If you suffer from constant or periodic bouts of insomnia, choose a bedside read other than Bolano’s huge and strangely brilliant 2666. (After all the hype around New Year, how many people have actually read this mammoth “novel”?) Especially to be avoided: the long and relentlessly distressing section called “The Part About the Crimes”, concerning the appalling real-life murders of women around Ciudad Juarez (Santa Teresa in the book). I’m not sure exactly what Bolano’s intention was here, but if the novel doesn’t turn you into a man-hater you may be sociopathic. It’s so bleak I had to put it aside the other night and watch a WIRE instead. And let me say, as lame as it is to be such a latecomer, Series 3 of THE WIRE is da bomb – some of the most gripping, engrossing TV I’ve ever seen. Just stunning, and why? Bottom line because the acting is peerless – because every character is 4 Real, completely dimensional and, yes, engaging in the truest sense. As odd as it may sound, I’ve even felt love for the worst villains in the show. (Yes, even Avon and Stringer have their vulnerable moments – their “soft points”… which was of course the secret of the Sopranos too.) And now I’d better try and get back to sleep.
5 Responses to Roberto Bolano, THE WIRE, and insomnia
There’s nothing lame about being a latecomer to The Wire – everyone is. I knew about it from day one, but avoided it, thinking it looked too dark, until the momentum of critical opinion forced me to take the plunge six months ago.
As someone who has been professionally forced to watch far too much TV over the years, I can say unhesitatingly that The Wire is by a country mile the greatest drama I’ve ever seen on TV. In fact it’s quite perplexing that something so pure, intelligent, nuanced and challenging was allowed to slip through the format-obsessed pandering system that is modern television production, and then avoid being cancelled after one season.
It’s great for all the reasons you mention above, for its honest moral shading/ambiguity and the assumption of intelligence on the audience’s part. It looks at its core story from a completely different perspective in each series, leaving us with an incredibly rounded portrait of the lives and issues of people in a failing city. It’s a work of structural perfection and technical and emotional beauty – with a cast of (mostly) unknowns who inhabit their roles so memorably that anyone else playing them would be unimaginable. And it has the integrity, unlike so many US hits, to stop when its job is done, but before you’ve had enough. If you’re still only on season 3 you have much to look forward to, but beware – there is also that horrible moment to come when you finish series 5 and have to deal with the realisation that it’s over, and won’t ever be coming back.
The BBC has just picked it up for terrestrial transmission in the near future, but DVD box sets are the way to experience The Wire. Wild horses couldn’t make me wait a week between episodes. At least, for those who have to, it is going to be on the BBC. Can you imagine it with ad breaks (like the original FX broadcasts)? Sacrilege!
In the admittedly hugely unlikely circumstance that anyone ever makes a film about my life, I want Wendell Pierce (detective Bunk Moreland) to do the voiceover.
I was turned on to The Wire by one of two estimable black music mavens, Andrea Lisle or Amy Linden. I wish I could remember which one it was, but I love them both.
And box sets are da bomb sans doubt. You have to binge on four episodes at a time, whether it’s The West Wing (as I’m doin’ with ma squeeze) or The Wire. When I retire it’s going to be box set city.
Sorry, wandered off topic I assume.
And you fuck yo Arvon an’ Stringer Bell, ‘ight? ‘Cause Omar’s gonna fuck wit’ those bitches, you feel me?
Sorry Tony.
Ashamed to say I watched my first ever episode of The Wire last night when it was on the beeb. Excellent. I love the way they don’t dilute the street/cop slang just to make it accessible, and the way characters are complex, not the two dimensional caricatures they are in some UK TV dramas.
Just as with Six Feet Under, HBO shows once again that using teams of writers for each episode and layers of plot and character development adds so much to drama.
As for Bolano, I haven’t tackled any of his books yet. Comments from many quarters about the graphic descriptions of the misogynistic violence puts me off a little – as someone who found Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho hard to stomach, I may not be the most appreciative reader. There was a short story by the late Bolano in The Sunday Times mag a couple of weeks ago, I might try that instead.