Bill Peschel http://www.planetpeschel.com/index en bpeschel@gmail.com Copyright 2009 2009-10-30T19:57:00-05:00 planetpeschel/fNQrhttp://feedburner.google.com Even for Halloween this is scary http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/-SmlMtX2grQ/ Im down to nine essays and the creation phase of "Writers Gone Wild" will be done. Today, I finished the essays on Vita Sackville-West's elopement to France with her lover, Violet Trufsis; the Lillian Hellman/Mary McCarthy smackdown and Joseph Conrad's suicide attempt.

And as if I didn't need enough encouragment, Ed Driscoll printed this chart showing the decline in circulation among newspapers.

Worse, Charles Apple -- expert newspaper designer and teacher -- reports on a rumor that Media General, a newspaper chain, is considering consolidating copy desks and page designers in a single location in Lynchburg, Virginia. I wouldn't be surprised if other newspaper executives will be watching this experiment to see what happens.

One prediction is easy to make: those newspapers are going to see more errors in basic facts. Outsourcing editing functions to copy editors who don't know the area, and with each correction, a reader's going to wonder if it's worth paying money to be misinformed.
]]> 2009-10-30T19:57:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/even_for_halloween_this_is_scary/ Still beavering away http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/d6ZFlrTztzY/ Writers Gone Wild Iwish I had more to say, except that this is my last week I'm intending to work on "Writers Gone Wild." I'm about 5,600 words away from finishing, so if you haven't already guessed, I'm focusing on that instead of anything else.

Here's the latest news from my whiteboard. It's talking to me, and saying: "Get back to WORK!" (click on it if you want the details).



And as you can see, Ivan is helping (clicking on him won't do anything; he is a force unto himself).

xxx

Good kitty ....
]]> 2009-10-26T14:54:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/still_beavering_away/ Almost at the end of the day http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/uoIX3WO1Css/ Writers Gone Wild, Writers Gone Wild! Diary, Great Blog Posts, Websites Worth Visiting, Writers Worth Reading Bill Peschel's whiteboard for todayIt's five o'clock. Do you know where your writer is?

I'm outta here, after a very, very full day.

About 1,200 words done on "Writers Gone Wild" (46,543 words toward a goal of 60,000, with a Nov. 15 due date), a few updates to the Wimsey Annotations (including one e-mail from 2005; yes, I am very, very far behind), cleaning out a bunch of e-mails, and some other stuff I'm behind on.

I only stopped for a few things: a Smart Bitches, Trashy Books contest asking you to identify if the couple on the cover was really "doing it"; Brandon's Roots "Six Things You Believe In That's Completely BS" which is guaranteed to piss somebody off; these lovely pictures of the horde of Anglo-Saxon goodies that I've been slobbering over; later, I'll be digging into Ed Champions review of "Capitalism: A Love Story", even though I despise Moore. I learned long ago to be suspicious of what I've been told, but educating yourself takes time, and there's so much to do in the meantime.

Like finish a book.

Speaking of which, congratulations to Elizabeth Kerri Mahon, whose joined the ranks of authors who turned their blogs into book contracts. I'm looking forward to seeing "Scandalous Women" on the shelves in March 2011. Congratulations, Elizabeth!
]]> 2009-09-24T20:50:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/almost_at_the_end_of_the_day/ ‘Could you have Inspector Vimes meet Dick Tracy? And sign it “To Bill”’ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/RPJNx60NHQM/ Comic Strips Roger Langridge Krazy KatThe thumbnail to the right is a commissioned piece by Roger Langridge of a Krazy Kat cartoon. I like it. Like it, in fact, more than I like Krazy Kat.

Sorry about that, comic-culture lovers. I’ve bought the books and read them, and I simply don’t “get” Krazy Kat. Perhaps the jokes were of a particular era, a particular style. Or, perhaps I’m a mouth-breathing idjit who can’t appreciate art if it sat at my table and ate my mint-chocolate cookies.

But I do like this one, and it raised a question about the differences etween comic artists and writers.

When artists do signings, it is common for them to dash off a quick drawing, sometimes on a specific subject: Batman, Spider-Man, your character encountering their favorite character. I encountered this at my first comic book convention, and I was flummoxed when the artist seemed to expect me to request a drawing.

Cerebus draws trees in Dave Sim's CerebusDave Sim riffed on this in his “Cerebus” comic, when his Conan-inspired aardvark character was running for office against Elrond (a combination of Michael Moorcock’s Elric and Chuck Jones’ Foghorn Leghorn. Seriously.), and a request to draw something resulted in Cerebus drawing trees.

This practice still puzzles me. When Terry Pratchett signed my copy of “The Last Hero,” I didn’t ask him to throw in a line about Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman.” No one asks Stephanie Meyers for a paragraph in which Bella Swan meets Lestrade? Would Thomas Pynchon, assuming you can find him, attempt an observation in the style of David Foster Wallace?

Nor do writers get private commissions, although I think that would be a really cool idea. I don’t know how much xxxx got for riffing on “Krazy Kat,” but would an up-and-coming writer ─ not Gaiman, obviously (unless you’re really, really rich) ─ but what about Austin Grossman, who rebooted superheroes in fiction with “Soon I Will Be Invincible?” Would someone offer him, say $300, for a flash-fiction piece on Superman? Would it be worth it?

I guess not, if only because you can put on the wall a drawing that your friends can look at and ooze jealously, while putting a paragraph on the wall doesn’t deliver the same visceral punch. No, it would be more like the unknown connoisseur who paid starving writers such as Anais Nin and Henry Miller a buck a page for pornography. A secret sin, to be enjoyed in private.
]]> 2009-09-18T16:19:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/could_you_have_inspector_vimes_meet_dick_tracy_and_sign_it_to_bill/ Spammers! Come here and I’ll cut you http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/1d61tJ1m014/ I suppose I had to crack someday. For the last week, since I wrote "My cat is my alarm clock," I've been getting spammers trying to insert their web sites for stupid cat-related products. For three days, I've been opening my mail and seeing "You have just received a comment" and cringed.

Go in, remove the spam, leave, come back and find it again.

Finally, I figured out how to close comments to that entry.

Now, some idiot from "www.Bridesmaiddressesunder100.com" has decided that my account of the burning of London in 1666 is the ideal location for a bit of spam.

So I edited it a little:
Wow, interesting reading, thank you for sharing. Just by looking at those amazing pictures it gives you a breif inisght to that historic night. By the way, did you know http://www.bridgesmaiddressesunder100.com is a scam? It is! We rip people off all the time! Bridesmaid Dresses Under $100 spams sites like this one because we have a little bit of money to hire monkeys such as me to spread our crap all over the Internet. So don't forget, Bridesmaid Dresses Under $100 wants to rip you off! So come and get screwed today!
I'll probably go back and remove it, because it wouldn't do, but I think I'll leave this up long enough for Google to stick it in their cache.

Because I don't know what else to do, short of cutting off comments entirely, but damn I had enough! I want to cut this site's head off and put it on a stick.
]]> 2009-09-16T18:26:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/spammers_come_here_and_ill_cut_you/ With special guest star … http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/RwyMHXL34iI/ Book Reviews, Mysteries & Thrillers It’s an odd feeling to open a book and read that you’ve drowned in a swimming pool.

There’s been a long tradition of writers naming their characters after people they know. Sometimes, the results are benign. Patrick O’Brian named one of his ships the Ringle after a favorite book reviewer, and Mr. Ringle doesn’t seem to be the worse for it. A.A. Milne took his son Christopher Robin’s name for his Pooh stories, turning his childhood into a flinching hell. Authors have even put their characters’ names up for auction for charity.

Now, it was my turn. To thank me for helping with a previous “Monk” book, Lee Goldberg asked if I would mind being killed for your entertainment in “Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop.” I said yes, pleased at the prospect of contributing to a novel without actually going to the trouble of writing it.

It also solved a problem when it came to writing this review. I’ve enjoyed Goldberg’s work since encountering his Star Trek parody “Beyond the Beyond” more than a decade ago. Since then, he’s turned out a number of novels, including tie-in novels for “Monk” and “Diagnosis: Murder,” and a standalone comic novel (“The Man with the Iron-On Badge,” a Donald Westlake-type romp that plays off his love of TV detective shows), that have been consistently good in quality.

The consistency is good for Goldberg, but it plays merry hell with a reviewer who finds himself running out of new things to say about each book. So I was looking forward to seeing myself splashed across the pages of “Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop.”

For those of you new to the show, here it is in brief: Adrian Monk is a brilliant police detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder whose life goes off the rails when his wife is killed. His OCD becomes so chronic he has to resign, but acts as a consultant to the San Francisco Police Department with the help of his assistant, Natalie Teeger.

Although a sympathetic character, Monk is a pain in the ass to work with. His desire to reorder the world and his fear of germs forces him to do bizarre things. He will sort a crowd at a soccer game so that an even number of persons are in each row. He’ll demand the arrest of a litterer. He’ll wear a hazmat suit in public if he feels he needs to. Naturally, this drives everyone around him crazy.

“Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop” plays with the logical outcome of Monk’s incredible crime-solving ability. His perfect record is used to embarrass Captain Stottlemeyer, his boss, and he loses his contract as a result of budget cuts. Monk goes to work for a high-end security firm, but is called back when Stottlemeyer is charged with murdering a detective he had bounced from the force years before.

That’s it in a nutshell, but there’s a lot of subplots as well, and that’s where I ─ or at least my namesake ─ comes in. When Teeger expresses frustration about her purpose in life, Stottlemeyer takes her to visit a family taking care of Dad, a delusional old rummy who used to run a bar and pass tips along to the police. Here’s how we meet him:

“Bill Peschel stood behind the kitchen counter, drying some glasses with a towel. He looked to me to be in his late sixties or early seventies. He wore an apron over his sunken chest and broad belly. Tufts of hair sprang from his nearly bald head like patches of dry, overgrown weeds. His nicotine-stained teeth were almost the same color as his weathered skin.”

Like Monk, he’s living in his own world, only worse. Or, as one of his relatives put it:

“You try living with a delusional, gutter-mouthed old coot who thinks he’s still tending bar in a Tenderloin dump filled with hookers and drunks.”

Good thing Goldberg has never met me. I’d start feeling self-conscious.

Like I said, it’s a good thing I’m not reviewing the book, because as I kept encountering my name, I felt more and more uncomfortable. Seeing one’s name in print associated with this character causes a disassociation with my self-image of the employed writer, father, and husband. Sometimes, it felt like I could feel a gear slipping in my head, so it was something of a relief when I’m finally killed and my ashes are dumped in front of the former site of the bar, now a Jamba Juice.

Fortunately, there’s plenty to appreciate about the book. Getting inside the characters’ heads is a major function of fiction that film can rarely reach, and in this series, Natalie’s concerns about her place in the world form a major backbone of the series. There’s even room for the odd observation of her own, such as this one about Marin County commuters who listen to NPR:
How do I know what station they were listening to on their radios? Because I know Marin County residents are well educated, own at least one Bob Dylan or Van Morrison album, and are notoriously liberal for people with so much money.
Then, she breaks the fourth wall:
And because I like to embrace cliches that have some truth to them and I enjoy making broad generalizations that support my biases. If you haven’t learned that about me by now, you haven’t been reading very closely.
Pleasure can even be taken in the secondary characters. Stottlemeyer reflects with mixed emotions on how he sees Monk’s role in the department. Lt. Randy Disher, last seen reveling in his underground cult status in Paris, gets to take over an investigation in this one. Goldberg loves playing with the conventions of the TV crime shows, so Disher imitates David Caruso, complete with sunglasses, tries to get everyone to call him “Bullitt,” and even works in a few one-liners of the kind that lead to a commercial break.

The Monk books not only capture the pleasures of the TV show, but add to it by deepening our understanding of the characters. It’s a testament to Goldberg’s energy and inventiveness that he’s been able to do it successfully for eight books.
]]> 2009-09-10T14:42:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/with_special_guest_star/ Stella Gibbons Kills A Genre (1932) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/46w5my_y0dQ/ Writers Gone Wild Few writers get credit for starting a genre — like Poe with the detective story, or Wells or Verne for science-fiction — but on this date in 1932, Stella Gibbons killed one.

Four years before, as a young woman working at a London newspaper, Gibbons was assigned the task of summarizing the plot of a novel that was being published in installments. Mary Webb's "The Golden Web" was a novel of the "Loam and Lovechild" school of fiction, which portrayed nature as rough and wild, men and women ruled by their passions, sexual and otherwise, and rural families as combative as any found in the Old Testament. This popular novel was part of a literary genre that ran back to Thomas Hardy and can even include, on a more rarified level, "Lady Chatterley's Lover." Even William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County might be considered a country cousin to the genre.

Although vastly popular in her time, Webb was no D.H. Lawrence, and she's been largely forgotten. Readers today would have little patience with passages such as:
"'See you Deb! The flockmaster goes westering; and the brown water and the blue wind above the cloud and the kestrels and you and me all go after the shippen with the starry door. Hear you Deb, what a noise o' little leaves clapping in the far coppy! Tis he, that shakes the bits of leaves and the bits of worlds, and sends love like forkit lightning— him as the stars fall before like white 'ool at sheep shearing...'"
Gibbons thought it dreadful stuff, so she decided to skewer it with her own story, about a smart young woman who moves in with her neurotic rural relatives. The source of her inspiration was none other than her parents, who seemed to take a perverse delight in histrionics. In one memorable incident when she was 11, her melancholic father threatened suicide and her mother begged Stella to intervene. Even at that age, she recognized that her father was secretly enjoying the agony he was inflicting on his family, and this pretense and emotional cruelty left a deep impression.

"Cold Comfort Farm" is a young writer's novel, full of energy and wit, written to entertain Gibbons and her friends and caring not a whit for what anyone else thinks. The encounter between the educated Flora Poste and her cousins in the Starkadder family gave her free rein to deflate not only rural virtues and vices, but the fads and fancies of the 1930s as well: Freudianism, Hollywood, even Lawrence's philosophy that the urging of the blood is wiser than that of the intellect. She penned a mock-fawning foreword dedicating the book to "Anthony Pookworthy, Esq. A.B.S., L.L.B"— a disguised Hugh Walpole, the noted novelist whom she saw as pompous and over-rated (the initials stand for Associate Back Scratcher and Licensed Log Roller). For the reviewers' convenience, she designated noteworthy examples of her best prose with one, two or three stars as "perfected by the late Herr Baedeker."

A typical three-star passage ran like this:
" * * * The man's big body, etched menacingly against the bleak light that stabbed in from the low windows, did not move. His thoughts swirled like a beck in spate behind the sodden grey furrows of his face. A woman . . . Blast! Blast! Come to wrest away from him the land whose love fermented in his veins, like slow yeast. She-woman. Young, soft-coloured, insolent. His gaze was suddenly edged by a fleshy taint. Break her. Break. Keep and hold and hold fast the land. The land, the iron furrows of frosted earth under the rain-lust, the fecund spears of rain, the swelling, slow burst of seed-sheaths, the slow smell of cows and cry of cows, the trampling bridge-path of the bull in his hour. All his, his . . .

"Will you have some bread and butter?" asked Flora, handing him a cup of tea. "Oh, never mind your boots. Adam can sweep the mud up afterwards. Do come in."
The manuscript was originally called "Curse God Farm," but she renamed it at a friend's suggestion after a place in the Midlands which no one had been able to make a go of.

Published on Sept. 8, 1932, Gibbons's debut novel was a smash. Punch praised her for mocking with devilish skill "'a certain type of much read, earthy passionate novel -- the kind of story in which peasants have babies in cow sheds and push each other down wells." Gibbon quit newspaper journalism for the writing life, but along with success, she seems to have also acquired the farm's curse. For the next 40 years, she published novels, short stories and poems, but "Cold Comfort Farm" remained her only success.

"I always love hearing from a reader who has enjoyed my other books as well as that wretched CCF," she wrote later in life to a fan. "I know this sounds ungrateful, but honestly, I do get rather browned off with having it tagged onto me -- or rather, me tagged onto it. "

Born: Frédéric Mistral, poet, Maillane, France, 1830; Alfred Jarry, poet, playwright, Laval, France, 1873; Siegfried Sassoon, poet, novelist, London, 1886; Grace Metalious, novelist, Manchester, N.H., 1924; Michael Frayn, playwright, London, 1933; Ann Beattie, author, Washington, D.C., 1947.

Died: William Tindall, essayist, critic, New York City, 1981.
]]> 2009-09-08T13:00:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/stella_gibbons_kills_a_genre_1932/ Mona Lisa discovered stolen (1911) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/c74QH9vUL-E/ Writers Gone Wild Agreat art theft would land the poet who coined the word surrealism into prison on this day and force a future famous painter to skulk about the Seine attempting to sink stolen artifacts.

The place: The Louvre. The year: 1911. A painter named Louis Béroud came in with a model, his easel and his paints. There had been a great controversy brewing over the previous weeks after the Louvre's curator, Théophile Homolle, had ordered the installation of panes of glass in front of a number of works, including the Mona Lisa. The reflections made it difficult to see the works, leading to jokes that the Louvre was covering up a theft by putting a copy behind the glass. Béroud had decided to paint a joke by painting his model fixing her hair in the reflection in front of the Mona Lisa.

This is what he found when he arrived:

Stolen Mona Lisa

Four iron pegs, the shelf on which the painting's frame rested, and a lighter patch of wall, Mona Lisa-sized. He called over a guard, who gave a Gallic shrug. Perhaps it had been taken away to be photographed. Be patient. It will be returned and you may have your painting.

Three hours later, an irritated Béroud asked again. This time, they checked with the photographers. No Mona Lisa. The guards hastily looked through the museum. Nothing. The police were called in. They shut down the Louvre for a week and searched every one of its 225 rooms and five miles of corridors. The painting's gilt frame was found in a staircase and a wrenched off door handle outside showed how the thief gave entrance. The police re-enacted the theft using a copy of the painting, and learned that unhooking the painting could be done in five minutes by someone who didn't know how, but in only six seconds by the museum's staff.

Theories behind the theft abounded. The Germans did it, to embarrass the French. The French secret service did it, to blame the Germans. It was a maniac enamored with Mona Lisa's smile. It was one of the Louvre's guards, or someone wanting to ransom the painting.

A week later, another story about the museum made headlines. The newspaper had received a letter bragging that the Mona Lisa wasn't the only object stolen from the museum. The letter-writer had taken two primitive sculptures back in 1907 and sold them. In fact, only a few months before the Mona Lisa theft, he had returned to the museum and stolen a Phoenician piece. As proof, he sold the item to the newspaper, who turned it over to the police.

At this point, let's introduce Guillaume Apollinaire, poet, art critic, editor and unintended recipient of stolen goods. He had befriended the letter-writer, Géry Piéret, a starving artist, and for awhile had employed the young man as his secretary. He had known about the earlier thefts, and when Piéret had arrived at his flat with the Phonician piece, had placed the item on his mantle piece.

When the Mona Lisa was stolen, Apollinaire panicked. Sure that Piéret had made off with the Da Vinci painting as well, he gave the piece back, along with all the francs he had, and told Piéret that a long vacation outside the reach of the French police would be an excellent idea.

This Piéret did, but not before he sold the piece to the newspaper and wrote the letter bragging about his later theft. But he did something else that dragged Apollinaire into the mess. According to "Rouges in the Gallery," by Hugh McLeave:
His fears heightened when Piéret wrote from Frankfurt confessing to the theft of the statuettes and trying to exonerate Apollinaire, who had asked him to leave when he discovered the crime. "My dear friend," he quoted Apollinaire as saying, "You'd better go immediately. I don't share your opinions and I'm sorry I invited you to stay with me now that I believe in your crime."
Somehow, the police got wind of this letter. With Piéret out of the country, they began to focus on Apollinaire, who panicked. He knew exactly who Piéret sold those two earlier pieces to, an artist with promise named Picasso who had been inspired by those sculptures to use them in "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."

Picasso's mistress at the time, Fernande Olivier, wrote about Apollinaire's visit to the studio:
"They owe it to me that they didn't lose their heads completely. They made up their minds to stay in Paris and immediately get rid of the incriminating objects. But how? Finally, after a gobbled meal and kicking their heels the whole evening they decided to go out after dark and throw a suitcase containing the sculptures into the Seine.

Towards midnight, they set out on foot carying the suicase, and returned at two o'clock, exhausted, played out. They brought back the suitcase and its contents. They had wandered up and down, never finding the right moment and not daring to get rid of their package. They thought they were being followed and their imagination had invented a thousand things, each one more fantastic than the last.
Soon after, Apollinaire was arrested. At the Palais de Justice, he endured a day of questioning before he broke down, confessed his limited involvement in the thefts, and fingered Picasso. He denied knowing anything about the Mona Lisa theft, but the poet was charged with complicity to steal and sent to the notorious Santé prison.

Later, Guillaime wrote:
Before entering my cell
They made me strip to the skin
I hear a sinister wail
Guillaume what have you become
Guillaime was in prison for five days before police concluded that he really didn't have anything to do with the theft, and he was released. Picasso was questioned, but not arrested.

Two years would pass before the Mona Lisa would be recovered. A former Louvre worker, an Italian named Vincenzo Peruggia, was arrested in Italy after trying to sell the work to an art dealer. In the eyes of Italians, the theft made him a patriot, and the Mona Lisa was exhibited throughout the country before it was returned to the Louvre, where it is exhibited today, behind reinforced glass, with a bored guard next to it.

Born: Emily Chubbock Judson, poet, author, Eaton, N.Y. 1817; George Herriman, cartoonist, New Orleans, 1881; Dorothy Parker, novelist, short-story writer, critic, wit, West End, N.J., 1893; Ray Bradbury, fantasy novelist, short-story writer, Waukegan, Ill., 1920; E(dna) Annie Proulx, novelist, Norwich, Conn., 1935.

Died: Henry Bohn, publisher, bookseller, bibliographer, Twickenham, London, 1884; Kate Chopin, novelist, short-story writer, St. Louis, 1904; Roger Martin du Gard, playwright, Bellême, France. 1958; Jacob Bronowski, scientist, author, East Hampton, N.Y., 1974; James T. Farrell, novelist, short-story writer, social critic, New York City, 1979.

Quote for the Day: "[Writing routine] is not a pattern, it's not a discipline, it's a madness. Every morning I wake up at seven o'clock and my subconscious says, Well, I'll tell you what you're going to do today, Ray. You're not in charge, I am. That part of me that's the writer dictates the day. I have no control over it. Every day is wonderful. It may be a poem one morning, it may be a short story, it could be part of a novel, a one-act play. Whatever IT wants, not what I want. It's fun. I can hardly wait to see what I'm going to do next." — Ray Bradbury, who was born today in 1920

Also from the Reader's Almanac:

]]> 2009-09-07T13:00:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/mona_lisa_discovered_stolen_1911/ London Burning IV: The End (1666) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/nAD0PXnY7IA/ Writers Gone Wild, 17th Century and Before The fire was beginning to burn itself out. A drop in the wind gave enough breathing room for those battling the fire, led by the king's brother, the Duke of York, to get a handle on the blaze. On the east side of London, fearing for the safety of the Tower, the garrison, without orders, used its stock of gunpowder to blow up houses.

With his house and offices safe, Pepys felt freer to walk about the town. With his feet burning from the heated cobblestones, he saw the vast park Moorfields covered with refugees "carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves."

Meanwhile, the king and his courtiers began the process of restoring order, establishing markets where food would be sold, resettling into the official residences and offices that were not burned down, and encouraging plans to be drawn up for the rebuilding of London, none of which were used. Instead, Londoners rebuilt their homes, substituting stone instead of wood, and making sure that the old, bad habits that caused the fire (such as building out over alleyways and roads) were not repeated.

By any measure, London was devastated: 13,500 houses, 87 churches, major buildings such as St. Paul's Cathedral, the Custom House, the Royal Exchange, a royal palace, the prison, the post office and three city gates. Nobody knows how many died. Some guess only a few, but who knows how many poor people perished, their bodies incinerated by the intense heat.

As for Pepys, apart from trouble sleeping ("much terrified in the nights nowadays, with dreams of fire and falling down of houses"), he was pretty much his usual self. Within days, his house and office were restored, although he was annoyed at having to be called away to work while strange workmen "going to and fro might take what they would almost." Within a week, in fact, he made up for lost time by visiting, in one day, with Betty Martin, the wife of a linendraper where he did "tout ce que je voudrais avec" her ("whatever I wanted with"), and William Bagwell's wife, where he tried "para aver demorado con ella toda la night" ("to delay it for the whole night") while her husband was away.

London

Born: Robert Fergusson, poet, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1750; Victorien Sardou, playwright, Paris, 1831; Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher, essayist, Tiruttan, India, 1888; Arthur Koestler, novelist, journalist, critic, Budapest, Hungary, 1905; Frank Yerby, novelist, Augusta, Ga., 1916; Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist, Dayton, Ohio, 1950; Edward Anderson, noir novelist, journalist, Texas, 1969.

Died: Charles Peguy, philosopher, poet, near Villeroy, France, 1914; Gustave Kahn, poet, literary theorist, Paris, 1936; Guy Bolton, playwright, librettist, London, 1979.
]]> 2009-09-05T13:00:00-05:00 http://www.planetpeschel.com/index/site/comments/london_burning_iv_the_end_1666/ London Burning III: Burn Down The Mission (1666) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/planetpeschel/fNQr/~3/IXG_stn_jKE/ Writers Gone Wild, 17th Century and Before Hell came to London.

On the west side of London stood St. Paul's Cathedral, the massive stone church that had been started after the last fire in 1087. The site had been a sacred spot since when London was a Roman fort: pagan megalith, temple of Diana, rebuilt several times after sundry fires and Viking sackings. Henry VIII's separation from the church and pushed the cathedral onto hard times, with its interior ornamentation stripped and some of the buildings in the churchyard destroyed or reused for shops, especially printers and booksellers.

King Charles' brother, James, who was leading the firefighting effort, had made a stand at the River Fleet, between the fire and the church, and also torn down enough houses to form a firebreak to the north. But an easterly gale pushed sparks across the river and outflanked his men, and by late afternoon, had jumped the firebreak as well.

The fire bore down St. Paul's, which by this time was crammed with refugees and their goods. The stone walls could resist the fire, but the church was undergoing restoration, and it was covered with wooden scaffolding.

Uh, oh, time to call This Old HouseThat night, the wood caught fire. The flames spread. Inside, the timbered roof beams caught, and the lead roof melted down onto the papers. With a roar, St. Paul's resembled a funeral pyre, the flames visible for miles. The diarist, John Evelyn, reported that "the stones of Paul's flew like grenados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them."

As for our Mr. Pepys, after he had secured the goods in his house, he turned to the Navy Office. The flames were approaching, and despairing of salvation, he penned a hasty message to the Duke of York, asking permission to use the crews from the shipyards down the Thames to create a firebreak from destroyed buildings:
SIR, The fire is now very neere us as well on Tower Streete as Fanchurch Street side, and we little hope of our escape but by this remedy, to ye want whereof we doe certainly owe ye loss of ye City namely, ye pulling down of houses, in ye way of ye fire. This way Sir W. Pen and myself have so far concluded upon ye practising, that he is gone to Woolwich and Deptford to supply himself with men and necessarys in order to the doeing thereof, in case at his returne our condition be not bettered and that he meets with his R. Hs. approbation, which I had thus undertaken to learn of you. Pray please to let me have this night (at whatever hour it is) what his R. Hs. directions are in this particular; Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten having left us, we cannot add, though we are well assured of their, as well as all ye neighbourhood's concurrence.

Yr. obedient servnt.
S. P.

Sir W. Coventry,
Septr. 4, 1666.
To be concluded . . .

Born: François-Rene de Chateaubriand, poet, novelist, historian, explorer, statesman, St. Malo, France, 1768; Mary Renault, historical author, London, 1905; Richard Wright, novelist, Natchez, Miss., 1908; Paul Harvey, broadcaster, commentator, Tulsa, Okla., 1918; Alexander Liberman, editor, painter, sculptor, photographer, Kiev, Russia, 1912; Craig Claiborne, food author, critic, Sunflower, Miss., 1920; Joan Aiken, novelist, short-story writer, Rye, Sussex, 1924; Jane Brox, author, Dracut, Mass., 1956; Lisa Knopp, memoirist, essayist, Burlington, Iowa, 1956.

Died: Margery Williams Bianco, children's author, New York City, 1944; Louis Adamic, novelist, journalist, essayist, memoirist, Riegelsville, N.J., 1951; Georges Simenon, novelist, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1989; Thomas Tryon, actor, novelist, Los Angeles, Calif., 1991.
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