Solomon's Legacy

The Temple of Jerusalem was razed to the ground by the Roman Titus in 70AD, not a single stone was left standing, its sacred treasures were looted and triumphantly paraded in Rome and the city’s people massacred and carried off into slavery. Today the Temple Mount is the Haram esh-Sharif, the second most holy site of Islam, where the Temple is believed, by Jews and Christians alike, to have once stood. It is controlled by the Muslim Waqf. All archaeological research or excavation is strictly forbidden to the chagrin of the Jews and the site has become a continual source of conflict between Jews and Muslims as well as provoking the Second Intifada. Pat O’Connelly, an Irish American writer, meets Isaac de Lussac, an obscure biblical archaeologist, who believes he has discovered the solution to the enigma of the Temple, building his theory on the work carried out by the Palestinian Survey Fund founded in the 19th century by Queen Victoria’s Royal Engineers.
This is the outline of my new book The Legacy of Solomon

A Book I am Preparing on Writing and Publishing

This is not a book on Grammar and perhaps I am exaggerating, but there there are a million of those and many are very useful, I have to say that, further it is not a ‘How to’, another million! This is rather, I hope, a explanation or description of publishing by someone who has been there before you, a friendly guide, myself, who like you has experienced exactly what you are experiencing in writing and trying to publish your first book or books.

A Little Political Agitation

I wrote this article last summer for Charles Hugh Smith in San Francisco for his excellent blog Oftwominds. So why am I adding it here? Because following my last visit to the Basque Country I see that things never change, so it’s worth a reminder!

July 17, Hendaye, Basque Country. As I sit here the outside temperature hovers between 95 and 105°F, probably the highest ever recorded in the Basque Country, a region straddling the Spanish-French border, known for its mild and often wet, temperate, North Atlantic climate. To the Spanish side, the Basque Country is an autonomous region called Euskual Herria, politically part of the Spanish Republic, to the French side it has no political status - to the great chagrin of the Basques - other than through its long history and traditions.

I normally spend two or three months a year here, relaxing by the sea, walking in the nearby green hills and mountains, eating the local specialities: tapas, Jamon Iberico and drinking Rioja wine. Recently, however, I cannot but help noticing that things are changing, and changing fast, faster than I could have ever before imagined.

In the background a continuous TV news channel reports alarming news from the Lebanon, which, perhaps strangely, does not seem to concern the tens of thousands of holiday makers sunning themselves on the long sandy beaches of Hendaye, that is apart from the fact that here the price of gasoline has risen to almost 8 dollars a gallon at the pump, a price that would cause a revolution in California.

Hendaye is a town with a population of approximately 15,000 permanent residents during the most part of the year, but which rises to about 80,000 at the peak of the summer. Locally, property prices have now reached astronomical heights, rivalling those of Paris, 500 miles to the north, and Madrid, 300 miles to the south. These prices reflect the general property bubble in a good number of the so called developed countries.

Why such property prices in Hendaye, this small unimportant town in the south west extremity of France? Ever since the disappearance of borders in the European Union, Hendaye has become an attractive residential area for a certain number of Spaniards from the prosperous neighbouring towns in the area between Irun and San Sebastian, said to be the smartest Spanish seaside resort, only a little over ten miles from Hendaye. They have mostly acquired second homes, but many also first homes. This is mainly due to the lack of availability of apartments on the more densely populated Spanish side of the border, plus the facility of the San Sebastian rapid transit system, the last station of its northern branch being situated on the Hendaye side of the border, allowing them to commute to their work places in and around San Sebastian from their new homes on the French side of the border.

In the space of ten years or so the Spanish population in Hendaye has risen to reach almost one third of the total population, a not unwelcome change to a previously pleasant but economically fading town. This situation has led to galloping property speculation and the development of infrastructure projects to meet the needs of the burgeoning population. This infrastructure need includes an ecologically doubtful, large scale, urban garbage incinerator just a few miles to the south of Hendaye and the Spanish city of Irun.

The municipality of Hendaye is part of what is called the ‘Consortio’, that is to say a cross border administrative structure made up of three adjacent municipalities, the other two being the cities of Irun and Fuenterrabia with populations of 100,000 and 10,000 respectively. Fuentarabia is an old and picturesque coastal town facing the Hendaye boat marina, it lies on the southern side of the Bidasoa River, with its magnificent Cathedral and Alcazar built to defend Spain against France in the 16th century. The general atmosphere has an odour of speculation, ranging from property to for example the extension of the small San Sebastian Airport that lies in the magnificent Xingudy Bay, which is surrounded by the foothills of the Pyrenees. For decades the airport, the single runway of which juts into the bay under the shadow of the Jaizkibel, and just a couple of hundred yards or so short of Ile des Oiseaux, a transit point for migratory birds, has been the point of arrival and departure of just a dozen daily commercial flights, the majority of which are relatively silent turboprops. Ambitious politicos and businessmen envisage the extension runway more than half a mile into the bay to facilitate the arrival of big jets, transforming this landscape of extraordinary beauty into another polluted industrial-transport zone.

Even the small park with its hundred year old plane trees I can see across the road from me, bequeathed in trust to the town by its long defunct owners, is in the course of being transformed into a superfluous play park, with more than its fair share of concrete. On a much larger scale the one hundred and fifty year old Paris-Madrid railroad line that runs through a deep cutting in the centre of the town is in the course of being covered by a monumental concrete platform, three or four hundred yards long by almost one hundred wide, a construction site more in line with an airport terminal building than the foundations for a 450 apartments condo, complete with shops and a parking facility, conceived on a totally speculative basis. This will increase the total number of residential units in Hendaye by not far off ten percent. And this is just one of the projects!

Our elected representatives tell us all these changes are needed for growth, for jobs, to encourage development. I ask myself what will they do for an encore when the current projects are completed in a year or two. Will the cycle start again? Then again and again? Where will it led us? Do we need these changes, changes that indirectly influence the course of events in other parts of the world, the struggle for resources, oil, minerals, water, space, changes in the climate, and a future when we will see more and more summers with temperatures in the order of 100°F.

copyright © 2006 John Francis Kinsella. All rights reserved in all media.

Evolving novel forms

Printed novels in the past have always been outdated by the events that form a background to the story or even the subject itself. Today Lulu prints books by order, even one at a time, thus the writer can update events when they change in the real world.
My book The Prism was written in the early nineties, the story is set in a forseeable, not too distant future in Paris, and the background, which is essential to the story, explains how the world arrived where it does in the book.
This required some creative foresight, today however it is clear that world events as then imagined did not quite take the path as seen in the cristal ball 15 years ago, example: the war in Iraq, Iran, China, or the exansion of the European Union, and of course the Twin Towers. So a little re-writing would have been nice from time to time. Today that rewriting can take place in real time as readers buy books on Lulu, with background events being re-edited from time to time as changes take place, though the fundementals of the story do not.
The title of the book is The Prism and this was chosen because the future can take different paths as seen through a prism. Today real events show how this in fact really takes place, how images reflect differently as we watch them. In spite of this concept being complicated it gives form to a new kind of continuous novel, where parallel paths and parallel worlds can be compared.

Sibelius 2007 Anniversary

Half a century after his death in 1957, Jean Sibelius remains the dominant icon of Finnish classical music and a great figure in global terms. His popular seven symphonies are re-recorded and performed regularly in Finland and across the world, and works such as Kullervo, Finlandia and The Swan of Tuonela.

Jean Sibelius - a biography

I am nearing the end of a 1,102 page marathon - the translation from French into English of Marc Vignal's huge and deeply interesting biography of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Like a marathon it is a lonely task. The difference is when the race is won there is no glory. When a musician or an conductor interpretes a piece of music he is appluaded, it is a noble undertaking, when a literary work is interpreted, more than a year's effort in this particular case, it goes unremarked, the translators name tucked away on some inner page. This is not a complaint but an evidence for those interested in writing and its lesser but ncessary companion; translation.
Sibelius lived to the age of 90, an important achievement for great artists, even though his last decades were unproductive. I will be writing more of this on my site http://www.johnkinsella.net
What does translation give a writer? Firstly, there is the negative aspect since it takes up his own creative time. Secondly however, it stimulates his own creative ideas and hones his own skills. Translating is the most intense form of reading, each word, each line, each paragraph is analysed. This is especially the case in a biography where spoken words and facts count.

Jean Sibelius

‘Set your sights high – such is the challenge of life. Learn to do it if it is not innate, such is the objective of life’
Jean Sibelius 6 January 1944