The LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL | John Le Carre

John Le Carré’s tenth novel, The Little Drummer Girl (1983), set the bar for tackling the passions and persistent complexities of the “Palestinian problem.”  It presented the big picture issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by means of specific personal crises and moments of life-and-death will.

The Plot

Fed up with cautious politicians and bureaucrats, Israeli intelligence officer, Martin Kurtz, gathers a small army of spies, malcontents, specialists, master operators-in-training, schemers, and fierce veterans of dark deeds behind the news headlines to craft an elaborate, complex mission to snare a Palestinian terror mastermind.

Kurtz’s most trusted associate is Gadi Becker, a seasoned warrior veteran of every Israeli success of the last 20 years.

At the heart of their scheme is Charlie, a bright, young, unresolved English actress of uncertain distinction. They attract her interest while she is on holiday in Greece with fellow troupers, a largely dissolute lot.

A dark mystery man she comes to know as Joseph (Gadi Becker) sweeps her off her feet and shows her a more intriguing and mysterious life. Soon, Charlie is brought into Kurtz’ fold and offered a chance to make a difference in the theater of the real.

Trained and prepared for the terrible loneliness of deep cover work beyond the protection of her elite team, Charlie becomes the bait that gradually attracts Khalil, the terrorist, to her in ever cautious, ever closing circles through a progression of dedicated soldiers of the Palestinian cause, each more adept and committed than the last. Finally, Charlie is tested by Khalil, who involves her in the assassination of a prominent Jewish intellectual.

Afterwards, when Khalil trusts her, and takes her for himself, he becomes distrustful and is about to kill Charlie when…

Casts a Spell

Rather than spoil the ending for you, I’ll stop there.  If you haven’t already, read this minor classic of the spy genre. We have seen the effects of the irreconcilable claims by Israelis and Palestinians to the same small area of land astride the eastern Mediterranean. LeCarré brings the passions, vexing contradictions, and cultural imperatives alive. The characters are fully realized. The settings are sensory-rich. The plot has enough switchbacks and chicanes to keep the most demanding reader turning pages. And it casts a spell by hewing closely to emotional truth.

The Little Drummer Girl was published in 1983.  Hodder & Stoughton (UK), Alfred A. Knopf (US).  ISBN 0-394-53015-2 (US hardback) George Roy Hill directed the feature film adaptation in 1984, which starred Diane Keaton (Charlie),  Klaus Kinski (Kurtz), and Yorgo Voyakis (Gadi/Joseph).

The Little Drummer Girl: A Novel

Oscar Appreciates A Good Novel

The 82nd Academy Awards, 7 March 2010

Cheers for the writers who created novels, non-fiction books, and memoirs that inspired filmmakers to bring their characters and stories to life on the silver screen.

Oscar nominees derived from a Novel:

“A Single Man” (1964) by Christopher Isherwood

“Crazy Heart” (1987) by Thomas Cobb

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (1970) by Roald Dahl

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2005) by J. K. Rowling

“Precious” based on the novel “Push” (1996) by Sapphire

“The Last Station” (1990) by Jay Parini

“The Lovely Bones” (2002) by Alice Sebold

“Up In The Air” (2001) by Walter Kirn

Oscar nominees derived from a Book (non fiction):

“Coco Before Chanel” based on the book, “Chanel and Her World” (2005) by Edmonde Charles-Roux

“Invictus” based on the book, “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation” (2008) by John Carlin

“Julie and Julia” by Julie Powell, (“My Life in France” [posthumous] autobiography by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme)

“The Blind Side”  by Michael Lewis (“The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game”) (2008)

Oscar nominees derived from a Memoir:

“An Education” by Lynn Barber

SAINT: A Priest's Review

What Readers Say:

Fr. Daniel M. Ruff, S.J.

I recently had the chance to re-read a wonderful novel which I discovered, somewhat randomly, during my years at Loyola College.  As near as I can tell, it is the only novel of an author named Mark Bailey; entitled Saint, it claims to be “a novel of intrigue and faith.”  The “teaser” lines on the cover of the paperback state: “He is a miracle of science, a messenger of God.  And he has returned.”

The “he” in question is St. Peter.  The book asks us to believe that a bio-genetic researcher in California has made a breakthrough in “memory resurrection.”  By concentrating and injecting DNA from one subject into another, Dr. Andrew Shepard has managed to transfer the consciousness of the DNA donor into the recipient.  Eventually, he obtains a strand of DNA from the bones of St. Peter and succeeds in “resurrecting” Peter’s personality and memories in the body of a Portuguese fisherman, Nicolao Soares.

I am no bio-geneticist, so I can’t really say how plausible the science is.  I am, of course, interested in faith, spirituality, morality, and theology; and the novel poses some interesting questions in those areas.  (Is the researcher “playing God”?  What happens to the personality and memories of the fisherman “host”?)  Dr. Shepard happens to be an ex-Catholic; “science is his religion, the search for truth in the maze of genetics his mission.”  We gradually learn that the death of his six-year old daughter from a brain aneurysm has destroyed his marriage, along with what was left of his faith.  Thus, he wrestles with the age-old problem of theodicy: if God is all-good and all-powerful, then why do horrendous things sometimes happen to good and innocent people?

Even more interesting is the “what if” aspect.  “What if” we actually had St. Peter here in the present-day world and Church?  What questions might he answer for us about Jesus – what He really was like, what He really said and believed, and so on?  And if Peter’s testimony conflicted with the inherited tradition, would it be welcome?

Not surprisingly, in the novel, Peter is somewhat astonished by what Christianity (even the word is new to him!), and the Catholic Church in particular, have become.  Still, at one point, he muses about the constancy of the human condition.  “People don’t change so much.  In my time they were simpleminded, willing to take literally the things their leaders told them then.  You still accept today.  What I see on this television, these assurances that the right medicine, the right shampoo, the right leader, the right pair of jeans will give you a perfect life, is no different from the village fool in my day believing some magic potion will make him attractive to women, when what he really needs is to eat fewer onions and learn a trade and stop loitering about the well annoying other men’s wives.  Everyone wants easy answers, in your time as much as mine.  It’s not the people, only the things they desire, that change.”

There is much wisdom in “Peter’s” reflections, I think.  In fact, having been programmed by the media, we almost certainly have far greater expectations of instant gratification and easy answers than did Peter’s contemporaries in 1st- century Palestine.  What remains constant, however, is the desire – a longing for purpose, for meaning, for direction.  And what also remains constant is that real answers, answers that actually “work,” are never quick, easy, or black-and-white.  Real answers are found in and through relationships, over time.  And real answers always remain partially shrouded in unfathomable mystery.

Near the end of the novel, when he finally succeeds in having a face-to-face conversation with his successor, the present-day pope, Peter offers an even more challenging observation.  “I see too many believers using their faith as an excuse.  They choose their Christ or Yahweh or Buddha or Allah or whatever name they call God by, figure they’ve found the answer, and stop questioning, stop their search for truth.”  He suggests instead that “finding” and even naming God – that is, affiliating with and studying a religious tradition – should be just a beginning.  And he argues that the Church’s mission should be to learn, as much as to teach.

He sums up: “You have the power to make each moment count.  Live each hour consciously, gratefully, generously.  Give something to every person and every creature you meet….  Look them in the eye and feel their concerns for a moment; give to them your undivided attention.  Better yet, share the humility of your own spirit….  Understanding grows from humility of spirit, from learning, not from the conceit of knowledge.  Give that which you most desire to another person.”  In other words, live by the “Golden Rule,” some version of which exists in almost every major religious and philosophical tradition.  Jesus said it this way in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).  Simple?  Yes.  Easy?  Never.

©2010 Fr. Daniel M. Ruff, S.J. Old St. Joseph's Church, Philadelphia, PA

This book should have been a New York Times Best Seller. As far as I know it did not make that list. But the plot is great, the biotechnology is great, and the plot twists at the end are excellent. 

   ague | Nov 18, 2007   (LibraryThing)

Thriller Writers Burn It Down

A visit to the mystery/suspense and thriller aisles at Borders this afternoon inspired six observations:

1. Deceased authors are publishing new novels (i.e., Robert Ludlum, Margaret Truman)
2. The Cold War is over, the War on Terror has evolved into traditional war, and espionage and conspiracy are bigger than ever
3. Protagonists in thrillers are best when they are deeply, irredeemably flawed
4. Women are gaining market share in the pantheon of mystery, suspense and thriller authors (i.e., Lisa Unger, Lisa Scottoline, Kathryn Fox)
5. The Mystery/Suspense market is growing
6. Successful writers in these genres ‘burn down the house’ and create palpable peril

In these categories, my reading has yet to venture far beyond Silva, Ludlum, Anthony Hyde, Clancy, Forsythe, and Cruz Smith, so forgive me if my categorization of those other above-mentioned writers contains errors.  In this, I suspect I am like many of my fellow shoppers in the aisles, scanning titles, cover art, jacket copy and blurbs – drawn to personal favorites, interested in broadening my horizons, yet conflicted about the burden on my budget and the quality of my reading, reticent about dropping $7-$12 on an unproven author.  LeCarré is a personal favorite.  He set the standard long ago in the spy novel genre and continues to craft writing that seems transparent, the writer’s holy grail.

Larry went officially missing from the world on the second Monday of October, at ten minutes past eleven, when he failed to deliver his opening lecture of the new academic year. 

- OUR GAME (1995)

There is an entire novel in that single opening line.

In mystery, Martin Cruz Smith raises my expectations, not only for quality writing, but also for my own work.

Blair lit an oil lamp hanging on the wall. Its wan illumination reached to the glory of the room, an oil painting of Christ in a carpenter’s shop.  Jesus appeared delicate and unaccustomed to hard work, and in Blair’s opinion His expression was overly abstracted for a man handling a saw.

- ROSE (1996)

But I digress.  If there is a single thread that unites the work of all of the above, it has to be the last observation.  These writers burn the character’s house down, usually early in the book, and often more than once.

LAST ORDERS | Graham Swift

Graham Swift‘s sixth novel, LAST ORDERS (1996), follows a day in the lives of the friends, spouse and children of Jack Arthur Dodds, butcher, recently deceased. Their day of remembrance is a metaphor for the ordinary, earnest yet flawed, occasionally misspent life. 

Following Jack’s three men friends and his son as they carry his ashes to the sea at Margate to fulfill one final wish is as driven, surreal and overarchingly important as a salmon’s return up a twisted and turbulent river to its life starting point.  The why of it is never quite clear to subjects, just like real life.  Perhaps Jack’s friends, son and wife discover that nothing in life should go to waste, including one last opportunity to unite with friends and family in the only place that ever held any hope of romantic significance for him. Margate was his Shangri-La, his hope for his and Amy’s connection to each other, even at the end of an estranged lifetime.

Uncompromising in his use of ordinary thoughts and language by the ordinary people of Bermondsey, south London, Swift establishes his contract with the reader early and never lets him or her down.

It aint like your regular sort of day.

…begins Swift and continues with absolute, unblinking objectivity, and an unerring ear for the deceptive riches in thought and dialogue.  At first, the similarity of voice between the characters – Jack Arthur Dodds’ understated, reticent butcher; Vince Dodds, his cagey son; Amy, his wife who chose their mentally disabled daughter, June, over her husband; Ray Johnson, his unreliable mate; Lenny Tate, his resentful Army buddy; Vic Tucker, his funeral director; and Mandy, the stray taken in by Vince – made following the changes in voice difficult to follow. I kept referring back to the chapter titles to see who was carrying the story forward.  Soon, however, each character’s emotional process and relationship with the deceased rippled outward and overlapped other characters’ process and responses.  Before long, cross currents became waypoints and I grew compelled by the journey and the back stories.  Swift’s exploration of ordinary lives in this novel is extraordinarily skilled.

This quiet novel speaks volumes about the quiet lives of its ordinary middle-class south London characters. In doing so, it speaks to the rest of us.

Graham Swift’s interview in SALON

The Booker Prize, which is often a reliable guide to literary excellence, is what originally attracted me to LAST ORDERS.

Last Orders

The END OF THE ALPHABET | C.S. Richardson

Collectible First Novel 

This story is unlikely.

So begins the first novel by C.S. Richardson, creative director at Random House Canada, award-winning book designer, and now, author. The story works on multiple levels, following the personal journeys of two individuals and discovering along with them the rare love they share. Having found each other, Ambrose Zephyr, 50-year-old advertising creative, and Zappora ‘Zipper’ Ashkenazi, fashion magazine columnist, are content in their narrow London terrace full of books when Ambrose learns that he is ill and has 30 days to live. Stunned and reeling, they depart from their home in Kensington Gardens and embark on an expedition ‘to the places he has most loved or has always longed to visit, from A to Z. Amsterdam to Zanzibar.’

Ambrose attempts to both escape his fate and accept whatever is to come next. Zipper discovers new depths of strength in herself as she overcomes her panic and creates ways to be there for him, witnessing his disintegration.

At the end Zipper is lost in the silence, the vacuum of deep space without the only man she ever loved.

She opens the journal that she purchased in Amsterdam on the first stop of their great expedition, takes in the emptiness and begins to write…

This story is unlikely.

THE END OF THE ALPHABET has some qualities of a classic.  It is visually captivating, surprises the reader by launching from a familiar premise yet takes flight into new situations, and is told in a discerning and disarming literary style.

The End of the Alphabet (2007), Doubleday, 119 pages

Random House Raises the Stakes

The climate for writers is changing as it is changing for so many other professions.  At least three writers I know believe that we are approaching a tipping point where a sustainable writing career might slip beyond the grasp of many talented and deserving writers. Contracts written prior to 1994, when Random House modified its contracts to include electronic rights, are subject to interpretation as to whether e-rights are covered.   It is primarily these backlist titles that are the focus of much of the current dispute.  Large publishers' legal departments see sufficient ambiguity in older contracts to claim the rights advantage before the courts intervene and define these terms for them. While publishers, agents, lawyers and judges argue whether imprecise pre-ebook contract language amounts to legally defined rights, the practical result is denied opportunity for writers.  This is not meant to ignore that the economic downturn and the paradigm shift in technology have also forced publishers into an urgent sprint to develop a business model that works for them.  My focus here is on writers and their ability to continue to create the raw material required by the publishing industries. Uncertainty in publishing leads to risk aversion among all parties, delay, and ultimately a degraded environment for writers whose professional survival is already a marginal existence. Last night, I dreamed I was a polar bear on a small floating patch of rapidly melting ice.  Nothing symbolic there, right?

Are traditional publishing's aggressive responses to the evolving e-book market threatening the careers of writers who invent, research, and craft original literary fiction?  Probably not in the long-term, yet it seems that way sometimes.

If you haven't already read it, here is the Authors Guild Dec. 15th Advocacy article, "Random House's Retroactive Rights Grab," in response to Random House CEO Markus Dohle's letter.

Golden Rule

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

or

He who has the gold makes the rules

Publishers are lining up for a high stakes confrontation with writers and agents. Traditional publishers are positioning for expanded control of individual author's rights, including wrapping e-rights into their traditional print rights contracts. Authors want to share in the revenues produced by e-books at a level that reflects the lower cost of marketing e-books vs. print books. If publishers will not honor this proportionality, then it seems reasonable that authors would want to retain the opportunity to market the e-rights to their books. The Authors Guild sides with the writer. Where will the courts side? Which Golden Rule will guide them? Ultimately, enterprise and economics will decide. In the meantime, we writers have to keep writing, keep finding ways to support ourselves while writing, and keep faith that our work will make a difference.

DISCOVERY of the Day

Melville House Publishing and its informative MobyLives literary blog keep the literary flame burning.  For another perspective on the Random House story, take a look at MobyLives' Dec. 16 coverage.

Write The Story That Will Change Your Life

Why write something if it will not change your life?

Too high a standard?  Not a chance.

Care deeply about your characters, the questions that affect them, the relationships, ideals, and treasure they gamble, and your reader will care. Writing a book takes time, a year or more, sometimes much more. At the end of that time when you turn around and look back at what you’ve been doing all of that time, you want to see your book in a window on Main Street, or your characters brought to life by actors on stage, or your screenplay moving people to laughter and tears in the cinema, right?

…if a story is important to you, it may be important to a lot of other people in the audience. And when you’re done writing the story, no matter what else happens, you’ve changed your life.

John Truby – The ANATOMY OF STORY (2007)

The WINDY DAY | Rick Bass

Wild Hearts

Bass mirrors the rush of life emergent in this story, The Windy Day, from his collection about wild hearts grounded in Nature entitled, The Lives of Rocks.

The narrator and his four-month-pregnant wife, Elizabeth, set out for town during a wind storm to learn the gender of their fetus.  Every hundred yards, they must stop to clear the road of fallen timber.  The father-to-be narrator fires up the chain saw and cuts and cuts and rolls, then gets back into the truck and moves on until they must stop again and cut, cut, roll.  It takes them an entire day (read lifetime) to reach the main road to town.  As darkness falls, the father-to-be is ready to keep going; he feels he is making progress and is intent on beating the odds.  Elizabeth says no, they’ll try again tomorrow.

Our father-to-be looks around him and imagines 16 years into the future when he and his daughter will ride horses through these woods, jumping over these fallen logs, or hauling the logs with his sixteen year old son…

Amy Bloom: I'm An Exotic

AMY BLOOM (AWAY, Random House 2007) read her short story, Compassion and Mercy, at a Celebration of Writing seminar in Wesleyan University’s Memorial Chapel on Saturday afternoon while 200 yards away on Andrus Field, her alma mater’s football team hosted Williams College.  The significant audience that turned out to hear her revealed two things: there is always a choice to be made at Wesleyan between mind and body, and Bloom is a writer with the kind of forceful presence that can compete with anything.  And she competed well, eliciting several laughs throughout her extended remarks. Her reading also produced the operative metaphor for one’s creative muse for the rest of the seminar: a raccoon.

On short story vs. novel writing

If I write forty pages and I’m not done… it’s going to be a novel.

Character-driven work

I tend to think extensively about a story before I work on it.  I think about the characters.  Eventually I ask, “who dies?”   Because in fiction you have to have things that are compelling.  Going to the grocery store is not compelling.  People dying is.  People going off to war is.

For Bloom, it’s always about the character’s story, finding ways to show who they are by how they react to events.

By the time you are an adult, events don’t make you who you are; they show who you are.

On writing for television

First, no one has to write for television. It’s not like they kidnap your children and hold them for ransom. They pay you.

And, if you have other things that you do, and you have the time and space in your life, then collaborating with very, very smart visual artists is positive and rewarding.  And they pay you.

It’s different for me. I’m an exotic. I’m older, I’m from the East, and I’m a novelist.

It’s funny. I always go out to Los Angeles and the second sentence out of my mouth is, ‘That’s okay. I’ll go back to Connecticut.’  It’s best [for a writer] if you can walk away.

Happy Birthday, Internet!

The first message transmitted between two networked computers occurred on Oct 29th, 1969 at 2230 hrs. when Leonard Kleinrock and Charley Kline sent a LOG IN message from UCLA (Westwood, CA) to Stanford Research Institute (Menlo Park, CA).  Leon Kleinrock tells it like it was here.  NPR also produced a 'Lo' And Behold: A Communication Revolution tribute to the Internet's 40th Anniversary. Forty years.  Amazing.  The blink of an eye...

Happy Birthday to you, Internet!

What VOYAGER 2 and a Blog Post Have In Common

Voyager 2 – More like a blog post than I realized

The Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of a rare geometric arrangement of the outer planets in the late 1970s and the 1980s which allowed for a four-planet tour for a minimum of propellant and trip time. The flyby of each planet bends the spacecraft’s flight path and increases its velocity enough to deliver it to the next destination.

JPL Fact Sheet – California Institute of Technology

This technique of using the local planet’s gravity to accelerate the craft to the next planetary rendezvous is a little like viral theory.  The “gravity assist” technique, which was first demonstrated with NASA’s Mariner 10 Venus/Mercury mission in 1973-74, and shortened the flight time to Neptune from 30 years to 12 years, multiplies the forward momentum of the craft.  It also modifies the trajectory to expose the craft to new destinations.  A blog post that spreads from reader to reader and is re-blogged to new blogs builds its momentum forward to new destinations.

Whereas the astronomers and astrophysicists and other scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech can calculate the effect of trajectory and successive ‘gravity assists,’ we bloggers still craft a message to unknown recipients, publish it to the Internet, hope someone reads it and either responds or relays it forward so that another can read it… and respond. Better than a message in a bottle cast to the outgoing tide, but not yet as scientific or successful as exploration of interstellar space.