Face to Face with the Mexicans by Fanny Chambers Gooch

First published in 1887, Gooch's Face to Face with the Mexicans, is on-line here in a very readable format. It includes the many charming illustrations by Isabel V. Waldo, as well as portraits of the characters in my novel, Agustin de Iturbide y Green and his mother, Dona Alicia Green de Iturbide.

Note: an edited (severely abridged) version with an introduction by C.H. Gardiner was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1966. However, said version does not include the material about the Iturbides.

More anon.

Court Life from Within by HRH Eulalia, the Infanta of Spain

Princess Eulalia of Spain's memoir, which raised a kerfluffle of an international scandal back at the beginning of the 20th century, is on-line here, and in a very conveniently readable version. (I'm blogging about some of these royalty books as I beef up the links for the bibliograhy of my novel.) More anon.

Old Georgetown on the Potomac by Henry Ridgely Evans

Yesterday I received a most extraordinary letter from a book collector and Maximilian expert who had in his possession a copy of Henry Ridgley Evans's Old Georgetown on the Potomac, inscribed by the author to one of the people who appears in my novel's epilogue (to respect his privacy, I won't say more than that). A note about Henry Ridgely Evans: the author of some two dozen books on freemasonry and magic (including a fine biography of Cagliostro), he lived in Georgetown, Washington DC and, as a child, played with the likes of the children of the Czar's ambassador Baron de Bodisco (whose house is now owned by Senator and Mrs Kerry), ex-Prince Agustin de Iturbide y Green (subject of my novel) and the daughter of the Japanese ambassador. It is a treasure of a book, full of charming details, and showing us a Washington that, for those of us who live there today, is almost impossible to imagine. The Georgetown Library's Peabody Room has a copy, as well as copies of several other of Evans's works.

P.S. View the painting with the same title here. The large building with two spires is Georgetown University's Healy Hall. Note also the Frances Scott Key House at the end of the bridge (since torn down).

More anon.

Message from Eric Maisel about the Writers Telesummit

From writer and writing coach-of-coaches Eric Maisel:

Hello, everybody:

Please join me this Wednesday for a free preview of the Writers Telesummit. I’ll be sharing some useful practice tips for writers (and for all creative people) and explaining the benefits, some of them quite surprising, of attending our virtual writers’ conference. There’s also a very nice free gift if you join in on the free phone call.

Please join me at 6 pm Pacific (9 pm Eastern) this coming Wednesday (August 27th) for an informative half-hour. To sign up, go here; you will see the free call sign-up near the top of the page:

www.telesummits.com

I hope you’ll drop on by.

Naomi S. Baron's Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World

Always On by Naomi Baron is one of the most original and profound works on the changes wrought by our modern communication technologies. As for me, two and half years into blogging, I'm still fascinated by the form and though I've anounced (see sidebar) that I update on Mondays and Wednesdays, I generally blog almost daily. But I loathe cell phones, watch a gnat's portion of television, and am still not ready for facebook. As for LinkedIn, I have my doubts. Once in a while I accept an invitation to link, but it gets weird. The other day I tried to invite a fellow novelist to link, but LinkedIn refused to recognize my password--- which brought on multi-layered meditations on the bungle-fangled capitalist appropriation of social networks. Yesterday, on the advice of a fellow writer, I joined Goodreads.com, thinking it would be interesting to explore and perhaps help gain some visibility for my books. But why (when that's my publisher's job)? Or, why not (when it might be both fun and useful)? The eternal conundrum: what to do, what not to do?

One of Naomi Baron's conclusions:

"most of us have more freedom than we realize to shape our own usage of language technologies. We have substantial say over the extent to which we multitask."

More anon, probably.

Kenneth White's Across the Territories: Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa

New on my list of recommended travel memoirs: Kenneth White's Across the Territories: Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa. White is a Scottish poet and founder of the Institute for Geopoetics. Read more about the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and about White and his work here. More anon.

New Guest-Blog Archive Link for Madam Mayo

Solveig Eggerz, Richard Goodman, Leslie Pietrzyk, Isabella Tree, David Taylor, Sandra Beasly, Jane Kinney Meyers, Nani Power, Dan Olivas, David Lida, Kim Roberts, and many more...check out the new archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts. More anon.

Madam Mayo Update: What's New on the Blogrolls

Doing some housekeeping here, as the sidebar gets increasingly cluttered. You'll notice that the link to the blogroll is new. Also new: American Fiction , Kinemapoetics, MeowBarkBlog, and several new Mexico-related blogs, including Border Reporter and Intersections. More anon.

Whereabouts Press's Traveler's Literary Companion Series is Now on FaceBook

Here--- and includes links to the material about my own anthology in the series, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. (I'm still not ready for FaceBook, however.) I was especially interested to read the interview with the editor of the France anthology, William Rodarmor. An excerpt:

Why isn’t more French writing being translated?
I think it’s partly because of the tremendous consolidation of U. S. publishers in the last thirty years. Small, high-quality houses like David R. Godine have to compete with multinational mega-companies that pay celebrity authors million-dollar advances. And translation is expensive, since you have to pay both the author and the translator. Read more

Here's my answer to the question,

Why isn't more Mexican writing being translated?
For the same two reasons that very little literature in any language is being translated. First, readers have a natural bias toward their own culture; second, cost. Translation can be expensive! Read more

There are some dozen books in the Whereabouts Press Traveler's Literary Companion Series, including Italy, Greece, Vietnam, Israel, Australia, Ireland, Japan, China... and more in the pipeline. Visit my page for Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion here.

Guest-blogger Solveig Eggerz on 5 Works of Historical Fiction

As a writer of historical fiction myself, when I got the announcement that my fellow American Independent Writer Association member, Solveig Eggerz, was to give a "pubspeak" on history and fiction, I was intrigued. And when I mosied on over to her website, http://www.solveigeggherz.com, I was fascinated. The author of the just-released novel, Seal Woman, set in World War II-era Iceland, Solveig Eggerz is a native Icelander with some impressive literary roots. In her own words:

"My great-great grandfather, Friðrik Eggerz, a farmer and a protestant minister, wrote his autobiography when he was in his eighties, a book that documented 19th century Icelandic regional history; my grandfather, Sigurður Eggerz, twice prime minister, wrote plays and essays. My father, Pétur Eggerz, a foreign service officer, wrote fiction and non-fiction until the day he died at age 80."

I'm about to delve into Seal Woman, which is sure to be good, for none other than Margot Livesey has lauded it as "rich in vivid detail and psychological understanding" and a "beautiful and suspenseful debut." I was out of town for her "pubspeak," alas, so I asked her to share with me--- and you--- some of her thoughts about writing historical fiction. With my warmest thanks, over to you, Solveig!

In reading fiction, I like two different ways of examining the past. One focuses on how the past can pervade the present. Charlotte in my novel, Seal Woman, carries the past within her heart to the point where it guides actions in the present. The other approach involves capturing the essence of the past—but without sacrificing the characters to the details of history.

Two examples of the past pervading the present: A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee presents a character who leads a routine life in a California suburb, but his imagination pulsates with violent memories from World War II in Korea, edged by his own culpability.

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa brings two time periods together, 1961, the year of the assassination of the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, and 1996, the year when a fictional character, a Trujillo victim wreaks revenge on the tyrant. Vargas brings the timelines ever closer until they finally collide, laying bare the unsavory truth.

How did capturing and shackling humans in Africa corrupt the character of the crew members on an 18th century slave ship? Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth offers the bitter lesson: “it could have been me” from several points of view.

Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky both describe German-occupied France in World War II, especially its deadly impact on foreign-born Jews. The difference lies in the author’s proximity to the events. Faulks describes the occupation and the resistance from the hindsight of the present. Nemirovsky records events as they are occurring, ceasing only when the French police knock on her door July 13, 1942. She dies August 17, 1942 in Auschwitz.


---Solveig Eggerz

P.S. Here's a link to a recent interview with her about Iceland and the novel.

--->For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.