Dates with Destiny

This is a cross-posting with my book blog.

Coming up with titles for a book or a story can be either easy or frustrating.

In the case of the first two installments of the Dallas Green trilogy, the titles came fairly easily. In fact, I had the title Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead in my head for a long time before I seriously tackled the book itself. It was something a good friend of mine quipped during a discussion about Mexico, and it stuck in my head for years. When it came time for the sequel, the idea of Lautaro’s Spear came to me fairly easily, keeping consistency with the mention of major historical figures of Latin America. The third book, though, was a real struggle. I considered all kinds of figures from Irish history and legend but found them all unworkable. I ended up on settling for Searching for Cunégonde, which referenced a fictional character from French literature.

As for the fantasy books, I had had The Three Towers of Afranor in my pocket since high school. The Curse of Septimus Bridge was likewise straightforward, and I had the title of that book’s sequel settled (for now anyway) before I even started writing.

When coming up with titles for books, I try to come up with something that hasn’t been used before and which aspires to being unusual or unique. The goal, which may or may not be misguided, is to have something that would be easy to find in a web search.

Interestingly, coming up with a title for my recent short story proved to be one of the more frustrating experiences in coming with a title. I liked the idea of having a French word in it since one of the two main characters is French. Since the plot essentially consists of a meeting, the word rendezvous lent itself. As a title, though, it is hardly unique. If you search that title on the Internet Movie Database, you find there are no fewer than 150 feature films, short films, TV episodes that have the title Rendezvous, Rendez-Vous, Rendez-vous or some other variation as an original title or alternative (e.g. foreign language) title. The good news is that titles cannot be copyrighted, so there is nothing to stop writers like me from reusing them. The drawback is the risk of having one’s work overshadowed by a better known one with the same name.

It’s not just films and books that have titles though. Something one may not think about is that political cartoons can have titles. I was reminded of this fairly soon after I released my short story as a small e‑book. One morning I glanced at The Times of London to see a cartoon by Peter Brookes lampooning U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry’s high-level meeting on climate in Shanghai in mid-April. Provocatively, it portrays Kerry and his Chinese interlocutor meeting cheerfully over the body of a Uighur while power plants belch out smoke in the background. The title is “Climate Change Rendezvous.”

This cartoon is a blatant homage to the famous Evening Standard cartoon by David Low which appeared in September 1939. That one was called simply “Rendezvous,” and in that context the word harkens back to its original meaning (before the French began using it to mean appointment or date): a place for troops to assemble.

Low’s cartoon depicted Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin meeting with exaggerated gestures of politeness over the body of a fallen Polish soldier. The cartoon was published 27 days after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact containing a secret protocol dividing Poland into “spheres of influence” between the Soviet Union and Germany; 19 days after Germany invaded Poland; and three days after the Soviets invaded the country. This joint military action was the official beginning of World War II.

It seems harsh to draw a parallel between talks over climate change and a cynical accord to carve up a sovereign nation, but if political cartoonists know anything, it is that subtlety and nuance are not friends to those trying to get a point across in a single image. Also, shock has a certain value when it comes to attracting eyeballs—and hopefully, brains. In the end, the cartoon is not really about climate change.

The plight of the Uighurs, referenced in Brookes’s cartoon, has been ongoing since the region was forcibly incorporated into China in 1930 but has escalated since 2014 when the Chinese government began the internment of more than a million Muslims, mostly Uighurs, in state-sponsored camps. Testimonies have described suppression of religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilizations and abortions, and infanticides. Critics have labeled Chinese policy both ethnocide and cultural genocide and have compared it to the Holocaust. So the cartoon’s comparison to the Hitler and Stalin regimes is not that far off after all.

Still, it may be unfair to imply, as the cartoon seems to, a moral equivalence between the U.S. and China, given that the Chinese government bears the responsibility for its brutal treatment of the Uighurs. Still, the suggestion that the U.S. government may be turning something akin to a blind eye to the atrocities in pursuit of a possibly quixotic climate deal with the Chinese is arguably fair comment. A century from now, will history celebrate John Kerry’s efforts at climate negotiation—or will the question loom larger of why the world left Uighur men, women and children to their fate?

That recalls another use of the word rendezvous. Politicians as dissimilar as Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have at critical moments memorably invoked a moral crossroads with a common phrase—rendezvous with destiny.

Expat Literary Hero

 They began to raise their voices.
 «Now we have a Fascist dictatorship!»
 «Instead of a Communist one!»
 People sitting near us looked uncomfortable. As for me, I was becoming, strangely and unexpectedly, aroused.
  —Excerpt from Chapter 11 of Searching for Cunégonde

There is something empowering about writing fiction. When you pen a novel, you experience the illusion of being God. You create people. You make them do what you want. You have total control of their fates. You can bestow them with good fortune or you can punish them with senseless tragedy. Their destinies are pretty much literally in your hands.

In practice, it doesn’t really feel that way. Characters—even ones you create yourself—have a way of taking on lives of their own. I think most authors have the strange experience of finding they are channeling their characters rather than controlling them. Your own characters sometimes do things you did not plan or want. Events sometimes take a turn you didn’t see coming when you started out.

These are interesting things to ponder but are probably best left for my book blog where I announced this week the publication of my fifth novel Searching for Cunégonde. More pertinent to this space is the fact that, when one writes a story set in a particular time and place, one is generally constrained by real-world events and situations.

The new book continues the adventures of Dallas Green, the protagonist of Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead and Lautaro’s Spear. More pertinent to this space is the background provided by the real world to his story. In all three books, he is a picaresque hero journeying through the strange world in which he finds himself. The first novel was set in 1971, the time of the Vietnam War, the military draft in the U.S., and political unrest in Central America. The second book took place in 1980, the year of a U.S. presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan’s election, the sixth Deauville American Film Festival, and a constitutional referendum in Chile.

The new tome splits its narrative mainly between two different time periods. One strand picks up directly after the end of Lautaro’s Spear in December 1980 and proceeds through the following year. These bits alternate with events in the year 1993. This larger scope allowed me to draw in all sorts of historical references. Dallas experiences several weeks of comfortable living under the Pinochet dictatorship as well as venturing into Argentina, also governed by a military junta. There is then a return to California which not only provides a contrast between South and North America but also an implicit comparison between the rural San Joaquin Valley and the suburbs of the Bay Area. Indeed there are a number of contrasts drawn in this story, for example two very different funerals in two very distinct cultures.

By the time this leg of Dallas’s journey ends, he has become all too acquainted with the violent latter days of Ireland’s Troubles. He has also become a nearly unwitting participant in the bad old days of the Cold War, and he even gets to witness the single most symbolic moment of the fall of Communism.

If I have made Dallas’s exploits sound as if they are all about politics, then I have misled you. In this book, as in the others, the heart of the story is really in the friendships. There is some romance as well, or at least as much romance as a neo-Lost-Generation baby-boomer can manage in a cynical world. He finds himself in bed with an interesting array of lovers and not-quite lovers.

At one point someone compares him to the hero of Voltaire’s Candide, thus tipping my hand. That is how I have always seen him—someone more or less politically innocent, wandering the world with wide eyes and bearing witness to the strangeness and wonder of the wider world.

Appropriately enough for this blog, in the course of this novel Dallas becomes an expat. I tried to capture at least a bit of the disorientation that comes with adjusting to a different culture and functioning in a different language. In the end, though, the goal was always to entertain. Mainly to entertain myself, but in the hope that others might be inadvertently entertained as well.

The paperback edition of Searching for Cunégonde is available from major online booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The digital version is available from Amazon’s Kindle store, Barnes and Noble’s Nook store, Kobo, Google Play and Apple iBooks. For those links and other information, kindly consult my book blog.

A Time Long Gone

“I detest John’s views, but what I detest even more is his effectiveness at espousing them.”
 —Congressman Robert Bauman, Republican of Maryland, as quoted by The New York Times in February 1980

When I came across an John B. Anderson’s obituary a couple of weeks ago, it brought a flood of political memories.

The Illinois legislator was prominent in U.S. politics during the election year 1980. Strangely, my third novel Lautaro’s Spear, which came out in September, is set in the year 1980 and, though it makes mention of the main political events of the time, it does not mention Congressman Anderson. Nevertheless, he was central to my own political involvement at the time.

It was one of the few times in my life where I actually became enthusiastic about a politician. I had been impressed by Jimmy Carter when he came out of nowhere to become president in 1976. I even saw him up close and in person when I attended a press conference he gave on the campaign trail in Columbus, Ohio. By 1980, however, between a miserable economy and what I saw as a hapless foreign policy—exemplified by an ill-managed attempt at rescuing the Iran hostages—I had become disenchanted. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were not setting me on fire either, but then I discovered John Anderson.

I felt a natural affinity for him probably because, like my father, he was a Republican Scandinavian-American from the Midwest. With his black-rimmed glasses and shock of white hair, he had the manner of a university professor. Indeed, he spent his post-electoral career teaching constitutional law at a Florida university. Early on, he had been very conservative, a supporter of Barry Goldwater who voted consistently against Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. Over time, though, he evolved. In the wake of attending funerals for civil rights activists, he became more socially liberal and wound up being the deciding committee vote to send the Civil Rights Act of 1968 to the House floor. He reversed his positions on the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, the Vietnam War and gun control.

Something that did not change, though, was his fiscal conservatism. He understood that social programs were no good if they were not sustainable in the long run and if the economy was shackled by ballooning deficits. That notion seems so quaint these days when Republicans do not care about deficits as long as they get their tax cuts and Democrats do not care about them except when they can criticize Republicans.

He ran for president in 1980 and that—plus the fact that it was hard to find a Democratic caucus in the Seattle suburb where I lived anyway—spurred me to join Republicans by showing up at my first precinct caucus. Previously, I had voted in California, a primary state. I have never felt particular loyalty to any political party, but Washington’s caucus system forced me to pick one—at least for the duration of an election year.

At the caucus I attended in 1980, I was outnumbered by Bush people, whom I found to be bullies. They were determined that all the precinct’s votes would go to their man, and that is what happened. In one heated exchange over internal security, I found myself saying something like, “But I don’t want my country to become like the Soviet Union” to which an irate Bush supporter rejoined with the non-sequitur, “Well, if you think it’s so great over there, why don’t you just go live there?”

Anderson never stood a chance of getting the Republican nomination but, when he decided to bolt the party and run as an independent, I followed him and gave him my vote in the general election. In the end, he got 6.6 percent of the popular vote and zero votes in the Electoral College. For years after, I was berated by friends and acquaintances when they learned how I had voted. One particularly aghast co-worker held me personally responsible for Reagan becoming president. Frankly, since the Gipper carried 44 states and defeated Carter by 489 to 49 in the Electoral College, I never lost any sleep over what part my vote may have played.

By the next presidential election, I would be living in the heart of Seattle in one of the most liberal districts in the whole country and I would be attending Democratic caucuses, largely by default. I was once even a delegate to the county convention. Living abroad now, I no longer attend caucuses. I simply fill out a ballot at home and mail it in.

The passing of John Anderson is a stark reminder of how much things have changed in the past three and a half decades. As hard as it is to believe, both major parties used to have a left wing and a right wing. Political discourse centered on principles and ideas rather than reflexively demonizing one’s opponents. There used to be politicians, even liberal ones, who saw the importance of fiscal responsibility. At the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the federal-debt-to-GDP ratio was 32.5 percent. At the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, it was 102.7 percent.

In a strange way, Donald Trump accomplished what John Anderson failed to. Trump won the presidency despite the opposition of both major political parties. He did not do it, however, by running as an independent but rather by leading a successful mutiny within one of the established parties—Anderson’s old party, as it happened.

That, however, is where the similarity ends. John Anderson was a civil, thoughtful, principled debater in the public arena. His time now seems very long ago.

Worse Than Fiction

“No one yet knows how all this will pan out. My hunch is that the liberal media are helping Trump greatly by setting expectations at rock bottom. Any sign that this isn’t, after all, the end of days is going to look like success.”
 —Historian/columnist Niall Ferguson, writing in the The Times (UK) in January

This blog is feeling a bit neglected. Posts have become fewer and far between, and there is a simple reason for that. Over the past year and a half, writing about politics has become much less satisfying than writing fiction. And, yes, that was a not-so-sly way of once again bringing up my new novel, Lautaro’s Spear, which is still available from fine online booksellers everywhere. Christmas is fast approaching, and nobody who gets a book as a gift ever returns it because it is the wrong size.

Here is the question that currently preoccupies me. Was political conversation always so dreary or am I myself only noticing it now? Yes, the most recent American presidential election was extremely unusual in all sorts of ways, and it does bring words to mind like unprecedented and atypical. The election did not, however, occur in a vacuum. The divisions that brought it about how been roiling for some time.

The really unsatisfying thing about discussing politics these days is that there is less and less common ground on which to base a conversation with people coming from different political mindsets. In my actual real life—as opposed to conversations that happen entirely online—I find that people either want to avoid politics altogether or else they want to simply go on and about how awful President Trump is. Personally, I am less interested in who can come up with the best enunciation of his awfulness than I am in understanding how exactly he managed to get elected.

One thing that does not help is that people who are interested in politics habitually phrase their comments in terms of principles and fairness but then apply them completely differently in different situations. In other words, they are selective about their high-minded arguments entirely to justify the outcome they would like see. I will give you an example.

After the Brexit referendum last June, I heard many people arguing that the result was illegitimate because, even though the referendum won the popular vote, it was not fair for London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—which all voted to remain in the European Union—to be bound by the wishes of masses of English voters outside London. Then, after the presidential election in November, I heard some of the same people making the argument that Trump’s election was not legitimate because (and I am paraphrasing here to emphasize my point), even though he won majorities in a large majority of states and congressional districts, it was not fair for the popular majority to be bound by the Electorial College.

Do not take the fact that I point out this inconsistency to mean that I do not sympathize with those people’s frustrations with both elections. I do, however, fret about so many people’s willingness not to have more respect for the legal electoral process in both cases. If you do not like the Electoral College, then by all means work as hard as you can to eliminate it from the U.S. Constitution (and good luck to you), but talking up the possible illegitimacy of an elected leader because you do not like him or his policies will ultimately not just undermine the guy you do not like but also successive leaders. It was not a healthy thing when people like future President Trump raised questions about President Obama’s birth certificate—or for that matter similar talk about President Bush’s legimacy after the 2000 election. The fact it is now erstwhile birther Trump who is the object of illegitimacy accusations does not make it any less unhealthy. There has to be a way to disagree with people without criminalizing them or their standard-bearers.

Frankly, the worst thing about the Trump presidency for me is the fact that his political opposition—in both the Republican and Democratic parties—tend to go so over the top that, when I comment on it, it comes off sounding as though I am defending Trump. This is not the place I want to be.

I worry about our two-party system but, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, I worry more about the Democratic party. There is a lot of craziness among Republicans and their voters, but a lot of it is just the raw craziness of diverse opinions and stubbornness over beliefs and principles. The Democrats could actually do with more of that kind of craziness. Both parties—especially Republicans right now since they have majorities—are prone to the dysfunction of career politicans comfortable in office, campaign contributions, lobbyist money and playing it safe. Democrats, I fear, are much less relevant at the national level than they appear. Ample and sympathetic media coverage belies Democrats’ numbers in federal offices. I can forgive them for going crazy over Trump—in fact I would be more than a bit disappointed if they didn’t—but they should focus less on the last presidential election and more on the most recent congressional elections. You cannot explain all those losses on gerrymandering, Russian collusion and AM radio. Nor can you realistically expect that a changing tide will automatically sweep in that many Dems back next year.

The aging party leadership should ask itself, what is a better prediction of future elections? Daily or weekly opinion polls and media coverage in Washington and New York? Or fundamental economic indicators?

For people who are depressed because they think today’s Washington D.C. is as bad as a government situation can get, I do have an antidote for you. As soon as you get the chance, run to see Armando Iannucci’s brilliant The Death of Stalin.

Looking Back, Literarily

A legendary reclusive filmmaker. An enigmatic cook and restaurant proprietor, who is clearly more than he seems. Two mysterious deliveries to be made behind the Iron Curtain. A desperate search for a long-missing old friend. An unexpected love affair on the coast of Normandy. Dallas Green’s life has only gotten more interesting in the years since his wild youthful adventure in Mexico, as told in the novel Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead. In the year 1980, he is now a photographer, living and working in San Francisco, where he adjusts to a world very different from that of his rural roots. He may be older, but that does not necessarily mean he is any wiser, as his continuing romantic misadventures attest. Lautaro’s Spear is Scott R. Larson’s third book, following the fantasy novel The Three Towers of Afranor.
 —Blurb on various web sites that are, or will soon be, selling my new book

Yes, this means that another book is done and dusted. Officially, the release date is September 29, but I see the Kindle version is available already from Amazon’s US site. Other digital and paper versions should follow shortly. Links to the various sellers around the globe will be updated on my book blog, so check there if you are interested.


Unlike the last book, this one takes place in the real world. Well, at least in a world as real as what goes on inside my head. The year is 1980, and the action moves from San Francisco to France to Germany and back again. This is a sequel to Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead and follows the progress of that book’s misguided teenaged protagonist, Dallas Green, a few years later, as he negotiates his late twenties.

I sometimes regret making Dallas the narrator of these books. It is actually a lot of work to write in character for nearly 300 pages while, at the same time, keeping the prose halfway readable. The reason I wrote the original novel in the first person was that I saw the book as my own personal Huckleberry Finn. If Mark Twain could write in Huck’s dialect, well, then I could write in Dallas’s. Instead of a raft on the Mississippi, Dallas and his friend Lonnie explored the world from the vantage point of a ’65 Chevy traveling the roads of California and Mexico. In the new book, Dallas goes on another journey, but he is a bit older and, hopefully, wiser—although not that much wiser. He is still a bit innocent, so he can also be compared to another seminal literary character, Voltaire’s Candide. He is something of a blank slate when it comes to politics, and he finds himself a bit out of his depth as he wanders into different political and social environments.

For some readers of a certain age, I suppose it will be an exercise in nostalgia. For younger ones, I flatter myself in thinking it might be some sort of history lesson.

I hate it when writers try to impose their opinions about current events onto some past era, although I understand it is a very hard temptation to resist. Writing about America in the 1980s, I could have easily have been lured into drawing parallels between that year’s presidential election and the one that occurred last year—if only I could have actually made heads or tails out of what happened last year. The comparisons, though, wrote themselves anyway. History now looks back at Ronald Reagan very differently from the way many people now look at Donald Trump yet, before he was elected, Reagan was seen by many as quite scary and his election came as a genuine surprise. This is not to say that Reagan and Trump are by any means similar human beings or that Trump will ultimately be seen as successful as Reagan was, but it is worth trying to keep some long-term perspective while in the middle of day-to-day political passions.

If there is a political theme running beneath the surface of my novel, it is the way people tend to divide themselves politically, sometimes with disastrous consquences. Dallas’s journey not only involves the late 20th century culture wars in America but also the residual rift in Europe after World War II and how political divisions in South America led to horrible violence.

Well, look at me, trying to make my silly old book sound profound. I hope some interesting insights did slip into the story but, in the end, my tale is ultimately about how we—mainly young men—get into all kinds of devilment out of boredom, confusion, and just trying to make some sort of sense of this crazy world.