Why Bouchercon?

My first Bouchercon was 2008 in Baltimore. I’d heard of it—no avoiding it if one follows crime fiction at all—but I’m a solitary sort who doesn’t care for crowds (read: anti-social), so I never took much interest. Living halfway between DC and Baltimore, it seemed tis would be the one to try, if I were ever going to. Now I love conferences, and would go to half a dozen a year if I didn’t have that damn “real job” that pays the mortgage, electricity, gas, car, food, clothing; you know how that goes. My affection for conferences in general stems from that first year at Bouchercon, which is the gold standard for its ability to bring together a critical mass of readers and authors.

My favorite Bouchercon stories still belong to Baltimore. As noted above, I’m a bit anti-social awkward meeting new people, don’t care much for crowds, and found myself that first morning overwhelmed by hundreds of people, only one of whom I’d ever met in the flesh. (Austin Camacho, who was a great comfort that first day, taking the time to chat with me while I was still making up my mind whether to stick around.) I was supposed to get together with some people I’d met online, but that was only half a step removed. In my mind, they were writers and I was (at that time) but a reader (in my mind), and felt an implied chasm between us.

Among those was Irish author Declan Hughes, creator of the outstanding Ed Loy series. I’d interviewed him for New Mystery Reader several months earlier, and he’d invited me to say hello. So there I was in the men’s room, standing at a urinal, still undecided about how long before I’d go home, and I look to my left and see a familiar face three stalls over. The conversation went like this:

Me: You’re Declan Hughes, aren’t you?

Him: Aye.

Me: I’m Dana King.

Him: Dana! Great to see you.

Me: Finish up. We’ll shake later.

We then made of great show of washing our hands before shaking. On the way out we had to pass through the line for the ladies’ room. One woman recognized Declan and said, “I never meet anyone like that in the rest room.” To which I replied, “You’re not hanging out in the right places.”

That was great fun, but even someone of my limited social skills knew not to attach myself like a barnacle to Declan for the rest of the day. By mid-afternoon my enthusiasm was waning again, until I happened onto Peter Rozovsky on the skyway between hotels. Peter and I became acquainted through his outstanding blog Detectives Beyond Borders, and had met in person earlier that day. (Peter’s fame is now beyond borders itself, thanks to his coming up with the idea for Noir at the Bar.) (Note to those in the DC region: E.A. Aymar is hosting a N@B event at the Wonderland Ballroom, Saturday, October 3 at 7:00. The stalwart lineup includes Austin Camacho, Jen Conley, Nik Korpon, Peter Rozovsky (the Godfather himself), David Swinson, Art Taylor, and Sarah Weinman. And me, but don;t let that stop you. You can always go to the bathroom when it's my turn.) Our chat went like this:

Peter: How are you enjoying yourself?

Me: It’s okay, but I don’t really know but a handful of people.

Peter: Well, just introduce yourself. (Looks around.) Do you know Scott Phillips?

Me: No.

Peter: Scott! Come here, I have someone for you to meet. (Scott Phillips comes over.) Scott, this is Dana King, Dana, Scott wrote The Ice Harvest.

Me (in fan boy mode, having seen the movie and read the book): I know.

We shook hands and chatted for five minutes before Scott had to leave for a panel. My comfort level increased exponentially and I was hooked on the conference experience.

(Epilog to that story: The next year, in Indianapolis, I was hanging on the periphery of the bar, having lost some of my hard-won confidence over the past twelvemonth. I saw Scott with some people and was deciding whether to re-introduce myself when he spotted me. “Hey, Dana. We’re about to go to get something to eat. Do you want to come?” Bouchercon doubts cured forever. Scott Phillips is a true humanitarian.)

I had to miss San Francisco and St. Louis for reasons beyond my control. (Still bummed about St. Louis, which is one of my favorite towns.) Sat on my first panel in Cleveland, my second in Albany (moderated by Peter Rozovsky, thus completing that whole Bouchercon Circle of Life™ thing), went to the Shamus banquet as a nominee in Long Beach, and have a panel next month in Raleigh. (As well as Author Speed Dating, which shows how much I’ve come around on that whole talking to strangers thing.) Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, I’ll be in New Orleans, Toronto, and St. Petersburg. Bouchercon is my primary social/creative event of the year, and I work budgets and vacations around it.

I still remember Baltimore vividly. So, if anyone who reads this is going to their first—or second, or third, or…--Bouchercon and feels at all uncomfortable abut speaking to an author (or at least someone who thinks of himself as one), please say hello if you see me. I’ll be happy to talk, and will have a few books on hand to dispense free gratis (as Al Swearengen would say) if you mention this blog post. If you don’t see me, or I’m otherwise occupied, say hello to The Beloved Spouse, who will talk to anybody. She has no standards at all. She married me, didn’t she?

Stuff

Peter Rozovsky’s peerless blog, Detectives Beyond Borders, had a thought-provoking post yesterday. Peter does this several times a week, but the thoughts he provokes are often for more eloquent minds than mine to articulate, so nothing happens here.

This post was titled, “What separates the superlatively great from the merely very good?” The post ends with one of Peter’s periodic displays of gauntlet throwing: “What distinguishes a great author from one who is merely good, even very good? Examples welcome.”

My comment: This may lower the level of discourse, but, to me, the mark of greatness is when a writer can consistently give me moments or entire novels where, after reading, I shake my head and think/say, "Damn, I wish I'd written this." Anyone can do it once in a while, but some do it so often I expect it. Those are, to me, the greats.

This was, in fact, somewhat lower than the accustomed level of discourse on Peter’s blog, but, were it not for the likes of me, how would you appreciate those who actually know what they’re talking about? Peter threw me a lifeline with, Dana, the question then becomes: What defines that writing that makes you thing, "Damn, I wish I'd written that!"? It's elusive, isn't it, and each writer who achieves it probably does it in his or her own way, revealing new possibilities. If we could nail it down, we'd be doing it ourselves.

I immediately thought, “F. Murray Abraham!” A worthy comment immediately came to mind, but, needing a blog post for today and being a selfish prick, I saved it for here. (At least I gave credit.)

You may remember F. Murray Abraham as the actor who played composer Antonio Salieri in the movie Amadeus. (If you saw the movie, you remember him; it was a brilliant performance.) Salieri was a contemporary of Mozart, and had established a nice reputation for himself when the wunderkind came to Vienna and pushed him aside, not just for the time being, but for all of history.

Salieri was a fine composer. You’ll hear music every day on classical music stations not as good as his, written by composers better known. A musicologist can compare his scores to Mozart’s and see no material differences. Put one score of each composer side-by-side (assuming neither piece is known to the observer) and one would be hard pressed to say which was whose.

Listen to them, and everyone knows in a heartbeat which is Mozart’s.

I sang in my college glee club for a year. The conductor was Bob Lloyd, a small, energetic man who was primarily the oboe and saxophone teacher, but loved him some glee club. Mr. (later Doctor) Lloyd was always going on about “singing into the wire,” making a face while pushing his index finger forward to show intensity. What he looked for was “stuff,” which he indicated by rubbing his thumb across his first two fingers in a symbol also used to designate money. “Stuff” was what turned a competent reading into a Performance. It elevated pedestrian material, give it charisma, because it was…it was…it was undefinable. You knew it when you heard it. Hell, you felt it when you heard it. He never had to tell us when we’d achieved Stuff; everyone in the room knew.

Every principal trumpet in every major orchestra plays his (or her) ass off; Georges Mager, Bud Herseth, Charlie Schlueter, Bill Vacchiano had Stuff. That’s why their names resonate with trumpet players years after their careers, and even their lives, are over. Good players play a piece with the attitude, “This is how I think it goes.” Great players sound like, “This is how it goes. Period.” Even when different conductors ask them to do it different ways, the end result is, “This is how it goes.” Stuff.

Great writers have Stuff. (Unlike me, they could probably define it.) Like Salieri and Mozart, they use many of the same conventions, grammar, tropes, and archetypes as the rest of us, yet you know as their prose falls on your reader’s ear they’re different. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ed McBain, James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, Declan Hughes: their grocery lists are worth reading. Every book is filled with examples of “I wish I’d written that” until you get to the end and can’t decide whether to be elated over having been in their world or depressed by the knowledge you will never, ever be able to do that.

And then you get back to work, because anything that can be done that well is always worth getting better at.

Detectives Beyond Borders Mentions Wild Bill

Peter Rozovsky’s award-winning blog Detectives Beyond Borders doesn’t spend a lot of time on American crime fiction, so it’s doubly pleasing to see this mention today.

Many thanks to Peter, who has been a good friend, and is an expert panel moderator, as I am looking forward to seeing in person again at Bouchercon next week.

An Interview with Peter Rozovsky

Peter Rozovsky is the creator of the popular and award-winning blog, Detectives Beyond Borders, which focuses on crime fiction written outside the United States. For those not familiar with Peter or his blog, an anecdote from last year’s Bouchercon will give an idea of the regard with which he is held in the crime fiction community. No less an authority than Ali Karim found himself stuck for the name of a foreign (to Americans) writer, and solved his dilemma by asking if Peter Rozovsky was in the house. Peter was, and he knew the name Ali was searching for. No one was surprised in the least.

His encyclopedic knowledge is matched by his generosity of spirit. Upon learning I was at my first Bouchercon and feeling a little uncomfortable at not really knowing anyone, his response was, “Do you know Scott Phillips? Scott! Come here. This is Dana King. Dana, this is Scott Phillips. Scott wrote The Ice Harvest.” And, just that quick, I knew someone.

Peter recently was gracious enough to take the time to submit to some questions about his blog and international crime fiction in general.


DK: How did Detectives Beyond Borders get started?

PR: Traveling had long been my preferred recreation, and I'd been reading crime fiction from outside the U.S. for a few years. I don't remember what spurred me to begin the blog in 2006, but once I did, my ex-colleague Frank Wilson, my newspaper's book editor at the time and a relatively early entrant in the field of blogging about books, helped me out. That was my first example of camaraderie among bloggers.

DK: You post every day, sometimes more than once. How do you find the time and energy to keep up that pace along with the demands of your full-time job as copy editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer?

PR: Novelists will tell you that the way to get anything written is to write every day. Blogging is my writing; I write every day. I lavish great care on it, but it does not take all that much time. Even a longish blog post is not all that long. Neglecting domestic responsibilities also leaves me more time for writing.

DK: What provoked your interest in international crime fiction?

PR: I mentioned that I'd long enjoyed traveling, so my interest in international crime fiction came naturally. More specifically, love played a role. About eight years ago, I had a Dutch girlfriend, and I happened to notice a book called Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering, the late Dutch crime author of the Grijpstra and de Gier (Amsterdam Cops) novels. His cops took a relaxed, sometimes detached philosophical approach that attracted my interest. Soho Crime published many of his books, and that led me to Soho's other authors, people like Seicho Matsumoto, Garry Disher and Qiu Xiaolong.

DK:Which countries currently produce the most interesting crime fiction?

PR: Every country has the potential to produce interesting crime fiction. Recently a lot of good writing has come out of Ireland.

DK: What authors should readers be aware of if they aren’t all that familiar with international crime fiction, both past and present?

PR: That's a tough question because the field is so vast. For a North American reader, the answer might depend also on whether one considers crime fiction from England "international." It is, of course, but when I started DBB, English crime fiction somehow felt too close to what I was used to. Recently I've been reading more of it.

I suppose a hypothetical course on international crime fiction might begin with Georges Simenon and with Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck novels. Henning Mankell looks on them as seminal figures, and many of today's Swedish crime authors in turn regard Mankell the same way.

Build a global reading itinerary, and you could read forever. Qiu Xiaolong, Jean-Claude Izzo, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Yasmina Khadra, Naguib Mahfouz (yep, that one, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner) and Karin Fossum are some of the authors who stand out for me for what they do with that vast form we call crime fiction. I'll also throw in a few heaps of praise for those marvelous prose artists Bill James and Peter Temple. And that's obviously just the beginning of a long list.

One should remember also that crime fiction was international from its beginnings. Poe's C. Auguste Dupin was a French crime solver created by an American. This is no mere accident of history. There is reason to believe, as one Poe scholar says, that an older society such as France was more prepared than the young United States to accept a writer who probed the dark side the way Poe did.

DK: What books do you believe should be on the shelf of anyone interested in getting into international crime fiction?

PR: Criminy, that's a hard question. The words "must-read" will never cross my lips. Note some of the names I've mentioned, and assume that all of those people are good.

DK: The late Stieg Larsson received a great deal of posthumous acclaim for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The book has prompted quite a bit of discussion, as there are many who are confused by its enthusiastic reception. What are your thoughts on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and what do you think has caused all the controversy?

PR: A colleague today accused me of avoiding The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo because of its popularity. She was right. I'll probably wait til the hullaballoo dies down before I make a serious effort to read Larsson. His premature death obviously enhanced his celebrity, and he touches upon some controversial themes. The current fight over his inheritance also will keep his name in headlines for a while. But I'll reserve judgment until I've read him.

DK: It seems to me that the translator is almost as important as the author when producing fiction for a different language, and is especially true of writers who write in a distinctive style. This is kind of an open-ended question, but what are your thoughts on the pros and cons of translators? Are there writers you think are hurt more than others in translation, aside from readers’ lack of familiarity with the location? Are there some writers who are actually helped by their translators?

PR: Translation may be harder than authorship because at least the author is in total control. A good translator, who must be a good writer also, is responsible to the author as well as to the prose styles of both the original language and the language of translation.

Each language presents problems of its own, and I have the highest respect for translators who can find creative ways to deal with this, whether it's Sian Reynolds coming up with English counterparts to Fred Vargas' French wordplay or Mike Mitchell's elegant English solutions to Friedrich Glauser's switches between different dialects of German.

I once complained about clumsy and vague passages in a translated Spanish crime novel. A reader who apparently knew the work of both the author and the translator said the problems were probably the author's fault.

Outsider in Amsterdam, which I mentioned above, has the occasional odd sentence where the translation applies Dutch grammatical practice to English. For example, you'll get one cop saying, "I wonder if he has done it" rather than "I wonder if he did it." Van de Wetering is an interesting case because, at least later in his career, he did his own translations, which he called "versions." But the point is valid no matter who the translator is. The translator needs to be a graceful, elegant prose stylist in his or her own language and have an intimate knowledge of the original language. That's a demanding set of requirements.

I’d like to thank Peter for his time and for the thoughtfulness of his answers.