Firearms, expandable batons, flick knives

Elberry is planning his first visit to America, and has listed Houston as one of his destinations. He wants to see my “arsenal of firearms, expandable batons, flick knives, coshes, brass knuckles, dobermanns, claymore mines, armed vehicles, sharks, etc.” Nobody gets his hands on my weaponry, though. Nobody.

One of the unexpected pleasures of rereading Thomas Williams (see below) was the enjoyment of male things—motorcycles (including an old prewar Indian Pony), hunting rifles, handguns (including a Nambu pistol), and power tools. Why is it that such things enforce solitude rather than “male bonding” or (God forbid) homosociality?

Equally interesting, as I reflect on how to prepare for Elberry’s visit, is how little American novelists say about the guns their characters use on one another. Humbert Humbert, who names everything else, refers to the automatic pistol that kills Quilty as “Chum.” Gatsby’s chauffeur hears the shots that kill his boss, and “a little way off in the grass” the body of the murderer—George Wilson—is found. Nothing is said about the gun, though, until several months later when Nick runs into Tom Buchanan on Fifth Avenue. Tom won’t say what he told Wilson, but explains to Nick: “His hand was on a revolver in his pocket. . . .” What kind of revolver? Are there different kinds? The only time that I can recall a gun’s being differentiated is when Ron Hansen observed, in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, that James carried two guns (“a .44 caliber Smith and Wesson and a Colt .45 in crossed holsters”). Otherwise weapons are largely a blur to American writers.