Twas A Mystery Writer's Night Before Christmas...and Chanukah

Jeff—Saturday

It’s Christmas Eve! And the first night of Chanukah! To all of you from the many different corners of our world who so kindly follow us on MIE, the very best of the Holiday Season, no matter how you may choose to celebrate the time.  For many of us it’s all about family traditions, and as I’m blessed to be part of the MIE family I have a little tradition of my own I like to sneak in here during the holiday season.  It’s a little something I composed for my Christmas Eve post a few years back and whether or not you’d like seeing it again, it’s a tradition so we’re stuck with it…like election debates…though updated to include the new members of our MIE family. I take great pleasure in brutally fracturing the classic poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore or Henry Livingston—history is still not sure who wrote it, so apologies to both. 

Livingston

Moor

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a laptop was stirring, nor even a mouse.
The reviews were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that new readers would soon find them there.

The critics were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of best-seller danced in my head.
And DorothyL in her wimsey, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for the hiatus nap.

When out on the Net there arose such a chatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the keyboard I flew like a flash,
Tore open the browser and dove in with a splash.

The glow on the screen cast like new-fallen snow,
A lustre of brilliance onto writing so-so.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But the sight of a blog with nine writers so dear.

With a little bold driver so quick with a thrill,
I knew in a moment he hailed from Brazil.
More rapid than eBooks their creations they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now, Kubu! now, Aimee! now, Charlie and Guy!
On, Vera! On, Justin! on, Hiro and Rei!
To the top of the Times! to the top of them all!
Now Anderson, slash away! slash away pall!”

As wry thoughts, that before the final deadline fly,
When they meet with an obstacle soar to the sky.
So off to their blog-posts these non-courtiers flew,
With a sleigh full of ploys, and opinions not few.

And then, in a twinkling, I saw not from aloof,
The prancing and gnawing of hard comments and spoof
Taking aim at some points so to bring them to ground,
Brought on by hard thinkers from near and far ‘round.

The writers were dressed from each head to each foot

In bold clothes that were tarnished with gashes well put.
A bundle of ARCs each had flung on its back,
They looked like kind peddlers bringing books to a rack.

Their eyes—how they twinkled! Their dimples how merry!
Their cheeks like Jeff Bezos’s, their noses like sherry!
One’s droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
‘Til his bottle of bourbon fell out on the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
Threw up smoke of the kind to fire scotch from the heath.
He had a broad face that would fill up the telly,
And as he reached for his bottle mumbled, “Just jelly.”

Neither chubby nor plump, more like jolly and svelte,
I laughed when I saw him, ‘til his stare I felt.
But a wink of his eye and no twist to my head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

They all spoke not a word, but went straight to their work,
And filled all the bookshelves, then turned with a jerk.
And crossing their fingers aside of their noses,

And giving great nods, passed around the Four Roses.

They kept all at play ‘til the ladies gave whistle,
Then each turned as one to read an epistle. 
And I heard them exclaim, ‘ere my charger lost might,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-fright!”

And, of course, “Happy Chanukah” and “Kala Kristouyenna.”

—Andreas Kaldis

The Little Drummer Boy

                                  

                  Mr Bolero himself. Written when, it is suggested, he was suffering from Alzheimers. 

I wish I had a quid for every time somebody has asked me ‘So who wrote Ravel’s Bolero?’

I wasn’t caught out by a friend asking me slyly what was the favourite carol of the German Psychiatric Institute. I thought for a minute and asked  ‘Is it God rest ye Jerry Mental men?’

Gold star for me.

But the best one was my friend the PhD student, apocryphal or not it is chortlesome. It’s reputed to be from a real exam paper. ‘What is the longest sentence you can get without using punctuation?’ ‘Fifty years to life of course.’

Anyway the reason for such hilarity ( what goes ha ha ha bang? A man laughing his head off.) is that the world is in a terrible state and it doesn’t look like we are going to get anywhere near the real meaning of Christmas. But we should never let the madmen win, we must stay cheerful. Even if it is in the manner of ‘The boy stood on the burning deck…because he had no idea how close the flames were.’

 So it ‘s that time of year again.

My pal is a well-known opera singer. He was on stage backed by a very famous orchestra, singing  one of my favs… .The Little Drummer Boy.  I found the recording on Facebook and listened carefully. Then I challenged  ‘Why is the backing the same  as Ravel’s Bolero?’  ‘Well spotted,’ he replied, ‘they saved money by not getting an entire orchestral arrangement rewritten as the time signature is the same in both pieces.’ 

I bet you are all trying it in your head now.

It did turn The Little Drummer Boy into one of the most sinister songs I’ve ever heard as if right behind the little drummer boy was the lord high executioner.

I was telling that to someone else, another one who asked, so who wrote Ravel’s Bolero.  I told her it was by Maurice Bolero and she believed me. ‘Oh every time I hear that song I can feel the ice under ma arse.’

                                 

                                               Torvill and Dean

The song, the Little Drummer Boy is American, made famous by the Trapp family singers and is known as the ‘Carol of the drum’.  The little drummer boy of the song has no special gifts to give the new born infant, just himself and his drum ---.. to play in front of a sleeping baby???  Little romper suit boy might be a bit more apt, I can just imagine Mary getting the wee guy off to sleep, then along comes some wee tyke with a drum giving it laidy.

How would it sound today, with a Glaswegian rap over the Bolero bits…

                                 

Come they told me Pa rum pum pum pum  (Ok but give it up with the noise, will you)

A new born King is here, Pa rum pum pum pum  ( And he needs his sleep, so can it, will you)

Our finest gifts we bring Pa rum pum pum pum ( Except you, you’ve brought a drum, where’s the play station and the furbies?)

To lay before our King Pa rum pum pum pum (and the gift receipt so we can take it back on Boxing day)

Rum pum pum pum ( yeah you said  that already)

When we come ( or you could have skyped, and we could have turned the volume down)

Little Baby Pa rum pum pum pum ( baby being the word, no sleep for a month, vomit stained cardi, dirty nappies every two minutes….)

I am a poor boy too, Pa rum pum pum pum  (So  you are on the social? how did you afford the drum then? If you have nicked it, you can bugger off..)

I have no gift to bring  Pa rum pum pum pum , (yeah we noticed. Not even a bottle of Blue Nun or a box of last year’s Ferrero Roche)

That's good to give our King, Pa rum pum pum pum –or anybody else really, vouchers would be better, then we can get him what he needs, not what he wants!

Rum pum pum pum   ( yeah you said already, twice )

Only my drums  ( one drum… one drum surely, or do you have a whole camel full of them out there)

Mary tapped her feet  Pa rum pum pum pum ( Having just had a kid, more like  some kind of spasm. I mean, the dynamics are the same as a man going to the loo and passing a melon so if  you think she’s in toe tapping mood, forget it )

The ox and lamb kept time Pa rum pum pum pum  ( Snort with derision, they would be in Ripley’s if they had )

I played my drum for Him Pa rum pum pum  ( after us telling you not to??)

I played my best for Him Pa rum pum pum pum ( Couldn’t hear you over the noise of him crying his lungs out)

Rum pum pum pum  (enough already)

Me and my drums  ( would you please go away.)

But thank you to the writer’s  HARRY SIMEONE, HENRY ONORATI, KATHERINE K DAVIS to all the times in my youth I rup a bum bummed.

                                    

                                             I really do like this, in a strange kind of way.

                                               And so much more poignant now.

 Still it’s better than that slight creepy way David Bowie pops in to say hello to Bing Crosby. ( Must say that great joke again here- What’s the difference between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney? Bing sings and Walt Disney! )  And then they sing in perfect harmony both knowing the words and everything. And when he plays the piano, a whole orchestra starts up.

And have you noticed that daft lyric in there? ‘Perhaps now we’ll see the day when men of goodwill live in peace, live in peace again.’

To my mind men of good will would always live in peace. It’s the nutters out there you have to keep an eye out for.

So to all my fellow bloggers and our followers, I wish you and yours a happy and peaceful Christmas. May the world be at one.  And I do believe that is the lyric of a very good song that really carries a meaningful message. Or did I imagine that.

Have a lovely day,

Caro  23 12 2016 ( two sleeps to go )

A rose by any other name

Michael - Thursday

On Monday Annamaria wrote a piece Were the Medici Italian?—partly tongue in cheek—about a British TV series on the Medici that ‘modified’ the history, used a variety of (English) accents in a peculiar way, and generally left Italian speakers unimpressed. I haven’t seen any episodes of the series—and don’t intend to now!—so I can’t really comment on it. But there is quite a deep issue that underlies the matter. Most of the writers on MIE face this every time they write. We are all writing primarily for English speaking readers, and we have English as our first language, yet our books are set in quite foreign cultures often with different first languages. (Zoe is the exception; I leave it to Caro to decide whether she would include herself in this or not.) The dilemma is how to do two things: firstly bring across a feeling for the culture, and secondly deal with the fact that all the characters will be speaking another language between themselves and often thinking in that language also.

There are some tricks one can use to remind the reader. As an example, sometimes when Kubu is speaking to a foreigner, we will tag the dialog with ‘he said in English.’ The point is to remind the reader that most of the time that is not the case. Here’s another nice one from Jeff’s books. Greeks don’t shake their heads to indicate no, they nod upwards. He uses this from time to time. Right away we're reminded that we are in a different culture and, by implication, that the characters are speaking a different language.

Of course one can (and does) describe the setting and discuss local issues and politics, but the danger is that it may ring false to the reader because English people in this setting wouldn’t behave in that particular way.

I think scriptwriters and film directors face similar problems. Occasionally they get it wonderfully right. People in Botswana almost all speak English—it is the official language of the country—but they speak it in a unique way, partly it's accent, but partly it's intonation that has been inherited from Setswana, and partly it reflects the pace of the society. When I first saw The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency TV series, I was stunned by how well this accent was reproduced by all the characters. The effect was immediate and pervasive. We all knew that the culture was as different as the setting. The fact that the characters would largely have been speaking Setswana to each other was no longer an issue; they would speak English on occasion and this was just how they would speak it.

Jill Scott as Mma Remotswe

Later Stanley and I had an opportunity to visit the set in Gaborone while filming was taking place. On set was a speech coach who would go over every line with the main actors. (None of them was from Botswana by the way. Jill Scott is an American; if I hadn't known in advance I'd have asked her where in Botswana she was from!)

DiCaprio and Hounsou in Blood Diamond

Since the series was made for British and US audiences, the question arises as to whether any accent would have been fine provided it was consistent. I don’t think so. The actors absorbed a bit of the culture along with the Batswana way of speaking. This seems to have been one of the problems with the Medicis. Different English accents were used for different types of characters and it didn’t work. Even worse would have been to have them all speaking English with Italian accents, as if Italian isn’t a real language but just a dialect of English. (Fortunately this went out with old B grade movies.)

Leornado DiCapprio isn’t one of my favorite actors, but anyone who saw The Revenant knows that he’ll do whatever it takes. In Blood Diamond, he worked hard at a Rhodesian accent. Most of the time it wasn’t too bad, but it didn't work for me. I would rather he'd just spoken ordinary English. But for people not from this part of the world, it may have achieved a better understanding of the character to be constantly reminded of the otherness.

I guess the moral is that one has to work hard to get this right, and that the rightness or otherwise may depend on the eventual reader/viewer. As I said, most of us in MIE face these issues with our writing every day. I’d be fascinated to hear your take. 

High on The Man in the High Castle

Sujata Massey

One of my holiday traditions is to indulge in a television binge watch--ideally, a series that gives me that delightful, reckless feeling of wasting time. To enhance the celebration, I watch on my laptop in bed. With tea.

In 2014, the holiday binge was Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, a light-weight crime series set in 1920s Australia. In 2015, I escaped with Underwear, a series about life at a lingerie design house in contemporary Tokyo.

This year, I found a speculative/suspense series on Amazon Video set in 1962 America: The Man in The High Castle. And my indulgence in comfort TV has turned discomforting.

Vintage paperback edition of the book 

An early edition of the novel

The Man in The High Castle was inspired by a Hugo-Award winning novel of the same name published in 1963 by the late Philip Dick. This talented author's science fiction has formed the inspiration for other films including Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Minority Report. Dick was a tortured genius, with mental health issues and a deep interest in philosophy. He believed that different world can exist because of people's mind-states. The possibility of multiple realities flows through his works, including this series.

The Man in The High Castle hurtles us into a world where the Axis prevailed in World War II. In 1962, the former United States are dived into Pacific States (the west), the Greater Nazi Reich (the East Coast, South and Midwest). The Rocky Mountain states lie in the Neutral Zone, but it is far from a safe haven. In Japanese-occupied San Francisco, a degenerate artist named Frank and an aikido teacher named Juliana   (they were married in Dick's novel) live together in a dank San Francisco basement. They are thrown into danger when Juliana's half-sister Trudy flings a film reel at her just before she is executed by the Japanese police.

Juliana Crane, played by Alexa Davalos lives in Japanese-governed San Francisco

Juliana's efforts to deliver the film to the person Trudy intended brings her into contact with the resistance, and throws Frank and his relatives, who have a fraction of Jewish blood, into danger. The situation is complicated when Juliana is aided by an attractive young man, Joe Blake, working for the Nazis. Not going to say any more on the plot, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

While the TV series is action-packed and suspenseful, the creepiest moments show the subtle ways  the foreign powers reshaped the lives of the Americans following the atomic bombing of Washington DC. In the Pacific States, many bus and street signs are in Japanese, and people routinely eat with chopsticks and fall into deep bows when faced by their rulers. In New York suburbs, families look "Father Knows Best" perfect, but the kids wear Hitler Youth uniforms to school, the textbooks are all about allegiance to the Fuhrer, muesli is on the breakfast table and people use fork and knife in the German fashion. Costumes and sets and the cinematography are top-notch.

Backyard baseball on Long Island, played by Nazi-American characters

Before viewing the first episode, I wondered if Germans and Japanese would feel disheartened by seeing their worst moments in history glorified.  I was relieved to discover humane characters among all the communities portrayed.  A pair of German and Japanese government men,  Rudolf Wegener and Nobosuke Tagomi, scheme together to keep power balanced between the two sides to avoid a war. And the Americans subject to rule--the "pawns" who work for the occupying forces, and those in the resistance--have to weigh whether their fight for freedom will bring death to innocents around them.

Japanese Trade Minister Nobusuke Tagomi, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

This series was shot in 2014 and premiered in 2015 with season 1 (you must watch Season 1 in order to understand Season 2). The US presidential race hadn't yet begun, which meant that white supremacists were lurkers, rather than a much-publicized, blatant force. The Man in The High Castle feels like the canary in the cole mine: the harbinger of disaster.

Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith of the American Reich

 In the first month after the  presidential election, we have witnessed almost more than 1000 hate incidents. The president-elect said nothing against these acts until he was coaxed to make a statement by a journalist, at which time he looked into a TV camera and said, "Stop it."

But they won't stop.  The KKK marched through North Carolina to celebrate Donald Trump's Victory. Trump appointed Roger Bannon, his election strategist and founder of the racist Breitbart News website as White House chief of staff. Richard Spencer, a young man who heads a white nationalist group called The National Policy Institute, held a conference of followers in Washington DC where Sieg Heil saluting was widespread in the audience.

Spencer is married to a pro-Putin Russian propagandist Nina Kouprianova. Trump does business with Russia and praises Putin. Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is an ExxonMobil CEO who has been awarded a medal from Putin's administration. New York looks to be the center of Trump's government, just as it is for the Nazis in the series.

Well worth watching!

Sounds like a paranoid conspiracy--but people are dead serious about it, and many Republicans now view Putin's actions favorably. Having grown up in the Cold War, this seems to me like a revised version of The Manchurian Candidate--or at the very least  Saturday Night Live skit.

What could happen next--after the ten episodes of Season 2 of The Man in The High Castle are finished? There may be a Season 3, although it's not official yet.

In the meantime, another program is in the works. The A&E Network plans a documentary series called Generation KKK that will follow young Americans choosing racism. This kind of programming--which is bound to attract fans who will connect to the real-life characters - seems like it could be another goose-step in normalizing racist behaviors. But I'll wait to see.

end of the year mysteries - enquiring minds want to know..

well, a lot of things including what happened in November but apart from that... Is there a difference between marzipan and almond paste? Aren't they both from almonds? And why did a man, I've never met, leave me a book with a friend in Paris. A book, that I'd heard had been pulled by the publisher? How were copies even available?

To backtrack, years ago I'd heard about Lucienne Goldfarb, aka Katia la Roquinne (the redhead), who owned a Parisian bordello, was a police informer, opera aficionado, had friends in high places and was an alleged Jewish traitor to the resistance. This came from an interview with Paulette Sarcelle, a female Resistant who'd been caught and survived a camp. Paulette knew Lucienne, as she was called then, in Paris when Lucienne and Paulette were members of the Jewish communist worker cell of the FTP-MOI. This cell was betrayed and the members executed, which is described in the quoted article below by Madeleine Meyer. Paulette grew visibly upset telling me Lucienne Goldfarb had written an autobiography with such blatant lies that the surviving Resistants were able to finally have the publisher pull the book. But here in my hands was the book, published in 1976, which consisted of Lucienne talking about her life after 1947, how she'd worked for love, respected the police and informed for them. Opera was her passion. She worked for no one but her girls and her clients and had bought a hotel by herself at 10bis rue Debarcadere. An infamous address, it seems and yet when I went there in 2014, it was closed. The cafe owner across the street shrugged, 'she lived there upstairs for years, fell down and is in a retirement home.' She intrigued me. Did she betray her friends? Did nothing stick to her because of her work for the police and close ties to Roland Dumas below - formerly in the Ministry and a high powered attorney. But until this book came into my hands, I'd found nothing, until Lucienne popped back up in the news a week later. All this within two weeks of each other.

She'd retired and sold her hotel/bordello and the hotel reopening is trading on her name and the notoriety. This is her in 2014.

How could Lucienne deny her past? Yet she had refused to speak about it. Here's what Madeline Meyer said in an article in Libèration: Madeleine Meyer, shows an old class picture. In it the face of a teenage girl with curly hair is surrounded in black pencil. "She was called Lucienne." A redhead, round. "She began to say she wanted to engage in the Resistance," Madeleine says, "she was actually trying to infiltrate." On March 23, 1943, the special brigades carried out their first raid against the network of young Jews of the FTP-MOI of Paris. 57 people were arrested. Since 1943, the survivors of which Henri Krasucki, future secretary-general of the CGT, accused Lucienne Goldfarb of being the informer to the police. In 1943, nobody was suspicious of Lucienne in their working class district. Her father, arrested in 1941, was deported in 1942. Her mother and brother have just been taken to Drancy. She is 18 years old. "The street was a little schtetel (Jewish village)," recalls Simon Rayman, arrested with the Manouchian group in October 1943. All the young people know. The Communists are numerous. Lucienne goes to find Ginette, a friend of school, tells him that she wants to enter a resistance group to avenge her deported relatives. "It worried me," said Adams Rayski at Liberation. "The next day, I was followed from my apartment. Later arrested." A few days before the roundup, Madeleine Meyer and her parents were visited by a police officer. "He said he was a police inspector and that our apartment had been denounced by Lucienne Goldfarb." The next day, Madeleine saw two German officers come out of a carriage, accompanied by a red-haired girl. "My aunt said to me: but here she is, La Lucienne," she remembers. After the war, Henri Krasucki filed a complaint against the policemen who tortured him in the police station of Puteaux, but also against Lucienne Goldfarb. Nothing happened. For the police, she quickly became a high placed informer and untouchable. Now after forty years it's gone from brothel to chic hotel that opened in late June. I'm still wondering why this book landed in my hands Cara - Tuesday

The dreaded round robin Christmas newsletter with a twist

Zoë Sharp

Christmas is approaching with frightening rapidity, mainly because I’ve had my head down in a book – writing one, not reading one, although I’ve been doing that as well. I’ve also been trying to get my house reconstruction finished, sort out my annual accounts, do Christmas present shopping, and prepare to move again for three months.

The rest of the time I’ve been merely loafing.

So, my sending out of cards this year has been, well, nonexistent, if I’m honest. Fortunately, I have a Jacquie Lawson eCard account and know how to use it, so I won’t entirely fail to keep in touch. No, you can’t stand an eCard on your mantelpiece for visitors to admire, but they’re lovely pieces of animated artwork all the same.

I’ve also been contemplating newsletters. Not only because I realise just how long it is since I sent one out to my readers, but also because it’s at this time of year you tend to receive family newsletters along with Christmas cards from people you haven’t seen in donkey’s years.

Now, in principle there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with sending out one of these annual missives, but I think you have to think carefully about the recipient. In the past I’ve had them from people I don’t know well, and the news about children and grandchildren whose names are utterly unfamiliar, and whose achievements therefore mean very little, can leave me nonplussed.

Mind you, I also used to receive cards that showed a picture on the front of ‘us heli-skiing in New Zealand earlier this year’ or whatever exotic holiday activity had been undertaken. I’m not entirely sure what the aim was of this, other than to be read out in a sarky tone of voice by the recipient.

In fact, quite a few people have expressed scorn for this type of communication, but I think it depends on the information given and the intent behind it.

So often, it seems to be reduced down to a list of achievements and boasts, both humble and otherwise.  ‘Jocasta had such difficulty choosing between Oxford and Cambridge for her university place, but after all those good grades everybody wanted her.’ ‘Nigel hardly had time to enjoy our second annual cruise after his latest promotion at work.’  ‘The new kitchen took a week longer to install than expected, but it’s bliss having both a steam rotisserie oven and an espresso machine built in …’

Either that, or it’s the anti-round robin, full of injuries, illnesses, family bereavements and bad luck.

Wouldn’t it be fun to send, or receive something a bit more … out of the ordinary?

‘Dear …………

‘Well, another year nearly over, and what a year it’s been! We can’t send you any pictures, as apparently it’s frowned upon when you’re in Witness Protection.

We had to move again, after the fire. Who would have thought it would catch so quickly? But on a happy note, the neighbour’s parrot was really quite old anyway.

Harper came home from kindergarten with her first exclusion last week. Little tyke! We think she’s trying to compete with her brother. It’s not everyone who can boast their first ASBO at seven, but he always was advanced for his age.

We managed to get away to the sun for a week or two this summer. Well, after that armoured car job we thought we’d better lie low for a bit. Had a lovely time, although poor Lenny lost twenty grand after a deal with some Russians went bad. I told him not to do business with someone he met in a bar on the Costa del Sol, but would he listen!

Auntie Doris is having a break this Christmas. She’s doing three months in Holloway for her shoplifting this time. Her own fault for trying to get out of Tesco’s with a frozen turkey under her fur hat. The cold made her faint and when the manager tried to revive her, well, that was that. She says she’s looking forward to having someone else cook her Christmas dinner and putting her feet up.

Our Wayne had his application for early release turned down last month. Something to do with the last riot in Parkhurst. But on the bright side he did get his picture on the front of the Daily Mail. Even with the balaclava, you can still recognise his cheeky smile.

We were so pleased to get your own Christmas round robin and hear about your new car, the iPads you bought the children for their birthdays, and when you’re going to be away on your winter cruise.

Next time we’re in your area, we’ll be sure to pop in …

All the best

Xx

(No point in me signing my name, as it’s changed several times since we last met.)

Hope you all have a very Happy Holidays – wherever, however, and with whomsoever you intend to spend them.

This week’s Word of the Week is amicide, meaning the killing of a friend.