Alan Thompson's Blog: Minds on Shelves

I write because there is some lie I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.  But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience–George Orwell

I recently re-read Orwell’s 1946 essay Why I Write, and it reminded me again why I write.  Orwell posits “four great motives for writing.”  The first three are “sheer egoism,” “aesthetic enthusiasm” and ” historical impulse.”  The fourth, and the true reason for great novels like Animal Farm and 1984, is “Political purpose–using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense.”

For Orwell, political purpose is a “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. . . [N]o book is genuinely free from political bias.  The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

But notice in the quote at the top–Orwell also required an “aesthetic experience” that goes beyond politics.  Before he understood that, he was only a “sort of pamphleteer.”  Later, “even when [his work] is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant . . . So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

As I’ve said many times before, a great novelist turns an idea–something meant to influence his reader or at least make her think–and turns it into art.  It requires a deft touch, and George Orwell certainly had it.

 

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More on the runaway cursor:

Best Buys was packed–it was a Saturday, eight days before Christmas.  I parked in a far corner and joined the throng.  Somehow, I found the mouses (mice?) without help.  Most of them were many colors–greens, pinks, reds–but I wanted plain black.  There was one.

I had expected to find “directions” on the packaging–I wanted to know I could use the damn thing when I got it home.  There were words and symbols, none of which provided any reassurance.  The words were in English and French and Spanish and Portuguese, and the symbols were meaningless.  A young lady, maybe 18 years old, sidled up to me.  “Can I help you?” she said.

“How does this thing work?”

She was puzzled for a moment.  “It just–works.  You push the stick into the port and off you go.”

Sticks and ports were barely in my computer vocabulary.  “Everything I need is in this package?”

“Yes, sir.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so I paid for it and left.  All the way home I chastised myself for not getting her to provide more detail.  After opening the package, I searched in vain for the stick that was supposed to be there.  There were no words to help me, only more pictures that communicated nothing.  About to give up, I pressed something that opened the mouse and there it was.

Almost giddy, I pushed the stick into a port and rebooted the computer and, lo and behold, it did work.  I went happily back to my manuscript and, ten minutes later, the 0s began again.  Almost weeping, I consulted the Internet once more with the assistance of my new wireless mouse.  One of the posts (three pages in) seemed relatively simple so I decided to try it.  It involved unchecking boxes in the control panel, a ten-second task that took me ten minutes.

I pulled up the manuscript again and the 0s began immediately.  About to heave the whole thing out the window, I remembered I had not rebooted again.  Et voila.  No more 0s.  So far.

Fingers crossed.

 

The post It Wasn’t the Mouse appeared first on Minds On Shelves.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been slow when it comes to adapting my writing to the available technology.  I was into my third novel before I could write and edit solely on the computer.  It was years before I realized I could send ms drafts to my Kindle where they would be formatted like an ebook, making it possible for me to see how the finished product would look, and easier to actually correct the text.

Recently, I’ve been dealing with a runaway cursor.  At first, it just skipped over lines I’d already typed.  Then, it began to type endless 0s all by itself.  Once it even jumped to the Google box and created a few 0s there.  In each case, I was forced to close the file and fix it a few minutes later.  Things would be okay for a while and then it would start again.

When it began to erase things, panic set in.  I consulted the Internet where complicated instructions didn’t help.  I began to reboot the computer every time I lost control of the cursor–it didn’t help.  Finally, I decided that maybe the mouse needed a rest, so I pulled the wire from the back of the box (yes, there’s a wire and a color-coded port) and went to lunch.  When I returned, I couldn’t get the wire to fit back into the computer (I’ve been known to force things when they don’t fit easily, and I may have damaged something).

Now I was really frazzled.  After weeks of indecision, I had decided to add a new character to my current book, The Order, and I was ready at last to make a turn in the plot.  Not being able to do those things immediately, while they were fresh in my head, was very frustrating.  I had coveted a wireless mouse for years, so I girded my loins and headed off to Best Buy, forty minutes away in Myrtle Beach, consoling myself with the fact I could also buy a case of Scotch (at the lowest price in the state) from the Costco next door.

During the drive I contemplated the ruin if I could never make the mouse work again.  All my work, my connections to readers and friends, my shopping preferences, everything, is on this little HP computer.  Intellectually, I knew it could all be retrieved somehow, some day, but viscerally I feared the worst.  And what if it wasn’t the mouse?

To be continued . . .

The post More Tools of the Trade appeared first on Minds On Shelves.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been slow when it comes to adapting my writing to the available technology.  I was into my third novel before I could write and edit solely on the computer.  It was years before I realized I could send ms drafts to my Kindle where they would be formatted like an ebook, making it possible for me to see how the finished product would look, and easier to actually correct the text.

Recently, I’ve been dealing with a runaway cursor.  At first, it just skipped over lines I’d already typed.  Then, it began to type endless 0s all by itself.  Once it even jumped to the Google box and created a few 0s there.  In each case, I was forced to close the file and fix it a few minutes later.  Things would be okay for a while and then it would start again.

When it began to erase things, panic set in.  I consulted the Internet where complicated instructions didn’t help.  I began to reboot the computer every time I lost control of the cursor–it didn’t help.  Finally, I decided that maybe the mouse needed a rest, so I pulled the wire from the back of the box (yes, there’s a wire and a color-coded port) and went to lunch.  When I returned, I couldn’t get the wire to fit back into the computer (I’ve been known to force things when they don’t fit easily, and I may have damaged something).

Now I was really frazzled.  After weeks of indecision, I had decided to add a new character to my current book, The Order, and I was ready at last to make a turn in the plot.  Not being able to do those things immediately, while they were fresh in my head, was very frustrating.  I had coveted a wireless mouse for years, so I girded my loins and headed off to Best Buy, forty minutes away in Myrtle Beach, consoling myself with the fact I could also buy a case of Scotch (at the lowest price in the state) from the Costco next door.

During the drive I contemplated the ruin if I could never make the mouse work again.  All my work, my connections to readers and friends, my shopping preferences, everything, is on this little HP computer.  Intellectually, I knew it could all be retrieved somehow, some day, but viscerally I feared the worst.  And what if it wasn’t the mouse?

To be continued . . .

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I’ve been away from these pages for several months, a combination of promoting The Onyx Unicorn, website revisions and laziness.  I’ve also begun a new book.

The Onyx Unicorn is now available at all the usual places.  As I’ve noted before, I plan to make Unicorn the first of a series.  Toward that end, and in an effort to set it apart from my other novels, the print book’s physical appearance is smaller, more compact than the others.  The cover, which will always be the same except for the colors, has a matte finish rather than a glossy one.

Regarding the website, I’ve finally straightened up the home page and main sidebar (with a lot of help), and made it easier for readers to learn more about my books (and maybe buy a few).

The new novel is tentatively entitled The Order.  It’s the next (and maybe the last) of what I refer to as The New Hope Canon.  The protagonist, my old friend Harry Monmouth, finds himself enmeshed in crime and intrigue at the College.  I’m 25,000 words in–the story lines are set and the characters are ready to go.  I plan to furnish a more detailed explanation on the Works in Progress page of this website in a few days.

Finally, that old bugaboo, genetic engineering, is in the news again.  Some of you may recall past posts on this topic, and some may have read Lucifer’s Promise wherein  it’s misuse was the primary plot-line.  What’s now called gene editing has gone mainstream, a process likened to ordinary surgery.  As one of the characters said in Lucifer, gene manipulation “is the Midas gold, the genie in the lamp who grants every wish,” and recent events confirm it.

According to the December 6 edition of The Wall Street Journal, the gene editing technique called Crispr has generated “more than $600 million” in investments from venture capitalists and public markets.  “Scientists” around the world are squabbling over the patent.  The Patent Trial and Appeal Board commenced a hearing yesterday.

Not a word about whether or not gene editing is a good idea.  There’s a brief paragraph about using Crispr to treat disease, but nothing about its potential for abuse (baby enhancement, physical and mental augmentation, and so on).  Given the ocean of cash involved, does anyone think questions will be asked?

 

The post Update appeared first on Minds On Shelves.

For the past couple of months I’ve been very busy with the publishing process for A Hollow Cup and finishing the first draft of The Onyx Unicorn.  The revised edition of A Hollow Cup is now available in print and ebook form in all the usual places.  An Amazon review was posted yesterday.  I want to share it with you because I think it captures what I was trying to say:

“When two men, one black and one white, open a cold case involving a race murder in a North Carolina university town, they confront the history of the Civil Rights movement and the fraught topic of desegregation as they experienced it when they were high school students in the early 1960s.  At the same time the murder is set, I was attending college in a state that is still one of the least diverse in the country.  I remember well the issues involving busing in Boston, but I had no direct experience with it.  The biggest challenge for my university was not to desegregate, but how to recruit more black students.  A Hollow Cup immersed me in the controversies as they were experienced by blacks and whites in a university so different from what I knew.  Reading it has deepened my understanding of the 1960s at the same time that it brought me into the present where the physical landscapes of university towns have enlarged and developed in ways that are not always attractive.  A word of warning:  the plot of A Hollow Cup is intricate and I found it helpful to keep a list of the different characters.  Alan Thompson pulls everything together in an ending that connects the past to the present and shows the relevance of every scene in the novel.  This is a compelling read that forces us to see the points of view of both blacks and whites at a time when race relations are all too often front page news.”–Amazon Book Reviewer

 The draft of  The Onyx Unicorn  is with my editor in New York.  Based on past experience, I look for publication sometime after the first of the year

 

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I’ve said many times that ideas are as important to a novel as setting, characters and plot.  The books I’ve written so far, except for one, take on large ideas–elitism, racism, sexuality.  The exception is The Black Owls, a thriller that has several little ideas, but was written mainly to entertain.  The “detective” novel I’m writing now, The Onyx Unicorn, is along the same lines.  In fact, the hero of The Black Owls makes an important cameo in the new book.

I believe that “classical” detective fiction, past and present, suffers from the mass communications, the interconnectiveness, of our modern world.  Who can imagine a lonely country house, or an isolated island, when all she knows is the 24-hour onslaught of “news” about herself and everything else?  And, unless a reader’s interested only in the “puzzle,” the (intentionally) flat characters may not hold his attention.  Finally, the “formula,” if held to rigidly, might put some readers off.

Accordingly, The Onyx Unicorn attempts to overcome those problems while remaining true to the spirit of classical detective fiction.  Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter stories are my my model with dashes of Christie, Stout and Conan Doyle thrown in.  The “detective,” for instance, is an amateur like Wimsey and Jane Marple.  The principle setting is a cruise ship (Christie’s Death on the Nile) took place on board a boat) that isolates the characters without cutting off the outside world–computers and cellphones abound.  The action revolves around a small (and, hopefully continuing) cast of well-rounded characters, like Watson and Mycroft and Lestrade or Archie, Felix and Lily Rowan.

Most importantly, the “puzzle” remains.  Murder is done, clues are left for reader and detective alike, and the crime is solved.  I’m working on what I hope will be an unique way to reveal the killer and explain the case to the reader.  The style–the rhythm and music and words–will be the same as my “serious” novels, but there’ll be more fun.  And maybe Unicorn, and the books that follow, will restore a little order to the Garden.

 

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“The phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges in is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law.  The driving force behind this daydream is the feeling of guilt, the cause of which is unknown to the dreamer.”– W. H. Auden

Or, as P. D. James put it, the detective story is not about murder, “but the restoration of order.”  As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I love the Sherlock Holmes stories and the Lord Peter Wimsey novels–I’ve read them all many times.  Likewise, the novels of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout.  They are all what is often called “classical” detective fiction, that is, they depict the crime, the clues, the resolution and the denouement, where the hero explains what happened.  They differ in what I call “the scenery”: the surroundings in which they take place, and the flourishes attributed to the characters.  Christie’s work, for instance, might be called “provincial” because her stories usually take place in small, self-contained communities (including trains and ships) and the characters are limited to suspects and those who represent the norms of her “village.”  Stout’s Nero Wolfe also operates in a small space, despite the fact that most of his tales take place in New York City.

Holmes and Wimsey, on the other hand, let the outside world in.  Sayers’ aristocratic sleuth, in particular, operates in expansive venues, and world events are not far from his mind.  Love, too, finds Lord Peter, a pleasure(?) denied Wolfe and Holmes (except, maybe, for “that woman,” Irene Adler) and Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot.  All, however, seek the restoration of order and, in the end, they find it, to the great satisfaction of millions of readers.

Some say detective fiction is petering out because there are no new plots to interest the reader.  That presupposes that people read it only for the “puzzle.”  I disagree.  I believe readers of every generation are still seeking Auden’s Garden of Eden, his “state of innocence.”  The book I’m writing now, The Onyx Unicorn,  will be the first of my contributions to the canon.  I’ll describe it more fully in my next post.

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The revised edition of A Hollow Cup is finished.  It will go to the publisher next week.  As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I considered changing the title but finally elected to keep the original.  It is my favorite story and, with this re-write, as well-written as anything I’ve done.  Here’s the back cover copy for the new edition:

“A coming-of age story and a classic murder mystery, A Hollow Cup begins in a small Southern town in the 1960s.   New Hope is in turmoil when a beautiful girl, an enthusiastic participant in the local civil rights movement, is killed after a demonstration on the College campus.  This “race murder” goes unsolved for twenty-five years until two men – friends and rivals as children – return to their hometown to prosecute and defend the man who’s finally been charged.  The past catches up with them as old secrets are revealed and old passions re-ignited, and the mystery is finally explained.”

The novel is loosely based on actual events, though not all of them happened in New Hope (actually Chapel Hill, NC).  Below is an excerpt from the Acknowledgements:

“The de-segregation of the public schools in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the resistance of the black community, is documented in the pages of The Chapel Hill Weekly.  Some of the incidents described in the novel are drawn from interviews conducted as part of the University of North Carolina’s Southern Oral History Program.  B. L. Moses’ Washington High School, depicted in the early pages of “The Island,” was inspired by a series of articles by Elizabeth Wright that appeared in Issues and Views, and a 2004 article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune written by Jonathan Tilove.  The famous letter from Zora Neale Hurston, written in August of 1955 to the Orlando Sentinel, is the genesis for Moses’ oration at the New Hope AME.”

There’s another big idea in A Hollow Cup:  Home, and how its inevitable loss impacts the people in the book.  Thomas Wolfe said “you can’t go home again” but, as even Wolfe acknowledged, we don’t stop trying.

The post A New Old Book appeared first on Minds On Shelves.

You can’t get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that–Gerald Brenan, British travel writer and novelist

My formal education–elementary school, high school, college and law school–spanned nearly twenty years beginning in 1955.  History, and the teaching of history–as I understood it then–was about the truth of our past.  That is no longer the case, if it ever was.  There are only “facts,” and even they are disputed, usually in the service of differing political or cultural perspectives.  And even the “history” I learned as a child wasn’t the truth because it necessarily reflected the perceptions of the people, over generations, who wrote it.On the other hand, as a younger man I never considered fiction as truth.  The novels I read were stories imagined by authors, dreamed up to entertain me.  Sometimes my teachers and professors suggested otherwise, usually in the back-and-forth over a novel I didn’t like–Crime and Punishment, for example, and Huckleberry Finn.  To the extent I read them at all, I cared only for the story.

At some point, I realized there was more to fiction than plot.  I began to consider the ideas in books, and when I began writing fiction eight years ago it was because I had ideas I wanted to share.  And, as I’ve said in this space before, the mesh of story and ideas isn’t easy–most readers still want to be entertained, so the balance is delicate.  Nevertheless, it’s worth the effort because fiction allows a writer to at least speculate about the truth that Gerald Brenan is talking about.

And, what is that?  It’s the truth about “us.”  Settings and plots and, most especially, characters, reflect the writer’s view of who we really are.  Inner dialogue, the novel’s greatest innovation, strips away the pretense that disguises the self we present to the world.  The characteristics that make us human, good and bad, are presented by the author and examined by the reader, and perhaps a few minds change.  It’s the best part about writing fiction.

Juvenal’s Lament: A Political Fable is here!  You can find it at all the usual places.  Here’s the back cover text:

Tommy Sawyer, the man one critic hailed as “Holden Caulfield with a political science degree,” is back.  Elected to serve out the term of a dead Congressman, Tommy is chosen to oversee the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the United States.  Along the way, he encounters the entrenched greed and corruption in Washington that’s now undermining life in the rest of the country.  Murder, terrorism and unrestrained “politics” are the order of the day, and the United States teeters on civil war.  Only a single, charismatic man stands between the country and chaos.  Juvenal’s Lament, set in the very near future, is a cautionary tale about the misuse of power and the widening chasm between Washington and the public.

 

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