Martin Cruz Smith writes novels that consistently engage readers, expand their experience of the world and resonate long afterward.
Read moreCall of the Writing
Call of The Wild, first edition (1903)
Imagine how rewarding it could be to have a tradition of sharing the day’s pages with a few fellow writers around the fire as Jack London did early last century at Wolf’s Lair.
He’d read aloud what he had written that day and get real-time reactions from friends. If Buck’s howl resonated in the imaginations of his listeners, then the passage succeeded. Buck’s extraordinary connection with his canine ancestors as he dreamt of freer days in the pages of the manuscript that would become Call of the Wild (published 1903) came alive in the flickering darkness and Jack knew that what compelled him had found its voice; his pen had touched truth that morning. When that happened, imagine his excitement. He had penetrated the universal heart and borrowed a pulse or two of Life.
That arrangement among fellow writers was unusual back then. In today’s publishing market where only ‘finished’ manuscripts are read by agents or editors, much less published, it may be vital to a writer’s survival.
THE CAT'S TABLE | Michael Ondaatje
Occasionally, writing penetrates the walls we build around ourselves, opens the windows to let sunlight in, and reminds us of who we are, what events shaped us, and hints how we got to this particular place. Michael Ondaatje’s writing does this for me.
Some events take a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence.
This truth, a defining presence in Ondaatje’s writings, is a powerful current in the flow of this novel. The Cat’s Table is understated and life-affirming, with a cast of characters that capture a lifetime of experiences during several weeks at sea.
THE BIRD ARTIST | Howard Norman
Fabian Vas is a young man with talent and a passion for sketching and painting birds in turn-of-the-century coastal Newfoundland.
His powers of observation are so finely tuned that he rarely needs to describe events. He simply lives them and, in so doing, brings every scene alive. A complex achievement skillfully executed by Howard Norman.
It is written in a stripped-down style that inspires colorful notions and emotions. The characters are vivid, flawed and fun to know.
National Book Award Finalist
A MATCH TO THE HEART | Gretel Ehrlich
In 1991, Gretel Ehrlich was struck by lightning while walking her dogs on her Wyoming ranch.
Before electricity carved its blue path toward me, before the negative charge shot down from cloud to ground, before “streamers” jumped the positive charge back up from ground to cloud, before air expanded and contracted producing loud pressure pulses I could not hear because I was already dead, I had been walking.
A Match to the Heart, page 5
She regains consciousness and with her dogs manages to get to the house. She is in shock, singed, disoriented, lame, plagued by furiously burning pains, her throat is paralyzed, and her nervous system is seared, broken and fragmented. Somehow she dials 911. So begins her journey from blinding light through years of shadows.
Hospitalized and severely debilitated, she begins a battle that will take more than two years for her to regain her health and a sense of confidence and autonomy. As compelling as being struck dead by lightning may be, it is Ehrlich’s narrative of her return to life that is extraordinary.
As in her other work, Ehrlich explores existence from all angles and perspectives. Even she, the victim, is not spared the Nature writer’s intense probing, research and exploration in search of understanding. She studies thunder, lightning, and storms and discovers comfort in their fierce science. She seeks out other victims of lightning strikes and finds many others who have experienced the indescribable pains that are invisible to medical specialists, impossible-to-explain personal transformations, and isolation due to society’s ignorance.
As she did in THE SOLACE OF OPEN SPACES (1985), and ISLANDS, THE UNIVERSE, HOME (1991), Ehrlich generously shares her unblinking observations along her uneven path to understanding with us.
I heard her read from MATCH and speak at the Los Angeles Public Library in December 1994. Her humility, commitment to nature, and passion for expressing the often inexpressible were moving.
A MATCH TO THE HEART, One Woman’s Story of Being Struck by Lightning. Pantheon, New York, 1994.
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A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY | J.L. Carr
Quince Tree Press Edition - 1980
J.L. Carr captures a moment in time in England’s rural north. The narrator is shell-shocked veteran, Tom Birkin, who tells of his weeks in Oxgodby in 1920 to restore a painting in the local church. The Pastor is a bitter and misunderstood man; his wife is a caged beauty. In a field nearby, another veteran, Charles Moon, digs for the bones of a 500 year-old victim of this village’s ancestors. Tom’s summer in the almost surreal Oxgodby is the tale of restoration of wounded souls, how the answers we seek are so often within our reach, and crafted in English that is a delight to read and re-read. I was reluctant to put this small book down.
J.L. Carr’s A Month In The Country is a quiet masterwork.
Booker Prize shortlist in 1980.
Note: This edition of the novel can be difficult to find. First published in England in 1980, it has appeared in various small press editions since that time. I recommend the illustrated Quince Tree Press edition.
GREAT HEART | Davidson & Rugge
GREAT HEART | Davidson & Rugge
It’s rare to return to a book a decade after reading it and find that it has grown, or more accurately, it has kept pace with my own evolution as a reader. I am a more critical reader now, probably due to the flight of years. There are ever more books to read, yet less time in an increasingly busy chain of days. Eleven years after reading GREAT HEART – The History of a Labrador Adventure I find I am once again transported by the story of Mina Hubbard’s fierce search for the truth about her husband’s death in Labrador’s unforgiving wilds.
I wrote an anonymous review of the book on Amazon in November, 1999, and upon returning last evening to see how the book is doing I discovered that my review is featured as the most helpful ‘positive’ review. While I appreciate that other readers rated my comments as helpful, I was disappointed that other readers hadn’t long since eclipsed my own comments in support of this good book.
Here is what I said:
Using Leon and Mina Hubbard’s diaries, as well s those of their guides, Dillon Wallace and George Elson (great character!), Davidson and Rugge reconstruct the extraordinary story of a woman’s search for the truth behind her husband’s death in 1903. They flesh out the facts, give form to the unspoken fears and desires hidden between the lines of desperate journal entries, and then skillfully breathe life into the tragic events. A powerful docunovel in a class all its own. Don’t miss it.
Others have been compelled by Great Heart. In 2000, author and freelance journalist, Alexandra J. Pratt attempted to retrace Mina Hubbard’s 1905 560-mile route by canoe through the sub-Arctic of Canada’s Labrador, but a century of forest overgrowth defeated her team’s effort. In 2002, Pratt published Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories, A Woman’s Journey into the Heart of Labrador. I look forward to reading Ms. Pratt’s take on this story.
Dramatic Structure | Aristotle
Just reviewing my notes about structure written when I was halfway through my third novel (as yet unpublished). Aristotle… good material.
Classical Unities
1. Single Place
Aristotle called this Unity of Place: he recommended that no play should cover more than one physical space; and definitely should not get into gimmicks like compressing geography or representing more than one space on the stage.
2. Single Action, Objective, Challenge
Aristotle called this Unity of Action: he recommended that the story (play) have one main action, with few or no subplots. Can you imagine a primetime hourlong with only one plot? Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, comes to mind – two men, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for Godot by a tree along a deserted country road. A few sitcoms have attempted it (i.e., Mad About You in which Paul and Jamie wait by the bedroom door for the baby to fall asleep).
3. Brief Time (a.k.a. ‘time lock’)
Finally, Aristotle suggested – you guessed it, in his Unity of Time – that no play should cover events representing more than 24 hours of time. Hmmm… so a season of 24 actually represents the Aristotelian ideal, right? Each episode follows Jack through exactly one hour of his challenging existence. That’s a time lock. Yet, at the risk of nitpicking, while he follows one overarching action, he is all over the world trying to achieve it. My guess is that Aristotle wouldn’t judge 24 too harshly. The structure works.
Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls is another example of the essential power of Aristotle’s Classical Unities:
1. Strategically important BRIDGE in war-torn Spain
2. Jordan must DESTROY the bridge
3. He has 3 days in which to achieve his objective… 72 hours
Apply that to just about any story and you see the pattern. There IS method! How many times must we rediscover what we know?