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Nov

28

A little Block here, a little Westlake there…

Posted by : E.v.R. | On : November 28, 2006

Category: Reading

No, not writer’s block… Lawrence Block — and his pal Donald Westlake. Digging into some pulp that I’ve missed out on. Here’s the summary:

  • 361 by Donald Westlake

    Ray Kelly gets out of the airforce and arrives back in NYC to meet his father, only to witness his father’s murder and consequently suffer a horrible car accident in which he loses an eye. It’s your basic revenge story, but a good one at that. 361 ended up being my ideal format example for fiction. At 207 pages, 361 made for a breezy read embellished by the fact that chapters were no more than a few pages each, and something happens on every page. The inciting incident the murder of the hero Ray Kelly’s father which happens by about page eight, and the story is in full gear by page twenty, with a major twist around page one hundred. 361 is a great example of getting to the heart of the story right away — something all writers could bear to study.

  • Money for Nothing by Donald Westlake

    Josh Redmont starts receiving $1,000 a month from an unknown source. Seven years later, someone approaches him and tells him that he is now ‘active.’ Josh gets wrapped in a hairy conspiracy and has to find his way out. At 336 pages, Money for Nothing is a bit longer than 361. The extra page padding makes for more loose storytelling than 361, but the plot is still no laggard and if Westlake doesn’t manage to keep the philosophy of “Something happens on every page,” then at least it’s “Something happens in every chapter.”

  • The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

    A prostitute is found dead and her stepfather hires Matthew Scudder to find out more about the estranged step-daughter. Things are complicated by the suicide of her supposed killer. As Scudder learns more about the estranged daughter-become-prostitute, he gets closer to solving the crime itself even though it’s not what he was paid to do. This is the first novel in Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series. It was a very solid mystery. There seems to be a lot less action than in Westlake’s novels, but half the fun is following Scudder around in his quest to find things out for his clients. Another example of blissful brevity. At 180 pages (my version), you can read The Sins of the Father in a single night.

  • In the Midst of Death by Lawrence Block

    A cop testifying on police corruption is framed for murder and Scudder must clear his name. Along the way he discovers leads which bring him to the real killer. Another short and delicious book. Not quite as good as The Sins of the Father, for the mystery is a bit more muddled and the ending lacks some resolution. But I guess this series is more about Matthew Scudder’s alchoholic journey through the seedy underbelly of New York City.

With exception of Money for Nothing, these represent both Westlake’s and Block’s earlier novels. Their later novels appear to be a lot longer. I wonder what happened? While longer might equal better from the perspective of the publisher, to me it represents bloat and excess.

Have you read any great short novels or novellas lately?

Oct

18

Sometimes You Strike Gold…

Posted by : E.v.R. | On : October 18, 2006

Category: Creative Process, Reading

There aren’t many books on creativity. Well, there are if you count all the touchy-feely ones punted from the ‘spiritual’ angle. I’m interested in the psychology and science behind creativity, and welp… oddly, there just hasn’t been much until I found a somewhat obscure textbook on the subject called the Handbook of Creativity. Within the first few pages there is an explanation WHY there aren’t many solid approaches to the study of creativity:

(a) the origins of the study of creativity in a tradition of mysticism and spirituality which seems indifferent or even possibly counter to the scientific spirit;

(b) the impression conveyed by pragmatic, commercial approaches to creativity that its study lacks a basis in psychological theory or verification through psychological research;

(c) early work on creativity that was theoretically and methodologically apart from the mainstream of theoretical and empirical psychology, resulting in creativity sometimes being seen as peripheral to the central concerns of the field of psychology as a whole;

(d) problems with the definition and criteria for creativity that seemed to render the phenomenon either elusive or trivial;

(e) approaches that have tended to view creativity as an extraordinary result of ordinary structures or processes, so that it has not always seemed necessary to have any separate study of creativity;

(f) unidisciplinary approaches to creativity that have tended to view a part of creativity as the whole phenomenon, often resulting in what we believe is a narrow vision of creativity and a perception that creativity is not as encompassing as it truly is.

In my experiences, all of these are true. Among writers and other creative types however, the lack of interest seems to be points A, D, and E. Most of the creative people I know gravitate towards a mystical view of creativity. This is evident by the popularity of The Muse, originating from the Greeks as an explanation for divine inspiration. If I was to wait for the muse, the divine inspiration to strike, I might be waiting six days or six years. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the creative process is all that mystical or unknowable. Insisting it is unknowable is tantamount to plain old-fashioned ignorance. We’ll have none of that around ye Quantum Storytelling, thank you.

The other issue is those that who would normally take creativity seriously, such as scientists or psychologists, don’t. To them there is either an ordinary explanation (e) or because of the traditional ‘mystical’ viewpoints (a), science treats creativity with the same amount of circumspect as religion.

It’s high time we end this nonsense, and devote a little study to a facet of human nature which is responsible for most of modern civilization. Who’s with me?

You’d better believe there are more excerpts coming from this goldmine!

Oct

17

Sometimes Digging Only Gets You Dirt

Posted by : E.v.R. | On : October 17, 2006

Category: Reading, Sci-Fi

I’m finishing up The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies. It’s interesting, but more in the trivia kind of way. For a book about the singularity and future technology, it doesn’t cover very many of its subtitled ‘Rapidly Advancing Technologies.’ I would expect the gamut from quantum computing to cloning, and while the book does briefly cover those it spends most of its chapters talking about nanotechnology ‘minting’ and A.I. that could possibly control the minting process. I expected a little more diversity of coverage.

Perhaps the reason why I am most disappointed is I was looking for ideas to mine, and nano minting or self-automated A.I. controlled manufacturing has already been covered in sci-fi, and is relatively well tread territory. Off the top of my head I’m thinking of a couple Philip K. Dick short stories: Autofac and Second Variety.

Something the author Damien Broderick brings up which I thought might be good fodder for a story; The biggest threat to a future society might be boredom. If it were even remotely possible, what would people do to fill their time if the cost of living was zero and everyone had every minute of their waking life to use however they please? Would chaos erupt out of sheer boredom? Would the irrationality of some belief systems only find more fuel for violence in the absence of meaningful life? Or would everyone become a couch potato?

Aside from a few tiny nuggets, I didn’t get much out of Spike. So much for research… but then you can’t win them all. Sometimes digging only gets you dirt!