Two I'll Miss

Two more authors we lost in 2013 that meant something to me.

Elmore Leonard (1925-2013)

I discovered his books when I was just out of college, broke, living with my parents, and working at a crappy magazine company. I picked up a paperback of Glitz, his breakout bestseller, and it was a revelation. I had never “heard” characters talk this way. They seemed familiar, yet wholly original. I would later read an article by Gregg Sutter, Leonard’s researcher, whose job it was to track down and interview people like the ones Leonard wanted to feature in his next book. Leonard insisted that Sutter type up interview transcripts word for word so Leonard could ape the speaking style of his subjects. That’s one aspect the year-end tributes to Leonard rarely mentioned: the almost journalistic, nonfiction reportage that went into his thrillers. Looking back, I realize that Leonard was the first author who taught me the meaning of third-person limited voice. I can’t believe I graduated as an English/journalism major, took a slew of creative writing classes in college, and didn’t know this terminology. In j-school we just said we were “writing from inside the subject’s head or POV.” I loved a lot of Leonard’s books, though I never did get around to reading them all. I was sad to hear of his passing. 

Barbara Mertz (1927-2013)

She wrote mysteries under a number of pseudonyms, the most famous being Elizabeth Peters, but I first discovered Mertz’s nonfiction writing when I was researching an aspect of ancient Egypt for a book I did this year. Professionally she was an Egyptologist, and she wrote with casual confidence of scientific findings in such a way that you felt as if you were on an archaeological dig with a fascinating, elderly aunt of yours. I picked up a number of nonfiction titles about ancient Egypt in the course of my research, but none of them made those long-dead citizens of the Nile come to life as Mertz did. I’m glad I discovered her books. I don’t know that I could have written those few critical chapters of my character’s backstory without the vision of that world which she brought to life for me. Oddly, I remember thinking, “Geez, this writer’s really good. Who is she?” I looked her up online, and checked out her website. A few weeks later I learned that she had died.

Advent Ghosts 2013

Today I’m participating in the 100-word #adventghosts2013 flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. Here’s my piece. Links to all of this year’s stories are here.

Winter in Amsterdam

Peerenboom’s eyes opened to find his partner looming over his deathbed. “Oh, Jan! My sons want to change my will. They say our business is corrupted by weird doings.”

“I loved you as a father, Albers! Why shouldn’t I inherit?”

“That pact was made fifty years ago. I’ve grown old…but you! You look as young as ever. How—?”

“I got sloppy,” said the other Dutchman. 

Skin pale as Venetian milk glass, he grasped his crony’s hand.

“Sleep, friend, sleep.”

“So cold,” Peerenboom thrashed. “So cold!”

“Ja, like the grave.”

So ended the partnership of Peerenboom & deWinter, purveyors of ice.

Copyright 2013 Joseph D’Agnese

Amsterdam image by @jordanpulmano, via Unsplash.

Congratulations, Susan Kushner Resnick!

Congratulations, Kush!

I just learned this morning that my friend Susan Kushner Resnick's book, You Saved Me, Too, hit the New York Times Best-seller list for nonfiction ebooks. It’s freaking awesome.

The book tells the true story of Resnick’s relationship with a Holocaust survivor whom she befriends, becoming his caregiver and sole champion.

I interviewed Resnick on the blog when the book came out last fall. You can read that interview here.

It’s wonderful news, and I’m very proud of her! Way to go, Kush.

Why I Love "From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler"

E.L. Konigsburg (1930-2013)

I’ve been meaning to write something about the authors we lost this year who’ve meant something to me. Before the year winds up, I thought I’d better get that done.

This picture shows the cover of one of my favorite books from childhood: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. This is the actual book. I’ve kept it all these years. I was saddened to hear that that author, E.L. Konigsburg, died earlier this year, in April, at age 83. The funny thing is, I’ve never read any other books by her except this one. Mixed-Up Files was enough to carry with me all these years. Only recently have I realized the debt my writing owes to this book.

The story of the book doesn’t sound terribly remarkable. Feeling unappreciated in her white-bread Connecticut household, a young girl named Claudia decides to run away from home. She knows herself well enough to know that she requires money and comfort to pull off this caper. So she enlists the help of her brother Jamie, a master card cheat, who has the princely sum of $24 to his name. The two run away to New York City and move into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By day, they educate themselves by tagging along with school groups. By night, they swipe pocket change out of the fountain and sleep in Marie Antoinette’s bed.

While living in their magnificent digs, Claudia becomes obsessed with nailing down the provenance of a mysterious statue of an angel, which the museum has recently acquired. Rumors identify the statue as the work of Michelangelo, but the experts beg to differ. Claudia and Jamie spend the remainder of their money to travel to the home of the statue’s last known owner of record, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who just might know the truth. Frankweiler offers the children a challenge: The truth is hidden somewhere inside her Mixed-Up Files. If they are clever enough, they can find the answer. The children accept, and what they discover in their search makes me want to cry forty years later.

I like two things about this book. It just took me until adulthood to figure them out.

One is that the book is supposedly written in the first person by Frankweiler herself, who doesn’t appear until the last quarter of the tale. Despite the fact that she won’t be present for most of the book, she tells us early on that since she’s interviewed the children extensively, she feels qualified to present this unbiased account. This narrative framework seems dodgy, but I’m currently using it with a book I’m writing. It seems to be working.

I think you should read Mixed-Up Files if you haven’t already, so I won’t give any spoilers. Suffice to say that the children solve the mystery, and Frankweiler—who by now you’ve realized is a proxy for Konigsburg herself—manages to save one last secret for the book’s final pages.

The second reason the book charmed me is that it’s remarkably wise. The author understands that all children—young and old—want to feel special, and solving a mystery is one of the best ways to arrive at that specialness.

Here’s the quote that sells it. Frankweiler, in a conversation with Jamie, says:

Claudia doesn’t want ad­ven­ture. She likes baths and feeling comfortable too much for that kind of thing. Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside, where it counts.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely true. Konigsburg, throughout her long career, became known for spouting similarly profound gems in her writing. I sometimes like reading quotes people have pulled from her books. She was that good. Here’s another:

Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.

When I was still working at Scholastic, one of my office mates was lucky enough to interview Konigsburg about one of her new books. Like me, my friend loved Mixed-Up Files and so she asked one too many questions about that book. Konigsburg bristled at this, saying Mixed-Up Files was one of her first books, it was old, and puh-leeze, she was trying to promote the new book.

These days I know in my heart how she must have felt. But Mixed-Up Files won the Newbery Award in 1967 and has touched millions of readers since. E.L. Konigsburg wrote a lot of great books, and I’m sure that in time I’ll read them all. But if I never do, all I need is this one.

The Voynich Manuscript: A soundtrack

The Voynich Manuscript: A soundtrack

Earlier this year, HarperOne published Blind Spot: Why We Fail to See the Solution Right in Front of Us, a book about I co-authored with Gordon Rugg, a British scientist who works in the field of human error. For lack of a better term, Rugg is an expert on human expertise, particularly what happens when those experts screw up.

I have planned a couple of posts with Rugg that I think you’ll enjoy. The first was about an event that occurred during the Second Punic Wars. This one’s about the sort of music a scientist listens to when he’s immersed in his work. The only time I ever visited Rugg’s office in Keele, England, I noticed tons of music CDs on his desk. This prompted me to ask what music, if any, does he listen to  when he does science. (Above, some images of the Voynich Manuscript, which plays a role in the book, and a shot of Rugg working with quill and ink to replicate low-tech technologies that might have been used to create the book.)

Dr. Rugg?

* * *

Music for Doing Science:

Research is a roller coaster — the high of a promising discovery, and the low that you get when your beautiful theory is killed by an ugly fact. Some of my music is good for handling those extremes.

When I hit a high, a good way of keeping my feet on the ground is listening to It’s hard to be humble by Mac Davis. It’s about an incredibly handsome, successful, intelligent, wonderful man trying his best to be humble in spite of his amazing wonderfulness. Very amusing, and a good grounding experience. 

For some reason, there are a lot more tracks in my collection that are good for dealing with the lows. For immediate gung-ho motivation, it’s hard to beat the Cantonese version of YMCA by George Lam. For sustained gung-ho motivation, there’s the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, on the grounds that if massed bagpipes can’t motivate you nothing can. I favour their album Live in Canada – the Megantic Outlaw. The only downside is that it’s a bit antisocial, even on headphones; it takes a lot to confine bagpipe music.

When you’re grappling with a research problem, or writing an article, concentration is essential. A lot of my collection is rich, intricate music, either instrumental, or in a language that I don’t speak, so I can blot out the outside world without distraction. I have a fair amount of desert blues music – Tamikrest, Tinariwen, Toumast, and compilations – and of Warsaw Village Band albums, plus Philip Glass and Lisa Gerrard. 

For the sort of work I do, it’s important to keep thinking differently. That’s a recurrent theme in the music I listen to; bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Miranda Sex Garden and Fever Ray. The “concentration” music also fits into this category. 

It’s always a joy to discover a new band or a new type of music; one of my projects involves developing better ways of finding music that will really hit the spot.

Playlist for the Voynich Manuscript:

I always think of the story as entering history with [Queen Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, mathematician, and all-around genius] John Dee, [conman] Edward Kelley, and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph; before that, there’s no record of the book. So, in terms of music, I’d go for a selection mirroring the events in the records.

First, calm, ordered lute music, for the world that Dee was living in when he met Kelley. I have Paul O’Dette’s album of lute music by Kapsberger – that’s a little post-Elizabethan, but it captures the mood well.

Then, music by the Warsaw Village Band, for the alien-ness of Europe to Dee’s family when they set out to visit Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor.

[Later, during a bizarre scrying session, Kelley claims to hear voice of an angel suggest that he and Dee wife-swap.] In particular, [I’d suggest] Woman in Hell from their Uprooting album, for what Dee’s wife would have felt, and Grey Horse, from the same album, for Kelley’s feelings for Dee’s wife; that’s one of the most sultry songs ever. 

After that, an abrupt change to blues and jazz when the manuscript re-appears, shifting gradually through to songs of the Second World War, when the American military codebreakers were trying and failing to crack the manuscript. 

To end, Siouxsie and the Banshees, particularly Juju, for when I was tackling the manuscript, blotting out distractions with their music.

Indies First: The Freaking Upshot

Indies First: The Freaking Upshot

The freaking upshot is that just because Joe D’Agnese worked in your bookstore on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that doesn’t mean his presence resulted in the sale of actual books.

Denise and I enjoyed ourselves immensely participating in the Indies First event over Thanksgiving weekend, which I described briefly here. I met some local authors whom I hadn’t met before, like children’s book author Alan Gratz and Terry Roberts, whose work of historical fiction greatly impressed the booksellers at our local shop.

Early on, I spent some time behind the gift wrap station, where I wrapped exactly one gift. Then, later, feeling that I HAD to hand-sell the shit out of some books, I wandered the aisles of the store, foisting myself and my expertise on people. In a matter of seconds I discovered:

1. I don’t do well speaking to the public.

2. I have no expertise that would allow me to intelligently sell the vast majority of books. I can hold my own in fiction, children’s, and some genre categories, but don’t asking me what book you should get if you’re planning to can tomatoes or build a chicken coop.

3. People in bookstores want to be left alone. I don’t blame them. I hate when salespeople come up to me in stores, too.

In the end, I spent a good deal of time talking to the booksellers, to friends who happened to be shopping that day, and to the authors I happened to meet. I bought a bunch of books for my nieces and nephews, so it was a profitable day on the Christmas to-do list front.

But I don’t think many retailers will be clamoring for my services anytime soon, and they’d be wise not to. I will say that the bookstore, Malaprop’s, was excited to be participating in the Indies First event. Next year they hope to be organized early enough to persuade our city’s biggest-name authors—Ron Rash, Sara Gruen, Elizabeth Kostova, Charles Frazier—to participate. A lot of authors said they wanted to participate but had made out-of-town-plans for the holiday weekend. The store plans to hit everyone on its list with a save-the-date email early in the New Year.

As for Denise’s Black Friday signing in Oak Ridge, it went incredibly well. Half of the store’s stock of her title were sold by the time we arrived, and people returned to the store after shopping elsewhere to get their books signed. According to Bookscan, this region of the country is in the Top 10 for sales of her book, which should surprise no one.