Chris Scott
08-15-2010, 06:01 PM
Now that I have your attention:-)
That is, according to this unnamed fiction writer in an article from February 1889
I wonder how much credence can be put in the actual existence of "Talking Bird" or "Copper Tom"?
Chris S
Kansas City Star
28 February 1889
THE FLASH NOVEL
A Writer of Sensational Stories Describes His Work and Methods
From the New York Sun
There is an active young business man in town who is not suspected by any of his friends of being one of the most popular writers of that class of literature best described by the term "flash." He has written at least twenty of these stories, and they have been so successful that he is well known by the publishers of that class of books, and is in constant receipt of orders.
His particular field is detective stories. He is an amiable young man, brother to all the girls he knows but one, and to her he is engaged. He never drinks, he doesn't chew, but gore flows from his pen like water from off a duck's back; his pages reek with crime. He spends an evening with amiable discourse with some young woman, and then goes home, and from 11 o'clock until 2 riots in murder and mystery.
His facility seems phenomenal. He will write a story from 40,000 to 50,000 words in abut thirty five hours - solid work - or in about a week. Of course before this the story is sketched in his mind, but the detail is left until the pen is taken up. In a moment of expansiveness his method of writing was drawn from him, for he has reduced it to a working system, and is given almost in his own words:
"My detective stories are not the works of the imagination. They are founded on facts. These I get from the newspapers. For example, I have just finished a story founded on the Whitechapel murders. In the Sun of last October and November the entire history and catalogue of the murders were given up to date. I took them as a basis. Then I had to become familiar with the locality. I got a large map of London and studied it. I then drew a sectional map of the Whitechapel district and located all the crimes. I then procured the London illustrated papers for the pictures, and the daily papers for the picturesque description, so that I had the entire thing - locality, character of the houses and streets, and characteristics of their habitues.
Of course as the book had to sell here it was only good business policy to tickle the national pride. So I made my detective hero an American. Now, in writing "flash" literature, it is essential to have the first, middle and closing chapters highly sensational. Why? Because a person picking up a book casually will read a little of the first chapter, dip into the middle and swallow the finale. If these chapters are intense enough to excite his anticipation, the casual glance may evolve into a purchase. I think I finished that sentence rather neatly.
Now, after I have all my facts down and my locus criminus well established my imagination sets to work on this skeleton and builds up that creature known as a flash novel. It may be all trash, but it pays from $125 to $150.
But, to return to this particular story. I found out, through channels known to myself, that some time ago there lived in Bishopsgate Street a character known as "Copper Tom." He was a full blooded Sioux, whose Indian name was In-yan-ti-o-pa, which means "Hole in the rock." He had been implicated in that Indian massacre in '64 and '65, and while twenty five of his comrades were hanged at Mankato, he escaped to Manitoba, where he entered into the employ of the Hudson Bay company, and eventually drifted to London, where he kept a bar, restaurant and gambling house and was known as "Copper Tom."
Moreover, he had a daughter, Wah-cou-ta, or "Talking Bird." Her mother had French blood, and the girl was educated in some Canadian school. I have heard her described as graceful, with a sort of weird beauty, and the weirdness comes in pretty pat when I tell you she was a mesmerist of no mean quality, and practiced the Indian doctress and black art in Bishopsgate Street after she joined her father, "Copper Tom."
As a detective story to be successful must always deal with the unexpected, and as the Whitechapel fiend still exists in the deepest obscurity, I have written my story on the assumption that this Indian maiden is "Jack the Ripper." No; I am not afraid of being scalped for the liberty I have taken for the good reason that both she and Copper Tom are now dead.
The reasonableness of any hypothesis lies in the fact that all the victims of the Whitechapel murders are women, killed in the same manner and with the same weapon, and the mutilation of the bodies show a degree of anatomical knowledge that only one who is a physician may be expected to have, and this Indian woman studied medicine. Now my theory is that she first hypnotized these women, then killed them; that it was the breaking out of her Indian blood, which education had long served to scotch, not kill; and that the long inheritance of brutality and ferocity showed in the mutilation of the bodies so like what is practiced in Indian warfare."
"Very clever; but where do your detectives come in?"
"They are over there on another errand, and they stumble on a clew. Curiosity leads one to investigate it, and circumstantial incidents divert suspicion to him and he is arrested as the murderer himself. His comrade, my hero, in endeavoring to serve his companion, runs down the false clew and finds the true one.
Right here I want to tell you one thing. If you ever intend writing a "flash" novel, you must always deal in parallels, and you must always have your incidents and situations bounded by these parallels in such a way that while they never touch, they are so contiguous that your innocent man is always looked on as the guilty man until you are ready for your grand climax."
"How did your detectives catch the Indian girl?"
"Oh, now the Whitechapel murderer has never been caught. Let me tell you another thing, it is harder to write a detective story founded on facts than to grind it out. For example, I had to learn the distances in London in order to make characters coming from different directions meet at a given point in the same time. Details of that sort demand accuracy to keep up the plausibility of the story."
"After working up such an exciting story, how long do you have to give your brain a vacation?"
"It don't get it. I have an order for a story now in which all the scenes are to take place in this city. I am now having the testimony typewritten that was taken in a case which occupied the attention of the newspapers and the public not so very long ago, and which contains material enough for twenty novels and fifteen plays. These will give me my facts, which I will arrange into a skeleton and then discharge my imagination at them with such fervor that their dry bones will get up and live. I have calculated to use up to about 70,000 words in doing this, which will oblige my publisher to put me i9nto two volumes of 35,000 words each. As my story is longer my check is the stronger."
That is, according to this unnamed fiction writer in an article from February 1889
I wonder how much credence can be put in the actual existence of "Talking Bird" or "Copper Tom"?
Chris S
Kansas City Star
28 February 1889
THE FLASH NOVEL
A Writer of Sensational Stories Describes His Work and Methods
From the New York Sun
There is an active young business man in town who is not suspected by any of his friends of being one of the most popular writers of that class of literature best described by the term "flash." He has written at least twenty of these stories, and they have been so successful that he is well known by the publishers of that class of books, and is in constant receipt of orders.
His particular field is detective stories. He is an amiable young man, brother to all the girls he knows but one, and to her he is engaged. He never drinks, he doesn't chew, but gore flows from his pen like water from off a duck's back; his pages reek with crime. He spends an evening with amiable discourse with some young woman, and then goes home, and from 11 o'clock until 2 riots in murder and mystery.
His facility seems phenomenal. He will write a story from 40,000 to 50,000 words in abut thirty five hours - solid work - or in about a week. Of course before this the story is sketched in his mind, but the detail is left until the pen is taken up. In a moment of expansiveness his method of writing was drawn from him, for he has reduced it to a working system, and is given almost in his own words:
"My detective stories are not the works of the imagination. They are founded on facts. These I get from the newspapers. For example, I have just finished a story founded on the Whitechapel murders. In the Sun of last October and November the entire history and catalogue of the murders were given up to date. I took them as a basis. Then I had to become familiar with the locality. I got a large map of London and studied it. I then drew a sectional map of the Whitechapel district and located all the crimes. I then procured the London illustrated papers for the pictures, and the daily papers for the picturesque description, so that I had the entire thing - locality, character of the houses and streets, and characteristics of their habitues.
Of course as the book had to sell here it was only good business policy to tickle the national pride. So I made my detective hero an American. Now, in writing "flash" literature, it is essential to have the first, middle and closing chapters highly sensational. Why? Because a person picking up a book casually will read a little of the first chapter, dip into the middle and swallow the finale. If these chapters are intense enough to excite his anticipation, the casual glance may evolve into a purchase. I think I finished that sentence rather neatly.
Now, after I have all my facts down and my locus criminus well established my imagination sets to work on this skeleton and builds up that creature known as a flash novel. It may be all trash, but it pays from $125 to $150.
But, to return to this particular story. I found out, through channels known to myself, that some time ago there lived in Bishopsgate Street a character known as "Copper Tom." He was a full blooded Sioux, whose Indian name was In-yan-ti-o-pa, which means "Hole in the rock." He had been implicated in that Indian massacre in '64 and '65, and while twenty five of his comrades were hanged at Mankato, he escaped to Manitoba, where he entered into the employ of the Hudson Bay company, and eventually drifted to London, where he kept a bar, restaurant and gambling house and was known as "Copper Tom."
Moreover, he had a daughter, Wah-cou-ta, or "Talking Bird." Her mother had French blood, and the girl was educated in some Canadian school. I have heard her described as graceful, with a sort of weird beauty, and the weirdness comes in pretty pat when I tell you she was a mesmerist of no mean quality, and practiced the Indian doctress and black art in Bishopsgate Street after she joined her father, "Copper Tom."
As a detective story to be successful must always deal with the unexpected, and as the Whitechapel fiend still exists in the deepest obscurity, I have written my story on the assumption that this Indian maiden is "Jack the Ripper." No; I am not afraid of being scalped for the liberty I have taken for the good reason that both she and Copper Tom are now dead.
The reasonableness of any hypothesis lies in the fact that all the victims of the Whitechapel murders are women, killed in the same manner and with the same weapon, and the mutilation of the bodies show a degree of anatomical knowledge that only one who is a physician may be expected to have, and this Indian woman studied medicine. Now my theory is that she first hypnotized these women, then killed them; that it was the breaking out of her Indian blood, which education had long served to scotch, not kill; and that the long inheritance of brutality and ferocity showed in the mutilation of the bodies so like what is practiced in Indian warfare."
"Very clever; but where do your detectives come in?"
"They are over there on another errand, and they stumble on a clew. Curiosity leads one to investigate it, and circumstantial incidents divert suspicion to him and he is arrested as the murderer himself. His comrade, my hero, in endeavoring to serve his companion, runs down the false clew and finds the true one.
Right here I want to tell you one thing. If you ever intend writing a "flash" novel, you must always deal in parallels, and you must always have your incidents and situations bounded by these parallels in such a way that while they never touch, they are so contiguous that your innocent man is always looked on as the guilty man until you are ready for your grand climax."
"How did your detectives catch the Indian girl?"
"Oh, now the Whitechapel murderer has never been caught. Let me tell you another thing, it is harder to write a detective story founded on facts than to grind it out. For example, I had to learn the distances in London in order to make characters coming from different directions meet at a given point in the same time. Details of that sort demand accuracy to keep up the plausibility of the story."
"After working up such an exciting story, how long do you have to give your brain a vacation?"
"It don't get it. I have an order for a story now in which all the scenes are to take place in this city. I am now having the testimony typewritten that was taken in a case which occupied the attention of the newspapers and the public not so very long ago, and which contains material enough for twenty novels and fifteen plays. These will give me my facts, which I will arrange into a skeleton and then discharge my imagination at them with such fervor that their dry bones will get up and live. I have calculated to use up to about 70,000 words in doing this, which will oblige my publisher to put me i9nto two volumes of 35,000 words each. As my story is longer my check is the stronger."