TONY & ME

by James Lincoln Warren

Before heading off to Bouchercon, I thought I would share a few thoughts concerning a man I never met: William Anthony Parker White, a.k.a. Anthony Boucher. My first awareness of him was when I was in high school in the early 70s. I had just joined the Science Fiction Book Club and received their two-volume A Treasury of Great Science Fiction for the cost of a dime.

When the books arrived in the mail, my mother, who was categorically not a science fiction reader, said, “I’ll bet these are good. They were edited by Anthony Boucher.”

“Who’s he?”

“A very fine critic and editor. He also writes mysteries.”

Mom’s preferred leisure reading were usually mysteries (especially Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham) and suspense novels (Helen MacInnes and Mary Stewart were favorites). She also frequently read classics (when she and Dad came to visit me in California in the late 80s, the book she toted around for bedtime reading was Silas Marner) and enjoyed a good A. J. Cronin saga now and again. Mom was very intelligent, although I wouldn’t call her tastes particularly cerebral. But she did have an unerring eye for quality.

I don’t know where she first encountered Boucher’s name, but my guess is from one of his novels, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, which after her death I found tucked away on one of her bookshelves. Its presence there was a little curious because Mom wasn’t really a Sherlockian at all — but her reading could cast a wide net. I had never read any of Boucher’s fiction, so I took it with me back to L.A.

To call it delightful is a pale understate- ment. The book has no flaws, but its greatest strength is its distinctive literary tone: sophisticated without being remotely pretentious. In many ways, it reminded me of Cathleen Jordan’s only novel, A Carol in the Dark. (Cathleen, of course, was a prominent editor herself for many years at the helm of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.) I guess you could call it playfully erudite.

That is a quality I aspire to in much of my own fiction. I think it is a particular quality of traditional mysteries — Harriet’s and Lord Peter’s literary badinage, Albert Campion’s recondite blather, Nero Wolfe’s orchidean expertise (which avocation he shared with Ian Fleming’s M, by the way) — but I can’t think of any writer who pulled it off as charmingly as Boucher did. Contemporary crime fiction has become so self-conscious- ly gritty that all too often it’s like so much unrinsed raw spinach. It has coarsened our expectations in what we consume. We’ve forgotten how much fun being refined can be. There are exceptions, of course, the most obvious of which is the late Sarah Caudwell, but she’s been gone now for eight years. We certainly don’t have a Tony Boucher among our ranks.

My primary goal at Bouchercon this week is to thoroughly enjoy the wonderful company I will find myself among — buddies like Charles Todd and Elaine Flinn, colleagues like John and Leigh and Steve and Melodie, and of course all the fabulous fans and writers I have yet to meet.

And one ghost. At some point during the week, I expect to raise a glass to the spiritual founder of the feast.

I may even try to say something playfully erudite.

“Diction City Police Dept.” Dept.

We all have our verbal pet peeves, but lately one has been driving me around the bend, especially when spouted by ignorant television reporters. I don’t mean the gross misuse of “ironic” to mean “coincidental” or the ubiquitous and wrongful application of “iconic” to mean “epitome”, even though those, too, drive me nuts.

No, I refer to the nearly universal mispronunciation of the adjective “short-lived” with a short “i” instead of a long “i”. This is completely wrong. I know why this is. It is because the verb “to live” is pronounced with a short “i”, and the past tense of the verb and the adjective are spelled exactly the same way. Danger, Will Robinson! (Non-boomers are forgiven for not catching this once-upon-a-time hip cultural reference to a bad TV show.)

Leigh has already educated us about words that are spelled identically but pronounced differently. This is a case in point.

You would never say “short-saw” to describe someone who is “short-sighted”, would you? To be “short-lived” means to have a short life. For whatever reason, “short-lifed” never made it into the lexicon, whereas “short-lived”, with the voiced consonant, did. But “short-lived” rhymes with “survived”, something its correct pronunciation is obviously having trouble with.

So now is the time to stand up and be counted, mi amigos. Whenever you hear someone performing this barbarism, gently admonish them and let them know how it should be pronounced. You will do them a favor, improve both your own and their karma, and savor the rare and precious experience of guilt-free, 100% justified smugness — all at once. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

X-RATED WORDS

by Leigh Lundin

We writers appreciate word play and several of us have written about words, their meanings, and sometimes their oddities. Tony Harris, physician, writer, and Criminal Brief reader, has contributed a couple of lists dubbed X-rated words.

Trix are for Kids

First are words that not merely end in -x but -trix, a feminine suffix in a language not renown for feminine endings.

Words ending in -trix come to us from Latin where some masculine forms end in -tor. Unlike English, nouns in many Romance languages are classified as masculine or feminine, or in some languages, neuter.

In contrast to Latin and Greek, where nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter, French has only masculine or feminine, which means nouns are often arbitrarily one way or the other: cars are feminine and ships are masculine.

Some French nouns can be turned from the masculine into feminine by doubling the final consonant and adding a letter ‘e’: a male chat (cat) becomes a female chatte, and a male chien (dog) becomes a female chienne.

Whereas the -trix words above imply a woman, the following words have lost their feminine connotations as they evolved in the fields of math and science.

We recognize the masculine forms of rector and generator, but tector is less obvious. In Roman times, a tector (or tectrix) was a thatcher of roofs. These days, tectrix has come to mean the small (non-flight) feathers that cover birds. Tortrix is a Latin feminine past participle of "one who twists".

Brand X

Tony writes that in the 1950s, the letter ‘x’ in a word was thought to imbue the product with attributes of leading edge high technology. Some of these products include:

Next week, we attend the 2008 Bouchercon convention in Baltimore. See you there!

XXXOOO

A SENSE OF DISCLOSURE — PART 2

by John M. Floyd

Last week, I wrote about the fact that I usually don’t tell others anything about my “stories in progress,” whether the stories are in idea form or outline form or already half-written. My point was, a storyline that’s not yet completed becomes less interesting to me if I tell others about it, and finishing the project is then not as much fun. I realize that’s just one of my quirks — I have many — and other writers might take a different approach.

In this column, I’d like to give you my views on the disclosure of completed stories — those that are finished and supposedly ready for submission. The question is, do you (the writer) show those to others, and thus gather advice and opinions, before sending the stories out to editors?

Do as I say and not as I do

Personally, I don’t often show my finished short stories to anyone before I submit them. The two exceptions are my wife and my daughter — they sometimes read my stories before I send them in, if schedules allow it and if I think a particular story is one they’d be interested in — because I know they’ll be brutally honest with me. But usually I just write the stories, edit them myself, and send them off into the great beyond without getting others’ opinions. I’m not saying my stories are so good they couldn’t use outside assistance, but after many years and many rejections I think I have at least a pretty fair idea by now of what works and what doesn’t, in my kind of short stories. Besides, I write so many of them the critiquing process itself could become almost more trouble (to me and my proofreaders) than it’s worth. And, to be painfully honest, part of it may just be a reluctance to show anyone else what I’ve produced until it’s been vetted by a real editor, and in print.

But I realize a lot of writers welcome and even depend on outside input immediately after completing a project, and I understand that. In fact I encourage it. Sometimes it can be a great help, in evaluating both content and style.

If you write a short story and you do choose to let others check it over before you submit it, here’s my suggestion: Let several people read it, not just one person. And no matter what I said earlier, close friends and family are seldom good choices, because they tend to try to spare your feelings. (Your mother, especially, should probably not be one of your early readers — I found out long ago that my mom thinks everything I write is great, even if it stinks like Bourbon Street on Sunday morning.)

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury . . .

Let’s say you’ve selected five unbiased readers who have no connection with your family tree. When they’ve finished your story and reported back to you, I would encourage you to do the following:

(1) Examine all their suggestions with an open mind.

(2) If each of the five suggests something different, and you disagree with all of them on those points, ignore all five.

(3) If more than one person suggests the same thing, give that item careful consideration, whether you agree with it or not.

(4) If any one of the five says something in your story wasn’t clear, give that careful consideration. (I think clarity is the one most important thing in a piece of writing.)

(5) Buy each of them a Baskin-Robbins double scoop.

Three final points

The first is, be a bit skeptical of criticism, from anyone. Friends, family, strangers, other writers – they’re people just like you and me: we all like and dislike certain things in the stories we read. If I’m corrected on something that’s obviously wrong, I’ll change it happily and gratefully — but if I have strong feelings that what I’ve written is exactly as I want it to be, I usually go with it regardless of what others might tell me. Some changes make things worse rather than better.

Secondly (and this is after submission), if an editor that I respect requests that I change something, and says she’ll publish my story if I do — then I’ll change it. Period. If I don’t completely agree, so what? Later, before I resell that story to another market as a reprint, I can always change it right back to the way I had it the first time. And the truth is, an editor probably knows more than I do about what her readers want.

Last of all, if you’re one of those who are asked by a writer to offer criticism, by all means be honest. Even if you hate the story. To do otherwise might make him feel better for the moment, but you’ll be hurting him in the long run. It’s sort of the literary equivalent of friends not letting friends drive drunk.

And don’t forget, afterward, to hit him up for your reward.

If the story sells, I’d say a banana split. At least.

THE ART OF THE DETECTIVE STORY

by Steve Steinbock

Two weeks back I spent a lot of column space telling you very little about R. Austin Freeman and his 1923 essay, “The Art of the Detective Story.” Today I’ll tell you a little bit more. But first, reading Freeman put me in an interesting verbialogical frame of mind. (I’m not certain “verbialogical” is a real word. Maybe what I mean is philological. I’m relying on our resident old PHART to set me straight.

In his essay, Dr. Freeman used the word appertain, in the context of “qualities appertaining to good fiction.” At first glance, I wondered if this was another irregardlessism, i.e. a word fattened up with unnecessary and/or redundant affixings, I was wrong. Appertain is a perfectly good word, and it’s not, as I had suspected, a highfalutin synonym of pertain. (“Appertain” means to be a part or attribute of something, while “pertain” means to be in relation to something).

In truth, the word irregardless doesn’t annoy me as much as some other words. It’s been around for almost a hundred years, and despite the facts that it doesn’t mean anything and is a gaudy imposter for the word, regardless, I tend to overlook it.

Do you remember being in fourth grade (or was it fifth) and your teacher presented the bonus spelling word antidisestablishmentarianism? I’ve always found it much easier to spell that to pronounce. It’s a very real word, but I’ve never EVER heard it used except in the context of long spelling words. My understanding is that back in the previous century or so, certain Protestant denominations had been established. But in 1871, the Church of Ireland was disestablished (i.e. declared to no longer be the official religion), and in 1920, the Church of England was disestablished in parts of Wales. In both cases, there must have been people who were opposed to disestablishment, and were thus antidisestablishment. That made them antidisestablishmentarians and their movement was Antidisestablishmentarianism. Follow all that? Good. At least one of us is. I need a compass to get my way through that.

Which brings me to another word, one that is accepted, but one that gives me the heeby-jeebies: Orientate. The verb orient, originally meaning to turn to the east, is a perfectly good word for the action of adjusting a compass, or any act of adjusting to a particular direction. Orientation is a perfectly good noun to describe the state of being adjusted or turned. So why on earth do people feel compelled to verb a noun when there’s already a perfectly good verb already there. Oops, I just did it myself. I used verb as a verb.

On to Freeman.

I should say that as much as I admire Freeman, I doubt he’d have much tolerance for me. He was not a fan of people of my religious persuasion – he would have called it my race – and often cast Jews as villains in his stories. I read somewhere, although it may have been apocryphal, that from time to time people would assume that Freeman was Jewish based on his surname, to which he would fly into a rage. But Freeman’s religious and ethnic prejudices are the subject of another day.

The subject for today is his set of literary prejudices, and his attitude toward the literary prejudices of others.

In Freeman’s essay, after pointing out the unfortunate bias against detective fiction, and admitting that much of what passed as detective fiction truly was bad stuff, goes on to explain what good detective fiction should be. I admit that Freeman was a bit of a snob about detective fiction. He said that there’s only a select part of the population that can really appreciate detective stories for what they are. The true devotee, Freeman wrote, “are to be found among men of the definitely intellectual class: theologians, scholars, lawyers, and to a less extent, perhaps, doctors and men of science,” and that “the enthusiast par excellence is the clergyman of a studious and scholarly habit.”

Freeman asserted that good detective fiction must have the qualities of good fiction in general. The qualities he listed (and this is where he used the word “appertaining”) are “grace of diction,” “humour,” “interesting characterization,” “picturesqueness of setting,” and “emotional presentation.”

This past month we’ve had a number of columns from our various regular contributors that explored structures and elements of fiction. For the detective story, Freeman listed four:

1. Statement of the problem;
2. Production of the data for its solution (clues);
3. The discovery, i.e. the completion of the inquiry by the investigator and his declaration of the solution; and
4. The proof, a unique characteristic of classical detective stories wherein the investigator provides an explanation of the evidence and solution.

I don’t know too many writers who use such a classical structure anymore. Even modern authors who follow the rules of “fair play” (i.e. providing the reader with all the evidence needed to solve the mystery) seldom include that fourth step – the exposition.

That is something else I’ll have to explore in some future Bandersnatch. Until then, as always, I’m very truly yours,

Steve

GOING TO THE DARK SIDE

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

My friend recently said, “You only see the good in people.”

I almost smiled, but caught myself in time. Our relationship is new and neither of us have spent enough time together to really know each other’s true personality. To me, she’s the one who consistently believes everyone’s intent is honorable.

“That’s not true,” I said. “I just keep trying to see the good in them until I finally admit maybe they’re on short supply. And to be honest, the flaws are more interesting, especially to a writer.”

Everyone has flaws. I’m sure there were some days when even Mother Teresa said something she wished she could take back. Perhaps she’d been tired or disappointed. But, I am sure it probably happened sometime in her life.

“You don’t really know a person until you have observed his behavior with a child, a flat tire, when the boss is away, and when he thinks no one will ever know.” — anonymous

A writer asked me to look over her manuscript before she sent it off to a national contest. This was a big one that could make a writer’s career jump into the big league. A caveat of such a contest is their previous year had over 2,500 entries. “Competition will be fierce,” she said, adding, “Another pair of eyes to proofread is always a good thing.” The story was good. The premise was good. The set-up and location were good. But, the ending was predictable and worse, throughout the story every person was too damn nice.

Identifying with a character in a story is important, but if she were a Pollyanna, wouldn’t we grow tired of everything about her being perfect all the time?

Bad things happen even to the nicest people (and characters) and I expect them to react in a not-so-nice manner when it does.

“The dark side I sense in you.” — Yoda

It’s easy to ride the route where the guys in black must be villains and the ones in the white are heroes. Bring in the halos (albeit created with extra bright, white lighting) surrounding the heroes so the audience will recognize them right off is an easy, lazy-writer tactic. Writing that the hero never has any doubts, bad habits or faults is not just bad writing, it’s boring.

The same is true with villains who are depicted with black hearts, having done nothing redeemable in their life. Those are the easiest to spot in a mystery and no doubt the reason a considerable amount of manuscripts are not published.

Consider Johnny Cash’s soulful lament in “A Boy Named Sue.” Throughout the song, we are told about the horrible father who abandoned his family, but even worse, “ … before he left, he went and named me Sue.” Sue lives for the day he runs into his father so he can relate — with premeditated violence — how awful it was to travel through life with such a feminine name, only to discover the father had the best of intentions knowing he’d have to grow to be tough on his own. The father would not have interested us if he’d been labeled a caring father at the beginning of the song.

My favorite heroes have always had flaws. I like that George Bailey didn’t want to stay in Bedford Falls and give up his dreams of traveling. I like that Huck Finn hated school, lied as often as not and ran away. I like that Mike Hammer wasn’t the guy I’d take home to meet the parents. C’mon, admit it: this is why Captain Jack Sparrow is so darn appealing. The guy is multi-faceted. Not completely bad – he is, after all, a pirate – and not completely a good guy even if he does row back to the ship when he could have escaped. Okay, I agree: having him look like Johnny Depp helps a lot, too.

Maybe it’s just me, but the flawed characters – whether they are fictional or the ones I meet in the real world – are the most interesting. Maybe we should ignore Mom’s advice and not always “make nice.” What about you? Do you have a favorite flawed character – or are you just one?

A VINTAGE DRAM

by Rob Lopresti

When I was a freshman in college I took an introduction to philosophy course entitled Freedom and Individuality. We read, as I recall some Plato, Nietzsche, B. F. Skinner, and a bunch of others. All heady stuff, but it was the last book that threw me for a loop. A cheap paperback, the cover showed a woman in a long gown running away from a mysterious looking house with one lit window.

“A gothic novel?” I said in amazement. “You want us to read a gothic?”

As I recall Professor Janet Lewis got red. “Forget the cover!” she snapped. “Just read the damned book!”

I did. It was great.

Have a little drink

The novel was A Dram Of Poison, by Charlotte Armstrong, and it won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1958. (An aside: occasionally the Mystery Writers of America thinks outside the box and gets one so right it makes me proud to be a member. Like this award, and the Edgar to Jorge Luis Borges for short stories, and the Best Motion Picture award to Z. But I digress.)

It is hard to categorize this book so I can’t be too hard on the designer of the book cover. (And the cover for the original hardcover … phew, what a stinker.) Is it a suspense novel? I guess. A crime novel? Well yes, but there’s only one crime and it’s committed by the good guy.

The first part of the book is about the growth of a relationship between a man and a woman. The second part is a slowly building suspense story. The last half of the book is … well, how can I describe it? It’s a sort of debate on free will conducted by strangers as they travel around a city at breakneck speed trying to prevent a needless tragedy.

A plot of poison

I’m trying not to give away too much of the story here … Ken Gibson is a nice fellow, but not a very worldly one. A lifelong bachelor at age 55, he teaches poetry at a college. One day he attends the funeral of a former colleague who had been sunk for many years in a vicious, miserable senility. There he meets the deceased’s daughter Rosemary, who has spent her entire adult life caring for the nasty old man. Now she is in her thirties and has no income, no skills, and no support system.

Ken wants to help her, but this being the 1950s and a conservative college town, he feels he can only take her in if they marry. A platonic marriage, he promises, with separate bedrooms, and she reluctantly agrees.

Slowly Rosemary’s fragile mental and phsycial health improves. Slowly their relationship deepens. And then there is an accident and Ken is badly injured.

His sister Ethel arrives to help take care of him and Ethel is a very different kettle of fish. A successful businesswoman in an era of homemakers, she is tough, worldly, and has strong opinions on everything. She is also a big fan of Freud and the idea that because of the subconscious mind there are no accidents.

So, who was responsible for Ken’s injury? How about his beautiful, much younger wife, who is healthy now and perhaps doesn’t need him anymore?

Ethel’s logic leads Ken down a road to despair and a desperate choice that might have tragic results. There is one person who might be able to prevent the bad outcome. It turns out he can’t help, but he knows of one other … and so a chain of helpful strangers develops. Each of them moves the plot forward, while taking part in destroying Ethel’s (unintentionally) cruel web of logic and inference.

My favorite line in the book is one I have used a number of times over the years. Paraphrasing here … Someone talks about the idea of Doom: an atomic bomb is certain to fall some day because human beings never change. Another character replies that if people don’t change you should be able to explain the ASPCA to a caveman.

The Armstrong Ouevre

I’ve read a few more of Charlotte Armstrong’s books, and never been particularly impressed by them. The ones I have come across read as standard women-in-jeopardy tales. But A Dram of Poison holds a special place in my heart. And thank you, Professor Lewis, for making us read the book.

It is a wonderful, uplifting, life-affirming suspense novel. And how often do you hear that phrase?

REARVIEW

by Melodie Johnson Howe

While James has fortified himself with various high tech objects for Bouchercon, I am wondering what to wear. I know I’m a writer and I shouldn’t be bothered about such things; but even Lillian Hellman worried about what she should wear when “asked” to appear at the House On Un-American Activities Committee. I think she settled on a Lily Daché hat and a Don Loper dress. I could be wrong, but I don’t have time to look it up because I’m still in my closet. As it turned out she never did have to give testimony, but she did have the outfit.

During my recent hospital episode I lost weight. The problem is I also lost my ass. (If Nora Ephron can write about her breasts and then later her neck I can write about my rear end.) I’ve searched for my ass but it’s nowhere to be found.

I think the female readers of this blog will identify with me here. It’s thrilling to lose weight. Suddenly you can get into things you could never wear before. Alas there is always a reality check: as you get older you lose weight in odd places. Hence my missing ass. I was so excited to slip on my tight jeans (times have changed since Hellman’s Daché hat and Loper dress) only to find that they hung on me in a very odd way. Tight over the stomach and baggy in the rear.

I rush for the biggest mirror and turn myself into a pretzel trying to see my tush. But I can’t. I search for my husband. I find him standing on the outside ledge of a window. He’s reading glasses are askew and he’s frantically clutching Investor Daily in his hands.

I turn my back to him. “Do I have an ass?”

“What?” His face is contorted now and he’s tearing the paper into shreds. “Do you know what’s going on in the economy?”

“Do you know we have a one story house?”

He sighs and steps off the ledge and wanders into the kitchen tossing the paper in the recycle bin. “$700,000,000,000 of taxpayer money.” He clings to the center island.

I am now wiggling what is lift of my derrière at him. “Do I have an ass?”

“Yes, you do.” He finally admits.

“But I don’t have the one I used to have. I think I have somebody else’s.”

I pull at clumps of fabric to show him. “Are my jeans too baggy?”

He eyes me suspiciously. “Are you writing something?”

“No, I’m trying to figure out what I’m, going to wear to Bouchercon.” But was I writing something?

“Melodie, they are not going to care if your jeans are baggy.”

“But that’s not the point. I don’t have an ass!”

I call my writer friend. She comes over and carefully studies me from all angles. Then pronounces: “You have to buy new jeans, Melodie. You can’t go to Bouchercon looking like that.”

My husband walks by. He is now carrying the Wall Street Journal. “Sometimes you just have to let things shake themselves out. Take the hard hits.” He disappears into his office.

“What’s he talking about?” she asks.

“The bailout that’s not a bailout that is a bailout.”

We discuss it no further. We do not agree politically. For the sake of our friendship we avoid politics. We focus on my jeans.

“Are we serious women?” I ask.

“Very,” she says. “I have to go and work out so I can get into my jeans.” She leaves.

I sit on the edge of my bed. Nothing is binding me. I stand up and lean over. I don’t see stars because the waist band is not digging into my flesh. I sit back down. I experience a new feeling. What is it? I can’t quite grasp it. Oh, God, I’m comfortable, I finally realize. Even if I don’t have my own ass.

My husband comes into the room. He is now gripping Barron’s. I stand up and wiggle my ass again. “I’m shaking things out,” I tell him.

“You’re writing a blog. Admit it.”