Nice is burning / Bukowski's Pulp

The Nazis set fire to Nice; I'd been tipped off that they would. I had to get the boat back to where a bus would bring me home. That was crucial. The agricultural show where I'd met some of my family had been enjoyable enough, not because of the machinery or animals on display, but because I'd not seen my nephew and sister for so long that we hugged, kissed and probably wept. I say 'probably' because such details of the dream are gone, blown away by a new day, as they always are. The sadness, heartbreak, call it what you will stayed with me though even as I woke up. That's also true of dreams in the semi-slumber/wakefulness moments when the emotion of a dream still has some hold on you.

I armed myself with a big stick in case I met any Nazis on the way to the boat. Luckily, I didn't. Boarding the boat I impressed my nephew by managing to ask for a ticket in French. We waved goodbye and the motor chugged its way through choppy Mediterranean waves. We weren't far from Nice. Nice was Nice and looked nothing like the real thing, the way people you know can populate dreams yet look nothing like them. As we entered the port I looked up at the ancient buildings, cracked colours faded by so much sun they seemed to be clambering onto each other's shoulders to get the best view of the sea. That isn't Nice port in reality. They are actually low-rise buildings, well-kept for the most part, forming an orderly line around the port.

Fire! There, high up, the bushes around one of the grander houses were ablaze....

It's no surprise I should dream of Nice, the finest city in the world, because I've been daydreaming of it ever since being imprisoned by the government. Not that we planned to go back this year but just not being able to made me pine even more for it. Perhaps the craving for something French resulted in me reading Patrick Modiano. Missing Person was a pretty good read. I must stop assessing everything as 'pretty good'. It's a verbal tic I've acquired. I said the other day that a film was 'pretty good'. It's become a default response. Missing Person is one man's search for his own identity. He goes from person-to-person, gathering names and photos until he slowly emerges. I won't say more in case you read it.

I hankered for 'alternative' crime novels. Not that there's much crime in Missing Person. I mentioned Bukowski's Pulp to someone online, having read it years ago, so I ordered it to read it again. I'm now halfway through. It's....more than pretty good, it's a brilliant satire of the pulp genre, full of Bukowski's wit; bawdy, brutish, absurd and goes at a hell of a pace. Bukowski's straight-talking prose was made for pulp. I'm surprised it took him so long to write one. One of the detective's jobs is to search for Celine, or rather, find out who Celine is, exactly, since he can't be the real Celine, the writer, can he? At one point the P.I. turns on his car radio from which someone starts talking to him. This must be taken from Jean Cocteau's Orpheus. Nice calls me again! Near to Nice we found the Chapelle de Saint-Pierre des Pecheurs, decorated by Cocteau.

So guess what I'm reading next? What else but Celine's Journey To The End Of The Night...