John J. Gaynard's Blog, page 12

Gianrico Carofiglio: Voluntary or Involuntary Witness?

A couple of French friends have been lauding the Italian writer Carofiglio to me for the past couple of years. I finally got around to reading one of his legal thrillers, Involuntary Witness, and it was as good as I had been led to believe. 


The novel is about as far as you can get from the hard-boiled crime genre. Carofiglio's defense lawyer, Guido Guerrieri,  spends most of the time at the restaurant or on the beach, mulling over his failed marriage and his mis-spent youth, avoiding women while being fatally attracted to them, sometimes letting himself be led against his better judgement into what he thinks is free love, before he finds he literally has to pay for it.  What you see is a man going about his life, experiencing many incidents of everyday life which have no bearing on the crime he has been engaged to solve, but which give a rounded portrait of a forty-year old Italian man who considers he has a job not much different to any other. The sights, sounds and questions that emanate from the, outwardly, laid-back sort of life to be enjoyed by an Italian man with no money problems pepper the novel in such a way as to keep you turning the pages.




In a manner reminiscent of the old Perry Mason series on TV, most of the action takes place in the courtroom. Having done nothing much since he was first contacted to defend his client, Guido Guerrieri, Carofiglio's defense lawyer character walks into court with no evidence to counter the charges against his Senegalese client, accused of killing a child he had befriended. But, he pulls one rabbit after another out of the hat until the innocent African walks free. Everything is based on intuition, not on the painstaking procedures of forensic science. And that makes a pleasant change from all the gore and sadistic dissection to be found in many recent crime novels.




On the French website Newsstart, Valentine Patry described an interview with Carofiglio. Below is my very free translation of a few parts of it: 

"Writer, anti-mafia prosecutor and senator, Gianrico Carofiglio has an unusual background, an unusual personality and an outstanding and undeniable literary talent. Author of 12 novels and essays translated into 18 languages, he has sold over 2 million books.

Meeting with a writer of novels is more fun than you might think.

Swaggering, proud, impressive are the first impressions you get from meeting Carofiglio ... 

We see the magistrate, the politician with his immaculate white shirt and nice wristwatch. But when you see the gray sneakers he is wearing, the superstar becomes human. He is very handsome. Short hair slightly graying at the temples, tanned, svelte and smiling. He speaks to us and you soon realize that, on top of everything else, he is nice. His jokes makes you laugh.

In his clear voice, he explains that he is often asked, "why the magistrate became a writer, but it would be more worthwhile to find out why a boy who wanted to become a writer became a magistrate"

It is surely the many hats he has worn--judge, senator and writer-- that have made his works unique and so realistic. He says he has never been directly inspired by one of the real-life incidents he encountered in his career as a magistrate and an anti-mafia prosecutor. His imagination crystallizes and condenses everything, but he admits that his professional experience is an asset for solving serious legal puzzles.

It is probably the "realistic aspect" of his work that has persuaded so many film makers to translate his novels into the language of the seventh art. But far from being pale translations, these film adaptations give new life to his art and breathe new life into his career as a writer, boosting his fame still higher. Carofiglio is nothing if not surprising.  He is so engaging that it is difficult to imagine that this gentleman poet was also an anti-mafia prosecutor, and a senator before he began to write novels in the "legal-thriller" vein. Finally, you end up thinking that, although you see the shirt first, you end up thinking he bears more resemblance to his sneakers..."

The five most read posts on my blog over the past month

Below are the five links that have proved most popular since December 12th, 2011, in descending order:




An Interview with Briny Dodo, the Fishlike Belgian Brothel Owner 




Interview with Lyn LeJeune, author of ELIJAH RISING




Albert Camus: A Philosophical Life, by Michel Onfray




French Mention of Stuart Neville's Ghosts of Belfast




The "Country Music" of Algiers: Chaâbi

An Interview with Dodo the Mackerel, Belgian Brothel Owner

Some people who have read my novel The Imitation of Patsy Burke have wondered aloud whether Patsy was himself molested by a Catholic priest during his youth. I am not going to give a clear answer to that question, but I was reminded of it when reading an interview given to the French newspaper Libération, and published this morning, by Dodo la Saumure, the Belgian brothel owner who, in the past few months, has often been mentioned in the same breath as Dominique Strauss-Kahn.




Dodo's real name is Dominique Alderwereld. 'Dodo' is short for Dominique. The French words 'la saumure' translates into English as 'brine', so a good equivalent for Dodo's French moniker would be Briny Dodo, or the Briny Pimp. To understand this, one needs to know that one of the most common French names for a pimp is derived from the word for the mackerel fish: 'maquereau'. One of the best ways to preserve and prepare a mackerel is to leave it in saltwater brine until such time as you wish to taste it. Thus, we get the information from the name Dodo la Saumure, that he is a pimp, still in the game, not yet prepared to be plucked out of the sea he navigates with ease.





Buy The Imitation of Patsy Burke


Briny Dodo has been interviewed quite a few times in the French press over the past few days. This is because he is looking for investors in the Belgian brothel business he wishes to expand. Keeping a brothel is a legal activity in Belgium, where Briny Dodo exercises his trade just a few miles from the French border. He was recently freed, after spending three months of preventive detention, because of his involvement in the so-called Lille Carlton Hotel affair, in which he was accused of procuring girls for friends of DSK.




Before I go any further I will,of course say, in this blog post that DSK is innocent until proved guilty of any charges that have been, or may be, laid against him.




So, where are the possible parallels between the Irish sculptor Patsy Burke and Briny Dodo? Here are some excerpts from the Libération interview conducted by Violette Lazard (who has also included Dodo's email address in her article, should you be interested in asking him a few questions about how best to get a share of his brothel business):




The conversation began in Dodo's brothel in the Belgian town of Tournai.

"I play naive. I ask Dodo about the morality of his business. The question shocks him. So much the better, that's the effect I wanted.

'What morality? Brothels have always existed, the wife of Pericles ran one. And a woman who waits for her husband to bring the money home, isn't that also prostitution?'

So, he procures girls, and he's proud of what he does.

'I'm not a procurer of girls. I'm a brothel manager. All the girls here are free to do what they want."

Sitting in the back room of the brothel, where the paint is peeling off the walls, sits Rebecca, a beautiful black lady. She is waiting for her next client. She takes her eyes away from her computer screen for a few seconds and confirms, in a soft voice, what Dodo has just told me. 'The people who own the brothel are just there to make sure that everything is running well, from a security point of view, for example. This is a good place to work.'

It would have been difficult for her to say anything else. 

The conversation with Dodo continues very affably and then he shares a brutal secret, without giving any advance warning.

'When I was twelve years old, I was at a boarding school for poor children, and a priest gave me a blow job.' He says this as if he is putting the final nail into the coffin of any discussion about morality. 'But, don't worry about it, it was just run of the mill,' he said to me. 'It taught me a lesson.'

Dominique never told his parents about it. 'In those days, you didn't talk about things like that.'

So, is the tough-skinned pimp hiding a secret wound?

'No, he didn't even penetrate me, so it wasn't that bad. And all that has nothing to do with what I'm doing today.'

End of that part of the discussion.

The discussion is taken up again, a little later, in a small bar in the center of Tournai, where Dodo is the bar's mascot. He pays his round.

'There are 800 brothels here, why close only Dodo's down?' says Edith, one of the waitresses, as she cuts garlic sausage and white pudding before she puts it in front of us on the bar. 'He should never have gone to prison.'

When Dodo was in preventive detention, all the café's customers sent him a letter, and signed it with nicknames worthy of his own. The local doctor signed as 'The Charlatan', Roger signed as the equivalent of 'Beau Brummel', because he has no dress sense. All of the locals burst into laughter as they remember the letter. Except for one, who finds it a little more difficult to make a light joke of everything, and prefers the darker approach. He provokes Dodo by saying, 'If the priest hadn't sucked you off, you'd probably have had a normal fucked-up life, and you'd never have become a pimp.'

Dodo denies this. The other guy won't let go. 'You owe that holy man everything. If I were you, (to thank him) I'd stick a candle up his ass.'

Dodo laughs, and begins to recount the history of brothels down through the ages. A fish who knows how to avoid a fishing net of questions."

An Interview with Briny Dodo, the Fishlike Belgian Brothel Owner

Some people who have read my novel The Imitation of Patsy Burke have wondered aloud whether Patsy was himself molested by a Catholic priest during his youth. I am not going to give a clear answer to that question, but I was reminded of it when reading an interview given to the French newspaper Libération, and published this morning, by Dodo la Saumure, the Belgian brothel owner who, in the past few months, has often been mentioned in the same breath as Dominique Strauss-Kahn.




Dodo's real name is Dominique Alderwereld. 'Dodo' is short for Dominique. The French words 'la saumure' translates into English as 'brine', so a good equivalent for Dodo's French moniker would be Briny Dodo, or the Briny Pimp. To understand this, one needs to know that one of the most common French names for a pimp is derived from the word for the maquerel fish: 'maquereau'. One of the best ways to preserve and prepare a maquerel is to leave it in saltwater brine until such time as you wish to taste it. Thus, we get the information from the name Dodo la Saumure, that he is a pimp, still in the game, not yet prepared to be plucked out of the sea he navigates with ease.





Buy The Imitation of Patsy Burke


Briny Dodo has been interviewed quite a few times in the French press over the past few days. This is because he is looking for investors in the Belgian brothel business he wishes to expand. Keeping a brothel is a legal activity in Belgium, where Briny Dodo exercises his trade just a few miles from the French border. He was recently freed, after spending three months of preventive detention, because of his involvement in the so-called Lille Carlton Hotel affair, in which he was accused of procuring girls for friends of DSK.




Before I go any further I will,of course say, in this blog post that DSK is innocent until proved guilty of any charges that have been, or may be, laid against him.




So, where are the possible parallels between the Irish sculptor Patsy Burke and Briny Dodo? Here are some excerpts from the Libération interview conducted by Violette Lazard (who has also included Dodo's email address in her article, should you be interested in asking him a few questions about how best to get a share of his brothel business):




The conversation began in Dodo's brothel in the Belgian town of Tournai.

"I play naive. I ask Dodo about the morality of his business. The question shocks him. So much the better, that's the effect I wanted.

'What morality?' Brothels have always existed, the wife of Pericles ran one. And a woman who waits for her husband to bring the money home, isn't that also prostitution?'

So, he procures girls, and he's proud of what he does.

'I'm not a procurer of girls. I'm a brothel manager. All the girls here are free to do what they want."

Sitting in the back room of the brothel, where the paint is peeling off the walls, sits Rebecca, a beautiful black lady. She is waiting for her next client. She takes her eyes away from her computer screen for a few seconds and confirms, in a soft voice, what Dodo has just told me. 'The people who own the brothel are just there to make sure that everything is running well, from a security point of view, for example. This is a good place to work.'

It would have been difficult for her to say anything else. The conversation with Dodo continues very affably and then he shares a brutal secret, without giving any advance warning.

'When I was twelve years old, I was at a boarding school for poor children, and a priest gave me a blow job.' He says this as if he is putting the final nail into the coffin of any discussion about morality. 'But, don't worry about it, it was just run of the mill,' he said to me. 'It taught me a lesson.'

Dominique never told his parents about it. 'In those days, you didn't talk about things like that.'

So, is the tough-skinned pimp hiding a secret wound?

'No, he didn't even penetrate me, so it wasn't that bad. And all that has nothing to do with what I'm doing today.' End of that part of the discussion.

The discussion was taken up again, a little later, in a small bar in the center of Tournai, where Dodo is the bar's mascot. He pays his round.

'There are 800 brothels here, why close only Dodo's down?' says Edith, one of the waitresses, as she cuts garlic sausage and white pudding before she puts it in front of us on the bar. 'He should never have gone to prison.'

When Dodo was in preventive detention, all the café's customers sent him a letter, and signed it with nicknames worthy of his own. The local doctor signed as 'The Charlatan', Roger signed as the equivalent of 'Beau Brummel', because he has no dress sense. All of the locals burst into laughter as they remember the letter. Except for one, who finds it a little more difficult to make a light joke of everything, and prefers the darker approach. He provokes Dodo by saying, 'If the priest hadn't sucked you off, you'd probably have had a normal fucked-up life, and you'd never have become a pimp.'

Dodo denies this. The other guy won't let go. 'You owe that holy man everything. If I were you, (to thank him) I'd stick a candle up his ass.'

Dodo laughs, and begins to recount the history of brothels down through the ages. A fish who knows how to avoid a fishing net of questions."

French Mention of Stuart Neville's Ghosts of Belfast

There's a short mention, by Alain Léauthier, of Stuart Neville's Ghosts of Belfast in the latest edition of the French political weekly, Marianne. It's in a section titled Crime Novels for Winter (Les polars de l'hiver). It doesn't say much about Neville's book, but I'll give it a quick translation, for the benefit of this blog's readers.

What do we know about the IRA? That, like most national liberation movements, it had its traitors. The ex-Libération journalist Sorj Chalandon has written two good novels about that aspect of the movement, in which he recounted the tragic story of Denis Donaldson. But what about all the others, the blameless fighters in a fundamentally just cause? 

Published in 2009 and lauded by the Anglo-Saxon reviewers, The Ghosts of Belfast, by the Northern Irish writer Stuart Neville tells the somber side of the politico-military adventure of the Irish Republicans. The assassinations, the executions and the collateral victims. In the end, at the end of a gun, after the 1998 peace, there is an army of ghosts, twelve to be exact, whom former IRA killer Gerry Fegan cannot shake off. He can only be redeemed by the methodical assassination of his former commanders, who've now converted themselves into politicians. While he continues to wrestle with alcohol and his nightmares, they not only prosper but continue to make capital from their past struggles. We can, alas, state this: it's the same the wide world over.

Patsy Burke's remorseful kidnapper publishes a book, and invites him to the book launch

A novel is never finished; it is just abandoned at what seems a propitious point in the story. People who have read The Imitation of Patsy Burke know that one of the events that derailed the Irish sculptor was the way he was kidnapped, soon after his "Jesus" statue had been sold at auction for a record price. Although I didn't mention in the novel how long the kidnapping lasted, I can now reveal that Patsy was held for more than 60 days in total darkness, in different underground galleries around Paris.




The person who was at the head of the gang that kidnapped Patsy, Roger Allain, has not only just written a book, in French, called Light at the End of the Tunnel, but he wanted Patsy to be allowed to leave the institution now looking after him, to attend the book launch in a large bookshop on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Roger Allain said that he absolutely wanted the Irish sculptor to know the kidnapper's side of the story and, if possible, pardon him. The doctors couldn't allow Patsy into a bookshop teeming with voracious readers in search of another scandal. They did, however, agree to a short meeting between Roger Allain and Patsy Burke in the lobby of a Paris five-star hotel, near the Place de la Concorde in Paris. 




After the meeting Patsy was asked, by a journalist from the French daily Libération, how he felt about it. He replied, 'I was amazed how similar he now looks to Robert De Niro. As to how the conversation went, well, when I was the prisoner of that man and his gang, they treated me with disrespect, for example they said "tu" to me and I had to say "vous" back to them. This time it was the other way round... He felt embarrassed about using "tu" with me.'




With regard to the book itself, the audio version of which Patsy Burke had had read to him by his beautiful Tunisian nurse, he said, 'It was a comfort to me to hear him describing the way they held me in exactly the same way as I recounted it after my release. Now, I hope people will stop accusing me of organizing my own kidnapping, as they did back then, in order to hike up the price of my sculptures.'




Roger Allain was obviously concerned about getting Patsy's forgiveness, but he didn't try to gloss over the slightest detail of the way in which Patsy had been mutilated. When asked how one of Patsy's little fingers came to be guillotined off with a heavy-duty paper cutter, he explained, 'As you know, his family, his lawyers and the gallery that sold his sculptures took a lot longer to respond to our ransom demands than we'd expected. At times we even thought they'd never show the slightest sign of life after we'd made our demands. It was obviously in somebody's interests to see the back of him.  In that situation, we (the kidnappers) spent about a month in some really heavy conversations about what to do. There was no point in holding onto a kidnap victim who wasn't worth a dime. We decided to settle our argument in a game that could satisfy the poker players we all were back then: a one euro piece, we kill him; a two-euro piece we let him live.'




Roger Allain admitted that he was one of the three kidnappers, out of eight, who threw a one-euro piece into the paper cup. It was when he heard this, at the hotel meeting, that Patsy Burke said to Roger Alain, 'I forgive you, for it's obvious you didn't know the gravity of what you were doing.'




When asked by the Libération journalist why he had forgiven Roger Allain, Patsy Burke said, 'I could see that he was remorseful, that he regretted what he'd done, and he no longer has that idea he had of me back then, of a sculptor who had sold out to the wealthy backers of Britart, the same people who have tried to corrupt artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.'




Once it was decided to let Patsy Burke live, they had to decide how to continue to exert pressure on his family. A suggestion was made to chop off his little finger and send it to his wife. The kidnappers drew lots, and Roger Alain drew the short straw. He was also the person who decided to use a plain brown envelope to send the severed finger through the regular French postal services, instead of using a courrier. 




Roger Allain couldn't hide his admiration for, "This man, Patsy Burke, who has often been described as vicious and depraved. In the end, the whole gang finally acknowledged him as a man of exceptional courage who didn't deserve what we did to him. We chose the wrong target.'




Roger Allain explained, 'We got it wrong right from the beginning. We wanted to choose the head of an aircraft manufacturing firm, Serge Dassault, or the head of a luxury goods company, like Liliane Bettencourt, who was to inherit the L'Oréal company.'




The son of a bourgeois family, and a convinced Marxist at the time of the kidnapping, Allain continued, 'But we finally decided we couldn't kidnap the head of the aircraft company, because he was a Jew who'd already suffered enough by being deported to Buchenwald.'




With regard to the other potential victim, Allain said that he had been noticed by one of her guards while trailing her in Neuilly, to build up an idea of the daily patterns she kept, so that the gang could decide when it would be best to seize her in the street. He added, ironically, 'The beautiful Lili must have felt the warmth of my eyes on her buttocks. It's a pity, because with her we'd have got the money without any hassle. I suppose we just have to put it down to destiny. What turned our attention to Patsy Burke was the uproar over that statue of his, the "Jesus Statue" and the way the conservative newspapers like Le Figaro, and the Catholic extreme right papers, were beating up on him, while at the same time protecting the pedophiles Patsy Burke said he was condemning in the statue.'




That is why, that fateful morning, it was the unprotected Irish sculptor who was manhandled into the car near the apartment where he lived in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.




"I don't regret the initial idea, of kidnapping and holding underground in the dark a famous person. Patsy Burke was, we thought, a man who symbolized everything we hated: a famous sculptor who'd once had integrity, but who'd now created a piece of work just to piss off the bourgeoisie and create a scandal that would make him even more money. But, after spending 24 hours a day with him, we realized we were face to face with a man made of flesh and blood, just like you or me. It's true that we wanted to get a pile of money out of him, but the longer it went on, the guiltier I got about committing what I was beginning to see was an injustice against a man who'd hauled himself up from poverty with nothing more than the talent he had in his bare hands.'




Roger Allain also said that, in kidnapping Patsy Burke, he had in some Freudian way, been trying to exact  revenge on his father. But as the days underground piled up, he discovered a sort of brother in Patsy Burke. 'We had had similar childhoods, especially with regard to the feeling that we were alone against the crowd.  Even the snobbery in that English Grammar School he went to resembled the expensive private school that my father sent me to.'




The son of a father born between the two world wars, and who made a fortune from creating an advertizing company that worked with the right-wing press, Allain says that all he ever got from his old man was a regimented education and "so-called good manners". He confided to Patsy Burke that his mother had never loved him. When Patsy politely prodded him into describing her, Allain limited himself to saying that she was a good-looking working-class girl from Alsace who married his father because she was pregnant by his elder brother. Allain's discovery, when in his twenties, that his father was, in fact, his uncle and that his uncle was, in truth, his father, had slightly unhinged him. It was reading Karl Marx that had put him back on track.




The Libération journalist who was able to talk to both Roger Allain and Patsy Burke, is very severe with Allain.  She describes him as a person who tries to justify some of the acts in his book, by making them out to be more heroic than they were, and to flagellate himself with other, minor misdemeanors which were, in fact, of little importance. Her verdict was that Allain was never anything better than a small crook. Sent to an exclusive private school when he was eight years old, he stole his first record from a music shop in England, during a school trip. She agreed with Allain's description of himself, in the book, as, 'reckless and vicious, a well-bred little scoundrel'. He hadn't shed a single tear at the time of his mother's death, the year he graduated from high school. Faced with the growing disinterest in him shown by his father, Allain left home at 21, dropped in and out of college classes at Nanterre University, and began to burgle apartments with a group of other small crooks.




He graduated to hold-ups and even worked for a short while with Jacques Mesrine, at the end of that famous gangster's career. Until his violent death, Mesrine was France's "public enemy number 1".




'I was in it for the money,' said Allain, 'but Mesrine was in it to get his photo in the  newspaper.'




These days, Allain says of Mesrine that he was, 'a stupid bastard, capable of killing on the sidewalk a guy who had just stuck a finger up to him in a bar.' Nevertheless, when Mesrine was being tried in the Compiègne court house, Roger Allain, with an accomplice, known as "aircraft carrier", had planted arms in the toilets to help Mesrine make a successful escape that got his photo in the newspapers for the next month.




After his arrest, for the kidnapping of Patsy Burke, Roger Allain's father was so ashamed of his son that he didn't leave the house for six months.




'Like Patsy Burke,' says Roger Allain, 'my father was a man of honor, and he also hid it well. But, the difference with Patsy Burke, is that, in all the ways that count, I really did kill my father.'




When asked if he thought he had been a sort of father-figure to Roger Allain during the kidnapping ordeal, Patsy Burke said, 'I would say it was more like we were weird brothers in arms. I would compare the relationship we have today, to what you can see between people who fought in the same war. But what he forgets is that we were never on the same side. Nowadays, he's trying to make out that he was some sort of Robin Hood.'




After his release from prison, Roger Allain set up home with a university professor who had begun to correspond with him while he was in prison. They published some of the love letters they had sent each other, and split the royalties equally. The university professor is still in love with him. She said to the Libération journalist, 'One day he just disappeared. He couldn't stand the chintz curtains and chair backs and the flowery cushions in my apartment. If he'd stayed with me, he would never have done that second term in prison.'




Roger Allain's second long term in prison was for the trafficking of cocaine between Costa Rica and France. Roger Allain's modus operandi was to hide up to 15 kilos of cocaine in Chinese copies of Patsy Burke's sculptures. In spite of the fact that Patsy Burke has now forgiven Roger Allain, he said to the Libération journalist, before being taken back to the institution, that the use of Roger Allain by cheap Chinese copies of his work, whatever the purpose, meant that they would never be friends.




Sunday, January 15th, 2011

With grateful thanks to the intertextual original of Patricia Tourancheau, journalist at Libération.




Paper or Electronic versions of The Imitation of Patsy Burke can be bought at:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.fr

Smashwords

An Interview with Ed Lynskey, author of ASK THE DICE

I was first drawn to Ed Lynskey's work by THE BLUE CHEER, a piece of crime writing that features his hard-boiled, but all too human, P.I. Frank Johnson. The novel was set in the Appalachians, a part of North America I can't get enough of, and it made frequent mentions of bluegrass music, something else I can't get enough of, when I'm not listening to Opera or Algerian country music.




Since I read the final page of THE BLUE CHEER, the novel has continued to resonate. In the end, were the murders really to be attributed solely to a racist group with terrorist plans, or were the motives for killing a couple, that had dared to cross a color line, even uglier than that? 




I decided that it was worth getting to know Ed. Lynskey a little better, and that is why I invited him to do a short, sharp interview and tell us something about his favorite writers and his new novel, ASK THE DICE.

Below are my questions and Ed's replies.




What have you been able to do better in ASK THE DICE than in all your previous novels, and how did you do it? 

ASK THE DICE is my second stand alone novel I published after writing my private investigator series. So, I had to create a new cast of characters from scratch instead of relying on the same troupe that populated the PI series. I did a lot of outlining and note-taking over a week trying to flesh out each main player in the ASK THE DICE. I'm pleased with the results. 




The reviews I've seen so far also seem pleased with the results. It was interesting to see that Ed Gorman picked up on the noirish roots of the title, "a Marilyn Monroe quote to the director John Huston at the Reno craps table in Spring 1960, during the filming of The Misfits". 




In your opinion, what book, that you loved reading, or that really influenced you, has never got the fame and readers it deserves?

I've always admired Harry Crews' Southern Gothic novels, in particular the early titles from the 1960s and 1970s (THE GOSPEL SINGER, A FEAST OF SNAKES). He attracted a cult following and a literary critical reception, but he never reached a larger reading audience. I'm not at all sure why that is. I read an interview done with him a few years ago where he said he's not writing any future books. I guess he's said everything he wants to say.




Thank you for telling me about Harry Crews. He has just gone onto my reading list. On the other hand, what supposedly classic piece of writing sent you to sleep after the first few pages?

Anything written by Henry James gave me the instant nods in graduate school. On the other hand, Edith Wharton, his contemporary and friend, I love reading and even rereading.




I totally agree with you about both Henry James and Edith Wharton. Her Ethan Frome is one of my all-time favorites, but with Henry James I've never been able to get past the first ten pages. 




Who's the writer you'd like to have a few drinks with?

Since I usually don't have much to say, I'd better pick a colorful guy who tells a good story. Otherwise it'd be a rather dull affair, I'm afraid.




Sounds as if Joe Konrath could be a good candidate. What book published recently do you most want to read?

I got a Kindle for Christmas, so I've been catching up on the ebooks TBR stack I've been accumulating. Not long ago, I finished a top-shelf noir, DUST DEVILS, by South African writer Roger Smith. Les Edgerton writes a mean crime novel. Patti Abbott reminds me of the great Margaret Millar. My favorite genre, the Western, is making a spirited comeback by writers like Wayne Dundee, Heath Lowrance, Ed Grainger (aka David Cranmer). So, I'll look for their next titles as they become available.




Thanks for the recommendation about Dust Devils. I noticed a few weeks ago that Irish crime writer Rob Kitchin recommended Roger Smiths Mixed Blood very highly on his blog, The View from the Blue House. What's your preferred place for writing?
I sit in an old cafeteria chair at an even older desk. That spot seems to work the best for me even with a laptop computer. Anywhere else like in a coffeehouse or library just doesn't get it done for me.




If there are no copyright problems, what excerpt from ASK THE DICE, do you think will give readers a good idea of the book?

Sure. Here are the opening lines narrated by Tommy Mack Zane, middle-aged hit man thinking about his retirement from the bloody business. 

Chapter 1, the first scene

The alcohol fumes were singeing my nose hairs. My lip snarled. All morning had been a bust. For a diversion while seated in the waiting area, I'd tried writing a poem in my head. Only the scary needle imagery stood out as clear. Right now, I sat here, dealing with my fear.

"Are you a vet, sir?"

A bit surprised, I wagged my head. "No. Why?"

"Buzz cut. Trim build. Stoic face. Just my read, mind you."

I gave him a curt look. "Wrong read." what

"Just making conversation, Mr. Zane."

"Uh-huh. Just finish it."

"Just relax. Haste makes waste."

My back muscles banded tight as I watched my blood—a deep crimson ink—slurp out to fill the glass tube. The rubber tourniquet encircling my arm two inches above my elbow squeezed away. The hypo needle, carbon steel, pierced my plumped vein. If the hypo needle sheared off, or if he jabbed me any damn sharper, I'd treat him to a knuckle croissant.

Ed, thank you for taking the time to reply to my questions.  Good luck with ASK THE DICE. 

The "Country Music" of Algiers: Chaâbi

When I came to live in Paris, a few decades ago, my French was very rudimentary. My first impulse in the evenings was to go to the local cafés and get in some conversation. I found most of the bars either empty or very stand-offish and I gradually found my way to the Berber/Kabyle bars in places like Levallois and Clichy, where the small, sweaty, music-packed spaces heaved with young Algerian workers knocking back bottles of beer, and where the welcome was much warmer. As my French improved, we often had conversations about the similarities between Ireland's war for independence, the civil war that followed it, the troubles in the North of Ireland, the recently ended Algerian war of independence and how "freedom" often meant emigration  to the land of the old colonial power. We all agreed that the senior people who had emerged "victorious" from the wars of  independence in Ireland and Algeria had then betrayed their people's aspirations.




Since those early days, I have often had the opportunity to work in Algeria, especially in Algiers, where I fell in love not only with the sort of Arab-Andalusian music still sung by Enrico Macias in France (sadly, he doesn't have the right to set foot in Algeria), which he learned in his native Constantine, before he had to leave the city, but also with that form of music native to Algiers as Chaâbi. 




When I asked a friend from Algiers, a petroleum engineer who had worked in Texas, to tell me about the origins of Chaâbi, he told me it became popular in the 1920s, thanks to the songs of a great songwriter and musician known as El Anka. The closest equivalent he could think of was American country music, although the sounds are very different. Chaâbi songs yearn for peace and the first ones sprang from the hard grind of the daily round of the diverse peoples who used to live in the streets of Algiers, before Independence. The Jews of the Casbah were forced into exile, one way or another, but the Muslims who still live in the overcrowded apartments in the old Casbah, and the narrow alleyways of other parts of Algiers, still listen to the rythms of Chaâbi from dawn to dusk. It is said that Chaâbi helps people to forget their misery, their hunger and their thirst.




Last Tuesday evening, a Chaâbi group known as El Gusto gave a concert in the Grand Rex cinema in Paris, in what the daily newspaper, Le Monde, described as a form of reconciliation. Fifty years ago, the Algerian war of Independence, was a victory over colonialism, but it also brought about the bitter separation from the mother country of most of Algeria's Jews. This group of veteran Jewish and Muslim musicians, whose members had been educated side by side, in the music academies of pre-independence Algeria, but who hadn't seen each other for fifty years, was brought together in 2007 by Safinez Bousbia, a young Irish Algerian. (It was probably the fact that she is Irish and Algerian that kindled my interest in the story.) Safinez Bousbia has also made a film that tells how she reunited the musicians.




In all, El Gusto is made up of twenty-seven musicians. Le Monde quotes a musician from the film:

"If we scraped the lime off the walls of the Casbah in Algiers, each grain would recite one of El Anka's poems, that's how deep his poetry is incrusted in our blood."

The article ends:

"Hadj Mohamed El-Anka, who lived from 1907 to 1978, was a prolific composer and teacher, and in some cases, a colleague to the musicians who make up El Gusto today.  He was the person who put the modern cast on this music, born from the centuries long cohabitation of Jews and Muslims. It's a body of "dancing poetry", invented deep in the alleyways of the Casbah of Algiers.  Chaâbi was the music of a dissolute Algeria, where small crooks, dockers and port prostitutes lived side by side with craftsmen and hashish smokers." 

It's difficult to explain why one engages in a love affair with a people or its music, but if ever you'd like to have a chat about it there's a certain Algerian café, in the North of Paris, where I can be found most Sunday mornings.

Interview with Lyn LeJeune, author of ELIJAH RISING

About 97.5% of the messages I see on the microblogging site Twitter are instantly forgottable, but the quality of some writers' tweets makes them stand out from the crowd. Lyn Lejeune, author of Elijah Rising, (http://twitter.com/#!/beatitudes) is one such person. That is what led me to ask her to tell me more about herself and her novel.

But, before I get to the interview proper, let me begin with an excerpt from a review of Elijah Rising, posted on Historical Novel Review:

In Lyn LeJeune's Elijah Rising, the heir to a railroad fortune, Michael is an aimless soul struggling to find his path in life. In World War I America, patriotism prevails and pacifists are punished. A misfit in the academic world and rejected for military service, Michael lives off a generous allowance from his callous mother and passes time in between bouts of drinking by wandering the streets of New York City. There he meets the disadvantaged and downtrodden and feels the need to share about their suffering through his writing. 

One of his encounters is with a young, orphaned black boy named Elijah Broom. For reasons even Michael can't understand, he is compelled to learn more about Elijah's life. When he later finds out that Elijah has become a revivalist preacher, traveling through America to bring God's message to the masses, Michael decides to follow him. Their journey takes them through the dangerous territory of the Klan and further west to the dusty deserts. Elijah becomes far more than a personal interest story to Michael – he becomes the answer to everything he has sought in life. Michael, the once-tortured soul, has found a cause in Elijah, the embodiment of hope and salvation. But the charismatic Elijah is more than what he seems to be on the surface…

And here is the interview (the short, sharp format of which is freely adapted from author interviews in Le Monde's literary pages):




Hi Lyn,

Thank you for doing this interview. I'd like to begin by asking you what you've been able to do better in ELIJAH RISING than in all your previous novels, and how you managed to do it? 

I studied history in college for almost ten years and focused on the 1920's and 30's. I was able to tell the truth of the times in my fiction, including cultural and political events. ELIJAH RISING has been compared to The Great Gatsby (hubris?) 




I saw that very favorable comparison in one of the Amazon reviews for Elijah Rising. Now, here's my next question. What's the first book you remember reading ? 

I grew up in a small town in Cajun Country, Louisiana. I used to walk around by myself and always ended up at the little library. I decided to read all the books starting with the letter Z. I cannot remember that author. But I do remember reading Zane Grey's books. I wanted to be a cowboy.




In your opinion, what book, that you loved reading, or that really influenced you, has never got the fame and readers it deserves? 

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier.
Outstanding book; outstanding young writer.




On the other hand, what supposedly classic piece of writing sent you to sleep after the first few pages ?

Pride and Prejudice, really. Something wrong with me? 




Nope, nothing wrong with you. Who's the writer you'd like to have a few drinks with? 

James Lee Burke. The south lives in this writing. 




I agree with you. I think I must have read upwards of 20 James Lee Burke novels and enjoyed them all. On the other hand, is there a writer you like to read, but you wouldn't like to meet?

John Irving 




What book published recently do you most want to read ?

Massie's new biography of Catherine the Great.




I read the New York Times review of the book recently, and I too am tempted to read it. What's the most recent book you read that nearly made you miss your train, your flight or kept you up all night ?

The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber.




What's your preferred place for writing?

I have a small room with a very old computer I use only for typing. I have this statement from Hemingway on top of the computer: "I sit at the typewriter and bleed." 




What 10-15 line excerpt from ELIJAH RISING, do you think will give readers a good idea of the book?

One day we were walking down a dirt road, the air was cool and clean. Trees that had turned to many colors lined the road. It was beautiful. Looka, Mama, I squealed. God be callin' us. The wind picked up and I caught three falling leaves; a red one, a yellow one, and an orange one. I spread them out like I was holding a deck of cards. Looka, I said, turning to sister,
Deys leaves, said sister. And she wiped her eyes that had become swollen with some kind of infection. By the time we got to the factories, to New York, she was blind.
The clouds ruffled up and a cold wind blew from the north and we continued on. On the second month of our trip, when we had no more food and drank from the streams along the way, a wagon full of little black heads headed toward us and I yelled. See dera, Mama, it be a chariot of da Lord.
And you know what? It was.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Lyn,  and good luck with ELIJAH RISING.

Albert Camus: A Philosophical Life, by Michel Onfray

Michel Onfray is both a teaching and a publishing phenomenon in France. He founded the tuition-free Université Populaire de Caen--The Working Class University of Caen, in Normandy, a few years ago, with a group of like minded friends. Crowds of people travel from Paris to listen to his lectures on the Counter-History of Philosophy. He regularly has audiences of up to a thousand young and mature students. He addresses subjects such as Freud, Atheology or Georges Politzer. Onfray's official web site can be found at: Michel Onfray.




As a writer, Onfray's books sell in the tens of thousands. His Traité d'athéologie, translated into English as Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam, sold more than 100,000 copies in France alone in 2010. Some critics say that his words don't come as alive on the page as they do in the lecture hall, which would tend to bolster his reputation as a phenomenal lecturer. His literary output is prodigious. I recently read some of his lectures on Freud (full disclosure: I hate everything to do with the creed of psycho-analysis) and the way in which he demolishes the "great man" by systematically listing the hundreds of lies that "underpin" his work is impressive. Given the number of books Onfray produces, there is also the inevitable criticism that some factual errors should have been corrected, before publication.    




Onfray's latest subject is Albert Camus. His book, 'L'ordre libertaire: La vie philosophique d'Albert Camus--Libertarian Order: The Psychological Life of Albert Camus', will be in French bookstores on January 4th. Michel Onfray has stated that the book is meant to put an end to the tissue of lies about Camus, spun by Jean-Paul Sartre and his friends, and the numerous put-downs, for example that Camus is a philosopher suitable only for high-school students, was a lack-luster social democrat or a thinker for the "little white people"(read blue-collar, pied-noir colonists) during the Algerian war.




According to the French weekly Marianne, Onfray demonstrates the immensity of Albert Camus's achievement, from a social libertarian point of view. He shows Camus as an anarchist, an anti-colonialist right from the beginning and a subversive thinker. Of course, many French philosophers who still see Jean-Paul Sartre as the only path to truth won't agree with this.




From my own point of view, I have always been surprised at how Sartre tried to pass off his cultural activities in Paris, during German occupation, as a form of resistance. One of his best friends, Marguerite Duras, was on the German authorized board that decided which novels would get enough paper to be printed, and that allowed her to exercise a form of censorship. Funnily enough, she mentions very little about that period of her life in her own autobiographical writings. What Onfray shows is that Camus, who actually fought in the resistance, and came out of it a hero, lived the sort of life he preached, whereas Sartre did the opposite. Sartre freely distinguished between heroes (most of whom were of a totalitarian mindset, like himself) and scum (most of whom were of a democratic mindset). He classed himself as one of the heroes, and this has probably led to one of the gravest accussations against Sartre, that he was the philosopher whose ideas gave rise to the Cambodian genocide (any readers of this blog who wish to take me to task on this statement, please check out your facts before you make comments, which shouldn't be of the variety, 'Why, I studied Sartre and Heidegger during philosophy classes and they both seemed very nice.').




For the interview Onfray gave to Marianne, he was asked:

You demonstrate very well in your book that, for Camus, there are no  people who can be classified as heroes or scum. Therefore, one shouldn't turn him into a sort of saint. Is there anything that would lead you to distance yourself from him? 

Michel Onfray: I found nothing in Camus that could displease me. However, there were times when I couldn't agree with him. He had a sort of psychic fragility. He didn't have a thick enough skin. He spent too much time responding to personal attacks, explaining himself, justifying himself. In Camus, there was really a very profound darkness, a sense of guilt, a sort of radical pessimism that I don't share. But I can identify with the way in which he doubted whether he had enough merit to be taken so seriously. It's such a great thing to have readers, it's such a gift. At the moment, in Caen, about a thousand people regularly follow my course on Politzer. But whenever I enter the lecture hall, I still can't believe that people have come to listen.

According to the Journal du Dimanche, The "philosophical life" of Camus, as described by Onfray, follows the birth and growth of Camus's work, referring, when necessary, to relevant biographical details. Onfray doesn't make any claims to unearthing new facts about Camus's life. He refers readers to the American and French standard works on the life, written respectively by Herbert R. Lottman and Olivier Todd.