Month: March 2016

Partly Autobiographical Literature Is More Than Partly Interesting

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The semi-autobiographical novel can be the best of both worlds for authors and their readers. That mix of memoir and fiction takes facts and embellishes them and/or dramatizes them and/or smooths them into more coherent form, etc.

A partly autobiographical approach also allows authors to potentially pen very heartfelt books — after all, they lived the emotions — and perhaps provides those writers with some mental therapy, too. Meanwhile, readers learn stuff about an author’s life that they might not learn otherwise. (Of course, many memoirs also have some fictional elements, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Often, a semi-autobiographical work is an author’s first novel. After all, that kind of book can be easier to write because the author just has to remember aspects of her or his own life. And perhaps such a novel psychologically declutters an author’s brain so that s/he can more easily move on to writing novels with fewer or no autobiographical elements.

Examples of semi-autobiographical debut novels include James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain (teen has problems with religion and harsh stepfather), Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (growing up lesbian), Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (Chinese-American immigrant experience), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (college years), and Herman Melville’s Typee (tropical island adventure).

(Melville went on to pen several other partly autobiographical novels — Omoo, Redburn, and White-Jacket — before writing that little thing you may have heard of called Moby-Dick.)

In other cases, authors don’t go the selfie route until later in their literary careers, as did Charlotte Bronte with Villette (English loner teaches in France) and W. Somerset Maugham with Of Human Bondage (personal and professional struggles of a would-be doctor). Authors might want to wait until their writing is developed enough to best convey their own experiences, or wait to become famous/established enough to risk writing something more personal, or wait for enough years to go by to have more perspective on what they’re writing about, etc.

Nathaniel Hawthorne let a decade pass before penning The Blithedale Romance, a fictionalized version of his experiences living on a communal farm. But Charles Bukowski waited only two years to write Hollywood — a minimally disguised account of doing the screenplay for, and seeing the making of, the movie Barfly starring Mickey Rourke in a Bukowski-ish role. (I read the very funny Hollywood this month.)

Occasionally, disguising is a necessity. It’s obvious to readers that Fyodor Dostoevsky was part-fictionally recounting his own Siberian internment experiences in Notes From a Dead House, but to get the novel approved by Russian government censors he couched it as the recollections of a murderer rather than those of a political prisoner like Dostoevsky had been. (I’m in the middle of reading the fascinating Dead House now.)

Other semi-autobiographical works written in early, mid, or late career? George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (Maggie and Tom’s troubled sibling relationship was partly based on the dynamics between Eliot and her brother), Willa Cather’s My Antonia (Cather channeled male character Jim Burden), Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (the author reversed his CD initials to DC), Jack London’s Martin Eden (the ME initials signify the London “me”), Colette’s The Vagabond (partly based on the author’s time performing in music halls), L.M. Montgomery’s Emily trilogy (the struggle to become a successful writer), and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (set in the hometown of the author’s youth and featuring a relationship inspired by a real-life relationship Hurston had).

Also: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Tom is an amalgam of the young Twain and two of his schoolmates), John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (which includes characters based on the author’s ancestors and features a brief cameo by a young John himself), Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (World War I trauma), Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree (living down-and-out in Tennessee), Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine (small-town Illinois childhood), E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair (growing up in the Bronx during the 1930s), Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (depression), and Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (schizophrenia).

What are your favorite semi-autobiographical novels?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Apocalypse Now Is the Subject of a Blog Post

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In the mood for some human-race-almost-gets-wiped-out reading? Then apocalyptic novels are the books for you.

Some of those books are also dystopian novels, but a major difference is that things like disease and nuclear bombs can bring on the apocalypse while a dystopian society can come about via (harsh) political change. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Donald Trump owned the New Jersey Generals in…1984.

Why do some of us like apocalyptic novels despite those books being depressing as hell? Well, they’re intense, dramatic, and cautionary — as in here’s what we don’t want to happen in real life and let’s support ways to prevent it (by trying to eradicate contagious diseases, reduce various countries’ nuclear arsenals, etc.). And of course climate change is another existential threat that many countries (but few Republican leaders) take seriously.

Readers of apocalyptic lit also wonder how they would personally react to a decimated world — even as they’re fascinated with how fictional characters deal with that scenario.

Apocalypse is on my mind after reading Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney, in which a 20th-century nuclear holocaust has the survivors living a rather primitive existence. Goods are bartered, decent food is scare, people travel in cars pulled by horses, and it takes months for a letter to get from New York to California. As they deal with those privations, the characters in Dick’s novel do what ultra-stressed people often do — become despondent,  behave recklessly, steal from each other, and occasionally act in inspiring ways.

It’s not clear what causes the already-happened apocalypse in The Road (Cormac McCarthy is more concerned with how his characters react to it), but the U.S. is in bad shape. The Road is also an example of how many apocalyptic — or post-apocalyptic — novels mostly focus on a small number of protagonists and a few secondary characters to bring readers into the story on a very personal level.

Novels with an apocalypse caused by disease or something else of a pandemic nature include Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Albert Camus’ The Plague, and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. (Shelley’s book is also quite fascinating in that its three main characters are thinly veiled versions of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and the author herself in male guise.)

I should also mention Stephen King’s The Stand, one of the longer end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it novels. The bleak, haunting conclusion of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine is apocalyptic, too — or maybe more an Earth is dying of old age thing.

Of course, apocalyptic novels can make for eye-catching movies — as with The Road and I Am Legend. And there’s the famous “Time Enough at Last” Twilight Zone TV episode — adapted from a Marilyn Venable short story — about a man who’s rather pleased with the Earth’s devastation because he can finally read in peace. (Needless to say, that bibliophile ends up barely having enough time to peruse a blog post, much less a bunch of books.)

Speaking of short stories, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is also pretty darn human-race-is-in-big-trouble.

What are your favorite apocalyptic works?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Fiction’s Female Felons

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The vast majority of criminals are men. One statistic I found on “the Internets” says only 18% of the U.S. “correctional population” is female. Many men are just more lawless and violent, to state the obvious.

So when fictional women do something they might get arrested for, it can be…arresting. And startling, fascinating, etc. — heightening the drama many literature lovers crave.

Adding to the interest is that many female “villains” have nuanced, complex reasons for committing crimes. Maybe the power imbalance in a patriarchal world finally gets to them. Maybe the felony happens in a moment of intense anger. Maybe their victims fully or partly deserve it. Maybe some progression of circumstances makes the illegal action almost inevitable. You rarely see totally senseless violence done by women.

Anita Shreve’s absorbing novel The Weight of Water, which I read this month, features a double murder committed by a woman I won’t name to avoid a spoiler. One totally understands the fury that causes her to kill the first person, who had treated her badly. The killing that immediately follows — committed because that second victim was a witness about to run for help — was less easy to stomach.

The two homicides in Shreve’s book take place in the 1800s, as does the double murder in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace. The Grace Marks character serves a long prison term for being an accomplice to that crime (her male cohort is hanged), but it’s ambiguous how much Grace was actually involved in the mayhem.

Another 20th-century book set partly in the 19th century is Louis Sachar’s young-adult novel Holes, in which white teacher Katherine falls in love with Sam, a kind black man subsequently murdered for the interracial relationship. Katherine becomes a vengeful outlaw, killing a number of men who deserve that fate.

Novels written in the 19th-century also have their share of women on the wrong side of the law; among those books are George Eliot’s Adam Bede and Wilkie Collins’ Armadale.

Hetty Sorrel of Eliot’s novel is a poor young woman seduced by the rich squire Arthur Donnithorne, who has no intention of marrying her. She becomes pregnant, and what happens to the baby might mean the gallows for Hetty.

The charismatic Lydia Gwilt of Armadale is a schemer and would-be killer, but also possesses some conscience and vulnerability.

Virtually no vulnerability or conscience in Annie Wilkes, the psychotic former nurse from Stephen King’s Misery who does unspeakable things to the author (Paul Sheldon) she traps in her home.

As with Alias Grace, there are questions in Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel about whether the title character is a criminal or not. Did Rachel help poison Philip’s late guardian Ambrose? Or is she innocent?

Then there’s the self-defense killing by Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, but she is nonetheless charged with murder.

Also charged with homicide (of her married lover) is Laura Hawkins in The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.

And as Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison begins, detective novelist Harriet Vane is in jail for allegedly offing her former lover.

Do Crawford, Hawkins, and Vane get convicted or acquitted? I don’t think it’s a crime to say I’m not telling. 🙂

In the Jack Reacher novels, there are a small number of female “bad guys.” One book (I won’t name it for spoiler reasons) makes it seem like a man is the serial murderer of women when in fact the culprit ends up being a female (driven by bitterness toward her stepsister and a hankering for the family inheritance) who has slain the various women to confuse investigators. That Lee Child novel is similar to The Weight of Water in setting up a male as the probable suspect — which of course skillfully and subversively plays to our knowledge that men are more likely than women to commit crimes.

Who are some of your “favorite” female transgressors in literature?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Protagonists With a Plethora of Abilities

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A number of fictional characters have two or more talents that readers see simultaneously or consecutively.

For instance, Adam Dalgliesh of P.D. James’ mysteries is both a detective and published poet. In the consecutive realm, Charles Strickland is first a stockbroker and then a struggling genius of a painter in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence.

Having more than one talent can obviously make a character more interesting, admirable, unpredictable, etc. — and can open up lots of dramatic possibilities. An example of that is the way Strickland coldly abandons his wife and children to pursue his art — trading a comfortable existence for a life of intense privation that involves starving for his fame as well as actually starving (almost).

Then there are the amateur detectives who do other things for their “day job” — as is the case with Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen running a small-town post office when she and her pets aren’t sleuthing in Rita Mae Brown’s mysteries. An often-seen personality “hook” for many fictional detectives is doing another thing well in addition to ferreting out the bad guys.

Other characters have a job they hate or at best tolerate, and then do something more fun in their spare time. Dave Raymond is a courier in Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones, but gets his real enjoyment playing guitar in a wedding band (when he’s not agonizing over which of two women is best for him).

In Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog, former Iranian colonel Massoud Behrani is working as a trash collector and convenience-store clerk in the U.S. when he buys a house as a first step to becoming a real-estate investor. Unfortunately, havoc ensues. Behrani is also an example of immigrants forced to take less prestigious jobs in a new country.

Chance, necessity, or societal events can cause people to put their different talents to use. In Fannie Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, Fritzi Jurdabralinski is an expert car mechanic and stunt pilot who joins the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II.

The not-admirable Briony Tallis becomes a nurse during that war and later a novelist in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

Then there’s Renaissance man — actually Renaissance orc — Mr. Nutt in Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals. That intellectual character is a “candle dripper,” blacksmith, soccer coach…

Who are your favorite fictional characters with two or more talents and/or a diverse job history?

If you’d like, you could also name real people with multiple talents and/or jobs — such as Leonardo da Vinci (painter, inventor, architect, etc.), Paul Robeson (singer, actor, activist, etc.), and Hillary Clinton (lawyer, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, etc.). Actually, I prefer Bernie Sanders, but that’s another story. 🙂

Authors who had other jobs before, during, or after their writing careers? See this post.

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.