Category Archives: writing

Traumatized characters: PTSD eventually affects us all

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By Peter H. Green

Sarah Fine

Sarah Fine

Among many outstanding features of Missouri Writers Guild’s 2013 conference in St. Louis was a Master Class presented by Sarah Fine, PhD, a child psychologist and author, who works with troubled teens.

My first clue that this session would be extraordinary came when its leader warned, “This is going to be pretty intense, and I want to conduct the three-hour session without a break. If you need to get out of here, just leave for a few minutes until you feel you can handle it.”

Sarah Fine told us that 60 percent of the population experiences traumatic stress at one time or another in our lives. Some recover quickly, through working it out with family, friends or therapists. But for about 8 percent, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has chronic effects that become part of their lives. It can be especially severe when a child deprived of a parent’s love at an early age experiences a traumatic event in later life. In this case the effects are amplified and harder to treat and cure..

As a writer, Dr. Fine communicated to us how to bring such a character to life, not by telling the reader the person has PTSD, but by reproducing the scenes as they occurred—in intimate personal settings, in a natural disaster or a man-made horror such as a battle. These are the memories that come back to haunt trauma victims, in flashbacks, nightmares and hallucinations.She suggests we recreate experiences creating trauma for the individual—their visual effects, physical character, sounds, scents and the infliction of physical damage or injury—in vivid, concrete detail.

While I knew this instinctively when I wrote such experiences for two characters

Sanctum, by Sarah Fine

Sanctum, by Sarah Fine

in my current Patrick MacKenna mystery, Fatal Designs, this class was a revelation. I was able to add authentic detail to my scenes and give my characters appropriate reactions, based on the symptoms described by Dr. Fine in to further bring my characters with traumatic stress to life. In the class we worked through development of such a character. Key steps included recording the nature of the person’s experience:   the age when it first occurred, the type of trauma, severity, and duration. Whether it was a single event, episodic, as with regular physical abuse of a child, or chronic, as occurs with war zone refugees or neglected, deprived children..

This news came naturally to me, since I had experienced a few traumatic events of my own—my doting father’s departure for World War II when I was only four years old, losing him a second time when he died at 68, when I was 36, and experiencing the trauma of the war itself though radio. Since then we endure traumatic stress and tragedy in Marshall McLuhan’s global village daily on live television. We relive its gruesome scenes though repeated broadcasts—the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center towers, natural disasters, freak weather due to global warming (or not),  school shootings and the Boston Marathon bombing. Read more about Sarah Fine’s books or her series on trauma.

It’s no wonder we fear our neighbors, foreigners, different ethnic groups, opposing political parties, contamination of our food, guns, gun control and the government itself. We’re collectively reliving the nightmare of self-inflicted Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Anybody know a good book I can read, with the TV off?

.Till next time, good words to you,

Peter

Peter

 

 


 

Facing Demons: Claire Applewhite’s ‘Nam Noir

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By Peter H. Green

My intrigue with the writings of Claire Applewhite, whom I’ve gotten to

Claire Applewhite,

Claire Applewhite,

know over the past five years through St. Louis Writers Guild and the local chapter of Sisters in Crime, can hardly be explained away by my weakness for redheads. I refer to my creation of Patrick MacKenna, an architect-sleuth whose willful carrot-topped daughter, Erin, in Crimes of Design is soon to come back even more troublesome as she battles Patrick and hardened criminals in Fatal Designs. By the way, Claire’s a redhead too.

No, I think it’s, Claire’s ability to out-think troublemakers, put Vietnam vets into dangerous situations and remain two steps ahead of the sheriff that keeps me coming back for more. And it’s her unexpected plot twists, deft turns of phrase and a thorough familiarity with the checkered past of our Midwestern cities that sets her apart.

Claire Applewhite is a graduate of St. Louis University, where she earned an A.B. in Communications and an MBA. Currently an adjunct professor at the University of Missouri St. Louis, her published books include The Wrong Side of Memphis, Crazy For You, St. Louis Hustle, Candy Cadillac and Tennessee Plates. She has served as President of the Missouri Writers Guild, Vice-President of Sisters in Crime and as a Board member of the Midwest Chapter, Mystery Writers of America. She is actively involved in other writers’ organizations, including the St. Louis Metropolitan Press Club. For details see: www.Claireapplewhite.com. Here’s what Claire had to say in a recent interview:

Where do you live, and how has your environment affected your writing? I live in St. Louis, Missouri, located in the heart of the country. Founded by French traders, the city possesses a rich history as “the Gateway to the West.” Nevertheless, it has been classified as one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. Most of my stories are set in St. Louis, and are influenced by economic, racial, gender, education and employment issues.

How many books have you written? I have written seven books. Of those, five are published.

How would you describe your most recently published book, Tennessee Plates, published by L&L Dreamspell, in December, 2012? In ‘68, the hot smoke and cold eyes of ‘Nam stalked ELVIN SUGGS. Now, a blonde in a tight dress and a silver Cadillac has captured his heart, and he doesn’t want to run. Lonely and eager, he trails the temptress with a shady past, rife with corruption and lies—the girl with the Tennessee Plates.

How much of yourself is hidden in the characters in the book? I’ve heard it said that no one can write authentically with their hands tied up behind their back. I think an author must forget oneself and let the characters talk. In other words, I strive to do that.

Do your characters take on a life of their own? I think an author must climb into a characters’ skin and view the world through their eyes. If so, which is your favorite? My favorite is the character who owns the viewpoint in the scene under construction.

What challenges did you face while writing this book? Tennessee Plates concerns reconciliation with past demons. The hero finally confronts the worst times in his life, and exposes them, so that he can find peace. A major challenge existed in the balance between tragedy and humor.

Tennessee Plates, by Claire Applewhtie, L&L Dreamspell, 2012

Tennessee Plates, by Claire Applewhite, L&L Dreamspell, 2012

Do you travel to do research or for inspiration? I love to travel because I am very interested in other people and their traditions. I travel for both research and inspiration. Can you share some special places with us? Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Seaside, Florida, Palm Springs, Phoenix, the Badlands are all intriguing places with their own personalities. I love Southern cities, but I am also fascinated by deserts.

What do you think is the greatest lesson you’ve learned about writing so far? Writing is much like acting in that the author must forget him or herself, and assume a new identity in order to express another’s viewpoints.

What advice can you give new writers? Don’t worry about what people will think when they read your writing. If you do, you won’t get your best work.

Where can folks learn more about your books and events? Amazon.com, Goodreads, and my website, www.claireapplewhite.com , My books are available in print and ebook formats at Amazon.com.

Till next time, good words to you,

Peter

Pete

 

 

 

 

The Care and Feeding of Agents

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By Peter H. GreenPeter Green in book room

I’m concerned there hasn’t been a single manual written in the past seven days on how to write a book—and how not to. This makes me speculate that everyone has already learned how. At least everyone in my acquaintance is writing one, including people who should know better–they have families to support.

Our mail carrier, for example, is writing a novel about how she took her grandchildren on vacation to the Ozarks and overturned her canoe. While they were drying out by the campfire, they were visited by a grizzly bear, who took all their food. So they survived for a week on peanut butter, soggy Ritz crackers and river water purified with Army surplus halogen tablets. The author describes their experience in vivid terms: “We had the time of our lives!”

In view of such widespread talent, however, I wonder: Why aren’t there more successful authors? For one thing, there are dozens of books about character development, dialogue that moves the plot along and the importance of double spacing your manuscript. But where is a new author supposed to learn the real basics–the essentials, after all–like how to have lunch with an editor or an agent?

This is a touchy subject for us Midwesterners, unfortunate enough to live in flyover country. How can you meet those chosen ones, those kingmakers from the Left Coast—and especially the “right” one—without blowing (in advance, mind you) your first advance? Fortunately for those of us as yet uninitiated and unblessed, there is the regional literary conference, where the Great Ones descend to the hinterland to seek, among the unwashed masses, that spark of raw talent, that rude woodsman with native genius, who ends his day of chopping and gathering wood in the primeval forest scribbling deathless prose by lantern light.

One seasoned and pickled literary agent once confided to me, “Let’s face it: the place to make a book deal is in the goddamned bar.” At a tiny cocktail table in the lounge of the conference hotel, six or seven of us crowded around her, hanging on every word, each vying to be the next to pick up the check for her whiskey—she drank it neat. To keep the conversation on a general level, I brought up recent bestsellers. “What about Fifty Shades of Grey?” Bingo. “That E. L. James can’t sustain her pandering,” she expounded. “She’s got only one book in her, period.” “I couldn’t agree more,” I said, “most so-called romance fiction is just mommy porn.” I took a chance that this esteemed arbiter of literary taste, who had too many miles on her to care about romance anyway, favored sterner stuff. “Now what I really think is coming back,” she added, “is hard-boiled mystery.” Bingo, again. But she was too well oiled to remember much a month later, when I submitted my noir detective novel, about our productive conversation.

You’ll have your own chance to drink in this advice and much more, April 26 through the 28th at the Missouri Writers Guild conference, Sheraton Westport Hotel, St. Louis. You can learn more at their website.  I’ll be there with plenty of loose change—at the bar.

Until next time, good words to you,


 

Peter

Peter

 

Teacher’s Real Life Tips Foster Critical Writing and Reading Skills

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By Peter H. Green

Peter at work

Peter at work

In one of our recent nightly phone updates, my daughter Lisa surprised me. A skilled fifth grade teacher at one of Houston’s top independent school districts, she instills several fifth grade classes with reading and creative writing skills. I happened to mention to her that my publisher’s editor felt I needed a major revision to my current mystery novel, Fatal Designs, which will be published  by L & L Dreamspell this spring.

After an earthquake, my main character, amateur sleuth Patrick MacKenna, whose only daughter is on a float trip on a Missouri Ozark stream, loses cell phone contact with her. He soon learns from her fellow campers that she has disappeared. By alternating in following chapters with his daughter’s point of view, I had revealed what befalls her too early in the story. Thinking I would be adding to the tale’s suspense and drama, I had instead taken all the steam out of the engine that should be driving my mystery.

The next day in class, Lisa, who was teaching the point-of-view topic to her fifth-grade writing students, used my anecdote as an example of how selection of the right point of view can be essential to writing a successful mystery. To fix the error, she explained, I had to rearrange and rewrite some of my chapters, so Patrick can employ his ample detective capabilities to learn what happens to his daughter. She used my experience as an object lesson: by limiting my story’s point-of-view to a single main character, I could actually increase the suspense in the story.

A wise fellow student in my architectural graduate program once repeated Plato’s observation that all you need in order to have a school is one person sitting under a tree with a group of younger people, telling them a story. In like manner, little did I realize I was providing Lisa with material for her next day’s class. She brought her lesson to life by explaining that her dad had learned from his mistake about point of view. She told me that using such examples makes it feel real for them. If they’re getting knowledge a published writer uses in his daily work, the students think,” Gee, I can do this, too,” and their learning becomes practical and real.

I couldn’t help but observe proudly that my daughter’s ability to draw insight from the grist of daily life is the mark of a gifted teacher. In using personal experience to illustrate to her fifth-graders how stories are put together, Lisa is educating a generation, not only of articulate writers, but also of critical readers.

Till next time, good words to you,

Peter

Peter

 

 

Banished Language: A Toe-Dip Into 2013

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By Peter H. Green

A New Year tradition, the 38th annual list of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness, has been published  by northern Michigan’s Lake Superior State University, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Leading the list of banned words are: “fiscal cliff,” ”spoiler alert,” “kick the can down the road,” “trending” and ”bucket list.” “Spoiler alert” has been tagged by Joseph Foly of Fremont, California, as an “obnoxious way to show one has trivial information and is about to use it.”

I heartily endorse this list and have a few of my own to add. ”Share” is one of my least favorite—that ubiquitous phrase with a simple dictionary meaning, to apportion. This term has been broadened in current usage to mean any or all of the following: “give,” “inform,” “pass along,” with even the connotation “to direct,” as when a leader “shares” a particular plan of action. This unfortunate expression insinuates all kinds of things—the good intentions of the speaker, one’s interest in what the sharer has to say, one’s agreement with the person’s basic premise and even the worth of the tidbit to be “shared.”

Another word to pile on the scrap heap is “diffuse,” a term from physics, which actually means to spread widely or thinly, or disperse; however, it is often incorrectly substituted for the verb defuse, meaning to avert an explosive situation or confrontation.

Self-conscious incorrect grammar follows closely. How often we hear a careful speaker correcting himself to say, “He greeted Mary and I,” thinking he is being politically and grammatically correct, using the subjective form of the personal pronoun, even when it is a direct object and the correct form is “me”. Moreover, these days people turn somersaults  to avoid assigning gender to an indefinite person. A frequent example of this is,” Each person must have a ticket so they can be admitted promptly.” I even prefer the substitution of “she” for “they” (if one must observe scrupulous political correctness), rather than slurring from the singular antecedent to the plural pronoun.

Another toxic phrase is the once cute and expressive term, “toe-dip,” suggesting a tentative experiment with a policy or initiative. After hearing it overused for the umpteenth time, I feel it would be easier to amputate both big toes rather than endure hearing it again.

I have mixed feelings about this creep of bad and incorrect usage, knowing full well that a living language evolves, and those improper phrases become accepted and often end up in the dictionary.  With current trends, I fear we are on a slippery slope to sloppy speech. Hence we frequent users must be especially vigilant to set a good example.

So as we abandon these tired phrases—hopefully (another bad term I propose for disposal) I can suggest a few new ones to adopt in the coming year. Until the institutions that initiate such terms as “fiscal cliff” can be reformed along the lines of the deliberative, priority-bound and representative bodies that the framers of the Constitution intended, we’ll need better words to describe them. As we sadly look back on the wreckage of the 112th Regress of the United States, we hope that the House of Misrepresentatives will usher in a new era of, if not cooperation, at least accommodation, and will settle down and get to work. After this toe-dip into 2013 it’s time to banish that phrase as well and to immerse ourselves, body, mind and spirit, with new resolve into the perilous, unexplored waters of the future.

Till next time, good words to you,

Peter

Peter

A Sense of Community in a Solitary Profession: St. Louis Writers Guild

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By Peter H. Green

Writing is an art that lends itself to solitary practice. The writer must commune with his own thoughts, ideas and imagination and then commit the work to the written page. As with painting and composing, this is best accomplished by the individual artist. However, an architect’s work is never complete until hundreds of builders have realized his conception in steel, masonry and glass and people have occupied the built spaces and put his concepts of structure, utility and beauty to the test. A playwright or a composer is not done until he has tested his work before an audience, seen how they respond and learned whether they find his or her work enlightening, moving or dramatic.  However, also like those arts, the author’s work is not complete until it reaches its audience. And herein lies a misapprehension by many beginning writers.

Many would-be authors get discouraged when they lack feedback from others. Moreover, if they’ve never worked in an office on solitary tasks, they may not know how to apply themselves at the same time day after day with maximum effort to achieve results. Even then, it is difficult for some to gauge their effectiveness — to know if and how well they will reach their intended readers and whether their writing will resonate with them.

Here’s where a writing community comes in. By meeting regularly with other writers, whether in a critique group or a writers’ organization, one can discuss common problems, learn current trends, compare one’s works with others and receive encouragement and guidance

In St. Louis we’re fortunate to have a vibrant community of writers and one of the nation’s longest-established writing groups, St. Louis Writers Guild, founded 1920, along with representatives of other national writing organizations: Sisters in Crime, St. Louis Poetry Center, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America and Missouri Writers’ Guild. We also have an active St. Louis Publishers Association, which assembles independent writers, editors, graphic artists and publishers to discuss book creation, publishing, design, marketing and Internet promotion.

As a member of St. Louis Writers Guild over the past five years, I’ve benefited from talks about the craft of writing, characteristics of the different writing genres, copyright law and business matters, such as contracts, accounting and tax benefits. Most important, I’ve made friends, ranging from nationally known published writers, to newly published writers and beginners. Its base of 300 active writing practitioners has led me to publication of my first novel, important strategies for promoting my work and a network of writers throughout the country, while keeping current on the rapidly shifting sands of the publishing industry. Together we have put on regional conferences, met and entertained national literary figures, including Ridley Pearson, Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate of the United States, and local newspaper columnists and celebrities. This organization has also provided comradeship through difficult and uncertain times in the book publishing field. They’ve certainly lived up to their slogan, “You have friends here!”

Most recently we’ve held a Holiday Book Fair at Left Bank Books, where the books of 45 of our local authors will be sold through the end of the year. For current events at St. Louis Writers Guild visit the website.

Till next time, good words to you!

Peter

Peter

Helping Heal Wounded Warriors

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By Peter H. Green

Yesterday I had the privilege of making a presentation to a small group of military retirees being treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, who had enrolled in a Warrior Writers workshop at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in St. Louis. As each introduced him- or herself and told one personal fact that wouldn’t be readily apparent to an outsider, I got a sense of what troubles they had seen. A combat nurse whose father had recently died —a veteran himself, exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam and only after nine years of trying had received government disability benefits; a pilot of B-52 bombers who had flown missions in two Mideast wars; a sergeant who used to drown his military sorrows regularly at the bars and now is clean, and an officer who had the task of debriefing secret operatives, not realizing he had the stress syndrome until the doctors told him.

I had been briefed about keeping the identity of the participants confidential, but was told I could talk about their situations. Part of the introduction to this new workshop group was a discussion of how beneficial the VA had found writing to be in the process of recovering from traumatic stress.  A strikingly high percentage of veterans who had written about their ordeals had been able to overcome their symptoms and begin the long process of recovery. One of the patients in the class had become so interested in the process that he had studied it in depth at the University of Missouri and plans to go on and get a PhD in the beneficial effects of storytelling. As I listened to each participant reveal his or her story, I began to remember the effects that writing my book on my father’s World War II experience had on me–how many times I had broken down in tears at my keyboard as I reread Dad’s World War II letters and realized how much he cared about his family, and me in particular. Suddenly I knew how to begin my talk.

I pointed out that I had military stress very young when my father left home for the Marine Corps. I was barely five years old, and my baby sister had just been born. While my father had doted on me and lived for me, he was gone. My mother not only had to cope with keeping the car repaired, the house warm and the family budget under control, while staving off the unthinkable dread of Dad’s assignment to the next island invasion, now she had an abruptly orphaned new baby and a dispossessed son on her hands.  I realized even better how to relate to the members of this class.

I mentioned how hard it’d been to lose my father at age 68, and said I couldn’t bear to let go of him. I never realized why until I wrote my book, Dad’s War with the United States Marines, when it dawned on me that that it was because of this early deprivation of him as a child. I recounted how my idea for writing the book came about,  on a nostalgic college reunion trip to the East Coast, where we visited Mary Oates Johnson, a school friend of my wife, who was an editor and writer, in Andover, Massachusetts. She suggested that we take a weekend jaunt up to Annisquam to revisit the locale where I had spent my sixth summer at a cottage my aunt and uncle had rented while Dad was off to war. The rest is history; in fact, reading 400 letters Dad sent from the Pacific theater revealed some World War II history that had never been written before. The rest of my presentation was easy. I reminded my class that a disproportionate share of the world’s history has not only been created but written by members of the military. Starting with Homer and Julius Caesar, the list continues with Ernest Hemingway, Ernie Pyle, Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower, to name just a very few. I told them, “If you don’t write down your history, much of it known only to you personally, it will die with you, and the world will never know.” I had begun to do it. Now. It was their turn.

That in itself was a very healing thought.

For more on this book, Dad’s War with the United States Marines,  see my website.

Till next time, good words to you,

Peter

Peter

Two Contrasting Southern Writers Take on the Complexities of Romance

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A Red, Red Rose, by Susan Coryell, L & L Dreamspell (London, TX), 2012,  210 pages and The Ballad of the Sad Café, by Carson McCullers (1941).

By Peter H. Green

A Red, Red Rose, a suspenseful young adult romance and a good ghost story, revolves around the summer 20-year-old Ashby Overton spends with her uncle Hunter Overton, his wife, Monica, her seven-year-old cousin Jefferson, the faithful, attentive retainer Miss Emma, and the handsome stable boy and main caretaker Luke, with whom she is to fall in love, on the family estate, Overhome, in a rambling 18th-century colonial mansion nestled in the mountains of Virginia. Ashby, daughter of one of three sons of the family patriarch and raised by the other surviving son and his wife, is an aspiring writer seeking adventure, the family’s guarded history and more knowledge about her deceased parents’ untimely death.

As she studies family diaries she finds in the ancient attic, she begins to wonder whose version of past events—Luke’s, her aunt and uncle’s, or Miss Emma’s—she can trust. Although she is a competent and constantly improving horsewoman, a series of riding accidents befall her, as they did her grandmother, who died in just such a mishap. She realizes something is amiss and does some sleuthing on her own to piece together Overhome’s horrible secret.

A beautifully crafted story redolent of the languorous atmosphere and brooding evil of the old South, the thickening plot brings Ashby, a very contemporary girl with a cell phone and Internet access, into intimate contact with her staid and tradition-bound ancestors and eventually aligns her in their common cause, unsatisfied claims and despair over unpunished wrongs. The fast-paced tale weaves contemporary characters, southern charm and Gothic mystery into the historic setting all the way to its violent, shocking and yet fitting end.

Coincidentally, I recently read “The Ballad of the Sad Café,” a classic 1941 short story by another southern writer, Carson McCullers (1917-1967), set in a dull West Virginia mill town. This tale depicts a tragic love triangle among Miss Amelia, who runs the local general store, her criminal one-time husband of six days and a homeless hunchback whom she takes in and whose love stimulates her to open a café that awakens the social instincts of the dead-end town.  The semi-autobiographical, bisexual nature of this three-way relationship is only hinted at in the story, but the violence that results is described in graphic detail. Comments McCullers as narrator, “First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons —but…that does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved… Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time… The most outlandish people can be a stimulus for love…The lover craves any possible relationship with the beloved, even if it causes him only pain.”

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare this relatively new novelist with one of our finest Southern writers, admired by both Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. But the contrast of Coryell’s work with Carson McCullers’s short story points up how the character of Ashby’s Aunt Monica, who has been deceived by her evil-intentioned husband, might have been developed in more depth. While it might be said that such complexity does not belong in young adult genre fiction, it is nevertheless a missed opportunity. The chance to explore Monica’s misplaced trust, unrequited love and a broken heart, to offset Ashby’s romantic fulfillment, while painting a less rosy picture for readers, might have served to enhance its Gothic sense, add tragic poignancy and provide needed balance to an otherwise solid story. Nonetheless, this novel is well worth reading for its romance, mystery, and convincing evocation of the past to influence of characters of today. And since the author hints at the continuation of the series in a trilogy, maybe we’ll learn more about this intriguing family in the future.

Till next time, as John Ciardi used to say on the radio, good words to you,

Peter

Peter

Cultured Moroccan-born Author Pokes Harmless Fun at St. Louis Elite in Fast-Paced Caper Novel

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By Peter H. Green

Terms of Interment, Fiction, by Marcel Toussaint, in collaboration with Cyrus Pars, NACG Press, 2011, Trade paperback, 273 pages.

Albert Wilson, a semiretired lawyer from a proud family, finds his existence in the family manse in St. Louis’s stately Portland Place threatened by the collapse of his poor investments and his overspending on a debauched playboy lifestyle. In desperate straits he calls in his younger brother Edward, an intern doctor, from Jefferson City, to explain his plight. Shocked that he has depleted all his assets and learning that Albert has a half million dollar life insurance policy, Edward tells his brother he must fake his own death and promises to show him how. In a hilarious series of misadventures, Albert makes his way from hospital to funeral home to cemetery, with surprising results.

This classic caper, reminiscent of Jimmy Breslin’s 1970 classic The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, and many others of its comic ilk, could only have been conceived and carried off–with some technical counseling from his collaborator Cyrus Pars–by Moroccan-born, award-winning poet, playwright and novelist Marcel Toussaint, whose Gallic irony and humor, along with an easy familiarity with St. Louis society, seems perfect for spinning the tale. A French-cultured dancing master who spent many years schooling the scions of St. Louis’s Central West End upper crust in the finer points of deportment and the social graces, he recounts the fast moving drama with just the right respect for and alarm at the foibles of the rich and famous. The plot, with its improbable yet comically plausible premise, races from from one adventure to the next through many unexpected twists as the brothers outwit a greedy, pompous funeral director, a necrophiliac grave robber with a bizarre fetish and two real mobsters who set out to unburden them of their supposed treasures. In its surprising dénouement, Toussaint’s characters must learn the classic lesson that crime doesn’t pay—or does it?—to  the great relish of those familiar with St. Louis in a much happier golden era, and those previously unfamiliar with our town, but craving an enjoyable laugh-out-loud adventure. More about this clever caper at www.NACGpress.com.

Marcel Toussaint, recently named National Gold Medalist by the Veteran’s Creative Arts Festival, was born Emil Saint Pellicer, in Rabat, Morocco, where his father worked for the French government, the youngest of three surviving children born to the late Raymond and Maia Gracia Saint Pellicer. His father was French and his mother was Spanish. He was a radio personality, professional dancer, fencing master and “duke of deportment” for St. Louis society matrons and their children in the 1960s and ’70s. He is a poet, author and lyricist of plays, novels and several volumes of poetry, including his autobiographical Poetry of A Lifetime.  Toussaint has two children from a previous marriage and lives in Wildwood with a golden Lab puppy named Madison. A member of St. Louis Writers Guild, he recently read his article in St. Louis Reflections, an anthology celebrating the 90-year history of Guild, at their holiday Book Fair at Kirkwood Train Station. Read more.

Till next time, good words to you,

Peter

Peter

 

 

 

Fresh Views of Hemingway from Rick Skwiot, Paul Hendrickson, Woody Allen and Me

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By Peter H. Green

Recent Works on Hemingway—Rick Skwiot’s new novel, Key West Story, Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat and Woody Allen’s comeback film, “Midnight in Paris,” which recently garnered a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay—prompted me to read The Sun Also Rises, the prizewinning author’s first novel, considered by many to be the best first novel by an American of all time.

In a review on Amazon.com I said St. Louis Writers Guild member Rick’s Skwiot’s latest novel is “a rich and timely contribution to this hearty literary stew. This work stands alone as an intimate portrait of a struggling writer’s close buddy and mentor relationship with a great author in his youthful prime, perhaps coincidentally similar, perhaps the man himself, reincarnate in his main character Nick Adams. Con (for Constantine) Martens, the protagonist in this self-actualization adventure, tolerates his new patrons’ and coach’s moniker Conman, as he joins a sunken treasure quest in Gulfstream waters to satisfy his more immediate need for cash to settle his bills and turn the lights back on.  A work in progress for at least six years, this novel gives us a new personal insight into what it might have been like to know the man and profit from solid advice generously offered from the master’s creative core where, for a writer, the rubber meets the road.” Read more.

In Hemingway’s Boat Paul Hendrickson searches for the human side of this much-maligned author. This well researched biography seeks out the causes of his brain numbing alcoholism, irascibility and downright cruelty in later years to his friends and to those he loved best. Chasing down original sources, some previously ignored – such as his protégé Arnold Samuelsson and his secretary’s new husband diplomat Walter Houk – as well as his youngest son Gregory (Gigi, pronounced Giggy) he uncovers the moving story of the master’s rise to the top of the literary and sportsman’s world and his ultimate decline through his later obsession with fame and struggle to defend his self-image, despite his declining sensitivity, output and health.

And if you haven’t seen “Midnight in Paris,” you should. We time travel back to earlier eras in Paris history: that of the lost generation of the 1920s and earlier literary times. This is Woody Allen at his creative best, finally stepping aside and allowing someone else to take the lead acting role and focusing his genius where it really belongs, on creating and crafting the story.

All this brings me back to Paris at the time of the lost generation and Hemingway’s remarkable first novel. The title The Sun Also Rises comes from Ecclesiastes, and Jake Barnes, a Paris-based American journalist, can be seen as the suffering protagonist in the biblical story as he joins his Parisian expatriate friends in a trip to Pamplona for the July fiesta and the bullfights. Impotent due to a war injury, he is in love with Brett, who in her current marriage is Lady Brett Ashley, wife of a British nobleman. She toys idly with the men in her group, having had brief fling with Robert Cohn and gained him as a doting worshipper. She is seeking a divorce so she can wed another Brit “writer”, Mike—a drunkard, moocher, loudmouthed bully, womanizer, Jew-baiter and braggart, with few redeeming qualities. He rides and baits Cohn mercilessly, as he lives off Lady Ashley’s stipend.  When Brett, bored and disgusted with them all, becomes infatuated with a promising and comely nineteen-year-old bullfighter,  Barnes and the other suitors receive  knockout punches from Cohn, in a fit of justified rage at the ragging from his comrades. Jake Barnes forgives and tolerates them all. Originally a Catholic, he is the only one in the group that will admit to being religious. While they seek pleasure, he seems to live less for self indulgence and more for vicarious experience, absorbing the  local people’s appreciation of the beauty of the landscape, the color of the fiesta,  the nobility of the bullfighter’s art and the dignity of the faithful Catholic population.

For a writer, it’s all about the way words are used to create the emotion. The word play among the expats, the author’s literal rendering in English of the idiosyncrasies of the locals’ Spanish and French expressions and the dialogue’s bite into the characters’ flesh as they love, tolerate, and abuse each other, in the most concise and simple phrasing imaginable, show us the master at his first shining moment.

Until next time, as John Ciardi would say, good words to you,

Peter

Peter