Problems with travel to Frankfurt Book Fair

Are baggage-handlers' strikes and standdowns universal?


After our troubles with the baggage-handlers in Australia (it took a week for our luggage to follow us home), I was surprised to read that those attending the Frankfurt Book Fair this week may face the same problem.

On Monday afternoon, over 1,200 ground handling staff at Frankfurt will be attending stopwork meetings.  Apparently, the EU is proposing a plan to increase competition among handlers, which seems crazy to me.  What's the aim?  To cut costs?  It certainly portends difficulties for passengers, in an era when efficient baggage-handling is not part of each airline's own image.

Anyway, Lufthansa (one of the nicest airlines I have ever flown with) said that they are "actively preparing for it, and hope to limit the effect on passengers as much as possible."  Delays, however, are inevitable.

Catastrophe

The food-writer's manual from hell

Courtesy of Aussie baggage handlers' strikes, and an apparent go-slow in airport control towers, last week's journey from Fremantle to Wellington was a 48-hour marathon of missed connections, revised itineraries, and no luggage.  I had a vicious chest infection, and was carrying purse, passport, laptop and a copy of Catastrophe.  And that was it.  My luggage, apparently, was lost forever. Ideal circumstances for reading Ian Wedde's latest novel?  Surely not -- but somehow, the book proved that wrong.

For a start, this book is beautifully written.  There is also a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humor, complete with luscious puns and other plays on words, which makes leisurely stop-and-start reading a very good idea.  The food-writer, for instance, is Christopher Hare, an ex-pat Kiwi who has lots of Maori cuzzies with Italian names on the East Coast of the North Island.  When we meet him, he is eating rabbit -- a Provencal braised rabbit, complete with "winey sauce, bay, thyme, juniper," accompanied with a Rousillon Coulet Rouge.  He reminisces often about his ex-wife, a condiment by the name of Mary Pepper.  A fraught figure with a hidden Jewish heritage, she is a food photographer with an unaccountable grudge because she is never in her own photographs.

When a mysterious woman enters the braised-rabbit-restaurant and assassinates a couple of other diners with a gun, Christopher is seized with a mad impulse to be "here" and not "there," amd rushes into an unknown future by following the assassin into her getaway car. 

This poses a problem for the murderess, as she is stuck with a witness.  For some unknown reason, she does not knock Hare off and turf his body into the street, but shoves a fake Gucci bag over his head, and takes him to her hideaway. There (or Hare's "here"), she forms an uneasy alliance with her prisoner, during which they both explore the strange circumstances that led them to this comic catastrophe.

The real catastrophe, however, is al-Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948, when Palestinians were first driven into exile.  Hare's captor is Hawwa Habash, a paediatrician who works in the camps of Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, coping all too often with malnutrition.  While the contrast to the routine gluttony that is Hare's working life is unmistakable --and particularly so during a glutinous and glorious description of an extravagant feast staged by rich Jordanese for Hare and Pepper in a Bedouin tent -- most intensely compelling is Hawwa's memory of her grandmother's ritual mourning over a box holding the key to the house the family abandoned in Lydda.

Hare has memories of his own, of course -- of his own grandmother, who could silence a rooster by dropping a cardboard box over his head.  And so this crazy, convoluted story winds in and out, and on and on to an ending that is unexpected, and yet predictable, demanding the same slow, judicious digestion as Hare's remembered exotic, vividly flavored dishes. 

For me, it was a feverish journey, with an unanticipated benefit.

Because of my wayward sinuses, I couldn't taste a thing.  Airport and airplane food, not particularly palatable to start with, had no smell or flavor at all.  And yet, while reading this truly remarkable book, my taste buds were alive.

And oh, that braised Provencal rabbit, with its wine, its bay, thyme and juniper.  How great it tasted in my mind.

8 October 1856 - the Arrow Incident, and more

Exactly 155 years ago today, the Second Opium War began

On the morning of 8 October 1856, a ship with a junk rig, and a European hull -- a hybrid known as a "lorcha" (pictured) -- lay quietly at anchor in the Pearl River, off the Chinese trading port of Canton.  She was owned by a Hong Kong merchant, Fang Aming, and had been registered as British, which meant she was protected under the Treaty of Nanking.  Her captain was Irish, and her crew was Chinese.  Her name was Arrow.

A little after 8 a.m., Qing officials boarded her, claiming that known pirates and smugglers were among her crew.  Allegedly, the vessel was employed in the salt-smuggling trade.  Twelve seamen were arrested.  The captain hurried to complain to the British Consul, Harry Parkes, who rushed on board in a fruitless attempt to prevent the arrested men from being taken on shore.

Parkes returned to his office to pen a severe message to the Governor-General of Canton, Yeh Mingchen, complaining particularly about the insult to the British flag -- which, apparently, had been torn down.   Not only did he want the return of the men, he wanted an apology for this.  He also sent a note to Hong Kong, declaring that it was time for a military demonstration of strength.

Yeh replied, pointing out that the vessel was Chinese-built and Chinese-owned, and that the arrested men were Chinese.  However, he offered to return the arrested men to the Consulate.  Parkes refused to accept them, as there had been no apology.

This was all a subterfuge.  The real issue was Chinese recalcitrance in the matter of Western trading privileges in their country. Gunboats, under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, sallied out to punish Canton for the alleged insult.  Though the Chinese prisoners had been returned to the custody of the British Consul they had not been "publicy restored to their vessel, nor had the required apology been made"  -- or so Seymour claimed.  After destroying the Imperial Provincial Fleet in the Peark River, he forced his way into Canton, and marched on Yeh's offices.  The Cantonese retaliated by torching British factories.

And so the Second Opium War began ...

On this day in 1871, the cow kicked over a lantern in a barn, starting a fire that razed Chicago, and in 1892, Rachmaninoff played his Prelude in C-sharp Minor in Moscow.

In 1945, President Harry Truman announced that the atom bomb would be shared with just Britain and Canada.  And in 1992, the morning-after pill was invented.

Is there anything about the written word in all this?  Of course.  On October 8, 1984, China announced that primary education for all their young citizens would be compulsory within six years, and that by 1995 adult illiteracy would be eradicated.

As far as I know, it has happened.

New Zealand Author October/November 2011

A Farewell to Dame Christine Cole Catley, thoughts on NZ non-fiction, and a crime spree

I suppose it's eccentric of me, considering that New Zealand Author is by and for New Zealand writers, but it is always a surprise to find how extremely well the contributions are written.  The current bi-monthly issue is no exception.

The focus is on non-fiction, and the editor, Adrian Blackburn, provides some fascinating figures, contributed by Anna Hart of Neilson Bookscan.

In 2010 1.9 million New Zealand titles sold.
71.6% of these were non-fiction
Non-fiction books cost, on average, $34 each
Fiction titles sold at an average of $21.60 each
Thus, non-fiction commanded 80% of revenue

Therefore, it is logical that NZ writers and editors tend to focus on the non-fiction market.  Even then, as Post Book Award-winner and author of Blue Smoke (a history of popular music in NZ), Chris Bourke, wryly comments, "The New Zealand book market is so small that the actual income received usually doesn't approach what can be earned in a regular job."  Awards and fellowships, obviously, are crucially important to the future of writers and writing in this country.

Novelist and poet Michael Morrissey explores this even further in his dryly humorous account of trying to find a publisher for his 250,000-word memoir of mania.  After remarking that "bogging--sorry blogging" will probably "bonsai" novels to 20,000-words or even less, he goes on to describe that he "reduced my gargantuan memoir of going bonkers to 176,000 words, then to 108,000."  At that, he decided to embark on the submission process.

A search for an American agent led to a "Stygian silence," so he sent it to Nicola Legat at Random House.  She loved the book, but ...

Likely sales fell below their commercial threshold.

And more fascinating figures are duly produced:

The Random House commercial threshold is 4000 copies
At Penguin, the break-through point for non-fiction is 5000
HarperCollins is even more conservative, quoting a break-even number of 6000

The story does have a happy ending.  A small private press, Polygraphia, published the book, and a documentary, based on the memoir, was aired at the International Film Festival.

James McNeish and Paul Campbell also have stories to tell about writing and publishing non-fiction.

This issue is also devoted to Dame Christine Cole Catley, doyen of NZ literature, who recently passed away.  Graeme Lay and Bernard Brown provide touching and heart-warming accolades and anecdotes.  They made me wish that I had known her.

And finally, A Nationwide Crime Spree.  Craig Sisterson, who is becoming a major force in the NZ crime fiction scene (with apparently no ambitions of writing a mystery himself), provides a rundown on the truly remarkable number of Kiwis who are producing blood and guts and mayhem.  There's a great photo of some of the usual suspects in Canterbury, at the recent Ngaio Marsh award ceremony, where Paul Cleave carried off the prize.

Great smiles, all around.  But where is the mysterious Alix Bosco/Greg McGee ... ?

Top Ten NYT bestsellers, fiction, print and eBooks combined

1			THE AFFAIR, by Lee Child. (Delacorte.) For Jack Reacher, an elite military police officer, it all started in 1997. A lonely railroad track. A crime scene. A cover-up.
2			THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. (Penguin Group.) A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s Mississippi.
3			1225 CHRISTMAS TREE LANE, by Debbie Macomber. (Mira.) Puppies that need good homes and an ex-husband loom large in the last installment of the Cedar Cove series.
4			THE MILL RIVER RECLUSE, by Darcie Chan. (Darcie Chan.) Only one man knows an abused widow, which revealed will change many lives in her small Vermont town.   Sixth week on the list!
5			LETHAL, by Sandra Brown. (Grand Central.) A woman, her daughter and a man accused of murder evade the authorities as they search for her dead husband’s secrets.
6			THE ABBEY, by Chris Culver. (Chris Culver.) Against orders, a former homicide detective begins an investigation into his niece's murder. Sixth week on the list!
7			FEAST DAY OF FOOLS, by James Lee Burke. (Simon & Schuster.) Danger increases tenfold as Sheriff Hackberry Holland investigates a case in the desert.
8			ONLY HIS, by Susan Mallery. (Harlequin.) Determined to make a fresh start, Nevada Hendrix applies for her dream job, only to find that her new boss was her first love.
9			THE NIGHT CIRCUS, by Erin Morgenstern. (Knopf Doubleday.) Two young rivals at a magical circus become collaborators as they fall in love.
10			KILL ME IF YOU CAN, by James Patterson and Marshall Karp. (Little, Brown.) A young man who finds a bag of diamonds is stalked by competing assassins.

Musical acceptance "speech" for Nobel winner

I think this both touching and very gallant.

Swedish poet Transtromer (80), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature this week, had a debilitating stroke 20 years ago, which almost totally destroyed his power of speech.

According to a report in The Independent, as he is unable to make the usual spoken acceptance at the ceremony, he will play the piano, instead.

And, what's more, he will play only with the left hand, as he lost the power to use his right hand, too.

Tomas Transtromer has become accustomed to expressing himself in music.  Here, he is photographed (in wheelchair) after a performance of a chamber music piece that was inspired by one of his poems.  Called "Transtromersanger," it was commissioned by the New European Ensemble.  The composer, Benjamin Staern, is behind Transtromer's left shoulder.

Steve Jobs, Visionary

Astonishing, absolutely astonishing. 

One knows that one man changed the world as we know it when the local paper in Wellington, New Zealand, devotes the whole front page to his passing

He changed your world, whether you bought an Apple gadget or not, runs the banner.

"In his trademark black turtleneck, jeans and sneakers, Steve Jobs could have been any man off the street," the front page story begins.  Obviously, he was not.  Instead, "he was arguably the most influential figure in the history of consumer technology."

Justifably so, as the column proves:  Jobs, with Steve Wozniak, launched the first computer designed for the mass market -- the Apple II -- as far back at 1977.  With the launch of the Macintosh in 1984, he introduced a computer that could be controlled with a mouse.

The editorial is also devoted to the passing of this epic figure.   Headed, Computer geek who changed the world, it goes on to claim, "When it comes time to write the history of the latter stages of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, Steve Jobs' name will rank right up there alongside those of Osama bin Laden, Deng Xiaoping and Vint Cerf, the father of the internet.  Jobs, who died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56, is the guy who made computers cool."

And, of course, there is the obituary.  It takes up the entire oped page, complete with a photo of Steve Jobs with the iPad during its launch in San Francisco in January last year.  The other illustration, which somehow I find even more evocative, is of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in the early days of Apple, their abundant Beatles-style mops of hair as outdated as the circuitry they're playing with.  

Altogether, an astonishing encomium for an astonishing man.

Steve Jobs biography release pushed forward

The release date for the biography of Steve Jobs, charismatic founder of Apple Inc., has been pushed up to October 24, according to a spokesman for Simon & Schuster.

This marks the second time that the publisher has moved the publication date. It was slated to come out November 21.

Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine, is the author of "Steve Jobs," now the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon's customer purchase list.

Jobs, the former chief executive of Apple Inc died on Wednesday in Palo Alto, California at the age of 56.

Swedish poet wins Nobel

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Tomas Transtromer of Sweden (pictured), whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him wide recognition as the most influential Scandinavian poet of recent decades.

Characterized by powerful imagery, Transtromer's poems are often built around his own experiences and infused with his love of music and nature. His later poems are darker, probing existential questions of life, death and disease.

Transtromer is considered a master of metaphor, weaving powerful images into his poems without much embellishment. The award citation noted that his collections "are characterized by economy."

"Waking up is a parachute jump from dreams. Free of the suffocating turbulence the traveler sinks toward the green zone of morning," reads the prelude to "The Great Enigma," his last collection, released in Swedish in 2004 and two years later in English.

"Things flare up. From the viewpoint of the quivering lark he is aware of the huge root systems of the trees, their swaying underground lamps," Transtromer wrote. "But aboveground there's greenery — a tropical flood of it — with lifted arms, listening to the beat of an invisible pump."

A psychologist and avid amateur pianist, 80, suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him half-paralyzed and largely unable to speak, but he continued to write, publishing "The Sorrow Gondola" in 1996 and the "The Great Enigma." He has since retired from writing.

Sailor donates scrapbook of USS Wyoming history

A piece of WW2 maritime history preserved

A story in the Billings Gazette (Casper, Wyoming) by Tom Morton observes that a veteran of the battleship that bore the State of Wyoming’s name came close to never talking about it.

After joining the U.S. Navy in 1943, John A. Winters was assigned to a destroyer with submarine chasers based in Norfolk, Virginia.

While waiting in an office, a full commander told him the destroyer had been sunk by a German submarine about 50 miles east of Norfolk.

Boy, that was close to home!

“If I’d been on it, I would have been gone — boom,” Winters said, pictured studying a model of the USS Wyoming BB-32 at the Casper Events Center.

After that narrow escape, he served on the training ship Wyoming.

He came to Casper from his home in Bowling Green, Ohio, via Dallas to give the city  his scrapbook of news stories, letters, photos and other memorabilia related to the ship.

Vice Mayor Kenyne Schlager formally accepted the collection.
“The city is honored to accept this scrapbook,”Schlager said.