PaulDoiron.com

Meet Me in Portland

2010-07-27T00:32:30Z

If you're going to be in Portland on August 11, I hope you'll join me for lunch.

Playing with Fire

2010-07-26T22:16:43Z

So it looks like Daniel Craig is officially onboard to play Kalle Fucking Blomkvist in the English language film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That's good. I like Craig. I also welcome the news that director David Fincher plans on filming in Sweden. Evidently, he's been given the green light to make his movies as dark as Steig Larsson's novels, too.

The first of Fincher's trilogy is scheduled for release in December, 2011. In the meantime I intend to see the Swedish version of The Girl Who Played with Fire when it comes to Rockland, Maine, next week. Based on the early reviews, I expect that I'll emerge from the Strand Theatre still wondering what the point is of remaking these movies in English (except to make loads of money, of course).

Maine Lingo: Prit'near

2010-07-26T17:03:23Z

Another in my occasional series of Down East colloquialisms:

PRIT'NEAR: Just about, almost. As in, "Melvin prit'near had a heart attack when he saw the bill for that pantsuit I bought over at Reny's."

The Cloud Works

2010-07-26T00:34:36Z

"Sometimes it seemed as if the summit would be cleared in a few moments, and smile in sunshine: but what was gained on one side was lost on another. It was like sitting in a chimney and waiting for the smoke to blow away. It was, in fact, a cloud-factory, —these were the cloud-works, and the wind turned them off done from the cool, bare rocks."

—Henry David Thoreau

Deer in the Road

2010-07-21T03:09:02Z

I was returning tonight from one of my most enjoyable readings yet—a packed house, literally standing room only, at the Bailey Library in Winthrop—when a doe sprang in front of my car. People in the audience had just been asking me about my next novel, and I'd said it begins with a deer-car collision. I avoided the doe (or she avoided me), but my heart continued to race for a while, as much at the uncanny coincidence as the near-death encounter.

"I Write Like" Stephen King

2010-07-17T18:06:35Z

Stephen King. Photo by "Pinguino"A new Web site has become the talk of the literary blogosphere. I Write Like has an intriguing gimmick: just cut and paste a sample of your writing into a text box, hit the analyze button, and an algorithm will tell you which famous author you write like. I pasted much of The Poacher's Son into the site and learned that my prose most resembles that of Stephen King. This was news to me, but I'm in good company: the New York Times fed all of Moby Dick into the program. It turns out Herman Melville also wrote like King.

The Girl with the American Adaptation

2010-07-17T17:38:54Z

David Fincher, the director of Se7en and Zodiac, has been hired to direct an English language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The script is by Steve Zaillian, who wrote Schindler's List, and Daniel Craig is rumored to be playing Michael Blomkvist. The part of Lisbeth Salander has not yet been cast.

Having just watched the Swedish version of Stieg Larrson's novel, I'm saddened by the idea that American audiences can't be bothered to watch movies with subtitles. It's more the shame because the film by Niels Arden Oplev is one of the finer adaptations of a (fairly complicated) novel that I've seen. There's absolutely no need for another version except to squeeze more money out of the worldwide Larsson phenomenon. I only hope to God that Fincher and Zaillian don't set their motion picture in the United States.

How Long Did It Take to Write?

2010-07-17T02:07:06Z

When you do a series of readings, you find that you get asked the same questions over and over. For me, the most comment question on my tour for The Poacher's Son is, "How long did it take you to write the novel?" It's an understandable inquiry, but one without a clear answer because I worked at the book sporadically. Sometimes I labored away on it every day or week, but there were many months when I did nothing at all.

According to Susanna Daniel, of Slate, my predicament is not unusual. In an essay titled "The Quiet Hell of 10 Years of Novel Writing," she recounts her seemingly endless endeavor to finish her first novel. At times the process was almost a kind of torture for her:

During my should-be-writing years, I thought about my novel all the time. Increasingly, these were not happy or satisfying thoughts. My "novel" (which had started to wear its own air quotes in my head) became something closer to enemy than lover. A person and his creative work exist in a relationship very much like a marriage: When it's good, it's very good, and when it's bad, it's ugly. And when it's been bad for a long, long time, you start to think about divorce.

It took Daniel roughly a decade from the moment she began working on her novel, Splitsville, to its forthcoming publication date. For most of that time she wasn't actually writing, though. Instead she was beating herself up for procrastinating.

I can empathize. In my case I can't remember the specific date I began working on the piece of fiction that would become The Poacher's Son (sometime after 2001 is the best I can do), but I guess I should be happy that I never suffered the crippling writing blocks and crises of confidence that plagued Susanna Daniel.

The Shame of Malaga

2010-07-16T22:00:28Z

Over at the day job I have a new Editor's Note up discussing Colin Woodard's excellent article about the State of Maine's belated apology for one of the most shameful chapters in state history. I don't say this about every Down East story, but Colin's article is a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand Maine's past—and present.

Small-Town Premiere

2010-07-13T11:48:50Z

Living in a small town comes with its share of trade-offs. There might not a decent Chinese restaurant for fifty miles, but you get to know people in all sorts of interesting contexts. Last night, for example, the best-selling author Tess Gerritsen hosted a premiere of the new TNT TV show based on her books, Rizzoli and Isles, at the local opera house. At the pre-party beforehand at the exquisite Camden Harbour Inn, I ran into not only the literary folk you might expect, but also my physician and dental hygienist among the attendees. In fact half the town of Camden seemed to be at the showing; the opera house was literary packed with Tess's many friends and fans who had come out to cheer on her new success. After the show (which I genuinely enjoyed), we all flooded out onto a foggy Camden street where a hired trolley was waiting to return people to their cars up the hill. You know you're living in a special place when half the community turns out late on a misty Monday night to watch television together.