Inside Rebus’ Head

The business of excerpting material from new books is, as the old cliché goes, a “win-win situation.” Newspaper and magazine editors get to publish something interesting, at no cost, while the author or editor of the work being excerpted receives a bit of free promotion for his or her work. Especially attractive as a source of extracts are collections of short bits of prose built around a theme--which is undoubtedly why The Guardian last weekend ran an excerpt from the forthcoming book How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors, edited by Dan Crowe with Philip Oltermann ... only to be followed this week by the Los Angeles Times, with its own selections from that same volume. Included among the Times sampling is this piece from Scottish crime novelist Ian Rankin, creator of Edinburgh Inspector John Rebus (The Naming of the Dead), in which he remarks on the relationship between his real-life world and his fiction.

The object in my office I treasure most is probably a framed photograph. It shows the battered signage above Edinburgh’s Oxford Bar. ... I’ve been drinking in the Oxford Bar since I was a student in the 1980s (a fellow student--one of my flat-mates--was part-time barman there). The first time I walked in, I was a stranger. By my third visit, my preferred drink was being poured before I needed to ask.

That’s the “Ox” for you: It’s like a private club, only with no joining fee. It’s also a democratic place: Everyone’s as good as anyone else, as long as they have the price of their next drink about their person. There are few frills to the Ox: no piped music, little in the way of hot foods (pies, pasties). It’s a place for drink and for conversation. I decided Inspector Rebus would like it, so he started drinking there, too.

... That sign helps me get inside the head of Rebus ... It keeps me grounded and also acts as a taskmaster: If I can get a good day’s work done, I can reward myself with a pint later on.

Also included in the L.A. Times excerpt are comments by Jonathan Franzen and A.S. Byatt. You can find the whole piece here.

(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)