Ross MacDonald

I see that Penguin UK are soon to publish another in their series of books by Ross MacDonald. These are part of the Penguin Modern Classics series, and they deserve the title.

I think I read the whole of the RM oeuvre, about forty years ago, and they were all pretty good stuff. Rather dark, featuring families with strange and twisted histories, and rather Freudian. In terms of genre, they are crime fiction/private eye, and older readers may remember Paul Newman playing the famous Lew Archer in the movie version of The Drowning Pool.

RM has been described by Elmore Leonard as 'America's greatest crime writer', and while the point is arguable it's not far wrong.

His wife was Margaret Millar, absolutely no slouch at writing herself, though I haven't seen any mention of her for a long time.

Doomed, I tell you, doomed...

If memory serves (and it is getting increasingly dodgy), it was that Scottish undertaker in Dad's Army who used to claim, at frequent intervals, that we are all doomed. But actually he was about fifty years ahead of time.

Take, for instance, one of today's headlines. It is reported that the G20 'wishes to express its alarm about the eurozone crisis.'

Well, aren't we lucky. We have political leaders who are so perceptive and supernaturally well informed that they think we should know there is a bit of a problem.

Problem? Is that what you call it? Listen, I just sit here and read the occasional blog, and look at a few newspapers in my local Costa, and I am here to tell you that for the past year I have been quietly wetting myself with panic. It seems that it wasn't enough for the banks to fuck things up big-time in 2008. No, they are filled, it seems, with an overwhelming desire to do it all over again!  While stealing money from you and me in the process.

I can't be arsed to look up the precise figures, because it's all too depressing, but the RBS, which owns the NatWest, with whom all my pathetic little pile of money is stored, seems to have lost 1 billion pounds sterling in the first quarter of this year. Well done boys! A billion in one quarter! Think how much you could lose if you really tried.

I tell you, if in a year from now I still have enough pennies left to buy a cup of coffee which allows me to read newspapers for free, I shall be pleasantly surprised.

Meanwhile.... There is a silver lining to this cloud. Because the book business is booming, right?

Um, well... Sort of.

The Sun tells us that Fifty Shades of Grey, 'about a depraved relationship between a young virgin and her rich older lover', is now the fastest-selling paperback since records began. And it's 'sexually explicit', says The Sun, drooling so much that it makes the newsprint all soggy.

Well, there you are then. If sales of that order can't put lead in the economy's pencil I don't know what will. Salvation comes (heh, heh) in the form of Mommy porn.

Or not, as the case may be.

Meanwhile, if you want to know what happened in 2008, you really have to read Michael Lewis's The Big Short, which is highly entertaining if you have a taste for black humour. If you haven't, it will probably give you a stroke.

Daphne before She Died

Coming soon to an Amazon web site near you: Daphne before She Died, a new novel by Michael Allen.

Well, actually it's newish. I wrote this book about twelve years ago, and published it as a trade paperback. In those days it had a different title, and I used a female pen-name. It sold about as well as you would expect, i.e. about 100 copies, mostly to libraries, and it washed its face financially. I took it out of print a while back because it had stopped selling. Since then I have revised it somewhat, and given it a new title and a new cover. I am using my own name this time.

Here's what Kirkus Reviews had to say about this book, first time around:

This account of two reckless love affairs in the early 1960s is primarily concerned with the emotional fallout of these obsessive relationships and their effect on the people involved in them. Robert Duval, son of a French father and English mother, has been approached by Daphne, his old housemaster's wife. She is dying and wants a record of the momentous year when she became passionately involved with one of the boys in her husband's House.

But hers was not the only torrid affair that year - Robert himself was initiated into the delights of the flesh by a nubile 18-year-old French girl, and Daphne's request stirs up memories of his own youthful infatuation.

Public schools [i.e. boys boarding schools in England] operated according to their own codes of morality - a little discreet homosexuality was acceptable, but striking up a physical relationship with a woman was considered unacceptable. Yet the couples seemed fearless in the pursuit of their desires, almost as if the strength of their feelings rendered them immune to discovery.

 The novel dissects issues of secrecy and truth in sexual relationships. Both Daphne's husband, Ben, and Robert's mother knew about the affairs, yet they kept that knowledge to themselves. Ben knew that Daphne's loyalties would always lie with him, and that the end of the school year would mark the end of the affair. Robert's mother knew that once Suzanne returned to France the passion would burn itself out. Yet years later, even though both affairs are long over, the memories of that obsession are as strong as ever for both Robert and Daphne.

This is a fascinating account of the consuming power of  sexual passion, and a remarkable insight into the claustrophobic world of traditional public-school life.

That's a pretty good review really, isn't it? Perhaps I'm justified in seeing it as one of my better efforts.

Anyway, the new improved version of this novel is coming out again within a week or two. In the meantime, if it sounds like the sort of thing that you might enjoy reading, after which you are encouraged to write a review on Amazon, please drop me a line -- address in profile -- and I will get you a free copy for your Kindle. This offer holds good for the first ten applicants or till the end of July, whichever comes first.

Adam Curtis -- the Medium and the Message

Even today, the majority of books published are non-fiction. And anyone who reads non-fiction is looking for information.

If you want information about the current political situation in many parts of the world, you need to keep an eye on the blog of Adam Curtis. The following description of what he's up to is lifted straight from the blog:

Adam Curtis is a documentary film maker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora's Box, The Trap, and The Living Dead.

Adam writes: "This is a website expressing my personal views – through a selection of opinionated observations and arguments. I’ll be including stories I like, ideas I find fascinating, work in progress and a selection of material from the BBC archives."

Today Mr Curtis has a detailed account of a strange character who was to be found lurking in the shadows of many military operations in Afghanistan. But along the way we learn a great deal about the thinking of the American military and politicians. Yes, you may, in your black cynicism and deep depression, wonder whether anyone ever does any thinking in those quarters, but it is going on.

Whether you like the results of such thinking is another matter entirely.

If you've ever seen a documentary by Adam Curtis, you will know that he relates them himself. And when you read his prose you can hear his voice. Uncanny.

The BBC gets a lot of stick these days, but an organisation that provides a base for a man like this is definitely doing something right.

Comma Press for short stories

The Comma Press, in the UK, is very active in the field of short stories. It's a not-for-profit organisation, which is just as well, I suspect, because it's mighty hard to get anyone interested in buying short stories -- at least via the traditional routes. Digital may change everything. Anyway, nip over to the Comma Press web site and take a look.

It you're interested in writing short stories, as opposed to reading them, you could do worse than read my book How to Write a Short Story that Works. This is available in ebook form, from the usual Amazon retail sources (US readers go to dot com, and Brits go to dot co dot uk). It's also on Smashwords, and therefore on a variety of other outlets, including Apple. This book has so far attracted 27,000 readers, give or take a few, so there must be a lot of people interested in the short-story form. And why not?

While I was checking the link to the Amazon.com location of my book, I came across a couple of very flattering reviews that I hadn't seen before. Amazon doesn't seem to notify an author of reviews (whereas Blogger sends me a copy of every comment). In view of these reviews I think I may have to put the price up, so hurry, hurry, hurry, buy your copy now.

Impac makes an impact?

Much fuss in the UK newspapers today about the Impac Prize -- sorry, it seems to be the International Impac Dublin Literary Award -- which has been won by Jon McGregor. Apparently he has 'beaten the Pulitzer prize-winning American writer Jennifer Egan to win the world's richest literary award for his novel Even the Dogs.'

As you can see, it's a lit'ry thing, this prize, so it is no surprise, perhaps, that I'd never heard of it before today (or had forgotten it). Neither had I heard of young McGregor.

Having read some of the stories about the winner and his novel I can't say that I'm rushing out to buy it, or even reserve it at the library, but that's because I'm a well known philistine, with no interest in kulcha.

However, good luck to the lad. Prizewinner or not, he has chosen a tough life (that of a literary author). I don't envy him that life style at all. Would you swap the life of Martin Amis, say, for your own? Not me, anyway. Sounds bloody miserable.

Dean Wesley Smith, on the other hand....

Well, I'm back

‘Well, I’m back,’ he said. 

You may not remember, but that is the very last line of the third and final part of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. And, ever since I first read it, I have always considered that line unsatisfactory.

The problem is not that the words don’t form a satisfactory ending – they do. The problem is that the order is wrong; at least to my ear.

As soon as I first read the line I said to myself, No, no, that really won’t do. In my opinion the order of the words quite spoilt the effect which the last line of a novel or story is supposed to have.

That word ‘said’ is really so feeble, and anticlimactic. ‘He said,’ indeed. Doesn’t work. Ought to be entirely the other way round. The sentence ought to read: ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m back.’  Or possibly even with a full stop in there: ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m back.’ That’s better, I think.

In any event, the important part is to get that final staccato sound of the K at the very end of the sentence; the point being that we need to have a real sense of the fact that this truly is the end – at least of that particular book. Of course it would have been far better to end the book on a letter T, if the author could have managed it. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That’s the end of that.’ Or something similar. Needs work, but you get the point, I hope.  

All of which, of course, is a roundabout way of saying that the Grumpy Old Bookman is hereby revived. Rip Van GOB is roused from his twenty-year slumber. Or whatever it was. I can’t promise to be as prolific as I once was. But occasionally, from time to time, there will appear here some comment or other on the current book world. Or perhaps even the world in general. And it’s all getting terribly interesting, isn’t it? Such times we live in!

Actually, I tell a lie. I suspect that, in practice, the very occasional posts here will be shameless plugs for my newly published books in digital form. I am writing some brand-new stuff, it’s true; but more often I’m reviving some of my previously published books in digital forms. Because they're really rather good and I'm quite proud of them. Worth reviving, imho.

More later.

Sabbatical

Long ago, in another life, I took a walk round the office corridors and thought about what lay behind the closed doors: quite a number of men of around my own age (then 55-60), grey-haired, grey-suited, grey-faced. Some of them weren't any too well. I decided it was time to go. So I did.

I retired from full-time employment. After which, of course, I had all the time in the world. Ha! If you only knew. First law of the universe: everything takes longer than you think.

Anyway, at some point thereafter I started blogging. Which took up an increasingly large amount of time, albeit in a most enjoyable and interesting way. Then, back in February this year, I gave notice here on the GOB that I was no longer going to be blogging on a regular basis. Why? Mainly because of the need to do other things, things which were either equally or more pressing.

Move forward a few months and it so happens that I have been able to blog fairly regularly once again. Now, however, I find that there are, also once again, numerous family and personal commitments which really do have a much higher call on my time than the blog.

What I found back in Feb was that it is all very well in principle, saying that you're going to do less; but if you do anything at all, then people assume (not unreasonably) that it is business as usual. So they write and ask you to review books, or they mention interesting things that they've seen on the web, and so on. And for all of these requests and pieces of info I was, and am, deeply grateful. Because I've found some amazing books and essays that way. And it is hard to disappoint people by ignoring what they say; it makes you feel bad, and it annoys the people who've taken the trouble to write.

So, the only sensible thing to do, I feel, if the quart will demonstrably not fit into the pint pot, is to stop blogging altogether. Which is what I intend to do, at least for a while. Call it a sabbatical. I hope -- and even intend -- to be back one day. But it will probably be a year.

As I also noted back in Feb, I am not the first blogger to recognise this problem. See Mad Max, Miss Snark, Poddy Mouth. And if you look again at Mad Max's last few posts, you will begin to suspect that the pressure of blogging on top of a more than full-time job did indeed make him a little mad. I'm not in that position, fortunately (or so I kid myself). But I do have other things to do which are undeniably more important than tapping away here.

In the meantime, the blog will continue to sit here, as a resource. There's well over a million words on it now, and if you wonder whether I've ever mentioned so and so, I probably have. Use the search instructions in the top of the right-hand column. For the moment, however, I won't be adding anything new.

Thanks for visiting, see you sometime, and best wishes for now.

More short reviews

R.W. Holder: How Not to Say What You Mean

Please take note: This is a perfect Christmas present for a bookish person. It is, in effect, a dictionary of American and British euphemisms, and it's also an interesting example of how a non-fiction book can have a long and profitable life, subject to periodic revisions and repackaging.

The book began life twenty years ago, published by Bath University Press, a small academic publishing company with which I was then associated. After the hardback edition was exhausted, the rights were sold on to Faber. Faber kept it in print for five years or so, and when the rights reverted I sold the book, on behalf of the author, to OUP.

Well, I say sold. The book sold itself. All I had to do was write the right sort of letter to the right person. OUP brought it out in 1995, retitled and rebadged it in 2002, and it's now in its fourth, revised edition. The Financial Times called it 'a very funny collection', which it is, and the Sunday Telegraph described it as 'great fun, but not for the maiden aunt'. Available worldwide.

R.W. Holder: The Fight for Malaya

At the end of the second world war, the later lexicographer of euphemisms found himself participating in the war in Malaya. The Fight for Malaya chronicles that period, and is subtitled 'The Jungle War of Maurice Cotterill'.

This is an astonishing story. Maurice Cotterill had been in Malaya for fifteen years before the Japanese invaded, and when they arrived he took to the jungle. Working with guerrillas of Chinese descent, he overcame appalling conditions and survived the war.

This is a book of specialised interest, of course, but if you know an old man or woman who remembers Malaya in that period, they are bound to enjoy this book.

It ain't easy to get hold of, being published by Editions Didier Millet in Kuala Lumpur. The ISBN is 978-981-4217-20-0. Select Books offer it online, as do Brendon Books. If all else fails, send me an email (see profile, top of right-hand column), and I will put you in touch with the author.

While you're buying this one for Grandad you might as well buy Dr Holder's memoir of the same period and place, Eleven Months in Malaya. This has been warmly welcomed by many old Malaya hands, and the ISBN is 9814155136. It's a bit more widely available than the Cotterill book: if you google the title you will find it on offer at a number of UK bookstores, eg Blackwells.

David Loye: Tangled Tales of the Book Trade

This is what used to be called, I think, a conceit. It is written by a man who is possibly even older and grumpier than I. It takes the form of a series of reported dreams, or nightmares, in which 115-year-old author Dilbert Dickens describes some of the most famous authors and scientists of the past century as they attempt to achieve publication of their books and ideas in the modern world of high-powered trade publishing. Sad to report, they don't have a lot of luck.

The result is an entertaining sort of romp, but it does reveal, I further regret to say, that the overall author, David Loye, has a distressingly jaundiced and cynical view of modern-day publishing. I cannot imagine what would justify such an attitude.

Tangled Tales is published by the Benjamin Franklin Press, a firm which deserves a moment or two of your time.

Emmett James: Admit One

Emmett James hails from England. He grew up in Croydon, finished his schooling in Cambridge, and in the 1990s went to Hollywood to pursue a (successful) career as an actor. Admit One is a memoir about his early experiences ('as a kid') in the cinema. No, not that kind of experience. It's about the fascination of film. It takes the form of a fond recollection of the films which are most memorable to him, and it links them to the story of his life (so far).

Emmett's theory is that the key to experiencing film is context, i.e. 'the environment, mood, personal history and circumstances in which a person sees a film'. I absolutely agree. Context, in that sense, is crucial to our appreciation of any art form. As I have remarked elsewhere, a joke told in German may be a very good joke, but if you don't speak German it don't actually mean very much.

It is a clever device, imho, to link an autobiographical memoir (is that a tautology?) to a series of films, and I think it works very well.

The book is published through Wheatmark publishing services, an outfit which seems to have done a splendid job.

Clary Antome: Family Blog

Speaking of good jobs, in printing terms, Family Blog is another one, this time produced via Booksurge.

Here we have the twenty-first-century equivalent of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel: Family Blog is 'a humorous modern-day saga of an uprooted European family, told through a medley of blogs that each member is writing without knowledge of the others'. There are three sisters and two parents here, and each of them has a skeleton or two in the cupboard -- sorry, closet. You get, as with Rashomon, several versions of the same series of events.

Clever, and well done.

Clary Antome, we are told, 'is a young Southern-European female hominid with some experience of being tossed around the planet'. Family Blog is her first novel. Poke around in the material provided by Ms Antome, e.g. the advance reviews, and you will find some seriously weird stuff.

Andrew F. O'Hara: The Swan

Andy O'Hara very kindly sent me a copy of this book, but he asked me not to review it. OK, I won't. But I will mention it.

Mr O'H is the driving force behind the Jimston Journal. The Swan, subtitled 'Tales of the Sacramento Valley', is a collection of stories inspired by the people who live in the valley today. The author says that he was delighted to find that at least one of his stories was highly offensive to a few people, so I think he must be doing something right.

Details et cetera here.

Peter Anthony: A Town Called Immaculate

A Town Called Immaculate is the latest in the Macmillan New Writing series (actual publication date 7 December). This series has usually featured a remarkably high degree of professionalism in what are, by definition, first (published) novels, and this one is no exception.

The book is set in small-town, rural America, where a Vietnam-traumatised and bankrupt farmer, Ray Marak, is beginning to become unhinged. And it's Christmas Eve.

This book is, I think, harder to categorise than many MNW books, and it belongs, I suppose, in that old-fashioned mainstream novel slot which seems to be out of favour with most publishers. The author himself says that he likes to think of the book as literary fiction, but perhaps it could fall under the family saga or the thriller category as well.

For more detail, excerpts, and so forth, go here.

Bill Liversidge: A Half Life of One

Bill Liversidge will be known to some readers of this blog as the author of another blog, View from the Pundy House. He began that blog about two years ago, with the express intention of putting his novel A Half Life of One in front of the reading public by one means or another. And as it turns it, he's succeeded rather well.

What's the novel about? Nick Dowty is 'trapped in a happy marriage, and staggering beneath the burden of being a good husband and a loving father'. But disaster strikes. What is the half life of a nuclear family in those circumstances? One hour? A week?

As you will see if you visit Bill's blog, he has gathered together some very good reviews of this book from the likes of Maxine Clarke and John Baker, both of whom I would rate as no mean judges. I see from the dedication page that Bill has also had encouragement from Lynne Scanlon, a lady who would not, I suspect, encourage any but the talented.

You thought you had problems

Writing is dificult enough for most of us, but if you're autistic it presents a different set of problems. Kevin Cann, himself autistic, has posted some thoughts on the issue, using his friend's blog to host the essay (18 November).

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There has been much discussion in the UK recently about teaching children to read. Well, we've only had compulsory education for 135 years or so, and you will appreciate that it takes a while to sort out the best way of doing things.

Anyway, one good sign. Richard Morrison reports in the Times that, at a primary school known to him, on the edge of a 'troubled housing estate', some of the parents have been helping teacher along. In one class of 30, six of the kids have been taught to read and write well by their Mum and Dad. Er, except that they've been taught to read and write in Polish.

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Now here's a pleasant surprise. An email arrives from Jyoti Guptara, one of the teenage Guptara twins who were mentioned here a year or so ago (end of the post) as authors of Conspiracy of Calaspia.

When I first mentioned them, the Guptara twins were lined up for publication in the UK by Aultbea; but that did not happen, so they remain unpublished here (or in the US). However, Conspiracy of Calaspia became a bestseller in India; and Mondadori, the largest Italian publisher, has bought rights to Books 1 - 3 in their epic fantasy saga Insanity. Rowohlt, a venerable German publisher, has not only paid a six-figure advance, but has announced that Calaspia will be the lead Young Adult novel in its 100th anniversary year, 2008. The book will be released in March at the Leipzig Book Fair with a first print run of 100,000 copies.

Not bad, eh? The twins have several web sites, including, of course, one on MySpace, but start here.

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By the way, those of you who read a great deal on-screen may be glad of a tip that I came across a year or two ago. Right click on the Windows desktop, then go properties>appearance tab>effects. In the dialog box, tick 'Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts' and select Clear Type.

To my eye, this makes screen type easier to read, and I have not found any disadvantages.

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The second book in Thomas Quinn's Venetian series will be out on 10 December. St Martins Press is the publisher and Barnes and Noble are pushing it. The Sword of Venice offers historical derring-do, war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, intrigues of the powerful papacy, conflict between the Ziani and Soranzo families, and so forth.