The Critical Line

Late Last Night Books

12/7/2014 – The Critical Line

I watched noir classic The Maltese Falcon again last night, and again I was struck by how faithful the movie is to the book by Dashiell Hammett. Even much of the dialogue is the same. The film received rave reviews and continues to enthrall audiences. Would that this could be true for other books vandalized by the film industry.

Films are a different medium with different requirements. I understand that. Screenwriters are necessary to translate a book into a movie. The question becomes where to draw the line in changing plots and characters to fit a different medium. We’ve all seen the often unhappy results. Characters are warped

CAN THERE BE A MARYLAND NOIR?

Late Last Night Books

12/13/14  CAN THERE BE A MARYLAND NOIR?  The first time I went on the Late Last Night Books website I thought the site may have been devoted to noir because of the nighttime cityscape that, at the time, was used with the logo. But that turned out not to be the case. The nighttime motif is “because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours,” although there are hints of the noir genre beginning to appear on LLNB. Pallas Snider Ziporyn, our guest blogger in November, is the author of A Cappella Drug Lord, a story involving a Yale a cappella group becoming cocaine mules in a mash-up of Breaking Bad and Glee. Sounds like noir to me.

WHEN COMMERCE CREEPS INTO NOVELS

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12/10/2014 — WHEN COMMERCE CREEPS INTO NOVELS

When I read a novel, there’s something sacrosanct about the relationship between the words and me. I become part of the world described by those words. I trust them, and the author behind them, not to violate our relationship and the world we’ve created. So when I find out some of those words are there because a corporation wants me to buy its product, I’m angry. If a character in a novel drives a Corvette, I want that car to be part of her personality, not some ploy to draw my attention to a particular brand. And when the dialogue defends the brand, as The New York Times says it does in Find Me I’m Yours by Hillary Carlip, I start to worry about literature of the future. 

Book Review of James Joyce’s The Dubliners

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12/7/14 — REREADING JAMES JOYCE’S THE DUBLINERS

This is the time of year for reconnecting with family and friends, a time to renew bonds and remember what makes a relationship special. So, too, with good books. I often find that the holidays are the perfect time to reread the classics, those priceless novels that offer something new, no matter how many times you read them.

INTERVIEW WITH SANDY WARD BELL, AUTHOR OF PARKED AT THE MANSFIELDS’

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12/4/14 – INTERVIEW WITH SANDY WARD BELL, AUTHOR OF PARKED AT THE MANSFIELDS’Sandy Ward Bell

In The Jane Austen Persuasion, I wondered how Jane Austen could be widely idolized by so many readers and yet at the same time dismissed, even despised, by other equally thoughtful, literate people. So I was delighted to have a chance to interview Sandy Ward Bell. As the  author of Parked at the Mansfields’, a modern twist on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, I figured  she could shed considerable light on this question, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Eric D. Goodman on the Secrets of Good Dialogue

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1 DECEMBER 2014 Eric D. Goodman on the Secrets of Good Dialogue

12/1/14 — BREAKING BAD DIALOGUE: BE CAREFUL WHO YOU TALK FOR

You’ve probably heard the advice before: be careful who you talk to. But when dealing with dialogue, it’s even more important to be careful who you talk for.

When putting dialogue into the mouth of a character, it is important to make sure they speak the way that sort of character would really speak.

PREVIEW OF OUR DECEMBER 1ST GUEST BLOGGER, ERIC D. GOODMAN

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11/29/14 — OUR DECEMBER 1ST GUEST BLOGGER IS ERIC D. GOODMAN

Goodman 3Writers and readers know that good dialogue is crucial to a novel’s success. It helps define characters, moves the plot along, and adds credibility to the story and setting. Bad dialogue, on the other hand, will stop a reader in his or her tracks. Guest blogger Eric D. Goodman will examine some of the secrets of good dialogue in this space on December 1. When he’s not blogging for Late Last Night Books, Eric writes about trains, wombs, and animals gone wild. He’s the author of Tracks: A Novel in Stories and Flightless Goose, a storybook for children.

 

Interview with Tom Williams, author of Don’t Start Me Talkin’

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Tom Williams

11/26/14   Tom Williams has published two novels, The Mimic’s Own Voice and Don’t Start Me Talkin’. His short story collection, Among The Wild Mulattos, will appear in Spring 2015 from Texas Review Press. The Chair of English at Morehead State University, he lives in Kentucky with his wife and children.

Don’t Start Me Talkin’ is a novel about Brother Ben, billed as the Last of the True Delta Bluesmen—but is he? Born in Mississippi, certainly, and purveyor of “authentic” delta blues, far from being the near-illiterate, hard-drinking, womanizing country boy he purports to be, Brother Ben turns out to be a vegetarian, Volvo-driving health fanatic, who listens to jazz for pleasure, is actually an accomplished jazz guitarist, and an extremely savvy and sophisticated manager of his own business—which he manages under his own real name, Wilton Mabry.

THAT LITTLE MAN IN YOUR HEAD

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23 NOVEMBER 2014 THAT LITTLE MAN IN YOUR HEAD

11/23/14 THAT LITTLE MAN IN YOUR HEAD BY SONIA LINEBAUGHHomunculus

Google the word humunculus (or homunculus) for a definition of the “little man” and you’re sent spinning in a dozen directions from the alchemy of Paracelsus who was born the year after Columbus sailed for the New World, to Louise Erdrich’s 2001 The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse, to neurobiologist Christof Koch’s 2013 NPR interview.

“It is rather funny I think,” wrote Barbara Pym in 1939 of her novel-in-progress, Crampton Hodnet.

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cramptonhodnet211/20/14 “It is rather funny I think,” wrote Barbara Pym in 1939 of her novel-in-progress, Crampton Hodnet. The war prevented her from pursuing publishers, and after the war she felt the book was dated and turned her attention to another of her novels. As a result, Crampton Hodnet wasn’t published until 1985, among the last of her works to  appear. Every now and then I re-read one of the thirteen novels of Pym, among my favorite novelists, a master of postwar English humor and ahead of her time in her views of male-female relationships.

The Explorer

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11/17/2014 – The Explorer

Writing is a vocation of exploration, whether of ideas and feelings, wishes and dreams, or places and events. According to my dictionary, the word, “explore,” means “traveling through (a country, etc.) to learn about it. 2. Inquire into.” At heart, I am an explorer, and writing is the perfect occupation.

So as I begin my fifth novel, which will involve an old clock and the underground railroad, I first explored the Internet to inquire

BOOK REVIEW: GODS IN ALABAMA BY JOSHILYN JACKSON

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11/10/2014 – BOOK REVIEW: GODS IN ALABAMA BY JOSHILYN JACKSON

Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson starts with a shock and ends with an even biggergods in Alabama shock. Set in the tiny town of Possett, Alabama, the story is a classic example of Southern Gothic literature, which includes works by Flannery O’Connor (the queen of Southern Gothic), William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Carson McCullers. You can tell a story is Southern Gothic by its preponderance of violence, weird characters, loners, ghosts, and other grotesque occurrences in any and all combinations. Jackson’s protagonist, Arlene Fleet, fulfills most of these requirements all by herself. 

The Book Club Meeting I’ll Never Forget

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11/7/14 — THE BOOK CLUB MEETING I’ll NEVER FORGET

I’ve been to a lot of book club meetings in my day, but never one quite like this, never one where the stakes were so high. This wasn’t going to be a casual conversation about books with a group of friends; this was going to be a conversation with eight strangers about a book that meant everything to me: Hawke’s Point, my debut novel published last summer. Was I nervous?  You bet.

THE SHAME OF BOOK HAWKING

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11-04-14 – THE SHAME OF BOOK HAWKING

Running a booth at the Baltimore Book Festival last month taught me a hard truth:  not only do I not write the kind of novels you can sell on the street, but I don’t have it in me to pretend that I do.

WHAT AMAZON WON’T TELL YOU

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1 NOVEMBER 2014 WHAT AMAZON WON’T TELL YOU

11/01/14 – WHAT AMAZON WON’T TELL YOUA Cappella Drug Lord

All I wanted to do was write, but I held back.

Before spending the next two months slogging away, I needed to make sure that my story was going to be read. And in today’s competitive world of indie publishing, there are no guarantees.

PREVIEW OF OUR NOVEMBER GUEST BLOGGER, PALLAS ZIPORYN

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Pallas Snider Headshot 201411/29/14 – PREVIEW OF NOVEMBER 1 GUEST BLOGGER, PALLAS ZIPORYN

Serial novelist Pallas Snider Ziporyn (who, full disclosure, also happens to be my daughter) tells all about the trials and tribulations of “playing the indie publishing game” and trying to make her book free on Amazon.

War and Peace Is not a Historical Novel–or Is It?

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10/26/14 — WAR AND PEACE IS NOT A HISTORICAL NOVE — OR IS IT?

I have been thinking about what a historical novel is, because the novel I am working on is set in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If we follow the dictum that a novel is ‘historical’ if set before the author’s birth, then mine clearly is, since I was born in 1955, almost twenty years after the very end of the action in the novel. And yet I feel a resistance to considering it a historical novel. No doubt this is partly owing to the stigma that pertains even now to historical fiction–I say even now since the genre is ever more popular–but also, I think, because I often reject the appellation altogether.

Gossamurmur and Outrider

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23 OCTOBER 2014 Gossamurmur and Outrider

10/23/14 REACTION TO GOSSAMURMUR & OUTRIDER BY SONIA LINEBAUGH. “I have always gone to poetry for the news of our consciousness.” Anne Waldman to Robin Edwards  about her book-length poem Gossamurmur.

Gossamurmur

Gossamurmur pits original Anne against her doppelganger imposter identity thief sci-fi ecology time travel.

REVIEW OF M L DOYLE’S MYSTERY, THE GENERAL’S AMBITION

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10/21/15 REVIEW OF M. L. DOYLE’S THE GENERAL’S AMBITION thegeneralsambition 

Given lemons, make lemonade. M. L. Doyle is no longer a Late Last Night Books blogger, so I’m taking advantage of our loss by reviewing her latest book, something I couldn’t have done while she was one of us. Whether in or out of uniform, press corps Army Sergeant Lauren Harper faces the problems of today’s Every Woman as she is drawn into a murder investigation. Her direct superior in the press corps, now divorced and without his family, imposes his affections upon her. He wants to marry her, rather than to be her best friend. Lauren once longed for this but thought it could never be. But is she in love with him now?