DROOD UPDATES AND EPHEMERA
         From Daily VARIETY
         DROOD - First Reviews Are In!
         Warner Bros. nabs "HYPERION"
         DROOD Cover from Little, Brown
         THE TERROR on 2007 Top Lists
         Carrion Comfort Optioned
         Dan to write new Fantasy Tale
         THE AGONY COLUMN interview

Here is just a sampling of the lists, reviews, commentaries, video and audio links, tour momentos, and other Droodlet goodies:

Please, Sir, We Want Some More

'Drood' becomes a best-seller -- Dan Simmons' historical thriller about Charles Dickens hit the ''Publisher's Weekly'' list with nary a press appearance By Kate Ward

Looks like it's the best of times for Dan Simmons: He just landed at No. 15 on the Publishers Weekly fiction best-seller list with Drood, his historical thriller about Charles Dickens. Simmons didn't make a single press appearance, so how do you explain the success of a 784-page Dickens-inspired novel in a market where easy reading rules the charts? According to Reagan Arthur, Drood's editor at Little, Brown, the book's sheer heft might have actually been an attraction. ''Something about the time of year is appealing to people's need for a big, hearty, old-fashioned read in the sort of Dickensian model,'' she says. And though you might not recognize Simmons' name, plenty do. His cult fan-base has been building since his days as a sci-fi and horror writer and reached fever pitch in 2007 with The Terror. ''When we are publishing a book [of his], you can see the Internet start to stir months beforehand,'' says Marlena Bittner, his publicist at Little, Brown. Count director Guillermo del Toro as one of those followers: He's already bought the film rights to Drood.

Posted Feb 27, 2009 | Published in issue #1037 Mar 06, 2009 |

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20262057,00.html

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER LIST

Latest BestSellers of Hardcover Fiction

WEEK OF MARCH 2, 2009

1 The Associate. Grisham, John Doubleday, $27.95. ISBN 978-0-385-51783-6. 1 4 2 Run Your Life. James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge Little, Brown, $27.99. ISBN 978-0-316-01874-6. 2 3 3 Heart and Soul. Binchy, Maeve Knopf, $26.95. ISBN 978-0-307-26579-1. - 1 4 The Host. Stephenie Meyer Little, Brown, $25.99. ISBN 9780316068048. 3 39 5 Fool. Moore, Christopher Morrow, $26.99. ISBN 9780060590314. 4 2 6 Bone Crossed. Patricia Briggs Ace, $24.95. ISBN 978-0-441-01676-1. 5 3 7 Dog on It. Spencer Quinn Atria, $25. ISBN 978-1-416-58583-1. - 1 8 True Colors. Hannah, Kristin St. Martin's, $25.95. ISBN 978-0-312-36410-6. 7 3 9 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows Dial, $22. ISBN 9780385340991. 10 18 10 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski Ecco, $25.95. ISBN 9780061374227. 8 35 11 Very Valentine. Adriana Trigiani Harper, $25.99. ISBN 978-0-06-125705-6. 9 3 12 Plum Spooky. Janet Evanovich St. Martin's, $27.95. ISBN 9780312383329. 6 7 13 The Women. T.C. Boyle Viking, $27.95. ISBN 9780670020416. 11 2 14 Drood. Dan Simmons Little, Brown, $25.99. ISBN 9780316007023. 15 2 15 While My Sister Sleeps. Barbara Delinsky Doubleday, $25.95. ISBN 978-0-385-52492-6. - 1

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Rick Kleffel's radio interviews for later podcasting from his AGONY COLUMN are always a high point of Dan's tours through the Bay Area. Kleffel is a careful reader and his questions are always excellent. (Unlike so many radio-host interviewers, even at the top levels of NPR, Kleffel actually listens to his guests' responses and forms sharp and sometimes penetrating follow-up questions that do tend to reveal things.) These energetic conversations between Rick and Dan -- the recorded talks are almost too long to be called "interviews" -- are some of the finest near-term examinations of Dan's books available.

Below is Rick Kleffel's print review of DROOD followed by the podcast of the February, 2009 podcast interview:

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Dan Simmons Drood Reviewed by: Rick Kleffel © 2009 Little, Brown / Hachette US Hardcover First ISBN 978-0316007023 Publication Date: 02-09-2009 784 Pages; $26.99 Date Reviewed: 02-21-2009 Index: General-Fiction  Horror  Science-Fiction Fantasy  Non-Fiction In 'Drood,' Dan Simmons makes some difficult choices. He tells the oft-told story of Dickens' life from the perspective of Wilkie Collins, in Simmons' novel (and in actuality), that of a pain-addled opium addict. There's an excess of actuality to deal with; Dickens life was incredibly complex, not surprisingly, Dickensian. To that add the imaginative riffs of Collins' hallucinations, the constant pain from his gout, the even greater pains of jealousy and Collins' certainty that he was good enough a writer to know he could never measure up to Dickens stature. This is where 'Drood' begins, with an opening right out of the most ripping of yarns, a dramatic grabber that makes the reader question not Collins' sanity, but Dickens, followed by a spectacular set-piece right out of the Dickens bios. On June 9, 1865, Charles Dickens was on a train with the woman who may have been his paramour and her mother, when it ran off the rails and plunged into an abyss. Dickens was left hanging over the edge, and readers will be as well in this cleverly plotted and cunningly composed novel. Sure, at 784 pages, there are really two or three "normal" books stuffed into this cabinet of wonders. But each of them is a one hell of a gripping tale, and Simmons' architectural skill manages to get all the rooms under one tin-plated, roof replete with chimneys belching smoke into the skies and underground labyrinths that lead straight to hell. Readers will know pretty much right off the bat if they're going to enjoy the novel because the tale is told in the consistently unreliable voice of Wilkie Collins. He's a hoot to be around, even if he's constantly in pain, and a good enough writer to make you feel his pain and that of everyone him. The conceit is that this manuscript has been withheld at Collins' request for 125 years. Now the true lies behind the last unfinished novel by Dickens, 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' can be told. It seems that Dickens met Drood in the pit beneath the Staplehurst disaster, as he tried to help victim. Drood, described as looking something like the figure of Edward Munch's The Scream brought to life may or may not still be human or actually alive, but he is according to Dickens' and Collins' real-life police contact, Charles Frederick Field, the nastiest serial murderer London has never heard of. And now he is in the lives of both Dickens and Collins; and that;'s just the Spook story aspect of 'Drood.' Threaded through 'Drood' as well are a superbly entertaining Dickens biography and a portrait of literary competition and innovation at the dawn of genre fiction as we know it today. Simmons' nails Collins' voice in the opening sentence and keeps the high-wire act up for another 783 pages. It's his funniest book to date, with a generous sense of humor that keeps the tone light even when the going gets pretty heavy — and in a book this size, you can bet there are more than a few dire moments. Simmons has set himself a very difficult task and it wasn't until the moment I began to write this review that I realized just how successful he is. On one hand, he's got to set a seriously Victorian tone to his prose. But he's an American writer, and he has to be careful not to seem too contrived or arcane. By choosing Collins — a thoroughly modern man even by our 21st-century standards — as his tale-teller, he gets to steep his readers in the atmosphere while keeping the language accessible. There are lots of parts of this book that readers will want to read aloud, and not just the fairly significant number of quotes, letters and speeches straight out of history. The characters, and as you might expect, there are lots of them, are nonetheless easy enough to keep track of. Moreover, they're all a joy to be around, especially with Wilkie as your guide. Charles Frederick Field, the real-life inspiration for Dickens' Inspector Bucket from 'Bleak House' and Collins' Sergeant Cuff, from 'The Moonstone' is a gruff but complicated figure. Women didn't fare very well in those times and they don’t do so hot in this novel either, but they live, breathe and often scheme with some success. Collins points out that the name "Drood" sound a lot liker the word "dread" and Simmons, a skilled horror writer, ensures he lives up to his implications. Given that 'Drood' will function as many readers' first Dickens biography, Simmons is to be congratulated on his integration of history and fantasy. There's certainly a good deal of history to be found here. It's entertainingly written and cunningly researched. Readers who pick up 'Drood' should do so with the knowledge that they're getting more than just a single story, more than just a single, straightforward novel. One probably shouldn’t make too much of the fact that Dickens' life was positively Dickensian; but it's not to be ignored either. If you're the sort of reader who enjoys a good digression, this is your banquet, because in 'Drood,' the digressions are served up with a good deal more than a soupcon of surreal imagery mixed with out-and-out obvious lies and hallucinations. The plot takes a crooked path, but also lots of drugs, and that makes the getting there a lot of fun. As 'Drood' lurches forth across a tortured landscape, Simmons doesn't just bury the knife, he twists it early and often. Fiction is, after all, lies and pain and illusion. The cost is great. In these times, it will require quite a bit of time to read 'Drood,' even if the pages turn very fast, and they do indeed. But how to value new dreams and old nightmares? How to count the cost of creation, how do we assess literary innovation then and now? Read the book; then go back and visit the landscapes that unfold in your mind. The lives you have lived are real. Pages, ages and price; what are they compared to memory? More Book Reviews Review Archive The Lost City of Z David Grann Reviewed by: Rick Kleffel Flashman: From the Flashman Papers 1839-42 George MacDonald Fraser Reviewed by: Dustin Kenall UFO in Her Eyes Xiaolu Guo Reviewed by: Rick Kleffel New to the Agony Column 02-27-09: Commentary : Barry Eisler Keeps it Simple, but not Stupid : 'Fault Line' Agony Column Podcast News Report : Deborah Grabien, Michael Boatman and Terry Bisson Talk at SF in SF on February 21, 2009 : Panel Discussion 02-26-09: Commentary : Paul Melko and Catherynne M. Valente Melt the World : Just Another Breakdown of Reality Agony Column Podcast News Report : Deborah Grabien Reads at SF in SF on February 21, 2009 : 'Still Life With Devils'

RSS Feed Link for News: http://trashotron.com/agony/indexes/tacrss.xml Podcast Feed Link: http://trashotron.com/agony/indexes/tac_podcast.xml

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    Click here: Agony Column Podcast 

Click here: Agony Column Podcast-Part 2

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(Dan's note: for purposes of NYTimes "bestsellerdom," only the top 15 titles on the list count. DROOD, at # 18, hadn't made that rarified summit as of the reporting week of Feb. 21.)

February 27, 2009, New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers  

Hardcover Fiction
Published: February 27, 2009

Buy These Books From:

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(Dan's note -- Shawn Speakerman recorded my long talk, reading, and Q&A session at Seattle's University Bookstore on the evening of Feb. 18, 2009. and has made the whole thing available via You Tube links below)

Video: Dan Simmons (02/18/09)

Luckily, two years in a row, Dan has visited Seattle on tour and held signing events at the fantastic University Bookstore where this time he spoke about his new book, Drood.

The premise of Drood is brilliant, in my opinion.

On June 9, 1865, author Charles Dickens was traveling by rail when, by human error, the train jumped the tracks. Many cars tumbled off, killing those within. Interestingly enough, the only first class car to not derail contained Dickens, who helped the wounded and dying as best he could until help arrived. For the next five years until his death on June 9, 1870—exactly five years after the accident—Dickens would be plagued by darkness and failing health, interested in death, the occult and hypnotism, only able to write half a novel in The Mystery of Edwin Drood and never staying in one place for very long.

Dan brings to the fore those final five years of Charles Dickens’ life in Drood!

And reveals the dark mysterious descent of arguably the 19th century’s greatest writer.

In the forthcoming seven videos, Dan gives a far more in depth look at the life of Charles Dickens and Drood. He then reads from the book and answers questions from the audience.

Here is A Speech, Reading and Q&A with Dan Simmons! Enjoy!

http://www.suvudu.com/2009/02/video-dan-simmons-021809.html

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And from TheDailyBeast.com compendium of web site reviews --

DROOD by Dan Simmons (9780316007023) is one of 5 featured books on The Daily Beast’s new Book Beast page.

And the following reviews:

“DROOD is such a great book that at first I just wanted to write a two-line review: “Masterpiece. Read the novel as soon as you can get it.” –FantasyBookCritic.blogspot.com (feature included a signed book giveaway that was promoted on over 40 blogs.)

 “This is a new Dan Simmons, writing the best books of his life. His next one is awaited now with almost a wonder of anticipation.” –OpenLettersMonthly.com

 “At its climax, a clever story reveals itself as more clever than you realized at the time — something that takes great skill to construct and then actually pull off. Simmons does so with aplomb. You don’t have to be a fan of either Dickens or Collins to enjoy DROOD, but you’ll gain ever more appreciation for this outstanding novel if you are.” –Bookgasm.com

 “For those who enjoy history, this is a fascinating look at the life of a writer whose works are still revered by millions.” –Hip2BHomeschooling.blogspot.com

 “I had a really, really hard time putting this book down. It’s just my kind of novel: lots of adventure, lots of tension.” –AGirlWalksintoaBookstore.blogspot.com

 “it is a book that will stick in the back of your mind for years to come.” –RuthiesBookReviews.blogspot.com

 “Reminiscent of Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Drood is full of interesting detail and richly textured scenes of real Dickensian London.” –LiteraryFanGirl.blogspot.com

 “Don't miss this one -- it is well worth the time and energy you put into it.” –Nancyo-2009—theyearinbooks.blogspot.com

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From reviewer Mark Graham at THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS on the very day that newspaper went under after 148 years of continuous publication --

A Dickens of a plot

Simmons novel chases Victorian's last mystery

By Mark Graham, Special to the Rocky

Published February 26, 2009 at 7 p.m.

Author Dan Simmons is known for his thorough research, literate writing style and celebration of major authors.

A Colorado author, Dan Simmons refuses to stick to a single genre; in fact, it's hard to find a type of fiction at which he has not excelled.

He may be best known for his Hugo Award winning far-future science fiction tetralogy, which includes Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and Rise of Endymion. But he is equally at home with horror novels like Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night and A Winter Haunting, and detective stories with his Joe Kurtz series.

Regardless of plot or theme, the three elements that best define Simmons' works are his thorough research, literate writing style and celebration of major authors and works of literature.

It's no coincidence that the Hyperion novels make use of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Keats, nor that Ernest Hemingway is a central character in his suspense novel, The Crook Factory. Last year's The Terror, which chronicled an ill-fated 19th-century attempt to find the Northwest Passage through Canada, made significant use of Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death.

Now the erudite Simmons uses one of the greatest novelists of all time as a character and another important Victorian author as narrator in his latest "magnum opus," Drood, as he recounts the last five years of Charles Dickens' life and the mysterious circumstances around the writing of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens' unfinished last novel.

Chapter One opens as the narrator, now estranged from his friendship with the "Inimitable," as he calls Dickens, introduces himself and his book: "My name is Wilkie Collins and my guess, since I plan to delay the publication of this document for at least a century and a quarter beyond the date of my demise (1889), is that you do not recognize my name . . . Even so, I would wager my current fortune, such as it is, and all future royalties from my plays and novels, such as they may be, on the fact that you do remember the name and books and plays and invented characters of my friend and former collaborator, a certain Charles Dickens."

While it is certainly true that Dickens will never be forgotten, Collins might have been surprised that his most famous book, The Moonstone, is considered by many the first true detective novel and that it is still in print today, or that his The Woman in White would be adapted as a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, though the play closed after a short run on Broadway last year.

In just a few pages, the actual story begins with a seminal event in Dickens' life. In 1865 the author, who had separated from his wife, Catherine, the mother of his 10 children, was traveling by rail with the beautiful and much younger actress, Ellen Ternan, when the train jumped the track, and most of the passenger cars plunged into a ravine. Though their first-class carriage was tilting over the edge of a precipice, Dickens and Ternan were relatively uninjured, but the majority of the other travelers died or were seriously maimed in the wreckage.

As he later told Collins, when Dickens worked his way down the hill to help the victims, he met the man, "if he was a man," who would change his life, a cadaverously thin person who appeared to have no eyelids and introduced himself only as "Drood."

As Dickens tries to minister to the horribly mangled passengers trapped in their splintered cars, it appears that Drood, like a vampire, is sucking out their last breaths.

After he has somewhat recovered from the experience (though the author retains a phobia of trains and fast-moving conveyances until his death), Dickens becomes obsessed with finding Drood, and he enlists Collins, his friend, sometime collaborator and the brother of his son-in- law, to accompany him into the slums and London's "Undertown," a secret society, hidden along the subterranean sewers and rivers of the city. Clues divulged by Dickens' acquaintances from Scotland Yard and private detective agencies lead him to believe that Drood lives as a type of potentate in these vast catacombs.

Gradually we learn that both Collins and Dickens suffer from gout, a common upper- class affliction of the times, and that the narrator is hopelessly addicted to laudanum, a combination of opium and alcohol used to treat a multitude of painful conditions. Collins ingests the drug in such copious quantities that we must wonder just how much of what he relates is truth and how much is hallucination.

It is possible that Drood is merely a figment of Dickens' imagination - or Collins'; or he may be part of a story Dickens is creating for his own amusement. He may actually be a serial killer responsible for at least 300 grisly murders. He may be the leader of a possible insurrection by London's miserable lower classes, who will eventually rise up and take over the city. Dickens himself may be a murderer who descends into these pits of depravity as part of a nefarious scheme. And Collins admits that he not only has committed murder, but that he plans to kill his former friend and dump his body in a lime pit.

As Collins continues his "memoir," he frequently strays from the narrative to discuss his own and Dickens' current works, their intimate lives, Dickens' Christmas parties, the "Inimitable's" reading tours, and the life and times of Victorian England and America. For the most part these departures do not detract from the story. However, if there's a criticism, it's that the tale tends to drag a bit.

Fans of Simmons' early work will find the underbelly of London described much as the poor sections of India were in his first novel, The Song of Kali. And early in Drood, there is much discussion of The Frozen Deep, a play on which Collins and Dickens collaborated, that tells the story of the expedition Simmons wrote about in his most recent novel, The Terror.

For those who wish to pigeonhole Drood into a genre, it's safe to say that it is a historical novel, a biographical novel, a horror novel, a mystery, a romance, a Gothic novel, a science fiction novel (since we are supposed to be reading it five years from now), a work of mainstream fiction and a book of literary criticism. Put it on any shelf in the bookstore and it fits.

Mark Graham is a retired high school English teacher. He reviews Unreal Worlds titles regularly for the Rocky.

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Meantime, while DROOD the novel was absorbing all the slings and arrows of reviewers' hits and misses, Dan was having a grand old time on the actual book tour, as these photos suggest --

from KEPLER'S BOOKS in Menlo Park, California, Dan tries on his gift of a Drood top hat --

In VROMAN'S bookstore on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, reader (and sometimes forum visitor) Alec Chambers and his girlfriend Molly present an obviously chocolate-stunned Simmons with Droodish cupcakes . . .

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Also at KEPLER'S in Menlo Park, young interviewer Alex C. Telander does a backroom interview for his "bookbanter" podcast --

bookbanter.podbean.com

Multiply these interactions by several thousand (and there were many more photos taken), and you get an idea of why authors go on book tours even when their new book isn't quite finished. (Leaving an almost-finished book behind to go on tour is like going away for ten days and leaving your newborn baby alone in a crib with nothing but a bottle of milk dangling from a string to assure its survival.)

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Meanwhile, in Seattle, quite a few people turned out for the reading and signing at least in part due to this perceptive review in the Stranger --

The Stranger

February 10, 2009

In the Shadow of Charles Dickens
Drood Is a Horror Novel About Not Attaining Literary Greatness

Amid the chaos of the Staplehurst train crash of June 9, 1865, something mysterious, and ultimately deadly, happened to the most popular novelist in the world. Seven railcars leaped the track and fell from a bridge to a small creek below. Ten people were killed, 40 more were wounded, and by all accounts Charles Dickens was a hero of the day. He helped free people trapped in their cars, and he administered aid to dozens of injured and dying passengers before assistance finally arrived.

Dickens was hailed as a hero, but he had something to hide: He was traveling with Ellen Ternan, his secret companion and (most likely) his mistress. And something that day changed Dickens for good. His wit and good nature had been celebrated far and wide, but after Staplehurst, Dickens demonstrated the classic signs of depression, punctuated erratically with outbursts of rage and cruelty. He never completed another novel, although he left one, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. Some doctors theorize that Dickens suffered a brain injury in the crash that altered his personality; some biographers suggest he was emotionally overwhelmed after bearing witness to so much death and suffering. Whatever the cause of his change in behavior, this much is true: Five years to the day of the accident, Dickens died, a portentous fate that would not be out of place in one of his novels.

Dan Simmons is no stranger to giant novels with enormous casts: His Hyperion cantos are sprawling sci-fi epics, and he's published two-dozen mammoth horror, mystery, and fantasy novels over the last quarter-century. His latest novel, Drood, is about those last, dark years in the life of Dickens, and it's in every way Dickensian: huge, unflinching in its description of the grubby Victorian world, and melodramatic in the very best way.

Like the best of Simmons's work, Drood stands astride genres: It's a historical novel, but it also features a supernatural element. Narrated by Dickens's contemporary and occasional collaborator Wilkie Collins, Drood posits that Dickens was visited at Staplehurst by an apparition in a top hat and opera cape, "cadaverously thin, almost shockingly pale... [with] dark shadowed eyes set deep under a pale, high brow that melded into a pale, bald scalp" and a nose consisting of "mere black slits." This skeletal visage belongs to a man named Drood, and Dickens and Collins spend the next five years trying to discover his secrets.

The two authors journey below London, to opium dens and weird pseudo-Egyptian temples beneath the streets. Their adventures are drug-addled and dark:                     

             I fumbled out the pistol. At the moment, I was convinced that we were being attacked by
             gigantic grub-faced rats.
                 Dickens stepped between me and the surging, feinting forms.

                "They're boys, Wilkie," he cried. "Boys!"

                "Cannibal boys!" I cried back, raising the pistol.

                As if to confirm my statement, one of the pale faces—all tiny eyes and long nose
                and sharp teeth in the bull's-eye light—lunged at Dickens and snapped, as if he
                were attempting to bite off the author's nose.

Collins is an unreliable narrator, to say the least: He drinks two cups of laudanum a day (allegedly to battle his painful gout), and he is often racked with jealousy that Dickens, whom he regards as an inferior talent, is exponentially more popular than he. Many passages of the book are consumed with unflattering (and often hilariously misguided) criticism of Dickens's work; Collins claims, for instance, that Miss Havisham is a pale imitation of the main character from his own The Woman in White. Collins becomes convinced that Drood has implanted a scarab beetle in his skull, and stress and jealousy cause the beetle to crawl around his brain impatiently. Before long, he's planning to murder Dickens and assume his role as the most beloved novelist in England.

Simmons leaves the fantasy elements up to the reader's judgment. There is enough mesmerism, opium, and out-and-out storytelling in the book to potentially render any one part of the account untruthful. In many ways, Drood is equally a mystery—a what-did-he-do as much as a whodunit—and a fantasy novel. And it functions as a fairly comprehensive biography of the last five years of Dickens's life. Dozens of biographers have reported that, after the train crash, Dickens undertook a relentless schedule of public readings so gruesome in their delivery that women and children would faint or flee in tears. None of those biographers have been as spirited as Simmons in describing the ghoulishness of an imaginary murder that Dickens commits onstage every night, playing both roles at once:

Dickens's voice filled St. James Hall so thoroughly that even Nancy's final, whispered, dying entreaties could be heard as if each of us in the audience were onstage. During the few (but terrible) silences, one could have heard a mouse stirring in the empty balcony behind us. We could actually hear Dickens panting from the exertion of bringing his invisible (all too visible!) club down on the dear girl's skull... again! Again! Again!

And no other biographer recognized the fatal toll that the exertion of performing these ghastly readings night after night probably had on Dickens: Collins declares it "suicide by reading tour," a sentiment that must surely bring a smile to the lips of many a published author.

Drood is about the horrors and pains of being a novelist. It's a book about the heartbreak of putting years of your life into a book, populating it with all the wonders and terrors that live in your head, and watching that book receive no attention at all on its release, as though it were published in invisible ink. It's about being friends with another novelist you suspect is your superior (it's said that T. S. Eliot once called Collins "Charles Dickens without the genius") and you know is better loved by the general public, and also knowing that there's nothing you can do to change that.

The story of literature can be told entirely in friendly and not-so-friendly rivalries (Bacon and Shakespeare, Plath and Hughes, Marston and Jonson, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Amis and Barnes—hell, Amis and Amis). And history has no doubt forgotten the thousands of also-rans who've been swallowed in the conflagration of literary glory. Drood masterfully tells the story of one such also-ran and invites the reader into the special kind of hell that exists in the dark space right next to the limelight. 

Dan Simmons reads Wed Feb 18, University Book Store, 7 pm, free.

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Independent bookstores and chains tend to commission their own book reviews (not always positive) and this one is from Barnes & Noble --

03/05/2009

Drood
By DAN SIMMONS

Reviewed by Veronique de Turenne

Just in time to rescue flagging New Year's resolutions (remember those?) to strengthen the body and improve the mind comes Drood, a hefty, harrowing, and often funny novel that uses Charles Dickens's life as a springboard. The book's great length -- 784 pages -- gives it great bulk; by simply toting it around, you're building muscle. But it's Simmons's deep dive into the final five years of one of England's favorite sons that's the real payoff. Separated from his wife and embroiled in an affair with a much younger woman, Dickens took his private life so private that even his most avid biographers have been left to do some guessing. Simmons, a master of mining historical fact and then reimagining it, makes gleeful use of this somewhat secretive period.

The story starts with the real-life Staplehurst accident, a horrific rail crash that took place near London in the spring of 1865. Dickens, whose train carriage jumped the track and dangled over a steep ravine, managed to claw his way to safety. He then scrambled down the embankment to where the rest of the train had fallen, in order to help the injured. In those hours he encountered a scene so gruesome, so soul wrenching, he rarely spoke of the accident again.

Simmons picks up where the facts leave off. In his version, Dickens isn't alone among the screams and cries of the dead and dying. He's joined by a tall, pale wraith of a man with lidless eyes, two slits for a nose, and an array of short, sharp teeth. It's Drood, a mysterious figure who tells Dickens he was headed for London, then unsettles the novelist by naming the city's foulest slum as his final destination. As Dickens and Drood tend to the injured, the author notes that everyone Drood hovers over winds up dead. Before the awful afternoon is over, Drood has vanished and Dickens is obsessed with finding him.

The author seeks out Wilkie Collins, a close friend and the narrator of the book. Though Collins was a well-known playwright and quite a successful novelist in his own right, his fame and acclaim were easily eclipsed by those of Dickens. Simmons plays on this imbalance, turning it into a festering envy. Over the course of the book, Collins emerges as a buffoonish Salieri to Dickens'a ever-more-enigmatic Mozart. Here's Collins, early on, doing some hero bashing:

                    I had seen Charles Dickens stuck in a rural,
                    doorless privy with his trousers down around his
                    ankles, bleating like a lost sheep for some paper
                    to wipe his arse, and you'll have to forgive me if
                    that image remains more true to me than "the
                    greatest writer who ever lived."     

Still, he's a loyal friend who's game for the adventure of joining Dickens in the search for Drood. The pair prowl the worst parts of London in the still and dark of night, which Simmons conjures with obvious relish.

We walked between the dark headstones and sagging sepulchers, passing under dead trees and down uneven paving stones on narrow lanes between ancient vaults. I could tell by the spring in his step and the clack of his cane that Dickens was enjoying every second of this. I was concentrating on not retching from the stink and not stepping, in the darkness, on anything soft and yielding.

The writers creep into the secret, reeking world of Undertown, a subterranean maze of ancient crypts and catacombs where Drood makes his home. There they stumble over rotting corpses, fight off a savage band of feral boys, and meet a police inspector who has devoted his career to finding Drood. As in any good thriller, by the time Dickens and Collins emerge into daylight they are in peril, and we are left with more questions than answers.

Though Simmons doesn't quite nail the ornate and extravagant tone of Victorian literature, he hits the high points of its favorite genres. There's the dream allegory made famous in A Christmas Carol; the gothic novelist's relish of ruin, imprisonment, and death; and a liberal use of exaggerated emotion and cliffhangers, as befits the sensational novel, popularized by Collins himself in The Moonstone and The Woman in White. There's plenty of humor, too, often at Collins's expense. Here he is, settling down to a meal that mocks him, even as it teaches us a bit about the era's culinary landscape:

                    Tonight, I decided to dine relatively lightly and
                    ordered two types of paté, soup, some sweet
                    lobsters, a bottle of dry champagne, a leg of
                    mutton stuffed with oysters and minced onions,
                    two orders of asparagus, some braised beef, a
                    bit of dressed crab and a side of eggs.

We learn a lot about opium, too. Laudanum, a popular medicine at the time, is usually dispensed by the drop; Collins, however, drinks this powerful stuff by the glassful. By the time he graduates to the hard stuff, smoking opium in the seedy dens of Undertown, he has become a most unreliable -- and long-winded -- narrator.

With a book this lengthy, it's tempting to speed through the opening chapters and rush to the heart of the story. Don't. There's a careful and clever set-up for the marvelous twist at the end -- a twist so unexpected that it changes everything that came before. As for whether you need familiarity with Dickens to enjoy Drood, the answer is, probably not. But the more background you've got, the more fun the book turns out to be. Simmons's title, for instance, references -- and takes great delight in playing with -- The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the thriller Dickens left unfinished at the time of his death. Knowing a bit about the politics and mores of the time helps, too.

You can get the basics of the author's life in Jane Smiley's biography, Charles Dickens, a quick and easy read. Perhaps most useful is Paul Davis's Critical Companion to Dickens, which compiles the people, places and incidents of the writer's life into a searchable glossary. Dip into either of these and you'll see what wonderful use Simmons has made of both the biographical material and the period detail.

Dickens died five years to the day -- to the very instant, according to Collins -- of the Staplehurst train crash. Was it the stroke that history tells us ended the celebrated writer's life? Or was it something far more sinister, as Wilkie Collins insists? What we do know is that Dickens left behind an incomplete manuscript of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which ends in mid-sentence. Numerous writers have taken a stab at finishing the book, with forgettable results. With Drood, Simmons goes them all one better. By anchoring this dark and intricate thriller to a firm foundation of fact, he solves the mystery even as he expands it and, in doing so, becomes both Boz and Boswell.

Veronique de Turenne is a Los Angeles–based journalist, essayist, and playwright. Her literary criticism appears on NPR and in major American newspapers. One of the highlights of her career was interviewing Vin Scully in his broadcast booth at Dodger Stadium, then receiving a handwritten thank-you note from him a few days later.

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Review | 'Drood': Dickens' demon arises after a train wreck

A train wreck opens the door to a dark double life in this novel of facts, half-truths and fantasy

AURORA ARRUE / MIAMI HERALD ILLUSTRATION

BY ELLEN KANNER

DROOD. Dan Simmons. Little, Brown. 784 pages. $26.99.

Who is Drood? Is he young Edwin Drood, vanished and presumed murdered in Charles Dickens' unfinished 1870 novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood? Or is he the slit-eyed, sharp-toothed, cadaverously thin stranger who magically manifests himself at a train accident on June 9, 1865?

There's more than one Drood and more than one mystery in Dan Simmons' new novel. Simmons, the Hugo Award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author, does not stint with this engaging historical thriller. He cleverly braids together fact and fiction -- biographical bits of Dickens' life and that of Wilkie Collins, details of Victorian London, elements of The Mystery of Edwin Drood plus ''murder, death, corpses, crypts, mesmerism, opium, ghosts'' and phantasmagoria by the fistful. Simmons accomplishes all this because Drood is extremely long.

The novel begins with the Staplehurst Disaster, in which a London-bound train derails, killing 10 pa ssengers and injuring 49. Others survive, bruised, shaken and profoundly altered, including Dickens, England's beloved author, his young mistress Ellen Ternan and her mother. This much is documented and true.

Also true is that Dickens was friends with Collins, prolific author of 27 novels including the 1868 bestseller The Moonstone. And yet ''my guess is . . . that you do not recognize my name.'' Collins, who narrates Drood, has arranged to publish his story now, 125 years after his death, in the hopes that we, a fair and unbiased audience, will believe him.

There's ample reason not to trust him. Why would Drood appear out of nowhere at the scene of the train wreck expressly to mesmerize Dickens? Do demons need authors? Perhaps they do. And perhaps authors need demons. Why else would otherwise exuberant Dickens become obsessed with Drood, going so far as to pursue him into ``that black-biled lower bowel of London?''

Another reason to question Collins' veracity is the author's addiction to laudanum and morphine, as prodigious in the pages of Simmons' book as it was in real life. Addled by opium, the real Collins claimed he often kept company with his own ethereal double, whom he affectionately called Ghost Wilkie. Is it so far-fetched, then, for the fictitious Collins to claim Drood has embedded a scarab beetle in his brain?

Using an unreliable narrator is risky. Using one based on a historical figure is even more so, but with Collins, Simmons just about carries the device off. The American author channels Collins so thoroughly, it's hard to remember Simmons is not a Brit. Or a Victorian.

He reveals more about Collins than Collins would have liked -- or believed. Though a gifted storyteller and plotter -- Collins' credo was ''Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em20wait'' -- he understood little about himself. An overweight glutton, he chucks his long-time mistress when she grows a little fleshy. A man who plots murder, Collins nonetheless assures us, ``I am a gentle man.''

As a writer, Collins lacked Dickens' light touch and compassionate voice. So, for that matter, does Simmons. But Collins and Simmons render a compelling supernatural world of their own imagining that owes more to Poe than Dickens.

Drood draws on two other big, satisfying novels, Marisha Peshl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which won the 2005 Hugo Award, 15 years after Simmons received it for his novel  Hyperion. As with Clarke's novel, Drood pits two friends and colleagues against each other and creates a book worth diving into with complex characters and vivid details. Like Peshl's stylish 2004 whodunnit, it's virtuosic and verbose, at times to a fault. Just shy of 800 pages, Drood can be as labyrinthine as the bowels of Victorian London. At times, it's tempting to dismiss it as ``unintelligible.''

Fantastic, yes, unintelligible, hardly. However, a familiarity with Collins, Dickens and Dickens' unfinished novel -- which Simmons clearly has -- increases the reader's pleasure immensely. If the author goes on (and on) longer than necessary, he ties up Drood's many loose ends in a way that even astonishes Collins.=2 0``I simply could not stop laughing. This story, this plot, was so wonderfully baroque, yet somehow so tidily logical. It was so, so . . . Dickensian.''

In these days, when less isn't more but all you get, Simmons' ambitious, overstuffed Drood delivers a romp beyond your wildest drug-induced dreams.

Ellen Kanner is a writer in Miami.

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