Two women are walking down the road and pass a frog sitting in the grass. “Hey,” says the frog.
“Wow. It’s a talking frog,” says one of the women. She picks the frog up and holds it in her hand.
The frog says, “Listen, I’m not really a frog. Actually, I’m a critically acclaimed writer. A spell was cast on me and I was turned into a frog. But if you kiss me I’ll turn back into a critically acclaimed writer.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” says the woman, and puts the frog in her pocket.
Her friend asks, “Aren’t you going to kiss it?”
And she answers, “Hell, no. I’ll make a lot more money with a talking frog.”
*
In 2009, I accepted a challenge to write a four-sentence review of Nancy Peacock’s memoir A Broom of One’s Own. Starting well before the due date, I wrote the first sentence of the review—over and over—and deleted it. Over and over. Sometimes I wrote the same sentence several times in a row. Sometimes I composed a new sentence to demolish. After weeks of literary and rhetorical torment, I produced the following:
*
I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own: Words About Writing, Housecleaning & Life so much that it’s taken me over two months and two missed deadlines to untangle my thoughts and write this four-sentence review, an irony Peacock, author of two critically acclaimed novels, would no doubt address were I in one of her writing classes.
She would probably tell me that there is no perfect writing life; that her job as a part-time housecleaner, begun when full-time writing wouldn’t pay the bills, afforded time, solitude, and the “foundation of regular work” she needed; that engaging in physical labor allowed her unconscious mind to “kick into gear,” so she became not the writer but the “receiver” of her stories.
She’d probably say that writing is hard; that sitting at a desk doesn’t automatically bring brilliance; that writers have to work with what they have; that “if I don’t have the pages I hate I will never have the pages I love”; that there are a million “saner” things to do and a “million good reasons to quit” and that the only good reason to continue is, “This is what I want.”
So, having composed at least two dozen subordinated, coordinated, appositived, participial-phrase-stuffed first sentences and having discarded them before completion; having practically memorized the book’s text searching for the perfect quotation to end with; and having once again stayed awake into the night, racing another missed deadline, I am completing this review—because I value Nancy Peacock’s advice; and because I love A Broom of One’s Own; and because I consider it the equal of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; and because I want other readers to know about it; and because this is what I want.
*
Waller Answers Directly with One Sentence: When it takes you over two months to eke out four sentences, don’t quit your day job.
*
Hear Nancy Peacock talk about A Broom of One’s Own, and about her early novels, on North Carolina Bookwatch.
This review first appeared on Whiskertips. Part of the post appeared here in June 2022. Part of it didn’t.
This post doesn’t aim to inform, persuade, or entertain. It’s more of an observation, a meditation, a rumination, a mulling over, a puzzling. A rambling through recent events and old secrets. A mystery.
I. The Story
Crime fiction writer Anne Perry died in Los Angeles on April 10. She was eighty-four. A native of New Zealand and long-time resident of Scotland, she published her first mystery novel, The Cater Street Hangman, in 1979. Her latest, The Fourth Enemy, was published the week before her death. A final novel,A Traitor Among Us, will appear in September 2023.
In all, Perry published over a hundred books: the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series (32 novels); the Daniel Pitt series (6 novels); the William Monk series (24 novels); the Elena Standish series (5 novels); the World War I series (5 novels); the Christmas Stories (20 novellas); the Christmas Collections (6 anthologies); a fantasy series (2 novels); the Timepiece series (4 novellas for young adults with dyslexia); standalone novels (7); and three volumes of nonfiction. She also contributed to and edited four short story anthologies. To date, over 26 million copies of her books have been sold.
In 2014, freelance writer Lenny Picker wrote in Publisher’s Weekly, “Quantity for Perry has not come at the cost of quality. She’s won major mystery awards, including an Edgar and two Anthonys, which demonstrate the esteem of fellow writers and fans alike.” At the 2009 Malice Domestic, she received the Agatha Award for lifetime achievement.
“Her belief in free will,” writes Picker, “allows Perry to hope for spiritual progress, both for herself and for humanity at large.”
He continues, “Perry’s writings are an effort to facilitate such progress. Through mystery and fantasy, she aspires to make a difference in her readers’ lives, by teaching them, in her words, ‘something of the human condition—a wisdom and compassion, an understanding of life that enables feeling empathy for people whose paths may be very different from our own.'”
Crime writer Ruth Rendell has died aged 85, her publisher says.
She wrote more than 60 novels in a career spanning 50 years, her best-known creation being Inspector Wexford, which was turned into a highly successful TV series.
Rendell, one of Britain’s best-selling contemporary authors, also wrote under the pen-name Barbara Vine.
Crime author Anne Perry, who, as a teenager helped murder her friend’s mother, has died aged 84.
The writer served five years in prison from the age of 15 for bludgeoning Honorah Mary Parker to death.
Perry died in a Los Angeles hospital, her agent confirmed. She had been declining for several months after suffering a heart attack in December. . . .
Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979. She went on to write a string of novels across multiple series, which collectively sold 25 million copies around the world.
Three major British writers of crime fiction die. They were contemporaries. They were prolific. Their novels received both popular and critical acclaim.
One major British news outlet reports the deaths. But the third report expends over 300 words before focusing on the author’s literary career–and then devotes only ninety-nine words to her books.
P. D. James lived an exemplary life, untouched by notoriety. The most serious offense I’ve found reported about Ruth Rendell is that on her first writing job, reporting for a newspaper in Essex, ” . . . she was forced to resign after filing a story about a local sports club dinner that she hadn’t attended. Her report failed to mention that the after-dinner speaker had died half-way through the speech.”
But Anne Perry was a murderer. In 1954, when she was fifteen, she helped to bludgeon her best friend’s mother to death. Convicted, she served five years in a New Zealand prison, was released under a new name and identity, joined her family in the United Kingdom, and worked for twenty years in what her New York Times obituary refers to as “less creative fields,” before becoming a writer. In 1994, forty years after the murder, and fifteen years after the publication of her first novel, her secret became public. She has since spoken about it in interviews. Although the Personal Biography on her official website omits reference to the crime, she has never claimed innocence. In the reporter’s judgment, Perry’s criminal past was of more import than her years as a literary superstar.
III. Social Media
Readers, too, judge. So do other writers.
Comments on Perry’s Facebook page express admiration for her and sadness at her passing. Elsewhere, however, reactions are mixed. A paraphrased and truncated sample of what I’ve seen on social media follows:
Perry was a gracious person and a brilliant writer. She should be remembered that way.
She was a murderer. She should have written in a different genre. A murderer shouldn’t write about murder.
Reading her books and knowing what she did–it makes me feel weird.
She didn’t celebrate murder in her books. She brought murderers to justice.
Can writers choose what they write? Choose what they’re good at? Perry tried writing historical fiction but didn’t succeed. Should she have refused to do what she did best?
She had to make a living.
It doesn’t matter what she was; it’s what she became that counts.
She served her time, paid her debt to society.
Five years isn’t enough to make up for murder.
She behaved badly at the trial. She laughed. She’s never expressed remorse.
Maybe bringing criminals to justice in her fiction was an attempt to atone.
It’s impossible to atone for murder.
What about redemption? Don’t you believe in redemption?
When you buy her books, you’re supporting her and condoning murder.
She made a major contribution to the mystery genre and to the culture.
She was a great person.
She read some of my work and offered advice. She was very helpful.
If she’d been a man who committed a brutal murder, would the public let her off so easily?
I love her books. I don’t care what she did before.
She was a murderer.I’ve never read her books and never will read them.
Her books raised awareness of social issues.
It’s a shame reporters dredge up all that business about the murder. That shouldn’t be her legacy.
Leave her to heaven And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge To prick and sting her.
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
All right–Shakespeare wrote those last two, and he didn’t post them on social media. But they’ve been looping through my brain over the past week, so I thought I’d throw them in.
IV. The Questions
The social media exchange is about more than just Anne Perry. It concerns how we view the relationship between artists and their art.
How do we separate writers from what they’ve written? Can we? Should we try?
And what do readers have the right to expect of writers, beyond words on the page? Do good writers have to be Good People? Just how good do they have to be? When people who’ve done bad deeds write good books, are we wrong to read them?
If writers and their books are inextricably linked, and reading is wrong, how much imperfection should we tolerate before we take those books off our To Be Read list? (Should books by Bad People be pulled from library shelves?*)
Or maybe reading isn’t the issue–maybe it’s money.
When we purchase books by writers whose past acts are abhorrent to us, and thus support them financially, do we condone their crimes? Money talks, but what exactly does it say?
Does time matter? What if a writer is dead, and the crime is long past, and our purchase instead supports heirs, publishers, booksellers–are we still enablers?
Is there a flip side? Do writers–artists–have a responsibility to the public? When they behave unacceptably–in Perry’s case, an understatement–should they expect the public to embrace their creations on merit alone?
Had Perry become a painter or sculptor, would the discussion be different?
Does Art stand on merit alone, independent of its creator?
Should there be a discussion at all? Are these questions a waste of time, gray cells, and energy, and not worth the pixels they’re written in?
Is Shakespeare correct:
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
V. One Answer
To Perry, at least, the issue was more than academic. The New York Times obituary quotes from the 2009 documentary film Anne Perry: Interiors:
“‘In a sense it’s not a matter — at the end — of judging,’ she said in the documentary. ‘I did this much good and that much bad. Which is the greater?’
“’It’s in the end, Who am I? Am I somebody that can be trusted? Am I someone that is compassionate, gentle, patient, strong?’ She mentioned other traits: bravery, honesty, caring. ‘If you’re that kind of person — if you’ve done something bad in the past, you’ve obviously changed.’
“She concluded, ‘It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.‘”
*****
Sources–And possibly a summing-up of everything that comes before:
Leave her to heaven And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge To prick and sting her. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones – William Shakespeare,Julius Caesar, III, ii
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii
*
*Librarians select books and materials based on their reading of multiple reviews published in professional journals, without regard to the Goodness or Badness of the authors. It’s a matter of professional ethics.
In novels, mystery often equates with danger. Whether in fiction or reality, it requires determination, dedication, and a willingness to face the unknown, which can be dangerous on many levels.
In The Fisherman’s Tomb, by John O’Neill, the quest to find the bones of the man Jesus appointed the first among the apostles, Simon, called Peter, upon which Jesus would build his church, became a 75-year search beneath the Vatican, and fraught with politics and dangers, including a world war. On a religious level, it was a courageous undertaking because, over the centuries, opinions proliferated about whether or not Peter ever entered Rome and whether or not he was crucified there. Was it fact or unsubstantiated legend?
John O’Neill was no stranger to archeology or Ancient Roman history. He had made a lifetime study of Roman Archeology, traveling throughout what was once the Roman World to visit sites and digs. An Annapolis graduate and lawyer, the author of the best-seller, Unfit for Command, and a former U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, it was when he became friends with the children and grandchildren of George Strake that he learned the story of this massive project and its discoveries. O’Neill felt it was a story that had to be told, and it became the book, The Fisherman’s Tomb.
The author acquaints us with the major players. George Strake, the man who financed much of the research. A quiet Texas oilman, and devout Catholic, Strake was the discoverer of the immense Conroe field in Houston. Two popes. Pius XII, “who, unlike some of his predecessors, saw science – particularly archeology-as an ally, not an enemy of Christianity,” and Paul VI, who brought in an outsider and a woman. Despite any misgivings or fears about the possibility that Peter was never in Rome and never crucified there, which would have changed and possibly destroyed the traditions dear to the hearts of the faithful, both popes encouraged and supported the search. The truth, they felt, was too important.
Pope Pius XII, began the project and was determined to keep it a complete secret except for George Strake. It began in earnest in 1939, with the death of Pius XI, who had one request: “to be buried under St. Peter’s Basilica in a simple grave.” To honor his request, an excavation team began to dig beneath the basilica. When a workman fell through the floor where they were digging, he found himself in a stunning and unknown world that had existed hundreds of years before. A city of the dead where both pagans and early Christians had been buried.
To understand the project fully, O’Neill tackles the ancient Roman world pertinent to the search. In those days, many pagan Romans delighted in blood sports, particularly involving Christians. Under Nero, the worst of all, “even hardened Romans like the historian Tacitus found his treatment of Christians extraordinarily cruel.” During Nero’s rule, two great leaders of the Christian Church, Peter, and Paul met their deaths. Paul, a Hellenistic Jew born in Tarsus and a Roman citizen was beheaded, but Peter met his death hanging upside down on a cross in Nero’s Circus at the foot of Vatican Hill in 64 A.D.
In 1939, Pius XII assembled a team that eventually ended up being led by Antonio Ferrua, a priest with a degree in archeology. He would remain in control until 1952, when Cardinal Giovani Montini, who would later become Pope Paul VI, invited a brilliant woman, archeologist, and epigraphist, Margherita Guarducci, to tour and study the excavation. And then the sparks began to fly. Margherita Guarducci, was an archeologist with an expertise in epigraphy. An Epigraphist, according to O’Neill is the Sherlock Holmes of archeology, which Guarducci showed she was. It was Guarducci, who linked and interpreted the signs and partial writings. Exceptional difficulty was added because many of the signs had meanings used for only a few decades.
Contrary to the Ferrua conclusions, Guarducci revealed the actual location of Peter’s tomb and identified the bones already in storage as belonging to Peter, and sadly the best, intentions and lofty goals of the project were then derailed by ego, and professional jealousy. Guarducci’s battle with the Vatican experts was epic, and after Paul VI’s death, her findings were almost obliterated by pride, sexist prejudices, and professional jealousy.
The Fisherman’s Tomb is not a dry textbook. It is a page-turner worthy of any well—written mystery novel covering all aspects of the project, from its accidental beginnings to the shift of monies and attention to saving Jews during World War II, and the amazing, and behind-the-scenes individual, George Strake. The book explains the lives of Christians in ancient Rome, the apostle Peter, and the Great Fire, probably started by Nero, who wanted land and a lot of it to build his palace. He then targeted the Christian sect as those responsible, enflaming the hatred and fears already in existence.
O’Neill addresses the Popes’ gamble in supporting the ongoing search, the archeological dig, and the super problems of digging under the structure of the Basilica and an existing city. The discoveries in the necropolis, and the interpretations of symbols, pieced together the meanings and identifications of the individuals buried there. It was accomplished by the unwelcome involvement of a woman, in a time when the fields of her expertise were dominated by men.
Guarducci’s story alone is worthy of a biography. The resentment of Ferrua, his revenge discrediting her brilliant findings, and her ultimate victory, which came long after her death, are powerful stories within the story of the search for the Fisherman’s tomb.
The hunt for Peter’s bones is a treasure hunt with twists, and turns, complicated by fears, politics, jealousies, revenge, and vindication. And ultimately, a confirmation of Peter’s presence and crucifixion in Rome.
A worthy note: O’Neill ends the forward by comparing the current slaughter and persecution of Christian communities in the Middle East to the fates of their ancient brothers and sisters in faith and contributes all proceeds of this book to their relief.
British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a dream. In October of 1797, after reading about the summer capital of the Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kubla Khan, he had an “opium-influenced dream.” When he woke, he immediately wrote down the lines of the poem he’d dreamed:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. . . .
An excerpt from the second stanza:
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And the entire third:
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
What a dream!
But there “Kubla Khan” ends. While the poet was working, a “person from Porlock” knocked at the door–a bill collector, as it happened–and by the time the person left, Coleridge’s dream had vanished.
The person from Porlock has much to answer for. I mean that sincerely.
I had a dream, too.
Here, a brief digression: Everything you read here is the Truth. The Absolute, Out-and-out, Embarrassing Truth.
My dream wasn’t opium-induced. At my last physical examination, my doctor noted that my level of B-12 was “off the bottom of the chart”–his words–and said I should take a supplement. He said I would see “improved cognitive function.” But I’m seeing something else.
Years ago, I read that people low on B-12 don’t remember their dreams. Sure enough, now I’m remembering them.
So here’s my mystery dream:
I was on a literary pilgrimage–probably driving around New England, since that’s where my literary pilgrimages take place–visiting authors’ homes, when I came upon a large white stone building set well back from the street, surrounded by a manicured lawn: a Sherlock Holmes Museum.
I browsed through the exhibits, but the highlight lay behind the building: a faux graveyard with a white marble tombstone for each victim of murder or general misadventure appearing in a Sherlock Holmes story or novel: terrified Sir Charles Baskerville, convict Selden, murderous stepfather Dr. Grimesby Roylott, innocent Mormon John Ferrier, abusive husband Sir Eustace Brackenstall. Even Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime.
Then the Muse descended! I would take another literary journey to research every single Sherlock Holmes Museum and Victim Graveyard in the United States, and surely in England, possibly in France, and then I would write a book about them. A massive undertaking, but I was up to the task.
When I got home, I told my mother. She thought it was a good idea. Or said she did. Her face said she was thinking she would end up having to proofread the manuscript(s) and, remembering her multiple proofings of my master’s thesis, was also thinking about going missing.
Then I woke up, and the B-12 kicked in. I remembered. And I came to my senses.
Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory
How many Sherlock Holmes Museums/Graveyards are there? Anywhere?
And if there are any–who cares?
I’ve had it with Muses. That kind of inspiration I do not need.
I want a dream like Coleridge had. Not with opium, but there must be something better than B-12.
Because B-12 doesn’t stimulate inspiration. It stimulates memory.
The Nine Muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory.
Dreams like this I prefer to forget.
Read about productive dreaming at “Waking or Sleeping?” by Ink-Stained Wretch Helen Currie Foster.
Errata
*Let me be clear. Coleridge was addicted to opium. As a boy he’d been treated with laudanum, a tincture of opium, for rheumatic fever and “other childhood diseases”–English professor Dr. Thomas L. Brasher points to tuberculosis of the bone–which grew into a lifelong addiction. Laudanum was frequently prescribed at that time and was sold without prescription at pharmacies, not the best conditions under which to break a drug habit formed in childhood. In later life, the addiction broke his health and affected him socially and professionally–including a break with longtime friend, poet William Wordsworth–and has tarnished his reputation to the present day.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To that tarnishment, I say, Pish-tosh. Coleridge was not only a major poet–the 1798 publication of Biographia Literaria, written with William Wordsworth, ushered in the Romantic Movement in British poetry–he was a “literary critic, philosopher, and theologian.” And I refuse to allow him to be turned into a druggie hippie opium-eater,not in one of my posts.
Image of Mnemosyne (aka Lamp of Memory or Ricordanza) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti via Wikimedia Commons
Image of Coleridge, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Vision of Sir Launfal (by Coleridge and James Russell Lowell), published by Sampson Low, 1906. Artist unidentified, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
M.K. (Kathy) Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly. The blog might disappear briefly for a facelift, but it will return. The picture in the sidebar is not M.K., but it’s as close to a facelift as she she can manage.
Believe it or not, the mystery novel is considered a “young” form of literature. Yep, that’s right. Mystery fiction didn’t exist before 19th century England. Many suggest two reasons why this was the case. First, the ability to read was now reaching “below” the upper class educated citizens. Farmers and factory workers and children were being taught to read. Secondly, back then, most towns relied instead on constables and night watchmen. No centralized police forces existed.
So what happened that caused the change in policing? The public’s morbid national obsession with murder.
Two cases in particular were instrumental in beginning this fixation on crime, according to Lucy Worsley, chief curator at the Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity responsible for maintaining the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace State Apartments, and more.
In her BBC four-part series, “A Very British Murder” (2013), Worsley suggests that the first murder, known as The Radcliffe Highway Murders, took place in 1811. Only a constable was available to the poor maid who realized something dreadful had happened when she returned to the home of her employers only to find the door locked, and a woman screaming inside. The newspapers hyped the crime, stirring the public into a frenzy.
Eventually John Williams was arrested and charged with the crimes. He committed suicide in his jail cell before the trial, though his trial was carried on without him. It was speculated that this was done to calm the public’s fear.
The second case, “The Red Barn Murder”, took place in 1826. Here a woman was found dead in a barn, apparently the victim of an elopement gone wrong. Again, the public fixated on the murder to the extent that a very macabre execution took place. On 11 August 1828, the convicted murderer, John Corder, was taken to the gallows and hanged shortly before noon in front of a large crowd. One newspaper claimed that there were 7,000 spectators, another as many as 20,000. But that wasn’t all. The body was taken back to the courtroom at Shire Hall, where it was slit open along the abdomen to expose the muscles. The crowds were allowed to file past until six o’clock, when the doors were shut. According to the Norwich and Bury Post, over 5,000 people lined up to see the body.
So now the British public was ripe to read anything that would feed their fascination with murder. All it needed was a writer to satiate their thirst.
Enter Edgar Allen Poe and his short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” which was published in Graham’s Magazine in 1849. It has been described as the first modern detective story and featured the world’s first fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin. Though Baltimore-born Poe was known in America for his literary critiques (several of which named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow a plagiarist), he was much more popular in Great Britain where he became well-known as an author.
(It should be noted that two books are also considered early mysteries but had little following due to their foreign languages. The first may have been Voltaire’s Zadig written in 1747, and Das Fraulein von Scuderi by E.T.A. Hoffmann in 1819.)
And the floodgates opened. Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White was published in 1860. Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887. Doyle’s series is credited with being singularly responsible for the huge popularity of the mystery genre.
Mystery novels have gone far beyond the private detective motif. The genre now covers romantic suspense, noir, cozies, thrillers, traditional, etc.: even comic books, graphic novels and web-based detective series now carry on the mystery tradition.
I read mysteries, watch mystery movies, (probably have most of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies memorized line by line), and write mysteries. However, I had no idea I was entertained by such a “young” form of literature.
So, whodunnit next?
Note: Sources for this blog included Lucy Worsley’s BBC’s four-part series, A Very British Mystery, and the Biblio Blog “What Exactly is a Mystery Book”.
K.P. Gresham, Author
Professional Character Assassin
K.P. Gresham is the award-winning author of the Pastor Matt Hayden Mystery Series as well as several stand-alone novels. Active in Sisters in Crime and the Writers League of Texas, she has won Best Novel awards from the Bay Area Writers League as well as Mystery Writers of America.
Mardi Gras! The wild celebrations and not-so-good behaviors that have come to be associated with Fat Tuesday take place on the last day before the solemn period of Lent begins for Christians around the world.
In the fourth century, when Christianity became recognized in Rome, church leaders incorporated the ingrained pagan Roman festival of Lupercalia, an ancient festival held every year on February 15 to purify the city, promoting health and fertility. The church fathers thought it an easier task to incorporate it into the new faith –than to abolish it – giving rise to excess debauchery that remains a common prelude to Lent even today.
In medieval Europe, the traditions of Mardi Gras changed and spread worldwide over the centuries, passing through Rome and Venice in the 17th and 18th centuries in the House of the Bourbons. And it came to North America from France in 1699, landing either in New Orleans or, some say, in Mobile, Alabama, in 1703. But the rapid spread of the eat, drink, and be merry tradition had a practical side too.
Lenten restrictions were stringent, and Christians were required to abstain from all meats and other foods that came from animals, such as butter, cheese, eggs, and milk, but there was no way to keep such foods from spoiling; thus everything in the larder had to be eaten, or it would rot and be thrown away. Hence a final feast-like meal the night before Ash Wednesday, the first day of the forty days of fasting and penance until Easter Sunday, became ritualized, but the good intentions of Mardi Gras the tradition also had and still has, a dark side.
As Lenten restrictions loosened, the seedier side of the festivities became more popular and disorderly. Unfortunately, the more solemn and spiritual reasons associated with this day have been pushed into the background, despite the ashes distributed on Ash Wednesday in churches worldwide. Crosses of ash are traced on foreheads as the priest or minister intones the warning, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
French customs that traveled to the States were eating pancakes, waffles, beignets, and crepes, and throwing beads and flowers from parade floats to people in the streets, but over time, the parades and floats in New Orleans took on another life. Sumptuous and sexy costumes became the rule, with characters on the floats shouting to women in the street “show me what you’ve got,” encouraging girls to bare their breasts to get cheap, plastic beads.
The Mardi Gras tradition in Italy is called Carnevale (from the Latin, Carne–meat; vale-goodbye), harkens back to their original intent. In Venice, there are genuine Renaissance costumes worn by city workers who must remain silent and stay in character when circulating among the revelers. Food, family entertainment, face painting, games, and the famed Venetian masks are everywhere.
Never meant to be a celebration for its own purpose, Mardi Gras also projects an atmosphere of secrecy. People can hide behind their masks, be who they want and do things they usually wouldn’t consider. It is a fertile setting for destructive behaviors and crime and the backdrop for the first book in the Housekeeper Mystery Series.
Traveling from Venice, Italy, to Austin, Texas, where the Mardi Gras celebrations are more along the lines of the original intent of stuffing oneself with food and drink, it is the underlying sense of something evil lurking that opens the story on Fat Tuesday in I’m Going to Kill that Cat. The following morning, Ash Wednesday, before ashes can be distributed in the church, abody is found in the alley next to the rectory. And now, on the first day of Lent, Father Melvyn and Mrs. B. are pulled into a murder investigation, forcing them to confront shocking old scandals and vengeance.
[The blogger having been rendered incapable of typing with more than five fingers, she repeats a post that appeared on Austin Mystery Writers in 2015.]
*****
. . . it was like taking a vase and setting it down so hard it shatters . . . ~ Tracy Chevalier
When I taught secondary English, grading essays was my least favorite task. I was happy to read them, but assigning letter grades? I hated that.
I hated judging. I hated trying to determine the difference between a B and an A, or, worse, between a B-plus and an A-minus.
But the worst–the part that made me want to moan like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, “Oh, horrible, oh, horrible, most horrible!”–was listening to students who believed their work merited higher grades: “But I worked so harrrrrrrd.”
Some had watched classmates complete an entire assignment during a lull in history class and then score A’s. It wasn’t fair.
“Harrrrrrrrrrd” was my signal to say that No, it didn’t seem fair, but that good writing involves more than time sheets and sweat. It’s the words on the page that matter.
Now, to my dismay, I often find myself slipping into student mode. For example, when I submit a chapter to my critique group, or a beta reader, or even a family member, and they find fault, or don’t even mention my genius, I have to restrain myself from wailing, But I worked so harrrrrrrd…
Each time it happens, I repeat to myself the old lecture about time sheets and sweat. I add that whingeing is the hallmark of the amateur.
And I meditate upon Tracy Chevalier.
Chevalier wrote the critically acclaimed historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her next novel began as a draft written in third person, with small sections in first-person voices of children. The completed manuscript disappointed her.
When I reread the first draft, she says,I cried at the end. It was boring, dead weight, terrible. Then I looked it over and thought, there’s nothing wrong with the story except the way it’s told.
She found the solution in another contemporary novel:
I had the idea when, just as I was finishing the first draft in third person, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which uses five different voices beautifully. It’s a wonderful book, using multiple voices very successfully, and I thought, “Oh, that’s an interesting technique, I wonder if I should take the kids’ voices I’ve already written and have the three of them tell it.” It just felt right.
The revision was published as Falling Angels, an exquisite novel about a young wife and mother struggling to survive in the rigid, but rapidly changing, social structure of Edwardian England. The book is written in first person, from twelve perspectives, in twelve distinctive voices.
I came across Chevalier’s account when I was just beginning to write fiction and had become obsessed with the work. Writing an entire manuscript, setting it aside, starting all over—it had to be pure drudgery. I couldn’t imagine putting myself through that.
Later, though, I reread the article and a different passage caught my attention—Chevalier’s description of the rewrite:
I took the draft, and it was like taking a vase and setting it down so hard it shatters, then putting the pieces back together in a different way. I rewrote the whole thing in first person with all these different voices.
That passage doesn’t describe drudgery. Shattering a vase, putting the pieces back together to make something new—that’s a picture of creation, of the excitement and the pleasure and the beauty that accompany it.
I love Tracy Chevalier’s novels and admire her talent. But, on a more personal level, I’m grateful to her for sharing publicly how Falling Angels made its way into print—for reminding me that hard work isn’t synonymous with drudgery, for implying that it’s okay to cry over a bad draft and that perceived failure can turn into success, and for showing that the act of writing itself affords as much pleasure as the spirit is willing to embrace.
And—for tacitly suggesting that no one really needs to hear me whinge about how harrrrrrrrd I work.
It’s the words on the page that matter.
*****
Note: I really do love Chevalier’s novels. In fact, I love Falling Angels so much that during library duty one Saturday morning, I was so intent on finishing the book—just racing toward the climax—that I unlocked the front doors but left the lights in the reading room off, and spent the next ninety minutes parked behind the circulation desk, reading, and hoping no one would walk in and want something. I’m not proud of what I did. It was unprofessional. But patrons were understanding. And I finished the book.
So there I was, getting ready to go on our Christmas cruise with my better half, Kevin, and our daughter, Bethany, and realizing that I didn’t have enough books for our vacation. My goal is to enjoy reading three books each cruise—I never have this luxury of time anywhere else. Most of the books I “read” now are on audio, which I listen to on my 3 mile walk with my Chihuahua, Tipper. But this was the night before our departure and I suddenly realized I only had two hard copy books: the latest J.D. Robb book and the eighth in the Sci-Fi Opera series, The Expanse by James S.A. Corey.
Off I went to the bookstore. Both already chosen books were kinda heavy (literally and physically), so I thought I’d look for something a little lighter. I saw a fun little Christmas book—had snow and a golden retriever puppy on the cover and I thought I’d read this little cozy looking book titled Best in Snow by David Rosenfelt.
This book was everything I love about reading. Yes, it had a golden retriever in the story, but this was not just a cozy. In fact, finding a category in which to fit this book is beyond my capabilities. It is a legal procedural, a comedy, suspenseful, and had a serious plot with more twists in it than a country road. The hero of the story, Andy Carpenter, has a self-deprecating humor that makes you want to have a beer with him, he loves sports, and he hangs out with a phenomenal group of characters. It had every element of a book that just makes me happy.
The craft that went into writing this book was top-notch. There was not one page written that didn’t make you want to turn the page. Every single word in the book was necessary; Rosenfelt’s writing was smooth, fast, and to-the-point.
As soon as I got off the cruise ship, I headed for my favorite audio book vendor. It turns out that Best in Snow was the 24th book in the “The Andy Carpenter Mystery Series.” I enjoy reading series in order, so I decided to go back to book #1, Open and Shut. It is now January 18th, and I just finished listening to book #7, New Tricks. And each one was better than the last.
So, here’s the skinny on this delightful author. David Rosenfelt graduated from New York University and then decided to work in the movie business. After being interviewed by his uncle, who was the President of United Artists, he was hired and worked his way up the corporate ladder. Rosenfelt eventually became the marketing president for Tri-Star Pictures.
Rosenfelt left the corporate treadmill and turned to writing novels. He has now authored over thirty-three books which include a different series and several stand-alones. In 1995, he and his wife started the “Tara Foundation” which has saved almost 4,000 dogs. He is a dog lover and supports more than two dozen dogs.
Hopefully this blog serves as bait for you to discover this author. If you like dogs, humor, nail-biting drama and a darned good story, a book by David Rosenfelt should be your next read.
K.P. Gresham, Author
Professional Character Assassin
K.P. Gresham is the award-winning author of the Pastor Matt Hayden Mystery Series as well as several stand-alone novels. Active in Sisters in Crime and the Writers League of Texas, she has won Best Novel awards from the Bay Area Writers League as well as the Mystery Writers of America.
This was an odd morning. I got up, as usual at 4 a.m. (no kudos here – just my body clock), prepared to sit at the computer and work on my story. I walked into the kitchen. There, perched on the corner of the table, with her cafe e latte in one hand, and waving a recipe for a Sicilian cake I’d printed out before Christmas in the other hand, was the muse. I took the paper and looked at the recipe again, captured by the bold, black font and pretty picture.
So, she commanded. Instead of worrying about plots, profiles, commas, apostrophes, nouns, and verbs,bake the cake.
Immediately – after my first cup of coffee, I assembled the ingredients, including lemons, and squeezed out fresh juice, then shaved off the zest, as instructed. This particular recipe depends heavily on the bright yellow fruit, sometimes sweet, sometimes not, that often decorates my martini glass. Today, it would flavor and brighten the cake. The entire process of creating the batter was not difficult, and soon the cake was in the oven. But my muse was not content.
Let’s talk about lemons, said she, a very Italian muse because we Italians, both human and spirit, do love our lemons, and off I went on a learning mission with the burning question at four a.m. Where in the world are the best lemons grown?
The answer varies depending on the website, but some of the best lemons are grown in Italy, on the Amalfi coast, just south of Naples. Beautiful varieties of lemons are also cultivated on the largest island in the Mediterranean, Sicily.
Its Ionian coast was traversed by Odysseus on his ten-year voyage home from the Trojan War. Here he found his way to Aeolus, the god of winds who lived in a castle protected by a solid bronze wall on the island of Lipari – where my husband’s ancestors lived – but I digress. Back to the worthy subject of lemons.
Italian lemons are not to be confused with the expensive, succulent Meyer Lemons. That hybrid citrus originated in China and is a cross between “citron and mandarin/pomelo hybrid.”
On the other hand, Italian lemons are as distinct as the areas where they grow. There are two types of Amalfi lemons grown on the Sorrento Peninsula — “the SfusatoAmalfitano and the Limone di Sorrento. Found in different parts of the coast, these are among the most highly prized lemons in the world. They are PGI-protected by the EU, which ensures they are produced only on the Amalfi Coast,” preventing substitutes or imitations. The Amalfi coast provides fresh breezes off the ocean, which are trapped in the mountain valleys, creating the perfect ecosystem for the lemons to grow. They are protected from the northern winds to bask and mature in the coastal sunshine. Incidentally, the same is true for the oranges of this region. So special and fragrant are these fruits that Italians even reference their perfume in song.
Traveling south to the island of Sicily, the Interdonato cultivar is a natural hybrid between lemon and citron grown along the Ionian Sea coast in Messina. Then there are the lemons grown along the volcanic coastal strip of Etna, in parts of Catania, differing in size, shape, and color. These are rich in essential oils and of high aromatic quality, which can be attributed to the fact that they are grown in an environment with specific volcanic soil and climate.
Last but not least are the lemons from Siracusa (Syracuse), characterized by an intense fragrance and juiciness, which makes them particularly suitable for creating liqueurs, desserts, sorbets, and ice cream
Which of these varieties did I use? Well, the only lemons available to me, and in my fridge, were from the good old U.S.A., most likely grown in Arizona or California, where 95% of our lemons come from. The other 5% are grown in Texas and Florida.
I’ve told you more than you ever wanted to know about lemons, while my cake cooled. One bite convinced me that it was well worth the detour inspired by my muse. So, when life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade or bake a Sicilian Olive Oil and Lemon cake. You’ll love it. I certainly do.
With my espresso, and a slice of the moist cake with its delicate lemony flavor, enhanced by the olive oil beside me, I return to my computer, content and ready to focus on writing, but remember, when the muse calls…pay attention.
Thanks to Hollywood and TV-land, most of us are tired of Christmas and we aren’t even in the official Advent season. The bombardment of mostly silly movies centered on Christmas themes that have little to do with this holy Christian holiday sucks the meaning out of Christmas and starts earlier every year.
Thus, it seems a good time to reprint Flights of Fancy and Imagination, reminding everyone that PBS television’s 2021 presentation of the musical production by Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award winner John Mauceri: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, written in 1816, is still available, and will be through December 13, 2024.
Mauceri conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with Tony Award-winning Alan Cumming narrating this original tale in three parts..
The story, written by E.T.A. Hoffman, is about a young girl who saves a prince, contrary to Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, where the prince rescues the girl. Perhaps Hoffman’s inspiration for this particular flight of fancy was the popularity of embellished nutcrackers, which appeared in Germany in the early 1800s.
The Nutcracker’s story begins with a young boy who stays home alone daily while his parents go to work. The little boy was lonely and afraid, so his father carved a special toy, a nutcracker in the form of a soldier with big sharp teeth and fierce-looking eyes, and told him that this unique Nutcracker would protect him while his parents were gone. It did the trick. The boy loved and enjoyed that Nutcracker and felt secure by its presence, so his father continued to carve new ones for him. When the boy grew up, he married and had a son to whom he gave all the nutcrackers made by his father.
Over time in early 19th century Germany, the lure of decorative nutcrackers grew, and so did a legend. They came to represent power, strength, and the protection of families from danger and evil spirits. Nutcrackers were given as gifts and keepsakes to bring good luck.
E.T.A. Hoffman was a prolific writer of gothic tales, fantasy, and the supernatural – most of them dark, including segments of his Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Alexander Dumas, the 19th-century French author, translated Hoffman’s work in 1845, propelling it beyond the written word. Mauceri explains that Dumas, the grandson of the French aristocrat and African Haitian slave, was drawn to the story because Hoffman concluded the tale with the girl growing up to become the queen of a land of tolerance and imagination. It was the Dumas version that Peter Illich Tchaikovsky adopted in 1892 when he composed the score.
While this production does not target children, it is appropriate for those youngsters who can sit still for a narrative without pictures or characters to hold their interest. Cumming reads the narrative with emotion and even injects moments of humor without straying from the story.
The orchestra gives a stirring performance. Bold and rousing where appropriate, mysterious, sensual, and nerve-wracking also when appropriate. In addition to the lush Tchaikovsky score, compositions from Tchaikovsky’s tone poems and orchestral suites, are included.
Mauceri’s reimagined Nutcracker and the Mouse King fill the mind’s eye with characters, places, and emotions generated by the performances of artists of the highest caliber. If you didn’t experience this fantastic flight of fancy and imagination last year, you might still enjoy it by accessing https://www.pbs.org/video/the-nutcracker-and-the-mouse-king-meabwt/.
Enjoy it for the first time, or once again, with friends, family, children, and grown-ups. And in the spirit of the upcoming season, I wish you all a truly thankful Thanksgiving, and in the true spirit of Christmas, I wish you all love, kindness, respect, and caring.
Ink-Stained Wretches 
