Ruth Rendell

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Ruth Rendell turned 80 on February 17th. Her publishers threw a bash for her at the House of Lords, where she's a Labor Peer. She's still producing at least one novel a year, and they're better than what people half her age are writing - considering what Agatha Christie was producing at 80, Rendell's recent novels (as well as those of her good friend P.D. James, 89) are all the more remarkable. But surprisingly, despite 45 years of highly laudatory reviews from American critics, Ruth Rendell is less familiar to many American readers of British crime novels than are James (her only competition as "Queen of Crime"), Ian Rankin or Val McDermid. What a pity!

I'm known to some as "Ruth Rendell's #1 American Fan." My friends know it, and so do my co-workers. And though I haven't been able to get her to put it in writing, so does Ruth Rendell.

Ruth Rendell is my favorite writer - well, actually, there's one writer I like better than Ruth Rendell, and that's Ruth Rendell when she writes as Barbara Vine. I started reading her in the late 1980s (with a Vine, the first under that name, the Edgar Award-winning A DARK-ADAPTED EYE) and by the mid-1990s she had eclipsed all other writers for me, regardless of genre. News of a forthcoming Rendell book always sets in train several months of sweetly torturous anticipation, and this anticipation is ratcheted up even higher (if that's possible!) if the new book is a Barbara Vine.

Her 6th Vine novel, ASTA'S BOOK (published in the US as ANNA'S BOOK and now out-of-print here, dammit!) is my favorite of all her books, and has become just about my favorite book, period - at last count I've read it 13 times - it's become an annual tradition for me. It isn't unusual for me to read a new Rendell or Vine twice within the first year of publication, either, and at this point I've read several of my favorite Vines - A DARK-ADAPTED EYE, A FATAL INVERSION, THE HOUSE OF STAIRS and THE BRIMSTONE WEDDING - anywhere from three to five times each, or perhaps more; I've lost count. They're eminently readable and re-readable (in my humble opinion, at least).

Most of 2009 wasn't my favorite year, but Christmas came early for me in 2009 - on November 12th, in fact, at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado, where a dream came true for me: I met Ruth Rendell! She didn't know she was going to meet me, but when I introduced myself to her, she smiled with recognition at my name. And why not? Although there had been some correspondence between us in the past, within the weeks preceding that night she'd signed bookplates for me (via an internet buddy who arranged it), responded to an email, and, while at her publisher's offices in New York the week before, had personally inscribed a copy of her new book for me which had arrived three days previously (I'd begged an Advance Reader's Copy/Uncorrected Proof from someone at Scribner a month or two before, and they evidently remembered me while Rendell was in the offices - hence the surprise arrival of
I'd always promised myself that if I got the chance to meet her, I'd bring as many books as I could, particularly all the first editions I have of her early works - I made sure ahead of time that it was okay with Tattered Cover, and then shipped the books to the home of the friend I would be staying with. I didn't take them all to the signing, as it turned out, but I took a good many (all of the old ones, of course), and you've gotta hand it to Ruth Rendell, because she was very indulgent of this fan: she signed about 50 books for me that night!

(Added to what I already had - I've been collecting her books since the early '90s, remember), I now have close to 100 books signed by her - not only that, but when the London bookseller I usually order her new books from finally came through with her latest book after numerous delays and excuses such as "Ruth has been traveling..." (as if I didn't know) and what she would or wouldn't write as an inscription (I got so tired of their excuses that I finally emailed them in frustration "I'm sure if you 'll ask her to write something like 'To Philip Swan - It was nice to meet you at last in Denver,' I'm sure she'll be most obliging!" - I'm still imagining their chagrin when they saw her write the following:

She also signed several different copies of my beloved ASTA'S BOOK for me, including a newly-published Czechoslovakian edition my dear friend Vicki in New York had brought back from Prague only the week before, and which she Fed-Exed to me in Colorado - it arrived on the morning of the 12th and I was able to have Ruth Rendell sign it that evening - in fact, she hadn't even seen this edition yet since, as she told me, she no longer receives foreign editions of her books because she doesn't have the space for them. She usually signs her Barbara Vine novels "Ruth Rendell as," but in this instance, for obvious reasons, she also signed "Barbara Vine" - lucky me!

















I framed the picture taken of us together that evening, with the inscription "Sometimes the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true..." and sent it to her. I felt kind of funny about sending it, worried that maybe I was going just a tad overboard, but fans send authors things all the time, don't they? Anyway, she liked it very much and wrote me: "The package containing the photograph (beautifully framed) arrived yesterday. It's a very good photograph, isn't it?"

Yes, it sure is!

2009 Recap

Hard to believe that I made only one entry in 2009, on New Year's Day. But I was usually too preoccupied to write. The first six months of the year SUCKED - big-time. I almost lost my house, but thank goodness Suntrust Mortgage saved the day - all it took was a little communication from me. I watched the Inauguration with tears in my eyes (on the internet, because my cable was off at the time, though it turned out through no fault of mine!) because only the day before Suntrust had told me all was well, they were going to re-do my loan.

Then it turned out I hadn't cashed a number of paychecks from a temp agency I'd done some work for - I didn't know that they'd suspended my Direct Deposits (a normal procedure if you have too long a break between assignments), and since I only opened the pay envelopes when I needed a timesheet, the unopened envelopes just got tossed onto one of the many piles of unopened mail around my living-room and kitchen. The agency's accounting department contacted me about a couple of checks, and I soon found several more, all of which they replaced. It was a nice little temporary 'windfall' that helped me through a couple of months.

Sorting through all that mail was quite a project . . .

The second half of 2009 was much better - things had eased up financially, and in November I was able to make a five-day trip to Colorado, where I saw an old friend I hadn't seen in about a dozen years, and also got to meet my favorite author in the universe, Ruth Rendell, who traveled all the way from London to meet me. Okay, she didn't travel all that way just to meet me - she was making appearances to promote her newest book, and the last stop on the tour was Denver because her son lives near there. Because my friend Vicki in New York was going to be out of town, going to Colorado, where my friend Salha lives, turned out to be more practical. So Colorado it was. I'm so glad this came up when it did, because had Ruth Rendell made those appearances in the first half of the year, I simply wouldn't have been able to attend. She signed over 50 books for me, mostly her works from 1965 through the mid-80s, and with the signed copies I already had of her output since the mid-80s, my total of signed Ruth Rendell books is now at something like one hundred.

2009

Things may not have been great

In 2008 -

But they’re going to be fine

In 2009!

That's my new mantra, folks. I've been very quiet for several months - I was without a computer at home for several weeks' worth of that time, so posting wasn't convenient - nor, to be frank, have I had much good to say about anything - 2008 was not my favorite year, as my employment situation has become more critical (I'm not alone in this, I realize, but let's face it: when you're single and wake up at 3AM and start worrying about it, you ARE alone in it) and ended on a sad note with the deaths of a beloved uncle, aged 90 (my mother's brother-in-law, and the last of the aunts and uncles on that side of the family) and a dear friend who was only 4 years older than I.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everybody!

Twenty Years Ago Today

. . . I smoked my last cigarette. I remember where I went for breakfast that day: Dalt's - what I was reading: MR SKEFFINGTON, the movie I saw that afternoon: CROSSING DELANCEY. Getting dressed to go to a meeting that evening, I really wanted to smoke, and I thought, what the hell, nobody knows I quit today - I can stop off on my way, buy cigarettes, smoke this evening, and try again tomorrow. But by the time I was dressed and on my way, the urge was past.

I can't say that I had a lot of confidence I was going to make it, but somehow I did, and have continued smoke-free to this day. I used Nicorette gum for 4 days (available only by prescription in those days) and in the early days had the support of 12-Step meetings.

All addicts have a list of "Things I Might Just 'Use' Over" - they are the experiences of Life - death of a spouse or a parent or a pet, upheavals in lifestyle, etc.

Most of these have come to pass - I've lost both my parents over these 20 years, endured the deaths of several dear friends (one of whom I was with when he died), had to put two cats to sleep (I stayed with both during the process), as well as the death of a beloved aunt - at no time during any of these crises did I think about smoking a cigarette. For the past 3 years I've been dealing with employment problems. Some days it really sucks. I still enjoy watching people smoke, especially Bette Davis, though I can't say I care for the smell of it (when talking to people who are quitting smoking, I usually advise them against watching films from the 1930s through the 1950s (such as CASABLANCA and NOW VOYAGER) - they smoked like crazy in films during those years!

In all this time, only once have I actually been so close to lighting up that walking away from it took all my resolve: the morning of September 11th, 2001. I had moment of not really giving a damn. And then I thought, "If I smoke, it will be one more victory for them."

I didn't smoke. But the stress of 9/11 caused newscaster Peter Jennings to start smoking again - who knows? If he hadn't started up again, perhaps we wouldn't have lost him to lung cancer a few years later.

So, it isn't always easy. But today I'd have to choose between a pack of cigarettes or a gallon of gas - the prices of both have increased over 20 years!

Happy Birthday, Dad.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD. You'd be 90 today. You're missed very much.
Love from your son, your daughter, and your granddaughter.

BIRTHDAY

Here it is again - do they seem to come around faster as we get older?

I share my birthday with quite an impressive group of talented, creative, successful people in the Arts world:

Jacques Offenbach

Lillian Hellman

Gus Schilling

Errol Flynn

Gail Patrick

Terence Young

Audie Murphy

Chet Atkins

Martin Landau

Olympia Dukakis

Brett Halsey

Wendy Craig

Dan Greenburg

Stephen Frears

Brian Wilson

Anne Murray

Tina Sinatra

Lionel Richie

John Goodman

Vikram Seth

Cyndi Lauper

Chuck Wagner

Nicole Kidman

Maybe there's hope for me yet?

I've never gotten a birthday card from any of them, by the way. No matter - I'd rather have one from my parents, or from Aunt Lillian and Uncle Sam, but neither will happen again. I'm glad I saved the cards I received from them over the years.

That WIND is Back!!!

After an absence of two years or so, Gone With the Wind has made a reappearance in what is known as mass-market (or rack-sized) paperback format.

I’m a long-time GWTW fan and collector, and I hate to say this, but I don’t like it!

There have been many such paperback editions of Gone With the Wind published in the U.S. over the years, and I have most of them – several feature cover-art inspired by the famous film (the familiar “flaming love” motif depicting Rhett Butler/Clark Gable carrying an apparently-subdued Scarlett O’Hara/Vivien Leigh against the background of Atlanta in flames), others artists’ renderings of the characters bearing no resemblance to their film counterparts, and at least two which featured virtually no cover illustrations at all, just the book’s title and author.

The new one features an artists’ rendering of Rhett once again carrying Scarlett, but they’re full-figure this time, although half of Rhett’s head and one-third of Scarlett’s are off-cover – Pocket Books, once again GWTW’s publisher after more than 35 years, apparently wasn’t about to pay this time around to license the Gable/Leigh images from Turner Entertainment (although their 1960s paperbacks featured them). Previous paperback editions published by Pocket ran to 862 pages in length and were 7 ¼ high (the industry standard for paperback for decades) by about 1 ¼ inches thick – some of the editions reprinted by Avon Books from 1973 through 1993 were just shy of two inches thick, and the Warner Books reprint published in 1993 (which used the same 1,024-page pagination as the Avon edition) and recently phased-out was about 1 ¾-inches thick.. Pocket Books brand-new 2008 edition has been printed from newly-set type (well, do they still actually set type?) which expands the book’s pagination to a whopping 1,448 pages! And although at 6 ¾ inches in height it’s shorter than previous editions, it’s girth sets a record – 2 ³ /₄ inches – wider than any standard hardbound edition of the novel!

So what don’t I like about this new edition? Well, I’m not wild about that cover, for one thing – it’s more appropriate for a historical romance á la Rosemary Rogers than Margaret Mitchell, and will blend right in with the hundreds of similar covers that still grace many a “bodice-ripper” on store shelves. And somehow the book’s thickness makes it look awkward, almost too short (and it is shorter than the average paperback is these days – height for mass-market paperbacks has become variable these days, depending on the publisher’s whim). And while the thickness of the spine should have made it practical to show the book’s title horizontally, as

Gone

with the

Wind

they instead turned it on its side so that customers have to twist their necks to read the title (could this be an accommodation to at least one of the major chain bookstores who seem to spine as many books as possible, regardless of thickness, thus discouraging many booklovers from browsing and necessitating a trip to the information desk?). The only plus: Pocket is attempting to depict the book’s title as Margaret Mitchell intended it, with a lower-case “w” for "wind".

There’s some biographical data about Margaret Mitchell inside the front and rear covers on the book which is placed too close to the inner spine of the book to be read comfortably. Worse than that, it contains misinformation! I don’t like sloppy jacket-copy – supposedly there are people whose job it is to make sure that facts are checked inside and outside of a book – we’re informed here that Margaret Mitchell “began work on what her friends called ‘the great American novel.’ She showed the finished manuscript, all 1,037 pages of it, to a visiting New York publisher, and on June 10, 1936, Gone with the Wind was published.” Any fan even casually acquainted with the novel’s history knows that when Mitchell unwillingly presented her novel to Macmillan’s Harold Latham in 1935, it was anything but a “finished manuscript” of "1,037 pages" (which was actually the final page tally of Macmillan’s hardcover edition published over a year later) - he had to buy a suitcase in which to transport the disorganized manuscript, which resided in several manila envelopes that had been known over the years to prop up furniture in the apartments in which Mitchell resided with her husband, John R. Marsh – Latham recalled Mitchell warning him: “You may take it, but it’s incomplete, unrevised, there are several versions of some of the chapters, there is no first chapter. . . I hadn’t any intention of letting you or any publisher see it. I only wrote it for my own entertainment.” And Gone With the Wind’s publication date was June 30^th, 1936 – not June 10^th.

All of these facts could have been easily verified.

But there’s one more thing that’s very disappointing about this new edition, something I’ve never encountered in any other edition of the book, and it’s perhaps the saddest thing of all: Margaret Mitchell’s simple dedication of Gone With the Wind

To

J.R.M.

has been thoughtlessly omitted.