Smiley's Legacy

I've long been a fan of fictional master spy George Smiley ever since seeing Alec Guinness in the legendary Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Read all the books at least twice and have compiled a handy refresher course over at Macmillan's Criminal Element. The reason for my look back is that there's a new Smiley out this week by John le Carré called A Legacy of Spies. 

My Influences... And Yours?

I'm back at LitReactor with a new article. Please share, stop by there/leave a comment, write home to mom, etc. Here's a sample:

Like many writers, I was reared on a never-ending veneration for big guns such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Authors who’ve passed some ‘immortal’ litmus test for stuffy academic types to get overly excited about. Harsh? Perhaps, because most of the top tier lit club have deservedly earned their marks. But along the path I’ve learned some of the best prose originates from sources other than these writing titans. Here are two actors—who apparently fancied putting pen to paper over starring roles—and one journalist that I would stack up with the best of the best and have returned to often for inspiration.

Immutable And Ineluctable

Richard Burton. Say the name and Elizabeth Taylor jumps to mind. But there was so much more to the man besides Liz & Dick, scandal, and great acting chops that were highlighted in movies like The Spy Who Came in from The Cold, Where Eagles Dare, and 1984. He was a damn fine writer and he's included in an upcoming article I'm putting together over this holiday weekend. Here's an except from his life-long journal that was published in 2012:

The more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and his murdering envious scatological soul the more I realize that he will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will change it. The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same lusts wheel endlessly around the parade-ground of the centuries. Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a God of some kind but I simply cannot. My intelligence is too muscular and my imagination stops at the horizon, and I have an idea that the last sound to be heard on this lovely planet will be a man screaming.

How sobering is that, right? And there's many more entries like that in The Richard Burton Diaries. And the dead live again, Richard's words are featured daily on Twitter which I regularly check. Burton ... fascinating guy. Back to work I go on a piece I'm calling My Unlikely Writing Influences.

I Before E Except After C: Uh, Maybe Not

Nathan Cunningham: i before e except after...w? 

No More Watchmen!

I concur. Article: Alan Moore doesn’t want them, and we should respect that.

SoHo Sins

My latest article An Artistic Debut: Reviewing SoHo Sins by Richard Vine has been posted at Criminal Element. Again, thank you for clicking over and reading.

The Endicott Pear Tree

Since 1630! The Endicott Pear Tree is America's oldest cultivated tree.

Under Burning Skies 2: Best of 21st-Century Westerns

Part II of my article Under Burning Skies: Best of 21st Century Westerns.

The Witch’s Familiar

My review of Doctor Who: The Witch's Familiar is now live at The Fall Creek Review.

Infiltrations

Julio Cortázar Blow-Up and Other Stories is the most fun I've had reading, so far, in 2015. Hopefully that joy comes across in my most recent article, Infiltrations of the Surreal: Argetina’s Julio Cortázar, for Macmillan's Criminal Element.