:::editorial funambulista en la web:::

James McClure
Un tributo

OBITUARIO PUBLICADO EN THE GUARDIAN (21-6-2006)

JAMES McCLURE
9th October 1939 to 17th June 2006

EXPATRIATE SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALIST AND
AN EXCELENT CRIME WRITER

Obituary by Duncan Campbell, The Guardian

James McClure, the author and journalist, who has died aged 66, is best-known for the much-garlanded Kramer and Zondi detective novels that subtly brought the reality of apartheid-era South Africa to an international audience. But he was also the author of two of the best post-war books about the inner workings of the police on both sides of the Atlantic and a campaigning and independent-minded editor.
Born in Johannesburg and educated in Natal, Jim, as he was always known, worked as a photographer before becoming a teacher at Cowan House in Pietermaritzburg, where he first started writing creatively in the form of school plays. He left teaching to become a reporter, first with the Natal Witness and then the Natal Mercury and his crime beat soon took him to the dark side of what was happening in South Africa at that time. His reporting of what he saw - including a black prisoner being dragged through the streets attached by his handcuffs to the back of a police van —led to the authorities taking an interest in him and the police would knock on his front door in the middle of the night to make sure he knew they were watching him. Other friends were now being arrested and having married his sweetheart, Lorly, and become a father, Jim decided, in 1965, to make his future in Britain.
After working as a sub-editor for the Scottish Daily Mail in Edinburgh, he moved south to Oxford and began what was to become an association with the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times that was to last for the next three decades. Possessed of a ferocious work ethic, he managed to combine a busy journalistic life and a growing family with the creation of one of the most successful detective partnerships in the crime novel.

The Afrikaner Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and the Zulu detective sergeant, Mickey Zondi, arrived on the scene in The Steam Pig in 1971 and duly won Jim the Crime Writers' Assocaition Gold Dagger that year. Seven more Kramer and Zondi books, including The Caterpillar Cop (1972), The Gooseberry Fool (1974), The Sunday Hangman (1977) and The Artful Egg (1984) were to follow, as were other novels including Four and Twenty Virgins and Rogue Eagle, which won him the 1976 CWA Silver Dagger.

He enjoyed the esteem of both fellow-writers and critics. Ruth Rendell said of The Song Dog, which was set in the week that Nelson Mandela was take into custody: "at one and the same time, this is spellbinding thriller, a social document exposing one of the less well known ugly faces of apartheid a serious novel about an iniquitous past...This great storyteller is at the peak of his considerable powers here." Susanna Yager said of him that "even his corpses seem more real than some other authors' living characters." In 2000, The Artful Egg was included in a list of 100 Best Crime Novels of the 20th Century in The Times. Neil Kinnock is one of his many fans.
Jim was not only interested in fictional cops. In the late seventies, he attached himself to 'A' Division of the Merseyside police and won the confidence of the officers there so well that he was able to produce Spike Island: Portrait of a Police Division in 1980, a book that managed to capture and humanise the police in ways that few such books ever do. He repeated the feat in San Diego, California four years later with Copworld.
After a break from journalism, which included a brief spell —in unmistakably McClure style— as an undertaker, he returned, and eventually became the editor of the Oxford Times, which won the weekly newspaper of the year award under his editorship. He became editor of the Oxford Mail in 2000 and remained there until his retirement last year. He had a talent for spotting young journalists and for championing causes. As one of his former colleagues put it this week, "generations of young journalists owe Jim McClure a great debt. In the 1970s when features editor of the Oxford Times and much later as editor of the Oxford Mail, he gave young, aspiring reporters and sub-editors their break and encouraged them greatly in their work."
He battled the ill-health which overtook him over the last few years with his characteristic dark humour, recounting tales of hospital visits with the same vivid attention to detail and wit that characterised his writing. He had recently reworked a screenplay set in the underground tunnels in the Vietnam war and he was writing a new novel, set in Oxford. Always a technological adventurer, he had also just started his own blog when his final illness overtook him. He was sustained throughout his life by his love affair with Lorly, to whom many of his books were dedicated, and by their three children, who inherited his creative enthusiasms. Only a few weeks before his death, he was present at his son, Alistair's, directorial debut production of The Tempest in London, with music from his composer daughter, Kirsten, and advice from his other son, James. He is survived by them all and by his sister, Lalagaye.

James Howe McClure: writer, journalist. Born 9 October 1939. Died June 17, 2006.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1803287,00.html

RAMÓN GARCÍA, traductor de El leopardo de la medianoche

Yo entiendo que fue el último gran «hard-boiler»: aún queda James Crumley, pero Jim McClure fue único, su inteligencia y su astucia narrativa no tienen parangón, ni tienen nada que ver con lo que hoy se estila en el mercado. Jim era genuino, un narrador de pura cepa, un hombre dotado con el don de contar historias, en el sentido más noble de la expresión, como esos narradores que en los poblados africanos toman la voz al caer el día, ante un corro de oyentes asombrados, y maravillados. Esas magias de Jim McClure: Zondi descubriendo al final quién fue el tipo que realmente lanceó al hechicero libidinoso, las tretas que uno puede utilizar con balas de fogueo, y el auténtico asesinato de El Leopardo: el del niño hindú que muere carbonizado en el furgón policial - a ese niño lo ha matado toda una sociedad. En fin, un gran narrador, un enorme y sutil narrador.

PACO CAMARASA, librero de Negra y Criminal (Barcelona)

Recuerdo la Terraza del Don Manuel, una mañana de Semana Negra, los primeros días, saludé a Justo Vasco, a Cristina y a Laura, y le pedí a Justo que me presentará a James McClure. Tenía ganas de conocerlo, desde que Etiqueta Negra de Júcar (es decir Paco Ignacio Taibo II) lo tradujera al castellano, allá por los inicios de los 80.
Y rápidamente, con el buen humor con el que le vería el resto de la Semana, hizo una broma con Justo Vasco (¡ Que tristeza produce escribir sobre ambos !): Este es el más importante, refiriendose a mi. Ni editores, dijo, ni críticos, ni periodistas, ni autores, el importante es él, el librero, el bookseller, el que vende los libros. Y esa fue la tónica de los dias que nos vimos en la semana: buen humor y sonrisas y abrazos. A Montse y a mi nos ocurre con algunas pocas personas: No importa que no sepamos lo que dicen, pero lo que sí sabemos es que nos apetece verles, sonreir con ellos, y abrazarles. James McClure fué uno de ellos.
Y mi último contacto con él fué más reciente. Como animador de un club de lectura sé que la última lectura del curso es importante. Es el que guardarán en la memoria durante el verano Y decidí que ese libro que les dejaría buen sabor de boca, el que cierra el curso del Club de Lectura de Novela Negra de la Biblioteca de Montbau sería El Leopardo de la Medianoche. Y no me equivoqué. Los lectores y lectoras disfrutaron con las andanzas de Kramer y Zondi.

Paco Camarasa,
también, en su "Carta del librero"
del 21 de junio de 2006.

Ayer nos llegaron dos mensajes. Tanto Ramon García, su traductor, como Gisbert Haefs su colega y amigo, nos comunicaban que James McClure había fallecido el pasado sábado, día 17 de Junio. No había podido ganar la batalla contra la leucemia.
Hace años en la excelente y mítica coleccion Etiqueta Negra de editorial Júcar, nos llamó la atención dos libros que trascurrían en la Sudáfrica del apartheid: El Huevo ingenioso, y El cerdo de vapor. Y nos quedamos con el Teniente Kramer y el Sargento Zondi, una pareja atípica en el mundo de lo negrocriminal.
El año pasado Funambulista nos regalaba un nuevo título protagonizado por esta pareja : El leopardo de la medianoche. Y tuvimos el inmenso placer y honor de conocer a James McClure en la Semana Negra de Gijón. Nosotros no sabemos inglés, y él no sabía ni catalán ni castellano. Pero nos entendimos estupendamente en el lenguaje de las sonrisas y los abrazos. Nos gustaba tenerlo en la parada que la librería tiene en Semana Negra y encontrarnoslo por la mañana en la terraza del Hotel Don Manuel. (http://negraycriminal.blogcindario.com/) Pero sobre todo nos encantó leer El Leopardo de la medianoche, y volver a disfrutar de su sentido del humor y su capacidad de observación y denuncia de la miseria cotidiana que supone una sociedad racista como la sudafricana. Y compartímos ese placer con los que le recomendaron para ser finalista de los Premios Brigada 21, y con los miembros del Club de Lectura de Novela Negra de la Biblioteca de Montbau. El leopardo de la medianoche fué el último libro que se ha comentado este curso.Para quedarse con buen sabor en la memoria.
Nosotros hoy seguiremos la sugerencia de nuestro amigo Gisbert Haefs:"Antes de su enfermedad, Jim era un muy erudito bebedor de ron. Sugiero que brindamos.", pero nuestra recomendación es que , si no lo han hecho ya, lean El Leopardo de la medianoche. Es el mejor homenaje que pueden hacer ( y hacerse ) a un hombre bueno como era James McClure.

http://negraycriminal.blogcindario.com/2006/06/00364-carta-del-librero-21-6-06.html