Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "blogs"

I wrote a guest post for A Book Blogger's Diary this week. The post, headlined "Fiction more real than journalism," explains why I turned from journalism about the Middle East to fiction, as a better way of explaining the profound things I had learned in more than a decade here in Jerusalem.

The Wanderlust and Words blog has a post about how my writing, in particular my second novel A Grave in Gaza, has channeled my traumatic experiences as a war correspondent and placed them on the page in the form of shocking moments for my characters.

Murder by the Book Mystery Bookstore blogs about my first novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem, which it calls "a thought-provoking, very different look at a community in crisis."

For those who happen to read some French, Planete Polar is a wonderful source of news and reviews about crime fiction, crime writers, and movie offshoots. It's written by Philippe Lemaire, cultural correspondent for Le Parisien. Philippe's a delightful fellow who's interviewed me a couple of times -- once in Paris, and also in Bethlehem when he came to write about my first crime novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem. One of my favorite recent posts on Planete Polar is his amusing assessment of a "slightly mad" book about the crime novels of Fred Vargas. His blog isn't restricted to French writers, of course ("Polar" is the French word for crime novels, and "Planete"...well, even a Parisian would admit that there's more to the planet than French novels) and Philippe has access to all the big writers from around the world visiting Paris for publication of their latest books. Take a look at Philippe's newest post, in which he decidedly gets under the skin of Douglas Kennedy....

My second Palestinian crime novel A Grave in Gaza (UK title: The Saladin Murders) is just now published in Holland. The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant asked me to contribute a list of my five favorite books, or at least those which've had the biggest impact on me as a writer. Here's what I wrote:

Let It Come Down – Paul Bowles

Writers look for resonance. You might say Bowles has us with his title alone, which resonates with doom even before he writes his first sentence. (It’s drawn from “MacBeth.” When the murderers come upon Banquo, he says that it looks like there’ll be rain. The murderer lifts his knife and says: “Let it come down.” Then he kills him.) But with this novel about Morocco, as in his more famous Algerian novel “The Sheltering Sky”, Bowles was even more resonant. When writing, he would often travel through North Africa. Each day, he would incorporate something into his writing that had actually happened during the previous day’s journey. Working in the Middle East, I often follow that technique, adding details from yesterday’s stroll through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem or a refugee camp in Bethlehem.

The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler

This is the novel that Chandler labored over longest and thought his best. He was right. It exposes a deep emotional side to his great detective creation Philip Marlowe. Chandler was the greatest stylist of Twentieth Century American fiction. Try this image, when a beautiful woman has just walked into a bar full of men and everyone falls silent to look at her: “It was like just after the conductor taps on his music stand and raises his arms and holds them poised.” Chandler inspires me to make every image in my book as good as that.

The King Must Die – Mary Renault

I was heading for Jordan to cover the dieing days of King Hussein a decade ago. I happened to pick up a used copy of this book -- the title seemed appropriate. But as I waited in a rainy Amman winter for the poor old monarch to die, I discovered that Renault had a capacity to describe the classical world as though she had lived through that era. Her novels are the best portrayal of homosexual love and of the great values of Greece in literature anywhere.

The Cold Six Thousand – James Ellroy

I love to see real characters from Hollywood and Washington turn up in Ellroy’s terse, hip, hardboiled poetic fiction. This story of CIA/FBI renegades in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination is perfect. I saw Ellroy read years ago in New York and he blew me away. If you can find a better opening paragraph to a chapter than this one, let me know: “Heat. Bugs. Bullshit.” Dig it.

The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene

Greene went to Mexico to research a travel book, but he showed that journalistic research can turn into literature of great spirituality with this story of a drunken priest on the run. I try to remember that as I flick through my old reporter's notebooks for new ideas for my novels. Greene's is such a powerful examination of the loss of belief that it captivates even a non-Catholic, non-believer like me. The scene where the priest steals a hunk of meat from a stray dog is astonishing. The priest starts to beat the dog: “She just had to endure, her eyes yellow and scared and malevolent shining back at him between the blows.” Like Mexico under dictatorship. Like the priest before a disapproving God.

My good pal Christopher G. Moore -- who shares with me a birthday today -- came up with a great idea for a new blog on international crime fiction. Chris, who writes a gritty, stylishly literate series of crime novels set in Bangkok, wanted to set up a blog where several authors of international crime would come together to write about their work and share ideas. The result is online as of today: International Crime Authors Reality Check. It features Chris, who lives in Bangkok; me, writing from Jerusalem; Colin Cotterill, a resident of Thailand whose delightfully acerbic detective character Dr. Siri is a Laotian coroner; and Barbara Nadel, author of the successful series of Istanbul novels about Inspector Ikmen.

The blog opens today with an amusing memoir from me called "Quick, woman. Go and get the Koran!"

I hope you'll follow the blog and see what this interesting collection of writers comes up with. (There'll also be some guest bloggers, so you never know who'll turn up.)

The blog International Noir Fiction describes my series of Omar Yussef Mysteries as creating a "comedie humaine" for the Palestinians. It's a great review of the third of my novels THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET by a reviewer who's obviously read and enjoyed the first two books as well. The review notes many of the aspects of Omar's impulsive, sensitive character which defy the detective genre. I particularly like this: "Rees give us a couple of chase sequences that are nonetheless exciting for Omar Yussef's lack of speed and agility--and are not simply amusing or "cute" as has been the case with some elderly detectives over the years of the genre. INF concludes: "Rees provides insight and also a satisfying crime story."

In his terrific book "On Writing" Stephen King notes that he once asked Amy Tan what she's NEVER asked about at public readings. "They never ask about the writing," Tan tells him. Which spurs King to write a book about exactly that.

Now controversial UK publishing guru Scott Pack goes one better. Public appearances by writers. With no readings. And no questions about...books.

The idea, as Scott explains here, is to get writers talking about their life and interests outside their books. Ultimately of course I think that'll take them back to their books. But it's a great way to refresh the rather tired world of literary events. For more on Scott's plan, look at his blog.

The new blog I've started with fellow crime writers Christopher G. Moore, Colin Cotterill and Barbara Nadel has a new post from me today. It's about why I came to write so-called genre fiction. It starts like this:

Writers have it all wrong. They think they need to learn about other writers. I studied English literature at Oxford University and I read all I could find of the sort of literary criticism that makes a novel seem like a piece of East German economic analysis. Three years later, I hadn’t learned a thing — except that it was
fine to have a room you could take a girl to without having to sneak past your mother, Guinness isn’t good for you, and the deputy bank manager at Lloyd’s on Broad Street with the goatee and the bald head didn’t just /look/ like Ming the Merciless.

Then I read Dashiell Hammett. Before he published novels, Hammett was a Pinkerton detective. What he wrote was real. I could smell the places he’d been for the Pinkertons, feel the punches he’d taken, think the way he’d had to think to outwit true criminals. I’d been reading Marxist critical theorists on Daniel Defoe and French deconstructionists whose scribblings about the “stereographic plurality of significances” were intended to tell me that whatever I thought a book was about was, indeed, what it was about–except that it wasn’t, was it. Or was it?

Read the rest on International Crime Authors Reality Check.

The excellent UK crime fiction blog It's a Crime features me in a post about the growing number of Welsh crime writers. Tartan crime (Scottish writers like Ian Rankin) has long been big and It's a Crime notes the recent wave of Irish crime writers--I'm a fan of Gene Kerrigen, Bob Burke, Declan Burke and Stuart Neville. Now she says it's time for the Welsh, noting some other up-and-comers.

Let's hear it for the Taffia!

(Perhaps I should explain that to my American readers: the English slang for a Welsh person is "Taff," because the river through Cardiff the capital is called the Taff and few English ever venture further into Wales than that. Therefore a Welsh mafia would be a Taffia...Amaze your friends with that one.)

Earlier this week I noted that I dislike writers describing a character as looking like a particular movie star. I cited a few examples from Elmore Leonard (which touched some nerves among fans of the Great Detroit Coolster) and one from Dan Brown. Now I bring you a real corker from The New Yorker.

The magazine's latest issue (at least the latest one to get through the Israeli postal system to me) contains a complacent little profile of Nora Ephron. In it, the writer quotes Ephron's sister as saying that their father "might as well have been Ben Bradlee." He then goes on to explain: "To understand this, all you really need to know about Bradlee, who was the executive editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate era, is that Jason Robards played him in 'All the President's Men,' and that it was very good casting."

Really? That's all I need to know? Brought down the President of the US--doesn't ring a bell. Looked like a moderately famous movie actor--oh, right him!

Maybe I was harsh on Elmore. I criticized him for writing (in two separate stories) that a character looked like Jack Nicholson. Not good, but at least I have a picture of Jack and the character he plays (again and again). Jason Robards? Do we all have a picture of him?

You see, I think of him as the bandit in "Once Upon a Time in the West." Was Ben Bradlee like that?

Or maybe what the New Yorker writer meant was: "Ben Bradlee was like Jason Robards when he was playing Ben Bradlee and not anyone else." Which makes about as much sense as describing him the way he did.

I've joined up with a few other crime writers to fill a single blog, International Crime Authors Reality Check, with original content. Last week Colin Cotterill wrote about his attempt to get a "vagina" into the title of one of his novels. This week, Colin has a hilarious post about his bemusing appearance at the Crime Writers Association's Daggers dinner -- at which Colin was awarded the "Dagger in the Library" for his excellent body of work. During the post, he notes that his name sounds like an adjective for the clitoris. (I was thinking he might have moved backwards from the vagina to another less specifically female spot, but there's always next week's blog for more bodily musings from the inimitable Colon Clitoris.) Tune in later this week for fellow bloggers Christopher G. Moore, Barbara Nadel, and yours truly.

Robert Rees (no relation) writes about my books in this week's edition of The Forward. Admirably Rob read all three of the books before passing judgment, and a good review it is (as well as an interview, because we spoke for some time on Rob's recent visit to Jerusalem). "Rees has created an award-winning crime series which provides a view of Palestinian society, warts and all, not previously available to a wider public," he writes.

Referring to the latest of my Palestinian crime novels THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET, he continues: "The local color — the dank, ancient casbahs, the bad mountain roads, the smell of angry, sweaty peasants — is rendered effectively. So, too, is the mortal danger. Yussef, visiting Nablus for the wedding of a policeman friend, is quickly sidetracked into a murder case, the consequences of which may prove catastrophic for the Palestinian Authority." Read the full article.

Australian blog Reactions to Reading has a new review of the audiobook of my second Palestinian novel THE SALADIN MURDERS (published in the US as A GRAVE IN GAZA). Blogger Bernadette writes of my detective Omar Yussef: "If bravery is defined as taking action in spite of the fear you feel then Omar Yussef must be the bravest hero of them all" while also being a "terrifically believable character."

I'm also delighted that while she acknowledges the book has a political context, she doesn't feel I was lecturing her.