RUM-TITTY-TITTY-TUM-TAH-TEE

by James Lincoln Warren

It has happened to every one of us. It’s one of those common experiences that unites all of humanity in universal experience. It probably has some deep neurological foundation, and might provide profound insight into the very nature of consciousness.

If only it weren’t so damn irritating.

I’m referring to having something stuck in your inner ear.

You know what I’m saying: a tune gets lodged in your brain and no matter what you do, you can’t get rid of it. Evil people plant such tunes in people’s minds deliberately, by whistling or humming something at us, say a particularly irritating advertising ditty, and then we the victims are stuck with it. So to avoid any enmity from the Gentle Reader, I’m not going to cite any examples except the one that provided the above title, from the eponymous 1958 comic horror short story by my hero, Fritz Leiber.

In the story, the ditty threatens to take over the Earth as the population of the entire world stops everything—except succumbing to the seductive rhythm of the musical expression. In the story, this turns out to have been planned by a long dead witch doctor as a way to seize global dominion, a shaman now reaching from beyond the grave in his demonic lust for conquest.

It has been suggested by webster Henry Lowengard that Leiber based his story on an actual incident that occurred in New York in 1913, an account of which he has published on two different websites (here and here). I do not know if Lowengard’s claim is true or not—Chicago and Los Angeles (and later, San Francisco) were Leiber’s chief locales, and they’re the ones that inform his fiction. Lankhmar in particular is an amalgam of Chicago and Los Angeles, by his own admission. On the other hand, Leiber did live in New Jersey for a year in the very early 1930s, and Lowengard’s urban legend is of precisely the sort that would have fascinated Fritz.

Not that it makes too much difference, because it’s one of those ubiquitous behavioral phenomena that cross all cultural boundaries. It is the Holy Grail of every advertising executive and political propagandist who ever lived to imprint some idea so firmly in someone’s head that they are reminded of it wherever they go and whatever they do. This is exactly what they have in mind. (It’s not a mistake that Leiber’s unseen villain, like the Mad Men and propagandists, is trying to dominate the world.)

And, in a more personal sense at least, of every performer. And of “characters” (as in, “That Leigh Lundin is a real character”). That’s why songs have hooks and Veronica Lake had only one eye.

And of every writer. That’s where lines and catchphrases come from, pilgrim. Say hello to my little friend.

I frequently say that a fiction writer’s only real job is to entertain, to not waste the Gentle Reader’s time during the span that the reader becomes engaged in the story. But what every writer really wants is for his readers to remember the work and to think about it afterward, for the story to have achieved something permanent. And nothing does that like the sort of meme1 that Leiber was having so much fun with.

But on the other hand, there’s the danger of overexposure and self-parody. Poor Bulwer-Lytton had no idea of the tsuris that the famous first sentence of Paul Clifford would leave in its wake. Some people I know refuse to buy the products immortalized by musical commercials on the grounds that the composer of the unforgettable ditty deserves to be drawn and quartered for causing irreparable psychic damage. Some ditties are so virulent that they are excised entire from the collective consciousness. Try to remember one of them and there’s nothing there but vacuum. Usually, I think they are displaced by something else.

So it’s not enough to memorable. You also have to be benign.

Which is how Leiber ended his story, by invoking a benign replacement for the devouring rhythm. The shade of the witch doctor is forced, presumably on the orders of the Prince of Darkness himself, to produce an antidote. A medium receives a message from him to pass on to his great-times-seven grandson: “Dear Descendant, They made me stop it. It was beginning to catch on down here.”

Tah-titty-titty-tee-toe!

1. Unlike Steve Steinbock, I regard Dawkins’ theory as quite tenable, and I disagree that it is unverifiable or immeasurable in a scientific sense—but science aside, it also stands its ground in critical analysis, since it’s a concept very easy to grasp and instantly recognizable. Which is not to say that I don’t respect Steve’s opinion on the issue or that his objections to it are without merit; only that we approach it in different ways. [↩]

AUGUST DERLETH and SOLAR PONS

by Leigh Lundin

Why isn’t the great detective Solar Pons better known? Pons strikes me as the friend you loved in school but were afraid to like too much lest your own popularity suffer. After all, what could Derleth, a North American Midwesterner who’d never been to England know about crime in those fog-laced streets? Didn’t Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh have 1930’s London well-covered?

Bob Byrne was a columnist for Sherlock magazine and has contributed to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine and The Strand Magazine. His "The Adventure of the Tired Captain" was included in the Sherlockian short story collection, Curious Incidents I. Bob runs the Solar Pons web site while maintaining two free, online newsletters: the elucidating Baker Street Essays and the elegant The Solar Pons Gazette. Ask Bob for the ‘missing’ Gazette, volume 2 issue 2.

Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

by Bob Byrne

It’s quite possible that you aren’t familiar with Solar Pons, the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.’ If that is so, a quick viewing of the  Solar Pons FAQ page might help. And if you’re thinking Solar Pons is nothing more than a tired copy of the Baker Street sleuth, the first essay in the first issue of  The Solar Pons Gazette might change your mind.  

Welcome back. So, August Derleth was a born and raised Wisconsin boy, enamored with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the great Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t much different than an awful lot of American youths in the nineteen twenties. Except, the enterprising Derleth wrote to the author and asked if there would be any more stories, and if not, could he write some himself. Doyle, not the friendliest person in regards to his meal ticket, did have the courtesy to send back a reply, denying Derleth permission to continue the adventures. 

Not discouraged at all, the nineteen year-old University of Wisconsin student made a note on his calendar, ‘In re: Sherlock Holmes’, as a reminder to write a story in imitation of Doyle’s creation. The date is lost in the mists of time, but August Derleth did in fact sit down and produce The Adventure of the Black Narcissus in one afternoon, starring Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker.  It appeared in the February, 1929 edition of Dragnet and Derleth would produce over seventy more tales before passing away in 1973. British author Basil Copper added over two dozen more Pons stories with the blessing of Derleth’s Estate.

Standing Amongst Giants

Derleth’s Pons stories received praise and support from noted Holmes fans like Edgar Wallace, Vincent Starrett, Anthony Boucher and the cousins jointly known as Ellery Queen. And it’s safe to say that quite a few of today’s Sherlock Holmes readers are familiar with and enjoy Solar Pons. However, Pons is not a major character in the history of detective literature, nor are the books best sellers. But one unique aspect of the series, worthy of mention, is that Derleth was going against type.

As I stated in my essay,  Hard Boiled Holmes, “The era of British detective fiction between the two World Wars is known as The Golden Age. This was the time of the country cozy and the locked room mystery.” Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Morrison were replaced by Lord Peter Wimsey and Miss Marple. In America, Caroll John Daly, Raoul Whitfield, Dashiell Hammett and others were countering with the hard boiled school, in style far more than just an ocean away from the British mystery story.

But Derleth chose to create a new detective that wasn’t a part of either school. Because of his love for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he spent the next fortyish years periodically writing stories that, while set in a London where cars had replaced hansom cabs, immediately called to mind 221B Baker Street and all that went with it.

Hard Boiling Point

The start of the hard boiled school can be definitely traced to April and May of 1923 when Black Mask contained Carrol John Daly stories featuring, first, Three Gun Terry Mack and then the longer-lasting Race Williams. By the time Solar Pons made his first appearance, a fellow named Dashiell Hammett had published almost three dozen Continental Op stories in Black Mask. Heck, Sam Spade and Solar Pons both came into print in 1929. Hard to picture them solving a case together!

In 1934, Rex Stout introduced Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, a pair that blended the hard boiled private eye with the armchair genius best personified by Mycroft Holmes. Stout was a well known Sherlockian and the Holmes stories exerted a great influence on the Wolfe books, which remain popular today. However, Stout was astute enough to know that pulp magazines set the style of American detective fiction and Wolfe and Goodwin very much read like contemporary mysteries, not throwbacks to gas lit London.

The Solar System

But Derleth continued to write new Pons tales while the British Golden Age came to an end and the pulp magazines fell by the wayside. Pons was a hobby that he indulged in out of affection for his boyhood idol, Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t compelled to create a tough private eye or a gentleman thief to meet the demands of mystery readers. Brett Halliday and Michael Shayne; Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe; John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee; Ross MacDonald and Lew Archer: just a few of the popular detectives that American readers gobbled up while August Derleth kept writing about Sherlock Holmes’ successor.

Solar Pons was a return to the earlier days of detective fiction at a time when his peers left that era behind. Fortunately, August Derleth was a fine writer and the Holmes fan who has not yet discovered Solar Pons has a treasure chest ready to be opened.

— Bob Byrne

Praed Street Irregulars

Bob drew my attention to the Praed Street Irregulars headed by the Honourable George Vanderburgh. A physician and retired army major, he founded a small press specializing in Edwardian and Victorian fiction. George is working on a nascent Facebook page, one of many projects including an intriguing silver and golden age book site called The Battered Box and its companion blog.

The web site contains a sort of ‘Easter egg‘. Click on the ‘How to Buy’ tab and scroll to the bottom. You’ll find a photograph of Baker Street as seen in Marylebone at the turn of the century. Praed Street (which rhymes with ‘preyed’) is not far away in the Paddington district.

George asked me to pass on the following contact information. (There’s no truth to the rumo(u)r Ontario has poutine marshes– that’s Quebec.)

George A. Vanderburgh M.Bt. PSI
The Viennese Musician
The Lord Warden of the Pontine Marshes
P.O. Box 50, R.R. #4
Eugenia, Ontario
Canada N0C 1E0
gav(at)cablerocket(dot)com
The Battered Box and blog

Turn down your gaslight, visit Bob’s and George’s sites, and say hello to Solar Pons and the art of vintage detection.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS?

by John M. Floyd

The other day I received two Netflix envelopes on the same day. It’s always fun when that happens; the only thing better is when I receive three. Anyhow, these were two crime/suspense movies, In Bruges and Dolan’s Cadillac, and I was looking forward to them both — the first one because Rob Lopresti had recommended it, the second one because it was an adaptation of a Stephen King short story. I love King’s short fiction, and I remember reading “Dolan’s Cadillac” years ago, in the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. (It’s one of those King stories that’s more suspense than horror, which is fine by me — he’s good at both.)

As things turned out, and as is so often the case in this life, I got a mixed bag.

The bad news is . . .

Dolan’s Cadillac was a little disappointing. To be fair, it’s hard to adapt a short story to the big screen. Most films are two hours long, and short fiction is, well, short. This means screenwriters have to come up with a lot more story to go along with the original material. Sometimes this works (Rear Window, 3:10 to Yuma, Duel, Brokeback Mountain, High Noon, etc.), and sometimes it doesn’t.

This was a story of obsession and revenge. After the wife of a schoolteacher (Wes Bentley, who did such a great job in American Beauty) is murdered by a sleazy Vegas crime lord (Christian Slater), the grieving widower decides to carry out his vengeance in a unique way — unique enough to make for a really entertaining short story. But the movie, alas, was a bit too long and too much, or at least too much for me. It wasn’t a terrible film, and I enjoyed the ending and the teacher’s determined preparation and planning in order to achieve his goal — but the rest of the movie seemed like filler. Worst of all, I didn’t like the hero much, which never bodes well.

The good news is . . .

In Bruges was excellent. It involves two Irish hit men (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) who have been sent to Bruges, Belgium, to lie low after a botched job in London. They are an odd couple in every way: the rookie is brooding and impatient and bored, the veteran is calm and fatherlike and fascinated by the history of the Medieval city. After a few days, everything changes when their boss (Ralph Fiennes) contacts them with instructions that turn their “vacation” into a deadly showdown between the three men.

This film has all the ingredients of a successful story: fascinating characters, an unpredictable plot, a moral dilemma (several of them, actually), a fairytale setting unfamiliar to most of us, and an almost perfect ending with multiple twists. Each of the three hit men have a conscience and a code of ethics, and learn “life lessons” before . . . well, that’s all I can say without spoiling things. Rob and I agree that In Bruges is a film of contradictions and soul-searching and, ultimately, redemption. And the most complex characters I’ve seen in a while.

It was impressive to me that the writer/director violated quite a few “rules” and still made the story work. The main players, after all, are killers for hire; it’s hard to make an audience sympathetic to guys like that. There are no cops or amateur sleuths around to exact justice and set things right. Even the minor characters are distasteful: rude tourists, a foulmouthed dwarf, a young woman who provides drugs to a Dutch film crew, an arrogant ticket-seller. The only breath of fresh air is a pregnant innkeeper who has some of the most interesting scenes in the story.

Conclusions

Two things happened as a result of my watching these two movies: one is that I think I’m a better writer for having seen them. A well-made film (or a well-written story or novel) is always educational, and I believe you can learn almost as much from a poorly-made film (or a poorly-written story or novel) as from a good one, if you can pinpoint the reasons you don’t like it.

The second thing is that, since I chose one of these movies because I thought it’d be good and one because a friend told me to . . . well, maybe I do better following the advice of others.

Any of you have recommendations?

TURNING OVER OLD LEAVES

by Steven Steinbock

I’ve been looking through some of my old issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Periodically over the next weeks or months I’ll take a close look at some of these and use this space to share with you what I find.

This week I’m looking at the March 1977 issue. Despite a fairly bland (text-only) cover, it’s a double anniversary issue. This was the 400th overall issue of EQMM, and it appeared on the 36th anniversary of the launching of the magazine.

(Note: from October 1955 to September 1959 each issue of EQMM came out with two different cover designs: a plain text cover for subscribers and risqué covers for the newsstands. I wonder if this had to do with the postal service shipping overly spicy material. From mid 1961 until the end of 1974, all issues had text-only cover art. That changed with the October 1974 issue, when more covers sported art than didn’t. Oddly, though, all of the March issues from 1977 until 1981 had the only text-only covers during those years.)

The opening story in the issue is called “EQMM Number 400” and is written by R. L. Stevens. In it, a pair of intellectual rivals meet to match wits on the subject of Ellery Queen trivia. Things don’t turn out well for one of them. It’s an amusing and clever story filled with tasty tidbits of trivia. R. L. Stevens, incidentally, is in reality Ed Hoch. The pseudonym, a spin on Robert Louis Stevenson, is one of several that he used when he had more than one story in a single issue.

Story two in the issue is “One of the Oldest Con Games” by Robert L. Fish. It’s a cute tale of what happens when con-men pick the wrong mark.

The Department of “First Stories” story has the byline “Edward Mananitas,” but in Fred Dannay’s introduction, he explains that it is the pseudonym of “a native-born American of Dutch Mennonite ancestry.” I’m curious who it is, and if he wrote any other stories for EQMM. The story is very short, and is in its entirety a message to a burglar who happened on the wrong house to burgle. The story involves a clever burglar trap and a homeowner on vacation. (I recently read a very similar story, except in that one the homeowner was recently deceased; but I can’t remember who wrote that story or where I read it).

Skipping around a bit, Georges Simenon’s “The Man from Out There” is unlike any Simenon story I’ve ever encountered. The central character is an old man, trying to forget his past as a prison escapee by living his life out as a lazy fisherman. But the past always catches up. The man receives his just desserts, but Simenon leaves it up to interpretation whether the man is visited by his old colleague, a ghost, or his own guilt. Nicely written and haunting story.

If anyone thinks the Criminal Brief crew are guilty of bad puns, the story “Malice in Blunderland” by Kevin Goldstein-Jackson leaves us in the proverbial dust. I won’t bother to relate the story. It’s fun reading, but will elicit more than a few groans.

Veteran mystery readers know that Sue Grafton wasn’t the first to use letters of the alphabet as themes for her titles. From 1940 (with the novel B as in Banshee until 1981 (with the story “M as in Mayhem” which appeared in EQMM of June 17 of that year) Treat used the alphabet gimmick to tell many a clever police procedural. This issue of EQMM contains “T as in Terror” which features the Homicide Squad’s Mitch Taylor and Bill Decker. For those who haven’t read Treat, his stories are a [pun omitted by the author], and may remind readers of McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, which Treat may have helped inspire. Incidentally, in the February 1966 issue of EQMM we have Treat’s story “A as in Alibi” which is oddly similar to the title of Grafton’s first Kinsey Milhone novel.

Finally, bookending the issue, Ed Hoch is back again (this time as “Edward D. Hoch”) with a Dr. Sam Hawthorne story, “The Problem of Cell 16.” The story features multiple mysteries, the most important being an impossible escape from a jail cell with more than a few nods to Jacques Futrelle’s classic “The Problem of Cell 13.”

In all, it’s a great issue. And in coming weeks as opportunity permits, I’ll invite you back in time with me to skim through the leaves of other classic issue.

THE SALAD DAYS

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

We’re going to a backyard barbecue tonight and I’m asked to bring potato salad. The first time I remember taking it for a crowd was at a beach party by the seawall of the North China Sea on Okinawa. All the soldiers were young in both years and rank. Mostly we were newlyweds, but a couple of guys brought dates. We were homesick and most of us spending our first 4th of July away from home. Independence Day required a barbecue or picnic to most of us. Burgers sizzled on a hibachi while we feasted on sangria and stories of home.

I inherited a huge Pyrex bowl from another soldier’s wife when they returned stateside. With a ten pound bag of potatoes and a few other not-so-secret ingredients, I managed to fill the green bowl to the rim with potato salad. That evening, there wasn’t a bit to be scraped from that bowl. I sincerely believe someone may have swiped his fingers along the inside, then licked the dregs of potato salad from his fingertips.

I was a hit, but from that time on, whenever we got together, I wasn’t allowed to bring anything but potato salad. I had been as typecast as George Reeves after he became TV’s Superman and couldn’t secure an acting job as any other character. Did the soldiers believe I didn’t have another good recipe or were they simply unwilling to allow me the chance to try because they adored my potato salad. Although I loved making that salad, I grew tired of it being what was expected of me.

I enjoy writing mysteries almost more than anything, but when asked at a recent writer’s conference what I write, I said, “As a mystery writer, I seem to sell a lot of nonfiction these days.”

I’ve sold to writer’s magazines and writer’s newsletters, essays to writer’s calendars and book reviews to magazines and newspapers. There have been a few columns for Criminal Brief, too. The truth is, I just like to write. Nonfiction seems to fill the need to express myself, too.

Successful authors advise writers to focus on one market, but that reminds me of the potato salad. I’ve perfected that particular recipe and while I will surely want to make it again, can’t I try a new recipe here and there?

Several of my friends write poetry and I admit to dabbling. It isn’t going to win me a spot as a Poet Laureate, but it makes me happy to stray from the beaten path occasionally and write something just for fun.

Not all writing has to be published to keep the Muse satisfied.

Many authors who write in more than one genre use a pseudonym when writing in another. Lemony Snicket wanted to hide his identity. S.E. Hinton wanted to use a name without clear gender for her stories. When Doris Meredith began writing mysteries, she chose to write as D. R. Meredith, perhaps because more men were being published at that time in her choice of genre. Ellery Queen was a pen name chosen by two other pen names, Frederic Dannay (nom de plume of Daniel Nathan) and Manfred Lee (Nathan’s cousin Manford Lepofsky). They also used the name Barnaby Ross to write four non-Ellery Queen novels.

Could I choose another name for my work that is not mystery? Would that soothe those wanting me not to stray from one genre? Maybe I could be known as the Potato Salad Queen – if it’s not already taken.

NO PLACE FOR AMATEURS

by Rob Lopresti

I opened the latest Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the lead story was by Clark Howard. The editorial note reported that he has been “a professional writer for more than forty years.”

Well, yes. I thought. Very professional he is. But that’s not what you meant.

And that got me thinking of how many shades of meaning a single word can have.

So it was time to take a peek at the Oxford English Dictionary. Turns out the oldest meaning of professional (eighth century) relates to joining a religious order (one who professes one’0s faith).

By 1600 it meant someone who did something for money. The same century brought the meaning of belonging to a profession.

The next meaning in the OED, arriving in the 1700s, was a surprise to me. It meant a declaration (again, one who professes) with an undertone of insincerity: to be professional meant talking the talk without walking the walk. Of course, we still sometimes use the word in that denigrating way. “He doesn’t mean what he says, he’s a professional spokesman.” And by 1800 people it was also a nasty word for habitual: “a professional parasite.”

By the 1780s it was taking on one of today’s common meanings: only learned occupations, especially medicine and law.

By 1811 Jane Austen was distinguishing between professional and amateur musicians. But did she mean the pros got paid, or that they made a living at it? The Olympics Committee used to ban as professionals people who had been paid for sports even once.

I think EQMM meant that Howard has made his living as a writer for forty years, and more power to him. The definition I had in mind when I read EQMM is actually from the 1920s: competent, possessing the knowledge and skills expected in a field.

On the other hand, in crime fiction a professional is usually an assassin. Which is odd because the far older crime-related meaning of the word is prostitute. (When a cop arrests a pro I wonder which word he thinks he is abbreviating?)

This reminds me of my high school days when a friend told me a mutual acquaintance had “lost his amateur status.” He meant that the man had engaged the services of a pro, not in this case an assassin.

By the way, in that short story Clark Howard wrote of a librarian (I don’t have the text in front of me…) that she had ”a Dewey Decimal mind.” So apparently there are some professionals who may not be too happy with him.

Let’s eat

Somehow all these shades of context and meaning remind me of a joke I heard when I was a wee whippersnapper. Here’s a version I found on the web.

For foreigners, a “yankee” is an American. For American southerners, a “yankee” is a northerner. For northerners, a “yankee” is somebody from New England. For New Englanders, a “yankee” is somebody from Vermont. For Vermonters, a “yankee” is somebody who eats apple pie for breakfast.

And if the person wins money at a pie eating contest, I guess he’s a professional, too.

Rob Lopresti suggested that his friend Nina Mansfield contribute a piece, and here it is. She modestly writes of herself in the third person:

“Nina Mansfield is a Connecticut based writer and teacher. Her fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Chick Lit Review. Her YA mystery novel Swimming Alone was a quarter-finalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. Her plays have been produced throughout the United States and in Canada, and have been published by Smith and Krause, One Act Play Depot and YouthPlays. Please visit her at ninamansfield.com.”

THOUGHTS ON THE TEACHING OF WRITING

by Nina Mansfield

At the end of every school year, teachers in the high school where I work get a slip of paper in their mailboxes informing them which classes they will be teaching the following year. This year I learned that I am scheduled to teach one section of creative writing in September.

I should be excited, right? After all, I am a writer. Writing is much more than a hobby for me. Writing is a passion. Writing gets me up in the morning—literally. When I write, I feel alive.

In theory, the students who are signed up for the course should be interested in writing. However, this is not always the case. Is it possible to inspire a room full of text-messaging, Facebook-addicted high school students to share my passion?

How?

Will I have them tweet their assignments to me? Will they write entirely in lowercase letters and sprinkle their fiction with emoticons?

Now that the school year has ended, it is time to start preparing for next year. My father-in-law likes to tease me for my summers off—but every teacher I know spends too much of their well-deserved vacation planning for the following year. And that is exactly what I am doing right now.

So, I ask the question again: how the heck am I going to inspire these kids to write—really write? I am not ready to declare the text-message, tweet, or status update as form of literature. And while it might be fun to create short stories using 140 characters or less, my ultimate goal will be to have students write pieces that are somewhat longer. Short stories free of emoticons. Short stories with plots. Short stories with conflict. Short stories that I will actually enjoy reading. For Pete’s sake, I’ll have to grade these things, so I want them to be good!

Is that asking too much? Have I set my standards too high? I refuse to admit defeat before I’ve even tried, so try I will! The first step, of course, will be to inspire them to write. Something. Anything.

But how does one inspire?

We are encouraged as teachers to be reflective. So I will ask myself a question: What inspired me to become a writer?

Well, that one’s easy. Reading.

Long before I knew that I wanted to be a writer, I was reading everything that I could get my hands on.

Books, plenty of books.

But I think it was the short stories I read that eventually transformed me into a writer. I can recall being enthralled by “The Most Dangerous Game.” I was mesmerized and terrified by “The Monkey’s Paw.” I fell in love with the ironic twists of O. Henry long before I fully understood the concept of irony. I credit Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter” for inspiring me to write mystery stories.

Will these same stories inspire my students to write?

I have confidence in these classics. But I also have this crazy idea that maybe I should bring in stories that are a little more modern—stories that were written in the past five, ten or fifteen years.

Fifteen years ago I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t use email. Twitter was what birds did.

The world has changed, so why shouldn’t the stories that teachers teach change? I can just picture my students, whose knowledge of forensics is substantially more advanced than mine was at that age, analyzing “Lamb to the Slaughter” with their CSI minds. “Wouldn’t they have found traces of lamb DNA on the victim?” they might ask.

Possibly. But of course when the story was written, DNA analysis didn’t exist.

But it does now.

Yes, I think it will be wise to examine some modern mysteries.

Since today’s students are notorious for being glued to a computer, I think I might start there. At the computer. Homework assignments might require them to visit Mysterical-E or Spintingler or A Twist of Noir. Well, why not? And if my students would prefer to read fantasy or romance or speculative fiction . .  . well, that’s the beauty of the internet. They can find anything they want, and I don’t have to worry about asking my supervisor to buy me more books (especially when school budgets are tighter than ever!)

Perhaps we’ll even compare some of these new-fangled stories with the “classics.” I’ll tell my students to be on the hunt for the classics of the future.

Then I’ll ask them to write the classics of the future.

But I’ll settle for just a good story. They can feel free to make use of all their modern day knowledge. Their stories can incorporate cell phones and references to the internet, and DNA analysis if they so choose.

And heck, just for fun, they can throw in an emoticon or two. As long as they are inspired.