I’m reading/editing a friend’s novel. I like his style. I especially like the fact that I have to take my time with it. He has done a wonderful job establishing the main character and the angst in the story. I can’t wait to find out exactly what’s going on and how it’s going to all play out.
Okay. I finished reading Apt Pupil. Actually, I finished reading it last week, but I haven’t had a chance to finish the summary until now.
Again, let me warn you. If you haven’t already read this incredibly, creepy story, my summary is not just full of spoilers, it is a spoiler. So reader beware.
In our last episode, Dussander suffers a heart attack while trying to bury his latest victim in his basement. He calls Todd, who tells his parents that Dussander got a letter from a friend that he’d like him to read. Todd rushes over and is pissed that Dussander has made such a mess. He sets about cleaning it up so that he can get psycho dude to the hospital. While he’s burying the poor old wino, Todd notices that he only has one Hush Puppy on. He’s thinkin’ “One Hush Puppy? One?” He runs around the basement like crazy and finds it near some shelving. Whew! The shoe goes in the hole with the poor dead wino. Alright. Cool. Wino is dead, buried and not yet stinkin’. He’s good to go. Upstairs, Todd finds Dussander out on the table. Immediately, he thinks old dude done kicked the bucket on him and left him holding the bloody shovel, knife, mop, broom, rag, everything. He shouts, “Don’t you dare die on me, you old #$#%$#!” Dussander wakes up and tells Todd to put a sock in it. He ain’t dead. Todd starts cleaning up. He finds the butcher knife Dussander used and he start wavin’ it at him, sayin, “I’d like to cut your throat with this.” Dussander is like, Yeah, yeah.
With the house looking like Martha Stewart has been by, well, not that clean, but at least all the blood and guts are up off the floor, Todd calls the “Santo Donato MED-Q.” They tell him that an ambulance will be there in a few. Todd then starts to lose it a bit. He calms himself by saying, “Get hold of yourself, Todd-baby. Get down, get funky, get cool. Dig it.” Yeah, he digs it all right. After he stops trippin’ Todd calls his father all frantic, like he didn’t just finish burying a body and threatenin’ to bury Dussander next to it. “It’s Mr. Denker, Daddy.” Daddy? “He . . .(oh, I can’t speak I’m so terribly upset and scared) it’s a heart attack, I think.” He’s dad’s all like, calm down. “Good boy.” I’ll be there in four minutes. Todd hangs up and starts trippin’ again. He needs a letter to show his dad to prove that’s why he came over there in the first place. Dussander tells him to go up to his room and get this box that has old letters in it. He and Dussander start arguing about the letter being written in German. “Are you crazy?” Todd raged. “I don’t understand German! How could I read you a letter written in German, you numb $%#^?” Dussander is like, “Why would Willi write me in English? If you read me a leter in German, I would understand it even if you did not. Of course your pronunciation would be butchery . . .”
Okay, so they got the letter and their lies all straight. The ambulance and his father get there. His father glances at the letter then off to the hospital they go. While in the hospital, Dussander tells Todd that he knows he’s been doing some killing of his own. Todd tries to play like he don’t know what Dussander is talking about. Kill people? How could you accuse me of such a horrible thing? You’re the murder. You’re the Nazi. I’m just an innocent little school boy, tryin’ to make good in this big, bad, ugly world. Dussander then admits that he doesn’t actually have a letter in a safety deposit box. Todd’s like, Come again, you old fart. Dussander says, “It was as much a bluff as your ‘letter left with a friend.’ You never wrote such a letter, there never was such a friend, and I have never written a single word about our . . . association, shall I call it?”
“Association?” See, I told you. These two are certifiable. As my boy in the movie Joy Ride says, “You need to find a highly qualified psychiatrist. Not a psychologist. You’re gonna need some drugs.”
Anyway, Todd saved Dussander’s life, so he gives Todd back his life by telling him that there is no letter. Okay. They’re square, right. Wrong. Nutso Todd doesn’t believe Dussander.
Meanwhile, there’s this other old dude named Morris Heisel. He’s up on a ladder fixing the rain-gutter when a dog chases a cat under the ladder and down he goes, breaking his back. He ends up in the bed next to Dussander. And wouldn’t you know, Heisel is a Holocaust survivor, whose wife and daughters were murdered by Dussander. It takes him a minute to recognize him, but when he does, he thinks, “Oh dear God, the man who murdered my wife and my daughters is sleeping in the same room with me, my god, oh dear dear God, he is here with me now in this room.” It is one of the saddest moments in the book. The movie does a great job with this scene, although they changed it a bit.
The book starts to get really dark after this. Especially the scenes with Todd. Todd is losing it really badly. He is freakin insane and his parents don’t even know. His dad is talking to him, calling him Todd-O, and Todd-O is thinking stuff like, “You call me that one more time and I’m going to stick my knife right up your #$%#% nose . . . Dad-O.” I’m starting to trip myself at this point. I mean, dude is crazy nuts, and sitting there smiling at his father. Scary. Todd really shows how cuckoo for cocoa puffs he is when his father talks about this girl named Betty Trask (Trask, Trash. Umm.) he’s been dating. She’s supposed to be a nice girl, but apparently she’s a . . . well, let me let Todd tell you what she is. According to Todd, mind you Todd’s a little loco, but according to him, Betty Trask “is one of the biggest sluts in Santo Donato. She’d kiss her own $#$# if she was double-jointed, Dad-O. Two lines of coke and she’s yours for the night. And if you don’t happen to have any coke, she’s still yours for the night. She’d $%$* a dog if she couldn’t get a man.” That’s what Todd said about Betty Trask. He says a whole bunch of other stuff that you have to read for yourself to get where Todd’s coming from and where he’s going.
Well, while Todd is having these wonderful thoughts about Betty Trask, Dad-O gets the paper and guess who’s on the front of the sports page? Yep. Good Old Todd-O. Seems he’s made the “Southern Cal High School All-Stars!” Whoopee! Way to go Todd-O! Dad-O couldn’t be prouder of his son. Todd, on the other hand, is thinking, “Who gives a ripe #$%@?” I’m telling you, this boy is bonkers.
There is a lot going on in this story. Remember Ed French, the counselor that Dussander saw when Todd failing? Well, he’s away at San Remo attending some “guidance counsellor’s convention” when he decides to give Todd’s grandfather a call. See, when Dussander met with French he told him that he’d retired at San Remo. Bored out of his skull, French calls the only Victor Bowden listed in the White Pages and he learns that he has been bambozzled, hoodwinked, lead astray, conned, suckered.
Alright. Now we’re gettin’ to the nitty-gritty. Dussander wakes up to find his roommate gone. Heisel left, called his boys and one of them was sitting in his room saying, “Wake up, old man.” We ‘bout to stick it to you. Dussander tried to pull that my name is Arthur Denker crap, and dude said, “My name is Weiskopf. And yours is Kurt Dussander.” Dussander kept repeating the same old lie and dude wasn’t havin’ it. He told him, “You’ll see me again. Soon.” Dussander was shakin’ in his old jack-boots. He knew that he didn’t have much time before they were comin’ to get his butt, so he sneaked out of his room, stole some pills and “His overdose was discovered at 1:35 a.m., and he was pronounced dead fifteen minutes later.
The next morning, it’s all over the papers. Dad-O chokes on his coffee when he reads the headline: “Fugitive Nazi Commits Suicide in Santo Donato Hospital.” Todd nearly faints, for real. Of course the cops come a knockin’ at the door, door door. Todd lies up a storm, but they already have him. They’ve found the bodies in the basement, Todd’s finger prints on the shovel, all over the house, on the box where he got the important letter he supposedly read to Dussander. The letter is missing, and Todd tries to help the cops explain why that is the only thing in the house that got legs and walked away, and that only helps him dig his grave more. The only thing the cops can’t figure is why Todd got involved with Dussander in the first place. A lot of people think that Dussander influences Todd, corrupts his mind with his true accounts of what happened. But the truth is Todd is schizo from jump. Anybody else would have turned Dussander in. Only a mind as sick as Dussander would have done what Todd did. Dussander is just a perfect excuse for Todd to do what he wants to do in the first place. Kill a whole bunch of folk.
Like a said, a whole lot goes on in this book. While the cops are trying to figure out how to finger Todd, a homeless man named Hap comes into the police station. He swears that the boy on the sports page is the same boy that was talking to his friend before he disappeared. The cop is like, how do you know it’s him. “The grin,” Hap said. “It’s the way he’s grinning. He was grinning at Poley in just that same ain’t-life-grand way when they walked off together. I couldn’t mistake that grin in a million years. That’s him, that’s the guy.”
Alright. They got ‘im. That’s what Ed French thinks when he reads the paper and sees Dussander’s picture. “That’s Todd’s grandfather!” Okay, he should have left it at that. No, he has to go and confront Todd. Before he gets there, Todd’s mother goes to the market and Dad-O goes to play golf. When they leave, Todd goes and gets his .30-.30 and all the bullets he can carry. He’s goin’ to the freeway and blow people away. Next thing ya know, here comes old Ed French. “How did it happen?” Ed asked. “Oh, one thing just followed another,” Todd said and picked up his .30-.30.” He shot poor old Ed a whole bunch of times. Then he said, “Sure did die hard for a guidance counsellor.”
After that: “I’m king of the world!” he shouted mightly at the high blue sky, and raised the rifle two-handed over his head for a moment. He went to the freeway and, “It was five hours later and almost dark before they took him down.”
See what I mean? Dude was wacked out of his mind!
Great story, though. Will give you a few nightmares, but they’ll stop. Eventually.
Thanks for the nightmares to come, Stephen King.
First: All 3 copies of Water In A Broken Glass that were on the shelf at the Book Escape have been sold. The manager has asked me to bring in more.
Second: SistahFriend Book Club wants to review Water In A Broken Glass.
Third: I will be signing Water In A Broken Glass at the Book Escape on Saturday, July 10th from 12 noon until 4 pm. Come on out and get your signed copy. Some other fantastic authors will be there as well. This will probably be the last signing I’ll do until June 2011. I’ll be gearing up for the release of my second novel. I can’t wait. But Water In A Broken Glass is my baby. So, I’m glad that people are still interested in reading it, and I’ll always promote it.
Here’s where I’ll be on Saturday.
The Book Escape
805 Light Street, Baltimore, MD 21230
Open 10 am – 6 pm every day!
(410)-504-1902
Apt Pupil by Stephen King
This novella was published in the Different Seasons collection back in 1982. I picked it up from the Book Escape on Calvert Street. I initially got it because I’ve always wanted to read The Body. The movie version, Stand By Me, is one of my all time favorite movies and an inspiration for me as a writer. Anyway, after I finished reading The Body, I started reading Apt Pupil. My mother, who is the biggest Stephen King fan you’d ever want to meet, told me that Apt Pupil was a great story. And I must say that she is right. I love the story. The writing is wonderful. The way he describes characters, the weather, sounds, the feel of things, pain, fear, happiness, sadness, madness, guilt is positively marvelous. Although, I have to admit that I wonder about Stephen King sometimes. His stories, like this one, will have you saying to yourself, I’m not reading another word, but then find that you can’t put the book down. So maybe I should worry about myself. Huh? Naw! I’m cool. Right?
Before I start, I want to warn you, if you haven’t read the book, you’re gonna be mad, because my review is basically a summary of what’s going on. So this contains some serious spoilers.
Apt Pupil takes place in 1974. It is about a 13-year-old boy named Todd Bowden who discovers that a former Nazi, Kurt Dussander, is living in his neighborhood. Rather than turn him in, Todd, who has a morbid fascination/”GREAT INTEREST” with the concentration camps, the crematoriums, the SS uniforms, the mass graves, the 6,000,000 people, blackmails Dussander. He makes the former Nazi tell him all about the horrors. “The firing squads. The gas chambers. The ovens. The guys who had to dig their own graves and then stand on the ends so they’d fall into them.” With the threat of exposing him, Todd forces Dussander to become his walking, talking, living, breathing history book.
I know. You’re thinking what I thought. Why doesn’t Dussander just bump Todd off and be done with it. Well, mind you, Dussander is an old man. He’s “seventy-six if the articles Todd had read at the library had his birth-date right.” He’s also in poor health. He drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney. But the real reason he doesn’t just do old Todd in is because Todd told him that he had written a letter about Dussander and given it to a friend, so if anything happened to him. . . So you can see Dussander’s dilemma.
The weird thing about this book is that Todd is not a very likeable character. For a minute, you actually feel sorry for Dussander , because you’re thinking that maybe dude was really a good guy. Maybe he was like the guy from Schindler’s List. Like he was trying to save people. You know, like if this were a Hallmark movies or something. But this is Stephen King, and he doesn’t do nice and easy and sweet stories. He gives it to us in that ugly way that life sometimes is. You find this out when Todd buys a cheap SS Uniform and makes Dussander goose-step around his kitchen. Todd is yelling out orders. “Achtung!” “About Face!” “About Face!” “March! March! March!” I mean, Todd starts trippin’. He’s all amazed and excited, like he’s living out his fantasies. But that’s when things take a turn and you immediately stop feeling any kind of sympathy for Dussander and see him for what he still is, because dude gets to really marchin’, like he’s back in that time and likes it back there. Todd even starts to get scared. It’s like, dude ain’t all here, and he’s liable to throw Todd in the oven. Todd yells for Dussander to “stop!” But dude keeps on marchin’, like, You told me to march, so I’m marchin’. Look at me march. Look at me.
I was like, Dude, you better get out of that house before you end up in that oven and worry about splainin’ later, Lucy. Finally, Todd yells, “Halt,” and Dussander stops. But in his mind, you know dude is still marchin’.
Anyway, they go on like that for a few months. Except Dussander starts wearing that SS uniform to bed, like a pair of “pajamas.” Creepy, right?
The next thing you know, Todd and Dussander both start trippin’. Todd starts failing in school and changing his grades so he’s parents don’t know. Dussander cooks a cat in his oven. Todd’s grades get so bad that the guidance counselor wants to meet with his parents. Dussander meets with him instead and tells him that Todd’s mother is hittin’ the bottle, his father is married to his job, and the boy is doin’ the best he can. Dussander convinces the counselor to let Todd pull up his grades before meeting with his parents. So every day, Dussander makes Todd study. By May, Todd is passing again.
Now, in my mind, I’m thinkin’, everything’s cool now. Todd, keep your stupid behind away from Dussander. But no. That’s not what Todd is thinking. Todd, the great, nutty genius that he is, decides he has to bump the old man off in order to get back to himself. He goes over to Dussander and plans to push him down his basement stairs. When Dussander is standing at the top of the basement stairs, Todd gets up and is about to do the old dude in when Dussander tells him that he too has written a letter and put it in a safety deposit box that will be opened upon his death. Ahh, sukie, sukie now! Dussander also tells him that he heard him get up from the chair. Todd standin’ there like, I wasn’t gonna do nothin’. Dussander also tells Todd that he knows that he didn’t give a friend a letter. Todd stands there like, Yes I did.
I was like, Give it up, Todd. He knows you’re crazy but as dumb as a doorknob.
Todd starts fussin’, and rightly so. He’s like, You’re old. You can die any time and my life will be over. Dussander is like, Yeah, Que Sera, Sera. Whatever will be will be.
This is when the two of them go to town killin’ up winos. Poor dudes. Todd is sitting by the expressway with his Winchester .30-.30 that his stupid father gave him for Christmas. Didn’t he pay attention to the mother in Christmas Story? You’ll shoot your eye out. But Todd’s planning to shoot people driving on the freeway. I’m like, I’m puttin’ this book down and I’m not picking it up again. Then I curled up in bed with the book.
Well, one night, Dussander decides he’s gonna kill another homeless dude. He doesn’t, stabs him while they’re sitting at his kitchen table. He drags him down the basement and starts diggin’ the grave, but then the nut has a heart attack. And you know who he’s gotta call. Todd. Todd comes over there, and he’s all pissed off like, What you doin’, you old fool. You know you’re too old to be tryin’ to kill people. Now look at all this mess. I’ve gotta finish diggin’ the grave, throw the dude in it, cover it up. Clean up all the blood. Todd finds the knife Dussander used to kill the wino in the sink. He picks it up and he’s like, I should cut you up. Dussander tells him, Yeah, yeah. Yell later. Finish cleanin’ up so I can get to a hospital, because he doesn’t wanna die. Isn’t that the way it is. Here, he’s just killed a dude, but he’s like, get my old behind to a hospital.
That’s it for today. Like I said. It’s a great story. It’s intense. It’s weird. It’s horrifying. It’s sad. It keeps you reading despite yourself. I’ll let you know what happens when I finish.
Later.
Of the 3 books that were placed on The Book Escape’s shelf at the beginning of this month, only 1 remains. That’s pretty cool. I’m hoping the other one will be gone by the end of June. Thanks to those readers who bought it.
Cool Black Writers Guild of Maryland Jacket
Water In A Broken Glass is now on the shelves of a wonderful bookstore called The Book Escape. Last Monday, the manager placed 3 copies on the shelf right below Zane and Laura Lippman. Today, there are only 2 copies left. I am very happy.
If you have a chance, go to The Book Escape, and not just to buy my book. Although, I do hope you purchase the book from there. But The Book Escape is just that. I go there on my lunch break and get totally lost. They carry new and used books. The prices are great, and you can find some real gems. The music ain’t half bad either.
They have two sites. My book is at 10 N. Calvert Street.
Most writers begin as readers. But once we start writing, we forget about reading. If you want to be a great writer, you must read. Read all types of works, including the classics you hated to read in high school. You can learn a lot about writing from the classics, and if you let yourself go, you can be thoroughly entertained by them. But if you want to be a romance writer, then you have to immerse yourself in the genre. Find out why people love reading these stories over and over again. Find out what makes a happy ending. What makes a woman irresistible? What makes a man charismatic? If you want to write horror, which I’m going to do someday, then you have to read horror to find out how plots unfold. How, when and why to have someone killed. I know it all seems at random, but there is a reason for every killing in horror. Every character must die a certain way, for a certain reason, at a certain time. That’s what makes horror scary.
In my last blog I wrote about the first thing you need to do to become a writer. Today, I’m going to talk about the second thing you need to be to become a writer. And that thing is: you have to take your writing seriously. By that I don’t mean get all stressed out and crazy about it. I mean study writing. Read as much as you can about the craft. Read books that discuss characterization, setting, motivation, emotions, description, dialogue, themes, plot, structure, grammar. I know, everyone hates grammar, but it’s really fun once you get into it. Being able to take a tired phrase and rework it so that the same old things sounds and feels like something totally new is an awesome thing to do. Read all types of works, including the classic you hated to read in high school. You can learn a lot about writing from the classic, and if you let yourself go, you can be thoroughly entertained by them. But if you want to be a romance writer, then you have to immerse yourself in the genre. Find out why people love reading these stories over and over again. Find out what makes a happy ending. What makes a woman irresistible? What makes a man charismatic? If you want to write horror, which I’m going to do someday, then you have to read horror to find out how plots unfold. How, when and why to have someone killed. I know it all seems at random, but there is a reason for every killing in horror. Every character must die a certain way, for a certain reason, at a certain time. That’s what makes horror scary.
Writing is the coolest thing. If you want to do it right, you have to learn everything there is to know about it, and understand that when you think you have it all down pact, something new will come along. Enjoy.
When I started taking writing seriously, I was hanging out with a group of poets, reading excerpts from Water In A Broken Glass at cafes. One day I made the mistake of saying that I wanted to be a writer, and a very talented poet named Juanita Jackson told me, “You are a writer.” I was confused because I believed that real writers were people like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Ntozake Shange, Stephen King, Judy Blume etc. I believed I had to be published by a big press before I could call myself a writer. But that is not true. I was a writer then as I am a writer now. The minute I started actually writing my novel I became a writer. So if you want to be a writer, the first thing you have to do is believe that you already are, whether you’ve been published or not. Believe it when others doubt you. Believe it when it seems like you are wasting your time. Believe when you can’t get that sentence quite right. Believe it when you read one of your favorite authors and doubt that you’ll ever be as big as her/him. Believe it with everything in you. That’s how you become a writer.
