Writers as spies

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Three authors have emerged, lately, as former spies. Noel Coward was an informant, sent by the British across Europe, and returning to report what was being said about the Nazis. As a society star, he was well-placed to gossip. After 1939, he became a fully-trained member of the secret service, along with Ian Fleming.

The third author is a surprise to me: Peter Matthiessen, author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord (a novel I loved). For two years, he worked for the CIA. His cover? Being co-founder and editor of The Paris Review. The prestigious literary magazine was founded in 1953, well past WWII, so what motivated him?

On airport bookstores

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I cannot pass a bookstore without browsing, and for a few moments in a Virgin bookstore in the Vancouver airport, I loose myself in the titles. And then I wake up: I'm an author, I've a new book just published, is it on the shelves?

No.

I can't believe it. How is that possible? It's not that it's a hardcover, for they do have other hardcover fiction titles displayed, and published by my own publisher — titles not on the Maclean's best-selling fiction in Canada list for over two months, I note with angry jealousy. For a crazy moment I consider inquiring of the clerk, and imagine her saying, Oh, we just can't keep it in stock, it flies off the shelves. Instead I skulk away, pouting.

It's amazing how emotional this can be. I'm not this type of person — normally. But normally, too, I'm not on a book tour, I don't have a book out, and normally I do not have a book on anyone's best-seller list. A sense of entitlement comes quickly ... and lethally.

I remember walking in a mall with my then-young son just before my first book was to be published. Passing a bookstore I told him, "Next time we come, my book will be in that store." I realized, then, that my bookstore experience would change forever. No longer, relaxed and easy browsing. Once I had a book published, I would approach bookstores as an Author, making sure I was presentable, checking to see if my titles were on a table or shelf, and then going up to the clerk and explaining that I was the author of a book on their shelf (pointing), and offering to sign.

It's a job, what you do. My experiences have been varied, from the manager of a large store jumping up and down with enthusiasm, to an annoyed end-of-day who-needs-this response from a clerk. More and more, I'm asked to prove my identity first with an ID before being allowed to sign.

I came to see airport bookstores as the cream of the crop, and longed for the day when my books would be in one. I remember with great satisfaction when I first saw the titles of the Josephine B. Trilogy on the shelf of a bookstore in a San Francisco airport. As the Trilogy became more successful, I began to even expect to see it.

And so, grumpily, I left the Virgin bookstore in the Vancouver airport and proceeded through check-in. There was another bookstore on the way to my gate: I glanced over the shelves warily. No. No. No.

And then: yes. There is was, Mistress of the Sun stacked ever so nicely on a shelf at the front.

Happily, I got on the plane.

On the Road (at 63): travel advice for ageing authors

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An unhappy thumb is a wonderful problem to have to deal with, since it's caused by swarms of fans wanting their book signed. The Calgary reading was one of my favorites — intimate, yet of a good size. They forgave my stumbling delivery. (Note to self: write my talk out, experiment with reading different sections, practice.) And then they bought books and lined up to have them signed.

I write out names before I sign because people often want me to sign more than one, and I fear misspelling a name. And so I have a record, neatly recorded in the lovely Moleskin I thought would be for recording thoughts about my next novel, but was rather quickly taken over by promotion notes. So: at my Toronto launch in February, I signed for 28. This was considered a smashing success: many had more than one book to be signed, and several, as well, only wanted a signature.

In Calgary, however, I signed for 46! Many, many of these were for more than one book. It seemed like I was signing for a very long time — an hour and a half? (Impossible, surely.)

The next morning, in Vancouver, my right thumb showed signs of stress. This worried me: if my thumb completely gives out, I'm incapable of shaking a hand, much less holding a pen — much less writing.

Add to survival gear list: an ergonomic pen.

The true danger of travel

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One night "on the road" and already I fear I'm coming down with a cold. This two-stop tour (Calgary, Vancouver) is something of a test run. The big tour will be in June – four and a half weeks of travel and promotion from New York to San Francisco. I can see that one of the (many) challenges will be staying healthy, given all the different hotels with variable temperatures, all the hand shaking and closed airplane air, all the late nights and early mornings — not to mention the excitement and consequent stress.

I add to my survival gear list: Echinacea (with Golden Seal, made in our local area by St Francis Herb Farm: the best), Tea Tree oil (vile even in drops, to gargle). And Airborne, which I still believe in.

Test Tour

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Mr. Seat by the Window calls out and waves to all the crew. "Hey, Joe! Nice to see you!" He obviously lives on WestJet — which, I can attest, is a perky sort of airline (superior, in my view, to grumpy Air Canada). I quickly dig out my earplugs and open a book. I think of Alexander McCall Smith, who writes on airplanes. I think of Margaret Atwood, who writes poetry on tour. "What else is there to do?" They are the gold metal winners of the tour circuit. I'm just aiming to get through it in one piece.

I begin a list of survival gear: iPod, earplugs. I will need a purse/backpack that fits under the narrow aisle seat I now favor, something sturdy I can put my feet on (given that the seat heights are too tall for me, designed for men). A shawl and slipper socks for when it's cold; a layer I can slip off when it's hot.

I've chosen an excellent novel for travel — The Book Thief — but it's too fat. I need a slender yet engaging book. I remember traveling through Europe with War and Peace, tearing off pages as I read them, returning home with a few pages and the back cover — but I don't want to do that with this book. This is a book to pass on.

(Written last Thursday, but not posted.)

Ishiguro interview in The Paris Review

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I've long loved The Paris Review interviews, but I've acquired a habit of counting the male/female balance of those interviewed, and often that's enough to turn me away. The current issue isn't any different: 7 men in bold on the cover, to 1 woman (Katie Ford, author of a beautiful poem "Earth").

However, the feature interview is with Kazuo Ishiguro, an author I greatly admire. Indeed, he is one of the few male authors who can write absolutely convincingly from a female point-of-view — so convincingly, in fact, that I could not believe that his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, was written by a man. He continues to astonish with every novel he publishes.

Here are some snippets from "The Art of Fiction" that caught my interest:

I’ve never felt that I have a particular facility at writing interesting prose. I write quite mundane prose. I think where I’m good is between the drafts. I can look at one draft, and I have lots of good ideas for what to do with the next one.

I find that reassuring. (I'd like to know how many drafts he might write.)

The PR interviewer asked how the English setting for The Remains of the Day came about, and Ishiguro said that it started with a joke that his wife made.

There was a journalist coming to interview me for my first novel. And my wife said, Wouldn’t it be funny if this person came in to ask you these serious, solemn questions about your novel and you pretended that you were my butler? We thought this was a very amusing idea.

He became obsessed with the idea of a butler as a metaphor for classical British reserve, but also as someone who serves loyally, without any responsibility for the larger issues. He did a lot of research,

but I was surprised to find how little there was about servants written by servants ... . It was amazing that so few of them had thought their lives worth writing about. So most of the stuff in The Remains of the Day about the rituals of being a servant was made up. When Stevens talks of the “staff plan,” that’s made up.

I've long had trouble finding information on what it was, exactly, servants did, so I find this interesting. I'm considering writing about a man who was a loyal secretary to my character — his role would have been similar to that of an English butler.

At this point in the on-line interview, I must chose to purchase the print edition of The Paris Review in order to read what follows. I do, selecting "state" of Ontario (is this a plot?), and scrolling up the long list of countries from the pre-selected U.S.A. to find Canada. Now I'll have to wait for the print issue to arrive the old-fashioned way, by burro-express.

Reading: the first step

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A friend who teaches writing was puzzling over a student who worked hard, but just "didn't have it." It turns out this student doesn't read.

I'm astonished by people who wish to be writers, but don't read as a rule. That would be like wanting to be a musician, but not listening to music, or wanting to be a chef, and not enjoying food. By reading, a writer develops an instinct for what works ... and what doesn't. And why write if one doesn't enjoy reading? It's incomprehensible to me.

I often advise people who want to write, to write what they read. Often this ruffles — my suspicion is that they read commercial or genre fiction, and imagine themselves above that, on a so-called higher literary plane. If that's the case, then that is the type of book they should be reading.

As a writer, one begins to read differently: for pleasure (always), but also for craft. I note changes in point-of-view, challenging structures. (The book Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose is excellent, as is Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.)

Right now I'm reading The Boys in the Trees, by Mary Swan, and I'm reading it in a reverie of awe. It's a brilliant book: she's a brilliant writer. As a writer myself, it's thrilling — and yes, humbling, I admit — to encounter a work of such daring reach. I'm studying the way she's able to change point-of-view, the heart-stopping structure (the main characters abruptly changing a third of the way in!), the nuanced, rich details. Just gorgeous. Bravo!

Process and product

I talked with a friend last night at a party. She confessed that she had always wanted to write, but that she's given up. "Now it's too late." She is in her early fifties.

Of course I said, It's never too late ... and I believe that to be true. I told her that even one-half hour a day is all it takes ... and I believe that to be true, as well.

I woke up this morning thinking of this conversation: thinking, as well, that it came down to process versus product. It's never too late to engage in the process of writing. But the product: this is what stops people, and I don't believe that it should.

By product, people think agent, publishing house, editors, production, promotion ... all of that. They also assume — although it's not always the case — that there is profit involved, money to be earned by the writer. Somehow this confers legitimacy. And it does — I'm not going to argue that — but it's not the only legitimacy.

I think of a book that once meant a great deal to me, in my teens: To Paint is to Love Again, by Henry Miller. (Miller's full quote is, "To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to its fullest.") Although I don't know for sure, I believe this was initially a self-publication. No doubt I could have an entire blog dedicated to wonderful books that were self-published. Margaret Atwood and friends started a magazine in order to be able to publish their work. Today, self-publishing is an art form: you can have so much control, and it doesn't cost very much. It's no longer "vanity publishing" — but rather more like an indy movie. And however it's viewed, it's a legitimate creation.

Which led me to think of my own long-time dream of "Log Cabin Press." I can immediately think of a number of titles — all my own, for I have no desire to be applied to by others, to have to accept or reject, to edit the work of others. That becomes work, and this is all about process, and the creative culmination of that process.

The first title that comes to mind is Bone Magic, the short story that became Mistress of the Sun.

Another is The Book of Books, a compendium of essays about my mother, illustrated with her paintings and other creative work.

Another is The Clown's Mother, a book of memories about my mother's mother, my grandmother May.

And the last would be Confessions of an Airhead, my own autobiography.

Vanity press? Yes, in a way, because these would all be intensely personal works, but all the more legitimate, for that.

I think, ultimately (and not a little sadly), of the opening lines of a poem, "Undid in the Land of Undone" by Lee Upton:

All the things I wanted to do and didn't
took so long.

It was years of not doing.

I began writing because I imagined my tombstone with the words, She never got around to it. So: I must ask myself, What's next? I do want to write at least one more Sun Court novel, but I also want to complete these Log Cabin Press creations ... not for profit, not for fame, but for myself, and for those near and dear.

Art about Writing

I love this image — "Still Trying" by Diem Chau. It feels as precarious as writing can be, especially at the trying stages. (And isn't it always thus?)

The importance of images

The painting Pegasus by William Blake is an evocative image, I think, for Mistress of the Sun: I see Petite in the clouds, handsome Louis, and, of course, an enchanting white horse. (I would be thrilled if this image was used by a publisher for the cover.)

I didn't come across this beautiful painting until Mistress was in production; otherwise, I would have pinned a print above my computer. I have always regarded this novel as something of a fable , and that's the feeling that this painting gives.

Another painting, also of a white horse — Tête de cheval blanc by Géricault — was pinned above my desk, and for all those years that I was working on Mistress, I imagined that this image would be the cover.

"Cover" image, working title, the story itself invariably change, but they are important to me while writing. I write a dedication first thing, as well. This, too, will change over time, but I need to feel that what I'm writing is, in fact, a book, and the more I can approximate one visually, even in the very messy early stages, the more ardently I apply myself to the task at hand.

This image of a white horse was important in other ways; I felt it was my "key" into the novel. I discovered it on a postcard in the Louvre gift shop. I was on my last research trip for The Last Great Dance on Earth. I dreaded finishing that novel, knowing that my long-term and intimate relationship with Josephine and her world would come to an end. I was in tears leaving the room where David's magnificent painting of the Coronation of Empress Josephine was displayed at the Louvre.

This painting has to be seen to be experienced. It appears life-size. "One walks into it," Napoleon said. I knew all the characters so well, I felt I was there with them. I also knew that when I returned — if I returned — I would view it as an outsider: hence the tears. As I left the museum, I stopped in the gift shop, needing time to collect before facing the bustling world. I spotted the postcard of Tête de cheval blanc and latched onto it, seeing in it the lifeline to my next novel, my next world.

On dream-storming

At a certain point, one must begin...again. Looking back, writing a novel seems an impossible thing to have done, and an even more impossible thing to do again. Frankly, it's hard on life and on the body. One must forsake things — pleasures often. "Write novel" is a space- and time-sucking up thing to have on the To Do list, and it will park itself at the top of that list for years. So reluctance and its sister resistance sets in. However, as pointed out by Susan Shaughnessy in Walking on Alligators (a wonderful book of meditations for writers), resistance is the first stage. In other words: I'm already writing.

About two years ago I read a book on writing that included a card technique for this initial process that appealed to me: From Where you Dream, by Robert Olen Butler.

It's Chapter 5 that interests me, "A Writer Prepares": which is exactly what I need to do. The technique is "dream-storming": investing 6 to 12 weeks or so (i.e. serious time) just dreaming up scenes, a good 200 or so. The next step is put them on cards, spread them out and begin to find the shape of the story.

What I like about this approach is that as you write, and when the story begins not to work (like immediately), you stop and re-dream it, so the plot is not a fixture, but an organic thing that keeps changing. Which, of course, it does anyway, but I'd like not to spend eight years trying to sort it out this time. What I'd like is to dream the story this year and write it the next, second and third drafts the year following.

But first, I must actually begin.

Languages

A French friend confessed recently that he was surprised how bad my French was. (As am I: I have been studying that language forever.) A day or two later, I was translating some sentences into Spanish. Only by the third sentence did I realize that I was translating into French. I am continually mangling the two.

I find learning languages challenging, and this winter has been particularly rigorous because I've had to learn Net-ease and rudimentary HTML. Promoting a book requires "getting out there," and these days, out there is here, on the Net, which has a language of its own.

A schizophrenic life

For years you toil alone. There is no coffee-machine chatter, no morning "Hello! How is your daughter this morning? Is she feeling better?" before going to your station. In moments of frustration (and there are many, many, many) you have no one to turn to. In moments of satisfaction, you think, "So, this is what it's all about. This is the secret." But you keep it to yourself.

You revel in the silence, the daily solitude. You put up signs, "Keep out!" You disconnect the phone. You lower the blinds and put on noise-cancelling head-phones, set to play a dronning hypnotic note. Daily, you sit at your computer and enter another world.

And then, one day, you come out, blinking against the glare. Your creation, over which you've wept and laughed — your creation, which has been your private and rather intimate affair for all these many years — is deemed ready to be sent out into the world. Your agent, your editors take it eagerly from your hands (they have been waiting; they had hoped to have it earlier). It's prodded and poked. Some adjustments are made, and it enters the machine of publication.

And so do you. You get your nails done, your hair tinted and trimmed. You acquire new clothes. You study questions, and think up answers. You talk in front of a mirror, to practice. Your words sound dumb to you, stumbling and inarticulate and false, and so you practice some more, for you well know what is to come, that you must go forth into the world, you and your creation. Now and then you think of her — your creation — and you wonder how she's doing, in the bowels of the publication machinery. But most of all, you worry: you want her to be liked. You want her to be loved.

And so you throw yourself into fray, do everything you can think of to prepare for her reception in the world. Your private place is closed to you know — it seems so long ago. Now you live in a public arena. You speak before audiences, the bigger the better. You type letters, hundreds of them. You seek connection with the same hunger that you formerly saught solitude. You must leave no rock unturned.

You are applauded, and it's wonderful. The creation is loved, welcomed, adulated. You have succeeded beyond what you'd dreamed possible.

"What will your next book be about?" the people ask. "I'm not sure," you tell them. What you don't say, what you're keeping to yourself, is that you fear that you've lost the way back to that cave. Like Hanzel and Gretel, you look for crumbs.

Blog star = lit star

I think of myself as not writing right now—"just" blogging—but blogging is writing, as is demonstrated by the literary success of this Japanese singer/blogger.

A note about the (awful) word "blog": it's from web log.

The fuzzy line between fact and fiction

I just posted to my research blog my thoughts on fact, fiction, and that messy realm in-between: "The fuzzy line between fact and fiction." It's certainly relevant here, as well.

With voltage

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I sent out a newsletter this morning, and was taken aback to discover that the lion's share of the clicks went to this blog. I wasn't sure that my house was in order.

Truth is, my house is in profound disorder! Having a book published is rather like having a baby--suddenly there is so much to do, and so little time. Suddenly there are waves of emotions, and cherished moments with so many readers.

Once upon a time (surely I should begin a book that way one day), a German fan posted a review to Amazon in Germany. Through the wonders of the internet, I could have it translated. Basically what I learned was that she was chained to her chair and experiencing reading my book with voltage. Once I got past the fear that she had electrocuted herself, once I understood that what she had said, in her native language, was that she was enraptured, I began to see the term "with voltage" not as a mistranslation, but as the true thing. The ideal reading experience is one that happens "with voltage." And writing, as well.

And now, meeting the readers, I see it as yet another form of voltage. Writing a novel is an intimate act; reading a novel is likewise intimate. There is a very special connection between the writer and the reader — and meeting with readers this week, and hearing of their profound connection to something I had created: this, surely, is voltage.

Google adventures into the history of cleavage

I’m being interviewed tomorrow by a journalist on the history of cleavage. Having written Mistress of the Sun, a novel set in the 17th century court of the Sun King, I’m now an expert.

Right?

Yes … and no.

I have some insights, some opinions on this, but I’ve not looked into the subject in any formal way. So: time to cram.

Of course the first thing I do to prep for this interview is Google the subject. One of the links to pop up is to an academic paper titled “Parties and Cleavages in the European Political Space.” (It occurs to me that this was an unfortunate choice of words for the title of a serious work, that the use of “party” and “cleavage” together was certain to give rise to hecklers. )

I persevere…

The next link brings up an article in the Journal of Metamorphic Geology. The article includes the sentence: “We interpret this to reflect a pressure-solution mechanism for cleavage development, where precipitation from a very small fluid reservoir fractionated that fluid.”

(How would you interpret this sentence?)

And further: “...the history of cleavage formation in the area is more protracted and complex. To unravel the cleavage history...”

Onward … for I must, indeed, “unravel the cleavage history,” and quickly.

Heroine of a Golden Age: a wonderful article

I'm very pleased this morning to discover Janice Kennedy's article in the Ottawa Citizen, "Heroine of a Golden Age". I'm a long way from Ottawa—I'm in San Miguel de Allende, enjoying a sunny morning—yet through the wonders of the internet I learn of this article the morning it comes out. It describes—accurately and well—the long and difficult process of writing Mistress of the Sun.

The days before a novel comes out is a nervous time for an author: there will be reviews, articles, interviews. Who knows what to expect? So it's a pleasure to launch with an article such as this one. Thank you, Janice Kennedy! 

That nervous time before lift-off...

In four weeks my novel, Mistress of the Sun, will be officially published in Canada (U.S. publication will be in June). The time before a novel comes out are always hard. Will readers like it?

Believe me, it's never easy. Over a decade ago, when I was just starting out, and piling up the rejection letters, Jane Urquhart—a wonderful best-selling Canadian author—told me: "Get used to it." If it isn't rejections, it will be reviews.

But getting "used to it" entails lots of nail-biting. Which is why sincere and unexpected enthusiastic responses mean so much. I had one such yesterday, a note from Bernard Turle on my Mistress of the Sun FaceBook page.

An endorsement from Bernard is extra-special because he was the wonderful French translator of the Josephine B. Trilogy. I'm not French, yet I write historical novels about French history, so I'm always concerned about how a French reader is going to respond.

Here is what Bernard so kindly wrote:

"I love Mistress of the Sun and I hope I shall do the French translation for my favorite publisher in Paris ; I am so glad Sandra has chosen to work on women of silent power ; I heard from her long ago that she was working on La Lavalliere and I so much enjoyed translating the Josephine trilogy that I was very keen and of course I enjoyed every minute of the reading. La Lavalliere is less known than other royal mistresses and the novel is a welcome addition to the literature on her. Among many other qualities, I like the point of view from which one sees history : through her : not in the light, not in the shadow, just in between. I sympathize with that position, which is typically a translator's position."

I love his phrase, "women of silent power." Thank you, Bernard, mille fois.

An amazing writer at work...

This article in the New York Review of Books by Michael Dirda on Joyce Carol Oates is well worth reading. It has a great deal on Oates' work patterns. She is a dirvish:

Between the beginning of 2000 and the end of 2005 she published nineteen books. She has written over seven hundred short stories, more than Maupassant, Kipling, and Chekhov combined.

But what's astonishing is that she is a writer who polishes her work, who rewrites every page over and over. As well, she is a professor and occasional editor of a literary journal. She has a balanced, healthy life and a happy marriage.

I don't know how all this is done. My time can easily become consummed with minutia. Who checks her galleys? Who answers her mail, the telephone? Who pays her bills?

Her journal tells us that she writes from 8 till 1 every day, then again for two or three hours in the evening. And she revises and polishes and reworks page after page after page.

I found this passage from her diary particularly moving:

I love to wake up early and begin to read. While the house is absolutely silent—Ray still asleep, nothing in motion. And then, after he's awake, work at my desk. Until 1:30 or 2. Then have breakfast (apple & cottage cheese). Then return to my desk.... Anything, everything, charms me at such times. Working on The Possessed [for an essay] or my own novel; dreamily shuffling through my old notes for stories or for Bellefleur; writing letters, postcards; staring out the window (at the perpetually falling snow—and occasionally cardinals, and often sparrows, in the berry bushes; today it's snowing so thickly that the river is invisible); thinking about the University; about students, classes, colleagues, things I must do, books I must read; day-dreaming; doodling; rewriting a brief chapter in Evening & Morning; browsing through things that have found their way onto my desk, for some reason; thinking vaguely ahead, as the afternoon darkens, to dinner....
[from The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982, edited by Greg Johnson. Ecco, 509 pp., $29.95]

Such rich "doodling"! It feels rather like a life from another time, and I long for it.

That absorbed state

"I slipped into that absorbed state I have come to associate with the writing process, or rather, that part of writing that precedes actually putting any words on paper."

--Susanne Dunlap, from her essay "Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses" in For Keeps; Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, edited by Victoria Zackheim.

This sentence by Susanne, a friend, startled me. I know that feeling well. Quakers talk of being "moved to speak." This sensation is similar, a welling up intense interest, a tumbling of voices and thoughts. It's like falling in love, a feeling of inevitability—a feeling of being blessed. 

This sensation of "possession" makes writing vital, addictive. It is also what makes its absence distressing. Writing Mistress of the Sun, I was "possessed" for almost eight years. Now that the novel is out in the world, I'm experiencing that same flat disinterest I felt after The Last Great Dance on Earth—the last of the Josephine B. novels—was launched. It helps to remember that I've been here before, that it takes time for the well to fill. 

About that novel you've been working on...

Oh!

A space

Writers are often asked: “How do you write? With a word processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand?” But the essential question is: “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write? Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas - inspiration.” If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn. When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. “Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?”

—

From Doris Lessing’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Getting started

I often buy a calendar notebook in December. It’s one I will use only for writing, so I give quite a lot of thought to it. This year I splurged and bought a lovely Moleskin. My intention is to set daily goals of some sort. If I’m at a first draft stage, I will set daily word goals, but I’m not at that stage yet, so I may only set daily thinking and research time.

This calendar rarely stays with me for more than a few months, but at least it gets me started.

Books I've read more than once

There are very few books I've read more than once. Life is short, and the TBR pile tall. In fact, there are really only two. In my twenties, I read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky several times over, in part because it was required reading in a number of clases, but also because I loved Dostoevsky's passion. It would be interesting to return to those pages now.

The one book I keep going back to every ten years or so is A Walk with Love and Death, by Hans Koning, a spare, elegant love story set in 1538 in France. The author was Hans Koningsberger when I first read him—it must have been the spring of 1963. I was at the end of my first year at San Francisco State College, and I was being courted by an older student. I remember him handing me the book—"This is good," he said. Someone had likewise handed it to him, in this fashion.

In later years, I found it difficult to find copies of the novel. This was before the Net, and finding a copy of a particular out-of-print book meant stopping in at various used bookstores and searching the shelves, one bookstore at a time. I ordered it thought my small-town library, and a copy was sent to me from afar. I read it, loved it yet again, but could not bear to be parted from it. I was beginning to write myself, and Koning's spare style was something of a beacon for me.

So: I had the book photocopied before returning it to the library. It's a beautiful (if illegal) copy, its stark white pages bound up in a fat black plastic coil. I don't believe I've ever read this "edition," but I've carried it with me fondly. It reassurred me just to know it was there, on my shelf.

I wrote him; I wanted the author to know how much this beautiful little novel meant to me. I sent it his publisher, to Hans Koningsberger—not knowing that he had changed his name in 1972. The envelope was returned. I assumed he had died.

And then, with the Net, and the all-powerful and astonishing ability to seek out any title, any author, I discovered that the book I loved was by Hans Koning, that he was a professor at a university in the U.S., and that not only was he alive and well, but had published quite a number of books. I might have written him then...but my life was busy, and so I did not.

A few weeks ago, having sent of the "final" changes to my soon-to-be-published novel, I took A Walk with Love and Death down off my shelf. It had been 44 years since I had first read it. Perhaps the author had a website, I thought. In no time, I found it, and through the contacts page, I was finally able to send him a letter, telling him how much I love this novel, and how much it has taught me about writing.

The email was bounced back. Hans Koning had died that spring, only months before. It brings tears to my eyes even now. I had missed my chance.

I have just finished yet another reading of A Walk with Love and Death. I still love this book. Such beautiful sentences! I'm going to quote from the opening lines, which I think set the tone beautifully for the bitter-sweetness of the story, and the elegance of the prose:

In the spring of that year, 1358, the peasants of northern France did not sow their fields any more.

I had succeeded in getting out of Paris just before sunset and walked to Saint-Denis in the twilight; I had found a room there to sleep and now was on the road again.

The sun was rising almost opposite me; a harsh light skimmed the empty fields. The war was in its twentieth year, but I was happy.

The ending: ah, I resist the obvious.