Preparing for the Future!

When I begin my first class of the spring semester at The City College of New York I will officially be at the half-way mark of my MFA experience. The time has really flown by!

While it's always a great thing that you are enjoying life in the "present," at some point it all must end. Those of my classmates who are near the end of their MFA experience are scrambling to find something to do once they receive their degrees. Others are unsure of what they will do next. This is one of the downfalls of being in the arts. Regardless of whether you are a writer, painter, sculptor, musician or whatever - you have to always think ahead, because before you know it, change will commence and you'll be left completely unprepared. Start NOW thinking about where you want to go with your MFA (or whatever degree you are pursuing). If there are things in place as the transition begins, you could seamlessly move from one area to the next and hit the ground running. The last thing anyone wants is to be stuck in neutral while those around you are moving forward.

Right now I'm making plans on life "Post-MFA." I've been lucky with City College. It's a vibrant community with great writers and instructors. There is a deep sense of community here, and there's also a true concern among the students for the "what next?" I'm attending a series of panel discussions titled "Life After the MFA," where writers, teachers and industry professionals are speaking to us about possible career choices to consider. The last one I attended had a former City College alumnus doing a reading and discussion, along with talking about the life of teaching creative writing students balanced with pursuing his own literary interests. Great discussion! If your school offers these kinds of events I highly suggest you attend them. They can be very helpful.

As far as myself, I've come to an understanding of what I want from this MFA experience that I'm privileged to be a part of. First - I want to continue to find my voice and develop beyond my main genre of interest, meaning in addition to writing mystery novels and short stories, I'd like to segue into literary fiction, script writing for plays and film. Second - I want to make long-lasting contacts with other writers and perhaps work on joint projects after my MFA days are over. Third, I want to write and publish, hopefully on a full-time basis. Not all of us are able to do that. Sometimes we might have to work for a while until our work gets noticed. Having the MFA will allow me to teach at any university or work at a magazine or newspaper as an editor.

Perhaps the most exciting venture that I'm up to is I'm in the process of starting my own small literary press! This is exciting and I'm busy collecting data for the press. I've found ways of doing it that are both affordable and professional. Very soon I will announce on my website what I'm up to once I've completed my research. If this works out, not only will I be an accomplished author, but a businessman as well. More on that later!

I'm so enjoying being in school. The City College of New York is a vibrant community. The campus is beautiful, the program is one of the best in the country. It sits high on a hill next to St. Nicholas Park in Harlem - home of the Renaissance. So much history and tradition at CCNY, but at some point it all must end. And when it does, I promise I will be ready!

"Cuckoo's" Ghost! by David T. Boyd

Read this and see if you can tell me who it's about!

Peace,
Dave
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“Cuckoo’s” Ghost!
By David T. Boyd

Once upon a stormy night,
At home alone I shook with fright!
A nightmare plagued my weary head,
Whilst’ I had turned throughout my bed!
This Hallow’s Eve, my family gone,
To Fifty-Fifth and Avalon!
Grim thoughts abound that made me cringe,
The Cuckoo-Man might take revenge!

He knew the art of pay-to-play,
The haters called him “disengaged!”
Yet it is he, with haughty laugh,
Who’ll burn them all within his wrath!
The howling wind blew forth my door,
And spindly shadows crossed the floor!
All that’s sane has neared the fringe,
As Cuckoo-Man takes his revenge!

I shan’t forget the breaking news,
His home chock full of TV crews!
Hearts dropped deeper than a well,
Our lives are now a living hell!
And he smiled wide, his hair intact,
Said “told you all I smelled a rat!”
Yet it was clear through eyes that singe,
This Cuckoo-Man would have revenge!

I rose from bed, I could not sleep,
Despite warm milk and counting sheep!
Lightning flashed and thunder clapped,
A subtle chill crawled down my back!
To you, I say this much is clear,
‘tis not the darkness that I fear!
For what creates the slightest tinge,
Is Cuckoo-Man bent on revenge!

Monsters of the Midway ran,
‘Hyde’ went Jekyll near ’The Dan’!
Shockwaves bolted through the Loop,
‘Canary-ville’ had flown its coop!
Yes, he’s BACK, and might I add,
Chi-town’s gone stark raving mad!
All mankind shall soon unhinge,
If Cuckoo-Man enacts revenge!

Hark! I heard a sound nearby,
A ghostly thing flew ‘cross my eye!
I had sensed it coming close,
Time to leave before I’m toast!
Sickly fingers grabbed my hand,
“I’m no crook!” it said again!
Its grip was tight, it caused a twinge,
And so began Cuckoo’s revenge!

“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” the Ghost just clucked,
And since I’m not a sitting duck!
I dashed in haste toward the yard,
But Cuckoo’s Ghost, it was not far!
I made a beeline down the block,
But I forgot my Ford was locked!
It was his name he must avenge,
The Cuckoo-Man wants his revenge!

It snatched me high up by my leg,
“LET ME GO!” I cried and begged!
I looked into its piercing eyes,
And knew I was about to die!
Without a word it took its due,
It made me wear the Cubby-Blue!
Lights out folks, this was the end,
The Cuckoo-Man had his revenge!

“NOT THE CUBS!” I shrieked and screamed,
Waking from this nasty dream!
The morning sun replaced the gray,
And I had lived to see the day!
But I shall wait for June the Third,
For that’s when Cuckoo’s voice is heard!
Will we be free or will we binge?
Will Cuckoo-Man… commence revenge?

My Big Fat MFA Life!

As my profile says - I am a Creative Writing student at The City College of New York. This is my second year, and already I've had the opportunity to take classes and study works from the Victorian and Modernist eras. I've had my own writing critiqued, praised and ransacked. I've had so little rest from the nagging desire to write "just one more page," and have met fellow sleep-deprived students from all walks of life who suffer from the same neurotic tendencies as I do. I want to get better, and thankfully I desired to push myself to the limit by seeking such torture that is the MFA.

While I think everyone who aspires to write should seek an MFA, I'm also smart enough to know that it's not for everyone. There are those of us who feed off of their own energy so much they can sit in front of a computer and crank out a best seller in no time flat. In my case, I wanted the complete package. I wanted the ability to write, listen to others read their work and develop a kinship with like-minded people who all strive to discover their inner-voice and let it shine brightly in front of them for the world to see. Just in the year I've been at City College, I've seen my abilities take me to places in my own mind that I never realized possible. Every day I feel myself getting stronger, my technique crisper. I believe in what I'm doing, because for the first time in my life, I have found something to be passionate about - something worth fighting and sacrificing for! The written word is the source of my greatest love and pain. It challenges me to supersede my personal shortcomings and take that next brave step forward into glory. The structure of my MFA makes it possible for me to want, to desire, to toil, to give my all to my craft. I know success will not fall into my lap, but I'm also smart enough to know that with hard work comes the fruits of labor. One day it will all come to me. I have no doubt.

Getting an MFA is a huge sacrifice. Days when you'd rather sleep or watch TV or go hang out are practically non-existent. You forget the ball game more than you'd care to; you find days where you'll pick your head up and see a million R's on your computer screen because you passed out on your keyboard. Believe me, I've done it all. But I will tell you this - there's nothing like seeing the finished product of something you've worked on for months, if not years. It's even better when someone you don't know tells you how much they appreciated your work - after all, it's a part of you that you've bravely shown to the world. And you know what? It doesn't get any better than that!

That is what I call "my big fat MFA life!" You are welcome to it however you see fit!

Much love,
Dave

Book Review by The New York Times - How Did They End Up That Way?

Having seen this kind of thing for myself first hand, I later came to understand the compulsive "collecting" of trash as "Collyer Syndrome." This book fictionalizes the lives of Homer and Langley Collyer, two men who lived in a mansion in Harlem that were found dead in their own trash in 1947. Interesting!

Dave

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Books of The Times
How Did They End Up That Way?

Article Tools Sponsored By
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: August 31, 2009

The last name of the title characters of E. L. Doctorow’s new novel, “Homer & Langley,” is Collyer, and the book’s brothers do, in fact, turn out to be versions of those infamous New York pack rats, whose overstuffed Harlem brownstone — crammed floor to ceiling with towering piles of newspapers, suitcases and boxes, as well as 14 pianos, half a dozen toy train sets, chandeliers, a car chassis and more than 100 tons of garbage — made their name synonymous with obsessive-compulsive collecting.
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The New York Times

In 1947 a police inspector looked at the clutter-filled brownstone where the brothers Homer and Langley Collyer were found dead amid their possessions.

HOMER & LANGLEY

By E. L. Doctorow

208 pages. Random House. $26.
Related
An Excerpt From "Homer & Langley"
Marion Ettlinger

E. L. Doctorow
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The New York Times

The day in March 1947 when the Collyers’ brownstone at Fifth Avenue and 128th Street was raided by the police.

The corpses of the two men would be found in their Fifth Avenue home by police in 1947: one buried under an avalanche of rat-infested trash; the other, dead of starvation and assorted ailments.

How did the well-to-do scions of one of New York’s oldest families come to such a sad and ludicrous end? The story is a kind of male, New York City version of “Grey Gardens,” and it has fascinated writers for years. It reportedly inspired Marcia Davenport’s 1954 novel, “My Brother’s Keeper,” and Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play, “The Dazzle,” and now Mr. Doctorow, using his patented blend of fact and fiction, has tackled it here, producing a slight, unsatisfying, Poe-like story that turns out to be a study in morbid psychology.

Mr. Doctorow (the E. stands for Edgar) has said he was named for Poe, and he’s ventured into his namesake’s Gothic territory before with his 1994 novel “The Waterworks,” a story about science and detection and families. That novel, like the author’s best-known works, “Ragtime,” “World’s Fair” and “Billy Bathgate,” showcased the author’s magical ability to conjure a vanished New York from the dust and smoke of history.

Clearly Mr. Doctorow wants to do something similar here, going so far as to extend his heroes’ lives through the Watergate era, but the reader unfortunately gets little visceral sense of the city or the country in these pages. After all, Homer and Langley spent much of their lives as recluses and came to inhabit a suffocating realm bounded by the walls of their town house. As a result, there are few excursions into the New York City Mr. Doctorow knows so well, and lots of time — far more than the reader might wish — spent inside the Collyer brothers’ musty, dusty, junk-filled home.

In Mr. Doctorow’s fictionalized telling of the Collyers’ story, Langley suffered from a mustard gas attack during World War I and returned home, damaged and possibly mad. His brother, Homer, who narrates the story, went blind as a teenager but became a skilled pianist and enjoyed the attention of lots of women, who apparently found his helplessness alluring.

As recounted in these pages, the Collyers’ parents died during the great flu epidemic of 1918, and after Langley’s return from the war, the brothers set up housekeeping together. For a while the pair maintained an engagement with the world. Homer has an affair with a house servant; Langley has a short-lived marriage to a tempestuous woman. Both of them develop unconsummated crushes on the beautiful and virginal Mary Elizabeth Riordan, who works as Homer’s assistant. There are visits to speakeasies and nightclubs, and encounters with a gangster who may remind readers of Dutch Schultz in “Billy Bathgate.”

Langley becomes increasingly eccentric, however, holding forth tediously on his Theory of Replacements, a cynical hypothesis that holds that “everything in life gets replaced”: that children are replacements of their parents, and that new generations of geniuses, baseball players and kings are replacements of earlier generations of geniuses, baseball players and kings. Langley sets about collecting and saving newspapers so he can create Collyer’s One Edition for All Time, a quixotic, all-purpose newspaper that will sum up all the varieties of human experience in one set of stories.

Speaking directly to us in a slightly wistful voice, Homer is an engaging enough narrator, and his account of his and Langley’s earlier years can be poignant, as he draws portraits of the people who enter and exit their lives like a passing parade: the charming Mary Elizabeth, who leaves to attend a Roman Catholic junior college; Harold Robileaux, their cook’s grandson and a talented cornet player, who goes off to war and never returns; and Mr. and Mrs. Hoshiyama, a quiet, industrious Japanese couple who take care of the Collyer house until they are arrested by the F.B.I. and sent off to an internment camp in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

But as the Collyers isolate themselves from the world and retreat to their monstrously overcluttered house, the narrative stutters and stalls. Mr. Doctorow never succeeds in making the brothers’ transition from mild eccentricity to out-and-out madness understandable to the reader.

And even though the two men come to constitute each other’s entire world, their relationship, too, remains oddly opaque: because Homer’s blindness never hobbled his life as a young man, his growing dependence on Langley feels hokey and contrived, as does his deference to Langley’s more and more antisocial behavior.

Langley stops paying bills and is soon at war with the city and Con Ed; the electricity and water are turned off; and neighborhood children take to pelting the dilapidated house with rocks. Newspapers start doing articles about the brothers, writing of “the decline of a House, the Fall of a reputable family.”

Meanwhile, the stuff in their house seems to multiply. There are “corridors of newspaper bales,” and piles of equipment, collectibles and junk: “the guts of pianos, motors wrapped in their power cords, boxes of tools, paintings, car body parts, tires, stacked chairs, tables on tables, headboards, barrels, collapsed stacks of books, antique lamps,” piles of clothing and rolled-up carpets.

Like characters in a Poe story, Homer and Langley have entombed themselves within their once-elegant mansion — and become the center of “a circle of animosity rippling outward from our neighbors to creditors, to the press, to the municipality, and, finally to the future.”

As reimagined by Mr. Doctorow, however, their story has no Poe-like moral resonance. It’s simply a depressing tale of two shut-ins who withdrew from life to preside over their own “kingdom of rubble.”

Creative Writing Poll - The New Yorker

As I read the following article in the New Yorker I was struck by how the author missed the point of creative writing programs in general. The purpose of these underrated and undervalued modes of learning is not to teach writers HOW to write, but to help develop their voice, purpose and better understand the necessity of honing their skills toward their selected readership. It also enables us to focus, learn from contemporary and classic authors and form a bond where we can associate with those in search of the same depth and sense of challenge and clarity that all writers strive for. These are not MBA producing factories (sorry, not to offend). Instead these are programs designed to report the human condition through the eyes of people who live everyday lives.

Read the article, take a look at the poll and see if you agree or disagree. I welcome all comments.

Dave

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In the latest issue of the magazine, Louis Menand tackles a fiercely debated question: Can writing be taught? Menand comes to his own conclusions, which, you know, are worth the read, but we here at the Book Bench decided it was time for something more direct—we wanted to hit the cyber-pavement and talk to the people. Yes, that means you, dear reader with an M.F.A.! How useful was that creative-writing program? Take our anonymous and highly un-scientific poll. Results are calibrated in real time, but check in with us at the end of the week to see how things settle.

What do you think of your M.F.A. in creative writing? (Poll Closed)
I enjoyed it. 65%
I didn't. 14%
It was fine. 20%

Was it worth it? (Poll Closed)
Yes. 58%
No. 18%
Is anything worth it? 24%

Have you pursued a career in writing (freelance counts)? (Poll Closed)
Yes! I make my living as a writer. I love myself. 32%
No. What I do for a living is not related to creative writing. It's not creative period. 13%

If so, is it the same genre of writing you got your degree in? (Poll Closed)
Yes. (Fiction.) 38%
Yes. (Non-fiction.) 21%
No. Now I write non-fiction, my degree was in fiction. 36%
No. Now I write fiction, my degree was in non-fiction. 5%

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly - Mystery Reader.com

Great review on this book! A must for the mystery enthusiast.

Dave

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The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

(Little, Brown, $27.99, V) ISBN 978-0-316-16630-0

When veteran "cop shop" reporter Jack McEvoy receives his RIF (Reduction in Force) notice from the Los Angeles Times, he is given the rather humiliating option of staying on for two weeks to train his young replacement Angela Cook. During that time, Jack receives a call from a woman who states her son is not guilty of the murder charge to which he allegedly confessed and which was reported by Jack. Curious, Jack goes to her home in South LA to discuss the case and later meets with the court appointed public defender who provides Jack with a flash drive which reveals that while Alonzo confesses to have stolen the car, he did not admit to the murder of the woman found in the trunk. Angela upstages Jack and writes the story first. As part of her research, she surfs the internet for similar cases and discovers a husband convicted of murdering his wife and placing her in the trunk of his car in exactly the same fashion. Could this be a serial killer? Jack travels to Las Vegas to meet with this man's attorney only to discover that his credit cards are cancelled, his bank account is empty and his cell phone is disconnected. Jack drives to the middle of nowhere Nevada to meet with the prisoner but is advised that he will need to wait till the following day. Jack had called Special Agent Rachel Walling for help but after refusing him initially, she appears in his hotel room in Nevada to advise that someone is tracking Jack on the Internet. Indeed, Wesley Carver, aka "The Scarecrow" who is the chief technology officer at The Farm which is a large data storage service, is the brilliant but deranged mastermind behind these bizarre cases and although the serial killer is revealed early on, this does not lessen the reader's interest. The Scarecrow could be called the sequel to The Poet which brings back Jack and Rachel some thirteen years later. Now the newspaper business is struggling and in fact the Rocky Mountain News where Jack previously worked has closed down in real life. Reality suggests that people now turn to the internet more and more for news and The Scarecrow shows us the dark side of technology with cyber villain Wesley Carver. Well-written, current and a fitting homage to the newspaper business, The Scarecrow is a must read not only for Connelly fans, but for any fan of crime fiction.

The Atlantic.com - Writers in Training

Here's an interesting article that discusses the "ins and outs" of MFA life. While I believe the key to a successful Creative Writing experience involves both a combination of ensconcing one's self in the program and planning for a future away from it, there are several important aspects that this article succinctly mentions in detail. There is a good balance of Q&A here and it's well worth reading.

Dave

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Writers in Training

Why don’t “genre” writers tend to get faculty positions in prestigious writing programs? Is it snobbery? And will that maybe start to change?

There is definitely an orientation at most of the better programs to teach a certain type of “serious” fiction. A couple of people I asked about that seemed to feel that if you learn to write serious fiction, you’ll learn the basics of good writing and that you can always then apply that to genres later because genre writing is more formula based.

What advice would you give to a young writer who’s about to go into one of these programs?

There were some people in those workshops who clearly thought they already knew what good writing was. So they tended to criticize from a particular position they had already taken. That seems a shame. Because there are an assortment of people in a program—both faculty and peers—who can really help you shake up all your perceptions about writing. And that would seem to me to be the best part about being there. If you’re really looking to be a better writer, why not be open to every suggestion and see what happens?

There also seems to be a growing perception that the work you do while you’re in the program should be the work that you get published rather than as the stuff you work on in order to learn how to write. The result is that many people are getting too narrowed down too soon. Students who bring work they’ve already been working on for years find it especially difficult to free themselves from what they’ve been doing. Several of the faculty members I spoke to said that what we need to help the students understand is that your best writing isn’t going to happen for years, so loosen up, be open to suggestions and really try to something different for the sake of trying something different. That competes with that natural desire to prove as soon as possible that it was worth going away to school for this. Someone who simply graduates with an MFA may feel they have a less defensible position than someone who graduates with a book contract.

If you were to give advice to a graduate of one of these programs what would it be?

I guess I’d have to quote Chang Rae Lee [the Korean-American novelist who teaches writing at Princeton] who I talked to and who basically said that you have to recognize that the degree in and of itself only does so much. If someone goes to Harvard for an MBA, one can presume that that becomes their calling card. But even with the top programs, this may be how you get rolling, but there’s a whole lot more to do from here.

I went to the AWP convention, which had a huge number of attendees who were either currently in programs or had recently graduated. It was interesting to talk to groups of people from various programs who had been out maybe two or three years. They were using the convention as something of a reunion opportunity. And they were definitely comparing notes on who had published, how many stories or poems in what publication, and so on. Certain people were like racehorses—way out in front. And there was an inordinate amount of attention focused on who had accomplished what. Because people were trying to figure out, to some extent, whether it had been worth going to a program like this.

That can be really tough, that kind of competitiveness.

Right. If Student A, or recent graduate A gets published in a top magazine or quarterly, and the other writer’s struggling away and hasn’t really published anywhere yet, does that mean anything? It may well not.

Some of these programs are extraordinarily selective. Your piece points out, for example, that last year Johns Hopkins only admitted two fiction writers.

That’s right.

That’s really tough odds for the applicant. In terms of the application, would you say that the writing sample is the most important part?

That’s what I kept hearing. It can be frustrating that you can’t send them 500 pages of your work so they can really get a sense of it. Instead, you send them somewhere from 10 to 50 pages on average and from that some sort of determination gets made. A couple of the people I spoke to in some of the better programs talked about how they had agonized over whether to send this short story or that one, or a little of this and a piece of that, because they understood how crucial the samples are.

A number of the top programs told me, “We had 12 slots,” let’s say, for fiction writers. “We offered our first twelve, and all twelve accepted and came here.” I heard that from a number of the top programs, and I know that a lot of students apply to all of these programs. So it suggests to me that each of these programs, either consciously or unconsciously, is choosing certain types of writers. That then shapes what their programs are like. For example, if Michigan gets all the writers that they offer places to on the first round and Iowa gets all theirs and Irvine gets all theirs, and yet all these people applied to all three programs, then that suggests that there is no absolute as to who are the best. It’s a matter of something about each of their writing appealing to someone in a particular program, which indicates a good match.

That’s encouraging, I think. It sounds like they’re really reading and choosing very carefully.

It seems they are. They say they are. They made a lot of the fact that January is usually crunch month, where you’re just sitting and reading and reading and reading because, ultimately—especially with the programs that only accept 5 or 6—these are really crucial decisions that can’t be taken lightly.

You write that “at some programs, famous writers seem guilty of propagating the notion that writing can’t be taught at all.” You probably can’t say who these people are, but my first reaction was: Who are these people? And why do they say this? Aren’t certain elements of craft teachable? And why is writing such a strange art in this way? An artist teaching someone about visual art or a musician teaching someone about music probably wouldn’t be doubting whether they really have anything to teach.

Well, there are a certain number of people teaching in the programs who just feel like there are no absolutes. They may well be right. But for students, for whom knowing a few absolutes is at least one way of feeling like they’re getting something out of their education, it can be frustrating. What you tend to find is that there are some teachers who would say, “Never say never,” and then there are those who would say “No, always be sure to follow such-and-such rule.” One thing that people tend to disagree over, for example, is whether you should always know where your story is headed as you’re writing it, or whether you should just let it unfold and see what happens. There are teachers who don’t want to get pinned down saying one or the other. But a lot of the students I talked to seemed to react better to hearing something specific, even if they disagreed with it.

Some of the teachers that I talked to said they would prefer not to even give grades if they had their way. They’d rather set things up like the Stegner fellowships at Stanford where people are supported in their writing and given some feedback, but nothing gets assigned value; you just try to help people move from one step to the next. But some students, particularly at Ivy League schools, said that people in departments other than creative writing don’t take them very seriously, because there isn’t that heavy attrition that goes on in a law program or a medical program. People view it as unserious because once you’re in, pretty much everybody passes.

You have a section at the end of your article about the PhD. There are a number of people writing about this. A recent Poets & Writers article raised the same question that you did about whether the creative writing PhD will be the new MFA. Do you think it’s the new degree people will need to get in order to get teaching jobs? What, in your view, are the ramifications of this potential move into the creative writing PhD?

The US News College Rankings puts a fair amount of weight on the percentage of your faculty who have PhDs. But let’s say you have a business school. Would you rather have someone who’s worked in finance or advertising and has an MBA from Harvard, or someone who has a PhD in business but has never actually worked in business? The students I talked to about PhD programs weren’t that enthusiastic about the idea. They feel their writing is an art, and they didn’t want to intellectualize it too much.

Do you think the creative writing PhD could have an interesting effect on the traditional PhD in literature? Could it bring fresh eyes to literary theory?

I did note at a lot of programs that there seemed to be a real sense that the people over in the English department had kind of lost touch with what’s really going on in writing and had become much too theoretical and abstract. So maybe the people getting their PhDs in creative writing now are the ones who used to get their PhDs in English years ago – the ones who really want to talk about good stories and have a knowledge base that can illuminate that.

You note that the number of creative writing programs has gone from 50 to about 350 in the last 30 years. What do you think this proliferation means for literature in America?

One thing I found interesting is that as publishers are publishing less and less serious fiction, there are more programs in which the focus of the writing is exactly that. Other than the low-residency programs, which have gone more into genre work, most of the standard programs don’t pay a lot of attention to anything other than what you might call literary fiction. It becomes a very difficult market for all those new writers. So I think there will be good work being done on all kinds of levels, but probably not a tremendous profit motive.

The New York Times: Detective Novel Reviews

Each of these books appear quite interesting. If I have time, I'll try to read them.

db

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Crime

The War at Home

Reviews by MARILYN STASIO

Published: July 29, 2009

Rennie Airth ignores all the popular wisdom about how to maintain a detective series. His meticulously detailed procedural mysteries are beautifully written but few in number and published five to six years apart. And his all-too-mortal characters not only age but lose their edge. Yet this South African-born writer has produced three novels that are well worth reading, and rereading, whenever we’re engaged in war.

The story Airth has to tell doesn’t deal with combat itself — the only battle scenes are the ones relived in the minds of his haunted characters — but with the disorienting social and psychic illnesses that emerge in its aftermath. Beginning in 1999 with “River of Darkness,” he examined the impact on a tranquil village in Surrey when a deranged World War I veteran breached the peace by invading homes and slaughtering entire families. Since serial killers were almost unheard of in 1921, Inspector John Madden and his colleagues at Scotland Yard were forced to educate themselves in new and baffling fields of forensic science. Jumping to 1932, “The Blood-Dimmed Tide” found England caught in a crippling postwar Depression that cost people their homes, their livelihood and their dignity. So, along with absorbing the shocking phenomenon of serial sex killers, the detectives also sought to find a humane way of dealing with the armies of dispirited homeless men, many of them war veterans, wandering the countryside.

Without entirely leaving the series’s Surrey setting behind, THE DEAD OF WINTER (Viking, $25.95) shifts the scene to London, which in 1944 is still under German attack. Although long retired from the police force and now living a rural life, Madden comes up from the country to investigate the murder of the Polish “land girl” who worked on his farm and had been visiting her aunt in the city. The world he finds in these last days of the war is harder and colder than the one he once knew. It’s not just the prostitutes and thieves working the bombed-out streets; international criminals have also made sophisticated advances in smuggling. And, unlike the murderers in the previous books, the man killing refugees who have found sanctuary as agricultural workers is a new kind of villain — a professional assassin — so the police hardly know what to make of such an anomaly.

Reading these three novels in sequence, it’s impossible to miss Airth’s cautionary message: wars never end; they just bring the violence back home to poison the ground we all walk on.

A man who calls himself David Loogan settles down in Ann Arbor, Mich., takes an editing job at a literary mystery magazine called Gray Streets, forms a friendship with the publisher, has an affair with the publisher’s wife and helps his employer dig a grave for a man he has just killed. All this happens in the opening chapters of Harry Dolan’s first novel, BAD THINGS HAPPEN (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95), so you better believe he has a gift for ­storytelling. Although the plot is fairly outlandish, the narrative comes with startling developments and nicely tricky reversals. There’s also something appealingly offbeat about the wry, dry tone of its academic humor, which has much to do with the self-­important authors who figure in the hectic plot, either as murder suspects or as the victims of a killer who seems to be culling the Gray Streets contributors list. Aside from the interestingly enigmatic hero, the publisher of the crime mag is the only character with a fully developed mind and conscience, and when he’s murdered we cheer Loogan’s loyal efforts to find his killer. But the lying literati are more fun to watch as they fluff their professional feathers in an attempt to justify their illicit, illegal or just plain nasty behavior.

Two late-19th-century cowboy brothers who become so caught up in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” that they turn themselves into Wild West “deducifiers” in the manner of Holmes and Watson — how cute is that? Not only cute but clever, as Steve Hockensmith demonstrates in THE CRACK IN THE LENS (Minotaur, $24.99) and the three previous books in his idiosyncratic series featuring Old Red Amlingmeyer (the gloomy, thoughtful brother) and his irrepressible younger sibling, Big Red (the one who knows how to read and write). The “deducifying” is pretty primitive, but so is the society the boys find themselves in when they set out for the Texas hill country and the whorehouse where Old Red’s one true love was murdered a few years earlier. Before Old Red puzzles out the mystery of her death, Hockensmith makes sure that readers get a lightly comic taste of Old West manners and morals, so be prepared for some lively lynchings and saloon brawls — and a whole lot of spitting.

Sloane Pearson, the Chicago cop who was introduced in Theresa Schwegel’s “Probable Cause” and who returns in LAST KNOWN ADDRESS (Minotaur, $24.99), is a fighter, which is genre code for a woman constantly goaded by men into unladylike eruptions of temper. (The guys at the station house are always flicking her ponytail.) Pearson’s pugnacious temperament happens to suit the situation here, which has the scrappy officer standing up for the traumatized victims of a serial rapist. Schwegel doesn’t advance her staid but serviceable style by pointlessly shifting the narrative voice, but she’s consistently firm on her theme: the vulnerability of young women forced to become “social pioneers” by making their homes in the only neighborhoods they can afford — the dangerous ones.

Essence.com: E. Lynn Harris Dead at 54

A very sad day! E. Lynn Harris left us way too soon, but his legacy will be felt by those whom he inspired. RIP brother!

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E. Lynn Harris, whose self-published 1991 debut novel "Invisible Life" novel endeared him to millions of readers, died on July 24, 2009. He was 54 years old. According to the Arkansas Times, Harris suffered a "serious health setback" while on a West Coast book tour for his recent novel "Basketball Jones." In subsequent novels such as "Just As I Am," "If This World Were Mine" and "Any Way The Wind Blows," featuring the glamorous and gritty lives of Black strivers, closeted and openly gay men, the former IBM executive became one of the country's most popular writers, whose book signings were often standing-room only events.

In a glossy style that combined elements of posh 1950s melodramas, daytime soap operas and homespun morality tales, Harris detailed the fictitious lives of young and stunningly attractive African-Americans, navigating their way through the NFL and NBA; Hollywood and Broadway; magazines and the music industry. Readers eagerly anticipated the return of Harris fictitious fixtures such as closeted attorney Raymond Tyler, Jr., Johns ‘Basil' Henderson, and Yancey Harrinngton, and propelled nearly all of his novels onto the New York Times Best-Sellers List. Harris, who had more than 2 million copies of his novels in print, ranks as one of the most popular African-American novelists of all time.

Everette Lynn Harris, who often spoke in a soft, Southern drawl courtesy of his Little Rock, Arkansas upbringing, always dreamed of becoming an author. His road to his true calling wouldn't come easy, yet would inspire countless writers to tell their stories. Born in Flint, Michigan, Harris grew up in Little Rock. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, his 2003 memoir, documented his painful childhood, including abuse by his stepfather and a 1990 attempted suicide. For nearly a decade before he tried to end his life, Harris lived a double life: He was a closeted, successful IBM executive by day. After hours, he slept with men on the "down low" and fell into a depression. A close friend asked Harris to write his story. In 1991, Harris wrote "Invisible Life," which received countless rejection letters from mainstream publishers.

In a now legendary story, Harris, who had relocated to Atlanta, sold the novel out of the trunk of his car at local beauty parlors. The novel soon landed in the hands of Martha Levin at Doubleday, Harris' long-time publisher. Harris' story inspired dozens of authors to self-publish their novels. ESSENCE Magazine was one of the first publications to feature Harris' work and he began a long affiliation with the publication.

He visited our officies last year, met with interns and signed copies of Basketball Jones, and gave us a sneak peek of his latest novel featuring Yancey, including the first working lines of the novel: "How did this b---- get my life?"

Harris single-handedly carved out a space for contemporary African-American male novelists such as Eric Jerome Dickey, Colin Channer, RM Johnson, Carl Weber, Van Whitfield, and Omar Tyree. He was a tireless champion for the Hurston/Wright Foundation and had his own foundation. Harris was known in the literary community for his generosity to his fans (often remembering birthdays and holidays); his love of the Arkansas Razorbacks (he was the first Black male cheerleader for the school), and his support for burgeoning writers. He combined his passion for both of the latter by returning to his alma mater as an adjunct professor, where he taught as recently as last fall. He divided his time between Atlanta and Arkansas, but ultimately, always made the time for his readers, who he credited with saving and changing his life.

SF Chronicle: "The Long Fall" by Walter Mosley

I can't wait to read this book! Mosley is one of my favorite writers, and I'm proud to say he's a distinguished alumnus of my MFA program - The City College of New York!

Here's a review by the San Francisco Chronicle!
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The Long Fall

By Walter Mosley

(Riverhead Books; 306 pages; $25.95)

In his first novel set in contemporary New York City, Walter Mosley, author of "Blonde Faith" and "The Right Mistake," introduces readers to a new series character - the middle-aged, literally low-rent private detective Leonid McGill. McGill is an African American, like Easy Rawlins, the protagonist of Mosley's period Los Angeles mysteries, but he's a very different kind of investigator, and "The Long Fall" is a different kind of Mosley book.

Married to a woman he doesn't love, raising kids not his own, yearning for the sexy building manager charged with breaking his way-below-marketvalue office lease, McGill needs the cash that will come once he unravels the new identity of a troubled kid formerly known as B-Brain. A more upscale detective with a mysterious client wants that information, but McGill isn't at all sure he can trust his colleague not to make life difficult for a guy who seems to have done well for himself since leaving his trouble-making buddies behind.

Once a tool of the local mob, McGill carries a large enough load of guilt as it is, and he can't afford any additional karmic burden. In addition to worrying about the erstwhile B-Brain, McGill has to contend with a mobster who wants a potentially deadly favor, plus his own teenage son's apparent plan to kill the father of a female friend. No wonder McGill has recurring nightmares of being trapped in a burning building.

There's a lot of plot to keep track of in "The Long Fall," but the pleasures of the novel come not mainly from its narrative mechanics but from McGill's first-person perspective on race and class in an America on the verge of electing its first black president. People around McGill tend to underestimate him because of his age, his short stature and the color of his skin. Again and again, he proves that, despite being pushed down, he's a contender. It's hard not to like a detective who sums up a case thusly: "The scenario was simple, it just didn't make sense, like a live cat sealed in a glass globe, or the United States declaring peace."

Starting with Leonid McGill, who bears an obvious legacy as a red diaper baby, Mosley has a lot of fun with characters' names in "The Long Fall." Which is good, because the cast of this slender novel expands almost to the point of unwieldiness. It's particularly amusing that McGill's unfaithful Nordic wife, a storm of destruction in human form, is called Katrina. But then there's a character called Norman Fell, who evokes distracting visions of Mr. Roper on "Three's Company" every time he's mentioned. Inscrutable joke or simply a stray note?

"The Long Fall" accomplishes most of what an inaugural installment of a mystery series should. The three major plot strands are solidly developed and neatly resolved. McGill's quest for redemption, however, is far from over, but it will be interesting to watch it play out across a number of subsequent volumes.

If "The Long Fall" is overstuffed with incidental characters whose importance may not be obvious until later installments, that's a minor flaw. Having retired Easy Rawlins, Mosley has devised a worthy successor in Leonid McGill.