Foucault's pendulum, loaded language & un cafe

In 1851 scientists knew that Earth rotated: in addition to the passage of the sun and stars overhead, scientific evidence included Earth's measured polar flattening and equatorial bulge. However, Foucault's pendulum (above) was the first simple proof of the rotation in an easy-to-see experiment, and it created a sensation in the academic world and society at large.
The plane of the pendulum's swing rotated clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours.
But this year the cable suspending the bob in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris snapped causing damage to that copy (there's one in the Pantheon too) of the pendulum and to the marble flooring of the Arts et Metiers museum. Umberto Eco wrote a book entitled Foucault's Pendulum (set at the Arts et Metiers) which I deliberately have not read. Not that I don't like his work but I'm focusing part of a story at that location. Partly in the museum, and nothing to do with Foucault's pendulum.


Here's what a Foucault pendulum would do at the north pole. The pendulum swings in the same plane as the Earth rotates beneath it.


At time of my story, the Arts et Metiers museum was closed for renovation (big plot point in the story) and Foucoult's pendulum wasn't there. Or at least was in storage until the Gothic church/museum was ready for the installation. I realized I hadn't mentioned the pendulum once in the draft I finished yesterday. What to do? If you go to the museum today you'll see it, yes, it's repaired after the mishap but it's important to consider. To think about. Like language it dates the characters, the point in time, the world they inhabit.

Isabelle and Andi, my neighbors up the street - she's a Parisienne he's an Austrian who grew up in Paris - are old friends and we drank espresso at our nearby cafe yesterday. Of course we got into a serious language discussion as only French people do because I had questions.
Mostly concerning the drink we were drinking. I get into trouble over the proper meaning and inference of this drink in my books. So it was ask the expert time.
It's so fun to see Parisians get started and this really wound them up.
How does one order a coffee properly in Paris at the cafe?
A coffee means espresso in France Andi said. Everyone knows that.
un cafe which gets you an expresso
une noisette an expresso with foam

une creme a double espresso with milk
une alongee similar to American coffee diluted with hot water
un cafe serree a double espresso with a short drip and less water like a depth charge.
That sort of solved the question but it generated more intense discussion.
We got into shoes
"Souliers," I said. No you will be dated. So dated no one uses that term anymore. But souliers is in the dictionaries and they said yes, but now you say chaussures or you will sound like our mothers.
Just like un pull a sweater but his mother calls it un chandail.
That's the older generation. Outdated, you don't want to sound like Jean Gabin.
So I guess it's sort of like if some one says 'cool your jets..." they haven't left the 70's and are in a hot tub. Me, I rather be accused of Jean Gabin.
I'm still confused about Foucault's pendulum.
Cara - Tuesday

Samba #1

I heard my first samba in 1966.

It was in a cinema on East 34^th Street in New York, and the film in which it appeared was Claude Lelouche’s Un Homme et Une Femme (A Man and a Woman).

Never heard of it?

Then you’re probably under fifty.

Because it was a movie that no one of my generation (or, at least, no one without a heart of stone) is likely to forget.

Sentimental, romantic and lovely.

Have a look at the scene in which the samba appears:

Six years later, I arrived in Brazil. And learned that it had been composed by Baden Powell to lyrics created by Vinicius de Morães, the poet who wrote the words to The Girl from Ipanema.

The English version goes like this:

The original title is Samba de Benção, sometimes called Samba Saravah. Here’s Vinicius himself, singing it at a live performance in Mar del Plata, Argentina (hence the introduction in Spanish) several years before his death.

This is a short post, because I’m off to Helsinki to have a good time with my Finnish publisher and to launch Haudatut muukalaiset. (The Finnish version of Buried Strangers.)

Next week, more on the samba as an art form.

Leighton – Monday

A Good One Gone

We speak of the "mystery community" that unites readers, writers, publishers, and booksellers in a shared circle of love for one of the world's most enduring literary forms.  But if it really is a community, then booksellers -- informed, passionate booksellers -- are the campfire around which we all gather.  They're the members of the community who link all the others together.

We lost one of the very best, David Thompson, assistant manager of Houston's Murder By the Book, last week.  Murder By the Book was an extension of David's outsize personality, his love for books, writers, and readers.  Any writer who was lucky enough to visit the store came away dazzled with a vision that this was what a bookstore should be, and that Murder By the Book, rather than the big chains, was the template for the bricks-and-mortar bookstores of the future.

But David was also a truly innovative publisher.  His Busted Flush Press came to the rescue of unjustly underpraised writers with beautifully designed editions of their work -- for great graphics, look at the jackets of their Reed Farrell Coleman reprints -- and just released their first Busted Flush Original, Tower, by Coleman and Ken Bruen.

David was only 38.  He left an emotional footprint on writers quite literally all over the world.

James R. Benn, author of the Billy Boyle World War II Mysteries:  If the world were a more ordered place, some years down the road David Thompson would be reading my obituary.  Instead, as a reminder that chaos is only a blink away, I and others are reading of David's death, stunned in our common disbelief that this could happen to someone so full of energy, passion, love, and from my perspective, youth . . . . I don't know what else to say, except that tonight I will have a couple of margaritas myself, and let the idea seep into my soul that perhaps I need to carry on some small portion of the goodness David brought to the world around him.  Otherwise, none of this makes any sense at all.

Cara Black, author of the Aimee Leduc Investigations:  Shocked and saddened, like everyone in the mystery community; I'm trying to understand this.  My heart goes out to McKenna.  David -- so enthusiastic, funny, and a dynamo.  I'd first gone to Murder By the Book with Peter Lovesey for my third book and met David briefly.  The crowd was there for Peter and yet David made me feel welcome . . . . He loved connecting people, loved books, writers.  The excitement bubbled in his eyes.  He breathed . . . . publishing, finding new voices and writers . . . . I know he kept up an incredible correspondence with so many of us.  Tireless, and yet he and McKenna reserved one night a week, Wednesday, I think it was, when they stayed home and just were together.


Colin Cotterill, author of the Dr, Siri Investigations Set in Laos:  In late 2004 I was starting out on this writing game and still had no idea whether I was any good. I got an e-mail from a guy I'd never heard of in far off Texas.  He said his store had voted my first book "Best of the Year" and they all loved it.  I couldn't believe anyone would go to the trouble but that was David.  He knew what it means to a writer to have support and words of praise.  We've been in contact ever since and that encouragement never slackened.  He was a rare breed who knew writers better than they know themselves and he'll be irreplaceable.  I'm sad today.


Jamie Freveletti, author of Running from the Devil and Running Dark:  When my book launched in May 2009 we had only planned on a regional tour in my area (midwest).  However, so many people told me, "Oh, no, you MUST go to Houston to Murder By the Book, David and Mckenna know this genre and love it," and I decided to contact them.  They . . . immediately extended an invitation and I flew there for a signing.  David twittered regular updates during the session, gave me coffee to keep me going, and they both went out of their way to make a debut author feel like one of the community.  I was heartbroken to hear of his untimely death.


Leighton Gage, author of the Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigations:  I would never have toured for my first book had it not been for David.  He read an ARC and wrote to me in Brazil to invite me to Murder By the Book.  I thought, Why not? And went.


It was an honor to have known him.


Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse and Harper Connelly novels:  I heard this morning.  I am still stunned.  I can't imagine going to Murder By the Book and not seeing David.  What a great guy, what a knowledgeable man.


David Hewson, author of the Costa series:  I met David briefly only once but his enthusiasm, helpfulness and love of books struck me at once.  It's a great shock to think he won't be there in that lovely Houston store any more.  My sympathies go out to his family and friends, and my thanks for all he's done for so many authors.


Christopher G. Moore, author of the Vincent Calvino Bangkok Mysteries:  I met David last year at Bouchercon.  What a wonderful, witty, and knowledgeable guy.  This is such a shame.  A knock on the head for all of us in the crime fiction community.


Eric Stone, author of the Ray Sharp novels:  David was someone who always brought a smile to my face when I saw him.  Over the years we met at conferences and exchanged e-mails . . . . I had three, really fun book signings at Murder By the Book, thanks to him.  He was someone I never had the chance to get to know as well as I would have liked to, and it really saddens me to know that now I never will.


None of us will.  
Tim -- Sundays

Run, Forrest! Run!

Back in February I told you about this. This Sunday it finally takes place. Seven months of training, of early morning runs in all kinds of weather with all kinds of strange chafing, aching joints and weary bones comes to a head and I will run 13 miles  - or aim to run, let's not count chickens - around the northern town which serves as my ancestral home, or one of them at least, along with 54,000 other people.

I don't get too nervous about many things these days. In a few hours time I am due to give a talk at the Reading Festival of Crime Fiction (Reading being a town approximately 20 miles out of London, pronounced to rhyme with bedding, rather than the pastime that brings us all here) about crime fiction and genealogy, and I'm not the slightest bit apprehensive. Yet whenever I think about lining up on Sunday morning, my stomach starts to do the fandango.

Guy Clark - makes great running music

I suppose it's the entry into the unknown. The last time I ran a race was at primary school in 1983. While I have attended various gyms, and then let my membership lapse, I've never really been fit since I was a teenager. Save three runs, all my training has been done on my own, with only my Ipod and its music for company (Guy Clark makes great running music - who would have thought that?) The majority of it has been done by the Thames or in the parks of London, whereas the race is run around Newcastle, a place I haven't visited for more than a decade. Sometimes on my training runs I have felt exceptional strong; then there have been times when only a mile or so in I've felt like my running shoes have been fitted with lead weights and the roads are made of treacle. The furthest I have run in training is a little over 12 miles. I simply have no idea what to expect, from the race, the lie of the land, the weather, or my body. A bad night's sleep, the onset of a cold, or some unseasonally warm weather and the race could become very hard going indeed.

It's quite a familiar feeling, akin to the one I get when I've finished the draft of a book, which I know I've worked hard on. You hand in the manuscript, reasonably happy (or email it in, as is the norm these days) and then start thinking and worrying and doubting. Should I have given it another read through? Was that really the best choice of first sentence? Was that really the best choice of first word? And that ending, does it really work? There follows a tortuous silence until your editor gets in touch. There used to be a TV Advert in the UK for Del Monte, who made fruit juice. An Italian farmer lovingly tends his oranges. A helicopter lands, out of which steps a tall, dignified man in a white suit and panama hat. The farmer and his wife look on nervously as the suited man tastes the orange. A horrible pause follows. Then the man nods his head. The farmer runs, arms outstretched, and shouts: 'The Man from Del Monte...He. Say. Yes!' In celebration the oranges behind leapt from the tree with a great shout of joy.

Each time I hand in the draft of a book, I think of the Man from Del Monte. And, with the Great North Run approaching, I've been thinking about it more and more, the difference being this time that the Man from Del Monte isn't another person, like an editor or reviewer, it's my own body. I'm hoping for a resounding yes.

One last point before go and load up on carbs (beer is a carb, right?). I keep referring to the Great North Run as a race. The fact is, I won't be racing anyone. My aim is to finish, enjoy the sense of personal achievement, and ensure all the money we've raised  - I'm running with two of my sisters and one brother-in-law - goes to our chosen charity, Breast Cancer Care. However, I did learn the other day that Sting is running the race. There are few people in the world I find more po-faced and dull than old Sting - plus his music truly sucks  - so if I encounter him on the final straight I might choose, as one British athletics commentator said of Cuban runner Alberot Juanterena as he sped away on the last bend, to 'open my legs and show my class.' I doubt I'll catch him though. Sting is famously capable of six hour tantric sex sessions. Er, I'm not (He's right. He's not - Dan's wife.)

cheers


Dan - Friday

The Sources of the Nile

Avram Davidson (1923-1993) was a well-known author of science fiction, fantasy and mystery. He published over 200 short stories and essays and 19 novels. His style was to look at things from left field and then present an original insight. For example, his story Or All the Sea with Oysters was about the life cycle of things like coat hangers and safety pins. Sounds boring? It won the Hugo (top science fiction award) for the best short story of 1958. In 1961 he won an Edgar for one of his mystery stories, so he’s definitely up our street, too. In the same year he published a short story in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction titled The Sources of the Nile.


I can only speculate what led to the story, but I imagine he looked at the explosion of fads and trends – changing rapidly and unpredictably – and perhaps he was wondering why his books received critical acclaim but seldom registered on the best seller scales. If one thinks about it, it's very hard to understand why some things take off and others – superficially better in every respect – vanish without trace. The premise of his story is that there is actually a person – one man – who starts the trends. He doesn’t know anything about what he does or how he does it. One day he just starts wearing cut-off jeans because he feels like it. Pretty soon every teenager is doing the same. The action is around Madison Avenue’s attempts to track him down for their own obvious advantage. The story has always stuck in my mind because the basic question is so fascinating. What are the sources of the Nile?

I’ve just finished reading the second Stieg Larson book. In retrospect I quite enjoyed it although there were a few points when I thought it would be what 4MAers call a DNF – Did Not Finish. Anyway, this blog isn’t about that. If you’d like to read an amusing tongue-in-cheek look at the issue from a mystery writer’s viewpoint, take a look at Kwei Quartey’s blog The Girl Who Kicked the Termite Hill.

 http://www.kweiquartey.com/blog/?p=951   

I’m interested in what generates the phenomenal success that the books enjoy.  I’m not talking about plot, characters, writing.  That can make success.  I’m talking about the super-star one-in-a-million success that these books enjoy.

Certainly Stieg Larson himself is a very interesting and intriguing person. Smart, intelligent, a crusading writer. Apparently taking on right-wing organisations without fear, although cautious with his private life. Then he dramatically dies of a heart attack and, despite his concern about the potentially violent behaviour of some of the organisations he exposes, apparently leaves no will. With a bio like that, is it surprising that he has such a high profile? Well, yes. Because we wouldn’t know (or care) about all that if his books hadn’t been such a incredible success.

A few days ago I was chatting to a friend who doesn’t read mystery novels at all and I mentioned the Larson phenomenon. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Three of my friends have told me they’re absolutely brilliant!” Had the friends read the books and come to that conclusion for themselves, or had they heard it from three other friends in a sort of inverse pyramid scheme? One thing’s clear. If my friend is going on a long flight and decides to try a mystery book, I can tell you which one it’s going to be.

Well, what do the publishers themselves know? When I first met our Australian distributer, I naively asked if they had an idea in advance of how a book would sell Down Under. He looked at me as though I were mad, and just laughed. Our Italian and French publishers bought the rights to publish the Da Vinci Code. Neither expected it to do particularly well. The French thought 20 thousand copies; the Italians were about the last publisher in the country to be offered the book and picked it up cheaply. The case rests.

Marketing? Well, our experience is that marketing ramps up after the book becomes successful. So it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyone seen any billboards along the lines of “Unknown author’s brilliant debut novel will thrill you. Rush to get your copy while they last”? I didn’t think so.

The only model I can come up with is that each book is like a tiny ice particle tossed out onto a snow slope. The particles catch a little snow. Almost all of them come to rest immediately and are ignored. A few hit just the right angle and start to grow as they roll down the slope. Some become large enough to attract attention and are given a bit of a shove as they pass. A few get really large. People start to point, talk about them. They grow faster. One gets big enough to start an avalanche.

Or maybe there really is a unique person out there somewhere who picks up the book, thinks it’s absolutely the best thing he’s ever read, and that’s it. Would I like to meet him!

Michael – Thursday.

Happiness

I really wanted to write something happy today, something that would hopefully make the reader smile and feel good for at least the minutes it takes to scroll down the screen. But sadly it was not to be.

At present in Iceland we are undergoing the lengthiest political havoc my country has ever seen. Old sins and new are brought to light on a daily basis, more often than not, a few per day. Since October 2008 when our emperor of a banking system was revealed to have no clothes we have been bombarded with negative news in such portions that I believe must be unprecedented anywhere, anytime.  It probably relates to our size or lack thereof, other larger countries undergoing crises have much more going on and can dilute the doom and gloom with the occasional positive event. Here no. Either it is all good or all bad.  It has become so depressing to listen to the news that some people, my mother for example, have given up on it completely. Make sure to turn off the TV and the radio, put on a CD and listen to music instead.

It is not only the political minefield we are forced to gaze upon, with each side trumpeting the opposing side’s faults and forgetting to nurture any merits they might have, or the ridiculous shambles of an economy we face. You see even the church is caught up in a storm, apparently having had a bishop in office some years back who was so busy conducting sexual harassment it’s a wonder he had time for the occasional prayer. He was not one of those you could say definitely had a type; young or old, sick or healthy, he was not one to discriminate and all women stood about the same chance of getting grabbed from behind. I do not envy any female organist playing in his church, unless she was lucky enough to have eyes in the back of her head.  How his escapades (for lack of a more appropriate word) were kept under wraps must have required some masterful maneuvering considering how small our society is, but whatever strings were pulled they sure held. Please note that the photo of the Icelandic church here above has nothing to do with this bishop, it is situated in an area much more sparsely inhabited than this ridiculously lecherous man preferred (too few females per square meter).

This is not good, obviously. It takes its toll on morale and just at the point when we need it most. Having given it some thought I have come to realize that happiness is overlooked by those who set up the way our society operates, we have ministries of justice, agriculture, education and so on but I have never heard of a country which has installed a ministry of happiness. This is strange if you think about it. Everything we believe important and value has a representing ministry, except happiness. Is happiness less important than the economy? Than foreign affairs or transportation? I don’t think so. I believe happy people are less likely to commit crimes (taking a load off the justice ministry), less inclined to go overboard in their spending (making life easier for the ministry of economic affairs) and more likely to be depressed or ill (providing the ministry of health the opportunity to once not overrun its budget). And so on. The only ministry that could possibly increase its workload under this new arrangement would be the ministry of agriculture as happy people eat more carrots and cucumbers than depressed and/or miserable people.

A ministry of happiness would not operate as an agency that was to stuff happiness down people’s throats if they become sad any more than the ministry of fishing is going to force you to eat shrimp if you are allergic to shellfish. It could however keep an eye out for ways to increase general happiness within society and address threats to the same. It could specifically address the issue of children as they have a right to experience joy as much as they have the right to booster shots on a regular basis.

But this will never happen. Happiness is not a phenomenon that brings in the votes. I have at least never heard any politician vying for office promising to make people happy or striving to increase happiness in his/her constituency. Not even our comedian mayor used this angle.

Maybe we are better off removing politics from the frame altogether. This should not be hard given today’s technological advances, one would simply need a supercomputer programmed to take in and weigh all the options, what conditions give rise to being merciful, how much money there is in the kitty, which spending posts must be met and so on. This way nepotism would become a thing of the past, what supercomputer is going to hire an old daft school buddy or cousin for a position of importance. None that I know of. Certainly not the one in the photo, which is a supercomputer despite its lack of cape.

Should it come to this the ballot on Election Day would provide the voter only two options: Dell or Macintosh.

Although my computer is an IBM I would vote for Macintosh –  being a bit less conventional it seems more likely to emphasize happiness.

Yrsa - Wednesday

of excavations and au revoir Chabrol

I guess it's returning to my 'roots' but it feels strange. Like going back in time, excavating the past; as I imgaine the workers who dug below ground for a parking lot and found this section of the Phillipe August wall dated 1200 AD. My wonderful publisher Soho is re-issuing my first book, Murder in the Marais, in all formats, and said 'now's the time if you want to go back and change anything you've always wanted to.' It scared me at first, I wrote that book in the mid-nineties and written ten since but it was a chance to go back and clean up mistakes.

I had buried Baudelaire in the wrong cemetary, realized I'd gotten a street wrong in Paris that only went one way instead of two, and given away my heroine's exact age. Something a French women would never, never do. It also presented challenges - should I age her, did I have to? Wasn't she's ageless, as I think of her, yet she'd gone through a lot of physical abuse in these books. But it gave me a perspective, re-reading the Marais, I realized how Aimee and her cohorts have grown, changed and lived through events, their perspective and attitudes deepened in the books. A surprise to me since I never knew I'd write a series, let alone get my first book published. The first book gives one freedom, you have no boundaries, no rules except the one you make up. And no complicated family tree, work and romantic relationships which you need to remember seven books down the road. Shoot your wad, go for broke, as you can in the debut book because that might be the only shot you get - I took that to heart.
Now that I'm going back, checking details on googleearth which didn't exist when I wrote the book - google was just an idea in two guys heads down at Stanford, I can change that peron's name to the proper French spelling and make someone the friend of Aimée's father which I'd meant to do quite a few years ago.
Now I'm excavating and it feels like finding part of the oldest wall left in Paris, like I did, in an underground parking lot.
You might have parked here. Or walked over this above at Odeon.




This weekend Claude Chabrol, a founder of the new wave cinema who made over 80 films, passed away. When Chabrol made his first film, Le Beau Serge, in 1958, using a small inheritance of his first wife's, he shot it in black and white, on location in his home town of Sardent. It became the first feature film of the new wave, a critical and commercial success, enabling Chabrol to act as "godfather" to his friends, who were also eager to make their first films.
His friends, film buffs at the Cinémathèque Française and at the Ciné-Club des Quartiers Latins, where they chewed the fat and argued over the finer points of film technique. The "gang", all of whom became film-makers in their own right, included Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Squat, bespectacled and rotund, Chabrol played the joker, resembling nothing so much as a startled owl. Though his films ie La Grande Bouffe pilloried the bourgeoisie – its foibles and petty cruelties – he was himself bourgeoise and shared many of its values: property, wealth and domesticity. What I liked best about this bon vivant was how he made fun of himself and his 'class' because as he said 'only some one who's a bourgeoisie, can truly show them'. Years ago I walked in the courtyard of 22 Place des Vosges looking for clues to Georges Simenon, creator of Inspector Maigret, who'd once lived there and discovered that Claude Chabrol lived here. I wish I'd seen Chabrol, been able to express my appreciation for all his films. But I only saw his 17th century townhouse in the courtyard in the throes of renovation. A jewel.
So au revoir and merci Monsieur Chabrol,
Cara - Tuesday