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Midnight’s Children is a rich and fascinating book. Rushdie channels dreamy visions of Kashmir and Mumbai, but his real masterpiece is the cast of characters — mostly the narrator’s family. In a variety of magical realist encounters, Rushdie manages not to let that fantasy unravel the dysfunctional, tragic and sometimes touching human dramas surrounding his narrator.

The narrator is one of the Midnight’s Children, a child born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence. These thousand babes grow to earn supernatural powers. The narrator can read thoughts, which accounts for much of his storytelling, and he assembles the thousand children into a kind of telepathic congress. He’s not alone — his “twin” has supernatural knees. Yes, knees, between which he can crush and kill.

The twin is actually a family friend, but there’s a critical twist. An English nursemaid switches the two boys at birth, and the narrator himself is born a bastard of a renegade Englishman and his servant Indian mother. But, because of the switch, he’s raised instead in a wealthy family of unusual characters. Meanwhile, the other boy grows in the poor family and becomes a violent killer then war hero, all hinted at a distance through the narrator’s tales.

That narrator is an untrustworthy fellow. He is — or claims to be — the catalyst of so many of the affairs and deaths and dramas surrounding him. The narrator often refuses to admit his responsibility, or to downplay his involvement. The effects are often tragic.

What his story crafts amid the web of magical realism and shady retelling is a strange and sometimes beautiful menagerie of tales that stab at the heart of India in the modern world. It’s not a subject I know much about, but Rushdie brings alive India of the 1950s and 1960s in personal detail, from the toothpaste brands to the wars in Kashmir. Mumbai in particular percolates with color and colorful characters.

It’s a challenging book, dense in its sometimes feverish prose and thick with layers of filtered tales. The book trails off into oblivion as modern India — and it’s pickled curries — grow beyond the reach of the narrator’s arms. He falls apart, literally, and the reader realizes there’s one thing he didn’t lie about: “To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”

Midnight’s Children: A-

Tags: Review, Salman Rushdie

In my experience there are two kinds of writer’s block.

The first kind of writer’s block is the dreaded blank slate. It’s that intimidating phase of creation where the entire universe of possibility is open before you, and you can’t write one shred of it because you don’t know where to even begin, perhaps even what to write at all.

I don’t often lack for ideas. But, even with some broad-storke notions of what to write, I still have to zero in on something concrete, something compelling.

The second kind of writer’s block is getting stuck in the middle of a story. You’ve got characters in some situation, and you may even have a general idea where you want them to be later in the story. But, as a writer you hit that wall and you’re not sure how to move them into the next step in the story. This kind of block has its own challenges and frustrations as a writer. But, at least  you know you’ve gotten somewhere.

Right now, I’m working on a short story and I’ve hit that second writer’s block. It’s a turning point in the story. I even know where I want the characters to be. But, I can’t yet get them there.

Some writers have great advice about overcoming these problems. Some even publish about the topic. My advice is recognize a couple important things as a writer.

First, it doesn’t much matter if you’re a literary genius or a best seller. Even if you are, you aren’t going to write or sell nothing. Accept living in your own skin. Accept your own ideas as intrinsically worthy to the most important person in your life — you.

Second, don’t try too hard to look outside yourself for solutions. Take a break. Go live. Read and watch other media. Read. Do what you do to rejuvenate. Those things will get your brain working again. Don’t worry if you feel like you’re “stealing ideas” by reading other material. If you’re really into writing, your brain can’t help itself. It will think up ideas in your own way. That is creation.

Third, if you have the option, let someone read what you’ve written so far. Some people don’t like to do this. I’m mixed on it myself. But often, another reader will see exactly the corner you’ve painted yourself into. And, often, they’ll say something obvious that you can’t see, like “Why in the world would this guy say that?” Answer that question, and the dam’s likely to break. You may have to ask questions, and that’s ok. The notion that we are alone in writing our work, and that others don’t contribute to the creation is pretty foolish.

Now, if I can just get myself out of that corner I’ve painted myself into…

Tags: writer's block, writing

I’ve had sitting on my shelf for a couple years now an unread copy of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Much more recently, when Gentlemen of the Road caught my eye as another prospect, I was sold the minute I opened to the dedication. It said “To Michael Moorcock.” Moorcock’s a favorite author of mine since my high school days.

In an echo of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales, Chabon casts two very different sword-swinging wise-crackers. Both are Jews from disparate backgrounds. Amram is a hulking African who wields a Varangian axe and a command of languages far and wide (he’s served the emperor of Byzantium). His counterpart is Zelikman, a lanky Frank physician with a gloomly disposition. Both are wildly clever and ably skilled. Chabon makes both endearing, but Zelikman usually steals the scenes with his obnoxious hat and anti-hero antics.

Chabon writes one hell of an adventure tale. Each chapter is a fun twist and a healthy dose of cliff-hanging. The tale is almost effortless in its tidyness, yet somehow manages not to be predictable. After swindling some townsfolk, the pair get caught up escorting a prince who is not everything he appears to be, and yet is more. By the end of the  tale, they’ve jaunted about the foothills of the Caucasus, allied themselves with elephants against Rus invaders, fought — and then recruited — Muslim knights, and ushered in a coup.

The banter is fun, the action exciting, and Chabon sneaks beneath it all some commentary on Jewishness (and Islam) quite relevant to today. His prose in the book is baroque and obscure, deliberately so. It’s a nod, I think, to the idiosyncracies of many admirable pulp adventure writers. It’s at once a joke and tribute, and it also manages to keep the text’s voice lively and smart. It works.

Wonderfully, the book includes a brief afterword cum apologia by Chabon explaining his forays into the lands of adventure writing. He more famously treads in, as he calls it, late-century naturalism a la Wonder Boys. He also explains his only slightly tongue-in-cheek working title for the book, “Jews with Swords.” The afterword is well worth a read for anyone on either side of that absurd divide between serious fiction and everything else.

Gentlemen of the Road: A-

If you’re looking for books on writing, look no further than the one-two punch of The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner and What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. Oh, and don’t let that subtitle fool you on Gardner’s. It’s the best text there is for any writer. Thing beginning writer maybe, rather than young writer.

Tags: Fiction, John Gardner, writing

This week, I’m the Mystery Reader at my daughter’s 3rd grade class. So, I decided to write a story to read. It’s a children’s story about a sassy girl pirate. It may be a touch too immature for the sassy 3rd grader I know. She’ll get over it. 

Captain Molly McScowl and Her Birthday Adventure
By Matt Snyder 

Not too far away, across the seas there was a fearsome scourge of a pirate named Molly McScowl. She sailed the pirate ship Terrible under the black flag of the skull and bones. She captained a crew of thirty-three pirate boys. She struck fear into the hearts of good ship captains across the southern seas. And most importantly of all, Molly McScowl was in the third grade.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Fiction, Pirates, Stories

I discovered Arturo Pérez-Reverte earlier this year with his endearing Spanish adventure novel, Captain Alatriste. My discovery started a chain that ended most recently with The Club Dumas. I now gather that Pérez-Reverte is a wildly successful author in Spain and elsewhere, and more recently finding success in the U.S. Of course, American editions are translations of his work in Spanish. I have no idea how capable they are as translations, but I do enjoy his books so far.

The Club Dumas is a mystery thriller with shades of the noir detective. In this case, protagonist Lucas Corso is a book detective. He’s a mercenary hired by rich — and usually corrupt — book collectors to buy, sell, trade and find rare books. I found Corso fascinating. (My wife, who read the book with me, found him deplorable. Ce la guerre!) He’s a weasel of a man, exceptionally clever, and lonely. He occupies his time drinking gin and romanticizing his Napoleonic ancestor. Oh yes, and books — very expensive, very rare books.

The story begins with a book collector’s suspicious suicide. Corso gets hired to verify the dead man’s possession – a rare manuscript written by Alexandre Dumas. It’s a chapter from The Three Musketeers. Subsequently, he’s hired by an obsessive collector of the occult to discover which of three extant editions of The Book of Nine Doors is a forgery.

Thus begins a twin strand of narrative where Corso races to find eccentric book collectors and examine their occult tomes while he’s pursued by a modern-day Milady and Rochefort (Dumas’ famous villains) as a strange conspiracy re-enacts The Three Musketeers with him at the center. The eccentrics wind up dead, and Corso demonstrates his cleverness.

Along the way he finds the girl. The alluring woman gives Corso fictional names and careless excuses. She’s slightly infuriating to read. Corso asks her questions I wanted to know, and she’s just aloof. There are many hints that she’s supernatural – a guardian angel maybe, or even the Devil. Through her shining, green-eyed seduction we learn that Corso once loved and lost. It explains his emptiness and callousness. And, in the end, explains why the green-eyed girl is so fond of him. She is, it turns out, rather diabolical.

Throughout the book, Corso works to unravel the pictorial mystery within The Book of Nine Doors. The book contains nine engravings, and the novel actually shows the images. This teases out one of the most captivating mysteries of the book. I desperately wanted Corso to unravel this occult puzzle. And, he does. But, the result is disappointing.

Pérez-Reverte gives us a lesson in narrative; I’m still not sure I needed it. At times, the characters actually imagine that their absurd situations are so dreadful that perhaps they’re merely fictional characters in a book. Of course, they are. The author’s teasinge. This itself, I don’t mind. He’s not the first to dabble in post-modernism. But, Pérez-Reverte has another, grander trick up his sleeve. To spoil it for readers, his trick is a lesson in how we perceive narrative. Those twin strands of narrative are ruses. They’re not intertwined. Corso – and therefore readers like me – have impressed upon these twin strands interconnectivity.

And what is the result? Corso, for all his cleverness, learns that he’s lost his soul long ago. He’s Faustian. And, in the end, he knows it. He’s smitten with the girl, and she’s pulling the strings behind it all, wrecking selfish interests for her own amusement. Let’s just say the devils in the details.

Like I said, I’m not sure I needed the lesson in constructing narrative. Fortunately, I the lesson entertained the hell out of me. It had all the wonderful trappings of that Umberto Eco style occult mystery (Eco himself actually has a cameo in the story!) in a tidy detective fiction package. It’s a good read with some frayed ends.

The Club Dumas: B-

Tags: Arturo Perez-Reverte, Review

I joined up with Intrepid Media — a long-standing independent writers and community site. My co-worker, Tracey Kelley, is an active member, and she introduced me. I just posted my first column there, a well-meaning rant about these crazy kids today: Generation Y not.

Tags: column, Intrepid Media

No doubt like every other aspiring wordsmith, I read Stephen King’s On Writing. I’ve never been much of a King reader — just a few short stories and The Gunslinger. Still, I appreciate his work and success.

His memoirs on writing amused me. They might even have inspired. It’s not much of a book to review (Oh hell, ok: B+). But, it is full of great lines. Here are some of the best:

When you’re six, most of your Bingo balls are still floating around in the draw-tank.

If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all. I’m not editorializingm, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remidn yoruself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

You go on the third level, of course, and begin to write real fiction. Why shouldn’t you? Why should you fear? Carpenters don’t build monsters, after all; they build houses, stores and banks. They build some of wood a plank at a time and some of brick a brick at a time. You will build a paragraph at a time, constructing these of your vocabulary and your knowledge of grammar and basic style. As long as you stay level-on-the-level and shave even every door, you can build whatever you like — whole mansions, if you have the energy.

But you need the room, you need the door, and you need the determination to shut the door. You need a concrete goal, as well.

Tags: On Writing, Stephen King

Last time I covered A Gentleman’s Game by Greg Rucka, an espionage thriller with a solid graphic novel pedigree from Rucka’s Queen & Country.

I also tore through Private Wars, the next novel in the Tara Chace series.

Here, Tara Chace is out of the service with a baby. This is serious business given the thriller ending of the previous book. Meanwhile, Paul Crocker, her chain-smoking, hard ass boss deals with bureaucratic hell. His own boss is out to get him, and Tara’s replacement sends an operation into chaos. These first several chapters make for the most interesting reading in this more uneven book. In particular, Crocker’s at his most compelling here as Crocker plays politics and juggles his own home life some. He tends to be the best character in the series.

The rest of the thriller is set in Uzbekistan, where a dying dictator’s daughter and son squabble over who will assume control of the country. The daughter is a Machiavellian nymphomaniac whose lover is a secret police sadist. Turns out, this guy’s the real villain. So, the story pits Chace against him as she tries to smuggle the brother out of the country and maybe figure out where some rocket launchers are along the way.

The story is about Tara’s comeback to special operations and Paul Crocker’s desperation to avoid a lousy demotion. Again, Rucka is willing to do awful things to his protagonist. The effect is a build-up to Tara’s torture and near rape at the hands of the secret police antagonist. It’s tense, but it’s a no-brainer figure out Rucka won’t go that far. No rape is imminent, and her rescue is minutes away.

This willingness to torture Tara (figuratively and literally) is what makes Rucka’s writing so great. Here, it almost works as well as the previous novel. But, not quite. The plot becomes to uneven, particuarly at the fast-forward moment following Tara’s rescue. Rucka actually interrupts the narrative chapters with a psychological profile about Chace, who has post-traumatic stress disorder (who wouldn’t!) and a bloody obvious need for revenge. While a bit of interesting verisimilitude, the suspense suffers.

Of course, Tara enacts her revenge, and regains her hard edge as Britain’s finest “Minder” (Rucka’s slang for special agent). Best of all, she sneaks in one surprise decision at the close of the story that turns out to be the clearest sign that Tara Chace really is back, motherhood and all.

Private Wars: B-

Tags: Greg Rucka, Review, Tara Chace

The Internet is changing Des Moines, and it’s about time. I’ve started using Twitter in the past few weeks. It took me a while to appreciate it beyond some freakish obsessive compulsion to share what we’re all having for lunch. It turns out, it’s a very interesting peep hole into a growing scene of digerati in Des Moines.

I now follow a bunch of strangers who are really excited about Internet technology and social media. And, that alone is pretty interesting to me. It’s part of my profession, and how I spend far too much leisure time. But, along the way, I get glimpses of far more interesting things. What people are like. What they’re doing. What they’re passionate about.

None of that’s particularly new. What’s new is that they’re right here in flyover country trying to get together with like-minded souls to make the most of their home town. I find it hopeful. Even a little inspiring to get discover some new things for myself.

Tags: Des Moines, Iowa, Social Media, twitter