Posts Tagged ‘authors’

I’ve Missed Harry

Posted by Carol Frischmann on September 28, 2012  |   1 Comment »

Another Fine Harry Bosch Novel

Harry Bosch is a fictional friend of mine, and I have been missed him. Not that I haven’t been busy reading.  I’ve read the New Yorker Fiction Issue, a number of  college textbooks for teaching rhetoric and composition, and a smattering of poetry–because what is life without poetry? I’ve read books on constructing sentences and Daniel Deronda, in case I am asked to teach about images of women in literature.  I’ve read books on dog training, veterinary medicine, and articles on various specialty aspects of poodle-dom for the manuscript on poodles I’m preparing.  But last night, I wanted my old friend Harry Bosch to overcome terrible odds and have justice prevail. In two sittings he did.

But the other part about Harry is that he’s a topic of conversation between my father and me. At 84, my dad doesn’t have many interests left.  His hands shake so he can’t paint the intricate uniformed miniatures or construct the ships and airplanes as he used to. He doesn’t get the opportunity to dance much and when he does, he tires easily. But he can read.  A few weeks ago, we made the trip to Murder By the Book, our favorite mystery bookstore here in Portland.  We filled a sack with books–some new, some used– because you’ve got to have the latest Michael Connolly (Harry’s creator), and Ellery Queen isn’t writing anymore.  My father read the stack of books in two weeks and passed them  to me.  This week, we need to go back to Murder by the Book and select a new passel of books.

For my dad, not much seems just anymore.  His friends are dying or gone. He has to use a cane  to get around.  He tries to make the best of it, but every day he feels he’s losing the battle.  He’s tired of the cold and damp here and wishes that he were in a place where there are tall long-leaf pines and sunshine, where the humidity is so high that you could drink the air, but the air is too hot to swallow, and where the  nearest Civil War battlefield is fifty miles away and not thousands.  But, as long as he’s turning the pages of the books that he pulls from our book-shopping sack, the world seems  better.  He forgets where he is.  Justice prevails and heros are safe for another day.  That’s one of the pleasures of reading mystery and crime fiction.  We can rely on Harry, my dad and I. No matter what his faults, Harry Bosch is a true arrow in a time when few people seem to be.

Books About the Low Country I Love

Posted by Carol Frischmann on January 18, 2011  |   No Comments »

I’ll update this list, occasionally, as I finish books. Consider all books by Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy to be included on this list.

Recently enjoyed:

  • A Song I Knew By Heart by Bret Lott
    An unusual story, a first person narration by a widow who moves with her dead son’s wife back home to Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

Contrary Construction

Posted by Carol Frischmann on January 14, 2011  |   No Comments »

Advice often given to writers, but seldom taken is to imagine a well-explored story from a different perspective. Kelly Davio did just that in her poem, Senescence. Ms. Davio, using The Qur’an rather than The Bibleas her story reference, considers how a change in a well-known character’s age might have affected the story. The result–simply elegant.

 

 

 

 

 

Movie Madness

Posted by Carol Frischmann on December 6, 2010  |   1 Comment »

Over  Thanksgiving,  I  got together with friends to watch classic films.  Some writerly observations:

  • William Faulkner wrote the The Big Sleep screenplay–the original Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Faulkner “peeled the onion,” layer after layer using dialog and Bogart’s face to expose Bacall’s character. That was bea-u-tee-ful.
  • In Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Jack Nicholson looks eerily like Robert Wagner.  Check out the scene near the end when Nicholson lies down and we see his face straight on. Does anyone agree with me that Jake tried to save the Faye Dunaway character and failed: hence, tragedy. Or, do you agree with my buddy Nancy, that the end had no punch and the hero did not push the action. Vote please.

[polldaddy poll=4180053]

  • Brideshead Revisited, the movie based on the Waugh novel, I loved. Period movies rock. For you who have read the book and seen the movie, do you feel the movie followed the novel’s spirit?
  • Sideways and The Royal Tennenbaums. Hated them.  The best part about the Tennenbaums was the concept. Sideways. Simply boring.

When a reader or viewer says, “boring,” the criticism usually means either lack of escalating  suspense or lackluster characters that no one likes.  Those criticisms remind me I’m revising a few similar bumps in my novel’s pages. Back to work.

Creating Story

Posted by Carol Frischmann on August 25, 2010  |   No Comments »

When I began my earnest journey to become a writer,  I believed that  if I applied myself, wrote each day, and paid attention to my teachers, the path to success would be straight. Anything but, eight years later,  the path lead me back to the place I’ve always called home, the blackwater woods of South Carolina.

Having left many years ago, afraid that my limbs would become twined with honeysuckle and wisteria, my memories of the region that has become my fictional town of Waccamaw are rooted in the 1960′s. Beginning my second novel set in that place and time, I’m returning to smell the pluff mud, hear the cadence of the talk, and touch the grave stones of people important to my “rearing.”

Teachers of writing say, “Write what you know.” Sometimes, one has to clear away life’s now to rediscover the raw sear of embarrassment , a body’s bone-breaking curl against the pain of a friend’s death, and a heat and humidity so dense one can hear electrons whir.