Florida man floors it into the sunset
Florida man floors it into the sunset
In defense of Beach Reads, and a farewell to one of their finest writers
Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Southern culture/sports/music/food offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. Thanks for reading, and if you’re new around here, why not subscribe? It’s free and all.
It’s gospel truth that the beach makes everything better, from cold beer to frozen drinks to fried shrimp on a paper plate to paperback books. I love Beach Reads — self-contained, pastel-covered escapist tales of exotic locales, high-speed chases, sex, violence, daring heists and credibility-stretching escapes. Yes, I revere the Western Literature canon; you can take the boy out of grad school, but you can’t take grad school out of the boy. But give me a creased-spine, neon-font-title paperback stained with sunscreen, a few grains of sand tucked in among the pages, and brother, I’m good for the rest of the afternoon.
I love Beach Reads, and I also love their stealthy cousin, Airport Books, which all seem to feature battle-torn American flags on the cover and stories of lone spies caught in a web of shadowy government conspiracy within. (I have this sneaking suspicion that better in-flight wifi has destroyed the Airport Book market, because lord knows reading a novel is a waste of time when there are spreadsheets you could be reviewing in the air.)
Yes, Beach Reads have all the intellectual heft and literary merit of a slice of pizza, blah blah. Don’t care. They’re not even a “guilty” pleasure, because I don’t feel a goddamn bit guilty about it, and neither should you. If you know how to read it right, a tale of stolen gold in the Everglades carries a whole lot more sociological and satirical punch than, say, an 800-page, award-winning tome about a handsome, blind Parisian sculptor whose heart can see what his eyes cannot. Gross.
This is all a long windup to some sad news: Tim Dorsey, one of the finest purveyors of Beach Reads in 21st-century America, passed away earlier this week. Dorsey’s work centered almost exclusively on Florida — all of Florida, from the Flora-Bama Cafe on the Panhandle all the way down to Key West, and literally everywhere in between. Dorsey had an exhaustive knowledge of his exhausting state, and he passed that knowledge on through the cheerfully manic rantings of a serial killer named Serge Storms. (It makes a lot more sense in context.)
Through nearly 30 novels, Serge and his dimwitted stoner buddy Coleman traversed the Sunshine State, from tourist-crowded beaches to private one-percenter enclaves, theme parks to state parks, pawn shops to jewelry shops, porn huts to megachurches, high-rise luxury condos to ramshackle mobile homes. Serge followed his own personal code of ethics — look out for those less fortunate or less able to care for themselves, and rain hell upon those who would take advantage of such types: rapacious developers, shady retirement-home management companies, garden-variety carjackers, greasy politicians. In Florida, there’s always another dirtbag to deal with.
Dorsey wrote in a manic, frenzied style pitched somewhere between Carl Hiaasen and Hunter Thompson, with the witty cynicism of Mark Twain, the slap-back dialogue of Elmore Leonard, and an intricate knowledge of the science of carnage you get from the kinds of sites you shouldn’t visit on your home laptop.
Here, for instance, are the opening lines of his most recent novel, “The Maltese Iguana”:
The socialite was dragged into the street and attacked by an antisocial homeless man, until another man in a giant bunny costume came to her rescue. The bunny threw a blistering combination of furry roundhouse punches until the vagrant relented and the police arrived.
It made perfect sense. It was Easter time. And it was Miami Beach.
And we’re off.
As a Tampa-based newspaper journalist who later turned to fiction, Dorsey followed the path of many successful novelists who realized that there’s abundant source material for page-turners in every morning’s newspaper — or, these days, every hour’s alert. Dorsey’s challenge wasn’t finding material, it was refining the vast reserves he had all around him into just one novel a year.
That novel would arrive every year in late January, and every year, I’d buy the latest book — “Orange Crush” or “Atomic Lobster” or “Triggerfish Twist” or “Hurricane Punch” or whatever brilliant title he came up with next — sight unseen, and I’d finish it before Valentine’s Day. For more than 20 years, Dorsey put out a book, followed that up with a reading tour criss-crossing Florida, and then went right back to work.
(One bit of Dorsey trivia I love: he killed off Serge in his debut novel, “Florida Roadkill,” and then decided Serge was the most interesting character in his arsenal, so presto, Serge returned to life. You can do that in Beach Reads. I’ve put “Florida Roadkill” in the Flashlight & A Biscuit Bookshop, check it out.)
I never met Dorsey, beyond seeing him on a writer’s panel or two and sending him a copy of one of my books in gratitude, so I don’t know what sorts of demons he dealt with as he wrote these books, or if he even did. What I do know is this: Tim Dorsey made writing seem fun, and he made reading even more fun, and man, I’ll miss his work.
Crowd work: Give us your favorite Beach Read/Airport Book author:
Then let’s all go find their paperbacks at a used bookstore and report back. Who’s in?
Song of the Week: “Hometown Soul,” Tuckahoe Travelers
Didn’t give this the love it deserved in the story on our new documentary — the song “Hometown Soul,” which the guys in Tuckahoe Travelers were kind enough to let us use as a theme. This is good ol’ hangin’-out music, meant to be played at a tailgate or on a porch — or when you want to be in that mindset. Enjoy, and follow our ever-growing Flashlight & A Biscuit Spotify playlist right here:
As Florida as it gets
Oh sure, the main story here, about a bear stealing Taco Bell off the doorstep of an Orlando-area home, is notable enough. But what really sets this clip apart — and what sets Florida as a state apart — is the crawl: “Shopper discovers human skull for sale in Florida thrift store Halloween aisle.” You could write an entire novel about how that skull got there, couldn’t you?
That’ll do it for this week, friends. Thanks for hanging! Deep breaths, we’ll all get through the impending holiday season together …
—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia
This is issue #109 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:
Our first documentary, on the famous Rama Jama’s diner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama:
History hidden in plain sight in Williamsburg, Virginia
Power-ranking the foods of the State Fair of Texas
I tried Chick-Fil-A’s Honey Pepper Pimento Chicken Sandwich and lived to tell the tale
What does “Flashlight & A Biscuit” mean, anyway?
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Sorry to hear about Tim . Thank you Jay .