Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

In his novel Mysteries (1892), Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) offers a master class in how to open a story, introduce a main character, and create dramatic interest. Henry Miller called  the novel “closer to me than any other book I have read.”

The opening paragraphs set up the story and the basic plot in a suspenseful way that pulls in the reader. No wonder so many of the modern masters – including Ernest Hemingway, John Fante, and Charles Bukowski – admired Hamsun and considered him one of their greatest teachers.  According to Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun.”

Now let’s hear from Hamsun about the man in the yellow suit. 

MYSTERIES, Chapter 1 (Opening passage)

by Knut Hamsun

In the middle of the summer of 1891 the most extraordinary things began happening in a small Norwegian coastal town. A stranger by the name of Nagel appeared, a singular character who shook the town by his eccentric behavior and then vanished as suddenly as he had come…

It all started at six one evening when a steamer landed at the dock and three passengers appeared on deck. One of them was a man wearing a loud yellow suit and an outsized courduroy cap. It was the evening of the twelfth of June; flags were flying all over town in honor of Miss Kielland’s engagement, which had been announced that day. The porter from the Central Hotel went aboard and the man in the yellow suit handed him his baggage. At the same time, he surrendered his ticket to one of the ship’s officers, but made no move to go ashore, and began pacing up and down the deck. He seemed extremely agitated, and when the ship’s bell rang the third time, he hadn’t even paid the steward his bill. 

While he was taking care of his bill, he suddeny became aware that the ship was pulling out. Startled, he shouted over the railing to the porter below: “It’s all right. Take my baggage to the hotel and reserve a room for me.” 

With that, the ship carried him out into the fjord.

This man was Johan Nilsen Nagel.

The porter took his baggage away on a cart. It consisted of only two small trunks, a fur coat (although it was the middle of summer), a satchel, and a violin case. None of them had any identification tags. 

Photo: Men’s Wearhouse

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

(Excerpt from Novella)

by Truman Capote

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a train. The walls were stucco, and a color rather like tobacco spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman ruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be. 

Review: “Truman Capote is the most perfect writer of my generation. He writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm.”

Norman Mailer

Find the book at Amazon.com.

Photo: Manhattan Girl, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa

The older part of Amristar, the original walled city, was full of bazaars – small ones that only the locals knew about, tiny bazaars that sold bangles and cloth very cheap but could be reached only on foot through tiny alleys; and the big, main bazaars where the streets were wider and the roads slightly cleaner. The bazaars of Amristar were busy places where every day, throughout the year, transactions were made, prices were bargained over, shops were opened in the morning and shut in the evenings. It was as if it had been so since the beginning of the world and would continue to be so till the end…

Money, congestion, and noise danced and eternal, crazy dance here together, leaving no moving space for other, gentler things. The actual walls that had once surrounded the city had fallen away long ago, but the ghosts of the wall still separated the old city from the newer one that flourished outside.***Excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Sari Shop by RUPA BAJWA

NOTE: I picked up The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa one day while browsing at the library. Since I enjoy reading about India, this story of a clerk at a sari shop appealed to me. During a three-hour train ride to San Diego (and a three-hour ride back to Los Angeles), I read this wonderful novel – and was transported from California to India throughout the journey. The main character, Ramchand, reminded me of Jay Gatsby – someone who gazes over the fence at the life the rich lead and embarks on a self-improvement program to become more like “them.” Poignant and compelling, The Sari Shop tells the story of a dreamer who aspires to fly out of the cage his caste represents – and enjoy the freedom to live without limits. I really loved this novel. Highly recommended! 

“An impressive debut, full of lean and lyrical prose.”

Ligaya Mishan, New York Times Book Review

Find a detailed product description and reviews at Amazon.com.

Subway to the Future by Jesús Salvador Treviño

I held the copper subway token up close and examined it. The outer part of the circular slug had a complex crisscross pattern imprinted on it and in its center there was an aluminum plug…The token read Good for One Fare on one side, and on the other side, New York City Transit Authority. As I held the token, I realized just how much it meant to me. When I had first pulled it out of Mrs. Romero’s sinkhole on that Saturday morning so long ago, along with the autographed picture of Carmen Miranda and a pair of sunglasses, it had, in an instant, crystallized my decision to leave Arroyo Grande. I had dreamed of New York and an acting career for years, but always felt it was a hopeless goal, a silly dream. But the moment I picked the token out of the sinkhole, my life changed. Suddenly, New York didn’t seem so far away. It was as if the token was urging me on, saying, “Yes, Julia, you can become that actress. Just go to New York! Look, here’s your first subway ride!” 

***

From “Subway to the Future,” a short story in by Jesús Salvador Treviño (Found in The Skyscraper that Flew and Other Stories available at Amazon.com)

But Where’s the Cat?…by Philip K. Dick

“But let me tell you my cat joke. It’s very short and simple. A hostess is giving a dinner party and she’s got a lovely five-pound T-bone steak sitting on the sideboard in the kitchen waiting to be cooked while she chats with the guests in the living room — has a few drinks and whatnot. But then she excuses herself to go into the kitchen to cook the steak-and it’s gone. And there’s the family cat, in the corner, sedately washing its face.”

“The cat got the steak,” Barney said.

“Did it? The guests are called in; they argue about it. The steak is gone, all five pounds of it; there sits the cat, looking well-fed and cheerful. ‘Weigh the cat,’ someone says. They’ve had a few drinks; it looks like a good idea. So they go into the bathroom and weigh the cat on the scales. It reads exactly five pounds. They all perceive this reading and a guest says, ‘okay, that’s it. There’s the steak.’

They’re satisfied that they know what happened, now; they’ve got empirical proof. Then a qualm comes to one of them and he says, puzzled, ‘But where’s the cat?”’

From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by PHILIP K. DICK

Photo: Philip K. Dick and feline friend.

Wind and Wedding Cake by Jesús Salvador Treviño

“A capricious breeze escaped from a small hole in the ground in Mrs. Romero’s front yard at precisely the place where more than a year before the sinkhole had erupted. The freakish wraith of wind rose from the vent and moved, snakelike, across the dichondra lawn and then began a slow ascent into the sky, traveling in a lazy spiral, like a hawk riding hot thermals, rising higher and higher, until the effervescent current was circiling high over the dilapidated wooden structure at 410 Calle Cuatro, which for forty-eight of her eighty-two years Mrs. Romero had called home.

 The breeze then suddenly plunged into a sharp dive, gathering speed and momentum as it descended, honing in on Mrs. Romero’s house like a precision arrow finding its bull’s eye. As the gust of wind reached the house, it found an opening in the kitchen window and burst through like a sprinter crossing the finish line.

Inside, the octogenarian was busy beating the special batter for the wedding cake she had committed to bake for Rudy Vargas and María López’s big wedding…With her back to the pastry cookbook that lay open to a recipe for “Golden Cream Wedding Cake,” she did not notice when the rascally draft swept over the cookbook, rustling its pages from page 231 to page 238, the recipe for “Three-Tier Chocolate Layer Cake…”

Note: The above excerpt is taken from the short story “A Boogie-Woogie Wedding Cake” by Jesús Salvador Treviño (Found in The Skyscraper that Flew and Other Stories. This remarkable collection is available at Amazon.com)

Painting: “Lady” by Isblahblah, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Palm Latitudes by Kate Braverman

“My life was an arc between darkness and irradiated clarity, an unpredictable and brutal journey. I felt as if I were a stranger to this earth. No, not merely this collection of angles, streets and alleys named Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles. I was estranged not from a particular season or region, a climate or a barrio, but from the planet itself. I stood motionless on my front lawn, humbled by sun, wind or fog, a passing sparrow. I heard the sighs of trees in their inviolate dominion where the sky is pearl, glazed, a mesa of puffy clouds tracked by wild gulls that could if they chose, shriek your name and the hour and latitude of your birth. I thought all women lived like this, in a torment of concurrencies.” KATE BRAVERMAN, Palm Latitudes

Painting: “En Vakker Dag” (“A Beautiful Day”) by Isblahblah, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

On Writing by Stephen King

On Writing by Stephen King is my very favorite book about the craft of writing.

Filled with insider stories and practical advice, this engaging memoir should have a permanent spot on every writer’s desk!

I was going to write “highly” recommended, but figured I’d better avoid an adverb (see quotation below) — instead,  I’ll say “5 Stars!”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” STEPHEN KING, On Writing

Available at Amazon.com — where the book has garnered over 800  five-star reviews!

Here are a few more quotes from the book:

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” 

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” 

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.” 

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.” 

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” 

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” 

“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” 

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

I’ve read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard several times — and sometimes just pick it up and read a few sections. The book is Dillard’s memoir about her life as a writer and includes her musings about the craft.

Here is my favorite passage (I actually woke up today thinking about this quote): “One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” 

Find the book at Amazon.com.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Some years back, I wrote a children’s novel that featured a girl named Anna, a dog named Otto, and lots of wordplay — as evidenced by the main characters’ names, spelled the same backward and forward. In the book, Anna, an amnesiac, sets out with Otto to learn her identity — and along the way meets a range of unusual characters and encounters a variety of wacky situations.

For a time, I shopped Anna & Otto to publishers in New York and received positive response (but no offers). One editor compared the novel’s emphasis on language to the wordplay found in The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster — a book (shame on me) that I had never read.

That day, I visited my local Border’s (RIP) and purchased a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth, a novel first published in 1961. I went home and read the book in one giant gulp — a huge smile on my face the whole time.

Excerpt from The Phantom Tollbooth: “In this box are all the words I know…Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is to use them well and in the right places.” 

The book’s jacket copy advises, “Readers of all ages will find much wit and wisdom in Norton Juster’s beguiling, offbeat fantasy about a boy named Milo…[who] meets some of the most logically illogical characters ever met on this side or that side of reality, including King Azaz the Unabridged, unhappy ruler of Dictionopolis.”

The New York Times gave The Phantom Tollbooth a rave, noting: “Most books advertised for ‘readers of all ages’ fail to keep their promise. But Norton Juster’s amazing fantasy has something wonderful for anybody old enough to relish the allegorical wisdom of Alice in Wonderland and the pointed whimsy of The Wizard of Oz.” 

Now whenever I see a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth in one of my used-book haunts, I snap it up — and pass it  on to someone I know would love this marvel of a book. (I’ll admit that I don’t often find The Phantom Tollbooth at thrift stores — people hang onto their copies of this brilliant novel.) Highly recommended! A Must Read! 

Illustration: The cover illustration is by Jules Feiffer, whose witty, spot-on drawings fill the 256-page book (Knopf hardcover edition). At left is Feiffer’s drawing of the Terrible Trivium, “…demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.”