Category Archives: Drive

Back to the Future

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Uh oh. This technology thing is great when it works, but right now it’s not working well. I am having trouble with Google Chrome across the board — search engines, blog access, Drive — it all needs a shot of technological Ex-Lax as I write this. I am not sure if the problem is system-wide or if it’s a PICNIC (Problem In Chair Not In Computer) problem but we’ll keep plugging away. It’s ironic, because what I was going to discuss today is how much I love technology.

I am 61 years old. I feel for the most part like I am in my early 20s. I can remember my childhood, for better or worse, very well. When I was in grade school I, for a number of reasons, spent a lot of time sitting and waiting in the car. When I could anticipate these waits I brought a stack of comic books or a Hardy Boys book and spent the time reading. If I exhausted the reading material I wound up sitting and spinning, as it were.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been revisiting those times, sitting and waiting, usually in the car, as I have been chauffeuring my younger daughter around to acting rehearsals, voices lessons and the various la-da-da-da-dee that parents do before their children are old enough to drive. The distance from our house to the destination often precludes dropping off and going home and coming back later; it’s easier to stay and sit and wait. As long as I have my Kindle Fire, that is.

Did I mention at some point here that I received a Kindle Fire for Christmas? It’s taken me a little while but I have it up and running to the point where it is more than a really sharp e-reader, and the result is that it has become something that I cannot be or do without. I had to smack it a bit to accept Google Drive, but now that it has I can run my law practice from it; work on manuscripts; write book reviews; write blogs; answer e-mail; listen to music tracks; watch videos; keep track of that daughter of mine; and yes, read comic books. That stack of comic books is now theoretically inexhaustible. Oh, and if I want a Hardy Boy book? Yeah, I can get one of those, too.

I don’t want to turn this into a “when I was boy” essay, so I won’t. I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger, however, and to paraphrase Pogo I have seen the future, and it is us. We may have been promised jetpacks, but what we have is plenty good enough. I took my car in for service the other night and the friendly greeter/advisor who met me at the door no longer carries a clipboard. He’s got a tablet, and with a couple of taps he had my vehicle history all the way back to…well, back to when the only tablets were made of aspirin or paper.

Is there a question here? Sure! What technological development has directly changed your life or occupation the most? What new technological tool is indispensable to you?

Location, Location, Location

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I fell in love with New Orleans before I ever stepped a foot into the city. James Lee Burke was the matchmaker, and all it took was THE NEON RAIN. Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January novels, as well as Burke’s subsequent Dave Robicheaux novels (Right up to and including CREOLE BELLE) sealed the deal. I lost my heart, probably forever. I had of course been exposed to New Orleans through literature and other media well before I read those books. When I was a wee tad there was a police drama entitled Bourbon Street Beat that I watched religiously; and I studied the plays of Tennessee Williams in high school. But it was that Burke book caused me to lose my heart, probably forever.
I was thinking about this today because I started reading Linwood Barclay’s new novel, TRUST YOUR EYES. This is a very different book for Linwood, one that I would strongly recommend to both old fans of his and new readers based just on the first few chapters which I’ve read so far. One of the primary characters is a gentleman who is obsessed with maps, to the extent that he spends hours and days and weeks visiting cities through the magic of a Google Street View- type tool. When offered the opportunity to actually physically visit one of the cities that he treads in cyberspace, he declines. There are reasons for this — read the book, please — but my reason for bringing this up is that there have been any number of novels that, unlike Linwood’s character, have made me want to trace the footsteps and tire tracks of the characters, to experience the sights and smells and sounds in real time and real place. I will be in Louisiana in a month or so and plan to make a quick trip to New Iberia to do just that — Burke and Robicheaux, once again — and on the way back I’m going to try to stop in Nashville just long enough to drive past some of the haunts which J.T. Ellison features in her novels. And who could read DRIVE or DRIVEN by James Sallis and not tempted to visit — with the windows rolled up, of course — some of the dustier sides of Phoenix?
So I’m curious. Have you read novels that have affected you in the manner? Has a particular book or author motivated you to visit a particular city or place and undertake a self-guided tour, using a story as a guide? Has a fictitious character or account actually prompted you to pull up stakes and move? And if you’ve had an experience such as this was it everything that you hoped it would be? Or were you disappointed?