In Memoriam: Philip Kerr (1956-2018)

(Quick Stolen Truck Update: The police recovered it! The case is still open but I will post more about it once I am able! Today's Post: When Scottish mega-author Philip Kerr died in 2018, I wrote the eulogy below for Kerr-one of my own all-time favorite authors, crime fiction or otherwise. Now that the Bernie Gunther novels are being adapted for broadcast beginning later this year on Apple TV+ with Jack Lowden–River Cartwright in the equally terrific Apple TV+ series SLOW HORSES–attached to play Gunther and Colin Firth (COLIN FIRTH!!!) attached to play Gunther's mentor on the Berlin Homicide Squad in a script adapted from Kerr's final novel, METROPOLIS, completed as he was dying–a prequel and origin story for the main character, set in pre-Nazi Weimar Berlin during the late 1920s. And get this: Peter Straughan (TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, and CONCLAVE) wrote the script and is showrunning it! In light of all of this great news, and in the interest of continuing to give July a positivity that is an exact counterpoint to the dark days that were June, 2026 [again, stolen truck!], I am reposting my piece celebrating Philip Kerr, in hopes that this might serve as an introduction of sorts for readers who have yet to encounter either the late Mr. Kerr, or his most celebrated creation: Bernie Gunther!)

On Friday, March 23rd, 2018, I got the word from an old friend that a mutual old friend had died. Crime writer and freelance editor Jim Thomsen texted me that Phillip Kerr died of cancer that day, aged just 62.

I suppose that in the strictest sense Mr. Kerr and I were not actually friends. I never met him in person. The closest I got was trying and failing to find him in the green room before the Edgar Awards in 2016, the year he was nominated in the Best Novel category for his book The Lady from Zagreb.

And yet, I do consider him a friend. In much the same way that one girl in the movie Ten Things I Hate About You says of William Shakespeare, "We're in a relationship," I think of Philip Kerr as an unwitting mentor, whose works have both delighted and provoked me.

And more, they made me want to work harder at the craft, to whet the edge of my facility with the written word, to forge characters who breathed and sweated and threatened and quailed and laughed and hated and fairly jumped off the page.

Philip Ballantyne Kerr was, by most accounts, a study in contradictions. Scottish-born, but no lover of Scotland, the child of devout Baptist parents who, by his own admission knew early on in life that "Jesus and I weren't going to get along," and a man who trained as a lawyer, yet despised the notion of practicing law.

An outsider by temperament, Kerr was bullied by other kids in school–and even teachers–in part because of his dark complexion. He later poured these experiences, and the feelings of isolation which attended them, into his fiction.

The result, in part, was Bernie Gunther.

Kerr's most famous creation, Gunther was, like Kerr himself, a study in contradictions: a former kriminalinspektor on the Berlin police department's famed Murder Squad, Gunther was a decorated veteran of World War I who lost his first wife in the flu epidemic which came hard on the heels of that war. A cop whose career thrived during the Weimar Republic, and who resigned from the police soon after the Nazis swept into power in 1933. Kerr once neatly summed Gunther up in a single sentence: "Oscar Wilde with a Walther PPK."

And yet Gunther eventually finds himself coerced into working for the Nazis. The reason they tolerate him (even as they disparage him as a "Jew-loving Bolshevik," among other things) is because they need someone with Gunther's talents. As Kerr has none other than the villainous Reinhard Heydrich put it to Gunther: Nazis are good at cracking skulls and shooting people. Any thug can do that. But when you need a good detective...

It's an effective set-up. But what Philip Kerr wrote was so much more than superb historical crime fiction. Like all great literary stylists, he was able to move fiction into the realm of great art: not so much literature as a brilliant expression of the universality of the human condition. Kerr possessed a knack for helping his readers understand, even sympathize, with people whose experiences seemed on the surface so vastly different from those of the reader.

Kerr proved especially adept at channeling the zeitgeist of early 20th century Germany, painting a portrait of these people (many of them fictional doppelgängers of actual historical figures) which was by turns scathing and sympathetic, unblinking, hard-edged, and in the end, fair. And in his Gunther novels he would return again and again to one of the questions which has haunted the world in the years since Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker: Why did the German people allow Hitler and his gang of thugs to rise unchecked in the first place?

Kerr's narrator Gunther is a brooder, so he is the perfect vessel for this and other existential questions posed to and about the people and the time. In the prologue to Greeks Bearing Gifts (second to the last of the Gunther books in order written, final one in the series chronologically), Kerr has his protagonist attempt–not for the first time–to answer this question:

But how is one ever to explain what happened? It was a question I used to see in the eyes of some of the American guests at the Grand Hotel in Cap Ferrat where, until recently, I was a concierge, when they realized I was German: How was it possible that your people could murder so many others? Well, it's like this: When you walk through a big fish market you appreciate just how alien and various life can be; it's hard to imagine how some of the fantastic, sinister, slipper-looking creatures you see laid out on the slab could even exist, and sometimes when I contemplate my fellow man, I have much the same feeling.

Myself, I'm a bit like an oyster. Years ago–in January 1933, to be exact–a piece of grit got into my shell and started to rub me the wrong way. But if there is a pearl inside me I think it's probably a black one. Frankly, I did a few things during the war of which I feel less than proud. This is not unusual. That's what war's about. It makes all of us who take part in it feel like we're criminals and that we've done something bad. Apart from the real criminals, of course; no way has ever been invented to make them feel bad about anything. With one exception, perhaps: the hangman at Landsberg. When he's given the chance, he can provoke a crisis of conscience in almost anyone.

The question haunts Gunther throughout the series, and since Kerr mastered the art of the non-linear plot thread beginning with 2011's Field Gray, he was able to revisit this central theme of his Gunther novels in a variety of inventive ways.

Kerr was a prolific writer by any stretch of the imagination. He wrote other series (including a recent triad of thrillers centered around a soccer team–soccer apparently being his favorite sport), a variety of standalone thrillers, even an acclaimed series of children's books!

I confess I haven't read any of the non-Gunther books yet. Now, unfortunately, it seems I'll have an opportunity to catch up on the rest of this remarkable writer's canon. And I have been looking forward to delving into his series of children's books with my son once he's old enough (they're middle reader books, a la Harry Potter, and my son is five, so I've got some time).

With this entry I have done my best to pay homage to a powerful artist whose work has had a galvanizing effect on my own. As with trying to capture the essence of all wondrous things, the effort strikes me as a bit like trying to describe an eclipse to a blind man: you're doomed to only do justice to one half of the experience.

All that said, my life is the richer for having known Philip Kerr in the context of his fiction. And isn't that really all we can ask of great art?

Thanks, Philip. And may you rest in peace, my friend.

*.    *.    *

See you in two weeks!

Always Be Sure, Please, To Call It Research

This piece might be useful to some people. We shall see.

Recently I have noticed a number of writers talking about doing research for their fiction, especially historical fiction.  Well, I spent 41 years as a librarian helping people with research, so I thought I might offer a few bits of advice.

I'm not going to talk about sources because they change with some speed. And besides, I moderated a panel of librarians at Left Coast Crime this year and you can find some of our recommendations here.  

What I want to talk about is some principles on finding sources.    Here goes.

Principle 1. Wouldn't it be nice to have a highly trained research assistant at your command? Surprise! You do. They work at the public library and they are paid with your tax dollars whether you use them or not.  You can call, text, email, or visit.  Don't be shy.  If you give a reference librarian a question they can spend a couple of hours digging into you are making their day.

And here is a subclause that is probably out of date but worth mentioning: If you ask a librarian for research help be as specific as possible.  I think the use of search engines has probably made this problem less common, but when I started out a lot of people seemed to think they weren't permitted to ask for what they really wanted, so we had conversations like this one I had with a college student in the early eighties:

Q: Where are your books on religion?

A: Most are upstairs under the letter B (Note: We used the Library of Congress system). But are you after anything more specific?

Q: Yes, books on Islam.

A: Great. Any particular book?

Q: The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Well, that shrank suddenly, didn't it? (And by the way, the Autobiography is typically shelved under E for American history.)

Principle 2. A lesson I learned long before the Internet: No matter how obscure your subject is, someone thinks it is the most fascinating topic in the world.  Find that person and you may wind up begging them to stop giving you information.

One way to hunt for that source is to look for websites related to your topic. Can you find a way to contact the person who created it? Yahtzee!

Principle 3. You have probably figured out that not all information is available for free on the Internet. I am especially thinking of scholarly articles. You need to look at databases (a stupid term libraries use (mostly) for digital periodical indexes), but your public library doesn't have all the ones you were hoping for.

Okay, is there a college or university in your area?  You can look at their website and see what databases they have, but, of course, they are only available to their own students. Bummer!

Don't panic.  Contact the librarians there and ask: 1. Is your library building open to the public?  And if it is: 2. If I go there in person can I use your databases? 

The university where I am a professor emeritus lists 47 databases under the subject of History, including:

* American History and Life

* America's Historical Newspapers

* American Prison Newspapers

* Historical Statistics of the United States

And so on.  

Principle 4. What if you learn of the existence of the perfect article but no library you can access has it? You contact your public library but they say no;  getting you a copy would cost them a billion kajillion dollars because of the APAGEP Factor. (Academic Publishers Are Greedy Evil Parasites).

Go back to Principle 2.  The author of that perfect article is the person who finds your subject  so fascinating.  Contact them and they may be delighted to send you a free e-copy of their article.  You  aren't depriving them of anything because they wouldn't get any of that billion kajillion dollars anyway. (See APAGEP above.)

Principle 5. If you are trying to dig beyond the obvious search engine, familiarize yourself with the tools of Boolean logic.  For example, if you go to Google Scholar and search for:

private detectives  nineteenth century chicago boston 

...you will get less-focused results than if you search for: 

"private detectives" "nineteenth century" (chicago OR boston) 

Thus endeth today's lesson.  Best of luck with your research.  I hope you get an A+ or, better yet,  published.

My Current Life in Haiku

 

Productivity

A revered memory from

My younger days, sigh

 

Cozy up

            In Raymond Chandler’s famous essay, The Simple Art of Murder, he eloquently provided the artistic and intellectual foundation of hardboiled crime fiction.  As one of his committed devotees, I lapped it up, and eagerly followed his direction (unwittingly, not having yet read the essay) with my own hardboiled series, trilogies and standalones.

            That notwithstanding, I’ve never believed that embracing one form, or sub-genre, requires rejecting all the others.  I lean more toward the omnivorous, having begun my reading life with my mother’s handoffs of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout and Earl Stanley Gardener.  And all on my own, Arthur Conan Doyle.  Lately I’ve been back at it, with a deeper appreciation for everything that Chandler condemned, realizing that these presumed shortcomings are actually the point.

            You might have noticed there’s no surfeit of cynicism, treachery and immorality on display in our daily newsfeed.  This was equally true in the first half of the 20^th century, probably more so, since they experienced two world wars and economic upheaval we can only imagine.  What most people wanted to do was escape, and these master hands understood just how to provide the ideal transport.  But as I read now, having lived the intervening years in the back alleys and mean streets of Noir fiction, is that there was much more to it than that.

               

                Looked at objectively, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes are exceedingly bizarre individuals.  Even with their loyal sidekicks and benighted enablers, they exist entirely apart from general society. Introverted to the edge of misanthropy, riddled with obsessive compulsions and hints at dark caverns of the subconscious, any would fit nicely into one of Marlowe’s sidetracks.  It isn’t just that they easily read the criminal mind, they empathized, familiar with the moral ambiguities that entangle even the most callow and supercilious.  All three are honorable men, yet none could be called trusting or emotionally available.  All would afford an interesting date, but you wouldn’t want to move in together. 

            Anyone tempted to belittle Agatha Christie should give it a try themselves.  In particular, her prose has a distinct clarity, efficiency and immediacy, required for packing a lot of setting, character development and extravagant plotting into fairly compact spaces.  She never wastes a sentence, much less a full passage, on anything unessential to her story.  I relish Marlowe’s circuitous diversions and introspections, but it would be fair for Christie to say, ”For pity’s sake, young man, get to the point.”

            

            In order to have the description “mystery” appended to any work, it needs to have a puzzle.  It’s no accident that ”Ludwig”,  a new show from Brit Box, features an actual puzzle creator thrust into a career of solving mysteries.  You may seek out Agatha Christie as an unthreatening pastime, but you better be on your mental toes, the plots so thick with clues, both portentous and incidental, that I’m tempted to open a spreadsheet.  Even then, you may not be able to crack the code, since she had only a passing loyalty to the principle of fair play.  Modern mystery critics would find this irredeemable, but I like to point out that no such problem ever occurred to Arthur Conan Doyle.  Sherlock isn’t only a deductive genius, he spends a lot of time offstage performing capers we only learn about in the final pages when the mystery is triumphantly solved for us. 

Speaking of Brit Box, a first-rate mystery needn’t unfold at an English country estate, though for me, the form achieves its most sublime in the presence of Jeff caps, sheep, ancient pubs and a whole population of flinty, emotionally repressed tea drinkers.  I find refreshing the absence of histrionics (who needs grief counselors when you can put on the kettle or have a barman pull a draft), abundance of deadpan humor and rich colors muted under permanently overcast skies.  Along with the nobility of simply carrying on despite it all. 

Changes in the Canadian Criminal Code: About time, I didn't know that wasn’t illegal before and Thank goodness, finally.

This summer the Government of Canada passed legislation touted as one the most consequential reforms of the Criminal Code to reduce intimate partner violence and femicide and, when I dig into them, I suspect that many other women and men are responding with a mix of ‘about time’ ‘I didn't know that wasn’t illegal before’ and ‘thank goodness, finally’.

Below is a graphic from the Department of Justice that shows the changes:

The law newly defines the killing of women and girls as first-degree murder, meaning the homicide is both planned and deliberate with an an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Prior to this it could be classified as 2^nd-degree murder; a deliberate killing that occurs without planning and the minimum sentence is life in prison with no parole for 10 years. Big difference.

The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability defines femicide as ‘the killing of all women and girls primarily by, but not exclusively, men.’ This definition helps track trends and also is broad enough to enable national and international comparisons of data.

In 2015, the most recent year for which official data is available, 29% of homicide victims in Canada were female and, while homicide rates are lower for females, "In 2015, close to one half (48%) of all solved homicides involving a female victim were committed by a spouse or other intimate partner. Family members (other than a parent) were perpetrators in 22 percent of female homicides”

This continues with a surprising statistic, “The risk of homicide varies by age. Among females in Canada, homicide rates are highest for girls 11 years of age and younger (40.7 per million population).”

Children.

They are talking about children killed by someone they know. Looking into this further, one in five victims are under eighteen.

So again, children.

One of the other big changes is to make coercive control illegal. What is coercive control? “It can be things like isolating the victim, cutting them off from social contacts, checking their phone, not allowing them to work, not allowing them to be in contact with family and friends. [It] can include physical violence, sexual violence and coercion, but not always. Economic abuse is very common.”

Brenda Ottenbreit a survivor of domestic violence and an advocate for other survivors, who fought for this change, points out, ”You may never have a hand violently put on you before, but 80 to 90 per cent of fatalities … it's not always physical before, but there is always coercive control.”

The last part of the change is making it illegal to share non-consensual sexual images (already illegal) and adds deep fakes to that. This is an important update for a new era of photoshop and AI.

Will these changes in the law actually reduce the murder of women and girls? Making it first degree murder might help, particularly if there are more resources put into finding and prosecuting the murderers. One shameful areas of murdered women is that Canadian Indigenous women are at elevated risk of homicide and many of these murders are not solved, despite the magnitude of the problem:

“[H]omicide rates for Indigenous women and girls were approximately six times higher (48.2 per million population) than rates for non-Indigenous women and girls (8.2 per million population). Other research suggests that Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to be murdered or missing than any other women in Canada and 16 times more likely than Caucasian women. This over-representation of Indigenous women and girls among homicide victims has been observed across the country, with the highest rates found in the territories and in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, specifically, it has been estimated that Indigenous women and girls are 19 times more likely than Caucasian women to be murdered or missing.

If the elevation to first-degree murder means that more resources will be allocated to finding and prosecuting perpetrators, this is a very welcome change.

Making coercive control illegal is highly promising. First, call me naive but I am surprised that it has been allowed to continue without any legal consequences. Second, I suspect there will be a reduction in suffering of women who can now prosecute these actions as well as hopefully preventing any escalation to murder.

All in all, these changes in the criminal code are hopeful if, and only if, they are coupled with resources for enforcement. Essentially, these changes may help find and prosecute whodunnit when women and children are murdered and may even stop them before they dunnit. 

Here's hoping. 

Unsolicited Thoughts on Spider-Noir

One of two things would happen with Episode One of Spider-Noir (Amazon Prime, 2026). Either I would press the stop button quickly, or I would settle in and binge away. I had my reasons for skepticism. Eight of my scarce hours were on the table, and if a show wanted to invoke classic noir, well, hawking "Noir" in the title is already trying too hard. 

My self-disclosures: I'm not a comic book guy. But I grew up on the cartoons, and Spider-Man can be good fun. I also don't go for any multiverse stuff. Endlessly re-versioning a character tends to water down the compelling original. Still, there is always room for an inventive retelling, and Spider-Man as a Prohibition-era detective counts as inventive. Plus, casting Nicolas Cage as said detective is like storing creative gasoline under the bright lights. Something is going to happen. 

I binged the series.

A little despite myself. Not because the series isn't enjoyable -- it is -- but because I have those purist expectations. You can't just put a brokedown detective in a smoky jazz club and call it noir. The world has to feel bleaker by the second. There has to be danger, not least for the detective. Marlowe couldn't lift a car or swing across town. When he got hit, he felt it.

A brief synopsis of Spider-Noir: Ben Reilly (Cage) is the brokedown detective, and not a great one by his own admission. He was better as the Spider, the masked hero who had stood between New York and mobster violence. He is retired these days after blaming himself for his girlfriend's murder. Since then, both he and New York have gone from bad to worse. A rare new case drags him back into the mob world, where he discovers others with superpowers, connections to his past, and possible cure for his inner spider.  

Spider-Noir's New York is rotting from inside out, a squalid town of post-war cripples and trash in the street. Nobody has much future, only a precarious now and a past dragging them down. Even mob boss Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson) is miserable and paranoid after a string of betrayals and murder attempts. 

If that sounds noir, it is. Mostly. But the problem is the same one facing any superhero story: No matter its other ambitions, there is still a superhero around. They have to do superhero things and be drawn toward a superheroic climax, or what's the point of introducing powers in the first place?

To its great credit, Spider-Noir understands this. Reilly dons the Spider outfit only when he absolutely must, a few minutes max in the early episodes. The supervillains are conflicted gangsters, with low-tech displays of powers they understand are slowly killing them. Sandman is sandy, sometimes, and Tombstone can't be hurt. 

Instead, Spider-Noir starts centered around normal-ish people who make bad choices and hate their place in life. As the series progresses, the laws of fiction prove inescapable, and the episodes shift from PI case-of-the-week to superpower flexes. The noir intent shifts, too, from plots and staging to destiny's hand and an inevitable end that even crime lords and superheroes can't escape. It's both Spider and Noir--and thankfully it doesn't wobble too far either way.  

And the writers understood their leading man. Nicolas Cage is going to play Nicolas Cage, not broad but always simmering. Powerful at his best, uniquely funny. Cage is older now, and he brings that to his world-weary, lost-a-step Spider with a bad back. The casting is inspired--and necessary. A play-it-straight actor couldn't bear the concept's load, and the noir spin probably collapses under its own smoked-up weight. No, this called for Spider-Cage, a double pour of Sam Spade and Roger Rabbit.

Which breaks another classic noir rule. When Bogey and Co. cracked foxy in The Maltese Falcon, the wit had a knife's edge, underpinning the tension, not breaking it. Spider-Noir leans on drawing a laugh, and I did laugh. 

Of course, The Maltese Falcon was released 85 years ago. Noir has evolved, whether I grouse about it or not. Noir today is more malleable than back in the Bogey flicks. Pace matters as much as the puzzle. Color signals as much menace as shadow. In a neo-noir lens, anything goes, even spider detectives. 

Still, Spider-Noir picked specific, Golden Age noir trappings. It's a mantel worn loosely, in parts homage and affectation. Spider-Noir doesn't wear that trench coat quite right, but it's not trying too hard at it. It's doing its own thing.

Déjà Vu, 1776

"Study the Past,"
National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

Since June 22, my wife has been promoting her new nonfiction book about the American Revolution. At the events where I’ve tagged along, I’ve experienced a curious sense of déjà vu.

Very déjà, oh so vu.

Starting in 2009—17 years ago—she and I hit the road around this time each year to visit a number of gift shops and bookstores in the former 13 colonies to hawk one and eventually two of our Revolutionary-era history titles.

Our travels took us as far north as Boston and as far south as Georgia. We usually visited sites associated in some way with the Declaration, the Revolutionary War, and the lives of the Signers. Instead of the local Barnes & Noble, we were more likely to be signing at the home of Long Island signer William Floyd, whose home and estate is today managed by the National Park Service. In Philly, we signed in a building across from the Liberty Bell. In Boston, we signed at a shop in the Old State House, which sponsors an annual reading of the Declaration of Independence each Fourth of July.

At the Independence Visitor Center Store, Philadelphia.

Since summer is prime travel season, on those trips we encountered countless tourists. Most often, they were Moms, Dads, and their families on their summer road trip. 

Sometimes, we encountered visitors from overseas whose vacations just happened to coincide with Fourth of July week. I imagine the foreign tourists trying to comprehend why the strangers in this strange land were decked out in red, white, and blue earrings, sneakers, face paint, and T-shirts, and why the slightest hint of evening darkness brought the clangorous pops and sizzles of distant fireworks.

Still…this year’s travels have felt special, and not because of Denise’s book. It was not just any Fourth, after all. This year the US is celebrating its 250th anniversary, so my déjà vu is at least two layers deep. 

On one hand, I remember our 2009-2012 bookstore trips and I remember America’s Bicentennial year, 1976.

That's me in the center, my two brothers at right and left.

Remember, both my parents were garment workers. I recall my Mom hand-stitching the costumes you see in this image, using a Butterick sewing pattern. The outfits were for a parade our school participated in. She also baked and decorated the cakes you see in front of us, the layer cake and the flag sheet cake on the right.

I consumed every children’s book about the Revolution, hoping to soak up as many details as I could of colonial life. Chief among the books I devoured were by the children’s author-illustrator, Robert Lawson: Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos (1939) and Mr. Revere and I: Being an Account of Certain Episodes in the Career of Paul Revere, Esq. as Revealed by his Horse (1953). And there was a charming book about Ben and his grandson living abroad in the year 1776, entitled Poor Richard in France by F.N. Monjo (1973). My fascination with Ben Franklin dates to that era.

Yes, I still have them.

Those books omitted the fact that over the course of his life Franklin owned seven human beings. He later changed his mind about slavery, and devoted the last years of his life to the abolitionist cause.

In her introduction to her new book, Denise tells her 1976 story. She was a few years younger than me. She tells of watching a parade amid red, white, and blue fire hydrants. She was particularly taken by the men and boys playing fife and drums. (Years later, she would master the flute.) Any women and girls she spotted in patriotic reenactments were dressed like Holly Hobby and were either sewing flags, churning butter, or doing laundry.

Surely, she thought, there’s gotta be more for girls to do than that. As you might imagine, that was the spark that led to her current book.

The Betsy Ross story, which is the biggest story Americans remember of a woman contributing to the Revolutionary War, is probably myth. Yes, she did make flags, but it’s impossible to prove that she made the first American flag. Her flag-making was not the most interesting fact about her. Far more interesting is that she buried three husbands, lived into her eighties, and ran a successful business as an upholsterer at a time when doctors and lawyers had trouble paying their bills. I don’t know why I didn’t learn that in elementary school. Was the word businesswoman deemed too difficult for kids in the 1970s?

American patriotism and jingoism are fraught with problems because so much of it is driven by the stories we learned in childhood. What appears in school curricula are the easy facts we know will entice kids and keep them engaged in the story. It’s also what will mollify schools and parents. What is not ever said is that we hope that children will check back in when they’re old enough to learn the fuller story, whatever it is, for better or worse.

Unless that kid grows up to be a dedicated reader, their knowledge of the past will remain stuck at the grade-school level.

The founders expected that citizens would stay informed. But even they would probably not have expected voters to be devoted readers of multi-volume works of history. In their day, the average citizen got the news via word of mouth, public readings, broadsides, and newspapers. And yes, there was just as much propaganda then as now.

But hey—I still look back fondly on those long summer road trips we took nearly 20 years ago. Over time, the booksellers we met on our annual pilgrimage became like friends who looked forward to our visits.
I especially treasured the time we spent in the National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are housed. Usually on those visits, we’d stow our bags in the gift shop downstairs, then go up to reacquaint ourselves with the so-called Charters of Freedom. You press a button to illuminate the documents, which otherwise repose in darkness.

The letters are faint, but they are still there.

We got so friendly with the publicity person in that building that we were permitted to film a naturalization ceremony in the Rotunda one year. What a moving experience! Under giant murals depicting dead white men, men and women of all races and color raised their right hands and pledged to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

One fellow, Dennis, ran the gift shop in the building. He’d set us up with a table outside the shop, and bring us boxes of books to have us start signing stock. Then he’d sprinkle the signed editions around the store.

One year, just as we were packing up, he presented us with adorable pair of goodie boxes he had designed and filled just for us. I was astonished by his kindness.

Bookseller's gift:
On the Road Writer Survival Kit
The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
"Take this, write something, have a nosh..." —Allen Ginsberg

Another year, as we hawked our books, we were told that David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States (AOTUS) appointed by Obama in 2009, would be coming down to meet us. 

Imagine my surprise when this man stepped off the elevator and walked toward our table, carrying in his hands a copy of my children’s book on the life of Fibonacci. Turns out, the man everyone called the Collector-in-Chief was also a math geek. He introduced himself and asked for my signature. I was so nervous I nearly flubbed the spelling of his name.

The tourists who moved me the most were always kids.

Families that were recent immigrants to the US often appeared at our table in one large group, speaking another tongue, urging their youngest member to step forward and speak. Indian and Pakistani families stand out in my memory because of the ladies’ dress. But we met a lot of newcomers from eastern Europe and South America as well.

“I would like to buy your book,” the child of these families would say.

“Would you like us to make it out to you?”

Nervously, the kids would look to their parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, and older siblings. As a group, the elders would nod. Thus emboldened, the kid would announce loudly, “Yes, please!”

By 2011, after we had been doing this a few years, I really loved the kids who announced proudly that they had read our first book on the signers of the Declaration and now wanted the one on the Constitution. We didn’t write those books for kids, but they were decent works of popular history, and funny to boot. Sometimes a child would quote a pun or a one-liner we’d forgotten we’d made.

A special spot in my heart is reserved for those kids who announced that history was their favorite subject. Ditto the ones who told us that they themselves were writers or writers in training. (Some of the girls carried their handwritten works in progress in their backpacks, which they were happy to show us.)

As we signed their books, the kids peppered us with questions:

“How long did it take you to write the book?”
“Do you write them on a computer?”
“Do you go to a library to look things up?”
“Are you married?”
“Do you have kids?”

In other words, they basically asked the same questions grown-ups ask writers, only far more seriously. 

And as we answered, both of us thought of the kids we were once. Kids of 1976. The Bicentennial. Kids eager to learn the history of the place we called home.

At the end, we always had a gift for those kids. 

“Would you like a sticker?”

Of course they said yes, as did their older siblings, who I was quite certain would think wearing a red, white, and blue flag, rainbow, or field of stars on one’s cheek wasn’t cool.

Writing is hard. Selling what you write is harder. But sometimes all the work and all the research you've done comes together nicely, and the result is a single product in the hands of one person who will take its words to heart. E Pluribus Unum.

Exterior, National Archives

* * * 

Thanks for reading. See you next time!

Joe

josephdagnese.com