Ron Asheton, R.I.P.

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(Photograph of Ron Asheton and Iggy Pop, Copyright 2009 Eric Rudolph, All Rights Reserved, No Reproduction Permitted Whatsoever.)

Guitar legend Ron Asheton died recently; after about 30 years of a fairly low-profile career, the man who played those amazingly brutal and beautiful guitar parts on Fun House finally began to reap the rewards of his primitive genius. He played 150 shows, worldwide, with the reformed Stooges. I took this photo in 1973 at the now-shuttered Ford Theater in Detroit. Asheton had, by then, been usurped to the bass chair by new Stooge James Williamson. 

Donald Westlake has died

The great crime-fiction writer Donald E. Westlake died, on his way to dinner on New Year's Eve 2008. May he rest in peace.

If you've never read Westlake, you are in for a treat. 

He is revered among writers worldwide. (Admired primarily by crime writers, he is also a hero to many outside the genre.) Westlake's series of novels about hapless, hangdog & slowly aging NYC thief John Dortmunder are delightful gems of comic drollery. His hard-boiled series about Parker (under pen name Richard Stark), a strangely likable cold-blooded thief and killer (killing only to protect his business interests) are marvels of straightforward action and perfectly chilling storytelling economy.

Absolutely anything by Westlake is worth reading. I'd long avoided his big book about the theft of an entire train full of coffee, owned by the ruthless Idi Amin. It just didn't sound like fun. The book, Kahawa, is terrific.

One hopes that the Dortmunder and Parker series will go on (there is at least one more Dortmunder book, Get Real, to be published in Spring 2009). If there can still be James Bond books written to this day, long after Ian Fleming's death, then hopefully these two series can continue. But can anyone write like Westlake? I nominate Westlake's friend, Lawrence Block. One lives in hope.