[Link] Fighting Edith Wharton's ghost

by LYZ

The day before a war began, I tried to stalk Edith Wharton through New York. 

I knew the war was coming. Despite assurances from officials quoted in the news and a friend of mine, a reporter, who told me that day that he’d spoken on background with a lot of people who knew things. “It’s not going to happen,” he said. “Putin is just bluffing.” But my brother, who is in the Army, had been deployed weeks before. He was sitting in a tank in another country — he couldn’t tell us where. But I could guess. I imagined my brother sitting there, teetering on the edge of something, ready to fall over into an abyss. And here I was in New York, standing in front of a Starbucks that had once been Edith Wharton’s home.

Wharton was a war novelist and a tireless volunteer. Among many philanthropic activities, she spent World War I in Paris serving as the head of the American Hostels for Refugees, feeding and clothing the people displaced by the conflict. She also oversaw an ambulance brigade and put together an anthology about war The Book of the Homeless. Many of her books are about war and the ensuing loss and devastation. But the eternal war of Wharton’s world that I was most interested in understanding was that of marriage.

Writing about Wharton in 2020, Sarah Blackwood noted that the historical foregrounding of Wharton’s more domestic novels isn't necessary “to establish the novel’s significance. Part of the genius of The Age of Innocence is how it insists that the story of a single, torn wedding dress is not qualitatively different from the story of a torn‑apart world, that novels of manners are as significant a contribution to human knowledge and feeling as are tales about combat.” 

Read the full article: https://lyz.substack.com/p/fighting-edith-whartons-ghost

[Link] The Crime Writer Who Went Down With The Titanic

By Harry Pearson

Jacques Futrelle was lost to tragedy, but his captivating works live on.

When the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic on April 12, 1912, the luxury liner took with it one of the greatest early US detective writers—Jacques Futrelle. Futrelle had just turned 37 when he ordered his wife May to take her place on one of the lifeboats putting out from the stricken ocean liner. He assured her that he would survive. The last May saw of her husband, he was standing next to Jacob Astor, smoking a cigarette. His body was never recovered.

"Jacques is dead, but he died like a hero, that I know," May would tell the New York Times a few weeks later. A gifted writer herself, May would complete Futrelle’s novel My Lady’s Garter and publish it with a moving dedication to her late husband. It marked the sad, sudden end of what might have been one of the brightest careers in American crime fiction.

Born in Pike County, Georgia in 1875, Jacques Futrelle began working as a reporter on the Atlanta Journal when still a teenager. He married May Peel in 1895. After spells as a war correspondent in Cuba for the New York Herald and as a theatre manager in Richmond, Virginia, Jacques, May, and their two children settled in Scituate, Massachusetts. Futrelle began writing short stories for the Boston American. 

Futrelle had been an admirer of Sherlock Holmes from the master consulting detective’s debut in A Study in Scarlet. He decided to create an American Holmes in the form of Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., etc, etc.  This brilliant scientist is also known as The Thinking Machine, a nickname given to him by a Russian chess grandmaster he defeated despite having only learned how to play the game a few hours before the contest.

In a neat tribute to Holmes’ celebrated observation, “There is a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life”, Futrelle titled one of Van Dusen’s earliest cases—the investigation of homicide in a New York apartment block—The Scarlet Thread.

Van Dusen made his first appearance in the Boston American in the late Fall of 1905. The tale, serialized over six weeks, would become one of the most celebrated fictional crime stories of all time, The Problem of Cell 13. In it, the brilliant scientist vindicates his pronouncement that “Nothing is impossible! The human mind can do anything,” by breaking out of the maximum-security Chisholm Prison to win a small bet.

Read the full article: https://murder-mayhem.com/jacques-futrelle

Nugget #139 -- Responsibility to History

 We have a responsibility to research and to history to 

portray our settings (place, time, etc.) as accurately as 

is needed for our stories. That’s the often hard work 

(but still fun for those who enjoy it) of writing—

research. We do that because we value accuracy. 

We want our fiction to be as real as we need 

it to be from story to story.

Milford Plantation, Entrance Gateway, Wedgefield-Rimini Road,
Pinewood, Sumter County, SC HABS SC,43-PINWO.V,1B-1

#MotivationalMonday -- Diamonds and Dirt

The Watson Report: On Barbers

Let us consider the legendary and mythic roots of barbers.

First, recall that in some early cultures hair was sacred. Some holy men and holy warriors made vows never to cut their hair (c.f. Samson). Many traditions held that hair could be used for malefic magic against the person from whose head it was taken; hence, for example, the hair and nails of the Pontifex Maximus of classical Rome could only be clipped by a free man and must be buried under an arbour felix (divine tree, preferably an oak). So some of the earliest barbers were men with holy duties.

The earliest shaving razors in the archaeological record come from Egypt c3500BC, with tweezers and tongs in a specially-made case, found amongst a cache of religious items. The first recorded barbers were priests and medics. Given that and the barber’s necessary skills with a razor it is unsurprising that barbers were also known as surgeons and dentists; it is only in the last two centuries that the professions have parted company.

By the time of the ancient Greeks, trimmed hair was a mark of civilisation, of sophistication and status. Only savages and country bumpkins – and slaves - wore their hair long and tangled. Discerning men of status went to the agora to see and be seen, to visit the cureus who would very publicly shave and hairdress them while those around shared debate and gossip. Indeed, the forum barber was the best source of gossip and a fount of information. This old function has led on to the “wise barber” trope of such stories as the Arabian Nights.

The Romans stole barbers from the Greeks, of course. By 200BC, tonsor shops were common in major cities across the Empire, part of the daily hygiene routine that included gymnasium and public baths. They were meeting places and sometimes plotting dens. A young man’s first shave was considered a major event in his life, sometimes preceding his first intercourse. Barba is Latin for beard, the origin of our name for one who shaves and cuts hair.

By the middle ages, barbers had stopped being priests or monks. The Pope had issued orders forbidding clergy from spilling blood (Council of Tours, 1163), which precluded dentistry and surgery. Hospitaller clerics therefore had lay assistants who would handle such necessaries of healing, along with applying leeches, enemas, lancings, and fire-cuppings. Those priests were clean-shaven too; another Papal decree in 1092 ordained that no clergyman should have facial hair.

By the 14th century, London was home to the Guild of Barbers; in 1308, the Court of Aldermen elected Richard de Barbour to keep order amongst his colleagues. In 1462 a royal charter upgraded the Guild to the Worshipful Company of Barbers, an organisation that continues to the present day.

A 1540 Act of Parliament merged in the Fellowship of Surgeons to form the Worshipful Company of Barbers and Surgeons, specifying that surgeons may not cut hair or shave people and that barbers could not operate on them; both groups could extract teeth. Barbers received higher fees than surgeons at that time.

It was probably this merger that led to the recognised shop sign of a barber, a long striped pole with red and white stripes (red for surgery, white for dentistry). In some modern versions blue stripes are also included, perhaps because red white and blue are patriotic colours in both the UK and US. Originally the pole also included brass bowls at top and bottom, the upper one for the leeches and the lower one for catching blood. There are a number of current US lawsuits underway regarding barbers’ objections to cosmetologists using the pole to advertise their services.

The Worshipful Company also had an educational role in the late medieval period, being a legal source of public autopsy anatomy lessons, conducted four times a year in an auditorium designed by Inigo Jones (the hall was destroyed in the Blitz). The Company’s crest features an opinicus (English gryphon) supported by chained lynxes. This is presumed to demonstrate the keenness of vision required for barber-work. The motto is De Praescientia Dei – “through God’s foreknowledge”. Root back to the ancient origins of the trade as far as you like.

Hairdressing as a term first appeared in the 17th century, along with the first women who are described as hairdressers. The first were French, of course; the most famous was Madame Martin who popularised “the tower” as a style and influenced every depiction of rich Aristos in every movie ever made. Champagne was the first famous male hairdresser of women; his Paris salon survived until his death in 1658.

By the 19th century, barbers were associated with gossip, with minor surgery and medication (including contraception, often in the form of pigskin condoms – “something for the weekend, sir?”), with fashion, with local knowledge, and with community meeting places. During that century in America, Black barbershops became a significant factor in the development of Black culture and society. In the UK barber salons served as a lower-class version of the coffee house as a meeting place to form opinion and foment political change.

In addition to shops, though, there were still the itinerant street barbers who would shave and clip a customer right then and there, maybe also shining shoes and offering manicures. There were door-to-door barbers and seafront barbers and in-club barbers. There were the first common womens’ hairdressing salons, as a more liberated distaff population with disposable income but not enough of it for personal maids with hairdressing skill began to demand services.

There was enough scandal about for Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who murdered his customers and turned their corpses into pie-meat to become a bestselling Penny Dreadful. There are still members of the general public who believe him to be non-fictional. The story goes to show the darker aspects of barbers that were in cultural currency at the time. Demon Barbers come from the same place as Killer Clowns.

So, barbers: wise gossips, social hosts, purveyors of advice and contraception to young men coming of age, hedge-surgeons, community mainstays, sacred servants, sudden butchers – rich characters rooted in old story, well deserving of being maintained in our fictional universes today.

Cut.

IW

[Link] From Katanga to Hiroshima; or the Pulp Fiction Author Who Was a Spy

by Tanth J. Graysmoke 

"In a book review last week, I mentioned that the uranium used to explode Hiroshima and Nagasaki (pictured above) came from the Belgian Congo.  Today, I’ll look more at that through Spies in the Congo (2016) by Susan Williams, with an audio book narrated by Justine Eyre.  The book is about how OSS agents and their “cut-outs” secured the American monopoly on the uranium from Katanga, a region in what is today southern Congo-Kinshasa. ...

"There are some great characters populating Ms. Williams’ narrative. The star of the book is Wilbur Owings “Dock” Hogue.  He seemed like a pretty normal dude to be chased around by Nazi agents.  He’s interesting to me, mainly because he was an amateur author of pulp fiction.  He published Adventure stories under his own name and Mystery stories under the name Carl Shannon, using his own experiences to write a thriller about a spy hunting Nazi diamond smugglers in Africa.  He seemed to have a promising little side career going before he died of radiation poisoning at age 42."

Read the full article: https://afeastknown.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/from-katanga-to-hiroshima-or-the-pulp-fiction-author-who-was-a-spy/

I Want To Be a Time Machine

by Sean Taylor

I'm currently listing to the audio book of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine on my drive to and from work. I must admit it took me longer to get engrossed in it than a Bradbury usually does. I kept waiting for something, well, outside of the normal to happen. Aliens show up to kidnap the Green Machine. A circus with a sinister showman gives Doug and Tom the stink-eye. Charlie turns on his parents and feeds them to the lions on a virtual reality veldt.

But, in spite of the lack of typical Bradbury action, I stuck with it. And danged it if didn't pull me in despite my preconceptions as to what a Bradbury story should be.

Now, why do I bring this up? Because I'm thinking about the power of story. You read that correctly. Story. Not Stories. The collective singular whole.

All of the stuff that is classic Bradbury is there... the struggle between nostalgia and the future, people's love/hate relationships with technology, the true fiction of the imagination. But above all in Dandelion Wine is Bradbury's eye for history and the knowledge that whatever the present is, it too will soon become that lists of facts we know as history.

So, what I see mostly in this book (and this is the point of why I'm writing) is the dichotomy between history as a bunch of memorized or recorded facts and history as a living, breathing story.

Ray Bradbury knew about the power of story.

That's why Colonel Freeleigh wasn't just an old man boring kids with old memories. He was a time machine into the past. And the boys were smart enough to realize that. That's why when he died, Doug exclaimed that not only had one man died, but that the whole Civil War had died, Honest Abe had died, at least to him and his playmates.

But, you may interject, facts are true, and stories are merely the storyteller's interpretations of the events. Well, one might argue (and many do as I learned as a History minor in college) that even the facts are the interpretations of those who managed to wrest control from others in order to write the text books and the news and reports of the time.

I, on the other hand, argue quite a different point.

Facts are dead. Facts are little lumps of truth that decay and rot and do nothing on their own but start off dead and continue to get deader everyday. Stories are the miracle that brings facts to life. Stories are the exotic elixir that restore vim and vigor to the bones and rotted muscle of facts and makes them dance and shoot and jump onto trains and fly airplanes and drop bombs and date your grandmother when she was younger and prettier than even you are now. Ultimately, stories are the life facts need in order to matter.

Facts need stories.

But for stories you have to look deeper than just the facts (ma'am).

Looking for stories is what led me to ask my MeMe about my mom as a kid, to ask her about what attracted her to my Papa when they started dating, to ask about when the brothers build the house she lived in, to ask about the drug store I saw in old family photos.

Stories are why I started to research the U.S.S. Zeilin, the ship my Granddaddy Thigpen served on in WWII in the South Pacific. Stories are why I love the old guitar my Granddaddy Taylor gave me when he died. It's full of stories that only he and I shared in his back office, playing and tuning that ol' six string.

Stories are, and I really don't think I can overstate this -- stories are the very things that make facts stick around. Stories are history. They only become mere facts after the stories are forgotten. They only become stale and rote memory when the stories are no longer told. Then they remain as the dates and epitaphs on the graves where the stories lie buried.

History is our combined story. But it's also your story. It's also my story.

History is why I tell the same stories over and over again when my family drives through Swainsboro where I grew up. I tell about how the old high school is gone now, but there, right there, was the hallway where my friends and I shoved a dead frog into a girl's locker. And that place -- follow my fingers, see where I'm pointing -- that's where the classroom was where Todd Jeter made our one neck-less teacher (a birth defect, I believe) snap around his shoulders and everything down to his waist by slamming his book on the desk. (The poor man couldn't just turn his head, not without a neck.) When we drive a mile further, I mention the library where one of my earliest girlfriends Christie and I used to kiss in one of the aisles, and my brother and our friends would play Bloody Mary in the men's bathroom with the lights out. I drive through the other side of town and mention the day I thought my mom was going to beat the crap out of me because I wandered for a full day with friends after a bomb threat got school dismissed for the day and didn't call her until the evening to let her know I was okay and where I was.

Some would be inclined to dismiss it all as nostalgia. But it's not. It's history.

Sure, I don't have a story from Pearl Harbor, but someone does. I don't have a story from the Civil Rights marches, but somewhere in my circle of friends I know there must be one who does (or has a parent who does). But history happened all around me too, and not just with frogs and Bloody Mary and neck-less teachers. Where was I, and what was I doing when the space shuttle blew up, and what did I learn from it? Where was I when John Lennon was shot? What about on 9-11 when the towers fell? I was alive, damn it, and I have a story. I'm a part of that history.

I'm a part of history, period. My story is my history. It's important. It's a collection of  the facts that make me who I am. It's the binding that holds the stories that make those facts mean something real. It's me. And it's important that I pass "me" down through time just like it's important that you pass "you" down through time. You see, I want to be a time machine too, just like Colonel Freeleigh.

I only need someone to listen.

Top Shelf Products -- Congressman John Lewis Recruits Another Generation to MARCH with New Graphic Novel

The much-anticipated MARCH: BOOK TWO is now in stores!

“With March, Congressman John Lewis takes us behind the scenes of some of the most pivotal moments of the Civil Rights Movement. In graphic novel form, his first-hand account makes these historic events both accessible and relevant to an entire new generation of Americans.” — LEVAR BURTON

"Essential reading... March is a moving and important achievement." — USA Today

"Riveting." — O, The Oprah Magazine

An astonishingly accomplished graphic memoir." — NPR

"Visually stunning… This insider’s view of the civil rights movement should be required reading for young and old; not to be missed."— School Library Journal (starred review)

John Lewis has been many things in his career: a civil rights activist, a featured speaker at the March on Washington, a leader of the "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma, a respected member of Congress, a recipient of the Medal of Freedom, and a worldwide symbol of the power of nonviolent protest.

With his latest project, he's added "#1 bestselling author," as his multi-part graphic novel autobiography, March, has become a smash success. Today, the long-awaited March Book Two reaches store shelves, poised to be even bigger than its predecessor — and perhaps even more relevant to this day and age. With March: Book Two, Congressman Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell give us a first-hand experience of milestone events that transformed the nation, including the 1961 Freedom Rides and the 1963 March on Washington.

At a time when, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the majority of states earn a D or F grade in teaching the Civil Rights Movement to their young people, March has quickly become a key resource for schools, libraries, activists, and the general reader. It’s been adopted in classrooms nationwide, spent 40 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, and even become the first graphic novel to win a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. What's more, three major universities have planned their freshman orientations around March, compelling 15,000 students nationwide to read and discuss it in a single month.

Why a graphic novel? Because John Lewis remembers the impact that a 1957 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story" had on him and his whole generation, inspiring them to take up nonviolence and join the civil rights movement. Now he's having the same impact on young people today.

As America continues to grapple with issues of race and the legacy of the civil rights movement, March offers an unforgettable success story and a way forward — one that's already been embraced by countless readers who are looking for hope today.

Congressman John Lewis is an international icon, and his story is now more essential than ever. See why this project has become such a phenomenon — join the March!
   
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Your friend thru comics,

Chris Staros
Top Shelf Productions
PO Box 1282
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chris@topshelfcomix.com
www.topshelfcomix.com