Just a quick note to say the English tour was wonderful; I loved the Watermill, a crisp clear day where we saw swans and other waterbirds. The venue itself was beautiful. Everywhere I went I found an interesting place and people, but I’ll write more when I’m back in Chicago. Right now I’m in Crimea, with my cousin who’s a Peace Corps volunteer. We spent the day hiking in an old cave city that dates back 1400 years, used successively by Mongol invaders, Jews, and Crimean Tatars. I’ll write more when I get home, and post pictures then as well. The people are lovely but there’s no money here for infrastructure; everyone builds their own houses out of local rock, so it looks as the American West must have done in the 1850′s–mud roads, everything in partial construction. It’s wonderful to see my cousin, who’s working in a library with Crimean Tatars–and learning Russian–a daunting language.
Crimea
Getting Ready for the Road
I’m trying to pack, trying to pull myself together for the road. I suffer from separation anxiety, and the further I’m going, the longer I’ll be gone, the greater the angst. My dog isn’t helping. She went into the back room where I’d set out my suitcases, sniffed them, then went back to the main bedroom where she has curled her big body into a tiny melancholy ball.
I remember when flying was exciting for all the good reasons. When I first moved to Chicago, I had a calico cat who traveled with me. In those halcyon days, we didn’t have security systems, and we didn’t have to strip naked, and put our clothes in bins where dirty shoes and diapers recently resided. My cat was so mellow she used to wrap herself around my neck, like a muffler, and I’d carry her carrier with my suitcase to the gate. Any number of times, the flight attendants would be so charmed that they’d take her into first class with them and feed her on shrimps and caviar while I sat in steerage–but in those days, steerage included a lovely little meal, nutritionally balanced.
For this trip, which includes 14 days in the UK and four in Crimea, visiting my intrepid cousin Barb who’s in the Peace Corps, I have bought a set of frilly pink undies in case we have to strip that deep.
Once I’m on the road, I know all will be well, but until then–insomnia and angst reign! Excelsior. More anon.
PotPourri, including a chapter from the new book
I leave on February 13 for my UK tour of Hardball. Kerry Hood,
Kerry Hood chaperoning Sara on the Cam
who is the Toscanini of publicity, has me covering as much of England as we can manage in a week. I hope that I’ll see some of the UK readers who’ve been posting here along the way.
New Book
I love the titles people have been suggesting for the new book. 
I think I have enough to go on, and will let you know before I leave for England which one seems to work best.
James Thurber once wrote, “The Beaver is a Working Fool, Who Went to Manual Training School,” an absurd couplet that has clung to me all these years because I seem to be a working fool. I finished the book last week, after rewriting the middle six chapters twice and the ending five times, and I am sort of in a blur right now.
I’m posting a chapter here, in which, V I is indulging in her favorite hobby, breaking & entering. I’ve had interesting protest letters on V I’s hobby–”You think you’re so moral,” they tend to read, “and yet your character breaks the law.” And all I can say is, “right you are.”
Chapter 34
NightWork
We drove down to Club Gouge in Petra’s Pathfinder, Tim in the front seat with my cousin, me drowsing in the back. I’d collected my picklocks from my car’s glove compartment, and locked my handbag, with Chad’s black armor mitt, in my trunk: I planned to drive straight to the Cheviot labs in the morning.
“So, is this, like your first break-in?” Petra asked Tim. “It’s my—I don’t know—do I count the time you broke into my apartment when I forgot my keys, Vic?” She looked over her shoulder at me as she spoke and the Pathfinder fishtailed.
“Keep your eyes on the road: I don’t want it to be my last,” I squawked. Petra managed to straighten out just before colliding with an oncoming bus.
“Do you two gals think because I was a soldier I’m some sort of outlaw?” Tim Radke asked. “I mean, the boss here thinks I’m a hacker and you, you think I’m a break-in artist?”
“I’m the outlaw in this party,” I said, just as Petra started to say, Oh, gosh, me and my motor-mouth. “Unless you have skills you’re keeping to yourself, I’m the one who can pick a padlock in thirty seconds, using the lip of a sardine can. Petra, darling Petra, put your damned phone away or let Tim or me drive, okay?”
“Gosh, Vic, I was just—
Tim took the phone from her. “I didn’t survive five years in Iraq to die in a Chicago car crash.”
“Okay, okay, you two bullies. I’ll get back at you, see if I don’t.”
Without seeing her face, I knew she was giving her exaggerated pout, the look she assumed when she knew she’d been caught in the wrong. We were taking her car because neither my Mustang nor Tim’s old truck handled well on these slush-filled streets, but I was beginning to realize that a good car isn’t as important as a focused driver.
When we got to Club Gouge, I had Petra drive slowly past so I could see if Olympia had any security in place. The fire damage had been confined to the interior, so no boarding alerted you to the damage. Only the empty parking lot told passersby the club was shut, that, and a message in the box by the front door used to announce upcoming acts. Tonight it read: “Club Gouge is closed for repairs. Stay tuned for our grand re-opening next week,” which was clever, because no matter when the repairs were complete, the grand re-opening would happen next week.
No one seemed to be watching the club, either from the alley, or my own forlorn post up on the L platform. I told Petra to park up the street and to stay in the car with Tim while I worked the lock. “If I holler, take off and leave me on my own.”
Tim got out of the car with me. “I learned a thing or two about keeping a lookout when I was in the Army. If you’re going to be an outlaw to try to help Chad, at least I can keep watch.”
Petra decided that meant she should join us, as well. She thought she needed to skulk, lurking behind L girders. then dashing to the next open space. It was Radke who told her she was attracting attention.
“Act normal. Act like you got a right to be here,” he said. “It’s the only way if a patrol—a cop, I mean—rides by.”
A keypad worked the front lock, but Petra had never been given the combo. The side door, which opened onto the parking lot, had a keyhole that sat flat against the panel. It was tricky, but not impossible—although my sore palm enhanced the challenge.
While I worked the lock, Tim disappeared into the shadows behind us. I trusted him. Of course I trusted him. Even if he had a combat medal, he didn’t own expensive clothes: he wore a faded Army parka, not a “soft overcoat.” Still, I was relieved when the tongue of the lock slipped back and he reappeared, a shadow sliding up to the door.
While I held the tongue flat, he slid a metal strip along the door edge and pried it open. When I tried to turn on the hall lights, nothing happened. The building was bitterly cold: Olympia, or perhaps the city, had shut down the power to lessen the risk of the fire restarting, or to save money until construction started.
As we moved deeper into the dark building, the acrid stench of charring began to choke us. Charred and frozen at the same time, what a gruesome end. I pulled my muffler over my nose and mouth. I didn’t want to think about what poisons the fire had released: the synthetic fabric in the curtains, the varnish on the stage floor, the polymers in the wire casings, all those must be grade-A carcinogens when they burn. I imagined my lungs coated with some kind of black grease that would never come out.
“Not all the perfumes of Arabia.”
“Say, what, Vic?” Petra demanded.
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. Bad sign.
I shone my flash up the corridor. The shadows made ghastly shapes—the wires looked like the tentacles of a giant mantis. I shuddered, but moved forward. Petra was subdued, even clutching Tim’s arm as we edged our way to the back of the stage.
The Body Artist’s computer was still there, still attached to the web cams and the plasma screens. I held the flashlight while Tim unhooked the connectors. We were out of the club and back in Petra’s Pathfinder within ten minutes.
Petra turned north onto Ashland, moving at a fast clip, talking in disjoint sentences: the adrenaline rush made her higher than a fistful of speed.
“Stop!” Tim shouted.
“I’m just saying—“
He grabbed the wheel from her and shoved his foot on the brake. We stopped inches from a silver SUV that was blocking the intersection at Carroll. I twisted to look behind us and saw a Mercedes sedan pull up. As I looked, Rodney began to work his bulky figure from the passenger side.
“On three, you two get out and run as fast and far as you can. I’m getting into the front seat. No argument, just go!”
My gun was in my left hand as I spoke. Tim had his hand on the door handle. On my count, he jumped from the passenger seat. I opened the rear door. Petra sat frozen in the driver’s seat. I yanked open the her door; Tim ran around the back and pulled her out.
Men were climbing from the SUV and heading toward us. I fired over their heads and Tim and Petra took off down a side street, away from us. Someone shot back at me, but I was crouching behind the Pathfinder’s open door. I climbed into driver’s seat, put the car into gear, twisted the wheel and floored the accelerator.
The wheels spun on ice, then grabbed and I crashed into the silver SUV’s left headlight. The impact knocked me against the steering wheel, but I backed up, gears whining. Someone was firing at my windshield. The glass splintered but I bore down on the shooter, and he fell backwards, away from my mad driving.
I wrenched the wheel around again and managed a U away from the shooter, toward Rodney and his sedan. I slithered around him, but just as I thought I was home free, he shot out the Pathfinder’s rear tires. I bumped down the road on the rims. In the rearview mirror, I saw Rodney get back into the Mercedes and come after me.
Oncoming traffic honked at me, or at the sedan blocking the right lane, but no one stopped to see what was going on. Too much MYOB, just like Mrs. Murdstone had said at Mona’s apartment this afternoon.
I jumped from the car at Lake and sprinted toward the L steps. I’d almost made it when a figure in black outran me and pulled me down. I rolled over, got into a crouch, gun out, but someone else came from behind and hit me on the side of the head.
Liu Xiaobo, Prisoner of Conscience
On December 23, 2009, the People’s Republic of China condemned the poet Liu Xiaobo for the crime of “inciting subversion of state power.” The trial lasted less than three hours, and the defense was not permitted to present evidence. Two days later, on December 25, Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights.
Mr. Liu’s alleged crime was the co-authoring of Charter 08, which, inter alia, advocates free speech and the end of single party rule.
The PEN website has complete details of Mr. Liu’s harassment before his arrest and the concomitant harassment of other signatories to Charter 08.
As a member of PEN, I am urging people to write on Mr. Liu’s behalf. Letters should be sent to the Chinese Ambassador to your government. For Americans, the details are: His Excellency, Mr. Zhou Wenzhong; Ambassador of the PRC to the United States; 2201 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; Washington, DC 20007; Fax: 202.588.9760.
In England, the Ambassador is Madam Fu Ying; 49-51 Portland Place London W1B 1JL; Fax:020-7436 9178.
In Canada, the Ambassador is The Honorable Lan Lijun; 515 ST.PATRICK STREET, OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA, KIN 5H3; Fax: 001-613-7891911 7891414.
My experience in writing on behalf of prisoners of conscience is that fax is the most reliable way to communicate, but if you are more comfortable with email, you can go to the embassy websites to get email information.
Daybreak by Liu Xiaobo
over the tall ashen wall, between
the sound of vegetables being chopped
daybreak’s bound, severed,
dissipated by a paralysis of spirit
what is the difference between the light and the darkness
that seems to surface through my eyes
apertures, from the seat of rust
I can’t tell if it’s the glint of chains
in the cell or the god of nature
behind the wall
daily dissidents
makes the arrogant
sun stunned to no end
daybreak a vast emptiness
you in a far place
with nights of love stored away
Revels
Every January for more than 5o years, people in the University of Chicago community have tried to lighten winter’s bleakness with a musical revue. For many years, the witty Robert Ashenhurst and Ned Rosenheim provided words and music in a Noel Coward/academic vein. More recently, Andy Austen, by day ABC-TV’s courtroom artist, by night a playwright, has written scripts that are both clever and charming–and often very funny.
We’re lucky to have the talent in the community to make it a good show, even though the stage is tiny. Sara Stern is an exceptional actor and takes a leading role; Dr. Philip Hoffman, a senior oncologist, plays a wealthy society matron, and musicologist Noel Taylor pulls it all together in only 4 weeks of rehearsals.
It’s one of my pleasures to take part as well, and over the last five years, my character –whether an evilly scheming Morgan LaFey or a stern police officer–sings an aria that proves she has more ambition than skill. This year, I play a fundraiser with a recalcitrant daughter and my aria, sung to the tune of Habanera, is a paean to “L’argent!” (L’argent stays true when lovers flee/when kids behave to you ungratefully…)
The show takes place in the Quadrangle Club and is open to the public; details below.
P.S. Thanks for all the wonderful title suggestions. I’m sifting through them as I work on rewrites!
Related event
What’s In a Name?
I haven’t posted anything new for awhile, because I’ve been working flat out to finish the draft of my new novel before I head off to the UK on tour. I finished the draft this afternoon, with more of a whimper than a bang. I lay down for an hour–it’s physically strenuous, writing like a madwoman, and then went to rehearse for the Revels, which take place the last weekend in January. This year I play a fundraiser who sings the “Habanera” song from Carmen, warbling “L’argent,” instead of “L’Amour.”
THE NEW BOOK NEEDS A NAME!
My working title is Body Work, but I’m not a hundred percent happy with it. Book names are funny. Some come with the idea, as happened with Hardball and Bleeding Kansas. Others come after the book is finished, like Bloodshot and Killing Orders. Body Work–I’m not so sure.
The action of the book is about an Iraqi vet who suffers from PTSD. He starts having violent outbursts at a nightclub, and, when a woman who also goes to this particular nightclub is shot and killed, the vet is arrested. V I Warshawski is hired by the vet’s parents to clear his name. At the center of the story is a performance artist whose act consists of appearing naked on stage and letting people draw on her. She’s enigmatic, a figure of mystery. She’s not part of the main action and yet her presence galvanizes all the disparate people who make up the book…the head of a Ukrainian organized crime syndicate…a civilian defense contractor doing business in Iraq…an immigrant family whose daughter is the person murdered at the nightclub.
With this small bit of information, try your hand at a title. Remember, the V I titles are two words, with a double entendre. If you come up with a title that works for the book, you will get a walk-on character named for you.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to anyone who’s able to open their eyes enough to look at a computer today. I was way over my limit last night but finally, at two p.m. on New Year’s Day, in Chicago’s 7 degrees, I’m ready to look at the world if not to smile at it.
Because it’s the new year, and we all want it to be a good one, I thought I’d start with sex. Writing about it, to be more precise. We’ve all heard Elmore Leonard’s dictum about leaving out the stuff the reader skips many many times–but I almost always skip sex scenes. Yes, he/she took off her/his clothes. They got naked, they got into bed/backseat of car/faux-skin rug in front of fire/billiard table, and heaved about like demented hippopotami for a bit and then-can we get back to the story?
I also skip sex scenes as a writer. Every year, when the Bad Sex in Fiction Award is announced, I thank my writing muse for steering me clear of any chance of being publicly humiliated at the In and Out Club.
This past December, Philip Roth was shortlisted for The Humbling, in which an aging actor “converts” a lesbian to heterosexuality: “This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze.”
The ultimate winner was Jonathan Littell, for a passage in The Kindly Ones. “Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus…”
In writing about sex, one should ask the same question about anything one’s including. Is there a reason to have it there to begin with? Narrative flow? Plot? Character development? Fun? And if there is a reason, how do you do it well?
For my money, Joyce (or, according to some scholars, his wife, Norah) does it best in Ulysses, where Molly says, “He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower…and I drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
On the other hand, you can’t beat Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for brevity. “The Duke returned from the wars today and did pleasure me in his top boots.”
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, painted by Charles Jervais
I hope 2010 is a year of health and peace for all who visit this site.
Entr’acte
As the year winds down, it’s time to consider the highpoints and hand out kudos to top performers.
Best text messager: Andy House, who drove his $2 million Bugatti Veyron into a lagoon because he was texting at the wheel and what was left of his brain was allegedly distracted by a low-flying pelican. The link’s headline says “$1 million,” but other sources put the price at around $1.8 million.” Although–what are a few zeroes among friends?
Best explanation of why we need to have our handguns with us AT ALL TIMES. The gun enthusiast’s website, Frontsite goes through how to do just this. What about when you go to the bathroom? their newsletter asks. A question that has often worried me. And the answer is both logical and practical.
“If your gun is in a holster attached to your belt, keep it there. When you pull up your pants, the gun will still be there. Where you get into trouble is when you are not using a holster and set your gun aside in the bathroom. THIS is at least an embarrassment and at worst a tragedy waiting to happen. Do people leave guns in bathrooms? ALL THE TIME simply because they set their gun aside rather than keeping it in the holster or (if not wearing a holster) placing it on top of their dropped trousers between their legs…Private citizens, law enforcement, and government agents leave their guns in hotels, airports, and restaurants on a regular basis… DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. The result of your carelessness will cost you and can be tragic.” 
Or ludicrous, depending on your sensibility.
And, while we’re on the topic, Most creative marketing plan of the year goes to beer vendors at the Washington, DC, pro football stadium.
Best book moment of the year: Amazon’s decision to remove some 57000 authors it deemed riské or offensive, from its rankings and search engine. These included most LGBT authors, including James Baldwin. Just a computer glitch, they assured us after 18000 people signed up for a boycott.
Best politician of the year. This is such a crowded field I wouldn’t presume to decide, especially since I’m biased in favor of my own Rod Blagojevich, who shook down a children’s hospital for campaign contributions, and wanted to put Barack’s Senate seat onto the market.
South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, flying to Argentina to see a lady friend, claimed he was hiking the Appalachian trail instead. The state recently fined him $73000 to cover the cost of using the state plane for the flight, which seems kind of cheap, but the cost of living is lower in the south.
Jenny Sanford, who decided to divorce Mark is much duller than Patti Blagojevich, who ate tarantulas on TV–she says she did it for her family.
And then, New Jersey, which is always stealing Chicago’s corruption thunder, gave us some Brooklyn rabbis and the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, involved in a money-laundering scheme so complex that V I Warshawski threw up her hands in despair over trying to unravel it. Suffice it to say that a yeshiva’s papers were taken as part of the evidence, and that human kidney trafficking played a role.
Please let me know the many wonderful stories I missed.
More Light
Chanukah begins at sundown on December 11. It’s a child’s holiday, with candles, songs, and, in the affluent west these days, presents. For adults, at least for me, it’s a bit more problematic–it’s a holiday that celebrates confusing things, the triumph of religion over reason, the cleansing of the Temple, the start of a theocracy not unlike current-day Iran’s.
Religion and politics in the Middle East in 167 BCE were just as complicated and deadly a combination as they’ve remained today. As David Brooks reports in the New York Times, many 2nd century BCE Jews embraced Greek culture, including elevating the power of reason over blind faith. Others were furious at the way in which science and art had taken the fundamentals out of that old time religion. And the Macabees belonged to this second group. When the Graeco-Syrian rulers took a step too far in defiling the Temple, the Macabees were able to rouse local opinion and begin a revolution against Syrian rule.
The history, with the restoration of the Temple, makes me proud, sad, appalled, breathstruck at the beauty and misery of it all. Yes, the lights burned again in front of the Holy of Holies, the sacrificial pigs were cleansed from the sacred space. But a century of enlightenment crashed to an end as religious rule was restored first with an iron, and then with an inept and corrupt fist. And within another 200 years, the Diaspora ushered in 2000 years of suffering, culminating in the Shoah. During those years, lighting Chanukah candles became a statement of courage. You put them in your window, even though that could invite the destruction of your home and the murder of your family, to show that you were not ashamed to be a Jew.
The parallels to American and Iranian religious fundamentalism are so pointed that I won’t dwell on them. (No, we don’t believe in evolution! Yes, climate change is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people! rousing statements by members of Congress, candidates for President, and ministers.)
Meanwhile, some people are trying to make political hay out of the Obamas’ invitation to a holiday party in honor of Chanukah. The Obamas invited 50 fewer people than did the Bushes–they must be dissing the Jews. They didn’t say “Happy Chanukah” on the invitation–unlike the Bushes, who put a Christmas tree on theirs.
This time of year exhausts me with its fights over who is holier than thou. On the Christian side of the aisle, a member of the Tea Bag Party is trying to put a law on California’s books requiring every public school in the state to force all children to sing Christmas carols. The proposed law includes an enforcement clause requiring the state to litigate against schools that don’t comply. California is sinking under its budget deficit, but surely it can find room to put Christmas Carol Inspectors on the rolls.
The only way I can cope with the season is to turn away from the history of bloodshed, the warfare over holiness, and focus on the lights: the flame on the candles, the twinkling of the Christmas decorations. More light. More and more light. And with it, as the US ramps up for year eight of its own Middle Eastern wars, as the desolation continues in Darfur,
in Congo, Zimbabwe, and in Gaza, may we please find some little flame of peace that we can blow on and turn into a true fire–not of zealotry, but of justice. And may the One who makes peace in the High Places grant peace to us all.
Kaddish, by Rex Sexton
A Quiet Week
in Lake Woebegone, Garrison Keillor’s home town, but not so much so in Chicago. We started with a gang of housebreakers who targeted our area. They would come to the front door; if anyone answered, they’d say they were looking for yard work. If no one answered, they’d hustle around to the back and break in through the second story windows–they even carried ladders with them. We haven’t seen them for a few days and don’t know if they were caught, or simply cleaned out our street and have moved on.
Two days ago, while walking my dog in the park south of the Museum of Science and Industry I came on a man torturing a dog. I called the University of Chicago security, since they usually come faster than city cops, but they said, out of their jurisdiction. By the time I actually spoke to a Chicago dispatcher, the man realized I was on the phone and had packed his dog up and taken off. I feel the kind of helpless rage you feel when you haven’t been brave enough to save a small creature in need–but I knew my golden retriever and I could not get close to a man with a tortured bull dog. I’m trying to find a direct line to the animal abuse unit at the Chicago Police so I can put it on speed dial if, Gd forbid, there is a next time.
And finally, while walking home with my dog this morning I managed to fall and impale myself on my cellphone. Somehow neither the phone nor I broke but I am badly bruised and will be pretty gimpy for a week or two. Meanwhile, my dog is definitely not Lassie: she thought the sight of me on the ground was hysterically funny. She snatched my hat from my head and began barking and lunging at me, daring me to try to catch her and get the hat back. When passers=by stopped to help, Not-Lassie tried to entice them into tug of war with the hat.
And that’s all the news from Lake Michigan. Don’t have a catchy paraphrase of Keillor’s tagline, but you get the point.
