Book Review: China Blues

Copyright © 2017, Steven E. Houchin. All rights reserved.

China Blues, by Ki Longfellow, begins by plunging the reader directly into the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and thus into the lives of the story's main characters. Chapter One jumps ahead to 1923, where we find the same characters (some of whom were children in 1906) now living in the bustling, post-quake city.

Despite the author's stated penchant for noir mystery, I would categorize this book as literary fiction because it immerses the reader so deeply into the characters' private lives and how events change them, and because the descriptive language has such depth and richness. Right from page one, we are treated to images like, "When Los Angeles was a sun-blown pueblo waiting for the movie to begin, San Francisco was the city, a fabulous metropolis by the bay -- straight streets driven reckless up her seven steep hills of yellow sand; tall buildings perched on turbulent slopes like exclamation marks ..." And so it goes throughout the book.

I won't even attempt to describe the plot, but the there are whorehouses, jazzy nightclubs, bootlegger gangs, the mysteries of Chinatown, mobsters, street gangs, ambitious politicians, and the city's wealthy elite. They all meet up and mix up together, spiraling inward to a confrontation right about the time of a Presidential visit to the city. The author does a great job hinting at the trouble to come - whether forbidden love between a rich girl and a Chinese man, a coming war between bootlegger gangs, or political intrigue - the reader keeps turning the page for more.

The book is long - 440 pages paperback - but worth it for the excellent atmospherics, juicy characters and their relationships, historical detail, and great action scenes.

Etiquette In the Old West

Copyright © 2008, Steven E. Houchin

I've recently done more research into styles, phrases, and slang from 19th Century America. I found a great book at the library tailored for this purpose: The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s, by Marc McCutcheon (1993, Writer's Digest Books). It lists all sorts of things by category, such as Slang, Fashion, Travel, and Crime. In the section on travel, there is a great sidebar entitled "Stagecoach Etiquette", which is from an 1877 Omaha Herald article. Here is a fun excerpt from it:

"... Don't smoke a strong pipe inside especially in the morning; spit on the leeward side of the coach. If you have anything to take in a bottle, pass it around; a man who drinks by himself in such a case is lost to all human feeling. Provide stimulants before starting; ranch whiskey is not always nectar. ... Don't swear nor lop over on your neighbor when sleeping. Don't ask how far it is to the next station until you get there. ... Never attempt to fire a gun or pistol while on the road; it may frighten the team and the careless handling and cocking of the weapon makes nervous people nervous. Don't discuss politics or religion, nor point out places on the road where horrible murders have been committed, if delicate women are among the passengers. ..."

Fun With Numbers; To Hyphen Or Not To Hyphen

Copyright © 2008, Steven E. Houchin
( Originally written 14 April 2008 )

I tend to spell out most numbers in my novels (the main exception being dollars and cents). There are definite, but sometimes conflicting, rules for how to spell out numbers in a manuscript. There are several web sites that attempt to deal with this subject. One is Tina Blue's Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert. Another is at edufind.com.

I'll try to summarize some of the points here.

1. Hyphenate compound numbers from 21 through 99. For example: sixty-five, thirty-one. But, larger numbers aren't hyphenated: one hundred fifty-six (not one-hundred-fifty-six).

2. Hyphenate fractions. For example: three-fifths, one-tenth. But, there are exceptions. If there is already a hyphen present in either the numerator or denominator, no other hyphen is added. For example: twenty-five thirty-eighths (not twenty-five-thirty-eighths). Also, no hyphen is used when the fraction is used as a noun: They were scoreless after three quarters.

3. Hyphenate numbers when joined with a unit of measurement to form an adjective. For example: twenty-five-minute walk, thirty-six-year-old man, fifty-yard pass, seventeenth-century historian. This rule also holds true when using digits: 25-minute walk. But, when not used as an adjective, the joining hyphen is not used, as in: walked twenty-five minutes (not twenty-five-minutes), passed fifty yards (not fifty-yards).

Clearly, describing these rules is quite complicated, but if we write numbers this way, it is a subject we need to understand.

Murderous Prose

Copyright © 2008, Steven E. Houchin

It seems I just can't get enough of author Raymond Chandler (1888-1959). His portrayal of the hard-bitten, working class Private Dick may only be matched by his contemporary, Dashiell Hammett, with his starring ace detective Sam Spade.

Chandler is famous for his gritty detective protagonist Philip Marlowe, who prowls the streets and environs of 1930's and 1940's Los Angeles, richly transporting the reader headlong into that era. Two of his most famous Marlowe novels, Farewell, My Lovely (1940) and The Big Sleep (1939), were also successful movies.

I'm currently reading Chandler's The Simple Art of Murder (Vintage Books, 1988), which begins with an essay - often scathingly critical - on the state of the "detective story", and his disdain for its many practitioners. He says, "The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published." The remainder of the book is a series of - you guessed it - short detective stories.

What amazes me most about Chandler is his stunning descriptive phrases. For example, his story Spanish Blood begins:

"Big John Masters was large, fat and oily. He had sleek blue jowls and very thick fingers on which the knuckles were dimples."

Or, the first paragraph of I'll Be Waiting:

"... Carl, the night porter, turned down the last of three table lamps in the main lobby ... The blue carpet darkened a shade or two and the walls drew back into remoteness. The chairs filled with shadowy loungers. In the corners were memories like cobwebs."

Wow!

I'm In a Blue, Blue Subjunctive Mood

Copyright © 2007, Steven E. Houchin. All rights reserved.
( Originally written 13 December 2007 )

I recently had my Linear Descent manuscript critiqued. A number of my sentences were marked for incorrect grammar. The problem involved use of the word “was” when “were” was the correct usage. I had descended into a bad subjunctive mood. Now, I must admit, I do often get moody, but I never realized my subjunctiveness was so out of whack.

Usually, the use of these words is obvious. For example: “The clown was squeezed into the tiny car”, versus “The clowns were squeezed into the tiny car”. This is a singular versus plural past-tense usage, where the proper word to use must match the subject “clown(s)”. Although, I do sometimes have trouble with phrases that seem ambiguous, such as “The pair was up to no good”, versus “The pair were up to no good”. Hmmm....

And then there are phrases that describe situations that depend on probability or likelihood, such as “If I was a rich man ...”. However, “was” is grammatically wrong. The correct phrase is “If I were a rich man...”, even though “I” is singular. Why?

This is an example of a subjunctive clause. A verb is in the subjunctive mood when it expresses a condition which is doubtful or not factual. In this example, I am not really rich, so the verb “was” - normally the singular past tense of the verb “to be” - is really in subjunctive tense. In English, the subjunctive past-tense of “to be” is “were”, not “was”, and the plurality of the subject “I” is irrelevant. “If we were rich men...” uses the same word, even though the singular “I” has changed to the plural “we”. It is still subjunctive mood.

So, as I slog through my latest manuscript looking for occurrences of this error, my mood quickly turns blue, blue, blue.

Puzzled

Copyright © 2007, Steven E. Houchin. All rights reserved.

( Originally written 11 November 2007 )

Having nothing better to do one evening, I watched a television program on people who take part in an annual crossword puzzle competition. The speed with which these contestants whizzed through them was truly amazing. During the program, it showed bits and pieces of clever clues and their answers. Now, I’m not interested in expanding my small universe of skills to include competitive puzzle solver, but it got me thinking whether tackling the daily newspaper’s crossword puzzle might prove useful for a writer. As writers, we are constantly confronted with the need to find different ways to say the same thing in order to avoid word repetition. For many puzzle clues, this kind of thinking is exactly what is required. For example:

• “Promised to give up” -- Swore Off
• “With wisdom” -- Sagely
• “Cast a spell over” -- Enchanted

Beyond that, you can just plain learn new things you never knew before.

• “Brine-cured cheeses” -- Fetas
• “La Vie en Rose singer” -- Piaf
• “City on the Rhone” -- Lyons

So, if I were to do the crossword every day, would it make the words, phrases, and cultural references in my writing richer and more varied? Other than taking up a little bit of time (they get harder through the week), it seems as though it might. Who knows, it may even help with those frustrating moments when I get stuck, grasping for ideas on how to move the story forward. Putting on my hat as an engineer, though, I doubt there is any effective way to actually measure any benefit from doing this unless, of course, my story’s plot would turn nicely on some brine-cured cheeses.