Goodnight, Texas - Hardcover

Cobb, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1932961267 ISBN 13: 9781932961263

Publisher: Unbridled Books, 2006

Synopsis

Besides Versailles, there was another palace that witnessed a flight of fancy—one original flight, and then tens of thousands of impregnated others. Their sum total? Perhaps “the French Revolution.”

The Palais-Royal stands on the right bank, just north of the Louvre, with a huge garden space behind it. Cardinal Richelieu had lived there, Moliere played and died there, and later, the palace was given to the king’s cousin, the Duc d’Orléans. In 1780 the Duc gave it to his son, who, over the next few years, opened the gardens to the public and encouraged the most spectacular mix of pleasure and politics in all of Europe. The Palais, belonging to the nobility, was a privileged area that the police could not enter except by invitation. Without police, what could not go on in its arcades and above and below them? It became an enchanted place, a small luxurious city enclosed in a large one, lined with cafés filled with speechifiers, the gardens filled with swarming crowds, prostitutes low-class and high, pamphleteers and pickpockets, a daily carnival of every appetite, the cultural and political antipode—even nemesis—of the stately court at Versailles. There were singers and chess players, wig-makers and magic lantern shows, billiard parlors and lemonade stands, and the miniature cannon, astronomically situated so that at exactly noon, sunrays would fall upon a lens to light a fuse, to make a boom. As someone remarked, at the Palais, you might lose track of your morality, but at least you could set your watch.

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Reviews

Goodnight by the Sea, Tex. (not to be confused with Goodnight in the Plains, 600 miles away), is a dying gulf coast town where global warming and international trade have made the once-reliable vocation of shrimping unprofitable. Alligators run amok while the West Nile virus picks off the elderly. When Russian restaurant owner Gusef learns a gigantic and thought-to-be-extinct zebra fish has beached itself nearby (replete with a dead horse in its belly), he dispatches his good-natured juvenile delinquent fry cook Falk to photograph it. As Gusef concocts schemes to capitalize on the dead fish, a hurricane brews in the gulf, portending possible doom for the town. The characters aren't particularly unique, but Cobb manages to breathe tragicomic life into them: Una, Falk's co-worker who wants more than Goodnight has to offer; Falk's adolescent cousin Leesha, who falls for Una's ex-boyfriend, Gabriel, the drunken bad boy turned driver's-ed instructor who in turn has it in for Falk. Though Cobb (The Fire Eaters) sometimes strives too hard for colloquial legitimacy ("nowadays you'd be lucky to catch a gafftop catfish a pound"), he expertly exploits the claustrophobic and incestuous atmosphere of smalltown Texas. (Oct.)
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Almost as if out of a dream, an enormous, zebra-striped fish the size of a Volkswagen washes up on the shore of the little fishing town of Goodnight, Texas. Even stranger still, there is a small horse stuck in its giant maw. The locals are intrigued, especially Falk, a teenage expellee who wears his heart decidedly on his shirtsleeve, and Gusef, who wants to stuff and mount the giant fish above his little gumbo-serving cafe. Una, a waitress at the cafe, has had it up to (her very diminutive) here with her alcoholic, quick-to-rage boyfriend, Gabriel, and falls immediately into the willing arms of Falk. As the giant fish finally makes its way onto the top of the cafe, a devastating hurricane threatens the already down-and-out inhabitants of the little town. Cobb, who focuses more on atmospherics than plotting, lets the relationships between his characters swirl and ebb without attempting to assert too much, but in so doing leaves much unresolved. Vivid yet gracefully understated at times, he paints in broad swatches that look great from afar but up close reveal some distinct, though promising, flaws. Ian Chipman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Unbridled Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1932961267
• ISBN 13: 9781932961263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304