Deeds & Words

Today I went into the office half an hour early so it was still dark on my commute. Heading east, nearly there, while I was sitting at a red light, I saw a guy going past, with the flow of cross-traffic who had the green. He was in the bike lane. He had on knee-length pants and a white windbreaker with silver reflectors, a miner-style hands-free headlamp, and N line skates.

I thought, “Well, how environmentally friendly, foolhardy, and stupid.”

I thought things probably couldn’t get much weirder.

So I’m driving home, heading west on the same stretch of road, and I see a guy on a bicycle in the bike lane ahead of me. Also ahead of me is an F-50 pickup. As the pick up passed the bike, the cyclist reached out and grabbed the edge of the rear passenger wheel-well, letting the vehicle pull him along. He hunched over the handlebars, the wind belling out the sleeves of his white shirt and making him look like a seagull riding the slipstream of a trawler.

As we approached a red light, he let go and glided up on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. I pulled up alongside him. He was older than I expected, with a wispy beard and a stubble of brown hair poking up from a recently shaved head.

The light changed. He kicked off, swerving in front of me to grab the truck again. The truck turned right without signaling. If it had been me, that’s where I would have gone right under the wheels, but not my guy. He spun right, up on the sidewalk again, shooting between a decorative sapling and a power pole, cut in front of a car coming through the intersection in the right lane, and grabbed the truck as it changed lanes. They disappeared from view and I went on my way.

It was like watching a live version of the opening scene of Snow Crash, only with stupid people instead of YT and Hiro.

What’s with the bike lanes in that part of town?

The coolest thing about Brian Fies’s book-signing at the Four Eyed Frog was when Joel Crockett introduced him to Nick. Nick is a high school senior. He and his mom are Gualala locals. The Sig-O knows her. Like most locals, she works about three jobs in town. She does landscaping and janitorial service for Cypress Village, works another job somewhere and delivers firewood to folks in Sea Ranch. She is medium height with a slender brownish-blond braid that reaches nearly to her knees. Brown-haired Nick is tall enough to look down on the top of his mother’s head. He draws a cartoon strip for his school paper. They hadn’t known about the book event, had just come in to pick something up. Brian talked to him about drawing and showed him some of the sketches from Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? Nick couldn’t stay for the talk, but he got the first autographed book of the afternoon.
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The second-coolest thing was the couple at the back of the store. They also came in to pick up something and did not plan to stay for the event. When Brian started speaking they drifted to the other end of the store, by the bay window and stood quietly talking. The Sig-O and I were standing near the back. I could hear them. The sentences of their conversation grew shorter, the silences grew longer. They moved up so they were standing near the door, just behind us. A few minutes later I heard the woman say, “Are you ready to go?” He said, “In a minute.” I knew they weren’t going to go in a minute. They were hooked. In about a minute, he had walked up to the counter, and Jeremy had come out from behind it to get a book off the table. I think that guy was the second one to get his book autographed.

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And the other second-coolest thing was Brian’s talk. He is low-key and funny, and never seemed nervous. He didn’t even seem nervous when he first got there. He may have been, but he hid it well. He talked about his personal love of science and imagination, and how those informed the structure of the book. Brian loves history and that showed in his talk. The group got the most animated when he started talking about Walt Disney. Everyone in his audience was old enough to remember when television had three channels, and on Sunday night you watched the World of Disney. If Nick had been able to stay, he might have thought we were joking. For many of us, Disney shaped our dreams of the future. Not just for us, as Brian pointed out, but for NASA as well.

At Karen’s suggestion, Brian brought not only some preliminary sketches but some props; a model of a 1939 car that he used to draw the cars in a couple of the chapters (and the book cover) and a wonderful home-made rocket. Seriously, when he gets into the merchandizing end of things, those puppies will sell. Look on page 50 of the book and you’ll see the rocket. He went into some detail about the design of the book, from the different weights and types of papers in the pages (“Oh,” the art people said, when Brian’s editor finally brought in an old comic to show them what he was going for, “You want crappy paper!”) to some of the details of the die-cut dust jacket.

One audience member, Steve, is the editor of the Independent Coast Observer, the local weekly. He brought a book with him, a red-covered hardback from 1942 which predicted the breakthroughs of the next 50 years. He said it predicted the “slump”—by that I think he meant the recession—only it got the timing wrong, forecasting a post-WWII slump. There was discussion among the group about what we got right and what we got wrong, which is part of Brian’s point.

The group was small. This is Gualala, and they were competing with a live concert at the Gualala Arts Center and a homecoming football game. Even so, it was great fun. I brought two copies (yes! Two more Christmas presents down!) and a new Michael Connolly since the Sig-O’s birthday is this week. Hanging out with the Sig-O, listening to a writer talk about writing, and buying books–if there had been chocolate, it would have been perfect. Oh, wait. There was chocolate! It was perfect!

The easiest place to find Neil and Lorraine’s Run Around Brew is at the Sebastopol Farmers Market, although you’ll find them at the Human Race every May, sometimes at the Gravenstein Apple Fair, and on local at TV and movie shoots. In fact, Neil told me, they just did a one-day gig at a shoot on Treasure Island, for the new TV show Trauma.

There’s a high-school connection with Neil and the Sig-O, and he trained Lorraine in the Firefighter I class when they were both volunteers at Gold Ridge Fire District, so to me they’re almost family. Lorraine spent several weeks this summer in the Chico and Susanville area providing support to firefighters on a wildland fire.

They’re both interesting people who’ll be happy to talk about Sebastopol, fire-fighting, waterdog trials, Hawaii, or almost any other topic; they mix a nice coffee drink and make great smoothies as well. One of their best summer drinks is a pomegranate and blueberry smoothie. Highly recommended!

Look for the beige truck and Neil’s smile.

An Antic Disposition
Alan Gordon
St Martin’s Minotaur, 2004

In Denmark, long ago, a king was murdered by his ambitous brother. The murderer married his brother’s widow and raised the dead king’s son as his own. The king’s son was trapped in a household made up of his enemies, with no refuge except madness.

You think you know this story, but you do not. At least, you do not know it the way Alan Gordon tells it in An Antic Disposition, the fifth book of the Fools Guild series.

The book begins in late fall, deep in a forest in Swabia, where the Fools Guild has moved to escape the reach of a vengeful pope. Father Gerald, the guild-master priest, assembles all the jesters and their helpers one evening, and begins a tale, a tale of the far north; the tale of Amleth, a Danish prince, Gerutha his mother, his treacherous uncle, and a jester named Terence of York, or, as the Danes pronounce it, Yorick.

The story is a break from the earlier tales of Theofilos and his wife Viola, who we met first in Thirteenth Night. Previous books followed their adventures. This story, however, is intimately connected to Theo, as Viola is about to discover.

Gordon sets the tale late in the twelfth century, during the efforts of King Valdemar to unite Denmark. Like his other works, this one is laced with humor. It is also filled with darkness, more darkness even than Lark’s Lament, a book that follows this one. It may seem darker because to some extent we know what is going to happen. Valdeman is a brave king who takes council from bad men. Orvendil, Ambleth’s father, is an honest man who cannot fathom the hearts of those around him, to his loss. His wife Gerutha is starving for power, more Lady MacBeth than Gertrude, crystallizing her desire in the vision of a rose garden and a palace. In Gordon’s story, there is no doubt how much Gerutha knew, and how much she approved, of her brother-in-law’s plot. The only thing that affords her the tiniest particle of redemption is her love for her son.

Amleth is the most vulnerable of the characters, long before the death of his father. He strikes up a friendship with the fool who comes to the stockade, and Yorick alone keeps him sane. He also begins to teach Amleth the art of the jester—an art that Amleth will cling to, in an attempt to ensure his own survival.

Yorick and his fellow jester Father Gerald are spots of light, flickering candles; brave and bright, frail and fleeting against the dark storm they confront.

Orvendil’s brother does not pour poison into his ear as he sleeps. That is not the way of the Danes. He challenges him to combat on a hilltop before a blazing bonfire and kills his drugged brother while Amleth watches. It’s a powerful, dramatic scene, one of the best in the book. Every exchange with Gerutha crackles with tension, even when she is only serving a guest a slice of roast pork. The downward spiral of the character who will become Polonius is convincing and almost makes us feel sorry for him. Almost.

The ending contains not a twist, exactly, but more of a grace note, as Theo, after the story is finished, reveals his part in it to Viola.

Because this story didn’t have Theo’s wit to leaven it, or much by-play between him and Voila, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have the others. I think Gordon achieved what he wanted, which was a change of tone. Gordon works for the New York Legal Aid Society, and I’ve said before that I wonder if the jester books aren’t inspired by a sense of fighting for small justices against a machine, a bureaucracy and a tradition that all mitigate against the people on the street. I have that feeling even more strongly in this book. Father Gerald, Yorick and the other fools can’t save everyone. Yorick cannot even save himself. Yet they struggle for justice. Even Amleth’s act against the mercenaries his uncle has brought in, toward the end of the book, is a brand of rough justice.

This is a good book, but not a light book. It’s a midwinter book, a book about the cold and the darkness, not only of the weather but of people’s hearts.

So, on Saturday the Sig-O and I are going to Gualala for Brian Fies’s book-signing at the Four-Eyed Frog. And tonight, the Sig-O says, “Do you have a copy of Brian’s book?”

And I’m all, “Um, yeah,” because I have two (but one’s lent out).

And he’s all, “Could you bring it on Saturday?”

“Sure, why?”

” ’cause I’d hate it if Brian asked me a question about the book and I didn’t know how to answer it.”

And I’m all, “Darn, he found out about the pop quiz!”

The Arabesk Series
Pashazade
Effendi
Felaheen
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Spectra Fiction

When I first see Ashraf al-Masur, it is through Felix Abrinsky’s eyes.

Felix is in a place with architectural features I’m not familiar with, in a city whose name I don’t know, in a part of the world of which I know nothing. There is a woman, dead in an unusual way. She is connected politically in ways I don’t understand. The only thing I know for sure is that where we are, it’s warm and slightly muggy.

What could possible anchor me, in this first chapter, these first eight pages, until I begin to understand my surroundings and can intuit the meanings of things?

Well, there’s Felix; Felix the seriously over-weight, disgraced ex-LA cop, now Chief of Detectives of El Iskandryia; Felix, the Jew Catholic in a city of Muslims, the not-so-secret drinker, the serious investigator, who dismisses the man he’s with as a “silksuit.” Those of us who read detective novels understand Felix immediately. I might not approve of Felix. I wouldn’t want him dating my daughter, and I certainly wouldn’t loan him my car, but if the nightclub were on fire, Felix is the one I would follow, because I know he would get me to safety.

Felix is also an outsider in the city, an adapted outsider, so he knows what the newcomer, like me, needs to know right away to navigate this mysterious world.

I’m writing, again, about the suspension of disbelief. Perhaps more precisely, I’m writing about the intersection of world-building and the reader’s suspension of disbelief. About a month ago I posted something kvetching about a book that did not invite me to suspend my disbelief, and in fact, slapped me every time I tried. That encouraged me to look around for someone who actually did it well. Enter Jon Courtenay Grimwood, and the Arabesk trilogy.

In Grimwood’s world, the Ottoman Empire never collapsed, Woodrow Wilson brokered peace between London and Berlin in 1915, World War II never happened, and the major world powers seem to be Germany, France, the USA and the Empire. This alternate timeline stretches a few decades beyond current time, but in terms of fashion and technology, there’s nothing the science fiction reader won’t recognize. It’s the social, political and economic things that are different, and the murder of an impoverished but highly socially connected woman, who has made enemies of one of the world powers, and introduced a complete stranger she claims is the secret son of the Emir of Tunis, strikes every single social, political and economic chord.

Felix, my host in the first chapter of Pashazade, is not a major character. Ashraf al-Mansur, or “Raf,” or “ZeeZee,” the silksuit Felix left standing in a doorway while he investigated the crime scene, is the main character. I hate to say hero. Raf, in the first half of the first book, is opaque to the reader, and largely opaque to himself. He either is the secret son of the Emir, or a petty criminal, or a murderer, or all of the above—or, he could be something completely different. By Chapter Two the most compelling thing I know about him is that he talks to a fox that lives in his head. Yeah. Okay. Like Felix, I kind of like him in spite of myself, don’t quite trust him, and can’t figure him out.

Grimwood has me right where he wants me.

The overarching story of the three books is Raf’s search for his identity, both in a psychological, spiritual way and in the strict literal sense. At the street level, so to speak, Raf is confused about who, exactly, his father is, since his mother said he was a Swedish backpacker she took up with for a few days. The bigger secret of Raf’s identity—not so much what he is as what he has been turned into—is murkier. The best theory about Raf’s existence is postulated by the isolated, rebellious, scary-smart nine-year-old girl Hana who may or may not be Raf’s niece. Raf, she decides, is a Son of Lilith, either a djinn or a vampire, and if he can disguise himself as a human for seven years, he will be allowed to become truly human.

You mustn’t think from that assessment that Hana—or Hani, as she prefers—doesn’t like Raf. She does. One metric in the judging of Raf as a worthy or unworthy character is his treatment of Hani, and he treats her right. Her trust in him is well-placed, even when his actions make no sense.

There’s still this different world to adjust to. Early in Pashazade, Grimwood gives us an info dump, as Raf indulges in a discussion about his imaginary doctoral thesis concerning alternate timelines. What if Wilson hadn’t stopped World War I? What if the Prussian Empire had dissolved in 1923? Grimwood makes this entertaining by setting the conversation with someone who is completely, if quietly, shocked by these suggestions and thinks they border on treason. Hamzah Quitramala is completely a product of his culture, and he doesn’t indulge in this sort of fantasizing. This foil to Raf’s hypotheticals—which are spelling out for the reader what did happen—makes this world more realistic.

Basically, this abstract discussion gives us just enough to accept everything that happens in the rest of the series—or just about everything. Close enough.

As I read, it was the characters who swept me through the elaborate city and the harsh, beautiful landscapes. Whether it is Hani, who comes to realize just how much like her uncle she is, or Zara, a rebellious and damaged daughter; the Khedive, the hereditary ruler, struggling, at seventeen, to find his own voice among the powerful older men who “counsel” and protect him; Avatar, pirate DJ and Zara’s illegitimate half-brother, or Raf himself, I cared enough about these people to stick with them through all three books. I turned the pages wondering what would happen next. What is Hani, exactly? Will Avatar be accepted by his father? Will Zara ever be happy? Will Raf survive? Even the story of Raf’s annoying mother Sally, who I never cared for, kept me turning the pages. And what about the fox?

And Felix? Felix, the only truly American voice in the book, is not a main character in any sense, but he becomes, in a way, Raf’s conscience and a mentor for Hani. His main mission, to introduce us to the strangeness, and then to stay with us until we are sure it’s safe, is executed perfectly.

So here’s one way to get the reader to suspend disbelief and enter your imaginary world; give them a tour guide they trust.

Looking for a unique Halloween experience for the kids? Here’s a thought—how ’bout a bible burning? A North Carolina congregation is doing just that.

I thought maybe this was a Church of Satan thing because, well, it sounds that way, doesn’t it? I was wrong. It’s a tiny fundamentalist Christian group. For Halloween, they’re going to burn copies of all the bibles they don’t like—and there are lots. The only bible they do like is the King James Bible.

It’s hard to burn books because they are dense and you need high heat (451 degrees Fahrenheit keeps coming to mind, for some reason) so they have a list of other books to burn, (starters, I guess)including some by James Dobson, Billy Graham and the writers of the “Left Behind” series.

After all that, a tasty chicken barbecue will be served, because charcoaling the word of God really works up an appetite. We’ll hope that the chicken is grilled over wood chips or propane, not immolated bibles.

I was going to quote from this hilarious posting on The Mudflats, but that didn’t seem fair to AKM, so I’m just going to say, “Go here.” This is the most entertaining story you’ll read all week about roads to nowhere, bridges to nowhere, and shallow politicians who like to wear red.

A reminder that the Four-eyed Frog in Gualala will be hosting Brian Fies signing his wonderful graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? on Saturday, October 24, at 4:00 pm.

Don’t take my word that the book is wonderful. Google it and read the reviews.

I might also point out that October is usually the most beautiful month on the northern California coast, and a day or weekend trip to Gualala can be a delightful getaway. Gualala is about sixty miles northwest of Santa Rosa, due north of the Gualala River which marks the border between Sonoma and Mendocino counties. In addition to the Frog, a great bookstore and gathering place, the tiny town also has galleries, a Center for the Arts, shops and restaurants.

The real reason to go, of course, is to make a dent in your Christmas gift list by buying people you know personalized, autographed copies of Brian’s book. If you take the time to browse the Frog while you are there, who knows what other treasures you’ll find?