A Buffett Buffet

Why get stoned when there’s rock? Stone crabs and rock shrimp, of course, boiling in sea water seasoned with Old Bay, served outside a rusted beach shack. Delicious.

Unless you’ve been living under a conch shell, you probably heard Margaritaville has a new criminal element in town. Disreputable word-slingers have been spotted skulking amongst the happy drunks at beachside bars, gathered around a piratey privateer, Josh Pachter. This disreputable lot call themselves anthologists. Book 'em, I say, in fact, it’s already booked: The Great Filling Station Holdup.

Let’s face it. Jimmy Buffett is a damn good lyricist. If he’d migrated from Nashville to Tin Pan Alley, he’d reside among the best of Broadway songwriters.

While Buffett is known for lighthearted, cheerful tunes, scratch many a surface and you’ll reveal more serious strata. Take as example the lyrics of Margaritaville:

But there’s booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.

Wasted away again in Margaritaville,
Searching for my lost shaker of salt.
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame,
And I know it's my own damn fault.

A reviewer at AZLyrics.com opines:

The song is about a man spending an entire season at a beach resort, enjoying carefree Caribbean lifestyle with margarita cocktails. There is some lyric confusion about words ‘Wasted away’ in the chorus of the song.

Whut? Seriously? Are we listening to the same song? You can’t hear the tone of forlorn desperation? Sir, put down the rum and step away from the bar.

While many of Buffett’s songs carry a serious secondary layer, a few like ‘Southern Cross’ will break your heart, and some of his early work is downright dark and dangerous. And I like it. But, when Josh Pachter invited me to sail the Buffett brigantine, I was immensely flattered and simultaneously panicked. What the hell could I possibly come up with? Then parts fell into place.

I find it difficult to write about myself. Talk about my work, okay, fine, but talk about me, not so easy. To deflect scrutiny, I hatched the notion of writing about my SleuthSayers colleagues and their stories appearing in Josh’s latest and greatest anthology. Good excuse. And why not include Pachter’s headlining story as well? Let’s begin.

	♪ Spending Money ♪ Beach House on the Moon [music • lyrics] John Floyd

John sent me his story first, so we’ll start there. Jimmy’s song, ‘Spending Money’, is a light-hearted, whistling ditty. Part of the chorus subtly hints at skullduggery,

A little spending money, money to burn.
Money that you did not necessarily earn.

John has molded his story into a morality play. Greek playwrights could recognize the plot. Russian authors might embrace such a protagonist.

In John’s story, a hint of a pending train wreck hovers in the air, a force that can’t be stopped. The main character has an issue with honesty, a shortcoming of which a rare friend, a waitress, tries to disabuse him of his wayward ways.

To tell you more would tell you too much. I’ve read many of John’s stories and haven’t encountered one like this. Enjoy it.

	♪ Tampico Trauma ♪ Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes [music • lyrics] Michael Bracken

I’ve read Michael Bracken over the years, but I hadn’t absorbed what a master of atmosphere he is. From the beginning, you feel like you’ve been dropped into Tamaulipas– no, not a Taco Bell menu item, the Mexican Gulf state. In Michael’s story, you can smell aromatic herbs seasoning the broth, you can hear a touristy guitar.

Buffett’s song is barely 150 words, fewer than twenty lines. In contrast, Michael has fleshed out a complete story, a simmering plot spiced by the kind and compelling Hernández hermanas. I can’t help but wonder if he didn’t borrow a refrain from another song:

First you learn the native custom,
Soon a word of Spanish or two.
You know that you cannot trust them,
Cause they know they can’t trust you.

Trust me, Bracken has smuggled a lot in a small packet.

	♪ The Great Filling Station Holdup ♪ A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean [music • lyrics] Josh Pachter

Josh Pachter shuttles us through the dimensions of space, time, and sound, back to a Jimmy country song. Both artists convey an old-fashioned tone, a feeling when informal policing could accomplish more than modern day school resource officers and zero-tolerance policies.

We got fifteen dollars and a can of STP,
A big ole jar of cashew nuts and a Japanese TV.
Feelin’ we’dd pulled the biggest heist of our career.
We're wanted men– we’ll strike again!
But first let’s have a beer.

Josh delivers a surprisingly gentle story. He pays considerable attention to characterization, so by the time the story wraps, you’re glad to witness a happy ending.

And for enquiring minds who want to know, he’s a damn fine editor. He’s also donating a third of the royalties to two Buffett charities, Singing for Change Charitable Foundation and Save the Manatee Club,

	♪ Truckstop Salvation ♪ Down to Earth [music • lyrics] Leigh Lundin

After Josh’s invitation, I sweated, coming up with zero ideas. As the acceptance deadline approached, I feared having to decline.

One evening, my scalpel-tongued brother Glen mentioned one of his ironic descriptors– dirty, furrin’ lovin’, commie, pinko, hippie, peace queers (considerably cleaned up for our refined audience). I tossed out, “Long-haired, greasy-looking ape,” and immediately wondered where that came from.

Googling found it in a song on Jimmy Buffett’s first album, Down to Earth. The lyrics of ‘Truckstop Salvation’ hinted at an off-camera not-so-pleasant ending.

A silly ditty floated in my brain to the tune of ‘Harper Valley PTA’ (written here in awkward pentameter):

I want to tell you about a valley in Eastern Tennessee.
Good folks and bad struggle in a place called Suwannachee.
No McDonalds, no mall, no factory, no future, no pay,
Then along comes a notice from the local valley TVA.

Those in Washington know you love your rustic neighborhood,
But Congress tells you to give it up for the greater good.
Though eminent domain puts your family in a jam,
Those vacate orders on your doors mean they don’t give a dam.

Once my brain juxtaposed my brother with his Tom Petty hair and live-by-his-own-rules attitude, a Southern gothic began to sketch itself in dark, dark tones. What if Edgar Allan Poe engaged in a forbidden romance with Bobbie Gentry? You know, Deliverance without all the fun and frolic?

---

Those rock shrimp and stone crabs are rolling to a boil. Beer tub in the sand, nutcrackers at the ready. Pick up the hammer and tongs, have at them.

Florida’s Broward College is sponsoring the launch party. It’s virtual. It’s Zoom. It’s free. It’s 11 March, 2021 at 07:30p. Sign up here!

And yeah, the Jimmy Buffett anthology has lots of damn good stories. Don’t be a crusty crustacean, pre-order at a discount. Do it quickly– it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

As You Wish

  

FYI, I am not a screenwriter. I'm just a short-story writer who loves movies and has always been interested in the way they're written and made. And one of the things I have observed is that any discussion of screenwriters eventually includes the name William Goldman (Butch Cassidy, Misery, Marathon Man, All the President's Men), and anytime you talk long enough about movies that are loved by just about everyone, somebody usually mentions The Princess Bride.

 

Goldman, who wrote the book and then the movie, once said, "I was going to California on a trip and I told my daughters, 'I'll write you a story; what do you want it to be about?' And one of them said, 'Princesses,' and the other said something about 'brides.' And I said, 'Okay, that will be the title.'"

As it turned out, the movie version of The Princess Bride became a classic, one of those rare films loved by viewers of all ages. I've probably watched it a dozen times, and it even has the approval of my wife and kids and grandchildren, who are sometimes bored crosseyed by my movie suggestions. TPB is unlike any other film I can think of, a weird combination of fairy tale ("Have fun storming the castle"), comedy ("Don't rush me, sonny, you rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles"), love story ("Farm Boy, polish my horse's saddle; I want to see my face shining in it by morning"), revenge story ("My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die"), and adventure story ("You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen"). It features pirates, giants, wizards, torture, fire swamps, The Cliffs of Insanity, and R.O.U.S. (Rodents of Unusual Size). And another thing: The Princess Bride is one of those movies--among them The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, Lonesome Dove, The Godfather, Cuckoo's Nest, No Country for Old Men, and Shawshank Redemption--that turned out to be as good as the novels and novellas from which they were adapted. That doesn't happen often.

A special treat for me was a book I acquired a few years ago called As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes, who played Westley in the movie. If you're familiar with the story, you might remember that the phrase "as you wish" was the reply Westley always gave Buttercup anytime she asked him for something (like fetching a pitcher or filling a bucket with water or polishing her saddle). And because of that, in one of those moments that make good stories great, there was this exchange at the very end of the movie, when Peter Falk is about to leave after reading the story to ten-year-old Fred Savage:

The Grandson: "Grandpa? Maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow."

The Grandfather: "As you wish." 

Anyhow, it's a delightful and educational book about the filming of the movie and about the actors and their roles. In case you don't know, or in case you've forgotten, here's the cast:

Robin Wright as Buttercup/The Princess Bride

Cary Elwes as Westley/Farm Boy/The Man in Black/The Dread Pirate Roberts

Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya

Andre the Giant as Fezzik

Wallace Shawn as Vizzini

Chris Sarandon as Prince Humperdinck

Christopher Guest as Count Rugen/The Six-Fingered Man

Billy Crystal as Miracle Max

Carol Kane as Valerie

Peter Cook as The Impressive Clergyman

Peter Falk as The Grandfather

Fred Savage as The Grandson

 

There's also plenty of interesting inside info about director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and the many ups and downs of trying to put the movie together. Here are a few excerpts from the book:

Rob Reiner: "So I went with Andy [co-producer Andy Scheinman] to Bill's [Goldman's] apartment in New York, and he opened the door and said, 'This is my favorite thing that I've ever written in my life. I want it on my tombstone.' And the subtext was, 'What are you going to do to it?'"

Robin Wright: "My theory is that they were so completely tired of meeting girls--I think I was the five-hundredth girl they saw--at that point they were like, 'Just cast her. Make her the princess.' . . . That was my lucky fate--they were exhausted."

William Goldman: "I remember turning to Rob and saying, "You're setting fire to Robin on the first day?! What, are you nuts? It's not like we can replace her!"

Mandy Patinkin: "It was 1986. My father died in 1972. I read that script and I wanted to play Inigo because my mind immediately went, If I can get that six-fingered man, then I'll have my father back, in my imaginary world."

Cary Elwes (on meeting Andre the Giant): "I remember Rob introducing us, and watching my fingers disappear when we shook hands, completely engulfed by a palm bigger than a catcher's mitt . . . His shoe size was twenty-four and his wrist was nearly a foot in circumference. Standing next to him, I only came to his belly-button."

You get the idea. The point is, if you like movies, and if you liked The Princess Bride, you'll enjoy this book. 

Meanwhile, have fun storming the castle . . .

The Day I Hung Up My Fedora Forever

I was about 10 years old when I got my first business cards. I “printed” them up myself, laboriously writing them in longhand with pen on index cards I swiped from my Dad.

D’AGNESE DETECTIVE AGENCY, the first line read. After that came our home address in Jersey. There ended my originality. The rest of the copy is tattooed in the brain of anyone who loved mysteries as a kid: 25 cents per case, plus expenses. No case too small.

I don’t know how many of these cards I wrote up. But it was a lot, because I remember discarding a few of my Dad’s pens along the way. Some cards started in black or blue ink, but finished in red. Then I pressed my younger brothers into service. We dropped those cards into every home mailbox or mail slot in the neighborhood.

I set up my office in the garage. We always had some folding chairs tucked away in a closet; I appropriated a couple for myself and my operatives. My Dad had a very large metal gasoline can in the garage—also perfect, also fortuitous—which became my desk of sorts.

I don’t know how long I had to wait for my first case, but when it materialized, it came in the form of two big kids. I can’t be precise about their ages, or mine, because childhood memories are forever and ageless. One of the kids was the friend of our older, big-kid neighbor, Clint.

Big kids suck.

“Someone stole my bike,” he told me. “I need you to find it.”

As soon as his lips closed, a shocking thought passed through my head: What the hell was I doing? I had no freaking idea how to be a detective. How does one even begin to track a stolen bike?

“Do you have any suspects?” I said.

My client didn’t get a chance to respond, because at this point one of my brothers insisted on seeing the color of the fellow’s money. “It’s 25 cents!”

“Yeah, I know,” the big kid said. “I read those books too.”

Book #1 in the Series. Note the gas can!

The books in question, as you’ve no doubt guessed, were the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries that were written so wonderfully by a man named Donald J. Sobol over the course of 49 years.

Sobol wrote other books in his lifetime, but the Brown mysteries—about Leroy Brown, a kid sleuth who solved cases out of his garage in a small fictional town in Florida—will always be his claim to fame. The Brown books each contained about 10 short mysteries.

I hate dreaming up clues for the stories I write today. I’m terrible at it. Sobol’s genius was boiling every single case down to some abstruse factoid that revealed which person in the story was a liar. Things like which way water flowed in the Amazon basin, or the fact that dogs can’t see color, or the fact that fire never burns downward, only up. (I just made these up. They are not Sobol-approved.) No one in the stories, not even grown-ups, knew this kind of trivia, but Encyclopedia always did. That’s how he always nabbed the perp.

I never did read all the Brown books. My childhood ended before Sobol finished crafting them. But many years later, I had the chance to read the first volume of his Two-Minute Mysteries series, which were wickedly short newspaper puzzlers not unlike the ones in Woman’s World magazine today. Sobol published three books culled from this one syndicated mystery column, which he began writing for newspapers in 1959.

But here’s what blew my mind: In the same way that Raymond Chandler “cannibalized” his short stories and their plots in later novels, or the way Ellery Queen repurposed their old radio scripts for later books, Sobol clearly tapped some of his old Dr. Haledjian newspaper shorts for later Encyclopedia Brown material.

Because clues are just that precious.

None of this helped me, by the way, back in the 1970s. The Case of the Purloined Bike didn’t have a single critical clue to guide me. (I wouldn’t have spotted it if it had.) As I recall, the case fell apart when the client threatened to steal our bikes, mine and my brothers. Isn’t that just like a big kid?!

Terrified, I fled my newly hatched office for the safety of my upstairs bedroom, bolting the door. If the world was not going to challenge my ratiocinative abilities, I would not be a party to its madness.

Book #29 —the last in the series.

My younger brother, who has always been physically bigger than me, fought off the big kids with a stick and locked the garage door. He’s the only hero of this story.

I never had another case. But some months later, a commuter on the bus to the big city plopped down next to my father one morning and innocently asked, “Are you a detective?”

My father spluttered that he was no such thing.

The woman showed him my business card.

“That’s gotta be one of my idiot kids!” he told her.

“I thought so,” she said. “But I thought I would ask. I need someone to find my sweater. I can’t find it anywhere.”

Where was this paragon of clienthood when I needed her?

By rights my story ends there. But many years later, when I was working at the children’s publishing company, Scholastic, I had the chance to interview Sobol, who lived in Florida, by phone.

I found him to be incredibly down to earth. He chuckled when I told him about my detective agency. I was not the only grown-up who’d shared such an anecdote with him over the years. Pulling some questions from old bios of him, I asked if he still fished or golfed. He laughed. He said most days he was lucky if he got up from his desk and made it to the refrigerator.

At the end of the interview, I mentioned in passing that our children’s magazine would be reprinting one of the Brown mysteries to accompany the Q&A I was writing.

In a line that sort of presaged my own future, Sobol replied, “Am I getting paid for this? I mean, if it’s just a few bucks, no big deal. But if it’s $25, send me the check.”

His last Brown title was published a few months after he died in the summer of 2012, at age 87. The best estimate I’ve found says the Brown books have sold more than 50 million copies—and counting. That should keep us in budding detectives until the end of this century, at least.

Count me out.

* * * 

You will enjoy this Crime Reads piece that profiles Sobol and interviews his grown children.

Sobol’s 2012 obituary in the New York Times.

See you in three weeks!

"Clarice, Don't Be A Naughty Girl..." Or, Fun With Dialogue

Happy Presidents Week! 

It's time we talked. You know, a real back-and-forth. A rap session.

A dialogue.

You know you're a writer if you're having them with yourself. And the more often you're having them, the more likely you are to be having a productive stretch at the ol' keyboard.

(And don't believe the alarmists. Shrinks overwhelmingly cite conversations with oneself as a sign of robust mental health.)

I have them everywhere. All the time.

Sometimes they're dead ends. Sometimes they're the start of something. Snatches of conversation. Bits of overheard dialogue.

A friend of mine (also a writer) has a popular and long-running series of snatches of other people's conversations overheard in public places and immortalized in his social media platforms. They are engaging, bizarre, and usually unforgettable. At times for their "quip" factor. At times for their sheer mundanity. 

And always for their utter humanity.

The best dialogue is not that written by the likes of Aaron Sorkin (whose work I admittedly love), because there is no situation arising in real life where everyone you work with comes armed with a knapsack full of relevant facts, a closet full of debate trophies, and barks at each other like an auctioneer who has just drunk their tenth Red Bull. Love it on the screen and can suspend my disbelief there, mostly because Sorkin's work is fun to watch. However, it doesn't translate well to the written page. 

For that you need realistic dialogue.

You notice, I didn't say, "real dialogue." "Realism" and "reality" are not exactly the same animal. We're staging something when we're writing, not memorializing it.

And that's in part because of the utter mundanity of most human conversation. Let me give you an example:

"The Costco order is here," my wife said.

"Okay, I'll be right there." And I got up to go help bring it in.

Real? Yes. It happened today, in fact. But it's mundane. It serves no other purpose than to let you know that my wife and I got a Costco order today. As such it's not so much written dialogue as it is a snatch of memorialized conversation.

And written dialogue must do much more heavy lifting than memorialized conversations. Like every other part of the story, dialogue must work in service of the plot. It must advance it. Realistic dialogue, when employed correctly, reveals character, ratchets up the tension and advances the plot. Otherwise, no matter how artful, no matter how witty, no matter how poetic, it must be (and in the best writing, is) cut.

When I'm trying to get dialogue to work, I try to keep in mind two maxims, each laid out by one of the best writers of the last century or so: Elmore Leonard and John Le Carré.

Leonard once famously said: "My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip."

As for Le Carré, he said of a plot: "The cat sat on the mat is not the beginning of a story. The sat on the dog's mat is."

The best dialogue obeys both of these dictums.

Leonard's is key because (of course) the best writing does not bore the reader. Le Carré's because it points up how essential conflict is to advancing the plot.

And that is what separates realistic dialogue from real dialogue. "Realistic" writing is a construct, not a transcription. It's a tool intended to convey the writer's message. As such, it works in service of the message, rather than serving as the message itself.

As such it can and must be massaged, worked and reworked, tweaked, larded with subtext, whatever it takes to get your point across.

Someone a lot more success than I am once said, "There must be conflict on every page" of a work of fiction, otherwise it's wasted writing. I'll take that one step further. There must conflict in every conversation the writer choose to employ, otherwise that writing, too, is wasted.

And where a playwright or a screenwriter has collaborators: actors to speak their words, lighting directors to set the mood, cinematographers to make effective use of the best camera angles, fiction writers tend to be solo acts (editors and beta readers are not only helpful, but essential, but they play their parts in the process once a draft is completed). We are the writers, the directors, the scene-setters, the dialogue coaches. We play all of the parts.

And oftentimes that includes having conversations with ourselves. Out loud.

I've never been lucky enough to hear a snatch of conversation so inspiring that it led to my creating a work of fiction. My ideas tend to spring from something I read, or, as I've laid out above, from conversations I have with myself.

My incredibly talented wife, however, is currently putting the finishing touches on her first novel, the germ of which story came to her in an overheard snatch of conversation. In fact, it was a bit of conversation we both overheard, a decade ago, while honeymooning in the U.K.

We were driving from Edinburgh to York, and stopped at Housesteads, an archeological site featuring a partial restoration of one of the many Roman-built mile castles which dotted the length of Hadrian's Wall. While touring the site we happened upon a British family: a father and mother, and two small girls, somewhere between the ages of 6 and 8 or so.

The rock wall in question looked a lot like this.

Just as we advanced within earshot, the mother, in a tone uncannily similar to that of one of the members of Monty Python in drag, called out to one of her daughters, "Clarice (pronounce "Clair-Iss."), don't be a naughty girl!" In reply to which the younger of the two girls, at that moment perched atop a two-foot high rock fence, stood straight and protested bitterly that her sister was climbing on the rocks too.

And just like that, my wife had an idea for a main character with a life-defining relationship. Sometimes it happens that quickly, that completely. Like the story about how car trouble on New York's George Washington Bridge led to Donald Westlake creating both the amoral thief Parker, and the pseudonym under which he would populate Parker's world, Richard Stark.

I'm not so talented as either my wife or the late Mr. Westlake (to say nothing of the late Mssrs. Leonard and Le Carré). So, for the time being at least, I'm going to continue having conversations with myself.

See you in two weeks!

Brand New Cliches

 

Yesterday the March/April issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine hit the newsstand, assuming such institutions still exist.  I am delighted to be making my 33rd appearance in those distinguished pages.  "Shanks' Locked Room" is the eleventh showing there by my grumpy crime writer, so he stars in one-third of my tales  in that market.

You may notice the "locked room" in the title.  It is a subgenre of the mystery story, of course, going all the way back to the very first: Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue."  I thought it might be fun to play around with the old gimmick and I wound up turning it inside out.  The puzzle Shanks has to solve is not "how did the villain get into a room without a key?" but "why did the villain steal the key and not enter the room?"

I enjoy turning a cliche around.  I had written what I thought would be a follow-up called "Shanks' Last Words," involving the famous dying-message clue, but it turned out that technology had gotten ahead of me and made my story outdated.  Such is life.

One master of the upturned cliche was Jack Ritchie, a genius of the comic short story whom John Floyd and I have praised to the sky on this page.  He wrote a book about Henry Turnbuckle, a Milwaukee police detective.  Henry loved mystery fiction and was constantly being disappointed that reality cruelly ignored the cliches and motifs of the field.

For example, in one story two of the suspects are identical twins.  Alas,  in violation of every rule of mystery fiction that turns out to have nothing to do with the solution.  In another tale Henry gathers all the suspects and dramatically reveals the killer - only to have the suspects point out a fatal flaw in his logic, which involved a fact no one had bothered to mention to him.  Why is it in crime fiction the detective always gets all the necessary information?  Doesn't happen in real life.  

 By coincidence I was reading a story today and gave up on it because it stuck to a very tired cliche: The villain was about to kill the hero but first gave him a detailed explanation of his plan, and damned near a blueprint of the house where he was being held.  

This peculiar generosity on the part of some bad guys was brilliantly skewered in the movie Austin Powers.  

So, which cliches of the field bug you the most?

When Red Herrings Stink

I'm going to go out on a limb and say something that may be controversial, at least among writers: Readers should understand why a red herring (something that is said or happens in a novel or story that leads the reader to a false conclusion) was not the solution to the puzzle by the time the tale is over.

Until recently I didn't think this was a controversial opinion. I thought it was a standard approach to writing mysteries. Sure, I'd sometimes heard authors say before that they didn't need to explain by the end of their stories why Character X said Y because Y was a red herring, but I thought they were mistaken, and since I wasn't their teacher, it wasn't my place to correct their misguided notion. But recently I edited a story by an author I respect, someone who's a solid writer, and the issue arose. Since I was this person's editor, it was my job to say my piece.

I'm going to talk about the story, but I'm completely changing the names and plot so that you can't identify the author because who this person is doesn't matter. In the whodunit story, Princess Consuella tells Annie the Amateur Sleuth that murder suspect Bad Bad Leroy Brown lied about something, based on personal observation, and therefore, it seems, Leroy must be the killer. Princess Consuella was believable and seemed absolutely certain, so I suspect most readers would have finished that scene believing Leroy had indeed lied and thus must have been the killer. It's what I thought. Yet at the end of the story, I learned I'd been fooled. Leroy may be bad, but he never killed anyone--at least not in that story.

I raised the problem with the author--that no explanation of Princess Consuella's statement about Bad Bad Leroy Brown was provided by the story's end. Either Leroy did lie (which by the story's end didn't seem right, since we never learned any reason Leroy would have lied about the issue in question) or the princess had been wrong (but how could that have been true, since she had seen with her own eyes the thing she was certain Leroy lied about, and it wasn't the type of thing that could have been misunderstood, and she had no reason to lie, either). The reader would be left wondering how to reconcile this situation, so some  explanation should be provided, I said. The author pushed back, saying that no explanation was necessary since it was a red herring designed to fool the reader into thinking the wrong suspect was the killer. The reader learns who the actual killer is by the end, and that's what matters, the author said; we don't need to revisit the red herring. 

That response prompted me to do some research about red herrings. Had I been wrong all these years? Did red herrings, by their very nature, not require explanation? To my surprise, I found nothing addressing this issue. There are a lot of articles about crafting solid red herrings, but I found nothing addressing the idea that red herrings should be explained by a story's end, that the reader should be able to understand how she got fooled. Even now, some time later, I remain quite surprised, because if authors can toss in red herrings without eventually providing an explanation for them, it makes writing too easy. It feels like a cheat.

In the case of Bad Bad Leroy Brown, sure, he could have been lying for reasons the reader never learns, despite seeming to have no reason to lie. Alternately, Princess Consuella could have lied for reasons the reader never learns about or she could have been wrong, despite being so certain and giving the reader no reason to explain how she could have been so mistaken. It certainly would make life easy for authors if they could write red herrings that didn't have to be explained in the end, but I think it would leave readers with a bad taste in their mouths. That is why I believe such scenarios need to be resolved. Did Leroy lie and why? Or did the princess get it wrong and how could that be? Without an explanation, the red herring feels contrived. It makes me feel like the author was playing games with me. 

This is why I recommended the author use a little misdirection when the red herring was introduced. More specifically, I suggested that when the princess called Leroy a liar, the author should use the wiggle word "recall" in the dialogue. Notice the slight difference:

Scenario A: The princess slams her hand on the table, its sound echoing throughout the castle. "Bad Bad Leroy Brown is a liar! I was sitting right next to him in the dungeon cafe last week, and he didn't leave money for his meal on the table when he left. I wonder what else he's lying about. I bet he rips off restaurants throughout the kingdom all the time. He's a rip-off artist."

Scenario B: The princess slams her hand on the table, its sound echoing throughout the castle. "Bad Bad Leroy Brown is a liar! I was sitting right next to him in the dungeon cafe last week, and I don't recall him leaving money for his meal on the table when he left. I wonder what else he's lying about. I bet he rips off restaurants throughout the kingdom all the time. He's a rip-off artist."

In Scenario A, the reader ends the story shrugging, thinking Leroy (who has a reputation for honesty, despite his name) had no reason to lie when he said he paid for his lunch, yet the princess's adamant accusation against Leroy remains unexplained. (She too had no reason to lie and her certainty indicated she hadn't made a mistake.)  In Scenario B, the reader can go back and reread the language of the princess's accusation and think, "Oh. The author fooled me."

Here's why Scenario B works: Because (1) the reader has no reason to think the princess lied; (2) the princess seems so certain, so the reader will believe her account; and (3) the princess distracts the reader by slamming the table, muttering about what else Leroy might have lied about, and declaring that he's a rip-off artist, the reader easily could read right past the key words--the princess didn't recall Leroy leaving his payment. When the reader gets to the end of the story, she could flip back to reread the princess's accusation and think, "Oh! It was right there. She merely didn't remember it. I was distracted by her certainty. I was fooled fair and square." That's the way to make a red herring work. That's the way to make the reader feel satisfied rather than feeling played.

Alternately, the reader could learn by the story's end that Leroy did lie for reasons unrelated to the murder. If there was a good reason for his lie, especially something that worked well with the plot, then revealing both the lie and the reason for it could have elevated the story. It also could have left the reader feeling satisfied because, while she was fooled, she wasn't played for a fool. Distracting the reader into missing a key word is playing fair with the reader. In contrast, dropping a lie into the story to fool the reader without any ultimate explanation isn't playing fair,  not to me, at least.

So that's my advice about red herrings. If you're going to use them,  make sure they're explained by the end so they don't seem contrived. Otherwise, you're taking an easy way out and you're not playing fair with the reader. Just like fish that sits out too long, that approach stinks.

I welcome your comments on this issue. And if I'm wrong and there are tons of articles addressing this subject and I need to brush up on my research skills, please share that information too.

***

In other news, here's a little BSP: I recently had a new short story published. "An Inconvenient Sleuth" appears in issue eight of Black Cat Mystery Magazine. In this whodunit, Kendra Silver, Dogwood Valley's celebrated amateur sleuth, is murdered. Who saw that coming? Certainly not anyone who thought  Kendra was invincible because she led a cozy life in a cozy town. But now that someone has killed Kendra, her best friend, Whitney, feels compelled to help the police unmask the culprit.  

Black Cat Mystery Magazine is available in trade paperback and ebooks from all the usual sources. You also can buy it directly from the publisher, Wildside Press, by clicking here.

More About First Person

 by Steve Liskow

I've discussed point of view before, mostly about the unreliable narrator. That's someone who tells the story but whose word is suspect. That person my be lying to cover his own guilt over some event, or maybe he is biased or misunderstands a situtation. Nelly Dean, the caretake in Wuthering Heights, hates Heathcliff and glosses over her own responsibility for many of the things that go wrong in that book, including the elder Catherine's death. Lockwood, the twit who rents the estate and listens to her account, is too self-centered and dumb to understand the significance of what she says. 

Huckleberry Finn was raised by an illiterate drunken racist, so he doesn't recognize his own racist attitude toward Jim.

He comes to understand through the adventures he and Jim share. Critics often compare The Catcher in the Rye with the emotionally shattered Holden Caulfield to Huck. Others point to Chief Bromden, the paranoid schizophrenic Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. All these books gain their power from a narrator who doesn't tell us the truth, expecially since he doesn't lie on purpose.

Many other books, both classic and newer, continue this tradition: The Great Gatsby, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Gone Girl...

But what about books where the narrator tells us the truth? That's a staple of the classic mystery story. I remember being told that a mystery should always use first person point of view, a dictum I tossed as soon as I read The Maltese Falcon, which uses third person through Sam Spade. 

Poe used an unnamed narrator to highlight the brilliance of C. Auguste Dupin. Maybe that's where Conan Doyle got the idea for Dr. Watson, who narrates all except one of the tales of Sherlock Holmes. Captain Hastings, who sounds a lot like Watson, shares his own awe of Hercule Poirot.

Once challenge of using first person point of view is that the narrator needs an interesting voice or persona to keep the reader engaged. If we're going to listen to someone tell an entire book, they have to be interesting, right?

That's true of the unreliable narratiors I mentioned above, but Watson and Hastings are, frankly, boring. They're nice, dull, unimaginative men of a certain age and class, and that narrow mindset exists to make their sleuths seem even more brilliant and dynamic. It also allows us to forgive (as they do) those detectives' personality quirks and shortcomings. Poirot is an arrogant ass, more concerned with his moustaches and his little gray cells than with anyone around him. Holmes is an off-again-on-again cocaine (or morphine, it changes from story to story) user who practices his marksmanship by shooting holes in the wall of his London flat. Apparently, zoning laws were different then.

Another advantage of having these characters as narrators is that Christie and Conan Doyle could hide clues from the reader because Hastings and Watson didn't recognize their importance. It's not really cheating. It's more like slight of hand where the magician makes you look at the wrong hand while the other one palms the ace. 

But Hastings and Watson and a whole generation of Golden Age narrators were dull. Their only reason to exist was the genius of the character solving complex plots that resembled higher calculus. I read a lot of those books and tolerated them, but at some point I lost interest because the characters were incidental to stories that were little more than the word problems in my math book. 

Rex Stout came along, too. I haven't read all the Nero Wolfe stories, but I don't know which ones I missed.

Stout realized that Nero Wolfe was insufferably vain. He weighed "a seventh of a ton," bred orchids, drank innumberable bottles of beer daily (keeping track by the bottle caps on his desk), and never left his brownstone residence. The traditional dull sidekick would have disappeared in his ego and rendered the books unreadable.

But Stout gave us Archie Godwin. Archie is a good PI in his own right. He's charming, loves the ladies (And Lily Rowan and others reciprocate), and can take care of himself in a fight. He's smart. He's also funny and constantly needles Wolfe and deflates him. The relationship between the two characters has more depth and complexity than their predecessors, and it makes for more interesting reading

.After World War II, Lew Archer and Phillip Marlowe came along to relate more character-driven stores with more complex people as narrators and investigators. I don't know if it's significant that they're both American while Christie and Conan Doyle were British. I do remember Chandler's snide comment in "The Simple Art of Murder," though. "The English are not necessarily the best writers, but they are unquestionably the best dull writers." 

In the seventies, Sara Paretsky gave us V. I. Warshawski. A few years later, Linda Barnes gave us Carlotta Carlyle and Sue Grafton gave us Kinsey Milhone. Three feisty, intelligent women PI narrators.

It's probably simplistic to give Stout credit for the rise of the detective teams who appeared in the 1990s, but I'll do it anyway.

Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are smart and damaged. They explore the dark depths of the human condition and come away even more deeply scarred. They finally married between the last two books in the series, and Patrick left investigating for a nine to five while Angie became a terrific mom to their daughter.

Robert Crais's Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are both military veterans (Vietnam, which would put them both at 70 now) and their youths were littered with emotional fallout that give them a deeper understanding of the people they both help and hunt. Elvis can be funny, too. 

I appreciate them more because I grew up with Archie Godwin's voice and vision coloring my own tastes and guiding my reading. When I started writing seriously (who writes frivolously?), Stout was one of my biggest influences.

The Pandemic: Babies and Stories

With so much time together with our lovers, many expected a pandemic baby boom, but it is looking more like a bust.

I get it.

My writing fantasy is to have stories - the ones that reveal the places we live and breathe, the dark places, the places of joy - and also the time to write them. 

I now have the time but the onslaught of stories is just too much. The edits on my book are not a boom but a bust. A total bust.

Normally, when I work I shut out the world. Ignore it. However, this is a time in history when absorbing what is going on in the world is needed.

When I sit down to write, my head swirls from the page outward. Perhaps my characters are talking on the phone - I think of all the people isolated by #COVID19 who can only talk to those they love by phone. When my characters sit for coffee, I think of all the lonely people unable to gather and the small coffee shops struggling to survive in this pandemic.

Then there are the elderly in long term care homes, isolated and at times suffering with dementia - how do they make sense of the long days when no familiar faces come? Do they forget them? Do they remember them in their dreams?

The children who once rushed up to playgrounds to do what we have forgotten to do - play with abandon with children they have just met. Now, they are masked and are asked to keep their distance. Will they play with abandon when the virus is gone or will they grow up too soon into the far more distanced adults that surround them? Hell, we are asking them to keep their distance so it would be a small wonder if they don’t.

The lovers, the ones that had planned romantic trips, weddings and parties - what happens when none of that is possible? Do they put that spontaneous side - the most romantic moments - on hold. Can they return?

And then there are those who don’t return at all.  Their families watch them disappear into the bowels of an ambulance or hospital and then can’t see them, hold them before they die. 

I’m bombarded by stories of my colleagues in the #COVID ICUs. They have so many tools to save people but now, their tools are often useless against Covid-19. Death after death. It's everything they've been trained to fight and yet they lose the battle constantly. They are tired and demoralized when one patient dies, the numerous deaths are just too much for them.

And, perhaps a few blocks from these ICUs, people are gathering without masks, perhaps in homes, to have a drink, laugh and spread this damn virus around another room.

Will all the pandemic stories raging around demanding attention finally settle when the worst of this pandemic is over? Will we have time to write them when life returns to normal?

My hope is that these stories will be written and we will take the time to pay tribute to each person we can. There have never in my lifetime been so many stories crying out to be told. There are also so many people who are now no longer with us to tell their story and we need to honour them by telling it.

I have practiced medicine. I have written. Both involve a similar process.

In medicine, the key to a diagnosis is always the story - the more fulsome the story, the more likely the diagnosis will be accurate. And after diagnosis, following the story allows us to assess the treatment and, more importantly, how the patient is doing. 

With writing, the key is always the story and the more fulsome, the more accurate. 

With the pandemic stories that will be written, I hope that that they will be about how we recover, or don’t, from this terrible time in our history. Like a medical story, we need to follow this up. 

At this point in time I have no idea how the story ends for us all.

Oh, and babies. We need to see more babies please. We need a new generation to whom we pass on our stories, because this has been a time of such important stories. But until we pass on our stories, we need the joy of a new beginning.

How It's Done These Days

It’s 8:00am Saturday, writing day, and I’m so not ready to write. I’d been up late watching That Space Action Buddy Movie That Is Always On. TSABMTIAO sucks me right in. That’s what I do now on weekend nights, stare at a screen and not think much because I’ve been staring at smaller screens all damn week and thinking my brain into mush. I’m Zoomed out. A year now—a year—since home became not just the retreat and writing space but also the day job desk and social distancing fort. I’m still seeking balance.

Anyway, I can’t just dive into “That Flash Idea Thing,” no matter what the schedule pressure and creative guilt says. Have to get my blood pumping first. A pre-writing walk has launched the process since forever. Core to the ritual. Writing itself is an endurance feat, right? Hard to push through mentally if the body isn't primed.

Step 1: Walk and think; Step 2: Buy cold Diet Coke at the convenience store. Step 3: Go home and write. Works every time– except when it doesn’t. But I can’t skip the warm-up, that’s for sure. Off I go, and hey, what if I walk another block to the grocery? They sell Diet Coke at the grocery. Variety of route, the spice of life.

I walk to the grocery. Buy that Diet Coke. Hang on. You know what would make for top snacking later? A bag of Munchies. You know the mix, with like everything Lays swept off the packaging floor jumbled together feed bag-style. I buy the Munchies and of course sliced mangos. Writers need vitamins. Now I’m walking back home, and I should be mulling over outline problems with “Flash Thing,” but iTunes keeps playing the Stones and seriously, here is a car with legit U.S. Virgin Island license plates. Anyone alive would wonder what other fantastic license plates are in this parking lot of curiosities.

I get home with a decent U.S. state count and the Diet Coke gone. I’m totally getting my steps in, y’all. I secure the Munchies and check the phone for the usual grim news and English football scores. Start the laundry. It doesn’t start itself, does it? Done, done, and done, and folks, it is time to write. No, wait. Pollen season. Important to shower off the sinus fiends. That also done, the writing session has arrived, except how did it get to be 11am already? I can’t get going on “Flash Thing” with lunch time looming around the corner. I’ll feel distracted, disjointed. I’ll make hangry choices sure to summon rejections and the eternal silence of the hard drive. What I’ll do, I’ll outline a few goals for the day’s session as an intentionality exercise.

And bam! A key decision appears on my scratch pad. The POV will be the son. Bam! No, the mother. Bam! No, a surrogate mother figure. I decide that the piece will be about 700 words. 800 sounds longish. So, 700 hundred words and a mom-like person. I’ve earned my tuna salad, thank you very much.

I have the tuna salad. No Munchies yet. Those are for special snack occasions like big game watching or nine o’clock. I check the news. Switch the laundry. Here we go. I’m at the computer, and I write a working title. Add the by-line. Seven words already. I try a first sentence. It stinks, but I move it around and then I move that around, and after the moving stops, there is a paragraph. There may not be another one, though. I’m stumped, and no amount of staring at my shelf inspiration deals seems to help. I’m downstairs again fetching more Diet Coke, and my path takes me past the TV. They play football in England like all Saturday long. Also, I haven’t doom-scrolled the news since the tuna salad. I have a few mango slices because the struggle is real.

It used to be, back when, I wrote in morning flurries. By afternoon, I faded into this same grind, except with victories already notched. I could recharge and hit it again later. Now, I have the grind. But hey, my word count is showing 220 words, and “Flash Thing” is tracking the general idea on the general pace. The story is leading me more, and I blow past my old 2pm hard stop and then past 3pm, and at some point, and with a spin on the treadmill, it’s dark out and I blow past my old evening stop time. Then there is a full draft right here on this monitor screen. As if the writing gods have spoken, the word count is 702.

I break open the Munchies. Turn on the TV.

There was an old process, and I’m managing through a rebalanced one, mainly to bear down and make it work. Plus, I get major laundry done.

The Covid-19 Year

2020 and the beginning of 2021 in review.

The damn Cover-19 Year. I've been on lockdown (except for occasional armed excursions to grocery stories and doctor's offices). Armed with mask and face shield and avoiding the non-maskers. Got a lot of writing and reading done in my home office.

Looking back, I wrote one and a half novels in 2020. Wrote six short stories. Had one novel published. Had five original short stories published and two stories reprinted. Sold four new stories. One of my stories was awarded the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Short Story.

It was a good year for my writing but Covid-19 overshadowed everything. A number of my former police buddies succumbed to it, so did a few of their wives. We're all up in age. Other friends have died that horrible death as well.

On the blog front today, I have nothing.

I'm tapped out of writing advice for the moment. I looked back at my previous postings on SleuthSayers and think I've said just about everything I know about writing. But I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. But for the moment, I'm tapped out.

Gave y'all the one about the dead woodpecker and the riverfront expressway and the confederate statues (which I'm still catching flak over). I did one on cemeteries and American police and a number about other writers and books by other writers.

On the ficion side, I just finished writing a novel and already started on a short story with another novel waiting impatiently to be written. Wait, I still have to do the final read-through of the novel set to be published in spring. So I'm busy. It's a process.

Maybe, by writing so much fiction, my mind doesn't have room at the moment to write a piece of non-fiction, a blog. So I'll fudge along and try to think of something for the future. The way my mind works at the moment is – if I think about something to write, it defaults to fiction.

Oh, I just thought of something to mention. My dislike of social media. Not all social media, just the mundane, repititious junk (like I care what someone's birthday cake looks like). There I go. I'm being a jerk. That might be the most important thing in that person's life at the moment. Just scroll down and GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA and write or read or go around and pet all the cats (which annoys most of them as they are sleeping).

Hey, I do have a piece of advice for beginning writers.

Daydream. Daydream and turn your daydreams into stories. This sounds trite but it works.

That's all for now. Y'all stay safe.

Old Audubon Park Zoo, New Orleans, ©1976 O'Neil De Noux

www.oneildenoux.com

Notes from the Wild West

First up, I noticed that there's a new Axes and Ales place opened up on 57th Street in Sioux Falls.  A long pandemic, a bitterly cold February, and a lot of booze.  As long as they wear masks, what could possibly go wrong?  

Second:  No determination yet in what charges (if any) AG Jason Ravnsborg is going to face for hitting and killing Jason Boever on that dark September 12th night.  

"Beadle County State's Attorney Michael Moore were also assisting Sovell. Both Vargo and Moore confirmed Friday that they continue to assist in the investigation. Moore said Friday that it's not unusual for accident investigations such as the one involving Ravnsborg taking as long as a year to complete. In the Ravnsborg case, prosecutors are still waiting on biological evidence and cell phone data. "From my experience dealing with a case where you're looking at possible criminal charges, it takes awhile to make sure you have all your information before you make a decision," Moore said. "You don't want to make a decision when there's still relevant information that we don't have. That's why it takes awhile."  (Argus Leader)

[Ahem]  There's a lot of South Dakotans (and other US citizens) who have found themselves in jail the very same night of the accident, but...  We all know what's really going on here, and a whole lot of South Dakotans are well and truly pissed off by it.

Including our Governor.  Kristi Noem has finally spoken out against something other than Amendment A (in which we, the people, of South Dakota legalized marijuana), and said “I share South Dakotans frustration about the amount of time this has taken,” Noem told Black Hills Fox News Wednesday. “To have more than 100 days go by without resolution on this is a disservice to the victim’s family.”  (KEVN News)  

Meanwhile, our Governor is apparently worshipped from afar by followers on Twitter and Facebook over her stalwart anti-lockdown, anti-mask position regarding COVID-19:  "I believe in our freedoms and liberties... I'll continue to trust South Dakotans to make the right choices for themselves and their loved ones."   

BTW, it's not working out that great.  We're 2nd in the country for per capita COVID-19 cases - 1 out of every 8, folks! And 6th for per capita COVID-19 deaths - 1 out of every 494.  In other words, for all you tourists that have been here, are here, and planning to come here - we're a great place to party (everything's open!) but be warned, most people are packing, and I'm not talking just about guns.  

Anyway, there's a change in the political weather now that we passed Amendment A (legalizing marijuana both for medical and recreational purposes) and also another Initiative that legalized medical marijuana. Both measures passed by a landslide, and so now Noem is using our taxpayer $$$ to try to get the South Dakota court system to find them unconstitutional.  So far, a judge out of Hughes County has found Amendment A unconstitutional.  And Noem says (all on her own) that it's going to take an extra year to set up medical marijuana, so there.  

And a lot of South Dakotans are well and truly pissed off by that.  Including people who loved her pandemic lack of response.  (It didn't help that she spent the pre-election season gone for 2-3 months, campaigning for Trump.  And she's still gone most of the time, fundraising for her future campaigns.)  The basic argument is simple:  So, Kristi, you trust us to make the right choices for ourselves and our loved ones in a life-threatening pandemic, but you don't trust us to make the right choices about anything else?  (ARGUS)  

Prediction:  Based on the industrial hemp flap, which she opposed both before and after it passed, saying at the time, “I remain opposed to industrial hemp in South Dakota because of the impact it will have on public safety and law enforcement’s ability to enforce drug laws.” ( ????  Really?  Works in almost ever other state in the country. )  Anyway, the legislature couldn't quite get the votes to override her veto.  So it came up the next year, and passed again, and this time she didn't veto it.  I can guarantee that striking down Amendment A will be challenged in court, and if the challenge is lost, then it will be back on the ballot in November in a cleaner, simpler form.  And eventually, Kristi will give up and let us have our childish way.  

But let's move on from doom and gloom to more exciting things.  Another mother in the freezer story!  This one from Japan:  

Japanese woman hid mother's body in freezer for 10 years over fear of being evicted

                (The Guardian)

Hey, it was Mom's name on the lease, and we all know that real estate is tight in Tokyo.  

Did you know that in South Dakota, you can join in mashed potato wrestling? Clark, South Dakota celebrates its main crop with Potato Days and boasts potato decorating contests, recipe competitions, and yes -- mashed potato wrestling.  Read more here at the Clark Chamber of Commerce:  https://www.clarksd.com/potato-days/ 

For those of you who don't know, SD is full of corn, from the Corn Palace, to the endless fields.  But back in August, 2020, a lone cornstalk in Sioux Falls made news - and not just here. It came up through a crack in the concrete at the intersection of 57th Street and Minnesota Avenue on Sioux Falls’ south side.

Dubbed the 57th Street Corn [a/k/a Cornelia] complete with its own Twitter accounts during its brief lifespan, the plant was a symbol of resiliency and hope as the pandemic rages on, Mayor Paul TenHaken said." And then some a-- pulled it up. What followed was sadness, protests, hopes that humanity is on its way out, and t-shirts. (See Argus Leader)

But fear not!  Cornelia was rescued and replanted in front of City Hall.  As for what happened next - I have no idea. Corn that is born of seed hath but a short time to live. Still, it was fun while it lasted. 

Tales from SD from Not Always Right :

Story #1:

I live in one of few states not under full quarantine yet. Many restaurants are closed except for drive-thru, including ours. A coworker of mine is taking orders through drive-thru.

Customer: “Do you read the Bible, [Coworker]?
Coworker: “No, I’m not religious.”
The customer starts ranting.
Customer: “This disease is a punishment from God! Repent while you still have time!”

She simply took his order and then he went to the next window asking the same question, again ranting when given the same answer. A few minutes later, the same customer went through the drive-thru again, this time blowing a trumpet. We still don’t know what the deal was but everyone was talking about “trumpet guy” by the end of the day.

Story #2:

(The defendant has been found guilty of public urination. After a police officer was requested to make him leave an event at the local community center, [Defendant] insisted on taking a long piss out of his wheelchair in the community center parking lot, all captured for posterity on the officer’s body camera. This is his fourth arrest — and conviction — on misdemeanor offenses in the last six months. [Defendant] is representing himself.)

Judge: “Ready for sentencing? Does the State have any recommendations?”

State’s Attorney: “Well, Your Honor, [Defendant] is a frequent flyer in the criminal justice system. Over the years, he’s been found guilty of…”

(The list the State’s Attorney reads from has 48 convictions that range from public drunkenness to felony possession and ingestion of controlled substances, with forays into disorderly conduct, various levels of theft, violation of a protection order, simple assault/domestic abuse, and driving while intoxicated.)

State’s Attorney: “…recommend [maximum jail time for the crime].”

Judge: “Do you have anything you’d like to say, [Defendant]?”

Defendant: “People can change, Judge.”

MY NOTE:  I swear we had that defendant in court up in Madison.  He might have been the one who showed up drunk and looked like he was going to puke all over the judge's bench...  As the attorneys backed off in perfect V-formation...

Happy February!

Mr. Holbrook & Mr. Twain

I saw Hal Holbrook do Mark Twain Tonight when I’d just turned fourteen, and it was life-changing.  Holbrook himself was thirty-four, playing Twain in his seventies. 

The venue was Sanders Theater, at Harvard, inside Memorial Hall.  I don’t know if Twain actually appeared there, but the building was completed in 1875, so it’s possible.  Sanders has terrific acoustics, and Holbrook took the stage unamplified, as Twain may well have.

 

I caught the show twice, a matinee performance and then again the next day.  I had to go back and see it a second time; it was that jaw-dropping.  Nor did Holbrook repeat the shows word-for-word.  He had a lot of material, and he shifted gears, depending on the audience reaction, the time of day, or how the weather was.  He played the room. 

The real game-changer came in the second act.  He screwed his voice up a notch, higher-pitched, an old guy pretending to be a boy speaking, for the opening of Huckleberry Finn.

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.  That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”  This is characteristic of Twain, and of Holbrook’s canny delivery, a slight pause or stutter, before the punchline.  Mainly.  What’s also characteristic of Twain is the reversal of expectation, which can be a matter of comic timing, or the sudden chill of menace.  The first act of Mark Twain Tonight is full of laughs.  It’s a kind of bait-and-switch.  Holbrook moves the goalposts when he reads Huck’s story.  He slips in the knife, with the inexorable slide from the burlesque of Stephen Dowling Bots to the murdered Grangerfords.

This is part of the skill of the novel, the juxtaposition of horror and farce, but it’s very clear choice on Holbrook’s part to give us the Grangerford feud, or the lynch mob, or the time Huck outwits the bounty hunters by telling them Jim – hidden in the tent – is his Pa, infected with smallpox.  It balances on the edge of darkness, the consequences if his deception is found out, the entire narrative in fact a feverish pretense, an infection boiling just below the skin, a dose of sulphur with the molasses.

Holbrook put out two LP’s, performing live, and the 1967 TV show.  All well worth seeking out.

I think, however, that the immediate effect of my seeing Mark Twain Tonight in person wasn’t astonishment with Holbrook’s skill at transforming himself (astonishing as it was), or an appreciation of the writer as celebrity (Twain following in Dickens’ footsteps), but the experience of invention.  Holbrook becomes Twain, yes, but Twain becomes Twain, before your eyes.  You see him in the act of picking and choosing, deciding what to reveal, and what to hold back.  I suddenly realized that it wasn’t accidental, and Twain was actually the author of these engines, that he could invent these outcomes, he could turn these corners, he could lift the edge of the curtain, and in so doing, he could shape my emotions, terror, or elation, or wonder.  In other words, he was doing it on purpose. 

This was a revelation.  It demonstrated to me that writing was conscious, that you laid down a beat.  It had somehow not occurred to me.  This is one of those startling things, the before and after.  Before, you didn’t get it.  After, you can’t imagine how you didn’t always know, the knowledge foundational, necessary, built into your muscle memory. 

This is the strength and power of the story-teller.  Given a place by the fire, blind Homer tells again the tale of the heroes on the windy plain of Troy.  His listeners lean in.  A beginning, a middle, and an end.  Or not quite an end, but a tease, the promise of tales yet to be told.  The poet sings for his supper; he needs to give good weight. 

Mark Twain takes a last bow and exits the stage, leaving us hungry for more.  Hal Holbrook gave good weight. 

The Fountain Pen of Youth

As writers we are always looking for ways to expand our readership and obviously sell more books. One way to do that is to try to reach younger readers. When we’re young we never think we’re going to lose our cool, but inevitably it happens. The music and other things we once thought so cool have little relevance for young people today.

As many of you know I’ve spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital in the last few months. And in that time I came across a lot of different nursing teams. The people on these teams are from everywhere and in all age ranges. But almost all of them have one thing in common as compared to me. They’re young. The vast majority are in their mid-twenties to early thirties.

I had a lot of pleasant conversations with them, but in talking to them I realized they don’t relate to the same cultural touchpoints that I do. And I don’t think it’s because of our different ethnic backgrounds, I think it’s because of our ages. For me the Beatles are everything. Most of them can’t relate to that. Some of them may even like the Beatles, but it’s not the same for them as it is for me.

I watch movies from the 30’s and 40's on Turner Classics and think of them as “old” movies. They think of movies from the 90’s as old. And black and white movies are ancient to them—might as well be cave drawings.

The point here is that if you want to reach this audience you have to write about things they relate to not only what you and your peers relate to. We need to include references to the things that are important to them. The music they like, the movies they like, the characteristics they admire or despise in a hero or villain.

They say write what you know but sometimes you have to write what you don’t know. 

In The Blues Don’t Care there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t relate to personally as it’s set in another era, World War II, but I found myself relating to more and more of it as I got deeper into the subject. If we can do that with stuff from a previous generation then we should also be able to do that looking toward the future too. And hopefully pick up some new readers along the way.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

I just sold my short story "A.K.A. Ross Landy" to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Stay tuned for more.

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