My framework is Sherlockiania, mystery, and miscellany.
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“You either fight or surf!” is, of course, the famous choice posed by Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now . In the madness of battle, Kilgore gives his soldiers a blank choice between two missions—take it to the waves or take it to the enemy. Screenwriter John Milius later revealed that the scene was inspired by a comment made by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the Six-Day War of…
I’m a sucker for meta-fiction, which reflects back on itself like a mirror within a mirror. So when someone comes along with a sequel to Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey which, rather than satirizing the gothic novel, embraces it, validating all Catherine Morland’s forbidding fantasies—I’m all in. (If you haven’t read the original, Wikipedia sums it up as a coming-of-age story and a satire of the…
Proteus One expression that really irritates me? “So true.” I’‘m reminded of what my high school English teacher used to say: “You can’t be very unique or a little bit pregnant.” some terms by their nature are binary. They either are or aren’t. There are no degrees of truth. You can approach truth, as you can approach the summit of a mountain, but you can’t plant your flag on Everest until you’ve…
Delta Morning Empty Swing , Milly L. Moorhead Here’s what it’s like to be on the cusp of life. It’s a Louisiana summer evening, suspended between twilight and night, suspended between 6th and 7th grades. Your hands are touching the shoulder blades of a tall girl who’s sitting on the swing in front of you. The swing must have been moving before, but now is still. You were talking before, you must…
What if … Charles Dickens were not a name synonymous with Victorian London, but were transplanted instead to 18 th century Edo (Tokyo)? You might wind up with something like Jonelle Patrick’s triumphant new novel, The Samurai’s Octopus. It’s not written in Dickens’s style of course. Patrick’s style is all her own, lucid and sharp-edged as Japanese calligraphy. But it’s Dickensian in subject…
I’ve been bingeing on Hercule Poirot on PBS lately. Poirot, if anyone in the English-speaking world is unaware, is Agatha Christie’s funny little Belgian detective, the most celebrated fictional detective this side of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve read all the books and seen all the shows already, more than once. So now I suppose you could say I’m luxuriating in nostalgia. Poirot is always talking about…
There are a few years in your childhood when you can positively fly. It’s a natural progression, when you think about it. We’re born nailed to the earth. Then we learn to sit up, to crawl, to stand, to run, to dance. I know this program intimately. When I had my stroke seven years ago, I had to repeat the program, every step of the way. And every night in my bed I dreamed of running. After you…
Rex Stout was prolific--he claimed it took between 35 and 41 days to write a novel, as long as he wasn't drinking. He wrote 33 novels and I won't get into the number of stories. His best-known as the creator of Nero Wolfe--the genius detective with the too too solid flesh. " A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is…
Gruntled to the dis- Would you like to be gruntled? On the face of it, probably not. It doesn't sound like much fun. But we know for sure that no one likes to be disgruntled . So what's our option? It turns out, "gruntle" is a very old English word (1682) that means to grumble or complain. But "disgruntled," rather than the opposite, means even more gruntled, a real complainy-face, and probably…
Marcel Proust ate a cookie one day which transported him back to his childhood and affected him so profoundly that he was compelled to write a seven-volume semi-autobiographical novel about it. Then he died. The lesson for writers is clear: lay off the sweets. Marcel Proust That’s my take on it, anyway. These are his actual words: She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called…
