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| First Written | 2024 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| My Copy | hardback |
| First Read | September 17, 2024 |
Cahokia Jazz
The actual plot and writing of this were great; an interesting mystery, but a great 1920s detective noir. I'm into it.
Noted on October 8, 2024
I grew up in St Louis, just across the river from the actual Cahokia Mound, and had obligatory school field trips there every few years. Despite the plaques and history trying to help us imagine there being a giant-for-the-time city there, larger than contemporary cities like London and Paris, there is just... barely anything there. It's notable because it's a mound, a manmade hill. But the utter scantness of any surviving material culture always just made me feel... desolate? Like yes, some pots herds were found there, sure, and you could reconstruct where some log palisades had been based on soil composition. But it's just... a manmade hill. In a field. I found it not just underwhelming, but depressing in how thoroughly this city did not persist on the earth.
Hilariously, to get to Cahokia from where I grew up - about 10 miles away - you drive past an enormous landfill that's situated just about a mile away from the big mound at Cahokia. That landfill, as seen from the highway, is manufactured, covered with turf, and ALSO just... a vaguely trapezoidal hill - but much, much bigger. I've always felt a little smug about that. We make mounds too. Try to wipe THAT from the earth, history.
Noted on October 8, 2024
Here's a new book from one of my favorite living authors, and it's a detective noir set in an alternate history. AND that history is centered in Cahokia, the great city-state of the Mississippian peoples that collapsed before the Europeans showed up, poking around the midwest. But in this timeline, European diseases did NOT ravage and depopulate the Americas, and therefore Cahokia was a thriving empire when the Jesuits showed up, became not only a large state in the USA, but a diversifying force on westward expansion? What does a modern city and state look like when it's run by an ancient Native American regime, and how does that interact with the modernizing and dehumanizing forces of the 20th century?
Noted on October 8, 2024
"I don't know what you mean," said the Man.
"Yeah, you do."
"No, I don't. And you need to accept that I am going to go on not knowing what you mean, under all conceivable circumstances. Think about it, Mr. Barrow. If for the sake of argument there was something in what you said, if an evil had —hypothetically— been committed so that good might come of it, then to destroy that good by declaring the evil in public would be to remove the one speck of light in the situation. Leaving only the evil."
Quoted on October 4, 2024
Kroeber too rose to his feet; hesitated, smiled. "There is advice I could give you," he said, "but in every culture I know, the offering of unsolicited advice is an extraordinarily hostile act. So I will only say: good night, detective, and good luck."
Quoted on September 17, 2024