Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "wales"

The new blog I've started with fellow crime writers Christopher G. Moore, Colin Cotterill and Barbara Nadel has a new post from me today. It's about why I came to write so-called genre fiction. It starts like this:

Writers have it all wrong. They think they need to learn about other writers. I studied English literature at Oxford University and I read all I could find of the sort of literary criticism that makes a novel seem like a piece of East German economic analysis. Three years later, I hadn’t learned a thing — except that it was
fine to have a room you could take a girl to without having to sneak past your mother, Guinness isn’t good for you, and the deputy bank manager at Lloyd’s on Broad Street with the goatee and the bald head didn’t just /look/ like Ming the Merciless.

Then I read Dashiell Hammett. Before he published novels, Hammett was a Pinkerton detective. What he wrote was real. I could smell the places he’d been for the Pinkertons, feel the punches he’d taken, think the way he’d had to think to outwit true criminals. I’d been reading Marxist critical theorists on Daniel Defoe and French deconstructionists whose scribblings about the “stereographic plurality of significances” were intended to tell me that whatever I thought a book was about was, indeed, what it was about–except that it wasn’t, was it. Or was it?

Read the rest on International Crime Authors Reality Check.

The excellent UK crime fiction blog It's a Crime features me in a post about the growing number of Welsh crime writers. Tartan crime (Scottish writers like Ian Rankin) has long been big and It's a Crime notes the recent wave of Irish crime writers--I'm a fan of Gene Kerrigen, Bob Burke, Declan Burke and Stuart Neville. Now she says it's time for the Welsh, noting some other up-and-comers.

Let's hear it for the Taffia!

(Perhaps I should explain that to my American readers: the English slang for a Welsh person is "Taff," because the river through Cardiff the capital is called the Taff and few English ever venture further into Wales than that. Therefore a Welsh mafia would be a Taffia...Amaze your friends with that one.)

I’m delighted to present a guest blogger today whose terrific new novel STOP ME is out tomorrow. Richard Jay Parker was born in the same South Wales town as me, just around the corner from where my parents now live. In our different ways, clearly, the mean streets of Newport shaped a real pair of sickos. STOP ME’s conceit is a truly riveting one: “Vacation Killer” sends out a chain email declaring that he’s kidnapped a woman and that if you don’t forward the email to 10 friends he’ll “slit the bitch’s throat.” Here Richard grapples with something that has many authors wishing they could slit the throat of the inventor – digital reading devices.

I'm not pro or anti when it comes to Kindle and Reader so, for my blog, I thought I'd have a dialogue with myself - with no agenda - and see what comes of it. Fortunately, this insures me against having to write anything cohesive.

Would I buy a Reader? The answer is a categoric 'yes' - if it can enrich my life. It's my criteria for investing in any new technology and I suspect it's most other people's as well. Things move fast in this world and I've always been willing to embrace new technology - if it can do something for me. I'm not one for wanting the latest gadget just because it's the latest gadget. You always get a reflex purchase reaction from a certain percentage of the population to any new gizmo. I think that's what we're seeing at the moment. We saw it with video, dvd and iPhone and we also saw it with Betamax, laserdisc and minidisc.

What can a Reader offer me on a personal level? Currently it's being sold on the notion that no longer will I have to take unwieldy hardbacks on holiday and that I'll be able to download and store all my books neatly and conveniently. I rarely buy hardbacks so it's no hardship to put a selection of paperbacks into a suitcase so that's not particularly tempting me. There's the cost implication of course. E books are cheaper but then you have to buy the Reader in the first place and can I be bothered to do a calculation of how many cheaper books I'll have to read on it before I've made the money back. Not really

But I do recognise that for busy professionals - particularly in the industry - loading a plethora of reading material onto something so neat has got to be a huge plus. But how many of us will that appeal to? There's also the benefit of being able to load your entire library onto it - as you would music onto your iPod. An incredible concept. The notion of so much on something so little is a design that has driven mankind's quest for technological advancement since the beginning of the 20th century. I'm certainly somebody who enjoys access to a large portable archive of music but I don't know if I really want to dip into my reading collection other than at home - my current paperback is usually sufficient when I'm out and about. One Reader is now being made to look just like that book.

So, although it doesn't convince me personally, the Reader does what all new technology should and makes life easier and services a need. There is a human need I can think of that it doesn't service though.

I was chatting to some friends of mine who make all their money from Internet technology. I'd noticed that their shelves were still groaning with new books, dvd box sets and cds and asked them why they didn't download all they wanted from the net. They said they still loved the physical presence of a product - the cover and packaging as a solid testament to the money they'd spent on it and the time they'd spent with it. It was a part of their life and a badge to visitors to their home of what they rated and liked. So rather than press one button and have Sky Plus conveniently record every episode of a series on a hard drive they still wanted the box set as a record of their involvement with it.

I've downloaded a lot of music but if you believed the portents of doom of a decade ago there should now be no physical music outlets left. Some have closed - the nature of shopping has had to make room for the internet but people are still tactile beings - they still like to browse. I think books are even more of a physical experience. A gripping read means just that to me.

I was speaking to someone on Twitter yesterday who is gradually loading up their Reader with their favourite books. However, she still said she loved the feel and smell of real books and had hundreds on her shelf.

Another anti Reader argument is that e books will see a flood of inferior books being self published. On a positive note this does also mean that we'll be able to discover some original voices that the current publishing system precludes.

When I started downloading music I discovered some great new artists that I normally wouldn't have had access to. I was also able to become more choosy and the dross I could quickly identify and dispense with. Moreover, it re-affirmed that having a system that sieves out inferior artists is necessary and although the publishing industry isn't infallible (and has foisted some execrable rubbish on society) it does develop and allow the best talent to shine. It's still quality that will out for an ever more discerning public.

To get away from the music/book analogy I suppose books and Readers are like real food and food pills. Convenience is never going to completely outstrip the need for the real thing.

Sci-fi writers' predictions always presuppose (for the sake of a good story) that man's trajectory into the future is a straight line. They don't account for the fact that we're an aesthetic race with a healthy respect for what has worked in the past. It's why we're not all content to live in aseptic, minimalist techno pads but instead crave period property and want to preserve our heritage.

Not to say that the book is outmoded though. It's a simple model that works as well today as it always has.

I'd be lying if I said that, throughout my life, I haven't fallen out of love with books but I've always come back to them and there's a reason for that. The book has survived my fads, banning, burning, cinema, TV, video, dvd, Gameboy, Karaoke and Wii so I'm sure it can weather the appearance of a smarter cousin trying to be a simultaneously thicker and thinner version of it.

Mobiles changed the way we converse (and unfortunately the way we have to listen to others converse) but not many of us are disposing of our landline.

I'm not becoming anti Reader. I actually believe the two can happily co-exist. I can't think of any instances now when I'd use a Reader but I'm certainly not ruling one out.

Sure there's a lot of doom and gloom in publishing at the moment but any industry that thinks it's recession proof is arrogant indeed. We're all experiencing it on every level. Obviously the Reader contractual ramifications for publishers and authors are an additional headache but as with every threat to western civilisation as we know it we always emerge the other side. Wiser? Probably not because there's always a new fear to fill up column inches and keep us awake at night.

I also don't buy the argument that it's a generational thing - that when the yellowing book reactionaries have snuffed it the new technology will rise. If that was the case why, with all the home entertainment technology listed above, do children still queue round the block in fancy dress to get their hands on the new Harry Potter? And that's the key phrase here 'get their hands on.' We'll leave media hysteria and peer pressure for another blog but these books are definitely being read. They're something we're familiar with from the time we put our smudgy hands all over a pop-up book.

But at some stage I will go and have a look at the new Reader - weigh it in my hand but, more importantly, weigh up whether or not I'm going to benefit from it. I can't wait to read the next chapter in this saga and - on a personal level - to feel the pulp between my fingers when I turn the page.

In his terrific “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” Stephen King notes that the best way to start a novel is with a compelling “what if.” Try this one: “Vacation Killer” sends out a chain email declaring that he’s kidnapped a woman and that if you don’t forward the email to 10 friends he’ll “slit the bitch’s throat.” That’s about as good a “what if” as anyone--Big Steve included--could come up with. It’s the premise for Richard Jay Parker’s debut novel, STOP ME, which is out this week. Born in the same South Wales town as yours truly, for a long time Richard worked as a tv comedy writer, then as a tv producer. Aware that tv was a sinkhole of depravity (with shrinking budgets), he decided it was preferable to write about scary ways of killing people. He moved from London to the beautiful southwest England town of Salisbury and came up with STOP ME.

How long did it take you to get published?

About a decade. I got a good agent with my first novel but it was an odd and warty book and editors were full of either admiration or revulsion for it. None of the positive feedback translated into offers so I was encouraged to write something else. It took a few attempts before I found I enjoyed constructing twisted, contemporary thrillers but then my agent declared she wasn’t comfortable with the genre. I had so many close calls with other agents and publishers after that it became something of a joke. Luckily, my current agent encouraged me to submit some work to the agency he had been poached to. He sold STOP ME in a couple of months.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

Yes. ‘Conversations With My Agent’ by Rob Long. It’s a very funny indictment of the whole writing process (I started by writing scripts for TV). I’ve never read any ‘How To’ books without keeping a grimace off my face though. I think I’ve only properly read ‘Screenplay’ by Syd Field but I’ve always been itching to make my own mistakes. If you’re just starting out then obviously you can learn the basics of submission but those books can’t really teach you the most important thing, which can only come from writing, finishing a project, submitting a project, starting a new project.

What’s a typical writing day?

I’m pretty disciplined – 8 til 5 – but that’s just so I can give myself plenty of circling time. Twitter and email siphons off a good chunk of my day and when I finally run out of excuses, I knuckle down. I write in concentrated bursts but I don’t ever have a word target. Sometimes it’s a page sometimes it’s ten.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?

Everyone suspects there’s something sinister about email chain letters. STOP ME begins with an email chain letter from the Vacation Killer. It describes a girl and must be forwarded. If it ends up back in the killer’s inbox he won’t slit her throat. Of course, nobody takes it seriously to begin with until the jawbone of a prostitute is sent to the police. The missing prostitute fits the description in the email. But the real story of STOP ME is in the relationship between two men via a website.

John R Bookwalter claims to be the Vacation Killer and runs a website based around this alleged delusion. He’s never left the state of Louisiana and the Vacation Killer has killed around the globe. He’s dismissed by the police as a crank but claims to have Laura, the wife of Leo Sharpe. She disappeared in London and the Vacation Killer was suspected. However, her remains were never sent to the police and Leo wonders why – did the email get back to the Vacation Killer’s inbox?

But as everyone around Leo gives up on Laura ever being found Bookwalter is the only person talking about her in terms of her still being alive. A bizarre relationship ensues even though Bookwalter’s attempts at verisimilitude are patently the product of the information Leo feeds him. However, Bookwalter comes up with the most plausible theory of how she was kidnapped and Leo must decide whether he should accept Bookwalter’s invitation to fly to Louisiana to find out if there is any truth in what he’s saying. That’s what the title STOP ME refers to - more than the emails. It’s about being drawn submissively into something you know you shouldn’t.

The book examines the phenomena of Internet celebrity and the public’s ongoing fixation with serial murder. It’s populated by blue collar characters – ordinary people who participate in/are drawn into bizarre activities behind the façade of normality.


How much of what you do is:
a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with?
c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time?

Only my first novel was a hundred percent me. I think after that I was trying to balance retaining subject matter and ideas that excited me with making them presentable to a readership. Luckily I found the thriller genre because it allows me to explore the sort of twisted, juicy, contemporary ideas that inspire me within an accessible framework.

After writing my first thriller my thinking was - would I be happy to be pigeonholed as a writer of this genre? That’s the reality for most writers and my answer was ‘yes.’ I think in today’s climate it’s a sensible approach for an author who wants to be energized by what he writes and earn a living at the same time.

This is my personal approach and obviously what works for me won’t be right for others. My instinct is to marry my predilections with pragmatism. I would love to have my first novel published but recognize why it probably wouldn’t make it past the committee of a publishing house. I’m also grateful that it wasn’t the first book I had published because I hadn’t really found my feet in terms of what sort of writer I was. This meant I would have probably struggled with the second book and my trajectory would have fizzled very quickly.

What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?

A great question because it’s impossible to answer – are we talking hackles, hoot, goose bumps or chin stroke? I’d have to just take one at random:

‘My Name is Arthur Gordon Pym.’ First sentence from ‘The Narration Of Arthur Gordon Pym’ by Edgar Allan Poe. This story concerns a character with the same name as me suggesting cannibalism when adrift at sea. Lots are drawn and Richard Parker is eaten. The story was written in 1838 and in 1884 it happened for real. And the cabin boy who was eaten? Richard Parker.

It certainly had an effect on my travel arrangements.

What’s the best descriptive image in all literature?

Have gone for one that has always stuck with me - Bruce Robinson describing a fart as ‘a ghost of a sprout’ in ‘The Peculiar Memories Of Thomas Penman.’

Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing?

Of contemporary writers I’d say Chuck Palahniuk – on form - is pretty unique

Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing?

I’ve always loved the conceit of Hjortsberg’s ‘Falling Angel.’ I couldn’t outline my reason without giving away the ending to those who haven’t read it though. That must have been so much fun to write.

How much research is involved in each of your books?

I haven’t had a period of concentrated research for any of my books but that’s because I’ve so far written about subjects that I’m familiar with. My stories focus on ordinary people becoming embroiled in bizarre situations so I guess a lot of what I write is based on what my own personal reactions would be to those events. I’m also a big fan of Americana. My latest book involves Albanian gangsters, however, so that was one subject I needed to gather data for. It would be great to be able to spend more time immersing myself in more alien environments and getting a taste for an entirely new subject. Maybe in the future.

Where’d you get the idea for your main character?

There’s two main characters in STOP ME and I would say both of them are extensions of my own personality – my day-to-day personality and the side of me committed to dark mischief that only gets listened to when I’m at the keyboard.

Do you have a pain from childhood that compels you to write? If not, what does?

I can’t really think of anything in my childhood that compelled me to write. I had a stable and loving upbringing so who knows what ricocheted me towards the sort of dark subject matter that I’ve always got a kick out of. Maybe it’s still re-living that thrill of sneakily getting up to watch the forbidden late night horror movie – that addictive trespass on an entirely adult world. Ridiculous I know but my heart still sinks a little if I have to watch anything that doesn’t have an 18 certificate.

What’s the best idea for marketing a book you can do yourself?

Am just finding out with my debut but all the advice I receive from other writers concurs - utilize the internet but don’t forsake local publicity – radio and signings etc.

What’s your experience with being translated?

None in books yet although I’ve seen my TV material crop up on YouTube in all sorts of languages. Must re-examine my contracts…

Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before could make a living at it?

I’ve been lucky enough to have always been a professional writer and the past twenty years have been a mixture of exceptionally good years and stultifyingly bad years. I made the conscious choice to move from TV to novel writing ten years ago and it’s taken me until now to get my first into print. I hope to move forward with my next book but I have a realistic outlook on how things can transpire. I’ll always write though.

How many books did you write before you were published?

Eight. Four of which I would happily see in print. I won’t be reaching for old manuscripts now though. I still feel I have lots of new ideas to explore. I probably salvage bits of them without really knowing though.

What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?

Will let you know. I’m touring airports in the UK this summer promoting British thrillers.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/896...

Should be an eye-opener.

What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?

My second novel – my agent described it as ‘supernatural pornography.’ Would have sold it to me.

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

I keep finding new reasons why I write my novels about the Palestinians. Usually these reasons have nothing to do with the Palestinians.

Here’s the one that may be the deepest, the one I’ve known about for a while, but have only recently been able to face up to: it’s because I’m scared of home.

Not so long ago, I read the 1992 novel “Fat Lad” by Northern Irish novelist Glenn Patterson. It’s a terrific book, examining Belfast’s changing political landscape through the story of a young man returning after a decade in England.

But I was struck by my reaction to the nostalgic tone of the main character’s memories. They filled me with terror and loathing.

What were these memories? Patterson recalls Choppers, which were long-handled bikes for kids. I never had one. The main character lays out his desk with a bottle of Quink, a brand name for ink which I used at school. I wasn’t happy at school. He listens to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, a specific remix of the song Relax. Relax was number one in the charts when I was in high school; I chose to listen to music that no one else liked in high school, because I didn’t like anyone and imagined no one would like me.

I cite other examples of Patterson’s nostalgia, but I think perhaps you get the picture.

Patterson created a world coterminous with my own childhood in Wales. For Patterson, who went to England for graduate work and returned to his hometown, nostalgia is filled with warmth and friendship, even amid the violence of Belfast. Nostalgia doesn’t work if the period being viewed through rose-colored spectacles was experienced through isolation and self-loathing. I left home, and I’ve never been back.

I used to think: Never mind, everyone’s pretty miserable as a teenager. In a series of interviews with other writers on my blog, I started asking: “Do you have a pain from childhood that drives you to write?” Almost all of them responded that, No, they had pretty good childhoods. At first I refused to believe it. (I even told Miriam Froitzheim, the delightful German who gave me my copy of “Fat Lad,” that she couldn’t be a writer because she’d had a happy childhood and was a very well-balanced, happy adult. Well, I take it back, Miriam. It’s just me.)

I started to realize I had been pretty miserable in my twenties and early thirties, too. It wasn’t only my childhood. I left Britain and went to America. But I boozed myself into a different kind of isolation there, before I found my way to the Middle East.

During those early times I wrote stories of alienation – loners driven to acts of violence or victims of violence, troubled men stuck in unfulfilling relationships with doomed women. With the Palestinians, I came out of that darkness. It wasn’t just the exotic magic of their culture, their architecture, their cuisine. It was that their memories weren’t mine.

No Palestinian has ever said: Did you have a Chopper when you were a kid? Remember having those Quink-stains on your fingers at school? Did you grope your first girl dancing to Frankie at the school disco?

I’ve never had to say to a Palestinian: No, I was a miserable kid and I hate you for having been happy.

This freed me from the angst trap. Me, and my writing, both. I could enter the heads of characters who had been scarred – I understood what it was to have suffered. But they’d been scarred by war and occupation. That allowed me to see my own sufferings for what they were: bad, but things that could be overcome by personal development.

If you’re a Palestinian, you can go to therapy and meditate and listen to Mozart all you want. You’ll be better off, but you’ll still be living under occupation. In my case, life among a people with real problems helped me separate from the anger that clung to me all those years. Beside them, my life was a constant beach holiday. In Jerusalem I go for days on end without meeting anyone as relaxed as me. I’ve started to think perhaps this is the real me.

I’ve lived in the Middle East 13 years now. Last month it was 20 years since I left Britain (when I was 22.) Soon all the nostalgia novels will be about periods of British life of which I know nothing, because I was no longer living there. In the Middle East, I’ve been insulated, distant from British culture and not really immersed in Palestinian or Israeli pop culture. Free from all the babble, from the reminiscences of others’ lives which are supposed to be my shared experiences.

Free not to be a member of a broader society. Free to live inside my head. Which is good. Because that’s where novels are written.

Welsh Icons ("an Encyclopedia and Gazetteer of Wales and all Things Welsh - A Cymrupedia if you like."...uh, "Cymru" being the Welsh word for Wales.) lists me among the "iconic" writers on its site. That puts me in the company of thriller king Ken Follett, sinister Willy Wonka-man Roald Dahl, and upright role model Dylan Thomas. Diolch yn fawr, as we say in Wales when we mean to say "thanks very much." My wife nearly choked on her bagel when I told her, but then she added: "Sure, you're an icon." New York sarcasm.

The listing is, of course, a great follow-up to my mother's recent phone call in which she informed me that one of her friends in her pottery class found my name on Wikipedia's notable people from Newport list, that being my home town in South Wales. I'm right there between Johnny Morris (who, for those reading in the US, hosted a British children's show about animals) and Michael Sheen, the actor famous for playing Tony Blair and David Frost. (Further down the list: rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain and King Arthur's sixth-century pal St. Cadoc.)

Anyway, from Jerusalem (which is rather full of actual icons and much too "iconic" for its own good) I wish you a happy new year: Blwyddwyn Newydd Dda!

(In case you're wondering why "Wales" isn't Welsh for Wales. "Wales" is derived from the Old English, that is Saxon, word for foreigners. Because when the Saxons came over from Germany, the so-called foreigners were living in what's now England. But that's water under the bridge...Twll din pob Sais! I add that with a touch of my wife's New York sarcasm and not to be taken seriously...)

Kingsley Amis said that “a bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch.” That’s because Kingsley, bless his vindictive old socks, was undoubtedly too busy spoiling someone else’s. Believe me, a bad review leaves a bad taste all day long.

That’s not because of any insecurity about my writing. If a review is bad, I know the reviewer got it wrong. It’s the mere existence of negative thoughts about me and my work floating around out there, even if it’s only an aside in an otherwise positive review – that’s what makes my lunchtime hummus taste like cement.

It’s a feeling highlighted by the gratitude of a good review and the sheer love felt for the writer of a really glowing review. Right now, for example, I’m quite in love with Joe Hartlaub, reviewer for Bookreporter.com. A couple of days ago, Joe published a review of THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, my latest Palestinian crime novel. He wrote:

“Matt Beynon Rees, a Welsh journalist living in Jerusalem, writes a series known as the Omar Yussef Mysteries. If you pick up anything at all that is bound between two covers, you should be buying and reading them even if you hate mysteries. If you happen to like mysteries, please read THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, the latest Yussef novel, and recommend it to an unenlightened friend.”

You’re very kind, good sir. But wait, Joe goes on:

“Take a look at the first four pages or so. The book begins with Yussef, newly arrived in the United States, climbing the stairs of the Fourth Avenue subway exit in Brooklyn in the heart of Little Palestine. Much is familiar, and much is different. I may have read better written passages recently, but I don’t think I have read any that I have loved as much as the ones contained in these opening pages. This is classic work that will stand up 20 or 30 years from now when you (maybe) and I (almost certainly) are gone, and the problems that currently exist will still remain. Brilliantly conceived and beautifully written, THE FOURTH ASSASSIN is strongly recommended.”

Thirty years? Joe, may you live to 120.

My delight in this review isn’t the same as kick my two-year-old gets when I tell him he’s the most handsome boy in the world. No, it’s rather that someone has chosen to do exactly what I try so hard to do day by day – to be positive.

And being positive about a book seems strangely hard for people to do.

Many reviews, positive ones in particular, measure out the encouraging phrases as if they were sugar to a diabetic.

Truly negative reviews, of which I’ve only really had one, seem entirely a reflection of an almost psychopathic need to be both right and a little cruel at the same time. (That’s why Alain de Botton famously fumed when he received such a review for his book a year ago. Someone was being a smartass at his expense, and in a forum where he felt he had no comeback. Like being sassed by a cool kid at school when you’re unable to talk back.) There’s also a degree of showing off in a negative review which always makes them deeply suspect, in my opinion – was this a bad book, or simply something about which our reviewer needs to show himself to be the most knowledgeable fellow in the world?

Few writers these days claim to never read reviews. But it’s a dangerous pastime, particularly with the plethora of blogs and even reader reviews on amazon.com. Reviews on amazon are mostly conscientious, but every book seems to have at least one review on that site which begins “I couldn’t get past the first chapter, don’t know why, maybe it was just me, but I gave the whole book only one star anyway.”

A couple of years ago I decided never to write a negative review. I was sure that in a karmic way it’d come back to haunt me. I expressed this view to a literary editor who had sent me a true stinker for review. He twisted my arm; I wrote the review; something mildly unpleasant happened soon after. I know why. It won’t happen again.

I often receive emails from book stores, amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and online literary sites telling me how much I’d like the novels of Matt Beynon Rees. I’m delighted to see these emails, which are based on my other purchases and interests, as only I can truly know just how much the novels of Matt Beynon Rees have changed my life. (Try them, I’m sure you’ll agree.)

Of course, I also get the occasional email informing me that if I like Matt Beynon Rees, I might also enjoy another author named in the email. Well, they’re half-way there, because of course I DO like Matt Beynon Rees. No ifs. So I always have to look to see if they’re right about the second part.

The links are sometimes obvious – “if you like Matt Beynon Rees, try [insert crime novelist’s name here:]” – and occasionally baffling though thought-provoking. I had one a few weeks back suggesting fans of Matt Beynon Rees’s Palestinian crime series would really dig a nonfiction book about a cyclone that hit Burma in 2008.

The latest of these connections was no doubt the most bizarre. I clicked on an email from an online book blog a few days ago: “If you like Matt Beynon Rees, we think you’ll enjoy Jimmy Carter.”

Wow, I thought, how did they know that I, too, have lusted after women in my heart.

It could be that the connection was the result of the review of the paperback version of my third Palestinian crime novel THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET in The New York Times—it was featured in the same column as a review of the softcover edition of the 39th President’s ultra-controversial 2006 work of nonfiction “Palestine – Peace Not Apartheid.”

Now here’s where I part with the “If you like Matt Beynon Rees, we think you’ll enjoy Jimmy Carter” email. Of you like Matt Beynon Rees, you’ll probably enjoy crime fiction. Or just fiction. Rather than “Palestine – Peace Not Apartheid,” in which the loveable old peanut farmer from Georgia accuses Israel of the worst kind of discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank.

I don’t have an opinion on Jimmy’s book. I never read it. It has “Palestine” in the title and, as Graham Greene wrote, once one has lived in a place for a while one ceases to read about it.

Also it has “Apartheid” in the title. I have an opinion about what Israel does in the West Bank. I’m not going to get into it here, but in a (pea)nutshell, I think it’s a mistake to compare Israeli policy to apartheid, because then the debate shifts to the similarities and differences between South Africa’s old regime and Israel’s occupation – instead of talking simply about what Israel does and what’s wrong with it.

As soon as Smiling Jim put “apartheid” in his title, his book’s content was largely ignored. Pro-Israel mouthpieces could condemn him as an anti-Semite simply for comparing Israel to the unlamented and certifiably pariah regime in Pretoria. Game over. Jimmy even issued an apology a couple of years ago to all Jews on Yom Kippur. As though saying something critical of Israel is somehow a criticism of all Jews. As though there weren’t any Jews who agreed with him about Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. Game over with a slamdown.

For me, as for many others, Carter has been a mildly useful voice for decency in the world. Though he also represents something a little pitiful, as one might witness in the song “Jimmy Carter” by my favorite band, Detroit whacksters Electric Six:

“Like Jimmy Carter,

Like electric underwear,

Like any idea that never had a chance of going anywhere….”

However, the decisive element in the question “If you like Matt Beynon Rees, we think you’ll enjoy Jimmy Carter” is a matter of personal animus. In fact, it’s a family insult suffered by the Rees’s of 32 Neath Road, Maesteg, Mid-Glamorgan, Wales, at the hands of James Earl Carter Jr., 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

My grandfather Tom Rees read in the Western Mail that then-President Carter was suffering from hemorrhoids. Tom had faced the same ailment some years before and had found nothing eased the feeling of defecating broken glass, until he switched to Allinson’s wholewheat bread. He wrote a letter to the White House in his careful cursive script, letting the leader of the Free World know what he needed to do to poop painlessly.

He didn’t expect any public recognition. But he assumed he’d get a polite note.

Perhaps Carter’s people knew that my grandfather was a former Communist Party member and figured the brown bread was a plot of some sort to keep the Commander-in-Chief on the can and away from the nuclear button, while the Reds swarmed Capitol Hill. In any case, the President never wrote back. Not even a “President Carter has read your inquiry with interest, but regrets that he will not be able to make it part of United States planning and policy at this time, though he is sympathetic to your cause.”

My grandfather continued to consume wholewheat bread, even at a time (the 1970s) when those around him considered it to be a strange fad akin to today’s no-nightshades tomato-free diets.

That’s why I don’t like Carter. Not because of apartheid. Because of hemorrhoids.

I wonder if Jimmy ever got them cured. Maybe he mentions it in his book. Perhaps I ought to read it after all…

Malcolm Muggeridge (an old English literateur) once said that George Orwell “was no good as a novelist, because he didn’t have the interest in character.” Well, I didn’t need to tell you who George Orwell was, so you may doubt the judgment of the largely forgotten Muggeridge. But I think he was very close to an important factor for the novelist.

Here’s why: Character creates empathy in a novel. It puts the reader in a relationship with the work. Muggeridge’s point was that politics were more interesting to Orwell than the people on whom he hung them. In “1984” we feel for Winston Smith because we imagine what it’d be like to be him – but we don’t really care that much for him as a character. In other words, if Orwell hadn’t had such a fabulous idea behind that novel, it would’ve failed because Winston was too much of an everyman.

Nonetheless, so much contemporary fiction fails the character test. Read the short stories in The New Yorker – which are fairly representative of today’s “literary” fiction – and you’ll generally see an authorial voice greatly distanced from the emotions of the characters. You’re not in a relationship with the characters, and you wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with the smart-ass authorial voice. Read the rest of this post on Matt Beynon Rees's blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

The women of the Middle East are about to save me from the greatest banality known to man. I’m counting on them to care as little about the the World Cup as I do and to keep me entertained until men can once again talk about something other than Wayne Rooney’s groin.

Though I’ve long loved to play soccer, I scorn the watching of its endless buildup passes, the constant disappointment of a game which can be won with a single lucky goal, the sport’s failure to rein in rampant cheating and other pathetic behavior by its pampered players.

George Orwell wrote in one of his best essays that international sports – and he meant, mainly, soccer – was a disgusting tribal experience that was intended to keep us filled with nationalistic hate until it was time to have an actual war and go off to kill each other again in earnest. Living in the Middle East, where nationalism is such an incendiary factor and is so often in bloody evidence, I find I have no tolerance for the stupidity of sporting nationalism.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

The company you keep can put the culture around you in a new light, let you see it as you haven’t before.

That’s true when I travel to different countries and discover that readers in Germany have a particular take on my Palestinian crime novels which differs from the way they look to Americans, for example.

I got to thinking about this when I was wandering the Nablus casbah this week with two German friends. An enthusiastic Palestinian fellow asked me to explain to them how much he appreciated Hitler, and as an afterthought he noted that all his people’s problems are caused by me and my compatriots from the British Isles.

I had just climbed up the old Turkish clocktower in Manara Square at the heart of the casbah with one of the Germans. I’d never seen the door at the bottom open before, but there was a policeman inside on this occasion and he generously allowed us to go up the ladder. On the first balcony, I stepped through more pigeon feces than I’d have thought could possibly gather in one place. It was crusty for an inch or two, then a little slushy beneath. I had a grin all over my face of the kind that tends to appear there when I discover a new corner in a place I’ve often been – and loved being there – before.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.