Unlikable Characters Return with a Vengeance

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In 2017, I wrote a post about novels with unlikable characters and how we might still like those novels – or maybe not. 

I noted nine years ago that “we hope the story line is compelling enough and the writing impressive enough to make up for the absence of congenial characters.” Humor can help, too.

The five books I cited in that post were mostly readable despite the downer characters – and perhaps partly because of them. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog, Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin, and John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.

Today, I’m going to use this same theme to discuss five more novels – all of which I’ve read or reread since 2017 — starting with the 2012 bestseller Gone Girl that I finally got to last week.

Gillian Flynn’s two protagonists – Amy and Nick – were so off-putting that I almost stopped reading after a few dozen pages. Both were what we would’ve called “yuppies” back in the day: young urban professionals a little too spoiled and a little too full of themselves. 

But I soldiered on, and Gone Girl became quite original and riveting in a very twisted way before going off the rails (in my opinion) toward the end. 

As with many other books featuring unlikable protagonists, it helps when you have supporting characters who are at least somewhat appealing. Gives a reader a person or two to latch onto. In Gone Girl, Nick’s twin sister Margo is mostly likable — even as several other supporting characters (such as Nick’s hateful aged father and the obsessed-with-Amy/passive-aggressive Desi) are loathsome. 

Fifty years earlier, we had Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle in which virtually every character is unpleasant or greedy or weird or antisocial. That was Jackson’s intent, and she was very good at that in this and her other best-known works. But one does feel some sympathy and sorrow for certain characters, and I think that was the author’s intent, too.

Most of the major players in Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall (2009) are far from lovable. When there’s royalty and “court intrigue,” you’re going to get a lot calculating, ruthlessness, sucking up, etc.

Agatha Christie’s ingeniously plotted 1939 mystery And Then There Were None features a cast in which every featured character is guilty in some way. Still, we can empathize with their ordeal after they’re invited to gather together by a person with murder on the mind.

A decade later, Daphne du Maurier’s The Parasites was published. I included that 1949 novel in a post last month about entertainers in fiction, and the pampered/irresponsible show-biz family (father, mother, daughter, son) in du Maurier’s book is certainly not one you’d want on your holiday card list. The non-show-biz other daughter is a little more sympathetic in a self-sacrificing way, but does not elicit much respect.   

Comments about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “One more space to add to my classic car collection!”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – which includes topics such as Spain’s World Cup-winning team staying at a hotel in my town — is here.

Fictional Characters Inspired by Real-Life People

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Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks (left) and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham in the official video for the Nicks-written 1977 song “Dreams.” (Screenshot by me.)

Fiction is of course not always totally fiction. One example of that is when authors create characters inspired by real-life people, even if those fictional characters are often different in significant ways. 

This approach can certainly be compelling for readers as they look for the similarities and differences between the created people and the actual people – and wait to see where authors take these hybrid humans. Also, authors are helped by having a factual template for creating fictional characters.

Taylor Jenkins Reid (above) took that approach in her 2019 novel Daisy Jones & The Six, which I read last week, about a fictional mega-popular 1970s band inspired by the real-life Fleetwood Mac. Daisy has some similarities to Stevie Nicks, an FM singer-songwriter, while Six member Billy Dunne has aspects of Lindsey Buckingham, another FM singer-songwriter as well as the band’s guitarist.

But there are differences. For instance, Nicks and Buckingham were real-life romantic partners before their breakup, while Daisy and Billy’s relationship has a different dynamic. Also, Daisy and Billy co-write a number of songs amid their love-hate feelings for each other, while Nicks and Buckingham each mostly composed their songs solo.

Another Six member is keyboardist Karen Sirko, loosely based on late Fleetwood Mac keyboardist/singer/songwriter Christine McVie. But, again, various differences between the two. 

A much different novel, All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren, stars a charismatic populist governor — Willie Stark – who begins as an idealist but ends up corrupt. Stark was clearly inspired by real-life Louisiana politician Huey Long.

F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic The Great Gatsby includes several characters modeled on real-life people. Daisy Buchanan was inspired by socialite/heiress Ginevra King – a longtime romantic obsession of the author. And fictional Daisy’s fictional golfer friend Jordan Baker was based on Ginevra’s golfer friend Edith Cummings.

Three years later, Aldous Huxley’s 1928 novel Point Counter Point included the character of Mark Rampion as a D.H. Lawrence type.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Atticus Finch was inspired by the author’s attorney father Amasa Lee. And the young Scout Finch’s friend Dill Harris was based on Harper Lee’s childhood pal Truman Capote, the future author.

Looking to real-life people for novelistic inspiration of course predates 1900.

The title character in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula was partly inspired by 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler.

In Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man, there are characters based on Percy Bysshe Shelley (the author’s late husband by that time) and Lord Byron.

Of course, authors often create characters who are like themselves – as was the semi-autobiographical case with the aforementioned Scout Finch (Harper Lee as a kid), The Last Man’s Lionel Verney (Mary Shelley gender-switched), My Antonia’s Jim Burden (Willa Cather also gender-switched), The Mill on the Floss’ Maggie Tulliver (based on George Eliot), Little Women’s Jo March (based on Louisa May Alcott), David Copperfield‘s title character (whose name flips Charles Dickens’ initials), Martin Eden‘s title character (whose initials spell “me” for author Jack London), etc.

Comments about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “Two more foundations and we’ll have Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation Trilogy.'”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about my town’s welcome pulling of $91.1 million from a bank supporting cruel privately run immigrant detention centers — is here.

First-Class Males in Fiction

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Elijah Wood as Frodo and Sean Astin as Sam in The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003).

Last week, I wrote about fictional female characters who are brave, strong-willed, etc. This week, I’ll do the same for fictional male characters – whether their courage is physical, mental, and/or moral.

One such inspiring guy is Sydney Carton of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. In that 1859 novel, Carton is a less-than-admirable man who wants to do better – which moves him to make an almost unfathomably heroic sacrifice during the French Revolution.

Ten years later, R.D. Blackmore’s 1869 novel Lorna Doone co-starred John Ridd, who does all kinds of courageous things after falling in love with the title character. Romance can be an incentive that way. 🙂

Staying with 19th-century literature, Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817) features a title character partly based on real-life outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor – who has been called “the Scottish Robin Hood.”

Moving to the 20th century, we of course have various heroic males in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1955) – including the hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. Impressive when physically small-of-stature beings are valiant against larger foes.

A lesser-known novel is Louis L’Amour’s Last of the Breed (1986) starring Native-American military pilot Joe Mack as he makes a daring on-foot escape from capture in the vast Siberian wilderness.  

A much-better-known novel is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), in which Alabama attorney Atticus Finch bravely defends an innocent Black man in the racist 1930s American South.

Moving to 21st-century fiction, African-American attorney Malcolm Bannister is incredibly clever and resourceful after being wrongly charged and jailed in John Grisham’s 2012 novel The Racketeer.

Count Alexander Rostov of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) is stoic and quietly courageous while serving a lifetime sentence of house arrest in a hotel.

Private investigator Cormoran Strike of J.K. Rowling’s series of eight (so far) crime novels published between 2013 and 2025 is far from timid as he pursues wrongdoers while dealing with the painful partial loss of a leg from when he was deployed in Afghanistan. 

Straddling the 20th and 21st centuries:

Walter Mosley’s private investigator Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, star of the ongoing series that began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, is quite gutsy in a low-key way. 

Lee Child’s roving Jack Reacher character, who was first introduced to readers in 1997, is fearless as he deals with various bad guys in 30 (and counting) novels.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this theme?

In our dimly lit garage, Misty the cat says: “Here’s where Joseph Conrad wrote ‘Heart of Darkness.'”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about high housing costs, the end of free tuition, and a failed candidacy — is here.

The Patriarchy Wasn’t Quite Ready for Them

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Megan Follows as Anne Shirley in the 1985 Anne of Green Gables miniseries.

Among literature’s memorable people are female characters who can be described as plucky, gutsy, clever, driven, strong-willed, determined, ambitious, etc. This can be especially interesting with female characters in novels written long ago — or set long ago if written more recently. Because women back then had an especially challenging task navigating a society usually much more patriarchal than today’s (admittedly still patriarchal) world.

This came to mind as I continued my recent Daphne du Maurier reading binge with her 1954 novel Mary Anne – whose semi-fictionalized title character was an actual great-great grandmother (I think) of the author. Mary Anne Thompson (1776-1852) grew up in a low-income/dysfunctional family, but rose quite a bit in life (at least during her 20s and 30s) via smarts, charm, humor, quick-wittedness, hard work, ruthlessness, strategic behavior, opportunism, and the compromising of some morals. Being good-looking didn’t hurt, either, as she “used” various men to climb society’s ladder.

Mary Anne reminded me a bit of some other fictional “heroines” – one of them being social climber Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (1913). Undine is meaner and generally less-appealing than Mary Anne, but they both share a fierce intelligence and relentless ambition. 

Another self-empowered woman is the title character in Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel Moll Flanders. The basically good-hearted Moll lives a very checkered life but is confident enough to act outside of societal norms: she’s a con artist, a thief, makes alliances with other women, has sex outside of marriage, etc.

Moving to the 19th century, we have William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. That 1848 novel’s Becky Sharp is a brainy, funny, talented, conniving, manipulative, amoral young woman seeking a better “station” in life.

Returning to 20th-century literature, Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God stars the admirable, energetic, resilient Janie Crawford — though she does do some backsliding here and there in terms of partly deferring to some problematic men. Janie has the double challenge of being a woman in a patriarchal society and a Black woman in a racist society.

Isabel Allende’s 1998 novel Daughter of Fortune features the half-Chilean/half-English Eliza Sommers who boldly travels from Chile to Gold Rush-era California, disguising herself as a man for much of the trip. She also ignores the prejudices of the time by developing a close friendship with Chinese man Tao Chi’en.

In young-adult fiction (which of course can also be enjoyed by not-so-young adults), three characters immediately come to mind.

The cast of Louis Sachar’s also-1998-published Holes includes Katherine Barlow, who — in the novel’s 19th-century flashback scenes — becomes a vengeful outlaw named Kissin’ Kate Barlow after a tragic racist act I won’t specify to avoid more of a spoiler.

Preteen-then-teen Anne Shirley in L.M. Montgomery’s 1908 classic Anne of Green Gables is feisty, hilarious, imaginative, and precociously intelligent — though she “mellows” somewhat as an older character and parent in the later sequels. 

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy of 2008, 2009, and 2010 is set not in the past but rather in a future society that, while brutal, is not super-patriarchal. But courageous and rebellious (as well as compassionate) protagonist Katniss Everdeen is worth mentioning.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “That rabbit isn’t running, so it must not like John Updike’s ‘Rabbit, Run.'”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which comedically commented on July 4th and more — is here.

When Entertainers Enter Novels

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The French author Colette (1873-1954).

Among the memorable characters in literature are entertainers: actors, actresses, singers, musicians, etc.

Many dramatic possibilities with these fictional “show biz” people — including creative highs and lows, how they handle fame or lack of fame, how they handle wealth (if wealthy), how they deal with loneliness on the road, and so on. These characters might be flamboyant, charismatic, egotistic, shallow, surprisingly decent, beloved, wedded to their work at the expense of relationships…

I thought about all that last week as I read The Parasites, a lesser-known novel by Daphne du Maurier. The absorbing 1949 book focuses on three siblings – intermittently depicted as kids and as adults – whose self-centered parents were acclaimed stage performers. Two of those siblings become performers themselves (one’s an actress and the other is a pianist who composes fluffy, very popular songs) and they are spoiled/often-irresponsible sights to behold.

More novels I’ve read with performers at the center or as notable supporting characters? One of them is Colette’s semi-autobiographical The Vagabond (1910), about an independent-minded divorcee who becomes a music-hall dancer to support herself. I’ve read most of Colette’s novels, and I think this is her best.

Also semi-autobiographical is Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood (1989), a fictionalized/satirical version of the author’s experiences as a screenwriter for the 1987 film Barfly starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.

Then there’s The Song of the Lark (1915), a poignant Willa Cather novel about an ambitious young woman from a small town who becomes a famous opera singer — and the joys and sacrifices that went along with that.

Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto features an opera singer, too. In the 2001 novel, that singer and others are taken hostage during a private concert she’s giving for bigwigs.

A significant supporting player in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (2010) is a rock musician who was a college friend of one of the novel’s two main characters and later has a brief affair with that friend’s wife (the book’s other co-star).

Also in the secondary character realm is the teen Hollywood actress who becomes infatuated with the married male protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934). Another semi-autobiographical novel.

The protagonist in Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones (1997) is a musician in a New Jersey wedding band trying to decide between being with a fairly conventional New Jersey woman or a more “hip”/edgy New York City woman.

Wilkie Collins’ 1862 novel No Name includes a character whose acting skills from her theatrical career come in handy when navigating an unusual family crisis.

While the main character in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961) is a film-watching stockbroker rather than an entertainer, I feel that novel deserves an honorable mention here.

I’ll add that some writers of novels have been actors/actresses or worked in other parts of the entertainment world — including Fannie Flagg, Thomas Tryon, Steve Martin, and David Duchovny, to name four.

Thoughts about, and examples of, today’s theme?

Misty the cat says: “Here’s where ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ was filmed, but I didn’t hear any singing.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which comments on a not-needed name change for a future park, my town’s hopeful divestment from a bank helping to fund cruel federal immigration detention centers, and another hiring of a high-paid administrator in a school district (mine) where teachers have been laid off — is here.

When Fiction Reading Meets Nonfiction Travel

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At the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. (2013 photo by me.)

In the Northern Hemisphere, today is the first day of summer – the season when many people travel. And that traveling can be literature-related in certain ways. I’ll discuss some of my experiences, and then ask about yours.

In my post on another topic last week, I mentioned the Pantheon in Paris and Westminster Abbey in London, both of which contain the tombs of famous authors and/or “memorials” honoring them. These writers include, among others, Chaucer and Charles Dickens in Westminster and Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and Emile Zola in the Pantheon. Sobering, unforgettable visits for fiction lovers.

Speaking of Zola and Dumas, I was in the south of France in 2007 accompanying my French professor wife Laurel to a Zola conference she was speaking at in Aix-en-Provence. Another speaker was Zola’s great-granddaughter, Martine Le Blond-Zola.

During that trip, Laurel and I also visited Marseille – from where we took a boat to the Chateau d’If island prison immortalized in Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas used a jail cell there as the model for the one in which his Edmond Dantes character would be wrongly incarcerated for years.

On an earlier European trip, I visited the London house where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839 – during which time he finished The Pickwick Papers and wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

Also while in London back then, I went to the Madame Tussauds wax museum – where the figures I most remember were of the three Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) sitting together.

Back in the USA, I’ve visited literature-related sites such as the Herman Melville “Arrowhead” house and museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (where the author lived from 1850 to 1863 and wrote works such as Moby-Dick) and the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut (where the author lived from 1874 to 1891 and penned novels such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn).

In addition, I toured the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis while attending a conference in that city.

And I’ve traveled to other conferences and gatherings in which speakers included novelists Tom Clancy, Lisa Scottoline, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, and others. (I didn’t go to see those writers per se; they happened to be among the speakers.)

Getting a literary experience while visiting somewhere can be more indirect. For instance, when I spent several days in St. Petersburg many years ago I didn’t see anything specific about Fyodor Dostoevsky but thought about Crime and Punishment’s setting as I walked around the Russian city. And I once stayed in a Terre Haute, Indiana, hotel where there was a lobby display about famous local Theodore Dreiser of Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy novels renown.

I have the vague recollection that I wrote about this topic years ago, but couldn’t locate that possible post in an online search. I’ll add that frequent commenter here Michele indirectly gave me the idea for today’s post when she mentioned a recent New York Times article about literary travel; that story (below) took a different approach than I did.

Any personal literature-related travel experiences you’d like to share?

Misty the cat says: “So THIS is where Anne Tyler wrote her 1995 novel ‘Ladder of Years’!”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which contains great library news and laments the long delay of a much-needed forensic audit of my town’s deficit-ridden school district — is here.

A Long, Long Time Ago…

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The Pantheon. (Photo by me during a 2018 trip to Paris.)

It’s been years since some things happened.

For instance, the New York Knicks last night won their first NBA championship since 1973 — a whopping 53 years ago. (A talented/unselfish basketball team unfortunately owned by nasty/despised billionaire James Dolan, who’s best buds with U.S. criminal-in-chief Donald Trump.)

Also, last Sunday the Canadian band Rush launched a sold-out worldwide concert tour — their first since 2015. It’s the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group’s first tour with virtuoso drummer Anika Nilles of Germany replacing revered drummer/lyricist/multi-book-author Neil Peart, who died in 2020. Nilles joined with Rush singer/bassist/composer Geddy Lee, guitarist/composer Alex Lifeson, and touring keyboardist Loren Gold. (See two videos at the end of this post.)

Both of the above developments remind me that there are also a number of book-related things that happened way in the past, and I’ll discuss some of them today.

The first libraries opened approximately 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) as repositories of clay tablets.

Around the 1st century AD, the earliest physical bookstore that historians are aware of appeared in Rome.

What many scholars consider the first novel was written in Japan circa 1010 AD — more than a millennium ago. That was The Tale of Genji, and a woman (Murasaki Shikibu) was the author. Not the most riveting read overall, but it has a number of interesting moments.

Construction of London’s Westminster Abbey as we know it began around 1245. Renowned writers buried there include Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy (partly), and many more. Those memorialized in that building include Jane Austen, the three Bronte sisters, Frances Burney, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Henry James, Shakespeare, and numerous others.

It was in 1440 or thereabouts that the Gutenberg printing press was invented, mechanizing book production. That of course led to lower costs for readers, more literacy, etc.

Paris! The Pantheon in that city was completed in 1790, and a number of famous French authors would be among the notables entombed there. Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Emile Zola…

The Nobel Prize in literature dates back to 1901. Among the high-profile novelists to win that honor are Pearl S. Buck, Albert Camus, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Mann, Toni Morrison, and John Steinbeck.

Seventeen years later, in 1918, saw the arrival of the Pulitzer Prize for novels — renamed the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1948. Among the early winners more than a century ago were Willa Cather (for One of Ours), Booth Tarkington (The Magnificent Ambersons), and Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence).

The first modern paperback book was published in 1935. (There were of course pamphlets and such before that.) That paperback was Ariel: The Life of Shelley by André Maurois.

Thoughts on this topic — whether about books, Rush, or the Knicks? Other book-related milestones you’d like to mention?

Literature-inspired song alert! Rush playing “Tom Sawyer” last Sunday: (Watch for the iconic drum fill at around the 3:20 mark.)

Rush this past Thursday performing “The Camera Eye,” with Neil Peart-penned lyrics inspired by the stream-of-consciousness poems in The U.S.A. Trilogy by novelist John Dos Passos:

Misty the cat says: “My speech is about to begin, and the ants will have to listen.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which comments on my town’s reported use of a bank with financial ties to private operators of cruel for-profit immigration detention centers, and the departure (firing?) of a beloved employee who worked with my town’s seniors — is here.

What Is So Rare as a Cat Post in June?

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SO ready for my close-up. (Photo by some human.)

I, Misty the cat, am back for my every-two-month guest blog post — this time starting with a book-related complaint. Is my beef the fact that few males in literature are as handsome as my feline self? Well, that’s an issue, but my complaint actually involves libraries not always having every book in a series — causing me to slap photos of not-there novels on milk cartons under the word MISSING.

Sure, I realize some of those novels are being borrowed by library users, but my cat intuition suspects that in other cases the whole series were not ordered by acquisitions departments. If Amnesty International didn’t have infinitely more important things to do, they’d investigate.

I most recently wrestled with missing-book syndrome after looking several times for Y Is for Yesterday, the 25th and final installment of Sue Grafton’s wonderful series of alphabet mysteries (the author unfortunately died before authoring Z). I decided not to write 25 strongly worded…letters.

Then, after reading Peter May’s riveting thriller The Blackhouse and its equally intense sequel The Lewis Man (unexpectedly not about Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor), I returned to the library several times with hopeful tail in air looking for the third installment: The Chessmen. But it was never there. Not even a single cheap plastic pawn, rook, or bishop. Sure, I could try to get on a waiting list (if my local library had those books) or do the interlibrary loan thing, but I have so many books on my to-read list that I just ended up borrowing other novels. After briefly sobbing for multiple days.

During my last library visit vainly seeking The Chessmen, I randomly chose a different Peter May novel called Lockdown. Didn’t like it at all; I abandoned the book after struggling through nearly 100 pages — though I kindly gave the library some clues about where I had abandoned said book. (Hint: it’s buried near where labor leader Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975.) Even the best authors can write the occasional clunker, and their prison terms for doing so tend to be only several years.

More clunkers by otherwise excellent authors who are not cats like me? Stephen King’s Cell, Kristin Hannah’s Fly Away, Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, and Jack London’s A Daughter of the Snows, to name four. I’d love to see what’s in the parent-name boxes on that snow daughter’s birth certificate.

Nary a clunker among George Eliot’s big-five novels published in this chronological order: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. Oddly, Mary Ann Evans wrote the same five novels — meaning she and Eliot may have been smoking noms de plume.

Daniel Deronda reminds me — the intermittently meowing Misty — that many fictional works have alliterative titles: Black Beauty (Anna Sewell), Captains Courageous (Rudyard Kipling), Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut), Golden Girl (Elin Hilderbrand), Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn), Make Me (Lee Child), Marjorie Morningstar (Herman Wouk), Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens), Perestroika in Paris (Jane Smiley), Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie), Rob Roy (Walter Scott), The Cuckoo’s Calling (J.K. Rowling), The Custom of the Country (Edith Wharton), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov), The Boys from Biloxi (John Grisham), The Plains of Passage (Jean M. Auel), etc. Oh, and Crime and Crunishment.

What does “crunishment” mean? I think it has something to do with being bombarded by croutons.

It’s June and the sun is often out, so I would like to conclude this post with some novels that have “Sun” in their titles. The Sun Also Rises, of course, which I feel is overrated Hemingway — although he was a big fan of never-overrated cats. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. And so on. I, Misty the cat, do not live in “The House of the Rising Sun” but instead dwell in “The Apartment of the Rising Sun” — from which I emerge every morning for my daily leashed walk to do more reading: STOP signs, street signs, graffiti, license plates, T-shirt logos, and the occasional plane skywriting “Where’s the final alphabet mystery?”

My human Dave will reply to all comments because “crunishment” is not a word.

Misty the cat says: “I’m inches from garden-bag greatness.”

My (and Dave’s) comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )


This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — with primary election results, a governor’s mixed reaction to protests against an awful immigrant detention center, and more — is here.

May the May Authorial Force Be With You

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Daphne du Maurier (Hans Wild/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images).

It’s May 31, so I think I’ll belatedly focus on fiction writers who were born this month!

Given that I read or reread three Daphne du Maurier novels (Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and Frenchman’s Creek) during the past 31 days, I’ll start with that author. She was born on May 13, and lived from 1907 to 1989.

Now I’ll go chronologically by May birth date, listing only writers I’ve read at least something by:

May 1: Joseph Heller (1923-1999), who of course wrote the famous satirical antiwar novel Catch-22.

May 7: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the renowned poet, novelist, playwright, painter, composer, etc.

May 8: Thomas Pynchon (1937-), the reclusive author of some pretty challenging postmodern fiction.

May 8: Peter Benchley (1940-2006). Jaws!

May 9: J.M. Barrie (1860-1937). Peter Pan!

May 9: Richard Adams (1920-2016). Watership Down!

May 11: Sheila Burnford (1918-1984). Author of the absorbing animal adventure The Incredible Journey.

May 11: Stanley Elkin (1930-1995). Author of satirical novels such as The Rabbi of Lud.

May 15: L. Frank Baum (1856-1919). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

May 15: Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940). Author of the fantastical The Master and Margarita.

May 17: Peter Hoeg (1957-). Smilla’s Sense of Snow, etc.

May 19: Nora Ephron (1941-2012). I haven’t read any of her books, but did watch several of the movies she wrote and/or directed — including When Harry Met Sally…

May 19: Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965). The acclaimed A Raisin in the Sun playwright.

May 20: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850). The prolific author of compelling novels such as Old Goriot and Eugenie Grandet.

May 22: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Sherlock Holmes!

May 23: Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952). Writer of the Goodnight Moon classic many parents have read to their children.

May 24: Michael Chabon (1963-). The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, etc.

May 25: W.P. Kinsella (1935-2016), whose books include the Shoeless Joe novel made into the movie Field of Dreams.

May 25: Jamaica Kincaid (1949-). Annie John, etc.

May 27: Herman Wouk (1915-2019). Wrote the riveting The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, and the memorable Marjorie Morningstar.

May 27: Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961). Author of The Maltese Falcon novel starring iconic private eye Sam Spade.

May 27: Tony Hillerman (1925-2008). Best known for his mysteries featuring Native-American characters.

May 27: John Cheever (1912-1982). His “The Swimmer” short story remains amazing.

May 28: Walker Percy (1916-1990). Best known for his novel The Moviegoer and for helping John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces novel get published posthumously.

May 30: Colm Toibin (1955-). Author of the novels Brooklyn, The Master (a fictionalized take on Henry James), etc.

May 31: Walt Whitman (1819-1892). The highly influential poet.

Other May-born writers I didn’t mention? Any thoughts on the ones I did mention?

Misty the cat says: “I’d be taller than this tree if I puffed out my fur.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which criticizes the ending of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show (he lives in my town) — is here.

Adept at Avoiding Accountability, in Real Life and Fiction

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Has-no-integrity Donald Trump and has-integrity Thomas Massie.

U.S. President Donald Trump gets away with SO much:

— The repugnant Republican is mentioned more than 38,000 times in The Epstein Files (named after perhaps the worst pedophile/sex trafficker in American history), yet Trump has never suffered any consequences for that. He even sufficiently maligned Congressman Thomas Massie, one of the VERY few fellow Republicans seeking justice for the Epstein survivors, to get him defeated in a reelection bid this past week.

— Also, the draft-dodger-as-a-youth Trump claimed he would be a “peace president” but bombs innocent Venezuelans in fishing boats and, with Israel, started the unnecessary war of choice against Iran that included the U.S. bombing of a girls’ school that killed more than 150 students. Meanwhile, millions of Trump’s supposedly anti-war supporters continued their cultish behavior by suddenly becoming gung-ho for American aggression.

— Also, there is Trump’s breathtakingly rampant presidential corruption and self-enrichment that has amassed him billions of dollars, but he’ll probably never see the inside of a jail cell.

— Also, Trump of course falsely claimed he won the 2020 presidential election and then encouraged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, yet got back in the White House four years later.

— Etc., etc.

How does the fascist/racist/misogynistic/homophobic/anti-poor/lying Trump avoid accountability? For one thing, he “floods the zone” with distractions, as when attacking Iran moved the news cycle away from the Epstein scandal. In addition, Trump is rich, white, and male; he has a perverse charisma; he and his supporters threaten violence against all who cross him; most Republicans in Congress cravenly go along with almost everything he does; six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are in his pocket; and so on.

I tried to think of fictional characters, whether villainous or not, who are like Trump in terms of fully or partly getting away with things. Doesn’t seem to happen super-often in literature — many novels offer the moral lesson and fantasy wish-fulfillment of problematic people getting their just desserts — but it happens. Being wealthy (like Trump) helps. Being smart (unlike Trump) also helps. Being good-looking helps, too. And being lucky can’t be ignored.

Here are some examples, with details hopefully kept fuzzy enough to avoid too much in spoilers:

Sue Grafton’s alphabet mystery V Is for Vengeance, which I read last week, includes a Mafioso-like character who’s not totally evil yet definitely no Mr. Rogers. But he’s smart enough and a good enough planner to evade legal consequences.

Amoral con man Tom Ripley of Patricia Highsmith’s novels has some close calls, but virtually always gets away with things. He is…talented, to quote the title of The Talented Mr. Ripley — the first book in the series.

The psychopathic killer in Cormac McCarthy’s bleak No Country for Old Men is injured when hit by a car but that’s the most “justice” he faces.

Daphne du Maurier’s mesmerizing novel Rebecca includes a major character who kills someone but never gets charged. Wealth, status, secretiveness, luck, and extenuating circumstances don’t hurt.

The evil/dictatorial Big Brother (whether one person or many) in Nineteen Eighty-Four retains complete power at the end of George Orwell’s iconic dystopian novel.

No one is criminally punished in Donna Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History, but, as is sometimes the case in situations like that, there’s some guilt and suffering for the perpetrators.

Raskolnikov, the somewhat-sympathetic murderer in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment, does the crime and gets the punishment, but that punishment — while not nothing — is relatively lenient.

The caddish George Wickham faces consequences of a sort in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but he certainly deserved more of a comeuppance.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat asks: “Is that STOP sign written by Shakespeare or Cervantes?”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which has an environmental theme — is here.