As regular readers of this blog know, I reminisced, in a May 2019 post, about my acquisition of a lovely Chinese waterscape, in oil, by a Taipei artist called Peco Yeh, in 1968. And I showed a photo of the painting, which graces a wall in my house to this day, almost fifty-seven years later.
Then in July 2023, I heard from a woman named Earline Dirks, who had a Peco Yeh painting that she had acquired at Goodwill. The subject matter and style were much different from my painting of a boatman on the Tamsui, and different from other paintings by Peco that I saw in his studio shop on Jungshan North Road in Taipei near sixty years ago. Yet it clearly was an original by him, as attested by his distinctive signature.
I posted a piece showing Earline’s painting, and mine, and speculating on this change of style. Since then I have received communications and photos from four other owners of Peco Yeh paintings— Joshua Lowe, Jane Upchurch, Michael Tomczyk, and Antonia Lonquist. All these proud owners generously agreed to let me share their paintings with you, as I have done in the posts hyperlinked immediately above.
The more of Peco’s paintings I have seen, the more I am impressed with his restless artistry, his constant grasping to experiment with and master a wide variety of styles, techniques, and subjects. I think if you look at all the paintings shown in these posts you are bound to agree.
Now, from Gloucester, Massachusetts, comes Matt O’Connell, with the canvas below.
I don’t know much about art, but to my eye this is a fairly spectacular example of Peco’s work. Unlike my canvas, and most of the others I have seen, this one is brilliantly polychromatic. A bright red ball of sun, sinking with surrealistic draftsmanship into a fiery sea, illuminates a few dark boats in the left foreground and a silhouetted fisherman tending one of them. The paint in most of the scene is applied in a blocky, chunky style, maybe with a palette knife. The fisherman and boats, on the other hand, are rendered rather minutely. The whole effect is dramatic.
Forgive the funny look of the frame. The photo was a little off-center and I cropped it to show as little of the frame as possible without cutting out part of the canvas.
Thanks, Matt, for sharing this. It gives us another window into the work of this enigmatic Chinese artist.
Dear Reader, I don’t know whether or not Peco was a great artist, but the more of his images I see, the more I realize he was an interesting artist. This blog you are reading, with this post and the others I have linked above, may be the world’s largest collection of extant Peco Yeh paintings. And of all the owners of these canvases, I believe I am the only one who actually met and conversed with the artist in those long-ago days in the 1960s version of Taiwan.
I may have mentioned before now, Dear Reader, that the writer’s life is a lonely one.
Oh, sure, we are celebrated among our friends . . . if we have friends who are kind enough to celebrate us.
Gerrit Dou, Scholar Sharpening a Quill Pen. Public Domain.
We also confer among ourselves at writers’ conferences. We sit at the feet of masters and learn, if we can, a kind of self-mastery. We even may tip a tumbler or two, on such occasions.
We have the usual allotment of spouses and children and dogs.
So writers, as a group, are not existentially lonely. Most of us are not, at any rate.
But when it comes to writing—when we need to plot and craft and draft and re-plot and re-craft and re-draft a novel or any large work of fiction—that we do all by ourselves, in mental if not physical isolation. We may share a work in progress with colleagues: give glimpses, get feedback, gain perspective. But the actual doing of the thing is a solo gig. It’s just you and your keyboard in a room somewhere.
Thus, any victory merits a celebration.
So it is with pride and joy I announce: Your New Favorite Writer has reached Mid-point on his current WIP (work in progress). Sorry to burden you with technical jargon, but nonetheless—HUZZAH! Please feel free to huzzah along with me.
What’s the Big Deal?
Thanks, I thought you’d never ask.
Aristotle. Public Domain.
Mid-point in a work of fiction is not merely halfway. It does not mean fifty percent of the work has been done. Perhaps the second half of the book will be much easier to write, or much harder, than the first half.
Rather, the Mid-point, which always falls very near halfway through the pages, is where Something Momentous Happens. There is a major plot turn, visible or invisible, that makes the whole thing deeper and more important. The story shifts, the way a batch of fudge changes color in the pan just before it sets up into a new, delicious thing.
This is not my imagination, Gentle Reader. You could look it up. Any number of gurus have told us about it, from Aristotle onwards. Pick up a copy of Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field (1935-2013). Mr. Field was one of the first to put the how-to of screenwriting into a book, so that anybody could do it.
Charles Dickens. Public Domain.
Well, not just anybody. You have to also be a certifiable lunatic.
Actor-director Roberto Benigni, creator of Life Is Beautiful. Photo by Harald Krichel, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
But I digress. The point is, there is a fundamental dramatic structure that almost all good stories have. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes we call them Acts I, II, and III. There are vivid plot points that kick off the action (Inciting Incident), shift it into gear (Break into Act II), change the whole picture (Mid-point), set up the final confrontation (Break into Act III), and resolve the story (Climax). There are numerous lesser turns as well.
The all-important Mid-point signals a shift in tone, emphasis, and import of the story. That shift can be quite stark, as in the Italian film Life is Beautiful (1997), or more subtle, as in Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol (1843). But it has to be there, or the story resembles an uncooked fish, several days old.
Therefore I celebrate the conquest of the Mid-point.
So What?
Your New Favorite Writer has written two novels that are currently in print, The Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold! Both were very hard to write. I have been at work for some time on my third—a twentieth century historical novel that goes by the working title Brother’s Blood. It’s about two brothers who find themselves at odds but have no opportunity to fully reconcile before the Second World War sends them off in different directions.
This one is hard to write, too. But writing the first two, as well as several unproduced screenplays, taught me a few things. Especially how important the first act is. Famed writer-director Billy Wilder said, “If you have a problem in the third act, your problem is in the first act.” What he meant is that you need to set the stage fully and exquisitely in the first one-quarter of the work (Act I), so that all kinds of situations and relationships established at the start can then pay off in satisfying ways as the rest of the story (Acts II and III) unfolds.
Writers often talk about a character coming to life and taking the story off in an unexpected direction. It is delightful when this happens. But in a way, it’s even more satisfying when the underlying logic of the story—the line of development that flows from all the details you have packed into Act I—forces an unavoidable realignment of meaning at the Mid-point, and the rest of the story snowballs to an irresistible end from that point.
I’ve been laboring mightily over Act I: Writing, re-writing, changing, re-adjusting to get a number of rather ordinary yet secretly powerful ingredients into the story. And I’ve launched into the wilds of Act II, grinding away at just marshaling the facts of the characters’ lives, when ALL OF A SUDDEN, SHAZAM! A major plot event, one which I did not see coming, elbows its way into the story. Right at the halfway point. It’s an event I’m not at all happy with—and you Dear Reader, may not like it either—but it shoves the invisible river of narrative into a swifter and deeper channel. There is no help for it. We must go there.
I can’t wait to write the rest of the book.
Note: It would be very helpful at this point, no doubt, to give you a more specific idea of what happens in the book. I can’t do that. Major SPOILERS would be involved. All I can say is: look for it in a year or two, possibly by a different title, wherever fine books are sold.
This blog is all about seeking fresh meanings in our common past. It says so in the tagline.
I also seek fresh meanings in our common past by writing fiction. Two historical novels have resulted: The Price of Passage, set in the Civil War era, and Izzy Strikes Gold!, set in the 1950s. My current work-in-progress is a World War II novel.
But there will also be a memoir, I hope—a memoir of four years as an enlisted man in the United States Air Force. It was the Vietnam era. We were voice intercept operators, eavesdropping on Chinese air force and civil air transport radio communications.
A memoir is non-fiction, but these days the best memoirs employ writing styles like those of fiction. So the difference between this memoir and my historical novels is that nothing in the memoir is made up. The events are real, fixed in my memory like ancient insects preserved in amber.
Long ago, in a galaxy far away, the local movie house would sometimes hold a “SNEAK PREVIEW!!” The caps and double-bang were essential parts of the phrase. Sneak previews were a marketing ploy, meant to boost attendance when the full movie came to town.
Here is a SNEAK PREVIEW!! of my sooner-or-later-forthcoming military memoir:
Forty boys, age eighteen and up, stand in four lines in a small room. At twenty, I may be the oldest boy.
Bare fluorescent tubes shine down on yellow-green walls. A man in a blue uniform stands at the front of the room. He points to a sign where the words of the oath are printed in large block letters. “Raise your right hands and repeat after me,” he says.
“I . . . do solemnly swear, or affirm . . .”
Swear or affirm, who cares? I wish I were somewhere else.
“. . . defend the Constitution of the United States . . .”
Defend America, shoulder-to-shoulder with these other sweaty guys? I’ve got to do it. No other choice.
“. . . obey the orders of the President . . . and . . . the officers appointed over me . . .”
That’s my new plan, the only one available.
“. . . according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so help me God. . . . Lower your hands,” says the man in blue. “Take one step forward.”
We drop our hands. We step forward.
“Welcome to the United States Air Force.”
Plan B.
#
They dispatched us in groups of six. One member in each group of motley adolescents was given the airline tickets for all six.
We had time to kill at the airport, Billy Mitchell Field. We were to stay together, so we would all be at the gate when the one boy turned in the tickets.
Of course, I was the one the government chose to hold the tickets.
“Why don’t you just give us all our tickets?” said Truesdale, a big, assertive guy. “That’ll be simpler.”
“We—uh, we’d better do it the way they said,” I stammered.
I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of a dominant guy like Truesdale. Fear was native to my soul. I came into the Air Force pre-intimidated.
Minadeo, a round guy with a crewcut, solved my problem. “Look,” he said. “Pinballs!”
By luck or providence, we had plenty of dimes. We spent forty-five minutes playing the machines on the upper concourse of General Billy Mitchell’s airport. In the bliss of bouncing balls, flashing lights, and bumping bumpers, Truesdale forgot about the tickets.
We all got on the plane together.
I had flown twice, both times in small planes, rigid with fear while dangled in a frail airframe a thousand feet above cornfields. Braniff Airlines was a whole different matter. Our DC-8 was sleek, well-upholstered, large, and fast. It flew high—miles above the corn, even above the clouds.
Stewardesses in svelte designer outfits brought us supper, then coffee.
Night had fallen. I looked down and watched the lights of Illinois and Missouri towns slide under our wings. Here is your new life, Mister Air Force Guy: Serene. Sophisticated. Not so bad after all.
At Abilene, we changed to a propeller-driven Lockheed Electra. The Texas plains were larded with storm clouds, which the Electra could not get above. We bounced and jounced.
I threw up in a paper bag.
More than once. Same bag.
When we arrived in San Antonio, they lined us up under an awning. It was past midnight. The rain had stopped, but the air was heavy. We sat on the concrete and waited in the dark, all forty of us.
My stomach started to settle, but I was out of sorts. I had been treated rudely by the airplane. I wondered who to report it to.
After forty minutes, a dark school bus pulled up. We all got on.
The bus trundled down the road. It stopped at a gate. Guards waved us through. We drove down empty streets on Lackland Air Force Base, past dark buildings, and lurched to a stop.
The driver opened the door. A tall, straight-standing dark man stepped up into the bus. He stood on the lowest step yet still towered over us. He wore a light tan uniform and a white hat with a black visor.
In this black night, he wore dark glasses. How could he see?
He stared straight at me. I could not see his eyes, but it must have been me he was staring at. The other thirty-nine guys might have thought it was them.
A flash of insight told me this man would not be the officer to receive my complaint, apologize on behalf of the U.S. Government, and cheerfully rectify the error.
“Get off the bus,” he said.
#
Your New Favorite Writer has posted another possible chapter, from later in the book, here . And if you have oodles of time, and a great thirst for knowledge of the era, you can find a 94-minute oral history interview here.
I hope that when at last my full memoir is published, you’ll rush out and buy it. You have my assurance it will be indispensable.
My first novel . . . all over again! With a wonderful new cover by artist Rony Dhar.
Dear Reader: If you already purchased and read Price of Passage in its original edition (DX Varos Publishing, 2022), you are exempt from purchasing* this new one. It’s the same book.
Those of you who have not read it are now commanded to go forth and buy a copy of The Price of Passage: From Norway to America, From Slavery to Freedom (Three Towers Press, 2025). You’ll be glad you did.
It’s the gripping story of Anders and Maria, who come to America from Norway in the 1850s, and of Daniel, a young slave they encounter in the midst of his bid for freedom. As historical novels go, it’s first-rate.
There are new dilemmas and conflicts on almost every page. The narrative sheds light on under-reported aspects of America’s experience in the middle of the 19th century. For example, the existence in every southern state of Maroons, free-living communities of escaped slaves; the major role played by immigrants in the armies of the Civil War; the politics of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates; and the prevalence of integrated white/black crews of sailors on U.S. Navy ships before and during the Civil War.
More to the point, it tells the human tale of three hardy pioneers—Anders, Maria, and Daniel—who worked out their destinies in the most turbulent era of our national epic.
The characters are closely drawn from historical reality. The Norwegian characters, Anders and Maria, are based on my great-great-grandparents. Daniel and other African American characters are composites taken from the actual experiences of slaves and free blacks in the 19th century.
Don’t miss it. You can buy it direct from its publisher, Three Towers Press. Or, if you prefer, you can buy it on Amazon. The cost is the same. $18.95.
*Ha! You were wondering when the asterisk would come up, weren’t you? Gentle Reader, evn though you have already read Price of Passage in its earlier edition, I’d appreciate it if you would navigate to its page on Amazon, scroll way down until you see Review this product at the left margin, then click on the “Write a Customer Review” button** and enter your review. It need not be a major research paper, or even a grade school book report. Just a two-word headline and a sentence or two of text, saying what you liked about it, will be enough. Amazon reviews really do help authors sell their books.
**Aha! You were wondering when the double asterisk would come up, weren’t you? Fair Reader, if you already posted a review on the original edition of Price of Passage, I beg you to post it again on the new edition’s Amazon page. Amazon will not carry reviews over from the old page to the new page. If you don’t remember what you posted before, email me, larryfsommers@gmail.com, and I’ll send you a copy.
By the way, if you read Price of Passage in its old edition, it’s perfectly fine for you to review it on the Amazon page for the new edition, because as I mentioned above, it’s the same book.
Thank you for your kind support and understanding.
