Sondheim’s musical “Merrily We Roll Along” is currently enjoying a revival in New York and I couldn’t be happier that it’s back. The show has an unforgettable score and a legendary history of being a brilliant, beloved failure. Well, “failure”‘s not a really fair description. Merrily challenges audiences and casts because of the way they tell the story: it’s backward. The Story It’s a pretty simple story told the traditional way. Two young guys and a girl are best friends and colleagues, all working to break into show business. They hang out together, brainstorm ideas and cheer each other on while the rest of the world ignores them. Eventually, they each catch that all-important break but success does what years of failure couldn’t do; it splits up the team. Like I said, a simple story and a sad one when you tell it that way. But tell it back to front and watch what happens! Right out the door, there’s the climactic fight that murders a friendship that existed for decades! Then back up a bit and you watch the information bomb drop that makes that last fight inevitable. Back it up again and you see the same characters again,…
I started this blog years ago because I had a story to tell. A story about how two irreconcilable sisters learned to work together. Somebody told me before I could publish my book, I had to have readers which meant I needed to write a blog. When they asked what I could write a lot about, I replied, “Stories.” Why Stories? See, I think stories are the most powerful magic we wield. You can change a person’s future with a story. Think of all those people who started working toward law school once they read about Atticus Finch. The veterinarians who followed James Herriot into the profession. Think of the destruction caused by Mein Kamp. But stories can change history as well. For centuries, Richard III has been vilified, not from the facts but because the next king spread nasty stories about him. And those stories made it into a great play. Sometimes the fictional story is so engaging, that we forget what really happened. Or a well-told story can rescue the truth from obscurity. The thing is, stories, good stories, can undermine all our defenses. They let us see connections we were blind to before. They find the fear…
I love the way things evolve. (Don’t be scared if you’re feeling fundamentalist; I’m not talking Darwin here). I mean that as standards of civilizations and cultures change, standards of popular arts morph along with the culture. In that way, we can study the values of any era by looking at what was created and celebrated during that time. And, since mysteries have been popular literature since the first “whodunit” was created, we can trace see how some protagonists have changed along with the times. Of all of these “standard” characters, none has changed more than the professional detective. They’ve gone from flat feet to tortured souls. Think of literature’s early detective heroes, Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. (Okay, so Auguste wasn’t a professional detective, but he’s close). Fans referred to them as human thinking machines because they solved puzzles with rational, deductive thought and neither allowed emotion to clog up their thinking. Which makes them fascinating characters to follow but not someone a reader can identify with. Self- doubt never undermines either man, and although both men have weaknesses, they’re never disabled by them. Let’s face it, these guys are great, but we’re not sure that they’re human. [amazon_link asins=’0679722645′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’theboothafoly-20′…
For some folks, mysteries are two-sided stories. There’s always the central puzzle to solve: usually who left a corpse (or corpses) laying around. Then there’s the motive behind the misdeed. But what keeps a lot of mystery readers glued to the page is the thrill of the chase. They stay awake for hours, mentally following a Sam Spade or Cormoran Strike from one risky scenario to the next, taking on all comers in a fight to the finish. It’s grand entertainment when it’s done right. But they’re not on the menu today. This is a salute to the mega-brains of detective fiction, those sleuths who never break a sweat. Literature refers to them as “arm-chair detectives.” They’re Sedentarians, to me. I know a bit about Sedentarians from my father’s side of the family. I saw them in action, so to speak, as a kid. Yes, my dad’s folks were farmers originally, but whenever we went for a visit, the family got together and sat. And sat. For hours on end. Until, if sitting was an Olympic Sport, my family would all have been medalists. But, however stationary my relatives could be, none of them were a patch on Mycroft Holmes. If you…
The child is father of the man, at least that’s what Wordsworth wrote. (Wasn’t he a loquacious so-&-so?) That means the things we love as kids often influence our tastes as adults. I am (unfortunately) old enough to acknowledge the truth in this observation, but I wonder if writers deliberately trade on this idea. After all, how do you create adult readers who’ll love Fantasy/Science Fiction? Wait until they’re old enough to vote and then give them a copy of Dune? No, you introduce them to the genre while they’re young, with kid’s stories written by great SF authors like Heinlein and LeGuin. But creating under-age Mystery readers is a slightly more difficult proposition. After all, Mysteries almost always involve Violent Crime, and we don’t want the Little Darlings to have nightmares. (Well, we may, but we won’t sell as many books if they do.) So how do you create the next generation of Nero Wolfe and Alex Cross fans? By giving them mysteries with juvenile detectives, of course![amazon_link asins=’0448466759′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’theboothafoly-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’eaafff07-9e68-11e8-ba3f-fd27745ad13e’] Early Juvenile Detectives When I was first learning to read, there were three fictional superstars of kid-lit whodunits. Well, seven characters but three detective teams: Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey…