This weekend we say good bye to the Bristol Crimefest.
Here's a flaneur around Thursday.....
This weekend we say good bye to the Bristol Crimefest.
Here's a flaneur around Thursday.....
Wendall--every other Thursday
I recently mentioned John Fowles and The French Lieutenant's Woman to my students and saw utterly blank faces. That prompted me to revisit this post about him, since the "clicking" phenomenon only increases and the quote from Daniel Martin that has haunted me since 1978 is more and more relevant.
John Fowles has had an enormous impact on me as a reader and a writer, ever since I swiped my parents’ Book of the Month Club copy of The French Lieutenant’s Woman at age eleven.
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The first U.S. edition cover. |
The cover of the book drew me in, immediately, and I still have that worn original copy, which I carried to college with me and have kept ever since..
The first paragraph, one long, glorious sentence, grabbed me instantly, with a phrase that still burns in my brain— “. . . Lyme Regis being that largest bite from England’s outstretched southwestern leg. . .”
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The famous Cobb in Lyme Regis. Years later, I visited this gorgeous spot. |
The rest of that paragraph sent me to the dictionary to look up the word "eponym,” and I kept my Webster’s beside me for the rest of the read. Just Fowles’s words alone probably got me through my SATs, and that habit of keeping a dictionary handy has served me well ever since, especially when I’m reading Cormac McCarthy.
Looking back now, as an author, I can truly appreciate the book’s complex structure and revolutionary approach to point of view, along with Fowles’s ability to weave themes of feminism, religion, sexual politics, art vs. nature, and so many others through his work. At the time, I just loved the book. His sentences went straight into me.
Of course I went on to devour everything of his I could find, going backward to The Collector and The Magus (my first real impression of Greece, Jeff!) and later forward to The Ebony Tower and, when I was in college, Daniel Martin.
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As a college student, bought it hook, line, and sinker. |
This quote from that book is the one I’ve been thinking about lately:
“A lifelong avoider of other tourists, he had forgotten the extent to which every man is now his own image-maker. It was almost frightening, this obsession with capturing through one sense alone, and one that required so little thought or concentration: a mindless clicking. It encouraged the clicker not to remember, above all, not to feel. Perhaps it was the ultimate privilege, on that ship already loaded with unfair advantage of a cultural and economic kind: merely to duplicate seeing, to advertise in some future that one had been there.”
At the time, this idea stopped me in my tracks. And in the way only a college student can, I vowed to stop taking photos and, instead, to be present and just burn things on my brain. I did my best to experience, rather than document, for many years after that and I remember those years with a fond, well-lit clarity.
But when I see photos from that period, taken by other people, they also delight me and take me back. There are certain photos that I wouldn’t trade for anything—like this one where my glasses are crooked, taken by our “professional photographer” at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. It so completely captures the spirit of our wedding, that it has pride of place on our mantle and always makes me laugh. I am so grateful for it.
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Nothing like a professional photographer at your wedding! |
But for someone who loves words, a world where images seem to be the only acceptable currency feels out of balance. From Twitter’s word count limit to Instagram, the whole planet seems to be embodying Fowles’s idea—"a mindless clicking. It encouraged the clicker not to remember, above all, not to feel." And was he right? Do we make a choice between documenting and feeling?
Although I was late to smart phones, now that I have one, I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to taking endless photographs. I have so many, I had to buy extra space on Google. So, have I stopped feeling? What do all those photos mean?
When I’ve been lucky enough to visit museums and see photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cindy Sherman, Roy DaSilva, Diane Arbus, Ansel Adams, or Dorothea Lange, there’s no lack of emotion there. It seems to be all feeling.
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Dorothea Lange documented migrant workers and their families (public domain). |
But photography as an art form is different from selfies and Facebook cover photos. I wonder what Fowles, who was notoriously private, would say about “the clicking” expected from an author today?
The pressure to document (and post) every appearance, every encounter with another author, every book box opening, every recipe realized, every panel, even details of our personal lives, can feel overwhelming.
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My husband, a smarter marketer than I, insisted I document this box-opening moment. There's a reason my face isn't in the picture. |
Can we be present and really meet and listen to our readers, and do selfies at the same time? We can’t know what those photos mean to others, so it’s hard to say which is more important in the long run. Maybe there’s been a redefinition of “Only connect.”
So where’s the balance, between feeling in real time and remembering? Between our public, photo-shopped selves and our deeper natures? How do all these photographs shape our reality? It’s still a conundrum for me. I blame the Book of the Month club.
--Wendall
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The author lineup for "Deadly in Devonport": Diane Robinson, Dr Jo Drayton, Dermot Ross, Hannah Tunnicliffe, Rose Carlyle & William McCartney |
Craig every second Tuesday.
Kia ora and gidday everyone, I hope you’ve all been enjoying some fabulous reads so far in 2025, whether new books or older ones. There are so many good and great crime and thriller stories out there, and plenty of cool authors to discover as well as enjoying old faves.
I've certainly had a busy but fun bookish time of it recently, with a combination of awards judging (results tbc) and events planning and/or attendances, along with reviewing for various publications in a few countries, and daily reading in among all the usual life stuff. I'm feeling incredibly grateful for this cool 'tribe' we have of readers and writers, especially given how collegial and welcoming the crime/thriller part of the books world is overall.
Back home in Aotearoa New Zealand our Mystery in the Library series is in full swing this month, with a bumper season of 30+ free/donation events featuring many dozens of different Kiwi storytellers at libraries in towns and cities big and small all across the country.
The pic above is from last week's "Deadly in Devonport" event on the North Shore of Auckland; our first-ever visit to that library. A big crowd turned out for a fun panel featuring a nice mix of Kiwi storytellers: podcaster and author Hannah Tunnicliffe, New York Times bestselling non-fiction author Dr Joanne Drayton (who's written biographies of crime writers Anne Perry and Dame Ngaio Marsh), internationally bestselling thriller writer Rose Carlyle, Auckland lawyers and debut authors Dermot Ross and William McCartney, and 2024 Ngaios Best Kids-YA finalist Diane Robinson.
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Back in 2015, our library event series began with four events and nine authors |
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Some of the decorations for our Lower Hutt MITL event this year; authors and librarians |
Indigenous storyteller Michael Bennett and visiting author Dervla McTiernan entertain a large crowd in Christchurch. Credit: WORD Chch |
Jill Johnson and me at Beyond the Book; her new novel comes out later in May |
A terrific closing panel at Beyond the Book Festival in Brighton with William Shaw chairing international bestsellers Ruth Ware and Elly Griffiths |
Wow, a taste of home |
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At my first Crimefest in 2015, with Queen of Icelandic Noir Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and leading British critic Ayo Onatade |
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I'm stoked to be chairing a fun panel at Capital Crime next month - come along if you're near London |
Guest Blogger Michael J. Cooper
From Annamaria: Today I am happy to welcome back my fellow historical novelist, who writes riveting mystery-thrillers set in the Middle East. His current series focuses on World War 1 at a time that provides a distant mirror for the current state of the world, important and - at the same time - entertaining reading.
The great Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana famously said “those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.” To avoid such repetitions, we historical novelists seek to bring readers back to the past so that they can learn what not to do.
My two latest novels, set at the beginning of the First World War: Wages of Empire and Crossroads of Empire are a case in point. They include prominent historical figures Kaiser Wilhelm II, Gertrude Bell, TE Lawrence, Chaim Weizmann, and Faisal bin Hussein. And they particularly focus on Ottoman Palestine, since it was from Jerusalem where the kaiser dreamed to rule as Holy Roman Emperor and self-crowned King of Jerusalem, with dominion over Arabian oil reserves, control of the Suez Canal, and with an eye toward promoting German-Nordic racial supremacy throughout the world.
I gave Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, therefore, a prominent role in the books, because many historians believe that his decades’ long scheming and manipulating led directly to the Great War. He methodically built up a naval force to challenge that of Great Britain, and he established layers of financial, military, commercial, and transportational ties with the Ottoman Empire. By-so-doing, Wilhelm made imperial Germany indispensable to a subservient Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, reducing it to a vassal state.
Apart from these maneuverings, the Kaiser makes for a great character study because of how outrageously strange he was, offering a veritable buffet of the bizarre to historians as well as to writers of historical fiction. To quote a prominent German historian, Thomas Nipperdey: “Wilhelm was superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any sense of sobriety. He was arrogant, uncontrollable, without any concern for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems. At the same time, he had a hyperactive sense of grievance, and was desperate for applause and success. He was theatrical, with an exaggerated bravado and desire to show off…”
As we read these descriptions of the German Kaiser, just imagine what it would be like to live in the grip of a head of state untethered by any restraint, who was able to rule by royal decree or by executive privilege. A monarch motivated only by the need to feed his own monumental ego…
Just imagine.
In Wilhelm’s day, royalty commissioned paintings of themselves to project how they wished to be seen—by their subjects as well as by other nations. Nowadays, art, CGI, and AI serve the same functions. Herewith, some examples:
But we have at least been saved from that. We have an American Pope who, given what he has said since his election, will focus on containing the worst impulses of a deranged and dangerous psychopath.
Viva Pope Leo XIV
Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel |
Just a wee bit of available breakfast buffet. |
Yrsa |
Caro |
A fan with Bill Gottfried |
A fan's fan with Toby Gottfried |
It takes a village...uhh, meritage |
Thursday, May 15 – Sunday, May 18
CrimeFest
Bristol, UK
Thursday, May 15, 2:40 p.m.
CrimeFest Panel
Panelist, Murder is Everywhere: Evil Crimes in Foreign Climes, with Heidi Amsinck, Michael Ridpath, Ovidia Yu, and Stanley Trollip (moderator)
Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel
Bristol, UK
Saturday, May 17, 1:40 p.m.
CrimeFest Panel
Moderator, Not All 999: Police Procedurals Across Time and Place, with panelists Tara Collins, Mark Ellis, Solveig Palsdottir and Stanley Trollip of Michael Stanley
Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel
Bristol, UK
Wednesday, September 3 – Sunday, September 7
Bouchercon
Author Panels yet to be assigned
New Orleans, LA