We spent the week in Apollo Bay, Victoria, a seaside town just round the corner from the bay where Patrick Swayze (SPOILER ALERT)dies at the end of Point Break. (If you haven't seen Point Break and you're a fan of prime cheese then get thee to a Netflix Queue.) Apollo of course is the sun god and patron of the muses, but alas during our week it rained hard every day, we saw little of our local star and the muses didn't give me or anyone else any great ideas. It was all rather like my childhood summer holidays in Ireland with parents bundled up in scarves and coats, driving freezing blue lipped children into the sea. Except this time I was one of the parents in the coats and the sea was the churning waters of the Southern Ocean. Yes I know its churlish to complain about the weather when North America is buried in snow, but even so Scrabble and Connect Four can only provide a limited amount of entertainment while rain constantly lashes your windows and the whisky runs low. (I did finally read The Secret History (Tartt not Procopius) and that was pretty good.)...
We arrived back in Saint Kilda to find our house unrobbed, Arwynn's fish still alive, our Christmas tree wilted and skeletal and my box of Fifty Grand undelivered. So that Fifty Grand giveaway I promised is going to have to wait a week or two yet. (Apologies for that.) Anyway hope everyone had a great new year and do stay in touch - 2009 is either going to be the year I make it as a writer or I jack it all in and have a major rethink about my life. (Literature's loss will be light opera's gain.) Either way its going to be an exciting and no doubt whingy and complaint filled ride for readers of this blog. Still for the moment "happy the man who from the sea escapes the storm and finds harbor," - Euripides, The Bacchae.
88 comments:
but there was considerable drinking.
Anon
Erm, yes. Perhaps I should have said that we went down to Apollo with a group of friends many of whom also got into the kid/sea-shoving business by day and heavy drinking by night.
Procopius' is pretty good -- good stuff about Theodora's sexual practices.
I'd seen the woman on walls in Ravenna. Who'd have thought she'd get up to all that salacious stuff?
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
You've been unlucky not seeing the best of that lovely part of the world. I hope you can get back there another time - and don't forget to visit Wye and Kennett Rivers when you do. Have lunch at the Wye pub, it's lovely.
Interesting to find you here, Adrian - I will be letting some people know about you!
Genevieve
Oh dont get me wrong - it was absolutely stunning. And in a way I preferred the grey skies and the pounding surf to the blue skied postcard images in the shops. Totally clicked with my Edward Gorey side.
And we will be back. We didnt quite make it to the Apostles...
Peter
I did read the other Secret History years ago (in English translation). It was pretty shocking, though not quite as out there as Suetonius's 12 Caesars. Still credit were credit's due. A hell of a woman and no mistake.
Oh, I'd say Procopius‘ Theodora had Suetonius beat:
"And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries."
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Kid sea/shoving by day and heavy drinking by night is probably much preferable to the reverse.
It's never wrong to complain about the weather. It may in fact be what keeps civilization going.
I'm glad Arwynn's fish are still alive. Let's all take that as a good New Year's omen.
Welcome back.
Peter
Have you read about what Tiberius got up to on Capri? And Nero and Caligula for sheer entertainment value alone...
Did you ever read those Robert Graves I Claudius books BTW? Excellent. Far better than the overpraised, BBC series, with its dodgy sets etc.
Seana
Met a couple from Santa Cruz but was too far gone to probe further. She was a history professor at UCSC.
And yes without first mentioning the weather to members of the opposite sex Englishmen might never procreate at all.
Not only have I read what Tiberius got up to on Capri, I have tramped around the ruins where he probably did it. And for sheer entertainment, I might take Heliogabalus over the bunch of them.
I haven't read Graves. I did rent an episode or two of the series but did not think that much of it.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
"Kid sea/shoving by day and heavy drinking by night is probably much preferable to the reverse."
Words to live by.
So, suitably, my v-word is admons
Peter
Youve been everywhere, man. Love to go someday. I Claudius is really good. C the God a little less good.
The other Secret History has its fair share of sex and violence too of course and but for an much needed edit of a 40 page funeral scene was close to perfect.
Welcome back and happy new year again.
Poor fish.You could have brought it with you to see the ocean.
drinking,whining,complaining.You're a real whino.
At least you didnt pass Christmas in bed with 102.2 F fever.
Bummer for the 50Gs
Secret History was Procopius personal vendetta against Justinian and Theodora -its attendibility is probably on par with the tabloid press coverages of the royals and princess Di.
Marco
Yeah I was sorry to hear about your fever, I wont even mention my cold in case you feel slighted.
We did have a fish feeder who promised to come in so we weren't expecting death but you never know with young people.
Julius Norwich doesnt have many kind words for the Empress either.
I Wiki-ed Heliogabalus, as per Peter's suggestion, a figure I didnt remember from my Gibbon, but he certainly is shining example of what its possible to achieve before you turn 19.
2009 is either going to be the year I make it as a writer or I jack it all in and have a major rethink about my life.
Jack it all in? Not even in jest, you bastard.
gb
Ger
You havent seen my rendition of "I am the very model of a modern major general". When you do you'll understand my true calling.
Course we're still on for our chapter, though I'll be singing my contribution into a dictation machine.
Gerard beat me to it. You hadn't better jack it all in, or I'll..or I'll be jolly disappointed!
Yeah A, Gerard is right. You better not throw in the towel. I do my best to get everyone I know to read the Dead trilogy. Over the holiday, I was with an old friend in a tiny bookshop in Oak Ridge, TN, home of the nuclear bomb, in search of a copy of The Sun Also Rises, and I was ecstatic to find a copy of Dead I Well May Be for a friend. I just handed it to him and said read it or else!
Hi There,
My name is Fergus Robinson,
My father came across your work,
and wished to contact you, yet this seems like the only way possible for the moment, so he has asked me to forward the following message to you, via my blogspot account.
Dear Adrian
I too am from Carrickfergus, but a generation earlier. After reading several of Adrian McKinty’s novels, I have worked out that he came from the same district as myself (Victoria Housing Estate, Larne Road – I’m from Boneybefore, just a stone’s throw away).
I’m a great fan now, although I first encountered these works by accident. I was on holiday, in a second-hand bookshop in Kent, when I picked up a copy of ‘Hidden River’, and found myself staring at the word “Carrickfergus” on the first page I opened. It was one of those surreal moments that made me want to check out who the author was.
Now McKinty is an unusual name, even in Co. Antrim where it belongs (same as McGinty – Gaelic for ‘son of the Gentile/ Foreigner/Viking’). But I knew McKintys in Victoria, Carrickfergus: A Les McKinty who was a very tall thin man that rode a black bike everywhere and was a leading light in Kilroot True Blues when I was a ‘juvenile’. He had I think 3 sons who were at various times away in the army, and at least one was a boxer.
I remember as a young teenager almost 50 years ago sitting in the horseshoe balcony of Joymount Presbyterian Church, and the McKinty brothers sitting opposite on a visit home. They were as tall as their da, and when us Boney lads were standing the McKinty heads were at the same height sitting down. One was a Pipe Major in the ‘Star of Eden’ Pipe Band so the top of his busby was almost out of sight when out on parade!
Now all this is irrelevant if Adrian is no connection, but I couldn’t wait to get ‘Everything Rhymes with Orange’ and the Lighthouse book set in Islandmagee (with Blackhead Lighthouse planted on Muck Island). The recognisable locations which were my own haunts in all these books made them addictive – but that apart, I think they are absolutely brilliant.
‘Everything Rhymes with Orange’ will be an Ulster-Scots classic some day, and I only wish an international audience could appreciate the cleverness of it. The spoof professorial quote at the beginning made me laugh over and over again each time I read it (I worked for 30 years in the Ulster Folk Museum, and have met those ethnomusicologists!)
As someone old enough to be Adrian’s father, I’m not quite up to blogging and so this is posted by my son. I would, however, like to establish contact (not just to do a ‘do you remember ...’, but to explore some aspects of contemporary Northern Irish /Ulster-Scots creative writing that I am involved with).
Philip Robinson
You can contact me through my email address -
owresettins@hotmail.com
You havent seen my rendition of "I am the very model of a modern major general". When you do you'll understand my true calling.
You could post it to youtube and link it here.I'm sure it will help us weather the worst-case scenario of the loss of your crime-fiction output.
But I know you won't have the ba..courage to do it.
Gaelic for ‘son of the Gentile/ Foreigner/Viking’
Your viking genes must have diluted over the centuries.
They were as tall as their da, and when us Boney lads were standing the McKinty heads were at the same height sitting down.
For the tallness genes apparently one generation was all it took.
And Orange doesn't even rhyme with Lime,Lemon or Tangerine.
Happy Christmas and Happy New Year, my man. You're going to do some great things in '09.
I wanted to send my greetings, but I also wanted to drop a question. I'm writing a new book now and I wanted to know if you're talking about a band's album title, would it be italicized or would it be in parenthesis? The story takes place in '95 so I get to reflect on classic ish like Helmet and House of Pain. Oh, the memories. Thanks. Really looking forward to Fifty Grand by the way.
Fergus
We're a different McKinty clan. My dad's from Magheramorne near Larne and is associated with the Islandmagee McKintys and McKees.
Your da's right though I did grow up in Victoria Estate - Coronation Road as matter of fact but didnt visit Boneybefore that often even though it was close as it was way too posh!
My mum's old Carrick though. She's from Thomas Street and remembers the Blitz when they Luftwaffe destroyed Belfast (which after all is only about five miles away) she always remembers the US Army Rangers arriving at Sunnylands Camp - that was the unit who subsequently went on to have fifty percent casualties on D Day. Apparently Eisenhower came to see them but she doesnt remember that.
Tell your da, thanks for enjoying the books.
A...
Liam
I wouldnt italicise but thats only me.
How enjoying the snow up there BTW?
Charmin aint it?
Marco
Oh you'll be laughing on the other side of your face when my Gilbert and Sullivan acappella group becomes the musical sensation of 09.
Hardbarned
Thanks mate. But it is a pretty gruelling business and the truth is teaching provides instant rewards and long term satisfaction.
But we'll see.
Cheers for brainwashing/blackmailing your pal.
a...
Mike
Happy New Year and belated Merry Christmas buddy!
I hope you get everything you want for 09, unless it involves sitting on a jewelled throne in Hyde Park while we (the human race) sacrifices our first borns to you to the sound of You Can Find Your Way Home by John and Vangelis
Oh, I think Procopius was far more scurrilous about Theodora than tabloids were about Princess Diana.
I wonder if anyone has written a biographical account or even fiction about Procopius. Why would such a trusted legal adviser, historian and imperial official write what he did in The Secret History? Maybe because Belisarius, whom Procopius served as secretary, was not always treated well by Justinian and Theodora.
In any case, I've decided to dip into the more somber side of Procopius: my copy of his Vandalic Wars. Justinianic highjinks have inspired
at least one historical-crime-fiction series, by the way.
My v-word is what Naomi Campbell does on the sly when the hubbub dies down over her hypocritical flaunting of a fur coat after acting as a spokeswoman for PETA: refur
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Thats pretty interesting. I suppose Byzantium was doomed though even if Belisarius had been given proper support.
Going back to Gibbon - I loved the description of the Fall of Constantinople, now there's a moving crying out to be made if that awful Ridley Scott / Orloondo Bland film hasnt sullied the market.
My favorite part of Gibbon is his footnotes. Maybe someone could make a movie called Footnotes: Gibbon's History of the Monks and Other Stories.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
A cappella is good,but I think your little number could really stand out with a nice sax accompaniment.
Interestingly,the verificator said wrong,but I disagreed and refreshed.
Now it says judgemon,and it's a bit ridiculous,so I'll refresh again.
phool-it's becoming insolent
I'll settle for an innocuous whkjdi
I really like the snow actually. It's not as cold one might think and I find there's just something peaceful about walking home from college in the snow with a good set of tunes in your headphones. It's a far cry from the southeast, but I think I'm starting to get used to it. Thanks for asking.
Slainte
Met a couple from Santa Cruz but was too far gone to probe further. She was a history professor at UCSC.
That is tantalizing information. Remember any names? Or should I just hope to heaven that they don't remember yours?
We had a whole "I, Claudius" thing going in my family back when that series aired on PBS. We were way too California suburban to have actually read the books, though my sister may have let go of her Derek Jacobi fixation long enough eventually to attempt them. She loves all things Rome. I think I am probably not Roman enough at heart to even take part in this discussion. Or too Roman to recognize it? I'm not sure. The classics play a scanty part in the California school curriculum, although somehow I did get drawn to a lot of Ancient Greek.
I love the Robinson family post, by the way. It sheds a lot of light on Carrickfergus, no matter what branch of the McKinty clan Philip knew.
Sorry to double post, but while we're still on the subject of Philip Robinson, I thank him for his endorsement of Everything Rhymes With Orange. We haven't talked a lot about that book here, at least that I've seen, so I was maybe a little too inclined to dismiss it as a first effort, unread, but we do have it at our local library, so I will check it out.
Seana
The Santa Cruzans were called Casey and Kate, that's about all I remember.
Orange is a bit of a weird one. Its very authentic in terms of dialogue and emotion but I'll be honest its a bit cobbled together. Basically two short novellas that I tied together in 1 book and I dont think I entirely pulled it off. Still I dont think the NYT critique of it was entirely fair either "too dark, too violent, too incoherent" they said.
I seem vaguely to recall that UC Santa Cruz ran some kind of summer institute in Greek. And I, too, enjoyed the Carrick Family Robinson chronicles.
I have a colleague named McKee with roots in the north, but for some reason I think his family may have come from County Tyrone.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Marco
The sax man next door hasnt been around for a while - dare one hope?
Peter
You'll be happy to learn that the one thing I talked to the Santa Cruzans about were the banana slugs. Casey I think told me that they had a vote on whether to change the name of the team and of course it was overwhelmingly rejected.
Peter, I don't know about the summer Greek studies, though I wouldn't be surprised. I actually had the great good fortune to study Ancient Greek there with a wonderful teacher named John Lynch, who retired last year. Not that I could do a thing with the language now, of course. Well, I could still 'read' it, which is not at all the same thing as understanding it.
Adrian, I will keep an eye peeled for Kate and Casey, though don't know them right off. Doesn't mean they won't walk into the bookstore tomorrow, though, brimming with their charming experiences of Apollo Bay. Stranger things have happened.
I think the banana slug theme is kind of a touchstone for UCSC--once they think themselves too important for this literally lowly emblem, they will have probably lost their way up there. With certain big grants in the sciences recently, notably from NASA, I don't doubt that hubris will be long in coming.
As for "Orange", well, 'too dark, too violent' wouldn't dissuade us much here. Especially me, right at the tail end of the holidays. Incoherent is something else, and maybe the apprentice work will show, but I'll still be interested to take a look at it for your observational/autobiographical insights.
I am not at all sure how your Gilbert and Sullivan aspirations line up with the Tasmanian dairy farm--I mean frankly it just doesn't really bear contemplating, so I think maybe you just better stick with your craft. Really.
I presume that the Santa Cruz emblem is rendered cuter and less loathsome than its real-life counterpart.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I, too, took a bit of Attic Greek years ago and even looked briefly into the possibility of summer language institutes. Boston College might have had one, and for some reason Santa Cruz sticks in my mind, too, maybe because I would have been surprised to hear of such an institute in sunny California.
I would not even say I can read Greek. I mean, I can sound out the letters, and I can make stabs at the syntax, which is kind of fun. The Procopius Vandalic Wars that I'm reading is the Loeb Classical Library edition, which means facing Greek text. That's always fun.
Oh you'd like the other Secret History then I suspect.
Funnily enough my roomate in college Alicia Stallings wrote a very similar story which was published in the Oxford and Cambridge Short Fiction Anthology a year or two before Tartt's. I always thought Alicia would have made a superb novelist but she never took it up. (Unless she writes under a pseudonym).
the story was called The Summer of the Dead Languages which is why you reminded me of it.
Marco
The sax man next door hasnt been around for a while - dare one hope?
Nice try,but I don't think this comment will hold up as a alibi when they'll discover the body dismembered by a Dionysiac frenzy.
And farmers not only never visit nightclubs,they don't EVER sing Gilbert and Sullivan.Otherwise Hardbarned comes and repoes them.It's a law.
the Carrick Family Robinson
;
Yeah,I enjoyed it too.
Its very authentic in terms of dialogue and emotion
I really liked the Christmas Belfast flashbacks in DIWMB.
Does Orange cover similar territory?
v-word:havedrip
The Carrick Family Robinson Chronicles (via my son Fergus, named after Carrickfergus)will now need to be revised, if there were two McKinty clans living in the same road round the corner from me. Can't quite get my head round that yet!
On the OrangeRWE book,the NYT review makes me cross and I'm pleased that other bloggers seem to be keen to look at it again - and to tell you not to talk it down yourself. I suspect it is not so much two novellas in one as several past experiences woven together in a single story that hangs together superbly for me anyway. For such is life! I thought I could detect (as well as the local landmarks) some real-life family/childhood/school stuff (the best euphemism I can think of)that I can relate to as well.
- Philip.
Phil
You're a good man. The New York Times has always been weird to me. They shat on Orange and they didnt review DIWMB at all. So DIWMB goes on to get picked by Borders and Booklist and the Library Journal in their top 10 crime novels of the year and it gets shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Award and it gets optioned by Universal. So what does the NYT times do? When my next book Hidden River comes out Marilyn Stasio makes a point of saying in her negative review that she didnt review DIWMB because it wasnt any good.
Then Dead Yard comes out and again in the NYT doesnt review it. Meanwhile Publishers Weekly picks it as one of its 12 best novels of the year and it wina a couple of Awards, so the Books Editor of the Times has a live blogging session and I message him and ask him why he didnt review Dead Yard and he gives me some story about there not being a lot of space in the paper. So finally when Bloomsday Dead comes out they do review in the most cursory fashion.
We'll see what happens with Fifty Grand but unless you live in Brooklyn and hang with the right set there's no guarantee of a review in the NYT.
Sorry for the rant Phil, and thanks again for the comment, everyone including me loved it.
Philip, thanks for getting on board here in the blogosphere yourself. It seems hard until you do it, when you realize that it is actually quite easy.
I think we can all agree that the the NYT is biased and, dare I say it?, provincial.
Of course, it's like the Oscars--everyone disses it, but you still want them to like you anyway. Human beings are pathetic, really.
Peter, I do not actually find the real banana slug loathsome, though I can see how there would be some who might. For those people there's this.
Seanag
Yeah we all wanna be loved esp by powerful grey ladies (at least I do).
We'll see what happens.
Nice slugs by the way.
Marco
The first five chapters of Hidden River are all that kind of home cooking stuff and written in a less experimental prose style than Orange. Might like it better.
Its resemblance to a banana is wondrous to behold, but the creature is within hailing distance of loathsome for me, I'm afraid.
V-word: favormor
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
"home cooking stuff"?
Hidden River is already waiting for me in my Florentine bookshop.
But it will wait a little more - until I have a more sensible reason to go than collect a single book.
"experimental" doesn't necessarily scare me.
Banana slugs seem cute.
Once I found three giant slugs in the woodshed of my grandparents house.
I had no idea normal garden slugs could grow so large,but evidently they had feasted on a steady diet of decaying wood.
Even the cat was scared by them.
Of course,being the creepy kid who loved spiders, scorpions, lizards, toads etc. (not to mention that time I found a small bat) I was fascinated.
Yes it's good to be liked and get awards - but they don't always come together. Look at Steinbeck, he turned into a grumpy old man that you couldn't talk to without getting your bake eaten off.
Talking of Steinbeck, the Carrick family Robinson were on holiday in California when I wandered into a second-hand bookshop in a wee town called Exeter and got talking to the owner whose husband came from Belfast. As I was buying a copy of 'Of Mice and Men', she asked me if I knew that Steinbeck's family on his mother's side came to California from Northern Ireland,(Co. Derry), and the story was chronicled in 'East of Eden'. Well, although he didn't come from Carrick, I started to devour everything I could written by him. At the end, I developed a respect for his talents and his capturing of the Californian 'working man', but I was left with picture of someone whose success had gone to his head.
This is what I tell myself anyway every time folk fail to appreciate me!
Haven't mastered the blogging art of brevity yet (thanks for the encouragement Seanag), and don't quite know where this ramble is going, other than to say that in 50 years time no-one will have heard of the NYT reviewer, but McKinty's name will be there.
Must keep out of second-hand bookshops when on holiday.
Yes it's good to be liked and get awards - but they don't always come together. Look at Steinbeck, he turned into a grumpy old man that you couldn't talk to without getting your bake eaten off.
Talking of Steinbeck, the Carrick family Robinson were on holiday in California when I wandered into a second-hand bookshop in a wee town called Exeter and got talking to the owner whose husband came from Belfast. As I was buying a copy of 'Of Mice and Men', she asked me if I knew that Steinbeck's family on his mother's side came to California from Northern Ireland,(Co. Derry), and the story was chronicled in 'East of Eden'. Well, although he didn't come from Carrick, I started to devour everything I could written by him. At the end, I developed a respect for his talents and his capturing of the Californian 'working man', but I was left with picture of someone whose success had gone to his head.
This is what I tell myself anyway every time folk fail to appreciate me!
Haven't mastered the blogging art of brevity yet (thanks for the encouragement Seanag), and don't quite know where this ramble is going, other than to say that in 50 years time no-one will have heard of the NYT reviewer, but McKinty's name will be there.
Must keep out of second-hand bookshops when on holiday.
Marco
You should be writing gothic children's books. Or creepy horror films for Guillermo DT
Phil
I remember that scene in EofE very well. I was struck by how strange it was. There's a hanging in Derry, right? Something like that.
I quite liked Steinbeck's early stuff but I think he lost his way a bit post war though Travels With Charley was good. Did you read that?
Mr.Robinson is a quick learner.
His first comment was forwarded by his son,the second was a namecomment,the third came from a blogger account.
He'll be twittering in no time.
Look at Steinbeck, he turned into a grumpy old man
If angry young men live long enough,they all turn into grumpy old men.It's a law of nature.
Must keep out of second-hand bookshops when on holiday.
Never keep out of second-hand bookshops.
in 50 years time no-one will have heard of the NYT reviewer, but McKinty's name will be there.
Possibly.Arwynn McKinty already shows much promise.
Sophie will instead take over as crime fiction reviewer for NYT and horribly trash her father's books.
I can already see the headline:"Daddy's book AGAIN very boring".
Steinbeck-has anyone read The Red Pony?(I only know it b/c there's a Triffids song with the same title).
I don't know if I read The Red Pony or not. I think, that it was actually one of those treacherous childhood things. My friend's older sister was reading it for school, and had somehow foisted it on her, so we all knew that things do not go very well for the pony. In any case, we did not read it as 'literature'.
I am always shocked at how blithely older people pass on "animal classics" like "Old Yeller, "The Yearling", and famously in my grade school, "Where the Red Fern Grows". In Denver, it was the tradition for the teachers to read this aloud to their sixth grade class, so everyone knew by the time it rolled around that this was going to be a tear-jerker. By the time the tragic part of the story comes, the whole classroom would be fraught with tension and everyone was waiting for the first tear to fall. They way it played out my year anyway was that once one girl started then it became a sort of waterfall of tears. All the boys of course were dry eyed, or at least didn't advertise their grief and were looking around at all the girls to see who had succumbed next. Me being me of course, I met all their gazes stony faced. I have to say that their was a touch of the histrionic about the girls performances which made it a little hard to get on board. I remember one girl having to be supported by her friends down the hallway to the restroom.
Kids, I'd say if some adult or teenager tries to read you a heartwarming animal tale, run for your lives!
On Steinbeck:
I liked 'The Red Pony' better than 'Travels with Charley'. Steinbeck's short stories are the best for me, but that's maybe because of my short attention span (I thrilled at James Joyce's 'Dubliners'short stories and it was that one that convinced me the man was a great writer!)
Having destroyed my own credibility among youse Literati, I would make an exception for the massive 'East of Eden'. Let me recommend Steinbeck's 'The East of Eden Letters, Journal of a novel' to any angry young man who wishes to become a grumpy old giant of a writer.
My own grumpy comments about Steinbeck do not mean I don't think the guy deserved his nobel prize and other awards. (double negative - positive intended). He makes me think, both about the message and about how clever the writer is, but he doesn't make me laugh the way Flann O'Brian does.
Better stop now before I'm doubly damned as a heretic.
Marco,
Once you teach Philip how to do the links code, he will up to speed with some of here, and will no doubt surpass us in no time.
Philip,
The Red Pony aside, which I'm not claiming to judge, I admire a lot of Steinbeck a lot. I actually live pretty much next door to Steinbeck country, here in coastal Santa Cruz, and of course Monterey and Cannery Row and all that landscape he made famous are just down the road. I always think it's strange how after reviling the guy, his home town of Salinas has since tried to capitalize on his fame, building a big museum there, apparently to try and make the world think of something other than gang-related violence in relation to their city, as that is the thing that shows up much more typically on the nightly news.
Steinbeck might be prouder of their current library system, which after teetering on the brink of extinction a couple of years ago, has bounced back and become a really interesting center of new innovation, at least according to a friend who works there.
Phil
No I like Steinbeck and have read pretty much everything except that book about Russia.
My favs: Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, Grapes, In Dubious Battle, Travels With Charley and the one about the guy cutting his wrists by the tree to save his farm. And I'm fine with him getting the gong for Grapes, its a hell of a book.
The central premise of East doesnt work for me: the message at the end is "thou mayest" right? Saying that everyone can triumph over sin, i.e. God giving us each a bit of freedom to trump fate; but how does that square with Steinbeck saying that Cathy (I think she's called Cathy) was "born a monster". What about her freedom to choose? She seems like a stock villain with no capacity for choice at all. No?
Adrian,
Well, I agree about EofE's central premise. I just didn't get the theological point, or if I did I didn't buy into it. But I do like the way the whole story had different layers of symbolic meaning, and yet based on real people and events.
Of all Steinbeck's books, maybe 'Of Mice and Men' I liked best because I got and read it in California, and it lit the spark - not to mention finding the story a clever development of Burns's famous line in 'To a Mouse': 'The best laid schemes ...'.
Seanag,
The dynamic of a re-invented 'Steinbeck Country' in your part of California fascinates me. I wish I had encountered you before completing my fourth Novel (The Old Orange Tree) which begins on that very theme. Will wait with bated breath for your review when it comes out!
On gongs,
I have just finished reading a book by Dennis Covington 'Salvation on Sand Mountain', about Snake-handling Believers in the Appalachians, for which he was a National Book Award finalist. The subject fascinates me, for if St Patrick hadn't bucked all the snakes out of Ireland, we would have had this going on in the back hilly-billy country of Carrick too! Anyway, absorbed as I was, the book was to me more overt biography, or cultural journalism than 'literature'. But maybe that's not important? Is there a line between fiction writing and documentary? When I read Adrian's books it seems that there's a lot of real-life stuff there too, and if it is 'incoherent' (to quote the NYT), that is almost entirely a commentary on the reviewer. Do not the best writers write from their own experience?
Philip,
I'd very much like to read The Old Orange Tree when it comes out. Will it have U.S. distribution?
As for Of Mice and Men, well, this is one of the problems of educational curricula. The book was required sophomore reading in California when I was in high school,mainly because it was short and everyone would get it. In a word, it was done to death. I'm not sure why I don't feel the same about Cannery Row, which was also on the list one year, probably for the same reasons. I think it's because we were somehow supposed to take Of Mice and Men more seriously. It's a long time, though, since I've read any Steinbeck at all, and there's a lot I never got to in the first place. Maybe 2009 is the year to revisit him.
Adrian,
Say I have a new books that's 220 pages in a Word document, 1 inch margins and all that. About how many pages would that transfer to in book the size of say, the hardback addition of DIWMB? I've trying to see if I need any parts or extend some conversation. Thanks mate.
Liam
Liam
Tell me a word count and I'll tell you what to do.
Phil
Theres a lot of reality in there. Especially in DIWMB. The geography and situations are basically all true. Michael lived in my apartment, knew who I knew, worked uptown, smoked what I smoked, ate what I ate, shared many of the same thoughts. Theres a scene somewhere in there where hes in the bath having a smoke while roaches are running round and its 100 degrees and Imagine is playing on the TV and he gets a phone call to come to work and thats exactly how it was for me.
So, if Selinas has a museum to capitalise on 'Steinbeck country', I have a new career in mind for myself.
I will curate the 'McKinty country' heritage trails round Carrickfergus. (a bit like the Joyce pub crawls round Dublin). We could try and decide if the local pubs mentioned in Adrians books are Dobbins Inn, 'Ownies' (Joymount Arms) or the Royal Oak (whose car park at the back does back onto the railway line across from Victoria Housing estate - just like he mentions in 'Hidden River' or was it 'Orange'?).
But this is only the start, for a 2-day tour I can take you east on the railway to Islandmagee, the McKinty tribal homeland, and the setting of the Lighthouse Trilogy.
Thgis Railway track has notable landmarks itself, like the shore at Downshire Halt where the hero sneaks off to get a fix, or Kilroot Halt, where (as an aside) Jonathan Swift lived in the 1690s as his first posting as an Anglican clergyman when writing 'Tale of a Tub' and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He had to write these to take his mind off the Battle of the Boyne and the rebellious McKinty's in his Parish who refused (like everyone else in Islandmagee) to attend the Episcopal Church.
Theres a scene somewhere in there where hes in the bath having a smoke while roaches are running round
Black insects crawl
On yellow walls
They seem to move
But they don't move to any place at all
No place at all
Pointless Triffids reference out of the way,Michael more or less had to go.Weren't you already a lawyer or something?
Hope the call wasn't for a Belfast sixpack.
v-word=adiva
Right now I have 70,486 and I still have around another 15 to 20 pages to go. Whato do you think maestro?
"I will curate the 'McKinty country' heritage trails round Carrickfergus. (a bit like the Joyce pub crawls round Dublin). We could try and decide if the local pubs mentioned in Adrians books are Dobbins Inn, 'Ownies' (Joymount Arms) or the Royal Oak"
I have eaten and drunk at the Joymount Arms, so I could probably provide a colorful illustrative quotation for the tour brochures. Soon every pub in Carrickfergus will be posting signs that proclaim "Adrian McKinty drank here." And they'll be right, by the author's own testimony.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Great stuff, international recognition for the Joymount Arms at last!
But if this is going to work along the usual lines, Adrian will have to grow old and die before I do! I am on chapter 5 of Hawkings 'A Brief History of Time' to see if this is technically possible. Failing that I'll have to leave it to the drink to do the job.
Philip, here's the start of that recognition.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Liam
When I had a book deal it stipulated "untitled thriller 90 000 words." but 80 000 sounds like a full length novel to me. Either way I'd write some more.
Adiva
I'm shocked, shocked, that you would bring up my lawyering days. Nothing something I live down easily.
But anyway by the time I'd moved to NYC I was an illegal immigrant working bar, selling things door to door and also working in Barnes and Noble on 82nd and Broadway. I didnt get a real job until much later when I got hired by the Columbia Medical School library.
Philip
Jesus, you really have read the books. Downshire Halt does appear in Hidden River. I dont remember mentioning Jonathan Swift but thats true. It made me furious when they demolished his house. Cultural barbarians! And then the knocked down Louis MacNeice's house too. Irredeemable cultural barbarians!
Dobbins Inn was Dobbins Inn right until the very end when Scribner's lawyers suggested I changed the name. But yes of course Ownies is the Joymount Arms.
Peter
Its a very nice pub and my sister has done a nice job bringing it into the 21st century, but I still hanker a little for the days when the men's (and only) toilet was the wall out the back with a rudimentary drain in front of it.
Thanks m'man. I've finished the book at right 79,000 and sent the query to Mecoy. He wants the full manuscript.
By the way, how was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? The 4th of my that's Swede wants to take a look but I'm not sure if it'd be a good buy. What do you think?
Liam
Well Bob was an editor for about twenty years so he should know length wise. I'd be happier if it were in the mid 80's though.
Okay, thanks, I'll go back through and try to see what I can add. If you get some free time, I'd love to send you the first chapter or so, see what ya think. It's the one with the Yeats title, Black Lamb.
Liam
Dont send me the chapter. Scary lawyers have told me not to read anything that has not been conractually accepted for publication and or copyrighted in case I do something similar and you sue my ass.
I will be happy to read the entire MS. and blurb you though (if you think that will help) once you've got a conract. I'm not being weasly here just doing what I've been told to by bad bad men.
Dont put in 5000 words of filler just for me! but maybe there's a scene you could add here and there to deepen the characters? I dont know. Bob will know. He edited Carrie Fischer & Patricia Cornwell and Philip K Dick for crying out loud.
BTW Dragon Tattoo - I dont know man everyone else loved it but it didnt work for me. Get it from the UW library.
I understand, not a problem. Once I get a deal, I'd love for you to blurp me. Are you kidding? DIWMB is the reason why I started writing crime fiction.
I'll go through and see what I can add. I think there actually is part where I can expand quite a bit.
Get Dragon Tattoo from the UW Library? Not a bad idea. Except for that fact that I already have two books checked out from last semester and I think they have assassins on their way to get them back.
Wow, an outhouse that was not even a house!
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Philip,
You may already have googled this yourself, but if not, here's the link to The National Steinbeck Center.
Might give you some ideas for your McKinty tour and website.
I'm not sure what to do about your waiting for him to die dilemma, as I actually don't think any of us really want him to die young. I mean, who would we needle? So there are two solutions. Either you are going to have to die very, very , let's say miraculously old, and stay in good health while you're at it, or you're going to have to treat him like some sort of Hollywood star and give tours of his origins while he's still alive. Actually some combination of the two wouldn't be so bad.
Or else he could go on living for a good, long time, but Clive James could write that he died.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Oh, yes. I think that would indeed be the best of all possible worlds.
Also for Philip, I'm not sure that you know, being new to the blogging world and all that if you click on the header that says 'the psychopathology of everyday life' on the comment form or the post itself, it will take you to the home page. Don't mean to be condescending or anything, but Adrian'a newer post is about the books he's read this year. A., that's more fodder for your tour, and B., you might actually want to comment on any of those that take your fancy as well. Or don't take your fancy, as the case may be. If you are a huge fan of Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot, for instance, it might be best not to bring it up...
Seanag
Yeah it would do for anyone of us to keeping commenting on a post that was miles down on the home page now would it?
Erhm...
Adrian, I know whereof you speak but that is not my point. I just don't want Philip to hit a dead zone when everyone--eventually-- stops commenting here and blips off somewhere else, and leaves him thinking,"Was it something I said?"
Fact is, it's far more likely to be something I said, what with going to a very trying store meeting tonight and then being yelled at for being in their way by some idiots in a big pumped up SUV as I arrived home. A little bit adrenalized? Yes.
Speaking of trying store meetings, my v-word is what a drunk might ask for if he were looking for "The One Minute Manager" of about Bill Gates or Lee Iacocca: bzsyniss -- though for some reason, business books don't seem to be so much in the news these days.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
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