to scintillating to… Really, to ask us to suspend belief and pretend that people talk like that is pretty thick in the first place; but that people who've been around each other since the Nixon administration will is simply mind bending. To his credit, Mr. Parker has realized this, and invents new protagonists from time to time, and seems come back refreshed by this. Still, I can remember a time when I could truthfully say I'd read every one of his novels in print. Not any more.

Dialogue doesn't really have to be natural to be believable. I doubt the people in Botswana, even private detectives, talk like the people who inhabit the world of the fabulous, traditionally built Precious Ramostwe. But we do believe in it, because we know there's an alternate universe out there somewhere, where people really do talk and act like that, and we are privileged to visit them every other year or so. Alexander McCall Smith writes other novels, and I'm sure they're delightful too. But I refuse to read them in the fear that such an act will break the magic of this other world beyond my event horizon.

But my all-time favorite dialogue writer is Elmore Leonard. The murderers, the conmen, and the really bad guys, as well as the good guys ("good" is extremely situational in LeonardWorld), talk the talk like trisomes, a cut or two above the rest of whatever mediocre or worse specimens of humanity Mr. Leonard chooses to make them.

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On a totally unrelated matter, the Red Sox seem to be having trouble signing Daisuke Matsuzaka. No wonder; he'll be 27 when he starts next season, right? That means he'll be 28 when he can go into the 2008 season as a free agent, right? So why does Mr. Matsuzaka have to leave 50 million dollars on the table for the Seibu Lions to take home, when he can grab that for himself a year later? It's not as if he'll have to pitch for free next year if he sticks around. There's that nagging matter of injury, but Lloyds will insure him against it; besides, he has an extraordinarily flexible body that allows him to use a fluid, almost languid delivery that looks injury-resistant.

Do you think the Seibu Lions will offer a rebate? Do you think the Red Sox bid Mr. Matsuzaka up, just to keep him out of the Yankees' clutches?

When We Tell You We're Taking the Fat Out of Government, We Mean It.

BBC again leaves its less serious-minded, US-centric competitors in the dust as it tackles yet another weighty policy issue in Japan. Cudos to Auntie for striking a blow against US cultural imperialism and infotainment.

Warning: The images displayed on this Japanese government blog may be harmful to your mental health and/or aesthetic well-being.

Female Politicians in the News? Sign of the Times, If You Ask Me.

Diet couple splits up, screams the headline.

Money quote: They were never legally registered as a married couple, but acted as such.

What were they thinking of, pretending they were "legally" registered, when they were living in sin? Isn't that against the law, for heaven's sakes?

Kidding. The people at Asahi Shinbun were merely noting the fact that a respectable couple, a political one at that, had gone through all the rigmarole of marriage, including well-publicized but ultimately successful efforts to conceive children, had decided, no, they wouldn't file the papers. Punk'd, they were, the MSM, and not sure how to handle this piece of information.

The takeaway from this story? The most obvious is that it was Ms. Seiko Noda, who was often mentioned as top candidate for first female prime minister of Japan before the LDP kicked her out and sicced Ms. Assassin Yukari Sato on her (unsuccessfully) in last year's Lower House elections, who was the focus of media attention in the split, and not Mr. Yosuke Tsuruho. It's clear who wielded power in this power household. Second, and I think this is one that has so much social resonance, is that an unconventional arrangement – one we used to call naien kankei (not quite common-law relationship) and look down on, as something you expected from the rickshaw pullers and stable hands - has come and gone, and we seem to be accepting it all with aplomb.

We are a nation of conventions and customs, a deeply conservative people, scuttling back to our holes like crabs at the first hint of danger. Yet we will shed centuries-old traditions in an historical instant like some outgrown carapaces and amble along, as if nothing had happened at all. I used to claim that this was a profoundly Japanese trait, this mix of deep conservatism and radical metamorphoses. But I've lived long enough to realize that this is merely humanity itself in action, up to and including what many people think of as the yet another uniquely Japanese trait, the exceptionalism that manifests itself in such claims.

I expect a flurry of shukanshi attention to this matter, and then the world will move on.

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Speaking of assassins, the boom finally came down on Mss. Yukari Sato and Satsuki Katayama, who were grounded for a year on the Japanese Archipelago for skipping a floor vote in the Lower House.

The punishment strikes The Cryptic as being somewhat odd, since the Aerodynamic Duo were not accused of modeling string bikinis in Saipan while their less well-downed colleagues (or more, if you think quantity trumps quality) toiled away in the corridors of Kokkai Gijidou. Still, the notion that overseas travel is a luxury, and not a necessary part of public service, for Diet members and thus can be revoked as punishment, appeals to this former bureaucrat. (I'll tell you why if you ask politely.)

There are so many ways you can go with this (It's kinda harsh, ain't it?), but let's just hope that this leads to a closer scrutiny of all those off-season overseas political junkets.

Ask Me Why It's Called Dance Mania Fantastic

I learned that a feature film I starred in has won an award at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. I played Dad. A sexy dad.

Sasie Sealy, are you reading this?