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  Lunatic Writer

Book Review: BIG LEDGE by Brian d'Eon

10/2/2018

1 Comment

 

Nascent Poet or Hotheaded Murderer?
by Sean Arthur Joyce

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​Big Ledge by Brian D’Eon is that rarity in historical fiction—a story that combines historical veracity with narrative fluency and a deep poetic sensibility. D’Eon starts the tale from its endpoint, with its protagonist Robert Sproule sitting in a jail cell telling his story to a priest on the eve of his execution in 1886. Sproule is well-known to readers of Kootenay history for having been convicted of the murder of Thomas Hamill, with whom he had a dispute over ownership of the Bluebell mining claim on the east shore of Kootenay Lake.

The author captures well the colloquialisms of late 19th century speech, adding to the tale’s believability. As any skilled writer knows, dialogue is a prime vehicle for storytelling, not just for revealing plot points but quirks of speech and character. D’Eon effortlessly masters the technique, easily drawing us into the tale. He also appreciates the value of including other sensory information in the narrative. Sproule’s confession to the priest is laced with his memories of the “pristine” Kootenay country—not just its visual grandeur but its smells: “…the firs and cedar, the black earth, the wild strawberries, even the smell of the lake—each has its own smell you know—that’s how salmon know where they’re going.”

The poetic dimension enters with a secondary set of characters, the Archangel Michael and Hindu goddess Parvati, heavenly eavesdroppers whose wry asides add a funny, philosophical dimension. Poetic quotes from Blake, Shakespeare, the Bible and others are woven seamlessly throughout Sproule’s narrative, though it’s uncertain what level of education he possessed, or whether he would have had quite the broad vocabulary D’Eon imagines. The dialogue between Archangel Michael and Parvati is often laced with humour, as when Michael wonders what it is that attracts mortals to tobacco. “Ah,” Parvati answered, happy to explain: “A native custom, and a most clever means of revenge against European invaders.” The celestial pair function as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting from the wings as they debate whether Sproule is an unjustly accused prospector with a poetic nature or simply a hotheaded murderer. In so doing, D’Eon skillfully engages one of Canadian history’s great mysteries, one that—given the contradictory historical accounts—may never be solved.
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Adding to this narrative of multiple perspectives is C.J. Woodbury, a reporter who wrote several accounts of the Sproule-Hamill trial. Speaking to his fiancée Kate Buchanan, Woodbury makes an observation that could serve as the book’s basic premise: “It was striking the way people could so quickly judge these things. As if there could be no doubt about the matter. Label someone and you no longer had to think about him as a person.” With explorations of Woodbury as well as William Baillie-Grohman, D’Eon sidesteps the trap of investing too heavily in his protagonist’s point of view.
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D’Eon successfully applies the techniques of the novelist to flesh out what would otherwise be—at best, given what we know of Sproule and Hamill—a very short story. One of the writer’s primary tools is a sense of empathy for a story’s characters, even those with an unsavoury nature. D’Eon clearly identifies strongly with the version of Sproule he has created, and his characterization is highly appealing. For many readers, it will raise serious questions about Sproule’s guilt and the “justice” meted out to him.
You can almost smell the smoke of a miner’s campfire, curling up into a night sky not yet crowded with satellites and air pollution, lake waters lapping meditatively as the tale unwinds. D’Eon has written a historical novel that ranks with the best of them.



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One of the story's principal narrators, the Hindu Goddess, Parvati

1 Comment

Big Ledge Ready to Go

11/27/2014

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I have spent the last couple of months going over the manuscript of my second novel, Big Ledge: the triumphs and tribulations of Robert E. Sproule, incorporating in this pass all the new editing skills I have learned the hard way from working with Trevor Cole. I don`t think I can make the novel any better.  Time to send it out to publishers once again--even without an agent to help. Please feel free to read the first part and tell me what you think.

Fingers crossed, thinking of needles in haystacks, never say die: what other clich
és can I bring to my aid?






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Big Ledge Update

7/12/2013

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First official rejection from an agent...

Hard not to take it personally.  Especially considering the etymology of the word which literally means to "throw back". 
Ah well...  I fall into deeper solidarity with Sproule who knew his fair share of rejection, didn't he? 

Maybe my bonanza's just around the corner, right?

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BIG LEDGE Update

6/27/2013

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Big Ledge is presently in the hands of three publishers and one agent.  The agent has showed some initial interest.  Unfortunately these things tend to move at the speed of receding glaciers...   By contrast, I have been nagged repeatedly by reps from Self-Publishing companies who are anxious to help me 'get my work out there'... Hmm...  I can only shake my head and repeat the mantra: "I will not grow cynical, I will not grow cynical..."


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BIG LEDGE: Final Edit

4/15/2013

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Big Ledge is in its final stages of editing (that is, until some outside editor has a go at it.) Next on the agenda is a visit to the Provincial Court House to read through the trial transcripts, both Sproule’s murder trial, and the Kootenay Mining Appeal of 1884.

A reader might ask why I’ve waited till now to read those documents.  There are two reasons:

1) I didn’t want to be overly-constrained by ‘facts’ as I mapped out the plot of my story and
2) The “British Daily Colonist”, one of Victoria’s daily newspapers of the day, covered Sproule’s murder trial at length, often including verbatim quotations from key witnesses.

Still who knows what juicy tidbits might lie within those documents?

This does sound like a recipe for INCREASING the length of my manuscript, doesn't it?


I’d better come armed with a necklace of garlic and a crucifix…


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BIG LEDGE, third pass:  Dismemberment and Reanimation

4/8/2013

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The second pass on Big Ledge is complete and the manuscript is six thousand words lighter.  Most of the typos, repetitions and questionable grammar are gone, and my dialogue is quite drenched in ‘cowboy vocabulary’.

I did some careful checking into factual details.  I also did my best to tighten up the consistency of behaviour for certain characters, trying to avoid having the attributes of one character bleed into another. 

My third pass of Big Ledge will be the most brutal. Next I will try to eliminate whole passages, perhaps chapters, which an impartial, unsympathetic eye would deem non-essential to the story.

I will, in other words, dismember the work… Then try to put it back together.

Horror.

Whether the Frankenstein version of the novel which remains will be worth animating or not is an open question.

Igor, to the lab at once!



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Big Ledge--Second Pass (How to Speak Cowboy)

4/2/2013

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Since the finish of the first draft about two weeks ago, I have read through the manuscript twice and reduced its length from 104 thousand words to 99 thousand. Gone, I hope, is the needless repetition and unnecessary wordiness.  Wordiness may continue to be an issue however.  My central character, Sproule, is obsessed with words and tries to use the most high falutin’ ones he can come up with, just to startle people.  There are a few legal prigs in the story as well. They have been known to be ‘wordy’ at times.  Due to forces beyond my control (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it), the entire novel may be infected with a certain verbal garishness throughout, so I will need to continue to be on my guard.

It probably does not help that I have been reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy over the last several weeks—a great novel, but hardly an antidote to wordiness.

Besides the constant goal of looking for places to cut content, my main goal in the second pass was to beef up my 19th century vocabulary.  To check on the legitimacy of expressions I had my characters use and to insert some new ones where needed.

This was done with the help of some good online sources and also with my own personal compilation of colourful words and phrases from Tom Sawyer.  The vast majority of these words and expressions were familiar, if quaint, but a few gems came as total surprises.

Here are a few of my favourites, most of which have made their way into the book:

 

Cock robin (a soft easy fellow)

Off one’s chump (crazy)

The cat’s uncle (one who grins without reason)

Fancy Dan (flashy dude)

High-toned (fancy)

Vexation (annoyance)

Bunch of fives (fist)

Like enough (probably)

Month of Sundays (long period)

Ruination (downfall)

Damaging revealments (scandalous secrets)

Devilment (mischief)

Hornswoggle (to cheat)

Fimble-famble (lame excuse)

Risibility (sense of humour)

Vittles (human food)

Sit-upons (trousers)

 

And my two very favourites: cold coffee (misfortune)

and… pixilated (bewildered)


 

I keep seeing Festus from the television series Gunsmoke, limping into the jailhouse and crying out: “Golly, Marshal! That high-toned fancy Dan’s gonna be the ruination of us all!” or words to that effect.




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If YOU have some favourite 19th century colloquialisms I may have missed, please pass them on!

I'd be much obliged.

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Guy Consolmagno & the Vatican Observatory

3/31/2013

2 Comments

 
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Brother Guy--A Jesuit and research astronomer--echoes my feelings about the relationship between science and religion very eloquently.  At one point he reminds listeners that Scripture says: "God so loved the world that he gave us his Son."  Brother Guy emphasizes the fact that it is the "world" that God loves, the physical, real, rational, open-for-investigation world.  We are part of this world and, like God himself, are expected to love it.  Hence science. Hence environmentalism. Hence all charity and love. Amen.




Br. Consolmagno and part of the Vatican meteorite collection, courtesy Kevin Nickerson

(Originally broadcast on CBC's Quirks and Quarks on April 15, 2006)

Science and religion are often seen in conflict, but that's something Brother Guy Consolmagno would like to put behind us. He's certainly put it behind him. Brother Guy is the Curator of Meteorites of the Vatican Observatory in Arizona, and an accomplished planetary scientist, and he sees no tension at all between his science and his religion. He also thinks many scientists with religious beliefs feel the same way. The conflict, he suspects, is a result of people who know too little about both science and religion.


Click BELOW for the CBC interview with Brother Guy and learn what the Roman Catholic Church really thinks about science.

qq-2013-03-30_04_guy_consolmagno.mp3
File Size: 17348 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

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VATT--the Vatican Observatory, near Tucson, Arizona.

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Ready for more? Here what the Vatican Observatory's chief astronomer, Jose Gabriel Funes has to say about the possible existence of
extra-terrestrial intelligence.

2 Comments

Editing Big Ledge: What's in a Name?

3/25/2013

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First Pass Edits:  How to Painlessly Lose Two Thousand Words

It has taken me one week to make my first pass edits on the Big Ledge manuscript. For the most part, the results have been successful.  Fixed up some spelling and a few punctuation errors—actually quite a few punctuation errors—or, as I like to think to think of them--style choices. For the most part, however, the story seems self-consistent.              

I did find, on one occasion, that I had given a minor character two different names, but that was easily fixed.  And I was reminded of my tendency to refer to major characters by several different names and epithets.  Sproule for example is variously called Bobbie, Bob, Robert, Robbie but mostly just Sproule.  In the courtroom he is also referred to as the prisoner, the accused and the condemned man.  Crown Counsel is referred to as A.E.B. Davie, or Alexander, sometimes A.E.B., the attorney-general, or simply the prosecutor.
     

Sproule himself is just as guilty of this tendency as the author. He calls Lily Langtry:  Lily, Ma’am or Miss depending on the circumstance and his state of mind.

It’s not that I can’t make up my mind. Different occasions seem to call for different names and I guess I like to err on the side of variety. However, if it results in confusing the reader…  This is something I will have to keep in mind for my next pass at the manuscript.

It was not my ambition to seriously reduce the size of the work on the first pass. However, even without this goal specifically in mind, it was clear that some passages were simply repetitive, too wordy, or inconsistent with other parts of the story.  Identifying these problem passages allowed me to reduce the work by about two thousand words.  Mind you, that’s barely more than 1% of the entire manuscript. I have a long way to go to reach my goal of 90 000 words.

Nor is it a straight forward process.  Sometimes it becomes glaringly apparent that I need to write more material for the sake of clarification, which is a painful revelation when one is trying to shrink the piece.  For example, my character, Fr. Desjardins suddenly disappears from the story with no explanation.  Can’t have that.  But in how few words can I fix it?

One my next pass, besides being attentive to the usual things: spelling, punctuation, internal logic etc., I will be paying special attention to 19th century American slang.  I’ve consulted several online dictionaries and made a fairly careful reading of Tom Sawyer, to provide me with vocabulary and expressions which are authentic for the time.  Much of the time while writing Big Ledge, my inner voice was speaking like a character from some John Wayne western!    


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90 000 Words

2/13/2013

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Just passed the ninety thousand word mark in BIG LEDGE. Just about time to start applying the brakes!

Below is a detail of a map showing the route of the Northern Pacific Railway. It starts in Minneapolis/ St. Paul and heads out to Tacoma and Portland.

Sproule and his fellow miners would normally have got off at Kootenai Station (near Sandpoint), then headed north to Bonner's Ferry. From there they could travel downriver to Kootenay Lake, cross the international border, and soon reach Big Ledge.

In 1884, Grohman tells a tale of his being accosted at gunpoint by Sproule on a train trip from Kootenai Station to Rathdrum.  Rathdrum was the nearest settlement where Grohman would have encountered the law and could have sworn out a complaint against Sproule. For some reason he never did.

Any local Kootenay residents will note that Nakusp and Sandon are shown in the wrong place. Cute...


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