marlin mayhem (i.e. no more-sey dorsey)

truly the end of an era for me…

…as i had mentioned previously, my favorite author died late last year. he inspired me in multiple ways, including the miami vice themed header on the post i just linked to AND the one above, which was inspired by his style of cover art.

i mentioned in the previous bit about how i was gifted his fifth book by kramer, in hardcover first edition, back when i was unemployed in 2003. i read it cover to cover, and then went to half priced books and scored the first four in paperback form for under twenty bucks total. i have since gotten all of them in hard cover first editions, and have the twenty that proceeded it in either hard cover firsts or soft cover advanced copies, which were always obtained months in advance of the release and may or may not have come from the man himself as we knew each other.

but at the time of his passing life and laziness had kept me from keeping up and i was three books behind. that is no longer the case.

when i was unemployed in 2003 and kind of freaking out his books kept me sane and entertained. truth be told, when i was unemployed, yet again, in 2009 and it turned out to be a bit longer than expected one of the few splurges i did was buying his annual tome, nuclear jellyfish, when it came out around the time i got let go. i then set it on a shelf and proceeded to read, in order of release (which creates a non-linear time line, his website explains the difference) all the books that proceeded it, and then finally that one, to wile away the time before i found work (which rather than taking my previous standard of six weeks, took six MONTHS that time around).

and, more recently, when puck passed and budnik just seemed to kind of give up and, as i put it those last months, age ten years in ten weeks, putting him down for the night would be rough as i could tell he was hurting, but reading dorsey as we both drifted off allowed me just enough mental escape while remaining alert enough to be there if he needed me (some illicit gummies imported from dorsey’s homeland helped). and when budnik finally left us, getting back into the novel a day or three later helped ease my brain into a version of normalcy that was therapeutic in ways i can’t describe. it’s still an open wound in many ways, budnik’s absence is, but it helped scab things up a bit.

now, however, i have finished. i read the last of the series, the maltese iguana, and it finished as they often do, with serge and coleman riding off into the sunset to get into another adventure…but this one we’ll never read about, because the man that brought us that world has left ours.

and i guess that’s how we leave them…now where’s the damn movie series? well, that may never happen as he divorced slightly before he passed, so who now controls the legacy? whoever it is, if you’re reading, my pic if dafoe for serge and galifianakis for coleman.

epilogue – as all his books had one, i figured this last bit i do about him should have one, too. i wanted a florida-esque, dorsey-esque title for this, and was shocked that in twenty-five titles he never once used “marlin”, which is so synonymous with florida that it’s literally they’re mlb team mascot. who knew that would be so easy? thanks again, tim!