The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie.

I interrupt the viewing of the terrible film about corruption and espionage {which I officially gave up watching eight seconds ago when I began typing}, to bring you word of a wonderfully witty book about corruption and espionage.  There is–as you might have guessed, only if youre quite quick–a corruption and espionage theme for this evening’s blah-blah-blogging. 

The film grunting and scratching itself on the screen is Contract Killers which was released today at Blockbuster.  Terrible, insofar as I can judge, in terms of screenplay, acting, cinematography, and pretty much every other category that can make or break a film.  I certainly hope I have no friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of cousins thrice removed who had anything to do with its production.  How embarassing that would be.  {On both levels.  The, “Good God, how could I not have known?” level, and the “Everyone has these bad patches now and again, don’t call me I’ll call you–oops, forgot to get your number” level.}

The book I finished this afternoon, however, was downright delightful.  The Gun Seller, was written in 1996, by British actor Hugh Laurie.  I discovered it quite accidentally {sorry, Hugh} while looking for some of Stephen Fry’s stuff on the shelf.  The Gun Seller was a neighbor and popped out at me with its bright pumpkin cover.  Oddly fitting that, as Fry and Laurie have crossed more than a few paths in their careers.  The thing that persuaded me to pick it up and buy it, is that Laurie coincidentally plays the scruffy star of my favorite television show, House. 

There are a good number of cases of actors writing.  Writing a screenplay they want to do with friends, then directing it.  Writing memoirs.  Writing songs, because what they always really wanted to do was sing.  However, it just feels downright rare for an actor–or anyone who’s already found success in another arena, come to that–to publish a book that functions so well, let alone keeps my interest. 

It’s difficult for books to keep my interest and attention.  The Gun Seller joins the small list of other books that kept my attention, and treated it well.

What makes The Gun Seller work for me, is its instinctive and well paced balance of terrific, witty humor, and believable samplings of sensitivity at other moments.  Yes: satirical, yet sensitive, amazing!  More amazingly, all tucked smartly into a plot intricate enough to have come from Thomas Harris. 

The other, more shocking bit about Laurie’s first book, was that it managed to inspire me to do one of those things I’ve never thought I–or anyone else, for that fact–should do.  It makes me want a motorcycle!  Not a Harley, nor anything heavy and leathered like that.  Something smaller, slighter, zippier.  That is, perhaps, the real accomplishment of The Gun Seller.  The fact that Laurie came up with a character quirky enough to remind me oddly of myself.  Quirky characters do that, sometimes.  But quirky characters inspire us, and this quirky bugger in The Gun Seller inspires me to throw caution to the wind, and do one of the stupidest things one can do.  My cousin was paralyzed from the hip down after a motorcycle snafu.  Yet all of a sudden, I want to buy a bike and hop on and go, go, go, because of how wonderfully fun Laurie made it all sound, and how wonderfully well he wrote about it, and a few other stupid things I now want to try. 

After all, one can dream. . .

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009.