Eva Peron

Why is she so interesting?  Why does her name strike a fascination that defies her simple appearance and benevolent smile?

Perhaps it is because that smile wasn't what it seemed.  And the era in which she reigned--for reign she did--is one of fear and uncertainty, not just in Argentina, but around the world.  It is the time of Nazi Germany and Peronist Argentina.  It is a time of military rule and the height of dictator furor.

Patti LuPone as Evita, 1979

But why am I so interested?  I remember my first encounter with Evita.  It was through the words of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.  "Don't cry for me, Argentina!"  Patti Lupone sang.  And my parents explained to me who this Evita was and why she asked a whole country not to cry, though she really meant the opposite.  At the age of 10 I knew words like "whore" and "bitch" and I knew that someone could be both but still magnetic and effervescent.

In the fifth grade, Evita became the topic of my first school paper.  I carefully read and wrote a biographical essay on the former First Lady of Argentina, replete with a profile-with-chignon rendering that my teacher remarked "wasn't called for in the instructions for this paper."  (Funny how we remember the slights in life, isn't it?  Perhaps this was how Evita survived--chewing on the slights until they nourished her.)

I am not Argentinean.  I have no ties with the Peronists or even with the Broadway musical.  But somehow this bottle-blonde Queen enticed me.  She still does.  Is it the mythical power that overwhelms the historical characters in Tomás Eloy Martínez's Santa Evita?  


No.  It's the mystery.  It is!  The mysteries of this life are more fascinating than the ones we make up.  Hence the success of the historical novel and the nonfiction writings of Capote and Martínez.  Mystery is why I write this blog.  Mystery is why I scour bookshelves and online libraries.  Mystery is why I watch Criminal Minds and CSI and even White Collar.  Mystery is why I read art books and play Legos with my children--yes, it's present even there.  Mystery is the not knowing, the wondering, the questions that fill our minds and pour out through our fingertips.


Do you have an Eva Peron?  Is there an historical figure who fascinates you?  Is there a mystery that enthralls?


Funnily, I hadn't thought about Evita in years.  I hadn't listened to

Nonfiction post, again

Noticed a lot of nonfiction references here lately?  First of all, you've noticed more than my usual zero posts, so that's a change in itself.  Then there are the constant ramblings on history as literature and government docs as nonfiction...

The point is, I've been reading a lot of the genre lately.  I have a hunger for learning lately that came out of no where.  That's not true.  I turned 31 in February and I can only imagine that has something to do with it.  The vastness of the knowledge yet to learn is truly overwhelming, but it still appeals to me.  My sister's in law school and my son is getting read for kindergarten.  And I read.  That is my graduate school.

Last night I finished Santa Evita by Tomás Eloy Martínez.  In his 2010 obituary, The New York Times describes Mr. Martínez as "a distinguished Argentine writer whose fiction mingled journalistic and novelistic techniques to conjure an Argentina more authentically strange and elusive than either fact or fiction alone might allow."  (I highly recommend reading the article, which briefly documents the life of a heroic writer/journalist with such anecdotes as this: "In 1975, while eating lunch in a Buenos Aires restaurant, Mr. Martínez received word that when he stepped outside, he would be assassinated. There was no back exit. Reasoning that the least he could do was document his own murder, he phoned his newspaper and requested a photographer.  The receptionist said: 'Why so modest? I’ll send them all,' Mr. Martínez recalled in a 2007 interview with The Guardian of London. A swarm of photographers descended, and the assassins scattered.")

It is a book that mixes reality with legend--and not just one reality, but the reality as believed by multiple personalities.  It mixes myth with mysticism, life with death.  But most of all, it sends the reader straight to the confusing parallel universes that exist in Argentina--the dichotomy of great wealth and great poverty, great power and great weakness, great love and great hate, great fear and great bravery, great desire and great cowardice.  Passion.


I hungrily add several more of Martínez's works to my TBR list, including The Perón Novel and  The Tango Singer.  I hope a biography of the writer will appear--perhaps written in the style he so favored, a style very Argentinean, where "nothing is true; at the same time everything is true" (ny times).  One gets the feeling that is the kind of life Martínez led.  At one point, the Times journalist writes, "Mr. Martínez was married several times...Information on other survivors could not be confirmed."


It's the little mysteries, isn't it?


*My next nonfiction undertaking will be The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth by Frances Wilson.  Fictionally, I am reading The Canterbury Papers by Judith Koll Healey.

Local Laureate and Nonfiction

The 2011 Piedmont Laureate spoke yesterday on our NPR affiliate, WUNC.  Scott Huler said many interesting things, but one stood out to me.  He said during his reign as Piedmont Laureate the "worst piece of nonfction" will come to an end.  He's talking about the Homeland Security Color Coded Threat System.

That's right, folks, you can no longer ignore the Code Orange rating on your way to the airport, because it won't be there to ignore! (NY Daily News)  Who knew what Code Orange even meant?  Who paid attention to it anyway?  I know in the news business we reported code changes dutifully but without relish.

But I digress...What struck me most about Huler's comment wasn't the end of the Threat System, but him calling it nonfiction.  I never thought about it one way or the other, but do we include all records and government publications as literature?  Do they count enough to be called fiction or non?  (Not debating the fictional possibilities in government works here...)

This reminds me of the US governement's 2004 publication, The 9/11 Commission Report.  The result of months of investigation into the worst act of foreign terrorism on US soil became in instant bestseller, according to the NY Times.  And they're doing it again!  That's right, the government commission headed by Thomas H. Kean is releasing a new, fully-loaded report titled The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.  It's due to be released August of this year.


All of this strikes a cord with me right now because I've been reading so much nonfiction.  I seem to be in an era of learning in my life--can't get enough of the stuff!  None of it is dry or mathematical.  It's all related to my interest--arts, mysteries, death, politics, history.  And Huler's comment made me realize how much is out there at which I've never looked before.  Nonfiction, fiction, a blend of the two...It's all around us!


What do you think?

History as Literature

"Why does history have to be a story told by sensible people and not the delirious raving of losers...?  If history--as appears to be the case--is just another literary genre, why take away from it the imagination, the foolishness, the indiscretion, the exaggeration, and the defeat that are the raw material without which literature is inconceivable?"
~ Tomás Eloy Martínez in Santa Evita, p. 129

What do you think?

Imagination

We don't have any trees in our yard which we can climb.  It's a shame, really.  I love climbing trees and I would love to watch my kids explore the view from different heights.  There's nothing like the world one can create from the branches of a tree.

But this week the light was just right.  It shone through this one tree--each limb drawn on the ground with near God-like precision.

So we climbed it.

We climbed that shadow tree, my daughter and I, and we each found our perfect branch.  We stretched out long and we let our legs dangle.  We chatted about the view and about the animals perched beside us or above us in our secret tree.

We imagined.

Today we welcome Frank J. Edwards, author of the new medical thriller, Final Mercy.  First, a brief bio: Edwards was born in Rochester, New York.  He entered the US Army in 1968 and served a tour in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot.  He received a BA with honors in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill then attended medical school at the University of Rochester.  In 1989, he received an MFA in writing from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC.  After practicing medicine for a decade in North Carolina, he returned to the Rochester area in 1990 where he remains in active practice.  This is his first fiction novel, but he has seen his poems, short stories, and two nonfiction books reach the market.  Edwards lives with his family on Lake Ontario, near Rochester, NY.

Here is Frank Edwards...

Similes for the Act of Writing

When trying to describe the process of creating fiction, writers often resort to similes and metaphors to express the act.  This is because writing is still a mysterious thing—the unconsciously motivated, consciously directed stringing together of words to create a flow of thought and images that will resonate in the conscious and subconscious of others.  And there you go: abstract descriptions like this, not only sound like gobbledygook; they don’t convey what it really feels like.  They don’t teach and they don’t inspire.     

Analogies do a better job of illuminating the heart of the matter.  That is why they are one of the writing tricks of the writer’s trade—the making of creative comparisons.  Ring Lardner supposedly said that writing is like sitting down at your typewriter and slitting open a vein.  Rudyard Kipling compared it to knocking ashes off a bed of coals. 

I read one just last week I’d never encountered before from a writer whose name I wish I remembered, saying that writing is like swimming underwater.  I like that.  It doesn’t apply to writing outlines or taking notes, but to when you begin creating the scenes that are the real lifeblood of any story.  That is when you dive down and stroke your way into the moment.  Then you surface and do it again.  The more you practice, the longer you can stay under.  The trick lies in learning when you are just floundering on the surface versus going deep. 

And here’s one of my own invention.  I’ve never heard it used before, but it works for me.  I used to be a military helicopter pilot and I was also a civilian flight instructor while going to college.  When you first start flight training, it seems like an overwhelmingly difficult task because there are so many crucial things to coordinate at once.  It’s far trickier than learning to ride a bicycle.  But, gradually with time and lots of practice the balancing act becomes second nature.  You get to the point where you no longer think; you just point yourself and fly there. 

Writing is very much like this.

Thank you, Frank, for coming by Southern City Mysteries.  I'm sure many of the readers here have placed Final Mercy on their TBR lists.


For more on Mr. Edwards, check out his website or that of his book, MedThriller.com.

Silence is Showing

I am watching The Divine Lady with Corinne Griffith and Marie Dressler.  It is a silent film made in 1929 and tells the romantic story of the love between Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton.  The costumes are the ultimate in luxury.  The makeup is dramatic to the 'enth degree.  The love is melodramatic.  And the music is a a mix of emotion-inducing symphony and hopeful lyrics.  Drums take the place of cannons and beautifully crafted model ships fall in Admiral Nelson's daring naval battle.

The story is told in black and white.  It is told in near silence.  It is told with facial expressions and body movements.  It is told with emotion but without the obviousness dialogue brings.  In fact, it is not told at all--it is shown.

Just look at the photo of Griffith above and to the left!  See her eyes?  Her clasped hands?  The innocence implied by the hat and the chasteness by the gloves?  Her eyes are sad and begging.  Her mouth is barely open in a hopeful purse.  She is begging or praying or both and won't you, won't you give her the attention she wants?  She is so innocent and beautiful; how can you deny her?


Showing.

Some of the best authors use descriptive action where an adjective might muddy the sentence.  Some of the best directors use movement and beautifully framed shots where dialogue might take attention away from the story.

Darren Aronofsky, nominated this year in the Best Director category for Black Swan (five nominations), is brilliant at this as Christopher Nolan, whose 2010 movie Inception is up for eight Academy Awards.

What great examples of showing stand out to you?

P.S. Don't forget to swing by Friday for guest blogger and author Frank Edwards and his new release, Final Mercy.