With a few positive comments about style and some aspects of the book, the club gave a general thumbs-down to The House Via Gemito, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time and being glad that everyone was in town on the same day! Seems like that’s -getting to be a rarity, but there’s always Zoom!

And so we did: Brice, Paul, Rob and John enjoyed the gourmet soul food Corbin creates at Alta, his West Adams restaurant in Los Angeles. Carefully prepared, several dishes were perfected versions of soul food staples; others were more adventurous, and all were delicious.

We were greeted enthusiastically and made comfortable with the staff, and the greeter was more than excited that our group had read Corbin’s book and followed it up with an evening at his restaurant.

Corbin was at the restaurant, the greeter explained, and then after scurrying away for a moment returned to say that if we’d like, Corbin would come out to talk with us after dinner.

Of course, WE LIKED. Corbin sat on a stool, comfortable and engaged, asking us what brought us to Alta and answering our questions. One of us had even visited Lokal his earlier restaurant near the Watts Towers, where he first realized his culinary ambitions, in the midst of his childhood and young-adult community.

Corbin said that even one more bad decision or case of bad luck in his gang past might well have led to a much different outcome in his life.

At our discussion of Matthew Salesses’ novel, The Sense of Wonder, FFR member Brice Hunt sang (to his own guitar accompaniment) the following verses about the fictional Asian basketball pro Won Lee, Lee’s rival/friend Power Ball (PB), spoiler/journalist Sung, and PB’s wife Brit.

Brice wrote his lyrics to the tune of Scots poet Robert Burns’s poem “A Man’s a Man for All That,” which had been Brice’s introduction to Burns via Paolo Nutini’s rendition of the song.

He titled the song “noraebang,” which, as we all learned from the novel, is Korean for “karaoke.”

He’s Won, an Asian-American; he shoots, he scores, the Man
The skills he use defy the eye! Oh Carrie loves the Man
For he’s the Man, oh he’s the Man, no matter what Sung writes
Linsanity’s wave raids his soul, he knows his place cuz he’s Asian-Man

For PB!s been the Man so long, he knows no other way
But Sung has won Brit’s heart away, he is her Man always
But K’s the toughest of them all, the baddest of all Men
And don’t we know it each of us, the Women are the real Men.

To get all the references and literary cross-talk, you’ll have to read the novel and listen to Burns’s song. You won’t be sorry.

Thanks, Brice.

At our July meeting, Richard Levesque joined us for dinner and discussion of his Dieselpunk novel, The Blacktop Blues. He explained his writing process, from idea to publishing, and clued us in to the business side of self-publishing with Amazon. A paperback copy of the book ordered in May says: Made in the USA, Las Vegas, 13 May 2001. Printed to order and delivered in a couple of days.

Blacktop Blues, the first novel in Levesque’s “Crossover Case Files” tetralogy, features Jed Strait, a WWII veteran who becomes a hard-boiled detective in 1940s Los Angeles. The series incorporates parallel realities and inventive twists into its plot. Levesque has just added another two or three novels to the series.

Relaxing with the author after an outdoor dinner and wide-ranging discussion.

“Just what is Dieselpunk?” we asked Levesque. Turns out that “diesel” is the key word, describing the level of technology in the era in which the story is set. So “Steampunk” features steam-powered transportation. We didn’t ask what the “punk” part of the title means. Next time?