On Monday RARA-AVIS celebrated its fifth birthday. I
announced it on 7 January 1997, which seems like quite a long
time ago. Mr. Duggan (who suggested the name) and Mr. Borgers
were two of the first three people to join; the third isn't
here any more. Some people have come and gone (a few loudly),
but most stay, and we've got 338 people on the list now, 154
on the regular version and 184 on the digest. I see
subscribers from Canada, the USA, Germany, New Zealand,
Japan, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Iceland,
France, Australia, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Cuba, and
there are probably other countries behind generic .com
addresses. All here to talk about hardboiled and noir
writing, on a list that, thanks to you, is noted for being
interesting, friendly, and focused.
The archives of the entire life of the list, except for two
or three weeks lost due to a disk crash, are up on the web
site, and I think they must form one of the biggest
collections anywhere of talk about this kind of writing. If
it's hardboiled or noir, and you look for it on the Internet,
some of the top hits are bound to be in our archives.
The last year has been a good one for the list, what with
people meeting at conventions like Bloody Words here in
Toronto and the last Bouchercon in Washington, and the guest
thememasters who've wrangled month-long looks at American
cities and now Latino hardboiled and noir writing. We've even
had guest writers (Jeremiah Healey, Benjamin Schutz, and now
Jose Latour), and Jason Starr got his publisher to give us
ten free copies of his new book. I hope 2002, and the next
five years of the list, will show just as much growth and
activity.
Three favourite quotes from Caspar Gutman:
"I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally
picks the wrong time to
talk and says the wrong things. Talking's
something you can't do
judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now,
sir, we'll talk if you
like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who
likes talking to a man who
likes to talk."
"By Gad, sir, you are a character. There's never
any telling what you'll
say or do next, except that it's bound to be
something astonishing!"
"And to you, Miss O'Shaughnessy, adieu. I leave
you the rara avis on the
table as a little memento."
Happy birthday,
Bill
P.S. I'll still be after you about trimming quoted text and
staying on topic, don't worry.
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Jan 2002 EST