One Thing and Another

• Over at Pulp Serenade, Cullen Gallagher has posted excerpts from Richard S. Prather’s 1995 Writer’s Digest article, “How to Clap One Hand.” “Much like his fiction,” Gallagher explains, “the essay is unpretentious and entertaining, as well as finely crafted. The title comes from the famous Zen kōan, ‘We have all heard the sound of two hands clapping, but what is the sound of one hand clapping?’ Which is how Prather views most articles purporting to tell you ‘how to write.’ In a down-to-earth manner, Prather demystifies the writing process as much as one can without being dogmatic or overly restrictive, while at the same time retaining the precious mystery of creativity and individualism.” Click here to read more.

• This is definitely not a conventional promotion scheme, and it can be a bit puzzling at times. But I’m enjoying Anthony Neil Smith’s “virtual motorcycle rally” in support of his forthcoming novel, Hogdoggin’. It seems that he convinced 23 bloggers to contribute their mostly outrageous biker fantasies to his site, as a way of getting the word out about Hogdoggin’, which--you guessed it--has a motorcycle gang component. Today’s contribution comes from Ray Banks. Look for the whole series here.

• The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association has launched a blog of its own, called Knock ’Em Dead. I’ve added it to the blogroll on the right-hand side of this page.

• The world seems to have no shortage of idiots.

• I found this quote from Swedish crime writer Håkan Nesser in John Harvey’s blog: “The crime novel used to be, and I stress used to be, a despised genre, diversionary literature not to be taken seriously. Then came the upturn and the so-called wave of crime novels, then the surfeit, of course, it all got too much, there were just too many of them. But now we’re entitled to raise an eyebrow at the poor quality and the amount of rubbish out there.” While I don’t dispute the truth of Nesser’s statement--I think that the abundance of crime fiction works today has resulted in a lot of crap reaching bookstores, even as more interesting and well-written books fail to find publishers--he probably could have stated this in a way that was less likely to offend some easily affronted authors.

• Jeremy Duns, author of the new Cold War thriller Free Agent, helps readers of the London Times separate fact from fiction when it comes to the British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6. (More here.)

• The comic-strip adventures of Modesty Blaise and James Bond are being collected and sold in book form. (More here.)

• During the course of a fairly short interview with pseudonymous author James Church--creator of the Inspector 0 series--Sarah Weinman asks him, “What would be the one thing Americans and the West should understand about North Korean human behavior that hasn't necessarily been transmitted in the press?” Church’s response:

Not to mince words, Western media treatment of North Korea has generally been pathetic. “Lazy” and “intellectually bankrupt” also come to mind. Too many reporters and editors love to fall back on “it was a dark and stormy night” journalism when it comes to writing about the country. If one cannot figure out what to say, spill some ink talking about how the North is a mysterious place, a black hole of absurd behavior, a Stalinist Disneyland.

North Korea is a bureaucracy, it is Asian, and it is a totalitarian state inhabited by human beings. None of those attributes are beyond our understanding or experience. In other words, North Korea is not an unknowable enigma, yet we insist on seeing it as the equivalent of the planet Pluto--dark, cold, and distant. Why are we stuck in this rut? It’s a very American problem. Perhaps we don’t understand other peoples as well as we might because, as a nation, we sometimes fool ourselves about ourselves.

• For the ultimate Agatha Christie fan.

• As someone who owns the complete 1970-1971 British science-fiction TV series UFO on DVD (yeah, I have my nerdy moments too), I was interested to read in Lee Goldberg’s blog that a theatrical remake of UFO is in the works.

• And finally, from Shotsmag Confidential: “[BBC] Radio 4 is going to be having a Le Carré-fest as it starts to dramatize all of John le Carré’s eight [George] Smiley novels on the radio. Radio 4 will begin the dramatization on Radio 4 on Saturday (23 May) with Call for the Dead. The other books that are due to be dramatized will be A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley’s People, and The Secret Pilgrim.” Click here for more information, and here to listen in over the Internet.