On taking requests, and graciousness

I return periodically to considering whether I may have been a bit inconsistent with my interlocutor of the weekend, who was requesting -- and I have after all solicited requests -- that I give some profile to the "community activists" who make Arlington "a better place to live." (Better than what? one is tempted to ask. The author was on a bus travelling through Newark, NJ once.) Certainly among this lot there must be some vivid characters to be found, if only my guest had been more specific about which activists (or at least which activist groups) have in his opinion made Arlington "better." But even in that boardroom minstrel line that seemed to so grate on him, there are folk who have done more than merely wed the podium. Models for my last cast of characters included a former member of the Fiscal Advisory Commission, a member of the Housing Commission and emeritus of the Community Services Board, and a recipient of the Sun-Gazette Cup for volunteer service to the community. Apparently none of these folk were quite civic enough for my correspondent, whose admonitions were therefore maddeningly vague. I would accept even well-honed hints for future character models, if no one felt quite comfortable naming names.

At any rate, Murder Behind the Scenes will feature a most romantic portrayal of a passionate advocate for the downtrodden. It will even feature the downtrodden. Surely that will mollify some of my readers.

The Blind Men and the Elephant, or the Novel as Rorschach

Civility got rather strained during the comments on the last post (I humbly admit my part, and have resolved to abstain from even genially crude Anglicisms starting with "b"). It all put me in mind of the old chestnut about the blind men and the elephant, as parlayed by one of the consciousness-raising gurus of our bustling culture. Beyond the human weakness for extrapolating from the obvious -- the elephant is like a wall, or a tree, or what have you depending on the part you encounter -- this guru enlarged upon the human weakness for reading various characteristics into the elephant. A blind Bill Clinton comes over the trunk and says "obviously quite a lover," a blind George Bush finds the tusk and says "clearly a warrior," and so on.

Something rather like this is happening with my modest little tales. To each person who reads them, they are emblematic of something that person finds important about local politics, and to this reader, that is their most important feature. One high-profile activist sees a parable about the County being run by developers. A poster to this blog focuses on the unfairness of basing a novel on the antics of the Boardroom's most consistent and colorful denizens, because they are "fringe players" and the author should have focused on the worker bees of the community. I have seen a post on another blog (Google is a wonderful thing) claiming that Murder Out of the Ballpark attacked heterosexuals for being heterosexual (one can only throw up one's hands after a quarter hour or so of attempting to comprehend this). One has made one's little comic foray, and discovers belatedly that it has so many fascinating subtexts!

But, now that we have had our laugh, does this not all beg a larger question? Does it not suggest that, to those with at least a minor hold on the engines of the community, never mind our movers and shakers, the world is some sort of Rorschach blot? It is thought provoking to imagine how many deeply personal agendas are converging when a group of citizens reaches consensus.

Life Imitates Art

I do suspect that my recent reviewer on Amazon must be chums with the amiable person who dropped in here after the last post. I can't recall remarking anywhere that I intended to write a trilogy, but both writers seem to share that curious assumption. Actually I only intended to write one book, virtually on a dare, but in the lengthy gap between creation and publication it became enticing to write the beginning of a second and see if there was enough interest to warrant proceeding with it. The enthusiasm from some of my own characters remains a bit of a shock.

One has few bones to pick with the reviews. Invention was challenged by the effort in Ballpark to include requests from more than one quarter -- it helps when a major paper publishes one's e-mail -- and one concludes that the twenty-first century's answer to the epistolary form (so beautifully exploited by Bram Stoker in his day) does not work as well as its forerunner. The tale currently in the works will contain no Internet exchanges, instrumental as they are in the political life of Arlington, where it seems every neighborhood has its own Yahoogroup.

It is harder to apologize for Pastorelli, who is the sort of character prone to take over a situation if he is not watched (readers of the tease fragment for Murder Behind the Scenes will deduce that I have found a way to sideline him for most of the story, without removing him utterly from the cast, which would be a pity). Truly, his model is someone whose long history of heavy-handed board-room performances, dating back to the days of the revered Ellen Bozman, strike one as having been already made up by some comic writer.

But I do dearly hope no one expects these bagatelles of mine to be a Baedeker of Arlington politics. One uses local affairs as a jumping off point, but it would be churlish to involve too much bald truth in a story colorful enough to make good fiction. One is not attempting to write Primary Colors, or any similar hinted-at tell-all. In fact, the backroom dealings and romantic upheavals of both novels are purely the invention of the author, who primarily enjoys drawing a good portrait -- and then seeing how well those portraits can be fitted into the festival of stock situations that is the generic pulp mystery plot. (One's hero must be crossed in love; get soundly roughed up at some point; do a bit of hard drinking; and oh so necessarily, be pounced upon by a femme fatale.) Truly, the rampant improbability of various parties having New Jersey Mafia connections, or attracting the attentions of loose women, etc., is part of the amusement. And then there was the author's ambition to use more characters made up out of the whole cloth in a second attempt. Perhaps Ballpark tried to do a few too many things at once. Life does imitate Art in some small ways, though. One hears that some of the real estate dealings of Ballpark have been approximated in real life, though without the desperation and coercion.

As for this "trilogy" misapprehension, perhaps it should be hexed right away by seeking requests for a future installment built around the well beloved Arlington County Fair. Whom would my readers like to see showcased? Or simply eighty-sixed? Which County Department seems to you most rife with skulduggery? I will avoid trying to do everything at once this time, but take all suggestions under advisement.