“I wanted to approach Shakespeare as if foreign … The past is another country.” That’s a composer named Thomas Adès in the New Yorker this week, regarding his opera of ‘The Tempest.’

The second part of his quote is the famous L.P. Hartley line (Hartley said, ‘a foreign country’). As I read the piece (in Critic’s Notebook) I wasn’t sure how I felt about what Adès meant by the comment. But the line started me thinking.

We sometimes over-focus, I think, on trying to make history’s people ‘accessible’ or ‘relevant’ in too-obvious ways. This isn’t the same as linking up themes or motifs, it has to do with trying to make it easier for readers to identify with characters. But the truth is, it seems to me, Adès is right … Shakespeare is both universal and remote. (That’s genius for you, yes.)

In my work I think I’m obsessed with trying to show both things … elements of the past that are startlingly similar to concerns today, and other aspects that are just as startlingly alien. And this author-goal can collide with some modern readers’ desire to ‘connect’ with characters (an analogy: the way Presidential candidates do photo-ops drinking Budweiser in bars, or bowling, just folks.)

With Ysabel, as an example, I was surprised by some readers lamenting (mostly younger ones, but not only) that they didn’t ‘get’ or ‘relate to’ the character of Ysabel herself. She seemed remote to them, inexplicable. But that was the point, from the writer’s point of view. She’s a 2500 year-old capricious, doomed, eroticized Celtic goddess-figure returning in an endless cycle. How should we have a beer with her? How should I (or the reader) see her as accessible, readily understood, just like us? To my mind, a writer who makes such figures clear in their nature and motivation is failing his work, even if he or she makes the book ‘easier’.

I love, and often cite, a line from Walter Bagehot: “We must not let in daylight upon magic.” We aren’t supposed to see certain things too clearly, have them explained too precisely. (A reason I have trouble with fantasy derived from dice-rolling games.) But I apply the line to more than the supermatural. It seems to me to resonate also with regard to any work that walks back into the past. Too much daylight, too complete an explanation, is a failure.

Hilary Mantel’s language does a good job of addressing this, even if she’s at pains to present her Cromwell as a ‘new man’, allowing readers to see him as a figure at the doorstep of the modern. Mary Renault was very good at injecting strangeness into her Greek novels. (“There is only one journey that all men make. They go forth from the Mother and do what men are born to do, till she stretches out her hand and calls them home.” That’s from memory, decades ago, and still gives me chills – I may have it a bit wrong. If someone has The King Must Die to hand, do correct me. If you haven’t read it, do!)

My friend Cecelia Holland, especially in her earlier, brilliant historical fictions, is a master of this effect: offering us that feeling of strangeness in the long-ago, in characters with a world-view alien to our own.

I am endlessly wrestling with these issues in my work, looking to balance them. The familiar and the strange, intersecting with each other.

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize a few hours ago, for Bring Up the Bodies, a book I greatly admire. I reviewed it for the Globe and Mail back in May: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/bring-up-the-bodies-by-hilary-mantel/article4106421/

You do need to read Wolf Hall first (even if the publishers say you don’t) but that’s possibly even better, and also won the Man Booker.There’s a profile of Mantel in the New Yorker this week, by the way. Success came late, and deservingly.

Along with a few others, I don’t essentially agree (as a writer) with this approach to treating the inner lives of real people, but I’d worry about my responses as a reader if I let that stop me from appreciating excellence on this scale.

For a treatment of history and real lives (rather more recent history, even more chillling than the dangerous court of Henry VIII) I have been recommending Laurent Binet’s HHhH. The odd title is an acronym for ‘Himmler’s Brain is Called Heydrich’, which was apparently widely used at the time in Berlin … and the book treats the Czech assassination of Heydrich. Binet shares my resistance to appropriating the thoughts and feelings of historical figures – but takes an utterly different approach to dealing with this. It is a exceptional book about an incident too little known outside the Czech Republic.

The small church where the assassins and their fellows were trapped is now a memorial, and the crypt below it where most of them died can be visited. It is deeply moving, with a very well done explanation of the context and the event in the room up above. I’d put it very high on any list for visitors to Prague. And Binet’s book is a superb, distinctive telling of the story.

Here are two photos from there, SS Cyril and Methodius Church, a walk from Wenceslas Square, towards the river.

This is where the Czechs were trapped and eventually killed themselves with their last bullets. The window is where the Nazis tried to send in tear gas and then water in an attempt to flood the crypt. At lower right is the tunnel the trapped men started in an attempt to get through to the sewers. Tributes and memorials fill it. There are bullet holes everywhere.

Busts of Gabcik and Kubis, the men parachuted in from England to kill Heydrich. They deserve to be better known. So do the victims of Lidice, the village site of the Nazis’ most vicious reprisal.

I am sometimes, inexplicably, accused of being insufficiently sober and judicious. Often, this involves puns. Over on Twitter someone started a very funny hashtag called #archaicfilms with retitlings of flicks to fit ancient themes. Like (a favourite) Acropolis Then, or Of Mycenae Men, or Never Say Nebuchadnezzar Again (!) or Sundial M For Murder … have a look if you are on Twitter.

This all made me very happy. And reminded me of a similar game when we lived in France in 2004-5 where, with some friends, we started doing Geriatric Rock Songs, riffing on the real titles in that way. The guilty accomplices were Martin Levin, Books Editor of the Globe, Neil Randall of U of Waterloo, my brother Rex, and my son Sam, but I did all the ones that you find funniest below, okay?

Yes, I am soberly and judiciously determined to brighten all your Mondays with a few of these, because I dug back into my email folders and found the exchanges. You are, of course, warned. Herewith, some geriatric song titles:

You Can’t Always Remember What You Want

Total Attack of the Heart

Every Breath You Took

One Less Cup of Coffee

Walking on Empty

Abraham, Martin, and Whatsisname (love that one)

Adam Raised His Cane

Penny Lame

Teeth In a Bottle

The Shape I’m Out Of (that’s Martin, a major fan of ‘The Band’)

Shufflin’ Jack Flash

Bound For the Home (Simon & Garfunkle’s last reunion?)

The Needle and the Sweater Done

I’ve a Rocker

and a particular favourite, from Neil, this variation of the Byrd’s immortal ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’

Turn

And no, I am not apologizing. Can’t make me!

No editing this week, as I wait on Catherine. I’ve filled the week with meetings, accordingly. One of the good things this time around is we are way ahead with our cover. My American publishers, Roc, took charge of the design, used the same artist as for the last few (Larry Rostant) and I absolutely love the cover for River of Stars … how it echoes the one for Under Heaven, which just about everyone adored. The monumental figure chosen (with guidance from my editor there, Susan Allison) is perfect for the book. You can see it up top here, of course, or larger on Bright Weavings in the art gallery section.

I’m working on the Acknowledgements for River of Stars. I read an essay earlier this year (someone might find it and link?) that was an irritated assault on the very idea of acknowledgements. One aspect was the notion that a writer’s family and friends really don’t need citing in great numbers, nor does the music one listened to while writing. And there was a pretty funny riff noting that sometimes the writer is just bragging: ‘I want to thank my friends Rihanna and Margaret Atwood for support during many coffee sessions and twitter PMs, along with the always-loyal David Bowie and Junot Diaz.’

Right. Having said this, I still find my own Acknowledgements important for each book, and I spend some time on them. And, as it happens, I am one of those readers interested in the acknowledgements of other writers. (David Bowie? Loyal? Wow!)

For me the starting point is the writers and books that keyed my research. The trick is trying to balance steering readers to the works that were most useful, letting them chase down the material, without making a novel sound like a dissertation. The reality for me is that every book is built on a scaffolding of reading and correspondence and note-taking over a long period of time. It feels proper to show my appreciation for the books and people who are central to that.

Beyond that, we get into ‘you didn’t build that yourself’. Yes, of course, a writer writes his or her books, and usually in an intense and solitary way (not always, but usually?). The very stresses associated with that make it even more important if an author was braced and backed up by people in their lives. There is also a difference between a manuscript on a writer’s desk or hard drive, and a book that can be bought in a store (or downloaded). Production, packaging, editing, marketing … some writers are now doing this alone. Some of us are graced with publishing colleagues who put a lot of passion and skill into bringing the book to  readers. It seems ungracious (un-Canadian?) not to name at least some of them.

On the other hand, I am going to refrain from acknowledging the day-by-day support of my very good friend Derek Jeter, especially the morning after he broke his ankle and the Yankees of 2012 probably died.

On the other other hand, here’s a photo…

Bright, blue sky autumn morning here. Leaves are turning, which is always wonderful. Watched the Yankees lose in extra innings last night (it would be so easy to cheer for the improbable Orioles if I hadn’t been born a Yankee fan and my mother wasn’t cheering for them so hard!). Also watched a feisty VP debate showcasing very different styles, over and above very different views.

That made me think (segue alert!) of styles in social media. I hope it is clear I am joking when I ‘blame’ people for my being on Twitter now, or shifting the Journal to this sleeker format. I am too stubborn to really be made to do these things against my will. At the same time, my ambivalence as to aspects of online interaction is real. I have a horror of being bland, and my friends know am not afraid to be silly/whimsical at times (puns!) but people vary so widely in their expectations or imaginings of a writer (for example) that getting elements of ‘the real person’ can be disconcerting.

So I was very serious on Twitter as to my contempt for the Taliban shooting of a 14 year old girl in the Swat Valley, and I have been wry about Paul Ryan and his ‘mistatement’ about his marathon prowess – and his two explanations that followed: 1. He ’rounded down’ from 4 hours+ to 2 hours and 50-some minutes and 2. He confused his own time with his brother’s. As someone with a sports background (and two brothers), I find these both hilarious and disturbing and I used the discovery that Laura and I were in Berlin last week during their marathon to do a riff on it, featuring my own (utterly fictitious) decision to enter and run. (Two hours, 21 minutes, my usual barefoot technique.)

But both of these posts, of course, take things into the ‘real me’ and into humour and politics … and that will inevitably not work for every reader. (One person wondered if my account had been hacked.) On the other hand, way back when (more than 12 years ago now!) I resisted Deborah Meghnagi’s urgings that I let her start up Bright Weavings because I found author-sites too self-indulgent, hyperfocused on their books. So it appeals to me to cast a wider net with social media, including this journal.

We’ll see how it plays out. I do plan to have the journal remain a window in to the way books are made and eventually to let readers who are not in the cities I visit get a bit of the flavour (I’m Canadian, it isn’t flavor!) of a tour.

State of play right now is this: Catherine Marjoribanks, my really splendid copy-editor is at work on River of Stars right now, turning it into a book of seafood recipes and … er, she’s doing her necessary, hyper-vigilant thing with name forms, punctuation, and other critical elements. She also makes a full character list, from which I will prepare the list of major characters.

I get this version back in about two weeks and then begin being harried by the equally important Sandra Tooze, who is in charge of production at Penguin Canada (who are handling this for everyone). Sandra needs me to turn it over faster that I ever want to turn it over, because I use that upcoming read through as my last chance to polish, not just to check what Catherine proposes, and I am just a tiny bit obsessive about the novels.

(Both these women did ‘guest posts’ on the Under Heaven tour journal, which can be found on Bright Weavings (link at top of this page) in the Forums.

In the meantime, in about four hours I meet with my friend and colleague Martin Springett, who always gets an early read of the books, as he is doing another map for me. He needs to deliver around when I finish with the copy-edited pages, so the map can go in the ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) which are slated to go out in January. (More on these in a later post.) Martin also did a guest post last time around, by the way.

Finally, a photo, to take advantage of what WordPress lets us do. I could do another piece of art, but this time I’ll link a shot taken during my talk/signing in Prague last week (for their release of Under Heaven).

No ‘Kanadsky’ jokes allowed! The bookstore is enormous, by the way, largest in central Europe they told me. On my left is the marketing manager from Argo, my Czech publisher. He introduced me, and translated – which may be why he looks stressed. It is a hard job.