A monthly letter from Gotham’s president, Alexander Steele (writing advice and other musings)
Only one fictional character has been given an obituary in the New York Times, on the front page no less. Can you guess whom?
Hercule Poirot, the brilliant Belgian detective invented by Agatha Christie. The obituary appeared after the posthumous release of Curtain, a novel in which Poirot dies. Poirot, of course, lives on through his many stories, but perhaps real people who have passed can live on too. Continue reading “The Living and the Dead”
We writers can be quite annoying.
In the new movie Let Them All Talk, Meryl Streep plays a much-lauded author of “literary” fiction who is crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary to accept the Footling Prize, which, she points out, they don’t give in fiction every year. She is a sanctimonious sourpuss.
Yes, it’s been dark lately in our world.
I was recently transfixed by a feature article by Joel Gunter for BBC Africa. A bashful young man from Ghana, who we’ll call Azeteng, was fascinated, like me, by spy stories. Unlike me, he decided to undertake an espionage mission that would intimidate James Bond.
Continue reading “Spying the Light”