David Linzee's Blog, page 2
April 1, 2016
Sherlock's snarky side
SPOILER Alert! If you haven't read these classic stories, depart this blog now and do so.
I first read Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I was 12, the perfect age to be introduced to Holmes. I've always felt that this story collection represents the best of Holmes. Conan Doyle never matched the freshness, ingenuity, and subversive wit of these early stories. (Nor did his imitators.)
Subversive wit? Yes. It's a sign of how well the stories work is that we readers tend to identify the real author with the fictitious narrator, Conan Doyle with solid, square Dr. Watson. But the author had a more complicated view of society. His detective stories, in surprising the reader, reveal a fondness for satirical inversion. The high and mighty are brought low, while the lowly get a boost.
Take the first story in the Adventures, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Conan Doyle was quick to pick up on what would become a troublesome issue for the private eye genre. The police are at least supposed to be serving the cause of justice. But the private detective does a job for a client. Society being what it is, he's likely to end up serving the rich, against the poor.
Holmes' client is a king, no less. The target is a woman with whom the king had an affair. Having had sex outside of marriage, she is, by the standards of the time, an "adventuress," whose motives are assumed to be mercenary, even malicious. She is in fact a heroine to match Holmes' mettle, and the steps by which he changes sides, ending up pleased that he has been defeated by her and failed his client, show Conan Doyle's artistry. Few detective stories are so full of twists and so emotionally satisfying at the end.
"The Man with the Twisted Lip" is a story about the city and the suburbs. Its rhythm is that of the commuter: starting at Watson's home in western London, travelling to the East End, then going out to a suburban villa, finally returning to the city. At the start, Watson is enjoying the coziness of his hearthside, but at his wife's behest reluctantly undertakes an errand to a den of iniquity. There he is lucky enough to meet Holmes, and happily defers a return to wife and home in favor of an adventure.
Conan Doyle is here subverting the suburban myth, which was still decades from its high point in '50s America: wife and kids enjoy the safe and healthy countryside, while the noble husband journeys into the ugly and wicked city to earn the family's bread. It's a self-serving male myth, and Conan Doyle suggests that the truth is, the man can't wait to get into the city, because that's where the action and opportunities are to be found. Watson's adventure serves as the overture, and the main plot--about a respectable commuter who turns out to be making a fortune as a repulsive beggar--drives the point home.
Not all of the Holmes stories are social satires--but the best of them, I think are both surprising and subversive.
I first read Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I was 12, the perfect age to be introduced to Holmes. I've always felt that this story collection represents the best of Holmes. Conan Doyle never matched the freshness, ingenuity, and subversive wit of these early stories. (Nor did his imitators.)
Subversive wit? Yes. It's a sign of how well the stories work is that we readers tend to identify the real author with the fictitious narrator, Conan Doyle with solid, square Dr. Watson. But the author had a more complicated view of society. His detective stories, in surprising the reader, reveal a fondness for satirical inversion. The high and mighty are brought low, while the lowly get a boost.
Take the first story in the Adventures, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Conan Doyle was quick to pick up on what would become a troublesome issue for the private eye genre. The police are at least supposed to be serving the cause of justice. But the private detective does a job for a client. Society being what it is, he's likely to end up serving the rich, against the poor.
Holmes' client is a king, no less. The target is a woman with whom the king had an affair. Having had sex outside of marriage, she is, by the standards of the time, an "adventuress," whose motives are assumed to be mercenary, even malicious. She is in fact a heroine to match Holmes' mettle, and the steps by which he changes sides, ending up pleased that he has been defeated by her and failed his client, show Conan Doyle's artistry. Few detective stories are so full of twists and so emotionally satisfying at the end.
"The Man with the Twisted Lip" is a story about the city and the suburbs. Its rhythm is that of the commuter: starting at Watson's home in western London, travelling to the East End, then going out to a suburban villa, finally returning to the city. At the start, Watson is enjoying the coziness of his hearthside, but at his wife's behest reluctantly undertakes an errand to a den of iniquity. There he is lucky enough to meet Holmes, and happily defers a return to wife and home in favor of an adventure.
Conan Doyle is here subverting the suburban myth, which was still decades from its high point in '50s America: wife and kids enjoy the safe and healthy countryside, while the noble husband journeys into the ugly and wicked city to earn the family's bread. It's a self-serving male myth, and Conan Doyle suggests that the truth is, the man can't wait to get into the city, because that's where the action and opportunities are to be found. Watson's adventure serves as the overture, and the main plot--about a respectable commuter who turns out to be making a fortune as a repulsive beggar--drives the point home.
Not all of the Holmes stories are social satires--but the best of them, I think are both surprising and subversive.
March 23, 2016
Me & My Walking Desk
As I write this, I am walking. Sometimes I drink coffee too, though that's pushing the multi-tasking envelope. My walking desk is equipped with two cup holders. I've never used both. I have been writing at this desk for a year and a half now.
So what is a walking desk? A treadmill, with a platform for your computer.
The first time I heard of the walking desk trend, from Susan Orlean in The New Yorker, it struck me as pretty radical, challenging our traditional division of labor. When we work our brains, we rest our bodies. Flaubert said, "A writer can only work seated." (Of course, he said it in French, and it sounded even more authoritative.) On the other hand, Hemingway banged away at his typewriter standing up.
The problem with sitting is that it's too restful. The latest medical research says that in a chair your metabolism is almost as slow as if you were in a coma. Even if you run five miles at dawn, spending the rest of your day sitting down will undo all the good the exercise did, and you won't lose weight.
I was reluctant to add sitting to the list of pleasures medical killjoys have spoiled for us...until personal experience confirmed their research.
I returned from vacation to find I'd lost weight. More than five pounds. Surprising, considering I'd been enjoying the local cuisine and wine, and missing my usual three times a week exercise routine. The reason for the loss, I decided, was that I'd been on my feet almost all day, strolling the town and visiting museums and sights. Though I'd been walking slowly or standing, keeping out of a chair was enough to bring my weight down.
There are precedents to show that you don't have to sit at a desk to get work done. Winston Churchill and Admiral Nimitz both stood at their desks, which not only helped them keep alert but discouraged visitors from lingering, so they could get back to work, winning World War II in the Atlantic and Pacific theatres respectively.
Even more relevant to me is C.S. Forester, who used to mentally compose his Horatio Hornblower novels while taking long walks around the English countryside. He would complete the book in his head. Then he'd sit at his desk and quickly type it out.
I can do the walking and typing at the same time, though not very well. I can touch type, but I make a lot of mistakes. Especially when I'm shuffling along at 1 mph. Fortunately, we have spell check these days, so repair doesn't take too long. I do all my writing at the desk, except when I'm having a very hard time with a passage. It has long been my habit to switch to longhand at such moments. And my walking desk just won't permit cursive writing. It's not set up for it.
I also read at the desk. I can even go faster than when I'm writing, though I've never touched my machine's top speed of 4 mph.
The big question: have I lost weight? Yes. I'm running about ten pounds lighter than I did before the desk. Some changes in diet and exercise routine have contributed, but it's mostly the desk.
So what is a walking desk? A treadmill, with a platform for your computer.
The first time I heard of the walking desk trend, from Susan Orlean in The New Yorker, it struck me as pretty radical, challenging our traditional division of labor. When we work our brains, we rest our bodies. Flaubert said, "A writer can only work seated." (Of course, he said it in French, and it sounded even more authoritative.) On the other hand, Hemingway banged away at his typewriter standing up.
The problem with sitting is that it's too restful. The latest medical research says that in a chair your metabolism is almost as slow as if you were in a coma. Even if you run five miles at dawn, spending the rest of your day sitting down will undo all the good the exercise did, and you won't lose weight.
I was reluctant to add sitting to the list of pleasures medical killjoys have spoiled for us...until personal experience confirmed their research.
I returned from vacation to find I'd lost weight. More than five pounds. Surprising, considering I'd been enjoying the local cuisine and wine, and missing my usual three times a week exercise routine. The reason for the loss, I decided, was that I'd been on my feet almost all day, strolling the town and visiting museums and sights. Though I'd been walking slowly or standing, keeping out of a chair was enough to bring my weight down.
There are precedents to show that you don't have to sit at a desk to get work done. Winston Churchill and Admiral Nimitz both stood at their desks, which not only helped them keep alert but discouraged visitors from lingering, so they could get back to work, winning World War II in the Atlantic and Pacific theatres respectively.
Even more relevant to me is C.S. Forester, who used to mentally compose his Horatio Hornblower novels while taking long walks around the English countryside. He would complete the book in his head. Then he'd sit at his desk and quickly type it out.
I can do the walking and typing at the same time, though not very well. I can touch type, but I make a lot of mistakes. Especially when I'm shuffling along at 1 mph. Fortunately, we have spell check these days, so repair doesn't take too long. I do all my writing at the desk, except when I'm having a very hard time with a passage. It has long been my habit to switch to longhand at such moments. And my walking desk just won't permit cursive writing. It's not set up for it.
I also read at the desk. I can even go faster than when I'm writing, though I've never touched my machine's top speed of 4 mph.
The big question: have I lost weight? Yes. I'm running about ten pounds lighter than I did before the desk. Some changes in diet and exercise routine have contributed, but it's mostly the desk.
March 19, 2016
Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writers--baloney!
The late great Elmore Leonard left us his Ten Rules for Writing. They have been widely quoted, which is to be expected. Leonard was one of the most successful American crime writers of the last several decades, and if he laid down the rules for writing, beginners and lesser writers hoping to improve should follow his rules, right?
Wrong. Let's take a hard look at these rules.
Rule Number One is, Never open a book with weather. Sounds good. Meteorological scene-setting is tedious, and "It was a dark and stormy night" is one of the most ridiculed first lines ever. But one of the best-known and most admired openers is, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." So George Orwell broke Leonard's rule, and produced 1984, a book that's not just a classic but an enduring bestseller.
Rule Two: Avoid prologues. Does "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again" ring any bells? Yes, it's the first line of the prologue to Rebecca, a crime novel that has sold better and longer than any of Leonard's.
Rule Three: Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue. "'What's keeping Newt?' Augustus asked," writes Larry McMurtry on p. 10 of Lonesome Dove. On p. 12 he writes, "'That old man can barely cook,' Pea Eye remarked."
Rule Four: Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said.' "She said severely, 'You're lucky,'" writes Ian Fleming on p. 21 of Thunderball.
Rule Five: Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. Alistair MacLean used four just on p. 7 of The Guns of Navarone
Rule Six: Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose'. Tennessee Williams titled a play Suddenly Last Summer. NBC correspondent Richard Engel titled a book And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East.
Rule Seven: Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn entirely in regional dialect, patois.
Rule Eight: Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. "A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet eight inches in height," writes Arthur Conan Doyle, beginning half a page of description of a character in "A Scandal in Bohemia.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"
Rule Nine: Don't go into great detail describing places and things. In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," Conan Doyle devotes several pages to describing a hat. First Watson describes it and misses everything important, then Holmes describes it and deduces a complete biography of its owner. Such passages are some of the most admired in crime fiction--more admired than anything Leonard has written.
Rule Ten: Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip. Millions of readers have adored Anna Karenina--and many of them have skipped the chapters in which Levin sets down his theory and practice of successful farming.
So if authors with more critical kudos and book sales than Leonard--we're talking Tolstoy now--break Leonard's rules, what good are they?
Okay. You think I'm being very obtuse, failing to see that Leonard isn't really laying down the rules for all writers. It's just his attention-getting way of pointing out and ridiculing things other writers do that he doesn't like. His piece is funny and forceful. He's a great novelist, and I've only been pretending to diss him to make a point.
Here's the point. Beginning writers can be over-awed by a master like Leonard. They may believe he's saying, imitate me--and you may enjoy a bit of my success.
What he's really saying here is the opposite. Don't imitate other writers. Find out what works for you and do it. Leonard was brilliant at dialogue, and he was able to find ways to write novels that consisted almost entirely of dialogue. It worked for him. It may not work for you.
Wrong. Let's take a hard look at these rules.
Rule Number One is, Never open a book with weather. Sounds good. Meteorological scene-setting is tedious, and "It was a dark and stormy night" is one of the most ridiculed first lines ever. But one of the best-known and most admired openers is, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." So George Orwell broke Leonard's rule, and produced 1984, a book that's not just a classic but an enduring bestseller.
Rule Two: Avoid prologues. Does "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again" ring any bells? Yes, it's the first line of the prologue to Rebecca, a crime novel that has sold better and longer than any of Leonard's.
Rule Three: Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue. "'What's keeping Newt?' Augustus asked," writes Larry McMurtry on p. 10 of Lonesome Dove. On p. 12 he writes, "'That old man can barely cook,' Pea Eye remarked."
Rule Four: Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said.' "She said severely, 'You're lucky,'" writes Ian Fleming on p. 21 of Thunderball.
Rule Five: Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. Alistair MacLean used four just on p. 7 of The Guns of Navarone
Rule Six: Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose'. Tennessee Williams titled a play Suddenly Last Summer. NBC correspondent Richard Engel titled a book And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East.
Rule Seven: Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn entirely in regional dialect, patois.
Rule Eight: Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. "A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet eight inches in height," writes Arthur Conan Doyle, beginning half a page of description of a character in "A Scandal in Bohemia.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"
Rule Nine: Don't go into great detail describing places and things. In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," Conan Doyle devotes several pages to describing a hat. First Watson describes it and misses everything important, then Holmes describes it and deduces a complete biography of its owner. Such passages are some of the most admired in crime fiction--more admired than anything Leonard has written.
Rule Ten: Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip. Millions of readers have adored Anna Karenina--and many of them have skipped the chapters in which Levin sets down his theory and practice of successful farming.
So if authors with more critical kudos and book sales than Leonard--we're talking Tolstoy now--break Leonard's rules, what good are they?
Okay. You think I'm being very obtuse, failing to see that Leonard isn't really laying down the rules for all writers. It's just his attention-getting way of pointing out and ridiculing things other writers do that he doesn't like. His piece is funny and forceful. He's a great novelist, and I've only been pretending to diss him to make a point.
Here's the point. Beginning writers can be over-awed by a master like Leonard. They may believe he's saying, imitate me--and you may enjoy a bit of my success.
What he's really saying here is the opposite. Don't imitate other writers. Find out what works for you and do it. Leonard was brilliant at dialogue, and he was able to find ways to write novels that consisted almost entirely of dialogue. It worked for him. It may not work for you.
