Author Archives: Eileen Haavik McIntire

On Interpretation

Late Last Night Books

 

On Interpretation

8/17/2014 – American essayist Susan Sontag once wrote that, “The urge to interpret is the compliment mediocrity pays to genius.” Are these are fighting words?

She adds that, “We approach works of art in order to interpret them. Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world-in order to set up a shadow world of meanings….Interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone.”

Of course, this falls in the face of all the analysis of subtexts and symbols I struggled through as an English major. Should we simply experience a work of art or literature as it is? Does interpretation result in distancing oneself from the work itself, as if the work had been disinfected and sliced and now lay dead on a slide under the microscope?

7/17/2014 – A Cafe of Ideas

Late Last Night Books

7/17/2014 – A Cafe of Ideas

The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, fourth century B.C., once carried a lamp around in daylight looking for an honest man. I am not a philosopher, but I’ve thought about carrying a lamp around like Diogenes looking not for an honest man but for a good conversation. So imagine my envy when I visited Les Deux Magots and Le Cafe de Flore, two cafes in the Rive Gauche section of Paris, which Rick Steves calls “the cafes of ideas.”

As Steves says in his guidebook to Paris, “From Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism (1900) to Picasso’s Cubism (1910s) to Hemingway’s spare prose (‘20s) to Sartre’s Existentialism (with his girlfriend Simone de Beauvoir

Reality or the Stuff of Dreams

Late Last Night Books

6/17/2014 – Reality vs. the Stuff of Dreams

In my writers’ critique group, a complaint is sometimes hurled at another writer’s plot points by saying, “I don’t believe it, couldn’t happen. It’s not realistic.” Since we are writing fiction, is this a valid criticism?

One might say that so many unbelievable things do happen—we see them online everyday–that we should accept the possibilities, no matter how bizarre. We can point to the old standby from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Another might say that fiction requires a “willing suspension of disbelief.”

For mystery writers, Dr. Max M. Houck, director of D.C.’s Department of Forensic Sciences, speaking

PREVIEW OF OUR JUNE 1 GUEST BLOGGER, BARB GOFFMAN.

Late Last Night Books

PREVIEW OF OUR JUNE 1 GUEST BLOGGER, BARB GOFFMAN. 

Barb Goffman is an award-winning writer of crime short stories. In 2013, her first story collection, Don’t Get Mad, Get Even, was published by Wildside Press. Her blog will be “The Best Kind of Trouble is Girl Trouble.”BarbGoffman

What’s Cozy About Crime?

Late Last Night Books

5/17/2014
I enjoyed a weekend of murder and mayhem this month at Malice Domestic, an annual convention of cozy mystery authors and fans in Bethesda, Maryland. I met some of my favorite authors and learned a whole lot about common poisonous plants and the Washington, D.C. Crime Lab.

What is a cozy? Even authors and fans try their hand at definitions. Generally, it is a crime novel without the blood and gore with an amateur detective who is somehow involved with the victim and/or suspect. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series is a prime example. Current authors include Margaret Maron, Joan Hess,

Remembering the Holocaust

Late Last Night Books

4/17/2014

On My Own: Decoding the Conspiracy of Silence, by Erika Schulhof Rybeck and published last year by Summit Crossroads Press, is just one of the increasing number of Holocaust memoirs from survivors who want to tell their stories.

Rybeck escaped the Holocaust by traveling via the Kinder Transport train to Scotland in 1938. She grew up there in a Catholic boarding school, protected from the horrors of the war and the fate of her parents by a “conspiracy of silence.” As an adult, she spent years seeking the truth of the Holocaust and how it claimed her family.

That is just one story. On my desk are two recent memoirs from Gihon River Press,

Deadline: Istanbul

Late Last Night Books

3/17/2014 -DEADLINE: ISTANBUL

Mystery as travel guide? That’s how I read Deadline: Istanbul, Peggy Hanson’s novel featuring a journalist named Elizabeth Darcy as amateur detective. Of course, Darcy carries Jane Austin with her wherever she goes.

Peggy spoke last week at a meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter meeting of Mystery Writers of America, an organization for mystery and crime writers.  She wore an Egyptian dress in memory of Elizabeth Peters, pseudonym of mystery author Barbara Mertz, who died last year.

2/17/2014 – Ethiopia and the Graphic Novel

Late Last Night Books

2/17/2014 – ETHIOPIA AND THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

I recently toured Ethiopia, a beautiful country rich in history and historical monuments, including rock-hewn churches dating from the 12th century–some still in use. Many of the church interiors I visited are painted with Biblical scenes and stories told in panels across the walls and ceilings. They all seem more vivid and accessible than the paintings, frescoes and stained glass that decorate European churches and cathedrals.

The Accidental Author

Late Last Night Books

1/17/14 — THE ACCIDENTAL AUTHOR

Erika Rybeck lives at Riderwood Retirement Community in Silver Spring, Maryland. She intended to put together an album of her life for herself, family and friends. She wrote a narrative to accompany the many photos she had acquired from her childhood and school years.

A Team Effort Tougher Than Football

Late Last Night Books

12/17/13 — A TEAM EFFORT TOUGHER THAN FOOTBALL

After giving a talk recently about self-publishing, I received a series of plaintive emails from one of the participants who wanted to know why her book had been on Amazon.com for a year without one sale. I asked her if she belonged to the Maryland Writers’ Association, MidAtlantic Book Publishers Association or any association that might provide the help she needed.  “No,” she said, “they all want money for dues.”

Well, yes, but for a fledgling writer, the money is nominal and well spent.  

Mystery Loves Company

Late Last Night Books

11/17/13 MYSTERY LOVES COMPANY

Would you like to go where they really know your name? Better yet, if you read mysteries, they know what you want to read?

Try your local independent mystery bookstore. I drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge last week to the quiet shores of Oxford, Maryland, to drop in on Kathy Harig and the Mystery Loves Company Bookstore. An energetic woman with short white hair wearing a blue turtleneck and corduroy slacks, Harig greeted me with a smile as she waved good-bye to a woman bemoaning the fate of two handsome oak trees in town. The store is on the main street in a building dating from 1900—it’s on the Historic Register–and used as a bank and then a post office for 30 years each.

Who Says So? Roger Ackroyd and the Unreliable Narrator

Late Last Night Books

My first encounter with an unreliable narrator—that I recognized, that is—was years ago when I first read Agatha Christie’s notorious The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, first published in 1926. The ending stunned me as it has many other readers through the years. It also gave rise to a list of rules for writing mysteries formulated by mystery author John Dickson Carr, rebuttals to that list from other authors, and an essay by the well-known literary critic Edmund Wilson entitled “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?”