With Barack Obama scheduled to ride a train to Baltimore for a pre-inauguration stop tomorrow afternoon, history buffs are recounting a similar trip by another famous Illinois politician: Abe Lincoln.

In early 1861, Lincoln’s trip was much rockier. Detectives found evidence of a plot to sabotage his train on the way to Baltimore or assassinate him as he transferred from one downtown station to another.

The tale is recounted in Michael J. Kline's The Baltimore Plot. To foil the plotters and avoid angry secessionist mobs, Lincoln was disguised, and he slipped through Baltimore in the middle of the night. But he was soon ridiculed for cowardice by the press, which noted that no conspirators were ever charged. The Sun said, "Had we any respect for Mr. Lincoln ... the final escapade by which he reached the capital would have utterly demolished it, and overwhelmed us with mortification." 

You can hear an interview with Kline on WYPR's Maryland Morning show; just scroll down to the Tuesday, Jan. 13, show.

I'm betting Obama gets a warmer welcome -- from Baltimoreans and Sun editorials -- tomorrow.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Marylandia, Southern/Civil War
        

The three surviving children of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King continue to squabble over a $1.4 million book deal for her memoir. This week, according to the Associated Press, lawyers for Dexter King asked an Atlanta judge to demand that Bernice King — as administrator of her mother's estate — turn over personal papers, including love letters between the civil rights icons.

AP says the judge appointed a special master to catalogue dozens of boxes belonging to Coretta Scott King. Control of the documents threatens to derail a book deal with publisher Penguin Group. Bernice and Martin Luther King III say the book goes against their mother's wishes. And they say it exemplifies how Dexter has shut out them out of the corporation that controls their father's legacy.

I feel for the family members. But it would be a shame if a family fight kept us from learning learn more about this brave woman, who stood with her husband through the civil rights battles -- here they're shown in Montgomery, Ala. -- and then dedicated herself to his memory. Baltimore's Taylor Branch has ably detailed their relationship in his King books, but another view is always welcome.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Southern/Civil War
        

The noir master (and father of the detective story) was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809, and first came to Baltimore in 1829 to live with relatives, according to a timeline of the local Poe House and Museum. After a stint at West Point, N.Y., he returned here and lived on Amity Street in West Baltimore with his widowed aunt and other relatives. Poe wrote a number of short stories here, before moving on to Richmond, Va., and Philadelphia. He died in Baltimore in 1849.

Philadelphia blogger Edward Pettit has been clamoring to have Poe’s body disinterred from the Westminster Burying Ground and hauled north. He even had the gall to make that claim at a Bouchercon panel about Poe. The audience was unmoved. (See for yourself on a video posted on Read Street tomorrow.)

We all know Pettit’s argument is absurd. Poe belongs to Baltimore, where his memory is respected. Our pro football team is the Ravens; theirs is the Eagles. Our Sheraton hotel has a Poe Room; Philly’s has Salon 1. We’ve even named public housing — the Poe Homes — after him. And his passing is honored each year with graveside roses and cognac. In Philly, he might get a cheesesteak and some Yuengling. At best.

Continue reading "Edgar Allan Poe's big birthday" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Edgar Allan Poe, Marylandia, Southern/Civil War
        

"Barth (winner of the National Book, the PEN/Malamud and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement awards) sets these narratives in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay country in the fictional retirement community of Heron Bay. Calling the book a projected history, Barth describes the Eastern Shore in James Michener-like detail in each one of these tales.

"So it’s nearly impossible not to know the setting of Barth’s fictional landscape. But it’s harder to know what’s happening, who’s talking and what’s the point. Barth offers alternate endings and even alternate narrators who jump into and out of the story. He plays games with the elements of fiction, establishing and destroying the illusion of reality.

"Welcome to the world of postmodern metafiction, with its subject being the art of telling a story — not the characters or what they do, not even the setting."

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

All week, we'll feature visitors from Bouchercon's Charmed to Death international conference of mystery writers (for all their posts, click here). Here's Washington author Austin Camacho, discussing how far race goes in defining his characters. His topic: Black Ain’t Nothing But a Detective’s Color. 

"It’s not about race. It’s about the characters. It’s about the mystery.”

That statement has become a mantra for me since I started writing detective fiction. Hannibal Jones, my fictional private eye, lives and works in Washington DC. Yes, he has African ancestors. He is also a hardboiled gumshoe in the MacDonald mold – Ross or John D., take your pick. He describes himself as a troubleshooter, a defender of the weak. In this sense his literary forebears include Simon Templar and Travis McGee. The archetype is familiar and the conventions clear. I take great pride in the complex, clue-laden puzzles I have crafted for novels like Blood and Bone and Collateral Damage. Yet when people talk about Hannibal’s stories, they always want to call him a Black detective, as if that were its own genre.

If my work must fall into a subgenre, let it just be hardboiled detective fiction. That means my hero lives in a dark, gritty world. It’s the part of the world most of us don’t visit much. Organized crime is a powerful force there, part of an underworld subculture. Violence is an everyday thing; corruption is everywhere; and people tend to be hostile instead of helpful. It takes a special kind of man to walk though all that muck and not get dirty. Hannibal Jones is such a man, and contemporary Washington D.C. is such a place. True, the District does have a large African American population, and that does mean that crime is organized differently. Violence grows from different motivations, and racial tension is the source of much of hostility in the District. The fact that Hannibal works in the African American community means he can’t do things exactly as Sam Spade did.

There’s also a social element to hardboiled detective stories. They often revolve around the friction between upper crust society and the lower economic levels. The relatively honest, survival crime of the streets meets the higher level corruption of the wealthy or political elite. Early writers illustrated this in San Francisco. Both Hammett and Chandler created tales of petty thieves and confidence men getting used and then destroyed by corrupt businessmen. I try to work the same elements on the East Coast, where Washington D.C.’s poor live side by side with the upper class. The conflict is real, and it takes a special man to walk in both worlds without getting crushed between the two. Sometimes one group is disadvantaged more because of color than income, and having money doesn’t automatically propel a person into the upper class. In fact, a black man or woman who is financially successful may face prejudice from both sides. Hannibal, born of an African American solder and his German national wife straddles all these lines, but never really fits into any one camp.

These stories always include action, and it’s often brutal. The hero has to be able to take a beating as rough as one he might hand out. Unlike TV, people really get hurt and the reader sees it up close. Fans of these stories know what really happens when a bullet hits a man in the chest, or a fist smacks against someone’s jaw. And the effect is the same from a white fist as it is from a black one, isn’t it? Except that bystanders are more likely to choose a side if they look like one of the fighters and not the other, or if they perceive the attack to be a hate crime. So, even a simple fight scene must be written differently if the combatants are different colors. Even if they’re not, African Americans do it differently. More trash talk, fewer bottles or car antennas, and a very different style of knife-fighting.

Continue reading "Austin Camacho on black detectives" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Bouchercon/Charmed to Death, Meet the Author, Southern/Civil War
        

Here's a look at some of the latest books by local authors or with a Maryland theme:

Janet Horn, a Baltimore doctor and former faculty member at Johns Hopkins' med school, is co-author of The Smart Woman's Guide to Staying Healthy After 50. It deals with topics ranging from fitness and nutrition to cancer. (New Harbinger/$19.95/280 pages)

Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken, is a reissue of The Great One's classic. Among his cutting observations are our "tendency to crowd competent and self-respecting men out of the public service" and democracy's "parade of obvious imbecilities." (Dissident Books/$14.95/204 pages)

Giraffes in the Savannah is a children's book described as a "fairy tale about harmony in nature" by Gopal Dorai, who has worked as an adjunct professor in economics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. (American Literary Press/$15.95/22 pages)  

House of Good Hope by Michael Downs, an assistant professor of English at Towson University, is part memoir and part narrative. The book follows a group of teenagers in a troubled section of Hartford, Conn., and includes Downs' own thoughts on living in the city. The book was a finalist for the 2008 Connecticut Book Award in the biography/memoir category. (Bison Books/$19.95/326 pages) 

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Marylandia, Southern/Civil War
        

jmww, the Baltimore-based online literary journal, has just released its fall edition. 

You'll find poetry, stories and the "hell boxes" of featured artist Rachel Bradley, a Towson University alum who lives in Brooklyn. There's also criticism, including a review of Dear Everybody by local author Michael Kimball (for the Read Street interview click click here) and Christine Stewart's discussion of her favorite poets of the moment.

jmww may be ahead of its time. The University of Manchester just started an online-only journal called The Manchester Review. Edition #1 includes poetry, essays and the opening chapter from Man Booker winner John Banville's upcoming novel, The Sinking City. The semi-annual review is published by the university's Centre for New Writing, home to professor Martin Amis.  

Is this the future for journals, which are often pressed for cash? Just as e-books are nibbling away at book sales, will online journals wipe out their paper counterparts? Or do you prefer the traditional version?

Continue reading "jmww's fall edition" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Marylandia, Southern/Civil War
        

Continue reading "Latest from Laura Lippman" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Here's a look at several new books with a Maryland connection -- either from local authors or with a local theme.

Dear Everybody, by Michael Kimball (Alma Books). In unsent letters, diary entries and other snippets, the Baltimore novelist recreates the life of Jonathon Bender, a Missouri weather forecaster who came to a sad end.

Buddy System (Oxford University Press). Geoffrey L. Grief. a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, explores the world of male friendships, and breaks them into categories ranging from "must friends" to "rust friends". 

Becoming Billie Holiday, by Carole Boston Weatherford (Wordsong). In this children's book, poems from the singer's fictional memoir, combined with illustrations by Floyd Cooper, chronicle the rise of an American icon. (October release)

Continue reading "New releases -- Marylandia" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Marylandia, Southern/Civil War
        

For those who have had trouble wading through  Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner, truly one of the great Southern writers (even Nancy can't dispute his lineage), folks at the Universitry of Virginia have created this helpful site. Chapter by chapter, it pulls apart the novel's narrative threads and reassembles them into a single timeline.

And here's another site for all things Faulkner, courtesy of Ole Miss.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Southern/Civil War, Whatever
        

One hallmark of Southern writing is the Civil War. Even if the war isn't mentioned outright, its heroic and tragic themes loom in the background. For recommendations about war-related books, I turned to local author Charles Mitchell, whose Maryland Voices of the Civil War is a collection of letters, diary entires and other contemporaneous writings. To get grounded in the war, he suggested these five great reads:

1. Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

2. The Fate of Liberty by Mark E. Neely

3. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

4. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation by Allen C. Guelzo

5. Mary Chesnut's Civil War and/or A Diary from Dixie by Mary Chesnut

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Check It Out, Recommended, Southern/Civil War
        

Barnes & Noble's Web site has an interesting new feature: readings of famous literary works matched to original animation. The first offering in the occasional series is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo reading an excerpt from Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

The animation is haunting, just perfect for Russo's reading of Huck's words. But the excerpt, only a minute and a half long, sure left me really hungry for more.

p.s. For those (like Nancy) who might in good faith, but mistakenly, assign this post to the theme of Southern writers, please note that Twain started Huck Finn in 1876, two years after moving into his new house in Hartford, Ct.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Southern/Civil War
        

So while I was doing a little research for this week's topic, I came across an article proclaiming Edgar Allan Poe as a Southern writer.

And I immediately started laughing. OUR Poe? The guy who writes about torture and stuffing corpses beneath the floorboards, the guy who spent his life romanticising death to the point that he is widely considered to have been a major contributor to the Romantic and Gothic movements, and a little bit crazy besides? (My favorite quote in the above article blames his "instability" on his chosen profession, journalism. Don't even get me started on THAT.)

What about that says Southern?

And that's when my dear friend over at Baltamour, Maryann James, got a little bit heated. See, she's a Richmond girl, and she insists that yes, Mr. Poe is a Southern writer. And p.s., he's from Virginia, not Maryland.

Well, I'm here to tell you that's just ridiculous. Yes, the man may have spent 15 (that's being generous) of his 40 years on Earth in Richmond, but simply spending time in Virginia does not make you a bonafide Southern author.

Continue reading "You leave Edgar out of this." »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Edgar Allan Poe, Southern/Civil War
        

Hey, y'all! We made it to Nashville, (Ahead of schedule because time zones are magical things that actually make the time, you know, different between Tennessee and Maryland. Crazy.) and our hotel is lovely. I have high hopes the rest of the city won't disappoint.

OK, so I realized after we decided to focus on Southern literature this week, that I wasn't sure exactly how to define the term. What makes a novel Southern? Or an author, even?

 So, of course, I turned to the experts. Lucky for me, the Southern Literary Review has an entire section devoted to "What Makes Southern Literature Southern?

They define the South as extending from Virginia, down the coast and then as far West as Missouri.

Missouri! The homestate of Mark Twain, the self-proclaimed father of Southern literature! Isn't that interesting, Dave? Don't worry, you'll always have that Mark Twain house in Hartford. And it is a beauty!

So what do you think? Does the Southern Literary Review's definition get it right?

(Photo courtesy of marktwainhouse.org)

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Southern/Civil War, Whatever
        

For starters, here are five for a Southern must-read list. It's not my list -- as a Connecticut Yankee (just like Mark Twain, one of the great Northern writers) I disqualified myself. But I enlisted Mark Flinchum, a college roommate who grew up in Atlanta and has taught English for years.

His picks: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, Three by Flannery O'Connor, Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns and The Thread That Runs So True by Jesse Stuart.

If we were to expand it to a Top 10, what would you add to the list?

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Southern/Civil War, Whatever