Matt Rees's Blog, page 35
August 26, 2009
My bogus bio
Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:
Since you’re reading this, you don’t care who I am. So I can be anyone I like. At least, that’s what somebody wrote here recently.
I posted on this blog a couple of weeks ago about Dashiell Hammett. I noted that, while a university literature student, I grew tired of all the post- structuralist and deconstructionist and Marxist esoterica I was studying. I picked up a copy of Hammett’s classic “The Maltese Falcon” and found myself transported into a gritty world, a world inhabited by real criminals, it seemed to me.
At the time, I was a real criminal. Only in the sense that I had shoplifted repeatedly (I stole books, including one by my university tutor) and indulged in proscribed intoxicants (including once with my university tutor). Not the kind of criminal Hammett revealed to me in his pages. Just a criminal, but not a bad guy.
In my recent post, I posited the idea that part of what made Hammett so good at writing about criminals was his career as a Pinkertons agent. For those not familiar with US law enforcement history, the Pinkertons were a private security agency whose men worked as detectives, but also did anti-union rough stuff, too.
This idea caught the attention of a fellow blogger who wrote that I was “romanticizing” Hammett. “Writers can toot their horn all they want,” he commented on this blog, “but an author’s bio is the least important — and least read –part of a novel for a reason.”
I think the “reason” may have less to do with readers’ lack of interest in an author’s bio than it has to do with the lack of information in the author’s bio. On a copy of a recent novel by Philip Roth, I learned in his bio that he exists only as a recipient of literary prizes (of which many were listed). He wasn’t born. He may not even write his books. He just collects prizes for them.
Nonetheless, if writers bios aren’t looked at (and are anyway not important), I plan to start including all the information about me which I’ve previously edited out. (In the past, as my novels are about the Middle East, I’ve included mainly just the facts that I was – unlike Philip Roth – born, and that subsequently I went to live and work in the Middle East, where much of what I’ve seen and heard makes its way into my books.)
Here’s my bogus new bio, which qualifies me to write about the Middle East, just as much as my previously available bio, according to some people (Note that only one fact listed below is correct. A free copy of my latest novel to the first person to identify which fact that is…):
Matt Beynon Rees was born in the George Michael Public Restroom on Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles. He was a milk monitor at kindergarten in Cardiff, Wales, until then-Education Minister Margaret Thatcher cut free milk from the schools budget, thus making five-year-old Rees the first of her four million unemployed. He graduated with a degree in finance from the Buddhist seminary at Mt. Baldie, where he minored in Leonard Cohen studies. He flew Tornado jets in the first Gulf War and was shot down over Iraq, trekking 400 miles across the desert to safety in Kuwait with nothing to drink but the urine of passing Arabs. He won Winter Olympic Bronze in the Darts Biathlon (cross country skiing with stops during which contestants must hit treble twenty and drink a lager). He was a ground-breaking radio ventriloquist on the BBC light entertainment program “Gottle of Geer,” until a producer saw his lips move and fired him. His first work of nonfiction “Get the Wife You Don’t Deserve” was an Esquire Book of the Year. He has been married six times, always to Mexican women below five feet in height (in homage to John Wayne, who did the same). He holds honorary degrees from the Mississippi State University School of Floral Management and from the Bob Jones University Department of Satanic Sociology. He lives in his house.
Since you’re reading this, you don’t care who I am. So I can be anyone I like. At least, that’s what somebody wrote here recently.
I posted on this blog a couple of weeks ago about Dashiell Hammett. I noted that, while a university literature student, I grew tired of all the post- structuralist and deconstructionist and Marxist esoterica I was studying. I picked up a copy of Hammett’s classic “The Maltese Falcon” and found myself transported into a gritty world, a world inhabited by real criminals, it seemed to me.
At the time, I was a real criminal. Only in the sense that I had shoplifted repeatedly (I stole books, including one by my university tutor) and indulged in proscribed intoxicants (including once with my university tutor). Not the kind of criminal Hammett revealed to me in his pages. Just a criminal, but not a bad guy.
In my recent post, I posited the idea that part of what made Hammett so good at writing about criminals was his career as a Pinkertons agent. For those not familiar with US law enforcement history, the Pinkertons were a private security agency whose men worked as detectives, but also did anti-union rough stuff, too.
This idea caught the attention of a fellow blogger who wrote that I was “romanticizing” Hammett. “Writers can toot their horn all they want,” he commented on this blog, “but an author’s bio is the least important — and least read –part of a novel for a reason.”
I think the “reason” may have less to do with readers’ lack of interest in an author’s bio than it has to do with the lack of information in the author’s bio. On a copy of a recent novel by Philip Roth, I learned in his bio that he exists only as a recipient of literary prizes (of which many were listed). He wasn’t born. He may not even write his books. He just collects prizes for them.
Nonetheless, if writers bios aren’t looked at (and are anyway not important), I plan to start including all the information about me which I’ve previously edited out. (In the past, as my novels are about the Middle East, I’ve included mainly just the facts that I was – unlike Philip Roth – born, and that subsequently I went to live and work in the Middle East, where much of what I’ve seen and heard makes its way into my books.)
Here’s my bogus new bio, which qualifies me to write about the Middle East, just as much as my previously available bio, according to some people (Note that only one fact listed below is correct. A free copy of my latest novel to the first person to identify which fact that is…):
Matt Beynon Rees was born in the George Michael Public Restroom on Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles. He was a milk monitor at kindergarten in Cardiff, Wales, until then-Education Minister Margaret Thatcher cut free milk from the schools budget, thus making five-year-old Rees the first of her four million unemployed. He graduated with a degree in finance from the Buddhist seminary at Mt. Baldie, where he minored in Leonard Cohen studies. He flew Tornado jets in the first Gulf War and was shot down over Iraq, trekking 400 miles across the desert to safety in Kuwait with nothing to drink but the urine of passing Arabs. He won Winter Olympic Bronze in the Darts Biathlon (cross country skiing with stops during which contestants must hit treble twenty and drink a lager). He was a ground-breaking radio ventriloquist on the BBC light entertainment program “Gottle of Geer,” until a producer saw his lips move and fired him. His first work of nonfiction “Get the Wife You Don’t Deserve” was an Esquire Book of the Year. He has been married six times, always to Mexican women below five feet in height (in homage to John Wayne, who did the same). He holds honorary degrees from the Mississippi State University School of Floral Management and from the Bob Jones University Department of Satanic Sociology. He lives in his house.
August 25, 2009
Ellroy Queen: Megan Abbott’s Writing Life
Megan Abbott is the female James Ellroy. When I read her Edgar-award-winning “Queenpin,” I immediately was put in mind of everyone’s favorite noirmeister. Dig it. Even more I loved “The Song is You,” in which Abbott took a real-life missing persons case from 1949 and plumbed her Hollywood characters for real debauchery and dirt like Ellroy at his best. Dr. Abbott (she has a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University) has a great new one that’s a US Independent Booksellers pick for August. As for how she does it, read on, checking out her particularly intriguing writing exercise. As someone might write: Off the record, on the Q.T., and very hush, hush.
How long did it take you to get published?
I wrote for years without finishing anything or knowing what to do with it. Once I finished a novel, it took about a year or so to get an agent and sell it. I was both stupid and lucky. Stupid because I had no idea how hard it would be, and lucky because I found an agent and an editor willing to take a chance.
Would you recommend any books on writing?
I’m sure there are good ones, but, for me, reading novels all the time is much more helpful. I once had a teacher who had us do this exercise I always remember because I use it to this day. He had us pick a favorite passage by an author and rewrite the passage by replacing every word. A noun for a noun, a verb for a verb, and so forth. I took a passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was staggering how much it forced my writing out of an old rhythm and into a new one. I did it a lot with Raymond Chandler novels once I discovered them. It breaks you out of ruts and you pick up this range of cadences
What’s a typical writing day?
I start about eight in the morning and then waste many, many hours—much time lost on thesaurus.com, on following endless research trails—I collect a lot of things: old menus from the 1920s, photos of friars’ roasts from the turn of the century, abandoned diaries. I get lost in them and it can, easily, take me four hours to produce a page, and when I do, it’s usually in a mad rush inspired by guilt for all that procrastinating.
Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
It’s a strange little tabloid tale loosely based on a famous real-life crime from the 1930s—the Winnie Ruth Judd “Trunk Murderess” case. It’s called Bury Me Deep and it follows Marion Seeley, a young woman left by her husband in Phoenix at the height of the Great Depression. Very naïve, very lonely, she falls in with two of the town’s single gals, gals with reputations: Soon enough, she’s swept up in their freewheeling lifestyle, the “thrill parties” they throw. At one of these parties, she meets and falls hard for charming Joe Lanigan, a rising town leader who proves her downfall.
How much of what you do is:
a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with?
c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time?
I am a genre lover—so much so that I like to knock them together. For Bury Me Deep, for instance, the idea was to merge a very traditional melodrama—a woman who faces this almost Edith-Wharton-style dilemma (follow society’s rules or one’s own heart) with a down-and-dirty pulp story of drugs, sin and murder. I think it’s probably true in all my novels—with the possible exception of Queenpin, which I tried to make as close as possible to classic pulp fiction. I think all genres are in many ways one genre, with different accessories. In the end, we’re all fighting social rules, society itself, or all fighting ourselves—which is kind of the same thing.
What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?
Did you ever have a sister, from Faulker’s The Sound and the Fury. In a book swollen with words, twisting and curling on themselves, pounding and thundering—it can still be gathered into in that simple line. And, when that line comes—which it does, more than once—it’s a heartbreaker.
What’s the best descriptive image in all literature?
Humbert Humbert describing Lolita’s feet, or Raymond Chandler describing almost anything.
Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing?
Daniel Woodrell.
Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing?
I guess I don’t really read for plot. In fact, many of my favorite books have rambling, meandering plots.
How much research is involved in each of your books?
For the historical ones—set in the 1930s-60s—a lot, but not in any coordinated way. For Bury Me Deep, I read a lot about TB hospitals and morphine addiction. Then, after a few months, I stop researching and start writing—it’s hardest for me to both at the same time.
Where’d you get the idea for your main character?
She’s modeled on her real-life counterpart, Winnie Ruth Judd, but Marion ends up veering pretty wildly. There was only so much I could find out about what went on in Winnie Ruth’s head, so I ended up making up the rest and soon enough Marion was all her own.
Do you have a pain from childhood that compels you to write? If not, what does?
Only boredom. I had a wonderful childhood with great, creative parents and brother, but it was old-school suburbia and I wasn’t imaginative enough to find the magic in it. I felt like I was just killing time.
What’s the best idea for marketing a book you can do yourself?
Golly, I have no idea. You tell me.
What’s your experience with being translated?
It’s fun to see the editions and see if/how they package it differently. I have no idea if those pages correspond to what I wrote, which is kind of a neat feeling.
Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before could make a living at it?
No. I work at a nonprofit four days a week and it keeps me honest and “in the world.” I have trouble being at home all day, living in my head. I think that requires a mental strength I don’t have.
How many books did you write before you were published?
No finished ones. But dozens of false starts and embarrassments.
What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?
I arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona with Vicki Hendricks, famous for her wonderful and very sexually explicit noir novels. It was over 100 degrees and we had a little time before our signing so we strolled into a nearby, nearly empty bar for a soda. Within ten minutes, a very drunk young man at the bar (it was only noon) kept talking to us and he confessed he was going to jail the following day. Then, he pulled down his pants to show us the tattoo on his bare bottom—the one he was sure was going to doom him in jail. It was a big beating heart and, of course, it said, “Mom.”
What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?
I never think any of my book ideas will lead to publication!
August 22, 2009
11 arrondissements to go: Cara Black’s Writing Life
Each of Cara Black’s titles takes her computer-security PI Aimee Leduc on the trail of a murder in a different quartier of Paris -- Montmartre, Clichy, Bastille. Aren't those names alone enough to make you want to read them? The latest is Murder in the Latin Quarter, where Aimee tries to trace a Haitian woman who turns up in her office to tell her that she’s her sister. One of the pleasures of a long, developing series like Black’s is that we’ve come to know the detective and her family backstory – radical mother and police detective father – over the course of eight previous books, giving the appearance of a putative sister an extra sting beyond the impetus it gives to the plot of Murder in the Latin Quarter. In much the same way, we’re getting a gradual underground tour of the real Paris. As Cara points out, she has 11 arrondissements (districts) to go. I hope that at that point she won't quit: Paris has a lot of suburbs.
How long did it take you to get published? Three and a half years.
Would you recommend any books on writing? Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey
What’s a typical writing day? Up early, coffee, feed the dog and hit the laptop for several hours. I take a break during the day then at four o'clock it's more coffee and back at the laptop. I re-read and revise the morning's work or often continue a scene working for as long as it takes.
Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great? Murder in the Latin Quarter takes place in September 1997 set against the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. A woman claiming to be Aimée's half sister disappears and in trying to find her Aimée discovers the body of a visiting Haitian professor at one of the Grands Ecole's surrounded by a ritual circle of salt. Her investigation leads to back door politics involving the World Bank, the IMF, human traffikers and personal insight into her own past. Murder in the Latin Quarter gave me a chance to explore and go deep into areas of the Left Bank I'd never known about before. The faded charm of the still intellectual center, the old Roman baths, the quarries under old Roman roads used and renamed today.
How much of what you do is: a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write? b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with? c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time? I'm not sure this is a strict answer but one of the reasons I love reading crime fiction stems from knowing that the framework, ie. an investigation, provides a map to follow in the story. The books I read use this framework in a different, fresh way and provide a resolution. Some form of justice is served. So that's what I aim for in my books, something we get so little of in real life. Since each of my nine books have Murder in the title, it's a bit of a given, that it's a murder investigation. Aimée works in computer security and it's a challenge for me to involve her with murder in each book and make it plausible. It helps that she's a licensed PI, has a background in criminal investigations previously, so she's got the skill set and background. She gave up criminal investigation after her father's death in a bombing during surveillance. In each book, she's on a journey - an inner one and solving the crime.
What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why? Well, one of my favorite beginning lines is: The camel died at noon. From The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett. I mean after that one sentence how can you put that book down.
What’s the best descriptive image in all literature? Something Dostoyevski said about 'don't tell me the moon is shining, show me moon glinting on a piece of broken glass.'
Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing? Alan Furst Marguerite Duras when she was alive
Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing? Phillip Kerr knocks me out.
How much research is involved in each of your books? Tons. More than you want to know. But that's what I love about writing a book set in Paris. I need to know the weather, the politics, what's on sale in the newspaper that day, the street fashion, the music, the clubs, the new Vespa model, computer technology, what's in season at the market, everything for that time, that day in Paris in 1997. So it's semi-historical in a way given that it happened more than ten years ago. But then there's the older historical research I do in the archives of that quartier, this particular district of Paris; what happened here in the 1700's, which King built this, the origin of a street name, who built this Metro station, when did this sewer line connect, when did the quarries get sealed over, accounts of life here during the German Occupation, interviews with police, private detectives, the local café owner. It's endless because I'm always finding a piece of gold, - an overheard conversation, an old newspaper article, a 'nugget' at the last minute before I head to the airport that deepens the story, adds another layer or spins in a different plot direction or becomes the seed of the next book.
Where’d you get the idea for your main character? I knew I couldn't write as a French woman -- can't even tie my scarf properly -- but I'd met a female detective in Paris who ran her own agency. Through her I met several other female detectives of all ages who gave me unique insights. Let's face it, a detective in the traditional mold is a loner, an outsider to society and that's Aimée. In a way she's half-American, half-French neither fish nor fowl but being half-French gives her a unique fashion sense. She has elements of my friend, a Parisenne who wear heels even to the Commissariat after her apartment was burgled, the woman you see on the street rushing into a cafe, a contemporary woman living in a vibrant city layered by history. Paris has twenty arrondissements -- I've got eleven more to go.
What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour? I had a stalker. He attended several book signings in San Francisco where I live. He'd sit in the front row, close his eyes, then at the q+a ask detailed questions about Paris streets and before I could answer pull out his maps and answer the question himself. He'd follow me to the parking lot talking about Paris. Asking me where I stayed and foolishly I told him the street name one time. Lo and behold, he showed up in Paris at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in the Marais the night of my signing. He asked the bookstore owners how to reach me since he'd walked up and down the street and hadn't 'seen' me and acted so weird they almost cancelled the signing. He showed up later in the bookstore with his 80 year old mother, a bag of chocolates and no questions for once! We never could figure that out.
August 21, 2009
Israel grapples with a new kind of violence
Good, old-fashioned murder catches off-guard a country always prepared for war
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
TEL BARUCH, Israel — It may surprise you to learn that many Israelis are only now realizing they live in a violent place. And they’re freaking out.
Not the terrorist violence for which Israel is something of a byword. The murderous gang beating type of violence. The dismembered women kind of violence. The homophobic hate crime sort of violence.
Earlier this month, an as-yet unknown masked gunman shot down two men at a Tel Aviv gay hangout. Two women’s bodies were last week uncovered chopped into pieces — one in a dumpster near Tel Aviv and the other in a river further north. This week, a landlady showing a potential tenant around a Jerusalem apartment was stabbed to death by the man she intended to evict.
But the biggest headlines were for the beating death of Aryeh Karp on the Tel Baruch beach, just north of Tel Aviv.
Last weekend, Karp’s daughter was harassed by a young Arab man from a town near Tel Aviv. Karp warned him off, but the youth called some drunken friends over. A group of eight Arab men and two Russian women chased Karp along the boardwalk and kicked him repeatedly in the head. He was found dead on the beach soon after.
The shock among Israelis was as much for the location of Karp’s death as it was for its violent nature. The beach, particularly to Tel Avivians, is a refuge from the bustle and general craziness of Israeli society.
Just how crazy the country has become is at the heart of the chest-beating opened up by a few weeks of violence. Israelis have long bragged to foreigners that — apart from the terrorism — Israel is a very peaceful place where typically children can wander towns without parents worrying and anyone can go anywhere at night without feeling threatened.
Israel’s police chiefs maintain that this image is correct. The crime rate, according to a police official, is at its lowest since 1996. Break-ins and car theft are both down more than 20 percent, though that could be explained in large part due to the security barrier around the West Bank. (Burglary and car theft inside Israel were popular with Palestinian criminals, who can no longer cross the network of walls and fences separating them from Israelis.)
One politician from the largest parliamentary party reckons the police are cooking the books to make themselves look more effective. Yohanan Plesner of the Kadima Party accuses the police of categorizing violent crimes under less scary names. Thus, someone robbed by a menacing mugger is entered into the police’s crime statistics as nothing more than a stolen wallet.
Certainly it’s rare to see Israeli police patrolling as cops do in U.S. cities. They always seem to be going somewhere. As for pounding the beat, the only time you’ll see an Israeli cop outside his car is when he’s checking the identity documents of an Arab.
The one time I’ve had to report a crime against me here was some years ago when a man leaned out of his car late at night on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and started smashing the side of my car with a police night-stick. I called the equivalent of 911 from the car and was asked, “Was he an Arab?”
When I responded in the negative, I was told to come to the police station and file a report. I waited two hours at the station in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound to do so. Some weeks later, I received a form letter informing me that further investigation was “not in the public interest.”
Most commentators trying to make sense of the increase in violence point to the growing complexity of Israeli society. In the case of Karp’s murder, it seems disaffected children of Russian immigrants mixed with disaffected young Arabs. Add drugs and alcohol, and you have a murder, the explanation goes.
But there’s also an unrestrained non-physical violence that’s prevalent in daily exchanges with Israelis. It’s a society in which the aggressor generally wins.
Alongside the articles and radio spots about violent crime, the media has featured frequent comments from people who were forced by threats to sign over property rights to thuggish neighbors or who were told by the police that minor crimes weren’t worth pursuing. Moving from aggression to actual violence may not be such a big step.
It isn’t only in violent crimes that Israelis feel their society’s morality slipping away. The country’s most sacrosanct institution, the army, was tainted this week, when a soldier at the main Tel Aviv military base stole the credit card number of the chief of staff and sold it to an Arab, who racked up $500 in charges. The soldier also sold the Arab a couple of assault rifles. Under interrogation, he said he wasn’t the only soldier on the base who possessed the army chief's card number
At the Tel Baruch beach this Wednesday, there was no sign of a police officer. Bathers at the beach appear to be experts at ignoring things around them. They ignore the lifeguard, who barks into his loudspeaker constantly about the risks of shifting sands and rip tides, warning swimmers that they’re too far from the designated bathing areas. They ignore the noisy planes landing at Sde Dov Airport, which has its main landing strip just across the beach’s small parking lot.
And now they are struggling to ignore a murder.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
TEL BARUCH, Israel — It may surprise you to learn that many Israelis are only now realizing they live in a violent place. And they’re freaking out.
Not the terrorist violence for which Israel is something of a byword. The murderous gang beating type of violence. The dismembered women kind of violence. The homophobic hate crime sort of violence.
Earlier this month, an as-yet unknown masked gunman shot down two men at a Tel Aviv gay hangout. Two women’s bodies were last week uncovered chopped into pieces — one in a dumpster near Tel Aviv and the other in a river further north. This week, a landlady showing a potential tenant around a Jerusalem apartment was stabbed to death by the man she intended to evict.
But the biggest headlines were for the beating death of Aryeh Karp on the Tel Baruch beach, just north of Tel Aviv.
Last weekend, Karp’s daughter was harassed by a young Arab man from a town near Tel Aviv. Karp warned him off, but the youth called some drunken friends over. A group of eight Arab men and two Russian women chased Karp along the boardwalk and kicked him repeatedly in the head. He was found dead on the beach soon after.
The shock among Israelis was as much for the location of Karp’s death as it was for its violent nature. The beach, particularly to Tel Avivians, is a refuge from the bustle and general craziness of Israeli society.
Just how crazy the country has become is at the heart of the chest-beating opened up by a few weeks of violence. Israelis have long bragged to foreigners that — apart from the terrorism — Israel is a very peaceful place where typically children can wander towns without parents worrying and anyone can go anywhere at night without feeling threatened.
Israel’s police chiefs maintain that this image is correct. The crime rate, according to a police official, is at its lowest since 1996. Break-ins and car theft are both down more than 20 percent, though that could be explained in large part due to the security barrier around the West Bank. (Burglary and car theft inside Israel were popular with Palestinian criminals, who can no longer cross the network of walls and fences separating them from Israelis.)
One politician from the largest parliamentary party reckons the police are cooking the books to make themselves look more effective. Yohanan Plesner of the Kadima Party accuses the police of categorizing violent crimes under less scary names. Thus, someone robbed by a menacing mugger is entered into the police’s crime statistics as nothing more than a stolen wallet.
Certainly it’s rare to see Israeli police patrolling as cops do in U.S. cities. They always seem to be going somewhere. As for pounding the beat, the only time you’ll see an Israeli cop outside his car is when he’s checking the identity documents of an Arab.
The one time I’ve had to report a crime against me here was some years ago when a man leaned out of his car late at night on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and started smashing the side of my car with a police night-stick. I called the equivalent of 911 from the car and was asked, “Was he an Arab?”
When I responded in the negative, I was told to come to the police station and file a report. I waited two hours at the station in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound to do so. Some weeks later, I received a form letter informing me that further investigation was “not in the public interest.”
Most commentators trying to make sense of the increase in violence point to the growing complexity of Israeli society. In the case of Karp’s murder, it seems disaffected children of Russian immigrants mixed with disaffected young Arabs. Add drugs and alcohol, and you have a murder, the explanation goes.
But there’s also an unrestrained non-physical violence that’s prevalent in daily exchanges with Israelis. It’s a society in which the aggressor generally wins.
Alongside the articles and radio spots about violent crime, the media has featured frequent comments from people who were forced by threats to sign over property rights to thuggish neighbors or who were told by the police that minor crimes weren’t worth pursuing. Moving from aggression to actual violence may not be such a big step.
It isn’t only in violent crimes that Israelis feel their society’s morality slipping away. The country’s most sacrosanct institution, the army, was tainted this week, when a soldier at the main Tel Aviv military base stole the credit card number of the chief of staff and sold it to an Arab, who racked up $500 in charges. The soldier also sold the Arab a couple of assault rifles. Under interrogation, he said he wasn’t the only soldier on the base who possessed the army chief's card number
At the Tel Baruch beach this Wednesday, there was no sign of a police officer. Bathers at the beach appear to be experts at ignoring things around them. They ignore the lifeguard, who barks into his loudspeaker constantly about the risks of shifting sands and rip tides, warning swimmers that they’re too far from the designated bathing areas. They ignore the noisy planes landing at Sde Dov Airport, which has its main landing strip just across the beach’s small parking lot.
And now they are struggling to ignore a murder.
August 20, 2009
My latest culture clash
Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:
The Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family is a beautiful sandstone building on the corner where the Via Dolorosa turns briefly onto the main alley of the Muslim Quarter’s souq. Buzz at the main gate, climb up two flights of enclosed steps, and you’re in a palm-shaded garden fronting a broad, four-story façade. Nearly 150 years old, it was built for Catholic pilgrims and for much of the second half of the last century was an insanitary hospital. Now returned to its original Austrian owners, it’s a hotel for church groups visiting the historic sites of Jerusalem.
From its roof, there’s a panoramic view of the Old City. It’s for this that I labored up the front steps with my friend, videographer David Blumenfeld, and his numerous camera bags, lights and reflector shields, last month. We’d already filmed a promo video for my next novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN in my favorite seedy Old City café, where I shone with sweat, swallowed cardamom-flavored coffee and sucked on a foul nargila, until I looked sufficiently like an inveterate marijuana-user coming down. Now it was time for a second video.
I approached the front desk of the Hospice in the large marble entrance hall. A blonde man in his twenties greeted me: “Grüss Gott.” I’m a lover of things Austrian, so I had a good feeling already.
“Grüss Gott. We’re making a short video for my website. Can we film on the roof?”
“It’s not allowed, unless you have permission.” Not unfriendly. Just stating the rules.
But I’ve lived in the Middle East long enough to know that there ARE no rules. “Don’t worry. It’s really nothing. It’s just for my website. To tell people about my book.”
“What is the book?”
The truth: It’s about a Palestinian teacher who goes to visit his son in New York and discovers a headless body in his son’s bed. No, I’d better not tell him that. It doesn’t sound like something he’d want a pilgrim hostel associated with. How about this? “It’s about Palestinians and how they live their lives.”
A bit more of this and the Austrian was thinking hard. “Ok, but just for ten minutes.”
“Of course, thank you. That’s very kind of you. Ten minutes, of course.” In the Middle East, one of the things that really gets me down is that putting one over on someone else isn’t seen as a bad thing to do. If you can get away with it, then good for you. Naturally when I get the opportunity to do this, I have a feeling of payback for all the times I’ve been deliberately misled by the locals. With that warm sensation, I ascended in the Hospice’s rickety elevator.
Up on the roof, the afternoon sunshine was too bright to film. It was so harsh I’d have been squinting into the camera like Clint Eastwood. So David and I descended to the Hospice’s garden café. For a mere 100 shekels ($30) we had a slice each of strudel (an uncommon dish in Jerusalem, where even Israelis who arrived as immigrants from Austria tend to eat Middle Eastern style), some soda and coffee.
Suitably refreshed we returned to the roof and soldiered on, despite the insanely bright sunshine.
Despite the occasional loud Israeli on a cellphone and the Korean tourists who stopped taking photos of the Dome of the Rock so they could photograph me, I managed to read most of the first chapter of THE FOURTH ASSASSIN without a pause.
Then, just before I’d finished, from the corner of my eye I spy the blonde fellow from reception striding toward me.
“Sir, you have to stop now. This has been more than 10 minutes,” he said.
“We’ve only been working a few minutes. We were down in the café most of the time. We had strudel.”
He twisted his face as though his finger had just gone through the toilet paper. “And I should believe you?”
“Yes, why would I lie? Go and ask the people in the coffee shop.”
I feel for this Austrian. After all, Israelis and Palestinians are able to lie with absolutely no compunction. It’s one of the first things you learn when you live here a while. I could see that this poor fellow had been at the front desk of the Hospice for a sufficient time to train him to recognize a lie, but not long enough to give him the graceful Arab ability to maneuver around someone else’s untruths without humiliating them. This fellow had only two options: let me get away with it, or kick me out.
“So five more minutes and then you’re out,” he said.
Here’s where my own cultural training came in. The over-emotional Welshman in me wanted to say: Listen, butty, I paid 100 shekels for some stiff strudel in your café, so you can bloody well calm down. In any case what do you think I’m filming up here? It’s just my face, some domed buildings in the background, and a lot of sunshine. What’re you protecting? It’s not a military installation. I’m buggered if I’m going to be hurried by you.
But I also know that the Middle Eastern way is to move from bald-faced lieing to apparent humility and submission, smug in the knowledge that you’ve got what you want. So I let him think he was having his way.
Twenty minutes later, when David and I passed the reception desk on our way out, I stopped to wave my thanks to the Austrian. Never leave anyone with a nasty taste in their mouth. Arabs taught me that. The kisses on the cheeks they bestow after a dispute really do defuse all the tension.
He ignored me. A Palestinian would never have done that.
Here’s the video David and I made.
The Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family is a beautiful sandstone building on the corner where the Via Dolorosa turns briefly onto the main alley of the Muslim Quarter’s souq. Buzz at the main gate, climb up two flights of enclosed steps, and you’re in a palm-shaded garden fronting a broad, four-story façade. Nearly 150 years old, it was built for Catholic pilgrims and for much of the second half of the last century was an insanitary hospital. Now returned to its original Austrian owners, it’s a hotel for church groups visiting the historic sites of Jerusalem.
From its roof, there’s a panoramic view of the Old City. It’s for this that I labored up the front steps with my friend, videographer David Blumenfeld, and his numerous camera bags, lights and reflector shields, last month. We’d already filmed a promo video for my next novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN in my favorite seedy Old City café, where I shone with sweat, swallowed cardamom-flavored coffee and sucked on a foul nargila, until I looked sufficiently like an inveterate marijuana-user coming down. Now it was time for a second video.
I approached the front desk of the Hospice in the large marble entrance hall. A blonde man in his twenties greeted me: “Grüss Gott.” I’m a lover of things Austrian, so I had a good feeling already.
“Grüss Gott. We’re making a short video for my website. Can we film on the roof?”
“It’s not allowed, unless you have permission.” Not unfriendly. Just stating the rules.
But I’ve lived in the Middle East long enough to know that there ARE no rules. “Don’t worry. It’s really nothing. It’s just for my website. To tell people about my book.”
“What is the book?”
The truth: It’s about a Palestinian teacher who goes to visit his son in New York and discovers a headless body in his son’s bed. No, I’d better not tell him that. It doesn’t sound like something he’d want a pilgrim hostel associated with. How about this? “It’s about Palestinians and how they live their lives.”
A bit more of this and the Austrian was thinking hard. “Ok, but just for ten minutes.”
“Of course, thank you. That’s very kind of you. Ten minutes, of course.” In the Middle East, one of the things that really gets me down is that putting one over on someone else isn’t seen as a bad thing to do. If you can get away with it, then good for you. Naturally when I get the opportunity to do this, I have a feeling of payback for all the times I’ve been deliberately misled by the locals. With that warm sensation, I ascended in the Hospice’s rickety elevator.
Up on the roof, the afternoon sunshine was too bright to film. It was so harsh I’d have been squinting into the camera like Clint Eastwood. So David and I descended to the Hospice’s garden café. For a mere 100 shekels ($30) we had a slice each of strudel (an uncommon dish in Jerusalem, where even Israelis who arrived as immigrants from Austria tend to eat Middle Eastern style), some soda and coffee.
Suitably refreshed we returned to the roof and soldiered on, despite the insanely bright sunshine.
Despite the occasional loud Israeli on a cellphone and the Korean tourists who stopped taking photos of the Dome of the Rock so they could photograph me, I managed to read most of the first chapter of THE FOURTH ASSASSIN without a pause.
Then, just before I’d finished, from the corner of my eye I spy the blonde fellow from reception striding toward me.
“Sir, you have to stop now. This has been more than 10 minutes,” he said.
“We’ve only been working a few minutes. We were down in the café most of the time. We had strudel.”
He twisted his face as though his finger had just gone through the toilet paper. “And I should believe you?”
“Yes, why would I lie? Go and ask the people in the coffee shop.”
I feel for this Austrian. After all, Israelis and Palestinians are able to lie with absolutely no compunction. It’s one of the first things you learn when you live here a while. I could see that this poor fellow had been at the front desk of the Hospice for a sufficient time to train him to recognize a lie, but not long enough to give him the graceful Arab ability to maneuver around someone else’s untruths without humiliating them. This fellow had only two options: let me get away with it, or kick me out.
“So five more minutes and then you’re out,” he said.
Here’s where my own cultural training came in. The over-emotional Welshman in me wanted to say: Listen, butty, I paid 100 shekels for some stiff strudel in your café, so you can bloody well calm down. In any case what do you think I’m filming up here? It’s just my face, some domed buildings in the background, and a lot of sunshine. What’re you protecting? It’s not a military installation. I’m buggered if I’m going to be hurried by you.
But I also know that the Middle Eastern way is to move from bald-faced lieing to apparent humility and submission, smug in the knowledge that you’ve got what you want. So I let him think he was having his way.
Twenty minutes later, when David and I passed the reception desk on our way out, I stopped to wave my thanks to the Austrian. Never leave anyone with a nasty taste in their mouth. Arabs taught me that. The kisses on the cheeks they bestow after a dispute really do defuse all the tension.
He ignored me. A Palestinian would never have done that.
Here’s the video David and I made.
August 19, 2009
Book bloggers love Omar Yussef
Since the first of my three Palestinian crime novels was published in early 2007, I haven't been short of terrific reviews in the mainstream media. After all, The New York Times said I'd written "an astonishing debut novel" and every outlet from The Sunday Telegraph to The Sowetan has raved about the books. But I'm always particularly pleased when I get good write-ups on individual book blogs. It makes me see the series is building a grass-roots momentum. So two recent reviews were very pleasing to me. On Joe Barone's Book Blog he writes a review of my latest THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET: "To me, the regional and religious parts--the food, the geography, the buildings, the sacred objects, and the people--were most interesting. I would have read the book for those things alone. I will read more Matt Rees." Then British blogger A Book Every Six Days writes of THE BETHLEHEM MURDERS (the first in my series, which has the title THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM in the US): "I always like books which teach one about places as well as entertaining one. This one also had the added advantage of taking the reader through some of the moral dilemmas facing all parties in modern Palestine."
August 16, 2009
Video: Reading from THE FOURTH ASSASSIN
The next in my series of Palestinian crime novels THE FOURTH ASSASSIN will be out early next year. Meanwhile I've made a couple of videos to introduce the book. In this one, I went up onto the roof of the Austrian Hospice in Jerusalem's Old City to read from Chapter One of the next book.
August 15, 2009
West Bank settlers and memories of Sharon
The current edition of Details has a terrific investigative piece about the youthful extreme segment of the Israeli settler movement. It's by my chum Matt McAllester who spent five years based in Jerusalem as a correspondent and returned earlier this year to probe deep into this largely inaccessible (to foreign journalists, at least) fringe of Israeli society -- a fringe that nonetheless holds the whole region to ransom, to some extent. It's a change from Matt's other recent offering -- a beautiful, tragic memoir of life with his alcoholic, depressive mother called Bittersweet.
It was doubly lovely to see Matt earlier when he came to report this settler story, because Details sent him with Gillian Laub, a photographer whose on a different artistic plain from most shooters working in the mainstream media. On the Details website, you won't be able to see many of her photos, which they've used mainly for the piece in the printed magazine. I have good memories of working with her. This is a shot she took of me interviewing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shortly before the stroke which ended his tenure:
Security at the Israeli PM's home is, as you might imagine, strict. It took us over an hour to get through the check, because of the amount of equipment Gillian travels with -- lights, light-stands, batteries for the lights, various cameras, reflectors, and I seem to remember a minigenerator, too. It's worth it, though, because the effect she's produced here is reminiscent of the darkness surrounding the action of a Caravaggio painting.
It's strange to see the photo now. When this interview took place, Sharon was under attack from the kind of extreme settlers featured in the Details piece. That's because he'd just pulled Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip. He told me his plan was to do the same thing in the West Bank, difficult though it might be. Then he had his stroke, and his replacement wasn't strong enough to continue that path. The result: both Israelis and Palestinians appear to be waiting quietly for the next big outbreak of violence. Perhaps the shadow around the edges of this shot wasn't only a measure of Gillian Laub's artistry. Though we didn't know it, despite all the lights and reflector shields set up around the room, the darkness was closing in.
It was doubly lovely to see Matt earlier when he came to report this settler story, because Details sent him with Gillian Laub, a photographer whose on a different artistic plain from most shooters working in the mainstream media. On the Details website, you won't be able to see many of her photos, which they've used mainly for the piece in the printed magazine. I have good memories of working with her. This is a shot she took of me interviewing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shortly before the stroke which ended his tenure:
Security at the Israeli PM's home is, as you might imagine, strict. It took us over an hour to get through the check, because of the amount of equipment Gillian travels with -- lights, light-stands, batteries for the lights, various cameras, reflectors, and I seem to remember a minigenerator, too. It's worth it, though, because the effect she's produced here is reminiscent of the darkness surrounding the action of a Caravaggio painting.
It's strange to see the photo now. When this interview took place, Sharon was under attack from the kind of extreme settlers featured in the Details piece. That's because he'd just pulled Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip. He told me his plan was to do the same thing in the West Bank, difficult though it might be. Then he had his stroke, and his replacement wasn't strong enough to continue that path. The result: both Israelis and Palestinians appear to be waiting quietly for the next big outbreak of violence. Perhaps the shadow around the edges of this shot wasn't only a measure of Gillian Laub's artistry. Though we didn't know it, despite all the lights and reflector shields set up around the room, the darkness was closing in.
August 14, 2009
UK cover for THE FOURTH ASSASSIN
It's always a thrill for me to receive the covers of my forthcoming novels from my UK publisher Atlantic Books. They have a series feel in that there's a continuity to the design. Each one seems to get better. Here's the cover of THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, which will be published next February. I received it from my delightful editor in London Sarah Norman just this week.
In THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, Omar Yussef leaves his regular haunts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He travels to New York for a UN conference, he's eager to visit his youngest son, Ala, who lives in Bay Ridge, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Palestinian community. He arrives at Ala's apartment to find the door ajar and a headless body in one of the beds. He's initially terrified that the dead man is his son, but soon Ala arrives and identifies the body as that of one of his roommates. He's convinced that his other roommate is the killer. But when the cops show up, Ala refuses to give an alibi and is arrested. Desperate to prove his son's innocence, Omar Yussef investigates. The murderer has left clues that refer to the Assassins, a medieval Shiite sect. When they were teenagers, Ala and his roommates had a club by that name. What's the connection? As Omar Yussef delves deeper, he uncovers a deadly international conspiracy.
On the subject of covers: My first Palestinian crime novel is just out in Indonesia (the second in the series A GRAVE IN GAZA was published there earlier this year). My wonderful editor at Dioma in Malang, Herman Kosasih, sent me copies of THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM with, frankly, one of my favorite covers produced anywhere in the world for any of my books.
In THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, Omar Yussef leaves his regular haunts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He travels to New York for a UN conference, he's eager to visit his youngest son, Ala, who lives in Bay Ridge, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Palestinian community. He arrives at Ala's apartment to find the door ajar and a headless body in one of the beds. He's initially terrified that the dead man is his son, but soon Ala arrives and identifies the body as that of one of his roommates. He's convinced that his other roommate is the killer. But when the cops show up, Ala refuses to give an alibi and is arrested. Desperate to prove his son's innocence, Omar Yussef investigates. The murderer has left clues that refer to the Assassins, a medieval Shiite sect. When they were teenagers, Ala and his roommates had a club by that name. What's the connection? As Omar Yussef delves deeper, he uncovers a deadly international conspiracy.
On the subject of covers: My first Palestinian crime novel is just out in Indonesia (the second in the series A GRAVE IN GAZA was published there earlier this year). My wonderful editor at Dioma in Malang, Herman Kosasih, sent me copies of THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM with, frankly, one of my favorite covers produced anywhere in the world for any of my books.
Berlin Noir on NPR
Last year, NPR correspondent Eric Westervelt toured Nablus in the West Bank with me, talking about my third Palestinian crime novel THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET as we wandered through the ancient casbah. Sadly for the many of us in Jerusalem who enjoyed his dry wit, Westervelt has left the Middle East for a new posting in Berlin. But we can still listen to his radio pieces, which he prepares with an ear for colorful sound that's truly distinctive. He hasn't quit the world of crime fiction, either. This week, he features Philip Kerr's excellent series about a German detective in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s, and an intriguing piece it is.
