Writers in moves: Leave Her to Heaven

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Richard Bowker

This is my second offering in this series.

Leave Her to Heaven was a popular film noir (beautifully filmed in Technicolor, actually) from 1945. Here is IMDB’s summary:

A writer meets a young socialite on board a train. The two fall in love and are married soon after, but her obsessive love for him threatens to be the undoing of both them and everyone else around them.

Gene Tierney is the psychopathic socialite; Cornel Wilde is the writer. The premise is fine, and Gene Tierney is great (and gorgeous). The problem I had with the movie was that the Cornell Wilde character is a complete drip, and Cornell Wilde isn’t enough of an actor to make us care about him.

The fact that the main character is a writer is of little significance to the plot. It mainly allows Wilde and Tierney to meet cute — he sees her reading his novel on a train. This lets him quote a line from the novel to her:

When I looked at you, exotic words drifted across the mirror of my mind like clouds across the summer sky.

Oh, dear. I’m pretty sure it’s always a mistake to quote from a fictional writer’s work in a movie.

(As an aside, on a plane once I sat across from a woman who was reading something I had written — not one of my novels, alas, but a work-for-hire I had perpetrated for a high-tech company. When I mentioned the coincidence to her as we deplaned, she was signally uninterested. At least she wasn’t a psychopath. I think.)

After the train scene, we just see Wilde occasionally pecking away at an old-fashioned manual typewriter, always wearing a writerly jacket and tie. There is no discussion of the creative process; there is no angst over deadlines; he finishes the book, and one day a copy arrives in the mail. Writing novels is just what he does, because he comes from Boston, don’t you know, and went to Harvard.

I’ll just add that the trial sequence, featuring Vincent Price as the DA who was also Gene Tierney’s scorned lover, is about as over-the-top ridiculous as anything I’ve seen recently.

Writers in movies: Love Actually

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Richard Bowker

It seems as if I’ve been seeing a lot of writers portrayed in movies lately. Here I mentioned the difficulty of portraying the writing life on film: it’s just too boring. But that doesn’t keep screenwriters from trying. Screenwriters should at least get the details right, but those details generally seem to escape them as well.

Let’s start with Love Actually, which features Colin Firth as a hack novelist falling in love with his Portuguese house cleaner. (This comes in eighth out of the nine plot lines in the movie, according to this post; I’d rate it a little higher.) In the plot, very little is made out of his being a writer — it just seems to be there to set up the scene in which a gust of wind blows his manuscript pages into a pond, forcing him and the maid to strip to their underwear and hop into the pond to rescue them. This of course makes them fall in love.

Fair enough — the maid looks pretty good in her underwear. But the setup is stupid. I suppose we can believe that a hack writer in 2003 wouldn’t be using a computer. But apparently we’re also supposed to believe that he wouldn’t be making daily copies of his manuscript pages, in an era of cheap home photocopiers. And that’s just idiotic beyond words. This isn’t something he’s doing for creative expression; it’s his job. I haven’t seen anyone remark on this scene; Love Actually offers far easier targets for criticism. But this one never fails to irk me when I’m forced to endure our annual holiday viewing.

Patricia Cornwell wins her case

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Here we gazed in awe at mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell’s lifestyle and the lawsuit she had lodged against her financial advisers.

Now she has won the lawsuit, to the tune of $51 million dollars. She seems to have given the Boston Globe a lot of access during and after the trial, in return for which she got prose like this:

And Cornwell is sitting, one leg crossing the other, just a couple of hours after the decision, lamenting the journey she had to go through in the first place, the type of challenges not even a hero in one of her novels should have to face.

“It’s just, we have fought long and hard,” she said, her Southern drawl deepening as she gets more heated while discussing the betrayal of her former finance manager, Evan Snapper, and his company, Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP.

“It’s just been harrowing, but we felt we needed to do the right thing, we needed to fight,” she said, in an hour-long interview with the Globe.

If I’m puzzled by why Cornwell didn’t pay closer attention to how her money was managed, I’m even more puzzled by why the financial management firm thought they could get away with the malfeasance they were found guilty of. They would have made out perfectly well without it. Why did the defendant, for example, forge a $5000 check from Cornwell as a bat mitzvah present to his daughter? This sort of stuff is too stupid for fiction, and I hope Cornwell doesn’t put it in a novel, as she told the Globe she was thinking about doing. That novel wouldn’t be worth reading.

Patricia Cornwell has problems that you and I are never going to have

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell is suing her former financial management firm for tens of millions of dollars. I read about it in the Boston Globe; here is the story reprinted in another newspaper (the Globe version is behind a paywall). This gives you a flavor of what the suit is about:

Cornwell said she was flabbergasted to learn, upon her questioning in 2009, that her net worth was only eight figures, which was her annual income in each of the previous four years.

When she took a closer look at the books, she said, she discovered that Anchin had borrowed money in her name for real estate investments without her knowledge. She says money from the sale of her Ferrari was unaccounted for, and she had to pay close to $200,000 in taxes on a helicopter because the firm wrongly registered it in New York.

She also says that Anchin mishandled a financial transaction involving 48 rare books, leaving the money unaccounted for, and that she found a $5,000 check that Snapper had written for a bat mitzvah gift to his daughter from Cornwell.

In addition, Cornwell’s wife, a Boston-area neurologist, also claims she was bilked by the firm.

Here is Cornwell venting about the case in the Huffington Post.

And here are my banal. uninformed comments:

She had a helicopter???
She had an eight figure income? That’s a lot of figures, for someone who isn’t a professional basketball player.
I can see an author getting bilked; authors live in a different world. But a neurologist, too?

I read one of Cornwell’s early Scarpetta novels; I vaguely remember it as being OK, but not quite good enough to make me want to read another. Clearly the way to untold wealth in the writing biz is to come up with an ongoing series that keeps all your old novels in print and selling. But clearly that’s not necessarily the path to happiness and peace of mind. I have this idea that, if I had enough money (well short of eight figures), I’d just invest it conservatively and continue to live more or less the way I live now, so I wouldn’t have to worry about money ever again. But I’m probably deluded. Probably if I had as much money as Patricia Cornwell, I’d want a helicopter too.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 8

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Richard Bowker

Kevin and Larry have put in a hard day’s work as they wait to see if anyone wants to talk to them about Kevin’s watch. And, finally, someone does . . .

Catch up with the previous chapters by clicking on “Portal” up there on the menu, underneath the funny-looking header image.

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Chapter 8

The lieutenant gestured for us to sit. Colonel Clarett outranked him, I guess, but the lieutenant sure looked more like an officer. He was young and handsome, and his red jacket and black pants were spotless and unwrinkled, despite the heat. The colonel’s office was a mess, with papers stacked everywhere and five or six long pipes lying in a jumble on his desk next to an oil lamp. Like the rest of the barracks, the room stank of tobacco smoke. The lieutenant stared at us for a few seconds, and he seemed to take in everything about us–what we were wearing, how we sat–everything. Then he sat down, too.

“My name is Carmody,” he said. “Lieutenant William Carmody. And to whom have I the honor of speaking?”

We managed to tell him our names.

“Pleased to meet you.” His accent was more cultured-sounding than the colonel’s or any of the other soldiers we had met. It wasn’t quite British, but it was, well, different–sort of like those actors in old-time movies. He pronounced “lieutenant” in the British way: “leftenant.”

He cleared a space on the desk–he didn’t look pleased to have to touch the colonel’s pipes–and then he took a blue cloth out of one of his pockets. He unwrapped the cloth and took Kevin’s watch out of it. He laid the watch carefully on the desk. “And this remarkable device belongs to–?”

“It’s mine,” Kevin said.

“And you obtained it where?”

Kevin glanced at me. “Well, that’s a long story,” he said.

Lieutenant Carmody shrugged. “I’m in no hurry.”

Kevin and I hadn’t really talked about this. Should we tell the truth about where we’d come from? That was the whole point of Kevin’s plan. But now that the time had come, it didn’t seem like that great an idea. No one was going to believe us–least of all this guy, with his icy stare.

But what else could we do?

“We’re not from here,” I said. “Not from . . . this world.”

“This world,” Lieutenant Carmody repeated, as if to make sure he had heard correctly.

I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I looked back at Kevin. This was his idea. He didn’t look any more eager to tell the story than me, but he did. “See, it’s like this,” he said. “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but: There are lots of universes. This is just one of them. We come from a different universe–it’s kind of the same, but not exactly. There’s a Boston in it, there’s a Canada, and so on, but there’s no United States of New England. And our science is way more advanced than yours. By accident we stepped into this, uh, this thing that brought us to your universe. Like a portal, a gateway between universes. This happened yesterday, in Glanbury–our version of Glanbury. Anyway, now we’re stuck here because we can’t get back to Glanbury, because of the war and all. So the watch–it was just something I was wearing when this happened. In our world it’s no big deal, something even a kid would wear. But here it seems pretty important, so we thought we’d, you know, show it to people.”

Kevin fell silent. I thought he did a pretty good job, but Lieutenant Carmody hadn’t changed expression. I couldn’t tell if he thought we were insane, or what. He picked up what looked like a long pencil and made a few notes on an unlined, yellowish sheet of paper. I could hear a clock ticking in the silence. A bead of sweat fell down my face, but I didn’t wipe it away.

“What’s a ‘kid’?” he asked finally.

“It’s, you know, a child,” Kevin said. “Someone who isn’t an adult. That’s a word—you know, back home.”

“Your accent is rather strange. That’s how you speak, wherever it is you come from?”

Kevin nodded. “It’s the same language, just a little different. Like everything else.”

He gestured at our clothes. “And those strange garments–that’s what you wear . . . ?”

“We just happened to have these clothes on when we went through the portal,” Kevin said. “It’s all an accident, see. We don’t want to be here. We just want to go home.”

There were tears in Kevin’s eyes now, but the lieutenant didn’t seem to be moved. “Let’s try again,” he said. “You found this thing or stole it. The question is where, or from whom.”

“No, we didn’t,” I protested. “What Kevin said is true.”

“You’re stowaways or cabin-boys on a ship that managed to run the blockade,” he said. “Where is that ship now? Where did it sail from? China?”

“No, sir,” I repeated. “I’ve never been on a ship in my life.”

“This so-called portal–it’s in Glanbury, you say? Did anyone see you come out of it?”

“No–well, there were some Portuguese soldiers who started shooting at us. A family picked us up on the road afterwards.”

“Their name?”

I tried to remember–they had given it to the guard at the city gate. “Harper, I think. Samuel and Martha Harper.”

He made another note. “And are they in the Fens camp?”

I shook my head. “They’re staying with his brother somewhere in the city.”

“And have you told this story to the Harpers or any of the soldiers here?”

“No. We figured no one would believe us.”

“A reasonable assumption. And a prudent course of action. There are those willing to see the hand of the devil in everything, especially in these dark days.” He fell silent again and stared at us some more. Then he said, “Tell me more about this world you claim to live in.”

That perked Kevin up. He started talking about cars and computers and airplanes and telephones, all the stuff we took for granted back home. And he mentioned bombs and missiles and grenades, too.

The lieutenant didn’t interrupt, and his expression never changed. He jotted down a few notes, especially when Kevin talked about weapons. When Kevin ran out of steam, he spoke again. “Do you know how to manufacture one of these?” he asked, pointing to the watch.

“Well, no, of course not,” Kevin said. “We just buy them. Big companies make them.”

“You’re only a kid,” the lieutenant said.

“Right.”

“What about the theory behind it? Do you understand how it works?”

“Not exactly. Maybe a little bit.”

“What about ‘telephones’ or those flying machines–what did you call them?”

“Airplanes.”

“Airplanes. Can you explain how they work?”

“Not really,” Kevin admitted.

The lieutenant looked at me, and I shook my head.

“If we managed to return you to this ‘portal,'” he went on, “could you obtain more of these ciphering machines? Or could you bring us back ‘rocket-propelled grenades’ or ‘submachine guns’ or the like?”

Kevin shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, we’re not even sure we can get back home through the portal. If we do get back, I don’t know if we can return here. The portal isn’t really part of our world–it’s not like airplanes and stuff. We don’t know have any idea what it is or how it works–maybe it’s from some other universe.”

Lieutenant Carmody sat back in his chair suddenly and put his pencil down, as if we had tired him out. He pressed his palms together and held them in front of his chin. “What is it that you want me to do with you?” he asked quietly.

“Well, we figured we might be able to help,” Kevin said. “You know, with the war.”

“How, exactly?”

“Maybe we know stuff you can use.”

“Enlighten me. What ‘stuff’ do you know that can help us win the war?”

Kevin looked at me for help. I didn’t know what to say. “Stuff about science,” he said, kind of desperately. “Stuff about the way the world works that you don’t understand yet. I don’t know exactly what, but if we think about it, maybe we can come up with something, okay? I mean, what have you got to lose?”

Lieutenant Carmody stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘okay’?” he asked finally.

For some reason that was too much for Kevin. He started to cry.

“‘All right,'” I whispered. “It means, ‘all right.'” I put my hand on Kevin’s shoulder.

The lieutenant lowered his hands to the desk and waited for Kevin to calm down. Then he said, “Let’s go for a ride, shall we?”

We left Colonel Clarett’s office. Outside the barracks was a fancy-looking carriage, the closed-in kind, with actual windows. A soldier standing next to it saluted Lieutenant Carmody and opened the door for him. “Back to headquarters, Peter,” the lieutenant said.

The three of us climbed inside, and Peter got up front to drive. I wanted to ask what was going to happen next, but the lieutenant didn’t look like he wanted to talk. Kevin still seemed pretty depressed. He just stared out the window as we made our way through Cheapside, then back downtown, where we saw more traffic and beggars and men wearing round hats and capes. We went along the waterfront, where I could make out the masts of ships in the harbor and along the docks. Finally we stopped at a large gate, and the soldiers guarding it quickly opened it for us. We went through it into a broad courtyard with big brick buildings on all sides. We came to a stop in front of the building at the far end of the courtyard.

Peter opened the door for us again, while a kid our age came up and took the reins of the horses. Lieutenant Carmody got out, and we followed him inside the building. Soldiers standing guard at the entrance saluted as he walked past them.

Inside the building was a large hall with paintings of soldiers hung on the walls and a big flag in the center–blue, white, and red vertical stripes. The flag of New England, I guessed. We went quickly through the hall and along a corridor. Finally the lieutenant stopped and knocked on a door. “Carmody,” he called out in a loud voice.

“Come,” replied a voice from inside.

He opened the door, and we saw a large, dark room, with a high ceiling and big draperies covering the windows. Like every room in this world, it stank of smoke. A gray-haired soldier sat behind a big desk, chewing on an unlit cigar and looking at a map. The lieutenant saluted, and the man gave a half-wave in return. His uniform was unbuttoned, rumpled, and stained, but when he raised his eyes and stared at us I knew this guy wasn’t another Colonel Clarett; he was a general, and an important one. I figured he was the head of the whole army, and it turned out I was right.

I thought Lieutenant Carmody had a cold stare, but the general’s gaze was even harder and colder; it seemed to suck the breath right out of me. It made me want to run and hide. Kevin and I stood on the other side of the desk from him and waited.

“These are the ones?” he asked Lieutenant Carmody.

“Yes, sir.”

“Strange clothing too, eh? Let me see the thing again.” The lieutenant went over, took out the watch, unwrapped it, and handed it to him. The general squinted at it and punched in a few numbers. “Fascinating. But not much use to us, is it?”

“Might speed up artillery calculations.”

“That won’t win the war,” the general muttered. “And what’s their story? Where did they get the thing?”

The lieutenant took a long look at us. “Sir, they claim to have, er, arrived here accidentally from another world, similar to ours but much more advanced. On their world, this is simply an inexpensive timepiece that one of them happened to be wearing.”

He paused, and everyone was silent. “Of course. Yes,” the general said finally. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Lieutenant Carmody gave a few more details from Kevin’s story. At the end the general rolled his eyes. “And do you believe this tale, lieutenant?” he asked.

“Sir, I don’t know. But as we discussed, this object is far beyond our ability to manufacture. Or the ability of anyone else, for that matter, including the Chinese.”

“We knew that already, Lieutenant. I sent you to form an opinion. Are they telling the truth?”

For the first time Lieutenant Carmody looked uncomfortable. “It seems absurd, but . . . I can come up with no other satisfactory explanation. The accents, the clothes, the device . . . And the story itself. It’s a tale beyond the ability of mere boys to concoct. In my opinion.”

“Hmmph,” the general muttered. He returned his gaze to us. “What does the ‘B’ on that strange hat of yours stand for?” he asked Kevin suddenly.

“For–for Boston,” Kevin replied. He sounded as scared of the general as I felt. “It’s a baseball cap.”

“And what is ‘baseball’? Some sort of game?”

“Yes, sir. It’s a sport. Teams from different cities play it–Boston, New York . . . It’s like cricket, I think. Maybe you play cricket here?”

The general ignored Kevin’s question. “Sit, both of you,” he ordered. “Now, explain the rules of baseball. Tell me everything you know about it.”

I was grateful to be able to sit down. And Kevin looked really happy to be able to talk about baseball. “Well,” he said. “there are nine men on a side, and the field is set up with three bases and what you call home plate . . .” He went over the rules, then he started in on how the major leagues were set up and the history of the game. He explained how you figured out an earned run average and slugging percentage and stuff like that. It was really boring if you ask me, but the general paid close attention.

“Enough,” he ordered finally. “A strange game, indeed. I think it’s time for a drink, Lieutenant,” he said.

The lieutenant went to a cabinet and got a bottle out of it. He poured some dark brown liquid into a glass and handed it to the general, who gulped. “Feel free, Lieutenant,” he said, gesturing at the bottle, but Carmody shook his head.

The general poured more liquor into the glass. “Earned run average,” he muttered.

The rest of us waited.

“We are not mystics, Lieutenant,” he said. “We are not philosophers. We are soldiers. We do not always need to understand; but we do need to act.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we don’t win this war,” he went on, “President Gardner may survive as a puppet of the Canadians and the New Portuguese, at least until they can figure out how to carve the nation up. You and I, Lieutenant, will most assuredly not survive. Can these boys help us win this war?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

The general eyed him. “Not the right answer,” he said.

“Sir, if we believe them, they’re too young to understand what they know about–airplanes, telephones, that sort of thing. But such things wouldn’t help us in any case. We don’t have the time or anything like the capability to reproduce them. But I have a suggestion.”

“Yes?”

“Send them to Alexander Palmer. Have him find out what they do understand, and whether we can take advantage of it.”

“Palmer? He thinks we’re all idiots.”

“Just the president, sir.”

“Well, he thinks the war is a disaster.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he wants to lose it. Imagine if Harvard College were to be turned into the University of Southern Canada.”

The general poured himself another drink. “Airplanes,” he muttered. “Telephones. Wouldn’t it be nice? What do you imagine His Excellency would think of all this?”

“President Gardner would think it’s insane. It would give him an excuse to fire you if he found out you were wasting time on it.”

The general nodded. “Precisely. Palmer’s still over in Cambridge?”

“I believe so. Holding out till the last minute, I suppose. Rather stubborn.”

“Bring them to him. See if he’ll help. But for God’s sake keep it secret.”

“Yes, sir.”

The general pointed his cigar at us. “On-base percentage,” he said, as if he were accusing us of something. Then he picked up the watch and handed it back to Lieutenant Carmody.

The lieutenant led us out of the room–which was a good thing, because I was about to hurl from the stench and the tension. We walked quickly back out into the courtyard. The night had gotten cooler, thank goodness. “I’ll wager you lads are hungry,” he said. “Let’s see what we can find to eat.”

He was sure right about us being hungry. We followed him into another building across the courtyard, then through a door labeled “Officers’ Mess.” He roused a private who was dozing in a chair in the corner of the room, and in a few minutes we were served roast beef, bread, and milk by candlelight. The milk was pretty warm, but other than that the meal was fabulous.

“I believe General Aldridge likes you boys,” Lieutenant Carmody said as we ate. You could’ve fooled me. “I wasn’t at all sure how he’d react to your story.”

“Who’s Alexander Palmer?” Kevin asked.

“An old professor of mine from college. Often rather ill-tempered, but the smartest man I know. I think he’ll enjoy this challenge.”

“Are you going to take us to him now?” I asked.

“Rather late for that, I’m afraid. Let’s find you some accommodations here for the night and pay him a visit tomorrow.”

The building we were in also turned out to be the officers’ quarters. When we were finished eating, the lieutenant brought us to a tiny, hot room in the attic. There was nothing in it but a couple of thin mattresses on the floor, an oil lamp on a rickety table, and a chamber pot in the corner. “This is where our servants usually sleep,” he explained. “Except now they’re now on active service in the army, and we have to fend for ourselves. I’ll fetch you in the morning.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

He gave us a wave and left.

Kevin and I sat down on the mattresses. “A good meal and a better place to sleep,” he said. “Progress, huh?”

“Kevin, how are we going to help them win the war?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Larry. But we should be able to think of something.”

“What if we can’t?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. And then he said, “I’m sorry, Larry. This is all my fault.”

That’s what I thought yesterday when we first ended up in this mess, but I remembered the way Kevin broke down earlier as Lieutenant Carmody gave him a hard time, and I changed my mind. “No, it’s not,” I said. “We both screwed up. Anyway, we’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” he said. “Funny how they don’t know that word. Anyway, I sure hope you’re right.” He stretched out on his mattress. “Good night, Larry.”

“Good night, Kevin.” I lay down on my mattress and closed my eyes. My muscles ached from all the lifting I’d done. It had been a long day. At home, they were probably still searching for us. Maybe they’d found the portal by now and were trying to figure it out. How many worlds would they have to visit before they discovered this one? How long would they keep looking?

Meanwhile, what was tomorrow going to bring for Kevin and me?

I fell asleep with my mind full of questions.

Writing is not fun!

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Richard Bowker

A friend points out that I idiotically stated in a recent post that writing is fun. Poking yourself in the eye with a pointed stick is fun, compared to writing.

Having written is what is fun. You just need to go through the terrifying excruciating writing part to get to the deeply satisfying having written part.

This blog regrets the error.

Rules for writing: Rule 4 — Get people to read what you write

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Richard Bowker

Haven’t added one of these rules for writing lately. So here goes. As always, they are intended for people (like me) who aren’t good enough to break all the rules. And the numbers are pretty random.

So I’ve started a new novel, and I have sent the first two chapters off to my writing group, and a few days later I’m sitting in someone’s living room sipping a beer as they take out their copies of the manuscript to critique it. And I can feel the same old tension rising in me — heart beating a little faster — prepared to convince myself that, even if they don’t like it, I know it’s pretty good. Or, at least, not too bad. Or something. This ritual with my writing group has gone on for a long time now — since the Carter administration, actually. Or maybe it was the Harding administration — the administrations all kind of blur together after a while. And I still get nervous.

It’s even worse when someone starts reading over my shoulder as I work on something. That terrifies me. If the person offers any criticism, I’m full prepared to say: Well, it isn’t done yet. Just some random ideas. I’m probably not going to finish it. And I know that paragraph sucks. I was totally going to rewrite it. Really, I was.

Writing is fun. Being read is hard — even by people who know you. Especially by people who know you. But the best way to improve your work is by getting opinions about it and figuring out what to do about them.

Here are some characteristics of good readers:

They should know something about writing. It’s helpful to have someone say: “I dunno, it seems kinda long.” But it’s way more helpful to to hear this: “You should cut that conversations at the end of the chapter. The reader doesn’t need any of that information, and it doesn’t add to the characterization of the speakers.”
They should have some understanding of what you’re trying to do. There’s not much point in showing your epic fantasy novel to someone who has never read Tolkien and has no idea of the conventions you’re working with. They may not realize that cutting the elves is just not an option.
Most of all, they shouldn’t take your writing personally. Here’s the kind of conversation you want to avoid:

Girlfriend: “How come you break up with me in that story?”

You: “It’s a story. The characters are made up.”

Girlfriend: “Yeah? They broke up in a restaurant. We had a fight in a restaurant.”

You: “But the character is a redhead and you’re–“

Girlfriend: “You thought you could just change my hair color so I wouldn’t notice that she’s me, and you want to break up? How stupid do you think I am?”

Now, your girlfriend is probably right about everything, but she’s not helping you improve the story. And that, after all, is what matters.

Good readers are hard to find. I’ve been really lucky with my readers, ever since the Carter administration. Or maybe it was Truman. If you find some good readers, hold onto them. Hold onto your girlfriend, too, but keep her away from your fiction.

In which I read a New Yorker blog post about genre fiction so you don’t have to

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Richard Bowker

Well, if you really want to read it, here you go. But let me just give you my quick summary: Anything the author thinks is really good isn’t genre fiction; so, obviously, if it’s genre fiction, it can’t be all that good. Like so:

“All the Pretty Horses” is no more a western than “1984” is science fiction. Nor can we in good conscience call John Le Carré’s “The Honorable Schoolboy” or Richard Price’s “Lush Life” genre novels.

I love the imperial “we” in that second sentence. And the “in good conscience”: I could call The Honorable Schoolboy a spy novel, because it involves, like, spies and all, but no, I just can’t bring myself to do it. My mother brought me up to be better than that.

I thought this debate had been resolved back in the 1960s, with Vonnegut and Burgess and Tolkien and, yes, Le Carré. But apparently some people still want to fuss about it. Sheesh. What a waste of time.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 5

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Richard Bowker

Here’s the latest chapter of the online novel I’m perpetrating. You’ll notice that I’ve got Portal up there in the menu now. Click on it to see the chapters I’ve already published. Yet another service we provide for our customers!

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Chapter 5

The wagon was piled high with clothes and furniture, which swayed as the wagon rattled along the bumpy road. Two small children–a boy and a girl–huddled in one corner, staring at us. The woman had twisted around to look at us, too. She was wearing a long coat and a bonnet. “How come you to be in those woods, lads?” she asked. Her accent was a little strange–not quite American, not quite English.

“It’s, um, a long story,” I said. What was I supposed to say?

“You talk funny,” the little girl piped up.

“Hush, Rachel,” the mother said. “Are you from Glanbury?” she asked us.

“Yes, we are.”

“Listen,” Kevin interrupted, “can you stop the wagon? We have to go back.”

The man pulled on the reins to slow the horse and turned back to look at us, too. “Why?” he asked.

“Their clothes are funny,” the girl said.

“Could you please just stop the wagon?” Kevin pleaded.

“There’s nothing to go back to,” the woman explained. “The Portuguese army is destroying nigh everything. If you’re separated from your parents, best stay with us till we get you to Boston. You can find them there.”

“Along with everyone else in New England,” the man muttered.

“Are you in the navy?” the little girl asked Kevin. She was pointing at his Old Navy t-shirt.

“What should we do?” Kevin asked me.

“I don’t know. This was all your idea.”

Kevin glared at me. We heard gunfire in the distance.

My parents would know what to do. But we had left them far, far behind. “We won’t be able to get to it,” I murmured to Kevin. And then I asked the woman, “Will we be safe in Boston?”

“As safe as anywhere,” she replied, “with the Portuguese on one side of us and the Canadians on the other.”

“Maybe we should go to Boston,” I said to Kevin. “We can come back when–when–”

When?

“What if it’s gone?” he said. “What if we can’t find it?”

What if we find it, I thought, and it doesn’t take us home?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

Kevin slumped down in the wagon. I slumped down next to him. The man flicked the reins and the horse sped up. “I bet I know what the ‘B’ on your hat stands for,” the little girl said to Kevin.

I thought the woman might press us about why we were in those woods, but she didn’t. She and her husband started arguing about why he had waited till the last minute to leave their farm and how all their neighbors were safe in Boston by now, and here they were, barely outracing the Portuguese and endangering their children. He said he couldn’t care less about their neighbors, he wasn’t going to give in so easily, he just hoped the cowardly government didn’t surrender without putting up a fight.

Kevin’s face was scrunched up, an expression he gets when he’s thinking hard. Or maybe he was just trying to keep from crying. We had screwed up so bad. This was a totally different universe. There was a Glanbury and a Boston, but what were the Portuguese doing here? And where were the cars? Where were the buildings? And now that we’d landed here, would we ever be able to get back?

The wagon continued along the road to Boston, and the gunfire faded behind us. My family drives to Boston a lot, but I didn’t know how far it was from Glanbury. I don’t think it took very long, except when there was a lot of traffic. How long was it going to take by horse? The road wasn’t that great, and we kept getting knocked around in the back of the wagon. My back hurt, and I started to get seasick.

“What time is it?” I whispered to Kevin after a while.

He looked at his watch. “Four o’clock,” he said.

Late for my piano lesson. I thought about Mom, probably standing on our deck and looking out into the woods for me, worried and angry at the same time, and I got a lump in my throat. Pretty soon everyone would start looking for us, and we’d be gone–just gone, without a trace. Mom always read those stories about missing children in the paper. She’d figure this had something to do with that guy lurking by schoolbuses in Rhode Island. But she’d never know where I went, if I was okay . . .

When they started searching they’d be bound to find the portal, I thought, and then they’d figure it out and come after us.

But that wouldn’t work, I realized. If there were a kazillion universes, who knew which one they’d end up in?

I should never have come, I thought. How could I have been so stupid? It was all Kevin’s fault . . .

“Larry, do you have any of those Oreos?” Kevin asked.

I shook my head, suddenly getting hungry myself. Probably no Oreos in this world, I thought. No Coke, no pizza, no Burger King–or Burger Queen.

The fog faded away as we rode. Occasionally a man on horseback passed us on the way to Boston. No one was heading in the opposite direction, south towards Glanbury. The riders would slow down and exchange news with us, then speed up until they disappeared up ahead. There were some houses along the road, and a few inns and shops that looked like they came out of an old movie. All of them appeared deserted.

We stopped once to give the horse some food and water, and we all went to the bathroom in the woods; it was gross, but the family didn’t seem to mind.

“What’s that?” the little boy asked, pointing at Kevin’s watch.

He shrugged. “A watch,” he said.

“My papa has a watch, but he keeps it in his pocket.”

Kevin shrugged again.

“Don’t be frightened,” the boy went on. “We’re going to stay with Uncle John, and he’ll take care of us. He has a big house in the city, and that’s where all the army is, so the Portuguese won’t be able to get us.”

“That’s great.”

The father took Kevin and me aside and spoke to us before we got back into the wagon. “I know every soul in Glanbury, and I don’t know you boys,” he said. “I’ve certainly never seen anyone wearing clothes like that, or heard an accent like that. Where are you really from? China?”

Kevin shook his head. “No, we’re from America.”

“Where is America?” the man asked suspiciously. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Kevin looked at me, and we felt a little more desperate. Just how different was this world? “What–what’s the name of this country?” he asked the man.

The man shook his head in astonishment. “Never heard of the like. We’re in New England, lad. The United States of New England. Where’s America?”

Far, far away, apparently. “Samuel, please come!” his wife called out to him from the wagon. “If we don’t hurry we’ll not make it to Boston by dark.”

Samuel looked back at us. “I think you lads have some explaining to do, but now’s not the time, I judge. Let’s go, if you still want a ride to Boston.”

He headed off to the wagon. “This may be our last chance,” Kevin said to me. “What do you think?”

I shook my head. “It’s too late, Kevin. We have to go to Boston.”

Kevin didn’t argue, and we silently trudged back to the wagon.

When we got in, the mother was feeding the kids apples and bread. She offered us some, and we took the food gratefully. Kevin ate his share like he didn’t think he’d get another meal.

We started up again. The sun was lower in the sky now, and it was getting colder out. After a while there were more shops and houses, and a few signs of life. Dogs barked at us. On one side street I saw a bunch of hogs eating garbage in the middle of the road. Another road merged with ours, and suddenly there was traffic–more wagons carrying furniture and frightened families. Some of the wagons had a cow, a goat, or even an ox tied up behind them. Everyone was headed towards Boston.

Finally we crossed a bridge over a river, and a little ways beyond was a long high wooden fence that stretched out as far as I could see in both directions. There were slits for guns high up in the fence, I noticed. A pair of gates were open, but a group of soldiers stood by them, examining everyone before they let them pass through.

They looked like soldiers, but their uniform was different from any I had ever seen. They wore short red jackets, black pants, and metal helmets with little brims, almost like batting helmets. Each of them had a rifle slung over his arm and a pistol in his belt. When we finally reached the gates one of the soldiers came up to us. He half-saluted Samuel and said, “Name, sir?”

He had an accent that was almost English.

“Harper. Samuel Harper. That’s my wife Martha.”

“And where are you coming from?”

“Up from Glanbury,” Samuel replied.

“Waited till the last minute, did you?”

“They were right behind us. There was some skirmishing, and I thought it best to leave. If they weren’t so interested in looting, they’d be right behind us still.”

“Why did you wait so long?”

“I didn’t want to yield my farm to any Portuguese, I tell you that. I fired my house and barn before I left. I don’t know how it got to this.”

The soldier nodded and looked into the wagon. “This your family, sir?”

“Except for those two strays back there,” Samuel said, meaning us. “I don’t know who or what they are.”

The soldier came around and took a close look at Kevin and me. “Strange outfits,” he said. “And your family is where, mates?”

“Murdered,” Kevin blurted out. “By the Portuguese. But we managed to escape.”

Why did he say that?

“But I thought you were in the navy,” the little girl objected.

“I know nothing of any murdering,” Mr. Harper said.

The soldier’s eyes darkened. “Well?” he demanded.

But just then another soldier called to him. “Move it along, Corporal! We’ll be all night getting these people inside.”

He shrugged and stepped back. “Any disease here?” he asked loudly. “Smallpox? Diphtheria? Drikana?”

“No,” Mr. Harper said. “We’re all healthy, thank God.”

“Pray God you stay healthy,” the soldier replied. “The city is getting more crowded by the hour. There is little food, and the water is bad. You are welcome to enter, but you’ll have a hard time of it. If there is a siege, conditions will get far worse. You’ll have to stay in a camp.”

“I have a brother in the city who will take us in,” Mr. Harper said.

“Then count yourself lucky, sir. The camps’ll not be pleasant places. You may pass.”

Mr. Harper grunted and flicked the reins, and the horse started through the gates. “A siege,” he muttered. “They want to delay as long as they can while they parley with the Europeans, as if any European has ever helped New England before. And meanwhile, all I’ve worked for has been destroyed.”

“You needn’t have set fire to the–” his wife started to say, but he quickly interrupted her.

“Better me than the Portuguese, woman. If we all did what I did, there’d be no food to sustain them, and they’d have to slink like dogs back where they came from.”

I looked at the fence. Soldiers were piling up sandbags against it. Getting ready for a siege, I thought. There were sieges in plenty of video games I’d played. Sieges could last forever.

“Was your family really murdered?” the little boy asked Kevin.

Kevin shook his head. “No, but I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.”

“Oh. That’s sad.”

Kevin nodded and looked away.

We were passing through a big military camp. The soldiers stared at us grimly as we went by. In the distance to our right I could see the ocean. I smelled fish and horse manure, and worse stuff. It was really getting dark now, and there weren’t any street lights. I was hungry and stiff and still a little queasy from the bumpy ride. This was awful.

“Are you sure John will take us in?” Martha asked her husband.

“He’d better, hadn’t he?” he replied.

“What about these boys?”

“What about them? I won’t ask my brother to house and feed anyone who isn’t kin, not with what’s about to happen. Anyway, they haven’t told the truth about anything since we met them. They can fend for themselves.”

“But they’re so young, Samuel.”

“They’re old enough to join the army, I daresay. The redbacks will need everyone they can get. They should be grateful to us. If we hadn’t taken them with us, they’d be lying dead in the road by now. Or worse.”

Martha gave us a look full of sympathy, but she didn’t argue with her husband. The little boy said, “I’d like to join the army,” but she hushed him.

My stomach started to growl.

We were past the military camp now. The road crossed some marshland, and on the other side there were a lot of shacks and tents jammed together, and some of the people in wagons got off the road to join the crowd. Was this one of the refugee camps? “Fools,” Mr. Harper muttered. “Camping in the swamp. Half of them will have the flux by morning.” We kept going, and after a while some of the buildings were built of brick, the road became paved with cobblestones, and there were even sidewalks.

“At last,” Mr. Harper said. “Now, if I can only find the street.”

The sidewalks grew crowded as we traveled further into the city. Kids younger than Kevin and me, dirty-faced and dressed in raggedy old clothes, were selling newspapers or flowers. Soldiers walked alongside women wearing too much makeup. There were lots of old people–and some not so old–holding out their hands or tin cups, begging for food or money. Policemen, dressed like the soldiers except in blue, directed traffic at every intersection. Some people on the streets rode something that looked like a bicycle with very wide wooden wheels. There were no traffic lights, and only a few dim, flickering lamps instead of street lights.

Mr. Harper made a few turns, asked directions a couple of times, and finally pulled up in front of a small house on a dark side street. A bearded man walked out of the house, holding a lantern. “Samuel,” he said, “about time you came to town.”

“Held out as long as I could, John,” Samuel replied. “I’ve lost everything but what we’ve got in this wagon.”

“I’m very sorry for that,” John said, coming over to the wagon. “but of course you’re welcome to stay here. Martha,” he said, nodding to the woman. “And how are little Rachel and Samuel?” He reached into the wagon and patted them on the heads. Then he turned to Kevin and me with a puzzled expression. “And you are–?”

Samuel had joined his brother and was unlatching the back of the wagon. “Passers-by,” he said. “Everyone had to get out or be shot. We gave them a ride, out of the goodness of our hearts.”

We climbed down, followed by Martha and the children. Samuel and his brother walked back to the front of the wagon, unhitched the horse, and led it behind the house. Martha looked at us. “Will you be all right?” she asked.

I didn’t know what to say. “I guess so,” I said.

She reached back into the wagon and filled a small bag with apples, bread, and cheese. “Good luck,” she said, handing me the bag. “I’m sorry we can’t do more. It’s a hard time for everyone.” She turned to her kids. “Come on, children. Let’s go inside.”

Kevin and I watched them go into the small house. And then we were all alone on the dark street, in the strange world, and neither of us had a clue what to do next.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 4

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Richard Bowker

Here’s the latest installment of my online novel. For more excitement, check out:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

*********************

Chapter 4

I was stuck sitting in front of Stinky again on the bus. He still seemed puzzled about what happened in the woods. “Hey,” he said to me. “I wanna know how you did that.”

I didn’t answer.

“Come on,” he said. “You were there, and then you weren’t. How’d you do that?”

“Your eyes weren’t fast enough to keep up with me,” I answered without turning around. “Leave me alone.”

And you know what? He did.

At school, Kevin came up to me in homeroom. “So what do you think, huh? Are we gonna do it?”

I was feeling a little less sure than I’d been yesterday. “I don’t know, Kevin.”

“Look,” he said. “You don’t have to go, if you’re scared. Just show me where it is, and I’ll go by myself.”

“I’m not scared,” I protested. “I’m–prudent.” That’s the word my mother always uses. A prudent person doesn’t ride roller coasters, or pet strange dogs, or enter portals to parallel universes.

“Okay, fine, you’ve already been there–you can afford to be prudent,” Kevin argued. “But I haven’t had my chance yet. And if you don’t show me the thing, I’ll never have a chance.”

I gave up. “All right all right,” I said. “Come on over. But you gotta promise to be careful.”

Kevin grinned and gave me a high-five. “Of course I’ll be careful,” he said. “And prudent.”

School took forever. In English class, Nora just sat there next to me, and I started thinking: Wouldn’t it be great to see that smile of hers again? And there was lots of other stuff to check out. Who was president in that world? Did The Gross exist?

Did I exist? Thinking back on what happened yesterday, I wasn’t really sure if Nora or Stinky had recognized me. Maybe Nora smiled at me because she knew me from school, and I looked so strange in my clothes.

What would happen if I met myself? Would we both explode or something? I should ask Kevin; he was bound to have a theory.

Anyway, the more I thought about going back there with Kevin, the more excited I got. Just be cool and don’t get into any trouble, and everything would be fine.

Stinky stayed away from me on the bus ride home. I was beginning to think I had really spooked him. Anyway, when I got home, Mom was on the computer. She has a part-time job writing grant proposals for Glanbury College, and she does a lot of her work in the downstairs study. “Don’t forget your piano lesson this afternoon,” she said as I walked past.

I had in fact forgotten about the stupid lesson. “But Kevin is coming over,” I said.

“Tell him to come tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll live.”

Kevin would go nuts if he had to wait another day, I thought.

“What if he goes home when we have to leave?” I asked.

Mom sighed. “I suppose. But don’t go disappearing in the woods.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. I want you back in the house, ready to go, at quarter to four.”

“Oh. Sure thing.” I headed upstairs.

“And Larry–how was school?” Mom called out.

“Oh, you know. The usual.”

In my room, I switched out of my cargo shorts into some regular khakis. I should have told Kevin not to wear anything weird, but it was too late now. He was probably already on his way to my house. His mother lets him ride his bike across town–without a helmet–which is something I wouldn’t even bother asking my mom to let me do.

I went downstairs to the kitchen to have some cookies and milk while I waited for him. As I ate my Oreos I started to get nervous. I didn’t really like lying to my mother. And this was my last chance to back out.

I didn’t have long to think about it. Kevin showed up a few minutes later, breathless and excited. “Ready?” he said.

“Want some Oreos?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Who can think about Oreos at a time like this?” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Okay, but we have to be back by quarter to four. I’ve got a piano lesson.”

“Sure, fine. I’ve got my watch. So let’s go.”

Obviously Kevin didn’t want to chat.

I put the milk away and we left the house. It was another beautiful day–the kind you hate to spend inside. Kevin had parked his bike by the garage. We went through the yard and into the woods. Kevin kept running on ahead of me, then waiting impatiently for me to catch up.

Kevin is shorter than I am, and he has this weird combination of freckles and black hair, which is always flopping onto his forehead. He looks younger than most seventh-graders, I think, but actually he’s a couple of months older than I am. He was wearing jeans, an Old Navy t-shirt, and a Red Sox cap. I sure hoped those kids wouldn’t be hanging out at the Burger Queen. “How much further?” he asked. “Are we almost there?”

“Calm down. It’s near the army buildings. We’re getting there.”

“Okay, c’mon.”

“I’m coming.” In a few minutes we reached the army buildings. They looked empty–no Stinky this time. Now I had to figure out exactly where the portal was. I’d been running from Stinky–which way? It took me a couple more minutes to find the clearing and the oak tree, with Kevin making impatient noises behind me. “Over there,” I said. “That’s where it was.” I looked around. We were alone.

Kevin took a step forward and held his hand out. He looked like he was searching for a light switch in the dark. Nothing happened at first. What if the thing had gone away? Should I be relieved or disappointed? Then he took another step, and suddenly his hand disappeared. “Awesome,” he whispered.

He took his hand out, then put it back in again, just the way I had done. Then he did something I hadn’t thought of–he walked around the portal with his hand outstretched, seeing how big it was. “I think the two of us can just barely fit in it at the same time,” he said. “I wonder what happens if, like, half your heart is in this world and the other half is in the other.”

That just made me more nervous. “Kevin, give it a rest,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “Just thinking out loud. It can’t be man-made, right? I mean–there’s no structure to it. It’s not like somebody built this.”

“If you say so.”

“Maybe they built it in the other universe–but you said they didn’t look all that advanced–they had big cell phones and everything.”

“That’s right. And if they built it, why would they put it, you know, behind a strip mall?”

Kevin nodded. “Could’ve been aliens, like you said. Or maybe it comes from some other universe altogether. What if we ended up there?”

Hard to believe, but that was the first time it occurred to me that the portal might not take us back to the world I’d visited the day before. That didn’t help calm my nerves.

“This is just so great,” Kevin went on, as he continued to stare at the thing–or, really, at the thin air where the thing was. “It’s totally strange, but totally real.” He looked at me. “You ready, Larry?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m really not sure if I–”

Kevin looked at his watch. “C’mon, Larry. We don’t have that long before we have to get back.”

“All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll come.”

Kevin grinned. “Attaboy.”

I don’t know why I agreed, really. Now that the moment had arrived, stepping back into the thing didn’t seem like that great an idea. On the other hand, I pictured myself being prudent, hanging around in the woods like Stinky, waiting for Kevin to reappear, and the image just seemed sort of . . . pitiful. If Kevin was going, I had to go, too.

“So what do we do,” Kevin asked. “Just walk into it?”

“Yeah. It’ll be all kind of foggy, but just keep going. Just a couple of steps, and you’re out the other side.”

“Cool. Want me to go first?”

“Okay. I’ll be right behind you.”

Kevin grinned. “All right,” he said. “Here goes.” He stepped inside. I watched him disappear, and it really was weird, seeing him vanish right in front of me. No wonder Stinky had been so freaked. I took a deep breath, and then I followed.

I was inside the thing. Same clouds, same vague shapes off to the sides. Everything seemed kind of out of focus. I blinked a few times, but nothing changed. “You there, Larry?” Kevin said.

The sound of his voice was reassuring. “Right behind you. Keep on going.”

I kept my eye on Kevin’s back as he moved forward.

But it was more than a couple of steps this time, and still the clouds didn’t go away. Instead it started feeling cold and damp–like real fog. And then I heard shouts and what sounded like footsteps.

Uh-oh, I thought. “Um, Kevin?”

As my eyes adjusted, I could make out trees through the fog. I looked around for the dumpster, but it wasn’t where it had been yesterday. Nothing was where it had been yesterday.

I saw two men coming towards us. One of them shouted at us. It sounded like Spanish, but I couldn’t understand it.

“Let’s go back, Kevin,” I said.

But where was the portal? I had lost my bearings in the fog. The men were wearing blue uniforms and carrying rifles. They were soldiers, I realized. They raised the rifles and pointed them at us.

Kevin took off through the trees, and I followed.

I heard rifle shots and tensed, expecting a bullet in the back. But the shots missed; one of them screamed as it ricocheted off a rock or something. I was having a hard time keeping up with Kevin. A branch whacked me in the face. There was more shouting. “C’mon!” Kevin shouted back at me.

The trees petered out suddenly and we found ourselves on a road. And now we heard hoofbeats and saw a wagon bearing down on us through the fog.

“Samuel, stop!” a woman’s voice called out.

The wagon slowed. We stepped back.

There were more rifle shots.

The man driving the wagon peered down at us suspiciously.

“Get in! Quickly!” the woman sitting beside him said.

We hesitated. Kevin looked at me, his eyes wide with fright.

“Now!” the man ordered. “Before the blasted Portuguese send all of us to our Maker!”

Portuguese?

More shouts, from close behind us now. We scrambled into the wagon and the man drove off. Behind us in the fog we saw the Portuguese soldiers come out of the trees and aim at us again. But the fog closed in around them before they could shoot.

I looked at Kevin again. He was shaking. I felt as if I was ready to cry.

The wagon picked up speed. And every second that passed, it took us further away from the portal, and from home.