Paraty’s Contribution To German Literature

Paraty isn’t only a charming little town within the Bahia da Ilha Grande:  http://tinyurl.com/9hcgu4y  

And the venue for Brazil’s most important literary festival:  http://tinyurl.com/8zvfzjc 

It also played a seminal role in the life one of the great German-language writers of the twentieth century.

Here’s the story:

This lady is Júlia da Silva Bruhns, the daughter of a Brazilian mother and a German father.

Back in the mid-nineteenth century, her father owned a number of sugarcane plantations on the Brazilian coast between Rio de Janeiro and the port of Santos.

Júlia was born in this house, in Paraty, and lived there until a year after her mother’s death.

And then, at the age of seven, she was shipped-off to live with her father’s brother in Lübeck.

She arrived speaking only Portuguese.

The rest of the family spoke only German.

In the Germanic fashion of the time, they decided to solve the communication problem by sending her to a boarding school where she stayed for the next seven years.

Harsh treatment, as far as I'm concerned, for a little Brazilian girl.

In 1869, she married Thomas Heinrich Mann, a senator and grain merchant.

She was seventeen; he was twenty-nine.

Their second son, born in 1875, was christened Paul Thomas Mann.

She always called him Paulo.

But the world knew him as the Nobel Prize laureate, Thomas Mann.

His mother was the inspiration for Gerda Arnoldson and Toni Buddenbrook in Buddenbrooks, for the wife of Senator Rodde in Doktor Faustus, for Consuelo in Tonio Kröger, and for the mother of the protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, in Death in Venice.

In her age, she wrote a book (never translated as far as I know) called Aus Dodos Kindheit in which she described her idyllic childhood in Paraty, referring to it as “the happiest time of my life”.

If you read German, you can still find it in many libraries throughout the world.

Check the World Library Catalogue for one near you: http://tinyurl.com/8rvh2y3

Leighton - Monday

City of Angels

I'm in Bangkok now—in Thai, Krung Thep, or city of angels—dragging my ass through the day while I wait for my mind to catch up with me.

This is the most brutal jet lag I know.  It's 1 PM here now, which means it's 11 PM in Los Angeles.  This is fine; no problem.  It's when it's 6 PM here and 3 am in LA that I begin to feel like I'm a different species than the people around me – older, slower, grumpier, more lizard-brained.

I mistake 500-baht bills for 100-baht bills and am constantly being chased out of stores by people waving change at me.  I spend quite a bit of time looking for something I just put down.  I lose at Hearts every time I play.  It's nearly enough to make me feel compassion for the fury most inanimate objects harbor for the fast-moving; I can almost empathize with coat hangers.

And I'm here to write a book.  I can't even keep my thumb off the CAPS LOCK key, much less make a sentence.  Doing this little blog is like giving blood.  To someone I don't like.

On the other hand, I get reminders via email that I actually have written books in the past.  I just learned that THE FEAR ARTIST, a story I barely remember at the moment, has been named one of the best crime thrillers of 2012 (so far, anyway) by Deadly Pleasures magazine, a publication for which I have considerable respect.  People in mystery bookstores who have read the ARCs of CRASHED and LITTLE ELVISES have written to say how much they like Junior Bender.  These people read a lot of books.

So this, too, will pass.  I actually wrote five of my first six books here, in a coffee shop called the Tip Top on the infamous Patpong Road.  It was at the Tip Top that I first met the eight- or nine-year-old chewing gum vendor who eventually became Miaow in the Poke Rafferty books.  I've written some good sentences in Bangkok.

But not today, and probably not tomorrow.

So what does one do when one can't write but has taken a public vow to write daily?

One writes crap.

So far I've made a total botch out of three scenes, one of which is quite delicate and, if written properly will be an emotional pivot of the new Poke, FOR THE DEAD.  As it stands right now, it wouldn't wring a tear from the Mock Turtle.  It couldn't be less emotional if I'd written it entirely in numbers.

On the other hand, I've gotten a few characters from point A to point B or even C.  I know how they get there now, even if I don't know how to make it work.  But it's a little like exploring a wilderness; a bumpy road or even a rutted path is better than nothing at all.  Smoothing and widening it, and making it interesting, can come later.  For the moment, I can take comfort in the fact that the characters found their way there, without violating who they are.

Now all I have to do is wait for the city of Angels to send me an angel who will take charge of my prose style.  Until I get it back, anyway.

What Bookstores Are All About.

I’m back in Ohio.  After five days in Cleveland for the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the two days I spent in NYC sent me scooting back to the Buckeye state.  Why, you say?  No, not because it’s currently ground zero for every imaginable form of Presidential political campaigning and will be until the first Tuesday in November, but because one year ago at the St. Louis Bouchercon Convention I made a promise to attend a book event in Westerville, Ohio.

Say what?  Or rather, “Where?”

Westerville.  You never heard of it?  It’s just northeast of Columbus—Ohio’s capital city located in the middle of the state and home to Ohio State University.  Still no bells ringing?

Well, let’s put it this way.  A lovely lady asked me if I would be willing to appear at her bookshop there, and being the party guy that I am I said sure.  Besides, it was a year away…until last Wednesday.

That’s when I had to find my way to Foul Play Mystery Bookshop, 27 East College Avenue, Westerville, Ohio.

I’ve been to “out of the way” book signings before, and many times it’s just the owner, the cashier, a cousin of the cashier, and me.  Plus a cat or two.  But, book tours are about building relationships and lots of interesting folks live in places many of us never heard of.  Besides, a promise is a promise. So, I flew out of LaGuardia, landed in Columbus, and headed off in search of Foul Play.

It was nothing at all like what I expected.  Imagine magnificent fall foliage, bright blue skies, crisp apple picking weather, well maintained two-story brick buildings with cleanly finished wood trim, and a grassy churchyard filled with neatly stacked pumpkins at the ready for the local Boy Scout troop’s annual weekend pumpkin sale.

And in the midst of all this Norman Rockwell charm sits the Cross clan’s Westerville gem of a bookstore. 

Judy Cross, her brother John, and his wife, Toni, run Foul Play today as they have for nearly twenty-five years, fifteen years at its current location.  It is the sort of place Harry Potter would chose if he were a bookseller.  A snug, brick and gabled two-story escape from the digital world crammed with 30,000 REAL books and two special effects cats.  Special effects I say because it’s hard to imagine they are of mortal form; more like T.S. Eliot’s Macavity in the Broadway’s musical Cats, but on steroids. 

John and Toni Cross live above the shop, and somewhere betwixt and between the floors lives the ghost—a “she ghost” they say.

Harry Potter, welcome to Ohio.

Foul Play is blessed with dedicated, longtime customers who support not just their bookstore, but the authors who come to visit as well. Early Wednesday evening two-dozen mystery junkies braved a frosty night to sit talking about books.  Many were Bouchercon veterans with distinct opinions on who and what they’d seen and read, and frankly, I learned far more listening to them than they possibly did from me. 

Hours later, when we moved en masse to a neighboring Italian restaurant for dinner and more talk, I realized this was not just a group of fans who loved the genre.  These were people who cared very much about each other in camaraderie born out of murder and mayhem. 

I’m sure Hannibal Lechter would be pleased.

Bottom line: If you’re an author who enjoys touring, do not miss Foul Play.  It’s set in another time…yet only only twenty minutes from the Columbus Airport.

Now it’s on to Pittsburgh, for a family get together of a different sort at my home town Mystery Lovers Bookshop hosted by it’s new owner, the incredible Laurie Stephens.  Can’t wait!

Jeff—Saturday

Nantes But the Brave

In October 2011 I received an email from my estimable and very talented French traducteur Jean-Rene Dastugue, informing me that I had been shortlisted for the Prix Cezam Literraire for my first novel, The Blood Detective, aka Code 1879 in France. My first reaction, as it always should be in these case, was pride - everyone loves a bit of recognition, and while we writers know prizes and awards matter little in the grand scheme of things (I was dropped by my UK publisher after being nominated for a rather prestigious award, so maybe they're a handicap) to know someone, somewhere thinks the book you wrote worthy enough to be nominated for a bauble is very satisfying. 

It was especially for me, because of the rather chequered experiences I've had in publishing in recent years. My  genealogy series has effectively been mothballed*, though not from any real choice of my own. Yet, because I wrote it back in  the summer of 2006, I am astounded at how The Blood Detective has taken on a little life of its own. I am always wary when authors claim that of their books - even more so when they refer to them as people would their children - but in this case it's true. Each time I think it has been forgotten, or come to the end of its shelf life, it pops up once more: whether that's a foreign deal, someone inquiring about TV rights, or being nominated for an award. It's heartening to know that a book which was written during a traumatic, turbulent time in my life - I wrote it before, during and after my first wife Emma died of breast cancer - continues to give people some pleasure.

So when Jean-Rene emailed me last year, I smiled, raised a glass and toasted my book for once more giving me something to cheer about. Then I forgot about it completely because I had other books to write. The Cezam is different to many other prizes. For one, the jury is more than 3,300 strong. They are all ordinary readers, who come together in various regions from different companies and organisations to discuss and read the shortlisted books. Then they rank the books in the order they prefer, giving maximum points to the one they like best. It takes a whole year for this process to play out.

Which is why I found myself in Nantes last Saturday. I had won the national prize: my book had been awarded the most points, narrowly beating Rouge Argile by Virginie Olagnier. I had been tipped off beforehand in an email from the organisers, who perhaps were unsure whether I would have been willing to make the trip on the off chance I'd won (I would have done.) Still, it was nice to be spared the gut-churning moment when someone opens an envelope, and even though you tell yourself it doesn't matter if you win or not, your palms slick with sweat and your hearts starts racing and you start to think 'I might win..' and then 'Oh shit I haven't' and you feel daft for allowing yourself to flirt with glory. Twice I have been nominated, one for the Macavity debut and the CWA First Blood, and both times I have lost: first to poor old Steig Larsson and second to Johan Theorin (I'm putting my victory this time down to the lack of any relentlessly gloomy Scandinavian books on the shortlist...) and each time I allowed myself to believe. 

This time, I was able to go and relax. Or at least relax as much as an Englishman with sub-schoolboy French can when he knows he has to make an acceptance speech to 400 French readers. I took my seat next to my patient and charming interpreter, Ludivine, and watched as the books were counted down in reverse order on a big screen. I may write crime novels but in real life I hate suspense, so this was bliss. Even the groans from the audience around me as they realised the book they liked best had not won failed to put me off. Then the time came, the cover of Code 1879 flashed up on the screen and I went to accept my award. Enough of the people there had voted for me to make the reception very warm and gracious. As I grabbed the microphone in  a trembling hand, the chimes of Big Ben rang out across the hall. The French sure love a gimmick. I managed to stumble my way through a few words of thanks and no one laughed. Then I took part in a panel discussion with Virginie, her editor and my French editor Nathalie Demoulin, where Ludivine managed to make me sound humorous and insightful in French. Never mind lost in translation: I think my words, in Ludivine's mouth, rather like the ones in the French edition of my book, actually gained something.

Then it was time to sign and chat with readers, which is always the nice bit. By the end of the evening I was knackered, so with a small cheque and large basket of Nantes delicacies under my arm I wove a weary way back to my hotel room and my bed, a very happy, humbled and slightly pissed author. I was on holiday in France three summers ago, just as a few problems were starting to develop in my relationship with my UK publisher, and before the rights had been sold there. If you had told me then that I would be back in the country three years later to collect a national award voted for by nearly 3500 readers, I would have thought you'd been at the pastis. But there you go. It's strange the path these books can sometimes take you on.

I had little time for celebration, because for the next week I had been asked to tour all the regions where I had won and meet more readers. But more on that next week, along with some photographs...

cheers

Dan - Friday

*mothballed no more. The third book is almost ready to go. The most exciting moment of last Saturday was hearing my French editor, who has read a rough draft, say she thought it was my best yet.

Three Jewels and the Discovery of South Africa

There is much debate about who first “discovered” America, and like most of these debates the issue is largely about definition.  Growing up in South Africa, I spent much time learning about Bartolomeu Dias rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, Vasco de Gama pioneering the sea route to India ten years later, and finally the Dutch East India company settlements at the Cape under the governorship of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652.  These were the people who "discovered" and "developed" the Cape; the conventional wisdom of the time was that there was not much in the way of local population, and that the black Africans migrated to the area much later.  This convenient fiction supported the right of white people to grab and hold the Cape.

"He walked like a tiger."

One of the voyages of Zheng He

I’m ashamed to say that it was only recently that I discovered that almost certainly the first non-Africans to discover the Cape of Good Hope were the Chinese.  It’s an interesting story – one familiar to every Chinese school student – but not familiar to many people in this part of the world.

It begins in 1371 with the birth of Ma He to a Muslim Chinese family in Yunnan.  His life did not start well.  In 1381, his father was killed during the Ming conquest of Yunnan, Ma He was captured, castrated, and sent to the court as a servant of one of the emperor’s sons – the Prince of Yan.  There he was given the name Three Jewels – rather droll in view of the removal of the two he started with.  But his fortunes were in the ascendant.  He helped the prince become the new emperor and was richly rewarded, not least with a new name - Zheng He - in honor of his bravery in battle.  Supposedly seven feet tall, it was said "he walked like a tiger”.

Drawing of a Treasure ship

Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming emperors financed seven enormous naval expeditions with Zheng He as admiral.  The fleet was amazing – up to 200 ships each with 500 men.  The ships were of various sizes, the largest being the Treasure ships used by the admiral and his deputies.  These were reputedly nine-masted monsters, about 400 by 170 feet (the size of a football field), with four decks and room for 500 passengers in addition to the crew, and masses of cargo.  Even allowing for some exaggeration, these must have been the biggest sailing ships ever built. Columbus’ fleet, by comparison, would have easily fitted inside one of the Treasure ships.  Then there were water ships (carrying fresh water for the fleet), horse ships, cargo ships…

Most of the time the admiral took his ships on established routes, accepting tribute, trading and generally showing that messing with the emperor was a poor idea.  He was not averse to force, but this was not a mission to plunder and pillage.  The stability of the emperor and his government was the message.  

The fleet at sail

One of the spoils from Africa

There were voyages of discovery too.  It is likely that the fleet reached northern Australia, given some artifacts found there and the stories in the oral tradition of the Aboriginal people of the area.  The ships certainly came well down the coast of Africa, and recent research suggests that they also rounded the Cape of Good Hope – fifty years before Dias.  But they went no further.  Presumably getting to the West for the Chinese was much less of an attraction than getting to the East was to the Europeans!

Zheng He died in 1433 returning from the seventh great voyage.  The year before he had erected a commemorative pillar in Fujian, that proclaimed:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (30,000 miles) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

Poor old Bartolomeu Dias!

Michael - Thursday

Vits er þörf þeim sem víða ratar

Hávamál is a collection of ancient poems or parts of poems, in all 164 in number. The common denominator is Óðinn who is the narrator in each verse. It should therefore not come as a surprise that where gender is a factor the wisdom is from the male perspective. Óðinn was not feminine in any sense of the word, bearded maybe but hipster not. The authors are considered to be many and the verses believed to have been written by Icelandic Vikings during the period between 900-1200. Only one copy from ancient times still exists, as part of the 13th century Iceland manuscript Codus Regius now on display in the Árni Magnússon Museum in Iceland. It consists of 45 vellum leaves, 8 are missing although I have no clue as to how they know precisely what is not there.  

Codus Reguis (the book of the King) is so called because it was given as a present to the King of Denmark in 1662 by the Icelandic bishop of Skálholt Brynjólfur Sveinsson. He is to have acquired it in 1643 but no historical documents mention its existence until that time and there is no information regarding from whom or where the bishop got it. Upon gaining independence in 1944 Iceland began to grumble about this gift. We wanted it back, along with other manuscripts that had been sent to Denmark during the course of Danish rule.  

In 1971 Denmark relented to our consistent and annoying nagging and returned the manuscript. At the time air travel was not considered safe enough to move such precious cargo so the Codus Regius was sent over by ship. I don‘t know why but I find this very old-fashioned. Ships can sink, planes can crash. Nothing is really fail proof. What would one do if given the task of organizing the logistics of such a shipment today? Take a month to work through contingency plans to counterbalance the risks. And probably end up by sending it by ship. Wrapped in a life vest. 

I love the wisdom set forth in Hávamál. It dates from a time so different than the present yet they seem to have had all of the important things down pat. Here are a few examples of the gist of the poems in the first section, Gestaþáttur: 

·         Do not try to be friends with the enemies of your existing friends.

·         Do not get a big head if you are successful, everyone has a peer.

·         Two men can usually overpower one guy (make friends – alone you are vulnerable)

·         The rich and the poor have always existed and will always exist. Poverty says nothing about the worth of the person.

·         If you have guests, make sure to speak to them and to listen to what they have to say.

·         The more you drink (alcohol) the stupider you will become. (I guess drinking has not changed much in a thousand years)

·         Do not make fun of others, you are not perfect yourself. Nobody is.

·         It is good to be smart or wise. But to fully enjoy life one must not be too smart or too wise.

·         Do not flee a fight, death will find you at some point no matter what you do. (Oh just get it over with)

·         Those who misuse power will eventually be overthrown.

·         Don‘t worry too much. Worrying does not solve problems.

·         A person that does not travel from home is stupid. (Small tidbit of information, the Icelandic word for stupid “heimskur” is derived from the word home “heima”, a remnant from the times of these writings.)

·         Don‘t spend your time lying in bed, a sleeping man has never done anything noteworthy.

My favorite, no. 70: It is better to be alive than dead. No one has any use for a dead man.

And the weirdest: A son born after you are dead is better than no son at all. (I would think this depends on how long after you die this son is born)

And finally, one that no longer applies, in Iceland anyway: Do not, ever, set your weapons out of reach. Keep them on your person when awake and by your bed when asleep. (To be read with the one about not worrying too much.)

Yrsa -  Wednesday

Bouchercon Hiatus #5

Bouchercon is over, but here on Murder is Everywhere Bouchercon Hiatus Week continues.

This is a reprise of the post I originally published on March 11, 2011, under the title

Icon - The Statue of Christ the Redeemer.

The first proposal to build a statue on the peak of Corcovado (the name means “hunchback” in Portuguese) goes all the way back to the mid-1850’s, but found no favor with the royal family of the time.

The second proposal, the one that ultimately resulted in what we have today, was made in 1921, by a group of religious laymen in Rio de Janeiro.

And it wasn’t a government project. It was financed by donations from Brazilian Catholics.

Initial proposals included a Christian cross and a statue of Jesus with a globe in his hands.

Construction of the winning design, in reinforced concrete covered with soapstone, took nine years and cost the equivalent of $3,000,000 in today’s U.S. dollars.

You can get there by tram...

...or by road.

Inside there’s a metal stairway that offers access to every part of the interior, and there are viewing ports in the hands and the head, but they’ve long been closed to the public because of the strong winds that blow almost constantly at that height.

The breadth of the statue from fingertip to fingertip is 28 Meters (92 feet).

The granite peak on which it is built, is 710 meters (2,329 ft) above sea level.

The statue and the pedestal add an additional 110 meters (361 feet).

Here’s the view you get from the base of the statue.

You can still spot the head and extended arms from a distance of more than 20 kilometers at sea.

O Cristo Redentor, as Brazilians call the statue, has become an icon, not only of the City in which it stands, but of all Brazil.

So much so, that my publishers have elected to use it on two different books as an "identifier" of the country in which the action takes place, even though neither book includes a single scene that takes place in Rio.

Here's how it looks on the cover of Soho's most recent book:

And how it looks on Karakter's (Dutch) version of Blood of the Wicked:

Leighton - Monday