Stranded at Hazlitt's in Soho

There are worse ways to be stranded abroad than in Hazlitt’s Hotel in Soho. I’d rather be home about now, since in a couple of days there’s a mystery gala in Picton, being held in association with Books & Co, where I was to be one of the writers to read a bit and talk about murder. I’m assuming Rick Blechta, Mary Jane Mafini, Michael Blair, John David Carpenter, Vicki Delany, Violette Malan, and Janet Kellough will still be there for the April 22^nd event. I’ll still be at Hazlitt’s.

London is beautiful at this time of year but we’re being held captive by the volcanic activities in Iceland. We were due to fly out this morning. We’d booked in here for our last night away, after totally low-end accomodation in London and Paris over the last couple of weeks. Now we can’t get away. The décor is 18^th century, William Hazlitt, the great essayist lived here, and the ‘library’ has autographed books by previous literary guests like Umberto Ecco and J.K. Rowling. I’m sure in due course at least one of my mysteries will find its way onto their august shelves, along with Beverley’s book, Inventing Easter Island.

By chance Bev and I bumped into Kirk Howard, my publisher at Dundurn Press, and Beth Bruder, VP of Sales and Marketing, at the London Book Fair. The whole affair was pretty low key because of the flight limitations. Still, it was great to be so far from home and talk about Canadian publishing. Like us, they’re probably anxious to get home, and yet it’s hard not to feel the excitement of being stranded. For Bev and I, a few more days at Hazlitt’s will be a luxury we can neither afford nor forego.

Yann Martel and What’s Her Name

As a writer, you have a better chance of falling into a pot hole on main street and ending up among talking rabbits and erasable cats than snaring a publisher’s advance in the millions. Yet it happens. Yann Martel is apparently getting somewhere around three million for his new novel. More incredibly, a woman in Nanaimo is pulling in over a million for her first, repeat, first novel. Yes, it does happen.

Don’t forget, this is the writer’s own money. The publisher is betting the writer’s work will bring in enough to make it up out of his or her earnings. It’s a gamble, since if the book fails to earn big bucks, the publisher is out of pocket, not the writer. But it is also something of a self-fulfilling prophecy since the publisher has a vested interest in extravagant marketing, beginning, of course, by flaunting the huge advance.

So why am I writing about this? Because most writers are professionals: that means by definition that there is not a direct correlation between what we do and what we make. Some medical doctors bring in more than Yann Martel, some work as an act of grace in places God forgot. Most writers are artists: that means by definition that there is not a direct correlation between what we make and what we are paid, whether it’s music, sculpture, or a book worth reading. When a professional artist like Martel strikes it rich, it’s not because he’s the best, but because he’s very good at doing what we do and vicariously I’ll dine out on his fortune. As for those writers like the woman on Vancouver Island who candidly admits to writing as a business project or Dan Brown who markets a product with amazing success, I wish them well, the same as if they’d won the lottery or invented a widget and struck it rich. Good for them but it’s got nothing to do with me and my life.

I write mysteries, Martel writes parables. We’re both listening to the world and we hear some of the same voices, share some of the same visions. Well done, Yann. I’ll enjoy my dinner at your imagined expense.

Anthem Grammar Appalling

“True patriot love in all thy sons command.” By all means, let’s change the words to “in all of us,” but maybe we could fix the grammar in the process. No-one seems concerned but, dammit, the line, even now, should read “commands.” It is patriot love that is commanded, not the sons who command or the sons’ command. It may not sound quite so mellifluous to say, “in all thy sons commands,” but changed to “in all of us commands,” it sounds even better than the present syntactically-challenged doggerel.

Clare Hitchens, a lovely blog

Check out:

http://adventbooks.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/clare-hitchens-discusses-her-love-of-canadian-crime-fiction/

I just discovered this lovely blog by Clare Hitchens, although it was posted some time ago. What a beautiful lift on a quiet February day. She apparently works in Waterloo County, my home turf. Her first name is the same as my granddaughter's, named after the Clare family from Preston. Her welcome appreciation is not nepotism, however, since we've never met (except genetically, perhaps). In any case, I'll quote a few lines:

Recently I’ve been exploring Dundurn’s great collection of Canadian mysteries. ... How lucky we are that John Moss has turned his brilliant academic mind to writing mysteries. His Miranda Quin and David Morgan of the Toronto Police service are a different breed of detectives. Intellectual and culturally sophisticated, they wrestle with both existential problems and their feelings for each other. Their adventures take them through the streets of Toronto and into the wilds of rural southern Ontario. Moss has written two titles so far (Still Waters and Grave Doubts) and I hope there will be many more.

That Is NOT Who!

Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, February 18, 2010:

"Hiller, the Anaheim Ducks' goaltender that made J.S. Giguere expendable, is a tall, fluid lefthander that many of the Western Conference-based players on Team Canada see frequently."

Dr. That and the Death of Who

I have just deleted my extensive collection pertaining to ‘that,’ the usurper. ‘Who’ as a relative pronoun is dead. I’ve been gathering the most egregious examples of its passing for the last few weeks. This morning, however, the ever-fastidious Russell Smith gives ‘that’ his imprimatur in a Globe and Mail column about asking guests to pitch in with dinner. If Smith has gone over, then my list of CBC newswriters, Maclean’s scribes, and scripted politicians is redundant. In the abject spirit of surrender, I quote Mr. Smith: “The separate kitchen is really only useful for those with servants that can cook and bring out food …” I can hear my mother whispering urgently from the celestial wings, “who, who, who, Mr. Smith.” Russell Smith is a brilliant short story writer and, as Inger Ash Wolfe, an intriguing mystery novelist. If ‘that’ is good enough for him, then ‘who’ must be laid to rest with my mother’s other obsessions about the abuses of ‘I’ as an object and the pluralization of ‘there’s.’ Who am I to disagree? Or, should it be, “that’s me who disagrees,” Mom? There’s two choices, eh. And no, it shouldn't be "the Death of Whom" in my title!

Everybody Drinks, Nobody Thinks

A reviewer paid me a gratifying compliment recently by suggesting the relationship between Miranda and Morgan in my mysteries is akin to Hammett's Nick and Nora in “The Thin Man” series. It turns out there isn't a series, just one novel stretched beyond recognition in a succession of movies. Like Hammett's best known work, The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Thin Man (1934) is familiar as a cultural icon, but I had never read either so I thought I'd give them a try.

Dashiell Hammett's characters are "louche." I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence because it feels right, but I had to look it up to be sure it meant "appealingly decadent." Everybody drinks. Nobody thinks. They smoke. They sleep in late, and around, with a dismaying lack of vigour. The men are effete, the tough guys included. They giggle about getting tight and they gossip. Women are girls, the bright ones like baubles. The obsessive use of slang mires the plots in another era and threatens to asphyxiate them.

Hammett captured or even helped to create the zeitgeist of his time. Times change and his writing seems louche. It's worth remembering how profoundly important Hammett is in the history of the mystery genre, especially its American version. We owe him, readers and writers, alike. But that doesn’t mean we have to read him: there are so many writers out there, so many recent novels worth reading. Unlike the canonical ‘literary’ texts, the foundational works in genre writing aren’t essential reading to appreciate what’s being written now.