Rozovsky is a fictional character
I've been a McFetridge fan for years, even before he borrowed my name for a character. Here's part of what I wrote about his most recent book. And here's a two-part interview I did with him in 2008.
© Peter Rozovsky 2013
Labels: Black Rock, Canada, Eddie Dougherty, John McFetridge, Montreal, Peter Rozovsky
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 3:59 PM
13 Comments:
Is this a coincidence or by design?
By design! The character is not based on me, but John did borrow the name, possibly bcause he (John) and I are the same age and grew up in the same city where the real-life events that form the background to the book took place. "Rozovsky" was part of John's own zeitgeist you might say.
Kelly: Here is some of what I wrote about John’s most recent book. I would be a fan, on other words, no matter what he called his characters.
That's a high compliment, Peter.
I am chuffed, Seana. I no longer have to simmer in jealousy and humiliation when I visit my friend whose name and those of his family made it into test questions in an SAT preparation book his wife's friend wrote.
It is much, MUCH better to be in a McFetridge book than an SAT guide.
I am really looking forward to the Montreal setting of Black Rock. Too bad it looks like I'll have to wait till mid 2014. But as I still have Tumblin' Dice ahead of me, I guess I can't complain too much.
Seana, you have nothing to complain about. I think Tumblin' Dice is McFetridge's best. Thinking about Black Rock, I can see why he and Adrian McKinty seem to have such a temperamental affinity, especially as regards the Sean Duffy books. Those stories of life lived amid a kind of war are awfully seductive. And there's now sense in either author's work that the personal is mere background to the political or vice versa. I would love to discuss this with the two of them on a Bouchercon panel some year.
And that makes those two authors, in turn, at least distant temperamental cousins to John Lawton.
Well, that would bump Lawton up the list, if he wasn't bumped up there already.
Lawton is one of the best. You know that familiar complaint of some crime writers that there are no genres, I write novels that happen to have crime in them, etc. John Lawton is one of the few authors who can with some justice make such claims.
You are familiar with the term "Tuckerized"? Wilson Tucker, writer for cash primarily of crime fiction and sf, would often introduce friends' names and variations of same into his fiction. I've still been too bashful to come out and ask one major writer if she Tuckerized me, giving a major female character the slightly odd first name of Mason. Perhaps I simply wish to think it possible, and certainly don't wish to discomfort her in any way if telling me No would be awkward.
Todd, you could try a lighthearted approach the next time you meet that author: "I like the book, (fill in name here). Of course, I am predisposed to like a book with a character called Mason." That greatly reduces the possibility of awkwardness, I'd say.
Yes, I had heard of Tuckerization. A popular free online source of unverified information dates one of the earliest instances of Tuckerization to 1935, but doubles the practice went on earlier--for minor characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps?
Many congratulations, Peter.
It sound like a competent name.
Thanks. I've read the book, and I'd like the character even if he had a different name. He's more enterprising than I am, that's for sure.
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