M. R. Bailey

A review of the mystery/suspense and thriller aisles this afternoon at Borders inspired six observations:

1. Deceased authors are publishing new novels (i.e., Robert Ludlum, Margaret Truman)
2. The Cold War is over, the War on Terror has evolved into traditional war, and espionage and conspiracy are bigger than ever
3. Protagonists in thrillers are best when they are deeply, irredeemably flawed
4. Women are gaining market share in the pantheon of mystery, suspense and thriller authors (i.e., Lisa Unger, Lisa Scottoline, Kathryn Fox)
5. The Mystery/Suspense market is growing
6. Successful writers in these genres ‘burn down the house’ and create palpable peril

In these categories, my reading has yet to venture beyond Ludlum, Clancy, Forsythe, Cruz Smith, and Patterson, so forgive me if my categorization of those other above-mentioned writers contains errors.  In this, I suspect I am like many of my fellow shoppers in the aisles, scanning titles, cover art, jacket copy and blurbs – drawn to personal favorites, interested in broadening my horizons, yet sufficiently conflicted about the burden on my budget and the quality of my reading that I am reticent about dropping $7-$12 on an unproven author.  LeCarré is a personal favorite.  He set the standard long ago in the spy novel genre and continues to craft writing that seems transparent, the writer’s holy grail.

Larry went officially missing from the world on the second Monday of October, at ten minutes past eleven, when he failed to deliver his opening lecture of the new academic year.

- OUR GAME (1995)

There is an entire novel in that single opening line.

In mystery, Martin Cruz Smith raises my expectations, not only for quality writing, but also for my own work.

Blair lit an oil lamp hanging on the wall. Its wan illumination reached to the glory of the room, an oil painting of Christ in a carpenter’s shop.  Jesus appeared delicate and unaccustomed to hard work, and in Blair’s opinion His expression was overly abstracted for a man handling a saw.

- ROSE (1996)

But I digress.  If there is a single thread that unites the work of all of the above, it has to be the last observation.  These writers burn the character’s house down, usually early in the book, and often more than once.

Graham Swift’s sixth novel, LAST ORDERS (1996), follows a day in the lives of the friends, spouse and children of Jack Arthur Dodds, butcher, recently deceased. Their day of remembrance is a metaphor for the ordinary, earnest yet flawed, occasionally misspent life.

Following Jack’s three men friends and his son as they carry his ashes to the sea at Margate to fulfill one final wish is as driven, surreal and overarchingly important as a salmon’s return up a twisted and turbulent river to its life starting point.  The why of it is never quite clear to subjects, just like real life.  Perhaps Jack’s friends, son and wife discover that nothing in life should go to waste, including one last opportunity to unite with friends and family in the only place that ever held any hope of romantic significance for him. Margate was his Shangri-La, his hope for his and Amy’s connection to each other, even at the end of an estranged lifetime.

Uncompromising in his use of ordinary thoughts and language by the ordinary people of Bermondsey, south London, Swift establishes his contract with the reader early and never lets him or her down.

It aint like your regular sort of day.

…begins Swift and continues with absolute, unblinking objectivity, and an unerring ear for the deceptive riches in ordinary thought and dialogue.  At first, the similarity of voice between the characters – Jack Arthur Dodds’ understated, reticent butcher; Vince Dodds, his cagey son; Amy, his wife who chose their mentally disabled daughter, June, over her husband; Ray Johnson, his unreliable mate; Lenny Tate, his resentful Army buddy; Vic Tucker, his funeral director; and Mandy, the stray taken in by Vince – made following the changes in voice difficult to follow. I kept referring back to the chapter titles to see who was carrying the story forward.  Soon, however, each character’s emotional process and relationship with the deceased rippled outward and overlapped other characters’ process and responses.  Before long, cross currents became waypoints and I grew compelled by the journey and the back stories.  Swift’s exploration of ordinary lives in this novel is extraordinarily skilled.

This quiet novel speaks volumes about the quiet lives of its ordinary middle-class south London characters. In doing so, it speaks to the rest of us.

Graham Swift’s interview in SALON

The Booker Prize, which is often a reliable guide to literary excellence, is what originally attracted me to LAST ORDERS.

Collectible First Novel

This story is unlikely.

So begins the first novel by C.S. Richardson, creative director at Random House Canada, award-winning book designer, and now, author. The story works on multiple levels, following the personal journeys of two individuals and discovering along with them the rare love they share. Having found each other, Ambrose Zephyr, 50-year-old advertising creative, and Zappora ‘Zipper’ Ashkenazi, fashion magazine columnist, are content in their narrow London terrace full of books when Ambrose learns that he is ill and has 30 days to live. Stunned and reeling, they depart from their home in Kensington Gardens and embark on an expedition ‘to the places he has most loved or has always longed to visit, from A to Z. Amsterdam to Zanzibar.’

Ambrose attempts to both escape his fate and accept whatever is to come next. Zipper discovers new depths of strength in herself as she overcomes her panic and creates ways to be there for him, witnessing his disintegration.

At the end Zipper is lost in the silence, the vacuum of deep space without the only man she ever loved.

She opens the journal that she purchased in Amsterdam on the first stop of their great expedition, takes in the emptiness and begins to write…

This story is unlikely.

THE END OF THE ALPHABET has some qualities of a classic.  It is visually captivating, surprises the reader by launching from a familiar premise yet takes flight into new situations, and is told in a discerning and disarming literary style.

The End of the Alphabet (2007), Doubleday, 119 pages

C.S. Richardson Blog

The Windy Day by Rick Bass

Bass mirrors the rush of life emergent in this story, The Windy Day, from his collection about wild hearts grounded in Nature entitled, The Lives of Rocks.

The narrator and his four-month-pregnant wife, Elizabeth, set out for town during a wind storm to learn the gender of their fetus.  Every hundred yards, they must stop to clear the road of fallen timber.  The father-to-be narrator fires up the chain saw and cuts and cuts and rolls, then gets back into the truck and moves on until they must stop again and cut, cut, roll.  It takes them an entire day (read lifetime) to reach the main road to town.  As darkness falls, the father-to-be is ready to keep going; he feels he is making progress and is intent on beating the odds.  Elizabeth says no, they’ll try again tomorrow.

Our father-to-be looks around him and imagines 16 years into the future when he and his daughter will ride horses through these woods, jumping over these fallen logs, or hauling the logs with his sixteen year old son…

The Lives of Rocks

J.L. Carr captures a moment in time in England’s rural north.  The narrator is shell-shocked veteran, Tom Birkin, who tells of his weeks in Oxgodby in 1920 to restore a painting in the local church.  The Pastor is a bitter and misunderstood man; his wife is a caged beauty.  In a field nearby, another veteran named Charles Moon digs for the bones of a 500 year-old victim of this village’s ancestors.  Their summer in the almost surreal Oxgodby is the tale of restoration of wounded souls, how the answers we seek are so often within our reach, and crafted in English that is a delight to read and re-read.  I was reluctant to put this small book down.

J.L. Carr’s A Month In The Country is a quiet masterwork.

Booker Prize shortlist in 1980.

Note: This edition of the novel can be difficult to find.  First published in England in 1980, it has appeared in various small press editions since that time.  I recommend the illustrated Quince Tree Press edition.

It’s rare to return to a book a decade after reading it and find that it has grown, or more accurately, it has kept pace with my own evolution as a reader.  I am a more critical reader now, probably due to the flight of years. There are ever more books to read, yet less time in an increasingly busy chain of days.  Eleven years after reading GREAT HEART – The History of a Labrador Adventure I find I am once again transported by the story of Mina Hubbard’s fierce search for the truth about her husband’s death in Labrador’s unforgiving wilds.

I wrote an anonymous review of the book on Amazon in November, 1999, and upon returning last evening to see how the book is doing I discovered that my review is featured as the most helpful ‘positive’ review.  While I appreciate that other readers rated my comments as helpful, I was disappointed that other readers hadn’t long since eclipsed my own comments in support of this good book.

Here is what I said:

Using Leon and Mina Hubbard’s diaries, as well s those of their guides, Dillon Wallace and George Elson (great character!), Davidson and Rugge reconstruct the extraordinary story of a woman’s search for the truth behind her husband’s death in 1903.  They flesh out the facts, give form to the unspoken fears and desires hidden between the lines of desperate journal entries, and then skillfully breathe life into the tragic events.  A powerful docunovel in a class all its own.  Don’t miss it.

Others have been compelled by Great Heart. In 2000, author and freelance journalist, Alexandra J. Pratt attempted to retrace Mina Hubbard’s 1905  560-mile route by canoe through the sub-Arctic of  Canada’s Labrador, but a century of forest overgrowth defeated her team’s effort.  In 2002, Pratt published Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories, A Woman’s Journey into the Heart of Labrador.  I look forward to reading Ms. Pratt’s take on this story.

One of the immeasurable benefits of novels is travel to other places and times with characters who begin as strangers and rapidly become part of our experience. How the author introduces us to a setting, a character, a premise, and occasionally even the designing principle of the literary work as a whole in a single sentence is a key moment.  Does the author establish a contract with us in that first line?  Or does s/he need a paragraph or a chapter to accomplish that?

Here are some distinctive opening lines.  There is no possible way to fairly represent all literature.  These are from my own reading, which scarcely scratches the surface.  I’m working on catching up, and hope that you will add suggestions from books you admire.  In that way, we can assemble a reading list for us all.

Opening Lines

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

Ernest Hemingway – The OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1952)

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville – MOBY DICK (1851)

A soft fall rain slips down through the trees and the smell of ocean is so strong that it can almost be licked off the air.

Sebastian Junger - The PERFECT STORM (1997)

One day in the spring of 1998, Bluma Lennon bought a secondhand copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems in a bookshop in Soho, and as she reached the second poem on the first street corner, she was knocked down by a car.

Carlos María Domínguez – The HOUSE OF PAPER (2004)

In that last winter of the war, she knew to use point blank ink.

Ivan Doig – HEART EARTH (1993)

Fedor Mikhailovich Smokovnikov, chairman of the Bureau of Fiscal Affairs, was a man who took pride in his incorruptible honesty and who was dismally liberal in his views; not only was he a freethinker, but he despised all form of religion, looking upon them as nothing but the relics of superstition.

Leo Tolstoy – The FORGED COUPON

The is the saddest story I have ever heard.

Ford Madox Ford – The GOOD SOLDIER (1915)

I started off this morning looking for a lost dog.

Gretel Ehrlich – Looking For a Lost Dog, from ISLANDS, The UNIVERSE, HOME (1991)

Floating upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface.

Wallace Stegner – CROSSING TO SAFETY (1987)

“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay.

Virginia Woolf – TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927)

Castle, ever since he had joined the firm as a young recruit more than thirty years ago, had taken his lunch in a public house behind St. James’s Street, not far from the office.

Graham Greene – The HUMAN FACTOR (1978)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens – A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)

Grandpa William once told me: “A good hunter… that’s somebody the animals come to.”

Richard Nelson – THE ISLAND WITHIN (1989)

This story is unlikely.

C.S. Richardson – The END OF THE ALPHABET (2007)

When the team reached the site at five-thirty in the morning, one or two family members would be waiting for them.

Michael Ondaatje – ANIL’S GHOST (2000)

Comparing The Modern Library Board’s List of the Top 100 Novels 1900 – 1999 to the Readers’ List gives me some reasons for hope.  Looking at the top 10, for example:

Board’s List

1.  Ulysses, James Joyce

2.  The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

4.  Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

5.  Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

6.  The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

7.  Catch-22, Joseph Heller

8.  Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler

9.  Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Reader’s List

1.  Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

2.  The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

3.  Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard

4.  The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

5.  To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

6.  1984, George Orwell

7.  Anthem, Ayn Rand

8. We The Living, Ayn Rand

9.  Mission Earth, L. Ron Hubbard

10.  Fear, L. Ron Hubbard

This 1990’s poll continues to generate discussion about the most popular books vs. best literature of the 20th century.  The Modern Library’s talking points are just the beginning.  For example:

Is it possible to compare books as different as Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, and Brave New World? Are there any features that unite these three books? More widely, are there any literary features that unite the best books as a whole?

My interest here is less intellectual or academic.  What I see is the state of literary art in 1999, not just from writer’s and publishers’ perspectives, but from the reader’s perspective. What moved readers sufficiently that they were willing to take time to vote, and write, and talk about it?  Aside from the fact that we are wired to be social creatures, inclined to exchange ideas, count and make lists, what is it that makes these novels in particular list-worthy?

These measures of popular appeal and perceived importance can be a source of information. Of course, they also can be a time sink amounting to nothing more than another set of questionably useful information.  Still, writers appreciate the hunt, the mystery, pulling back the layers of the story, even when it’s their own.

So what can we learn from the Lists? If the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novel List provides any lessons that are useful to the novelist, these might include the following:

Screenwriters tend to write novels that appeal to everyday readers more than to cultural leaders.

It’s true. Ayn Rand (a.k.a. Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum), Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter, holds four places in the Readers’ Top Ten List for her novels, Atlas Shrugged (1), The Fountainhead (2), Anthem (7) and We The Living (8). Ayn Rand was a screenwriter?!  Yes.  Her first literary success was the sale of her screenplay, Red Pawn, to Universal in 1932. Rand’s aforementioned publications are novels, not screenplays; yet her initial success as a screenwriter suggests her creative instincts began in the language of showing rather than telling her stories.

By the way, the fact that L. Ron Hubbard comes second after Rand with three novels in the top ten almost made me toss this post-in-progress. But that’s another entry.

Everyday readers buy more novels than the cultural elite buy novels.

There are more readers than cultural leaders and scholar-readers, hence more demand and larger market. Unless you are writing scholarly theses, which is good too, focusing your energies on the significantly larger market of novel readers increases the odds that your agent will succeed in closing a deal with a publisher who, after all, is very much in a numbers game.  If he/she can’t sell it to at least 5,000 readers, it’s D.O.A.

The top-twenty most popular novels in both lists, Board’s and Readers’, are dense with screen adaptations.

What, if anything, does this tell us?  Consider all channels as you develop your concept.  Popular sentiment has the printed book on the mat and down for the count.  That may or may not be true; only time will tell.  What is clear is that the story, the tale, the CONTENT is king. Demand for story/content is greater than ever before.  So it makes sense to adapt your material to your reader’s/viewer’s/listener’s preferences.

♦

On another front, a glance at Publishers Marketplace offers even more to confuse the muse…

> Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Books Editor Geeta Sharman-Jensen Takes Buyout

Is the book review market so deflated that early retirement, unemployment or part-time teaching at the community college look like reasonable career choices?

> Teen Sues Amazon for Deleted Kindle Homework Notes

What can the U.S. justice system possibly make of this ‘dog ate my homework’ story? Intellectual property and privacy issues notwithstanding, I’m following this case for what it reveals about the game changing ramifications of epublishing, wireless downloading, and even cloud-based computing for writers, publishers, and service providers.

> Supermarkets Responsible for One in Five UK Book Sales

That’s bad news, right? No, that’s good news; supermarkets are one of the sectors least damaged by the economic downturn. Rising paperback sales there suggest a market opportunity for novels – procedurals, romances, mysteries, conspiracies, religion – novellas, and self-help.

♦

What’s your view on the physics of successful publication?  What is the role of technology … of publicity and exposure … of representation … of literary merit … of perception as a genre master … what differentiates the published from the unpublished … is it any different in its end result than the old model?

NOTE

This post has been refeshed and updated at http://mrbailey.net/?p=308

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Several years ago, Yannick Murphy (The Sea of Trees, 1997; Signed, Mata Hari, 2007) recommended Lawrence Sargent Hall’s (1915-1983) short story, “The Ledge,” to me.  She did me a favor.

This story continues to resonate over time and after successive readings. Published in 1959, “The Ledge” won first place in the O. Henry Prize Collection of 1960 and has appeared in dozens of anthologies since that time. ”The Ledge” has a narrowness of time and event – rich with significance – that I related to the first time I read it and every time since, also a strong point of view, clarity of theme and premise, and poetry of natural detail. I mention it here in case you haven’t already read it and are looking for inspiration. Lawrence Sargent Hall also published the novel The Stowaway in 1960.

While F. Scott Fitzgerald was working on a new novel on December 21, 1940, he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 44. He left behind his novel-in-progress, The Last Tycoon.

Although the published manuscript exhibits the power of Fitzgerald’s prose and it reveals a new direction in his work, it is not complete. Most obviously in that only 6 of the planned 9-plus chapters are present, but also because, knowing the outlined vision and the work-in-progress nature of the storytelling, gaps in pace are still discernible.

That said, it is an engrossing read. Fitzgerald’s power with characterization and economy of description are compelling, even 65 years – a World War, television, the Beat Generation, rock ‘n roll, the British Invasion,Truffaut’s New Wave, Watergate, Panavision, VHS, Spielberg, Lucas, DVD, the Internet, YouTube, Twitter – later.

Producer Monroe Stahr is a significant contribution to Fitzgerald’s stable of literary characters. And the sense of the day-in, day-out Hollywood motion picture industry culture  he recreates on the pages is accurate in terms of my own experience of life and work on the Warner Brothers and Sony lots.

Considering the half-life of most novels, the fact that The Last Tycoon (Scribner’s) remains in print nearly seventy years after the author last touched pencil to paper suggests this work has enduring literary merit.

Writer’s Notes

The NOTES section at the back of this edition read like a graduate seminar.

Rewrite from mood. Has become stilted with rewriting. Don’t look [at previous draft]. Rewrite from mood.

There are chapter specific notes.  For example, the following note on “the episode with the director at the beginning of this chapter:…”

What is missing in Ridingwood scene is passion and imagination, etc.  What an extraordinary thing that it should all have been there for Ridingwood and then not there.

The Outlines are case studies of how to envision and re-envision story.