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From: reberhart@pita.com (Richard Eberhart) Date: Sat, 03 Jan 1998 18:30:28 -0500
To: seltzer@samizdat.com
Subject: yours of 11/15
sorry i can't use capitals; my keyboard is sick.
your note of 11/15 asking about my novels was misplaced in the barn when i brought my office into the house before the cold weather. i had hoped to finish converting the barn's second floor into an insulated and heated office before december but didn't. i just ran across it today. sorry to be so long in responding.
you may not have found the books on amazon.com because you have my name wrong. i publish under the name dikkon eberhart, which has been my nickname since the beginning--even before holderness' 'meatball.' the books are listed by amazon.com, but as 'hard to find.' both are out of print.
i have started my own publishing company, barquentine books, and will reissue one of them--paradise, formerly from stemmer house, ownings mills, md, 1985--sometime in the late spring/summer. i'll also publish my new one-- an island further out than ours --at about the same time. i hope to reissue the other, old one-- on the verge, also stemmer house,
1979--in early 1999. meanwhile, barquentine books brings out my annual maine menu guide--i was a restaurant critic in maine for many years.
on the verge is a coming-of-age novel, rich in character and mood, thin in plot, about a carpenter in vermont, learning about women and the necessity of dealing with a larger world than his rural garden. it's set around the experience of building a stone house. relatively short, literary reading but not turgid, has some charm.
paradise is more demanding, longer. a better read plotwise. it is a nautical, theological adventure story surrounding the historical character st. brendan--irish, 8th century, possible travel to the new world. for the purposes of the book, the protagonist is a north african black ironsmith, a gnostic, whom brendan and crew rescue in the north atlantic and who, perforce, travels with them to 'paradise', the coast of maine, where the gnostic and the catholic adventurers meet the abnaki indians, who have their own spirituality. a suitably grand climax occurs when the abnaki take the europeans to the summit of mount katahdin to discover what coutantowit--the great manito--has to say about these strangers.
anyway, nice to hear from you. i understand you've been writing for years yourself. tell me about your line.
dikkon eberhart
From: Richard Seltzer <seltzer@acunet.net> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:21:41 -0500 (EST)
Good to hear from you.
I'd be delighted if you could send me a copy of either of your novels, and yes, of course, I'll return it.
Meanwhile, I'll send you copies of mine (for keepers; I have a basement full).
You can also see my stuff at my Web site -- http://www.samizdat.com There you will find my historical novel The Name of Hero, my fantasy The Lizard of Oz, my (unproduced, of course) screenplay Spit and Polish, and lots more. I've reached the point where I post just about all my stuff on the Web. I've also posted stories, poems, and books for friends.
If you have stories or even novels that you would like to get to a Web audience and if you have them in electronic form, I'd be happy to do the same for you (no charge). Let me know if you are interested.
Richard
From: Richard Seltzer <seltzer@acunet.net> Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 16:01:12 -0500 (EST)
I just finished reading On the Verge. Couldn't put it down. And having reached the end, I'm looking for the follow-on.
The ending seems more like a beginning.
Roughly, it feels like you told two separate but related stories -- one about Noah trying to figure out who he is in relationship to the land and to nature, and the other about his relationships with Jill and Robert and Lauren. In the second half of the book, particularly the last 50 pages, Jill and Lauren and Noah come very alive. You can see and feel them.
Crisp and clear -- full of interesting contradictions and possibilities that have yet to be worked out. That's the story I'm really interested in.
I may be way off base, but it feels like through the coming-to-terms-with-place, and the compelling poetic language of the beginning, you come to develop a new and different style -- more sparse and direct to the point, and more focused on the people.
I'd really like to see the story played out further -- what happens next? -- and to read it in the direct style of the "ending."
Did you ever write or plan to write the sequel?
Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com
From: reberhart@pita.com (Richard Eberhart) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 22:00:56 -0500
Thanks! Nice comments. No, I didn't write anymore about them. I wanted to leave it as it was. I was conscious at the time of wanting there to be a possibility for Noah and Lauren, but n0thing confirmed. I had read too many books, I felt, that ended--contemporarily--with the ending of things. I wanted at least a hint of the beginning, but I didn't know myself what would happen.
Yes, I agree about the shift in tone, or at least the cleaner, clearer narrative line toward the end. I wrote the beginning part numerous times, and I was afraid at that early stage of my writing career of just launching in and telling a story. I wanted mood, which I think I achieved, but I wasn't confident that if I simply told about the characters and their actions and feelings I would interest anyone.
Partly, perhaps, too much of a poetical household growing up. I often overheard my Dad and his friends diminishing fiction because it was just about one thing after another. Poetry was what soared!
Anyway, thank you for your warming remarks. I've begun THE NAME OF HERO but am not far enough into it to comment, except to say that I like the moment in history and what I am beginning to learn about your characters.
Dikkon
To: Richard Eberhart <reberhart@pita.com> Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 23:19:56 -0500 (EST)
I just read Paradise and added it to my list of favorite recent fiction -- http://www.samizdat.com/readbest.html
I especially liked the whale walk -- so physically absurd, but yet so true and believable in context -- and the related sense of destiny that came through time and again.
Thanks very much for lending it to me.
Richard
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