HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-02-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1996 PAGE 5.
Arthur Black
An inspired
boob-oo
Pm thinking of writing a book.
That's a tactic more potential scribblers
should adopt bookwritingwise — they should
just think about it for a while. Say, five or 10
years.
Think of the forests we'd save! Thihk of
the vats of Murine we could divert to Third
World countries if, say, just half the books
that eventually wind up in the Remainders
Bin never saw the light of day in the first
place.
But book writers aren't like that. Hope
springs eternal in the heart of the average
hack. Take John Creasey. Now here was a
guy who simply couldn't take a hint.
Away back in 1918 he mailed his first
literary effort — a mystery thriller called The
Men Who Died Laughing — off to the
publishers. The publishers nearly died
laughing. They sent the manuscript back
almost immediately. "Hated it" the editors
explained cordially in a note. "Please don't
write again."
But Creasey .did. Three months later he
finished a novel about his school days which
was also booted over the transom by every
publisher he mailed it to. Undaunted,
Creasey went on to pen Captain of the Fifth,
The Mysterious Mr,, Rocco, Mystery at
Mamby House, The Flying Turk and Dazzle
The lighter side
of travelling
This winter having been somewhat harder
than the majority of those that we as
Canadians have had to suffer aver the past
decade or so, I thought I might steer away
from admonitions and the like and look at
the lighter side of life for a little while, if
only to take our mirlds off the fact that
spring is still a few weeks away.
We have all had rather traumatic things
happen to us when we have been travelling
in other countries, but you have to admit that
there are moments where a good laugh is the
only way to react. I have had my quota and I
would like to share a few of them with you.
First of all, English speaking people have
this tendency, when in a country whose
language is not known to them, to believe
that, if you only raise your voice when you
are speaking English, the natives will
immediately begin to understand you. The
Americans are the worst, but Canadians and
British are among the adherents.
I was standing in a market in Italy one day
when an American tourist came up and said
something to one of the vendors. The latter
shook his head whereupon the tourist
addressed all and sundry in a loud voice.
"How much are the oranges?" Again no
reply.
I heard all this from a bit of a distance so I
am cled over to see if I could be of any help.
The tourist saw me coming and, instead of
asking if I spoke English, literally shouted at
me the same question.
When the ringing had stopped in my ears,
and the Red Bombers — all in less than two
years.
And all turned down by publishers
everywhere.
Incredibly, John Creasey never lost hope,
he scribbled night and day, week in and
week out for seven straight years, piling up a
world record 743 rejection slips.
Finally, in 1925, a publisher took pity on.
Creasey and published his latest effort.
Perhaps Creasey knew something 'the
experts' didn't. He went on to author another
564 books and every one of them got
published.
Indeed, a writer shouldn't lose a lot of
sleep over a few rejection slips. Daniel
Dafoe had his book turned down half a
dozen times before one publisher decided to
take a chance on that wacky novel the world
came to know as Robinson Crusoe.
Vancouver writer Lawrence Gough had
his first book turned down by every
publisher in North America. On an impulse,
he bundled the bedraggled manuscript off to
one of the biggest publishers in Britain.
They not 'only bought it, they commissioned
nine more books from him.
But then Gough had one indispensable
talent — he comes up with good titles.
Not every author does. I think the title an
author chooses is almost as important as the
manuscript he turns in. Listen to• some of
these titles culled from the Best Seller Lists
a couple of weeks ago: The Lost World, The
Hundred Secret Sense, The Piano Man's
4 ' I asked the vendor in Italian what the
oranges cost, got an answer and promptly
wrote it on a piece of paper. The tourist
looked at it, took my pencil and wrote "six"
on it. I showed it to the vendor; he put six in
a sack, wrote the price down on the same
paper, got the money, gave change and the
transaction was completed. I have to admit
that, at the time of such shouting, my
English tends to disappear.
Did you ever notice how much people try
to carry on with them when they board an
aircraft? They are told that they are restricted
to one piece of hand luggage but that does
not deter most travellers one iota.
Definitions of hand luggage seem to include
everything just short of a steamer trunk and
what they do not carry in their hand, they put
into their pockets.
'. one fellow who sat behind me had a coat
that was so heavy with his belongings that
he could hardly lift it up into the luggage
rack. All this should come as no surprise as
when is the last time you heard a stewardess
tell a passenger that his "hand luggage" was
too big to bring on board. The fact is that a
safety factor is built in when calculating the
total weight of the carry-on luggage. If it
were not, we might never get the plane off
the ground before we ran out of runway.
I was sitting in the airport at Frankfurt,
Germany, when a man came up to me and
asked me in very broken German if I had
change for a 5 mark note (worth about $5). I
said no and suggested that he go to the
nearest bank on the next floor.
This took quite a bit of time since I also
agreed to look after his bag while he went to
get the change. After he left I got the thought
that it might contain a bomb or something
Daughter, Game Misconduct, Chretien: The
Will To Win.
Every one of those titles is a bit of a tease.
Each one makes me want to pull back the
front cover and find out what's inside.
But not every book title makes the grade. I
know all about embarrassing book titles. I'm
the guy who, several years ago, penned a
modest little tome investigating the history
of one of the great fur trading outposts in
Canada — Old Fort William, near Thunder
Bay.
There were doubtless a lot of clever,
dynamic, gripping titles I might have called
my book, but I opted for the clean, spare no-
nonsense title of: A History of Old Fort
William.
I mean, who could screw that up?
Answer: the master of ceremonies at an
Awards Banquet in Toronto, who asked a
roomful of people to please welcome
"Arthur Black, author of "A History of Old
Fat William".
Titles. You want to be very careful picking
your titles. We all know the British are
animal lovers, but who could have foreseen
the incredible demand for a tiny volume that
was published last year. It was a paperback,
quite thin, and could appeal only to
birdwatchers — and a select group of
birdwatchers at that. And yet it has sold out
four times over. Personally, I credit the
success to the title of the bird book.
It's called Great Tits In Britain.
Now that's what I call an inspired boob-oo.
but, at any rate, he returned before any
explosion took place. He thanked me most
profusely, saying "Danke schoen" about five
times.
Since he seemed to want to talk in spite of
his limited German, I asked him where he
was from. He replied "Vancouver." -I
immediately switched to English and the
conversation went much more smoothly
from that point on. It turned out he was an
immigrant to Canada and spoke English with
a heavy accent but even at that his English
was much better than his German.
By and large Italians are rather loquacious
people. Sitting in a train compartment
without carrying on a conversation with
other travellers is not really in the books.
I got on a train in Verona one time which
would take me to Inssbruck in Austria and
from there with a couple of changes to my
home in St. Gall, Switzerland. There was
only one young fellow in the train. He did
not say a thing to me for the first few
minutes until, that is, a newspaper vendor
came by and I bought an Italian paper to
read. The young traveller immediately
exclaimed, "Thank goodness you can speak
Italian. I thought I was going to have to take
the trip without being able to speak to
anybody."
He need not have worried. As the train
made its way toward the Austrian border,
other Italians got on and the conversation
was perpetual. One of the travellers was a
young girl who was going to work at a hotel
in Austria. She didn't speak any German and
my original friend checked with everybody
in the compartment to see if they were going
over the border. It soon became clear that I
Continued on page 6
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
A matter of trust
I trust you.
Of all human characteristics, this is the
one I think is the most important, and
perhaps, sometimes the hardest to have. An
ability to trust is an essential component to
our development as caring beings, yet trust
the wrong person and it can tear you to
pieces. It is the utmost betrayal.
In most regards trust is something that has
to be, and should be, earned. Once we have
it, it's the best medicine for a healthy
relationship. From young to old, without
trust, you are alone. Without trust loving
couples are shaded by a cloud of jealousy
and hostility.
Children earn trust by being honest, by
proving they are reliable. We all know of
youths who get themselves into trouble, then
lie to cover their tracks. When it happens too
often, and mom and dad get tired of the tug
of war between fact and fiction, the wall of
credibility crumbles and homelife is built on
a foundation of mistrust.
Parents, however, are also capable of
destroying faith. Young children are born to
trust, but too many broken promises and bad
examples will eventually cut through even
the most ingenuous heart, leaving a wound
too deep to heal.
Trust once obtained, then lost, is hard to
recover, but in time, with someone who
means a good deal to us, it can be. Most
want to believe in the best of people,
particularly those for whom we care, and
are keen to restore the faith we once had.
Less likely are we to so readily stand
behind a more casual acquaintance, these
days. I recall as a child, that in getting to
know someone, trust was assumed unless
they proved otherwise. Today, however, we
tread cautiously with new faces, only putting
our trust or faith in a stranger when there is
no other choice.
Avis Ottey may have not particularly,
cared for her daughter's new boyfriend, but'
she welcomed him into her home and at her
dinner table. Her toleriince and her
hospitality were repaid in violence. Avis's
two daughters, Marsha, 19, and Tamara, 16,
were slaughtered in their Toronto-area home
last August. Marsha's boyfriend, Rohan
Ranger is a suspect along with his cousin,
Adrian Kinkead.
According to The Toronto Star, Avis early
in the investigation said what haunted her
most was that her daughters' killer was a
friend or visitor to her home. "What would
they do if they faced me on the street? Could
they look at me?"
I have to wonder how people, who see
such a blatant disregard for their sinceiity
and warmth ever feel totally secure?
think of someone causing a family such
pain, after they open their home to him is
incomprehensible.
I, also, can't help but wonder what could
have happened to this person, and so many
others it seems, that he can be so little
affected by another's kindness?
Without trust, we'd be a wary lot. It is
paranoid to distrust everyone you meet, and
in order to develop close relationships we
have to let down our guard from time to
time. Sadly there are those like Ranger who
remind us we can be too trusting.
International Scene
By Raymond Canon