Authors, Fiction

Interview with a Plagiarist

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Author Jeremy Duns has a lengthy analysis of the plagiarism in Assassin of Secrets and posts an interview with the author in the comments section. The disgraced author, Quentin Rowan, begins with his initial motivation:

When I was 19 a poem I wrote in high school was chosen for The Best American Poetry 1996. Up until that time I was an indifferent writer, a dabbler really, at the best of times. I was in college and like everyone trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. (Mostly I just wanted to play Rock music.) I took this anthology business as a sign that I was meant to be a famous writer. However, unlike any normal person who works at something a long time and eventually gets good, I decided I had to be good then and there. Because I was already supposed to be the Best.

Goofing, Music

And they all think just the same

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This morning, while driving to work, Malvina Reynold’s song “Little Boxes” popped into my mind.

And I pondered it it. All that snide condescension toward people who live unexciting lives, and are able to own houses, however small.

Malvina Reynolds, of course, was a socialist, so she dreamed of something better for the masses. And it occurred to me to wonder, “What kind of life would she wish for ordinary people?”

I have to assume the glorious Soviet Union must have been her model. Delightful accommodations like those pictured above, where the happy workers shared a fulfilling communal existence.

And so I wrote my own version of the song, which you may read below the fold: Continue reading And they all think just the same →

Fiction, Reviews

Dark Quarry, by David H. Fears

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[Cover art omitted, because it might embarrass some of our readers.]


I liked the way her hips swayed hard. She was a chiropractor’s dream.

I’m rooting for David H. Fears. He’s attempting to revive the classic hard-boiled mystery in his Mike Angel novels. On the basis of Dark Quarry, the first in the series, I’d say his reach still exceeds his grasp a bit, but he’s close enough to persuade me to come back and see how he progresses.

Dark Quarry is set around the year 1960. It starts, in a sense, where The Maltese Falcon ended, if you imagine that Sam Spade had agreed to “play the sap” for Brigid O’Shaughnessy. New York private eye (he later relocates to Chicago) Mike Angel finds Kimbra Ambler, a woman he’s been shadowing for a client, standing over the body of her abusive husband, whom she’s just shot. Instead of turning her in, he lets his heart guide him and assists her in getting rid of the body.

Later she comes back to try to kill him, but he disarms her, then just sends her on her way, still starry-eyed about her.

Because that’s the kind of mug Mike is. Continue reading Dark Quarry, by David H. Fears →

Fiction, Reviews

A Question of Blood, by Ian Rankin

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My new custom of searching out free and cheap books for my Kindle (for instance here) has introduced me to several authors I hadn’t read before, and reacquainted me with some I’d lost track of. One of the latter authors is Ian Rankin, Great Britain’s foremost writer of police novels. A Question of Blood was a welcome reunion, and well worth the read.

As the story begins, the police are investigating the death of a petty criminal in a house fire. This criminal had recently been harassing Inspector Siobhan Clarke, friend and colleague of the continuing hero, Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus. So eyebrows are raised when Rebus comes in to work with burned hands.

Considering Rebus’s already equivocal standing with his superiors, it strains credibility somewhat for the reader to believe he’s allowed to continue on duty, examining the murder of two students at a private school (and the wounding of another) by a former SAS commando.

It’s even harder to believe when we are informed that one of the victims was the son of Rebus’s cousin.

But the fulcrum of the Rebus series is his talent for working his way around his superiors and getting away with it, based on results. His inquiries bring him into contact with “emo” teenagers, street gangs, drug smugglers, military intelligence agents, and a politician campaigning for stricter gun control laws (it greatly increases my esteem for Rankin that this politician is portrayed as pretty slimy).

John Rebus is a fascinating character, hiding deep psychological scars under a brilliant mind, a hair trigger temper, and rash decisions. His relationship with Inspector Clarke is also interesting, as they both care for each other, but care for their jobs more.

Recommended for adults.

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R.I.P. "Elmer"

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I sat down to watch the local news on TV last night, and learned that one of my oldest friends is dead.

I’ve written about him here before, calling him “Elmer.” Since I don’t know how his family would react to my reminiscences (though I have no reason to think they’d be offended), I’ll continue to use that name.

Elmer and I met in elementary school, back in Kenyon. As our class’s social hierarchy evolved, the two of us found ourselves thrown together more and more, not because of similar interests or personalities, but as partial outsiders, boys who didn’t play well with others. A sturdy, black-haired kid, Elmer was not in the least diffident, and if he possessed any sense of shame I never saw a sign of it. He loved to say and do provocative things, just to get a reaction. Continue reading R.I.P. "Elmer" →

Fiction

George Smiley Is the Anti-Bond

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James Parker writes about author John le Carré’s spy, George Smiley, and the coming film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy He says:

Smiley drops no one-liners, romances no tarot-card readers, roars no speedboats through the Bayou. Bond has his ultraviolence and his irresistibility, his famous “comma of black hair”; Smiley has his glasses, his habit of cleaning them with the fat end of his tie, and not much else. There is a cultivated blandness to him, a deliberate vagueness of outline that at times recalls G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown—the little priest’s alertness to sin replaced, in Smiley’s case, by an extraordinary memory and a profound knowledge of “tradecraft.”

(via Mark Bertrand)

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Iago: "I Should Have Been a Clown"

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Jeremy Webb wrote his play for high schoolers, but it’s gained legs for a broader audience. “I think that it’s great for adults because it breaks all the rules,” said Webb. The one-act comedy has Shakespeare’s characters accusing their playwright of various injustices. (via ProfShakespeare)