MY REPLY TO STEPHEN FRY

by James Lincoln Warren

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography – Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.

Today I’m wearing my Diction Cop helmet. As I mentioned last week, my work in fiction lately has been dominated by trying to find the right voice, and there is nothing more important in voice than diction. So when I stumbled across the above video, it got me thinking.

Stephen Fry is probably best known to American audiences as half of the erstwhile British comedy team of Fry and Laurie, the Laurie part being Hugh Laurie, himself best known to American audiences as the star of the eponymous TV series House. Laurie and Fry were very, very funny. Their interpretations as Jeeves and Wooster (Fry was Jeeves and Laurie was Wooster) are justly considered definitive. Their parting was entirely amicable; Fry is godfather to all three of Laurie’s children.

In the above video, Fry provides a spirited and eloquent defense of what I suppose one might call idiomatic usage. He makes a couple of references in it that may not be readily grasped by an American audiences. The first is to Lynne Truss, who wrote Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a witty and thoroughly charming manifesto calling for a strict adherence to the received rules of punctuation. The second is to John Humphrys, a sometimes controversial Welsh television news broadcaster in Britain who has written several books on the abuse of English. The last reference is to “Radio 4”, by which he means the spoken word-based BBC Radio 4 (in contradistinction to “BBC 4”, a television network). The last is mildly ironic because Fry is a staple on Radio 4.

Although I think that Fry makes several valid points in the video, I can’t agree with him that those of us who fill Diction Cop’s shoes are dessicated pedants whose sole joy is in crushing expressive language in the name of Linguistic Correctness. When he says that only a dolt doesn’t understand what is meant by “five items or less” or when “disinterested” is used to mean “uninterested” instead of “nonpartisan”, he is of course correct. But that isn’t the point. The saddest five words in the English language are, “You knew what I meant.” When “nonstandard” usages, in diction (which is what he’s complaining about) but also particularly in grammar, become accepted uses, it shrinks the expressive punch of language. There are times when nonstandard usages may be preferred—but their purpose, like profanity, should be to convey more information than simple semantics. If there is no distinction to be made between what ain’t standard and what is, a whole spectrum of connotation ends up circling the drain. That’s a net loss. I do not put the same words in the mouths of street urchins, college professors, and private detectives when I write.

His next salvo is aimed at defending “verbing”, and he justly mentions that Shakespeare is the all-time heavyweight champion of turning nouns into verbs. Only a fool does not recognize that Shakespeare is considered the greatest English language wordsmith who ever lived, perhaps the greatest wordsmith in any language at all. His conclusion, therefore, is that if it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for those of us who aren’t Shakespeare. Well, I don’t buy it. In the first place, Shakespeare was writing at a time when English was in a state of great upheaval, when it was more amenable to stretching and experimentation, when it was deliberately breaking boundaries. Spelling, for example, wasn’t standardized by any stretch at all. It was the Renaissance. It’s not an historical accident that during the Enlightenment, English settled down to become something more refined and rational. Secondly, Shakespeare was a genius, and when you’re talking about genius all bets are off. Shakespeare was a professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt!

Innovation has no value for its own sake—it is only when innovation provides a fresh power of expression that it contributes something. Most innovations suck.

“Actioning”? Fry says it’s ugly because we aren’t used to it, and then compares its use to the rule-breaking of other great artists that provided us with new ways of looking at things. Now, as far as this particular excrescence is concerned, let us first reflect that “action” is already a noun form of a perfectly good and common verb: “to act”. So what exactly is “actioning” supposed to mean, as opposed to “acting”? Doing? Performing? Causing? Those words have shades of meaning; they all tell us something specific about what’s happening. How does an awful neologism like “actioning” give us a new way of looking at things? It doesn’t. It’s pretentious and lazy.

Along the same lines, “five items or less” does not have any semantic or expressive advantage over “five items or fewer”. “None of them are” may be just as clear as “none of them is”—we actually had an off-line discussion over those very phrases here at CB some time ago—but “none” is a contraction of “no one” and “one” is singular, not plural. Fry regards this argument as purist, pedantic, and puerile, and I get that. Frankly, it’s not worth going to General Quarters over, and I get that, too. But on the other hand, even if these expressions provide equivalence in terms of comprehension, they also say something about the care one takes in putting forth ideas. He concedes this point, but concludes that whichever is more appropriate is entirely a matter of context. I, on the other hand, maintain that language usually creates context.

I’ll conclude with my take on something Fry invokes very early in the video, a quotation from his personal hero Oscar Wilde (and a pretty good literary hero he is, too), leaving it to his editor to sort out the woulds and shoulds and thats and whiches. Fry uses this as evidence that Wilde didn’t care about such niceties, but to me, it sounds as if Wilde was trusting his editor to make the necessary emendations to bring his prose to the highest standard. When I write something, I know that only an editor’s eye is going to sharpen it to the edge I want it to have. Similarly, master painters used to make the broad strokes on the canvas and let their students fill in the details. That doesn’t mean that the masters thought the details were beneath their notice.

I think that maybe Fry is mostly objecting to the stultifying voice of petty authority, and he is absolutely right to do so. Language should never be a dictatorship—it must be a republic. But republics can only exist where there is respect for the rule of law.

So I’m letting Stephen Fry off with only a warning this time. Please write safely.

POETICAL PLAY

by Leigh Lundin

In the era before television and video games, nursemaids, mothers, and teachers employed poems and word play to get their children thinking about words and their meanings, and of course Shakespeare loved playing with words. You may have noticed that most of us at Criminal Brief enjoy word games too.

Recently, I received a pair of eMails involving word play. Usually, I check the web to determine if I can accredit the works to anyone and to my surprise, what had been a simple word list was actually part of a poem by J T O’Leary, according to his daughter Caroline.

• The English Language
•     ^by J T O’Leary
•  
• We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
•     But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
• One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
•     Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
• You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
•     Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
•  
• If the plural of man is always called men,
•     Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
• If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
•     And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
• If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
•     Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
•  
• Then one may be that, and three would be those,
•     Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
•     And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
• We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
•     But though we say mother, we never say methren.
• Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
•     But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

When I was little, my mother insisted there was a stirrup, hammer, and anvil in my ear. I had serious doubts. Here is a folk rhyme that explores the body.

• Non-sensical Sense
•     folk rhyme
•  
• How far will you fall when you fall asleep?
•     Could you walk on the bridge of your nose?
• Could you ever play the drums in your ears
•     Or drive the nails of your fingers and toes?
•  
• Could you play ball with the ball of your foot?
•     Could your blood vessels sail on the sea?
• Could you feed corns to the calf of your leg?
•     Or try wearing the cap of your knee?
•  
• Could you walk under the arch of your foot?
•     Could you make your hair fat if it’s thin?
• If a king wanted the crown of your head,
•     Do you think you would give it to him?
•  
• Could your eye teeth take the place of your eyes?
•     Could your shoulder blade cut like a knife?
• Could you shingle the roof of your mouth
•     If you tried for the rest of your life?

I leave you with another American folk rhyme with similar theme.

• Foolish Questions
•     ^by William Cole
•  
• Where can a man buy a cap for his knee?
•     Or a key for the lock of his hair?
• And can his eyes be called a school?
•     I would think—there are pupils there!
•  
• What jewels are found in the crown of his head,
•     And who walks on the bridge of his nose?
• Can he use, in building the roof of his mouth,
•     The nails on the ends of his toes?
•  
• Can the crook of his elbow be sent to jail?
•     If it can, well, then, what did it do?
• And how does he sharpen his shoulder blades?
•     I’ll be hanged if I know—do you?
•  
• Can he sit in the shade of the palm of his hand,
•     And beat time with the drum in his ear?
• Can the calf of his leg eat the corn on his toe?
•     There’s somethin’ pretty strange around here!

OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB

by John M. Floyd

A few weeks ago JLW mentioned that one his stories and one of mine in AHMM last year were recently named by Otto Penzler as “Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2009” (an addendum to the Best American Mystery Stories 2010 anthology, edited by Lee Child). It’s the second time that’s happened to me — the first was in 2001, when another of my AHMM stories was chosen for that list. Those are the only times, by the way, that I’ve come close to actually being in one of those annual “Best Mysteries” books. (Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.)

Double your pleasure?

The other day I happened to notice something similar about those two “selected” stories of mine: Neither one had a traditional ending. The same thing is true of one I sold last year to The Strand Magazine. All three stories had a sort of “double-twist” near the end, where everything appeared to be resolved following a surprise ending but was then taken a step further, to yet another surprise and a different and (I hope) even more satisfying conclusion.

Did that technique help those two AHMM stories to be chosen for the “distinguished” list? I have no idea. I do remember that it was fun coming up with the extra twists, and trying to mislead the reader into thinking the stories would end one way while setting them up to later take a different direction. I also remember that even though I like to outline (at least mentally) my stories before I begin, I didn’t foresee either of those final reversals until I was well into the writing process. Believe me, I’m not so big on outlines that I’m not willing to change one of them during the heat of battle.

Asking for misdirections

So why is this even worth mentioning? Are those double-twists always a good thing? Probably not. But I can recall a number of them in novels and films that worked well. One was Die Hard. In that movie, several minutes after the final confrontation with the main villain, when hero John McLane and his wife were exhausted and bloody but supposedly safe, a terrorist who was thought to already be dead rudely showed up and tried to kill them both. Personally, I doubt that that final scene was in the writer’s plan from the beginning. I’d bet anything that he decided later to have that happen, and I further believe that he probably went back and changed an earlier phone conversation between McLane and a uniformed cop on the outside, to have the cop confess to McLane that he’d once mistakenly shot a kid and had since been unable to point his gun at anyone. The reappearance of the terrorist at the last moment caused the cop to draw his gun and shoot the guy dead and save the day (and save the McLanes), thus creating an even more pleasing, edge-of-your-seat ending.

The same kind of thing happened, to good effect, in the films Red Dragon, Body Heat, Goldfinger, The Terminator, and many others, and double-twist endings seem to be the norm in all Harlan Coben novels. Be aware, however, that this concept doesn’t always work. At its worst (I’m thinking here about horror/slasher movies, where the monster/killer miraculously keeps coming back to life after being dispatched) it can be a cheap “shock value” gimmick. At its best, though, a little additional twist, an added jolt just when the reader/viewer has relaxed and is thinking that the battle is over and all is well, can be an even stronger way to end an already strong story.

Going in for the (over)kill

What are your opinions on this? If you’re a writer, have you occasionally tacked on an extra twist ending? If you’re a reader — and all of you are readers — do you enjoy that kind of thing now and then?

It has certainly crossed my mind that I might be overanalyzing this whole issue. Endings — like golf swings — often work just because they work. Examining them too closely is not only boring but counterproductive.

Bonus features

A final point: I’m not saying double-twists are always better than traditional surprise endings like the ones in Presumed Innocent, Psycho, The Sixth Sense, etc. Those were wonderful just as they were. But I think a final “extra” reversal is at least worth considering, when you’re writing and rewriting your short fiction. AHMM editor Linda Landrigan once mentioned to me that that was one of the reasons she accepted my story “The Powder Room” for their July/August 2009 issue.

And believe me, when that lady speaks, I listen.

MORE TOUGH GUYS

by Steven Steinbock

This past week I’ve continued my mission as the evangelist of noir for The AudioBook Community. They’ve given me an official identity and even a cute little hard-boiled avatar. If you haven’t stopped by, the discussions have been in the the Get Caught Listening discussion area. The celebration of Tough Guys continues through the weekend.

During the first week I profiled Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Mike Hammer, and Nero Wolfe’s leg-man, Archie Goodwin.

This week I moved to the latter half of the Twentieth Century with Spenser, Parker, Nameless, Matt Scudder, and Keller. I thought I’d share shortened versions of my profiles with you today.

Robert B. Parker’s Spenser

We never learn his first name, but that doesn’t matter. Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” is a classic tough PI brought into the latter part of the 20th century. Spenser was an ex-boxer, a Korean War veteran, and one-time State Trooper. Spenser breathed life into what many thought was a fading subgenre when he first appeared in The Godwulf Manuscript (1973). There have been thirty-nine “Spenser” novels, and even though Parker died earlier this year, a fortieth is slated to come out next year. Parker’s novels spawned a long-running TV series, “Spenser: For Hire” starring Robert Urich.

Despite being a tough guy in the classic mold, Spenser was an innovative creation in many ways. For one thing, he was in an ongoing relationship (with psychologist “Susan Silverman”). More importantly, he had a sidekick who was both likable and frighteningly violent (“Hawk”). I almost forgot to mention, Spenser is an accomplished chef.

Donald Westlake’s Parker

Donald Westlake created “Parker” under the pen-name Richard Stark. Unlike all the other tough guys I’ve looked at so far, “Parker” doesn’t solve crimes, he commits them. Parker is a crook, a career criminal. And he’s ruthless.

First appearing in The Hunter (1962), Parker has been the central character of twenty-four novels. Although not well known outside of the world of tough-guy fiction, Westlake’s “Parker” novels have been an inspiration to many authors, including Max Allen Collins and Stephen King, and are beloved by hard-boiled aficionados and devotees of the caper-novel.

Bill Pronzini’s Nameless PI

Beginning with The Snatch in 1971, Bill Pronzini has written something like thirty-four novels and three short story collections about a nameless private eye. Pronzini didn’t plan on calling his character “Nameless.” He just never got around to giving him a name. But with a name like “Nameless,” who can forget him?

“Nameless” is tough but real. He’s an everyman hero. With him readers experience honest emotional experience as well as action and problem-solving. Over the years Nameless has gathered a small entourage of friends, and these days operates a small PI firm. Some critics have called the “Nameless” books “character driven” as opposed to “plot driven.” I disagree. As with most of Pronzini’s writing, plot and character both flow naturally and are both inseparable aspects of the stories he weaves.

Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder

One of the signature traits of Tough Guys is their ability to belt down oodles of liquor and still have the coordination to handle a gat and the insight to solve the crime. But Matthew Scudder broke with that tradition in the emotional final chapter of Eight Million Ways to Die (1982) when he introduced himself at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Created by Lawrence Block for the 1976 novel Sins of the Fathers, Scudder began his career as a hard-drinking unlicensed PI after quitting the NYPD.

When he wrote that pivotal chapter in which Scudder renounced alcohol, Lawrence Block thought he’d written himself out of a job. But the fact is, the series and its hero became all the more popular and many writers have tried to imitate the move. There have been a dozen “Matthew Scudder” novels since Eight Million Ways to Die, bringing the total to seventeen titles (that included the yet-to-be-released A Drop of the Hard Stuff). Along the way, Scudder had garnered a PI license, a wife, and a young protege. But the series has lost none of its bite.

I’m not ashamed to admit that Block’s books are my top-shelf choice. His writing is honest, witty, and wry (that’s wry, not rye).

Block’s Hitman, Keller

As Chip Harrison once said, Lawrence Block is “as together a person as he is a writer and you can’t get much better than that.” Who am I to argue? So I conclude by skipping to the opposite corner of the Block and the other side of the law with his conscientious hit man John Paul Keller. Reporting only to his broker/receptionist Dot, Keller travels the country killing people for a price. Keller has certain standards, though. By and large, he only eliminates people whom the world would be better off without.

Keller first appeared in the short story “Answers to Soldier” which appeared in the June 1990 issue of Playboy. At the time, Block thought that was that. But you can’t keep a good hitman down. Eventually a collection of Keller stories was issued as a sort of a novel, Hit Man (1998). It was followed by Hit List, Hit Parade, and Hit and Run. During the course of the series, Keller has gone through therapy, taken up stamp collecting, and contemplated retirement. As fictional tough guys go, Keller isn’t all that tough. That’s the wonderful paradox of the character and of Block’s writing.

And that, as they say, is that. If you get a chance, get your browser over to the Tough Guy page at Audiobook Community. And let me hear from you. Did I leave out your favorite Tough Guy? I purposely neglected John D. MacDonald’s “Travis McGee” because the profiles were targeted at audiobooks, and sadly there aren’t any “Travis McGee” audiobooks being published. But next week I hope to make up for my neglect with a special column devoted to the southern Florida recoverer of lost property. Stay tuned.

LUCKY WRITERS

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

“You are so lucky to be published writers,” a woman said to my group of author-friends sharing a book signing event.

Actually, the process was more than luck and involved a lot of work by each of us, I thought, but didn’t say. I knew her word choice was not the best, but she meant well. It was supposed to be a compliment.

Who believes in luck? Whether it’s good luck or bad luck, an astonishing number of us, do.

On a recent television news/entertainment show’s broadcast, a guest reported 53% of Americans are superstitious, believing in luck, whether real or perceived . Chatting with my buddies, I found this statement pertains to writers, too. Several admit they refuse to talk about their WIP (work in progress). It doesn’t seem to be so much that they fear someone will steal their ideas (although a couple did mention this possibility) as much as they were afraid they’d lose their passion for the story and characters. “Bad luck is too easily brought on,” one told me, shuddering. Some admitted they were simply superstitious and wouldn’t talk about an unfinished work any more than they’d walk beneath a ladder, place a hat on a bed, or cross a black cat’s path on Halloween.

Intelligent and absolutely sensible in other matters, some folks admit that not adhering to superstitions makes them (on occasion) tremble like frightened children on a stormy night.

“Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember, it didn’t work for the rabbit.” – R. E. Shay (While many recognize this quote, no one seems to know who R. E. Shay actually was – not even Google! He has been called an author, but does anyone know what he wrote?)

All of us know someone who became famous or rich or both and that the public believes was “just lucky” because they really:

• Didn’t deserve such fortune
• Weren’t talented
• Obviously knew the right people

Probably they did deserve it, were talented and just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

What if luck did have something to do with finding a great idea, finding time to devote to actually writing the story and running into the exact person who could make ones dream come true of being a published writer?

I’d call that luck colliding head-on with someone who did the work and made himself available to such perfect opportunities. I’m not sure luck had much to do with his success. Often luck arrives in disguise. We have to recognize fortunate circumstances when they comes into our lives.

“Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck.” – Og Mandino, author of The Greatest Salesman in the World and past president of “Success Unlimited” magazine.

“All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck – who keeps right on going – is the man who is there when the good luck comes – and is ready to receive it.” – Robert Collier, author of The Book of Life.

One of the principles in Dr. Richard Wiseman’s book, The Luck Factor is “Lucky People create, notice, and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives.” I believe this is how successful authors become successful. Is there luck involved in getting your short story published? If the story is never written or never sent to an editor, even the best luck isn’t going to help.

Do I feel fortunate to be published? Yes. Do I consider myself blessed to be able to share my thoughts on writing each week with you? Definitely. Do I think I’m a lucky writer? Indeed, I do.

A WELL-DESERVED KICK IN THE SIDE

by Rob Lopresti

Thinking about villains last week made me think about that other regular in the field of mystery fiction, the hero’s sidekick. The loyal Watson’s main job is to make the hero look brilliant but he or she may also do the legwork, play the reader’s surrogate, and generally provide whatever is missing from the hero’s personality.

Of course, there’s also a subset of Watson I wrote about a few months ago. They provide other services, like rushing to the rescue and doing violence the hero can’t ethically commit.

But enough taxonomy. Let’s go over my personal gallery of favorite sidekicks.

Dr. John H. Watson. Well, duh. Why do you think detectives’ sidekicks are called Watson? Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t invent the type – Edgar Allan Poe did that with the anonymous friend of C. Auguste Dupin – but his unsuccessful physician made the character an inevitable part of the genre.

Carolyn Kaiser. Lawrence Block’s first two novels about burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr were okay but the series didn’t really take off until he met Carolyn, who runs The Poodle Factory. She is a smart, sassy, New York lesbian, always ready to help Bernie think through a caper and occasionally compete with him over a woman. In her first appearance she tries to convince Bernie to let her go along on a burglary. He agonizes on involving a solid citizen like her in a crime. “I wash dogs,” she replies. “Big hairy deal.”

Archie Goodwin. The winner and still champion as far as I’m concerned. His voice is what makes Rex Stout’s novels about Nero Wolfe endlessly enjoyable. Nobody rereads the books for the plot; it is the relationship between Archie and Wolfe that brings us back.

Andrew Octavius Kelp. Not exactly a detective’s sidekick, but Donald E. Westlake’s gloomy burglar Dortmunder would not be nearly as much fun without the sparkling help of Kelp. He’s the guy who only steals cars with MD plates because doctors understand the importance of comfort.

Ruth Winthrop. Miss Wilhelmina Zukas, the star of Jo Dereske’s novels, is a short, quiet, dignified, repressed librarian. Naturally she hangs around with a tall, flamboyant, wild and tart painter. Helma and Ruth have been bff forever, would fight to the death for each other, and can’t stand to be in the same room for more than an hour. Women often ask Dereske “how do you know about me and my best friend?”

Winsor Horne Lockwood the Third. Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar is a nice guy. Fortunately his partner, Win, is a charming, handsome, blond, athletic, WASP sociopath. When he gets in a bad mood he breaks into the house of an unconvicted child-killer and tortures him into confessing to where the bodies are buried. Just be glad he’s on our side. If he is.

Otto Amlingmeyer. A classic Watson. Big Red is as large and loquacious as his brother Gustav is puny and taciturn. But Old Red is the brains of the operation, even though he was too busy making a living as a cowboy to learn to read. That means part of Otto’s job in Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range novels is to read Gustav his beloved Sherlock Holmes stories. The other is to charm his way into situations and bull his way out.

Hawk. As I said a few weeks ago, when Hawk showed up in Robert B. Parker’s Promised Land he seemed to be just another bad guy for Spenser to beat up. Instead they teamed up and became inseparable chums. Like Win, above, he is a sociopathic sidekick, and as far as I know, the original.

As I wrote this one thing became clear to me. You can’t have a fascinating sidekick unless the detective is equally fascinating.

Over to you. Favorites?

FALLING IN LOVE AND A FEW OTHER THINGS

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Nothing compares to the rush of falling in love. I mean that rapturous, passionate, nothing-exists-outside-this-love-you-feel kind of love. It is all consuming, filtering out all the flaws, and the niggling doubts that maybe something isn’t quite right. It makes the lover impervious to what others think about the love object. And that is why writers should never fall in love with their work. Because that means they want to be loved in return.

Writers need to see clearly, dispassionately. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t fall in love with an idea, or they don’t have a creative rush.

Actors are notorious for falling in love with their own performances. The great English theatre director Peter Hall talked it about in his aptly named Peter Hall’s Diaries: “Saw Yahoo, Alec Guinness appears to have at the moment a bad attack of the ‘the lovelies.’ He seems to me to want, above all, to be loved by the audience. A pity when he is such a superb technician, and has such an amazing sense of character. What we received tonight was a gentle half-smiling ironist about as far away from the ferocious misanthropic Swift as a duck-pond is from the Pacific Ocean.”

I bet the audience loved Sir Alec’s performance. But when the creator wants to be loved he takes away the act of discovery from his audience or his readers.

I have just stopped reading a novel because the author not only loved his work but demanded I love it too. What happens when a writer has an attack of “the lovelies”? He over-writes by falling in love with his own array of words; it doesn’t matter if they stop the pacing, slow down the story. His words are beautiful, they are brilliant. There is no monitor just narcissism. And narcissism doesn’t much care for any kind of self-editing. If one perfect adjective will do, why not three or five? I forgot what the hell was on going as I fought my way through the swamp of non-ending sentences splashed with colons, dashes, parenthetical phrases, and semi-colons. Machete, please!

On Husbands: Speaking of love, I told my husband I needed a hug and he said, “just a minute.”

A half hour later he comes into my office and hugs me.

“Thank you.” I say. “What was that for?”

“You said you wanted a hug.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering the need but forgetting the moment that had
created it.

Timing is everything.

On Shoes: I love shoes. I’ve written about my leopard shoes in a previous column. They still sit on a shelf so I can see them and pet them. But as one gets a little older (a clearing of throat here) finding shoes that are appropriate, but still have style and don’t kill your knees because the heels are too high is difficult. I was determined to find the perfect ankle bootie. something saucy that I can actually walk in. I found them. (Speaking of the lovelies!) Beautiful deep black suede with a little dashing strap and buckle in the back. And the heel is only two and a quarter inches high. I can’t hurt myself in them, I thought. These are the kind of shoes my character Diana Poole would wear.

The time comes for me to go out in them. I sit down and pull on the right bootie. Perfect, gorgeous, sexy. I pull on the left one but it’s obstinate and won’t go over the arch of my foot. This didn’t happen in the store. I pull again. I put my foot down on the floor and try to jam my foot into the shoe. I’m now working up sweat and my husband announces, “We’re going to be late.”

I sit back down and lift my foot, the bootie still half-on, rest it on my right thigh, and tug some more. I stick my index finger between the heel of the bootie and my own heel attempting to use it as a shoehorn. Now I can’t get my finger out. It’s beginning to throb. I clench my jaw and jerk my hand. My finger, bright red, pops lose, an excruciating pain shots up the left side of my back, and the bootie slips easily on. I take two Advil and manage to walk out to my waiting husband.

“Great boots,” he says

“Booties,” I growl.

“Why are you crooked? Did you hurt your back?”

I nod.

“How’d you do that? And what happened to your finger? It’s all red.”

“We’re late.”

“Do you want a hug?”

“No.”