An Overview of Underdogs

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Most of us like to root for the underdog. I’ll first discuss an underdog winner of a real-life political race last week, and then discuss underdog characters in literature.

The candidate is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat representing Michigan (the state where my wife Laurel spent much of her childhood).

Dr. El-Sayed’s victory was a narrow one, but it impressively happened against great odds. He’s Muslim and he’s progressive, which means establishment politicians (including some fellow Democrats) and the corporate media did all they could to tarnish him with various kinds of nasty nonsense. Plus Dr. El-Sayed was outspent a whopping 11-1 by his center-right opponent Haley Stevens, partly “thanks” to AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) pouring millions into Stevens’ campaign because she supports Israel’s far-right government and because Dr. El-Sayed has correctly called that government’s assault on Gaza a genocide – plus he wants to end the billions of dollars in military aid the U.S. sends each year to Israel. 

I should emphasize that I’m criticizing AIPAC and Israel’s current government – not the Jewish people, of which I’m one. Heck, a clear majority of American Jews have a negative opinion of reactionary Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dr. El-Sayed has also taken various other progressive positions, including advocating for the much-needed Medicare for All in the world’s only developed country (the U.S.) without guaranteed health care for everyone.

Underdogs in literature? I just finished (Ms.) Lionel Shriver’s intriguing dystopian novel Mania, in which the protagonist (Ms.) Pearson Converse gets major pushback when objecting to an alternate-universe America’s “Mental Parity” policy that equates stupidity and intelligence. The 2024 book can be viewed as partly a satire of the utterly incompetent (yet very dangerous) Trump and his regime.

Of course, many older and newer literary classics have an underdog as the central character. That kind of person – who might be impoverished, have a difficult upbringing, be a member of a marginalized group, be bullied, be small in stature, etc. – is usually someone readers can admire, respect, and root for. Most readers can’t resist a character trying to surmount major obstacles with smarts, courage, resilience, and other attributes – including a measure of luck. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t.

Just a few examples of underdog characters: Jane Eyre of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Silas Marner of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Oliver Twist of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Carrie White of Stephen King’s Carrie, Jeanie Deans of Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, Denise Baudu of Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, Offred of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Valancy Stirling of L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, Dana Franklin of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, Tom of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Dellarobia Turnbow of Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Humphrey Van Weyden of Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf, the Mirabel sisters of Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.), and the hobbits populating J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In sports literature (the subject of a 2015 post here), many athletes are not-surprisingly depicted as underdogs. Among them are Roy Hobbs of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural (made into the stirring Robert Redford movie) and Joe Boyd of Douglass Wallop’s The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (which inspired the hit Broadway musical Damn Yankees).

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “Dave matched my harness color to that wire’s color? The man needs therapy.” 

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 – in which I “bank” on my town making news even during the summer — is here.

It’s Meow or Never

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My feline self is seen next to Sue Grafton’s final novel. The airborne tail is a commentary on Wuthering Heights. 

I’m Misty the cat, returning for my every-two-month guest blog post about books. What have I been doing since June? Well, among other things, sampling from the four major food groups: Nestlé, Tyson, Unilever, and General Mills. Actually, the four major food groups are treats, more treats, perpetual treats, and apocalyptic treats from when the Earth nears extinction at the end of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.

Speaking of endings, I just read Sue Grafton’s final “alphabet mystery”: Y is for Yesterday (2017). Unlike some authors who peak several books before their series conclude, Grafton mostly got better and better. In fact, Y is so good that The Village People wrote a song about it, although they inexplicably added “MCA” to the title.

Dave is nudging me to say that “YMCA” was first heard on the radio in 1978, not in 2017 or later. IMHO, he can “scram,” “get lost,” “kick rocks,” “pound sand,” “shove off,” and “take a hike.” He can also “hit the road”; I borrowed Cormac McCarthy’s The Road from the library so Dave can do just that.

Grafton of course planned to write a concluding Z installment, but sadly died in late 2017 before that happened. This was the same month (December) I adopted Dave and his family, not knowing then that I would eventually write for WordPuss. Maybe I’m a bit off with that blogging platform name. 

It was also in 2017 that Dave purchased the phone he used to film my daily leashed walks until nine days ago, when he FINALLY upgraded from an iPhone 7 to an iPhone 17. Going nine years before buying a new phone is a weird way to pay tribute to Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers – a good novel by an author who also wrote What Alice Forgot. Alice forgot to feed her cat, leading that hungry feline to reluctantly have her human jailed in the notorious Chateau d’If island prison featured in The Count of Monte Cristo. Harsh.

When borrowing Y is for Yesterday at the library, I also took out and will soon read Lionel Shriver’s Mania, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, and James Michener’s The Bridges at Toko-ri. 

Before I say more about that haul, you’re probably wondering how a cat can borrow books from the library. Simple: I grab the ones I want from the shelves, use the check-out machine, and print a receipt shorter than the CVS receipt on which Tolstoy wrote War and Peace. 

Anyway, as you might know, Lionel Shriver is a woman who changed her name from Margaret Ann as a teen because she was a tomboy. Among her other novels is So Much for That, which discusses the high cost of my feline asthma inhaler. Or maybe not.

Jeffrey Eugenides is also the author of Middlesex, whose protagonist is intersex. Much of that novel is set in Detroit, which has the Meowtown nickname that’s sometimes shortened to Motown. A Motown Records sampling: “I Heard It Through the Meow Vine,” “Meowing in the Street,” “What’s Meowing On,” and “Meow! In the Name of Love.”

James Michener? I’ve read several of his novels, including Tails of the South Pacific. 

That’s all for now. Dave will reply to comments as I prepare to endure the existential dread of not blogging about books again until early October. 

Misty the cat says: “I’m here at Chappell Roan’s ‘Pink Pony Club,’ minus pony and club.”

Dave and I’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 – which includes riffs on “The Odyssey” movie — is here.

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.