Novels Are Read. Violence, It Grew

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Violence has always been part of literature, as it has always been part of life, but in recent decades authors have often depicted killings and other kinds of bodily harm more graphically than their writing predecessors did.

As with sexual situations, violence used to be significantly veiled in older fiction. Brutal acts would frequently happen “off stage,” or be shown in a not-too-bloody way. That sanitized carnage could still be very upsetting to read about, but most readers didn’t lose their appetites. These days, things in general are usually less subtle and more “out there.”

This was reinforced for me with the last two novels I read: Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game (1974) and Anthony Burgess’ The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985) — both written after violence in lit started to be depicted more explicitly.

In Highsmith’s novel — one of five psychological thrillers, including The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring the rather amoral Tom Ripley — murders of various Mafiaso are chronicled kind of graphically (such as strangulation with a cord, aka garroting). Interestingly, the retaliatory shooting of a sympathetic co-protagonist is described in a more euphemistic way.

The Kingdom of the Wicked — which chronicles all kinds of intrigue during the early years of Christianity two millennia ago — has myriad scenes of revolting violence (crucifixion, stoning to death, stabbings, etc.) amid the wonderful writing.

A living-author king of violence depiction is Cormac McCarthy, who has a high mayhem quotient in novels such as Blood Meridian (1985), No Country for Old Men (2005), and, to a lesser degree, All the Pretty Horses (1992). Blood Meridian may be one of the most violent literary novels ever written, but, then again, the 19th-century American West was often a brutal place that earlier authors had to sanitize to some extent when published in less-candid times.

In Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), a brutal law-enforcement murder of a likable, admirable “Untouchable” is heartbreakingly depicted. As intensely painful as it is to read, vividly showing the power structure’s violence against minorities gives readers a small sense of what the discriminated-against go through.

And how about the nightmare injuries Annie Wilkes inflicts on captive author Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s Misery (1987)? And the excruciating Afghanistan-based scene in which Taliban guy Assef breaks several of Amir’s bones in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003)? And various horrific deaths in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010)?

There’s also plenty of hard-hitting harm in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, with Reacher receiving and doling out violence — and a number of good and bad people dying along the way. (Think “pink mist” rising from heads exploded by bullets — yikes!) One can’t read the 20 Reacher novels (1997-2015) without getting a major adrenaline rush, for better or for worse.

What are some of the most violent novels you’ve read? Do you think reality demands that acts of bodily harm be depicted in a fairly graphic way, or do you prefer a certain amount of author restraint?

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.

Fictional Characters Who Treat Women As Badly As Donald Trump Does

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I wish Donald Trump were fictional, but, alas, he’s real. Yet the Republican presidential candidate does remind me of literature’s sexist louts who emotionally and/or physically abuse women. Some of the men are rich and some not so rich, but all possess a high quotient of creepiness.

And those fictional characters are painful to read about, until they get their satisfying comeuppance. Perhaps it’s revenge at the hands of people they hurt, or perhaps they die young. But sometimes the jerks of literature continue to thrive, which is frustrating but also realistic. As realistic as Donald Trump, who — though destined to probably lose next month’s election — has mostly lived a charmed life despite being awful and amoral.

So many examples of repulsively sexist guys in fiction, but I’ll discuss just a few.

For instance, the father in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is a disgusting human being who treats women (and many a man) like garbage. His first name is Fyodor, but thankfully he’s not an autobiographical version of Dostoyevsky.

Also in 19th-century literature, we have Heathcliff (who, in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, deeply loves Catherine Earnshaw but is cruel to various other women in his life); Edward Casaubon (who’s condescending and contemptuous toward his young wife Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s Middlemarch); Gilbert Osmond (the loathsome, unloving husband of the appealing Isabel Archer in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady); Roger Chillingworth (the vengeful, lost-then-reappears husband of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter); and Sir Percival Glyde (the nasty schemer in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White who, under the direction of the more powerful Count Fosco, takes part in an ugly scheme whose victims include Glyde’s wife Laura Fairlie).

In post-1900 literature, we have these repellent men — among many others — guilty of domestic violence against their wives: police officer Norman Daniels of Stephen King’s Rose Madder; company heir Seth Duncan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel Worth Dying For, and Frank Bennett of Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Two of Janie Crawford’s husbands (Joe Starks and Tea Cake) in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God are guilty of physically hurting Janie, though Tea Cake has a decent side, too. Still, there’s never a legitimate reason for a man to attack a woman.

More lowlifes: Slave owner Rufus Weylin, who is unspeakably cruel to slave Alice Greenwood in Octavia Butler’s Kindred; the vile Alphonso, who beats and rapes his daughter Celie in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; racist town drunk Bob Ewell, who abuses his daughter in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Esteban Trueba, who rapes a number of peasant women living on the land he owns in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits; and all the rotten males who treat women as nothing but breeding machines in the patriarchal dystopia depicted in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Monstrous actions all.

Do you have other examples of odious, sexist men of fiction? With a slight variation on “trump cards,” we could call them “Trump cads.”

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.

Recurring Characters Are Not Just in Series and Sequels

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Obviously, there are recurring characters in novel sequels and series. Some are sleuths who star in mysteries, and many are non-sleuths who hail from other genres. Memorable, widely known recurring characters include Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Katniss Everdeen, Lisbeth Salander, Sherlock Holmes, Anne Shirley, Miss Marple, “Easy” Rawlins, Harriet Vane, Frodo Baggins, etc., etc.!

Then there are characters who appear in more than one novel despite the books not being sequels or series per se — which will be the subject of this blog post. In a number of cases, they’re a minor character in one novel, and a major character in another.

One advantage of recurring characters is that they add to the illusion of reality — the worlds that authors create can seem more believable when readers encounter the same people in different books. And if readers like and/or find those characters interesting, they are thrilled to see them several times. Also, multiple appearances by characters give authors the opportunity to depict them in a more nuanced, complex way than might be the case with one-novel appearances.

Emile Zola was among the writers who mastered this. For instance, he introduced Claude Lantier as a supporting character in The Belly of Paris before making that troubled artist the full-fledged star of The Masterpiece, and gave Nana Coupeau a relatively modest role in The Drinking Den before making her the main protagonist in Nana.

Zola may have gotten the recurring idea from earlier-in-the-19th-century French author Honore de Balzac, whose perhaps most prominent use of the device was having Rastignac appear in Old Goriot and about a half dozen other novels.

There was also Mark Twain, who made Tom Sawyer the star and Huck Finn a supporting player in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and then made Huck the star and Tom a supporting player in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Tom was subsequently featured in two lesser, late-career Twain novels: Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective.

In 20th- and 21st-century literature, authors who have gone the recurring-character route include Kurt Vonnegut (Kilgore Trout appeared in or was mentioned in various novels), Margaret Atwood (“Snowman” was prominent in Oryx and Crake and not so prominent in The Year of the Flood), Robert Heinlein (the long-living Lazarus Long had a role in about a half dozen novels), and Fannie Flagg (who put characters such as the Norma/Macky couple, Aunt Elner, and radio host “Neighbor Dorothy” in Welcome to the World, Baby Girl, then Standing in the Rainbow, and then Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven).

Can you name some recurring characters from non-sequel, non-series books? And, heck, if you want to mention your favorite characters from series and sequels, be my guest!

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.

More Multiculturalism in Literature

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We live in a multicultural world, so it’s great when that’s reflected in literature. An increasing number of books have characters of different races and ethnicities interacting — often on a more equal basis than they might have interacted in older fiction.

(Actually, some older fiction also has surprisingly decent multicultural aspects amid the many false assumptions of white superiority, which I’ll get to later in this post.)

But the multicultural interactions in relatively recent literature are hardly always nirvana. There is love and hate, open-mindedness and narrow-mindedness, harmony and conflict, understanding and lack of understanding. Racism continues to often rear its ugly head, even as some characters are more enlightened than their ancestors might have been.

I just read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, which is not only funny as hell but has an amazing mosaic of characters. Among them are Samad, a brilliant but insufferable Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh whose best friend is a white Englishman (Archie) who’s married to a black woman (Clara). The variety of cultures depicted in the mostly London-set novel is exhilarating, even when it’s more like a clash of cultures.

A later Smith novel — the compelling On Beauty — finds much material to mine in the marriage of an African-American woman (Kiki) to an insecure/annoying white professor (Howard) from England who’s teaching in America, and how that couple relates to another couple: a Trinidadian (Monty) who’s a professor in England, and his ill wife (Carlene).

Plus, in both On Beauty and White Teeth, it’s fascinating how the children of the main characters become (sort of) Americanized or anglicized. The immigrant vs. second-generation experience and all that.

It’s no surprise that Smith is the biracial daughter of a Jamaican mother and English father; the increased multiculturalism in relatively recent literature is partly a reflection of thankfully increased author diversity.

Jhumpa Lahiri also finds multicultural fiction gold in The Namesake and The Lowland, both of which feature Bengali characters who migrate to the United States. They and/or their children of course interact with white Americans and in some cases have romantic relationships with them, while other characters continue to identify mostly with their country of origin.

Then there’s Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story, in which a biracial anti-apartheid activist in South Africa has an affair with a white social worker; Lee Child’s Make Me, in which Jack Reacher teams up professionally and romantically with a Chinese-American woman; and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in which the multicultural elements include Harry and Cho Chang dating at one point.

The multicultural connections in relatively recent novels obviously include more than romantic ties/angles. In Fannie Flagg’s I Still Dream About You, for instance, the African-American friend/real-estate coworker (Brenda) of the white protagonist (Maggie) has political aspirations in Alabama. Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is includes African-American (Moses) and Native-American (Benny) characters who befriend the white protagonist (Novalee) when she’s abandoned in Oklahoma.

As one can see from the above examples, people of color are frequently — though not always — the supporting rather than lead characters in multicultural literature written by white authors. Too much of that sidekick phenomenon, which is also often the case in movies.

While there’s plenty of blatant white superiority in older novels — often reflecting the narrow-mindedness of the authors themselves — there are some nice exceptions. For instance, James Fenimore Cooper depicts various Native-Americans with surprising tolerance in his five 19th-century “Leatherstocking” novels (including The Last of the Mohicans), and I loved the deep friendship between the Native-American Chingachgook and the white Natty Bumppo.

Also, black or biracial characters are prominent, portrayed positively, and shown interacting (or trying to interact) with white characters on a fairly equal basis in 19th-century novels such as Armadale by Wilkie Collins and Georges by Alexandre Dumas (who was biracial himself). But those protagonists also face major difficulties living in a mostly white society.

Black-white interactions are even more fraught in decades-ago books such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Margaret Mitchell’s often-racist Gone With the Wind, Carson McCullers’ more-understanding The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and Richard Wright’s Native Son — though Bigger Thomas in that last book is eventually befriended and represented by a white (communist) lawyer.

Then there are John Steinbeck’s works, which rarely featured black characters but often featured Hispanic ones — as in The Wayward Bus (driver Juan) and Tortilla Flat (most of the book’s ensemble). Also, Asian-American housekeeper Lee is arguably the most interesting person in East of Eden as he interacts with the white Trask family he works for and with the mostly white California world he inhabits.

It’s almost another topic entirely, but there’s plenty of multicultural interaction in sci-fi and fantasy — or maybe it’s more like multi-planet or multi-categories-of-beings interaction. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, for instance, we have hobbits, dwarfs, elves, orcs, wizards, humans, etc.!

What are your favorite books with multicultural elements? How important is that kind of diversity to you as a reader?

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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. 

 

A Blog Session on Emotional Repression

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Can novels with emotionally repressed, even boring protagonists hold a reader’s interest? In many cases, most definitely yes.

To illustrate how, I’ll first talk about Evan Connell’s Mrs. Bridge, which I read this month. Its title character is not only emotionally repressed and boring but also conventional, conformist, proper, too conscious of manners, timid, obedient, afraid to offend, and often clueless. Her first name, India, is about the only thing distinctive about this white, cliche-spouting, country-club-member woman.

Yet the novel is gripping and fascinating. Why? Well, Mrs. Bridge is superbly written, in an understated way. It has numerous short chapters (some less than a page), which make things go quickly. And there’s lots of subtle satire from the author.

Also, despite India being all the yawn-inducing things listed in my second paragraph, there are other elements to her that draw our sympathy. She is nice, friendly, kind of smart, unhappy, and haunted (India has longings but can’t quite articulate them or do anything about them).

In addition, we understand that she’s of her time (the decades before World War II) and economic/family situation (upper middle class with a workaholic husband) — meaning she was expected to stay home, have no outside job, and employ a housekeeper. So Mrs. Bridge has almost nothing to do to break life’s tedium, especially when her three kids grow older.

Also making the novel interesting are those three kids, who quietly or not so quietly rebel against their humdrum upbringing. Plus India has a few friends and neighbors with a bit of an edge.

One more thing: Readers — who may know people like Mrs. Bridge, even in the 21st century — are curious what will happen to such a character. Connell’s novel doesn’t disappoint, offering closing chapters that seem just right and a last scene that’ll knock your socks off. (After which India’s housekeeper might feel obligated to wash them.)

Now I’ll name protagonists from other novels who are emotionally repressed for reasons that are Mrs. Bridge-like or because they’re the victim of racism or other bias, have a history of psychological or physical trauma, wrestle with a major regret, harbor a secret, or just possess a certain personality. In some cases, they’re emotionally repressed for the entire book; in other cases, they start out fine and then go downhill, or start out troubled and get better. And those characters range from very likable to very unlikable.

A few of the many fictional people with some or much emotional repression include Sethe and Denver of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Matthew and Marilla of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Dimmesdale of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Penderton of Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye, Claire of Henry James’ The American, Harry Haller of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Gauri of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, Maren of Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water, Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.), the kid Ricky in John Grisham’s The Client, and the title characters of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome.

Who are some emotionally repressed characters you remember most?

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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. 

The Plot (or Lack of) Thickens

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Last week I was reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and my brain was queasy with mixed feelings. The novel is intellectual, philosophical, existential — clearly a great mind was at work there. But I was at times bored along with being impressed, and found myself putting the book down every few pages. Then I started to skim it.

Why the partial boredom? Well, the protagonist sat in cafes, watched people, walked down the street, moped, thought, overthought, etc. There was no dang plot, or very little of one. And a plot-less novel — no matter how well-written and thought-provoking — is going to have a harder time holding a reader’s interest.

Now a brief poetic interlude, sung to the tune of “If I Only Had the Nerve” from The Wizard of Oz:

There are followers or leaders
Who were bound to become readers
They like literature a lot

But they could change that habit
Flee as fast as a rabbit
From a novel with no plot

I’m afraid there’s no denying
If I did I would be lyin’
To adults or to a tot

Authors could show their prowess
(With a touch pad, not a mowess)
If they only had a plot

Oh we’d be in our stride
Book fans to the core
Oh we’d read the way we never read before
And then we’d read
And read some more

If many an authorsaurus
Wrote works that were more for us
More book sales to be got

Yes, we’d gladly read their fiction
And our brains would have less friction
If they only had a plot

I’m exaggerating a bit, because there are a number of novels with little or no plot that I like a lot. It helps if that sort of book has humor (as with, say, John Steinbeck’s episodic Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row), but even plot-challenged books with a scarcity of laughs can merit our admiration and deep respect. The aforementioned Nausea is one of them, as is Evan Connell’s exceptional Mrs. Bridge, which I finished this afternoon (more on that novel in next week’s post).

Yet…a plot is usually needed to activate another “p” word: page-turning.

Take any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, such as The Killing Floor and 61 Hours. How will the bad guys be defeated? How much damage will they do before that happens? How much damage will Reacher do to them? How will Jack’s latest romance begin, and end? We’re on the edge of our seats.

But a novel doesn’t have to be a thriller or a mystery or another kind of genre fiction to propel the reader along. It can be literary fiction, or a popular/literary hybrid like Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Will Edmond Dantes escape from prison? Well, it’s pretty obvious he will. But how exactly will he exact his epic revenge on the various people who framed him?

Other classics are also full of plot lines, even as they can be brainy, too. For instance, we wonder what will happen to Crime and Punishment‘s double-murderer Raskolnikov even as we are awed by how Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrestles with all the important questions: psychological motivations, guilt, nonconformity, and more. Nearly as propulsive and thought-provoking is Richard Wright’s Native Son, which also stars a murderer whose fate we very much wonder about. Or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, in which an innocent man is put on trial. The last two novels have the added dimension of gruesome racism.

A fictional crime doesn’t have to involve real or alleged physical violence, of course. Donna Tartt keeps the suspense going for hundreds of pages after her protagonist takes and hides a priceless painting in The Goldfinch.

Another compelling plot line focuses on whether characters will survive a war (Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Erich Maria Remarque’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die, etc.) or survive a hostage scenario (Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto) or survive other life-threatening situations. It’s hard to top death, or the threat of death, for drama.

And will courageous political activists — such as those in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies — survive opposing a despotic government?

Then of course there is the age-old and frequently fascinating plot line involving relationships, married or otherwise. Will two people get together or not? Will they stay together or not? How lovey-dovey or stormy is the relationship? So many examples: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, and thousands of other novels.

And there are all kinds of other plot variations, including whether characters will finally achieve a non-romantic goal — as with the protagonist in Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That, or Dorothy, The Scarecrow, The Tin Woodman, and The Cowardly Lion in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

How important is a plot to you when reading fiction? Do you like some novels that mostly lack a plot? If so, which ones? Also, what are some of your favorite books with compelling plots?

That’s a lot of questions, but at least I didn’t post a second Wizard of Oz parody…

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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. 

One Novel Stands Out, But Why?

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What is it that makes a many-novel author become known mostly for one novel?

Maybe that book is their best, even though they’ve written a number of other good or great books. Maybe it’s because that most-known novel became famous partly because it was turned into a popular movie. Maybe the publisher marketed that one book more than the others. Maybe there’s no discernible reason.

I was thinking about all that last week when reading Fannie Flagg’s Standing in the Rainbow — a funny, sunny, sentimental, heartwarming novel that also seriously addresses sexism, racism, homophobia, infidelity, death, etc. And the 2002 book — which spans more than five decades of life in a small Missouri town — includes a drunk-with-power politician whose presidential campaign in some ways eerily presages the vile Donald Trump’s divisive White House run.

Flagg has also authored other excellent novels (several set in Alabama) — including A Redbird Christmas, Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, I Still Dream About You, and The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion. But when the general reader thinks of Flagg, what mostly comes to mind is Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe — which probably is the author’s best novel, and was made into a beloved major motion picture. Still, Flagg’s other books deserve to have much higher profiles.

Of course, Flagg’s fans know and love her novels, and the same can be said for the fans of other multi-book authors associated mostly with one novel.

Those other authors? Let me name just a few, in alphabetical order:

— Margaret Atwood’s most famous book by far is The Handmaid’s Tale, but she has also authored more than a dozen other superb novels — including Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake.

— Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is that author’s book most assigned in high school and college courses, but she also wrote other compelling novels such as O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia.

— Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World far outstrips his other books in popularity, but his novels such as Antic Hay, Point Counter Point, and Island are well worth the read, too.

— Herman Melville is of course best known for Moby-Dick, but he penned a number of other fine novels such as Typee, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, and Billy Budd. Plus the riveting short stories “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno” are almost long enough to be novellas.

— L.M. Montgomery is mostly associated with the memorable Anne of Green Gables, but she also attracted readers with compelling works such as the various Anne sequels, the Emily trilogy, and The Blue Castle.

Can you name other authors who wrote a number of very good novels yet are mostly known for just one of those books? Why the disproportionate focus on that one novel?

(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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.

Mental Illness in Fiction

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There’s a lot of mental illness in the world, and there’s a lot of mental illness in literature.

And why not? Fiction frequently reflects real life (albeit often in a heightened way) and many readers have suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, etc. — or have family members, friends, and coworkers with various such conditions.

Mental illness — which of course ranges from mild to severe — can also help give literature the important elements of drama, heartbreak, curiosity-evoking content, cliffhanger situations, etc. Will characters with mental illness harm themselves or others? Can they function well in society, perhaps with the help of medication and/or therapy? How much does income level determine how people with mental illness are treated? Do the characters live at home or in a facility? Are some of them misdiagnosed? Do characters who know characters with mental illness act resentfully, compassionately, or both ways in their interactions? Heck, people with mental illness can’t help the fact that their brain chemistry has wired them differently — yet the resulting behavior is still not easy for family and friends.

One of the most famous novels dealing with mental illness is Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set in a psychiatric ward. Known to many for its movie version, the book includes the sobering scenario of ward residents being treated harshly by Nurse Ratched.

Indeed, literature has many examples of the mentally ill not getting much compassion. For instance, the far-from-affluent Connie Ramos of Marge Piercy’s part-sci-fi novel Woman on the Edge of Time is institutionalized despite probably not being mentally ill at all — just legitimately angry at, and stressed with, what life has dealt her.

But there are other instances of characters being treated kindly by mental-health professionals — often in cases where the family has the money to pay for superior care. One example is in Jamie’s Children by Susan Moore Jordan, whose Niall character gets some darn good help that might help him save a relationship and create a music career.

Other literary works containing characters with mental illness, possible mental illness, depression, severe social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. — or who are “eccentric” or “slow” — include Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (“madwoman in the attic” Bertha), Jean Rhys’ Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea (a more sympathetic Bertha as a younger woman), Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (comically delusional title character), Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (despairing title character), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (psychologically sick Raskolnikov), and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (reclusive Boo Radley).

Also: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (shell-shocked war veteran Septimus Smith), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (had-a-breakdown Nicole Diver), Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping (spacey Sylvie), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (dual-personality title character), Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (beleaguered Lucy Ashton), Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (depressed/suicidal Esther Greenwood), Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (schizophrenic Deborah Blau), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (possibly psychotic title character), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (hallucinating/patronized-by-husband female narrator).

Several of the above fictional works were semi-autobiographical.

One of the most famous examples of an author who struggled with mental illness was Janet Frame, whose scheduled lobotomy was canceled when a collection of her stories won a prestigious literary prize in New Zealand.

Then there are works featuring characters on the autism spectrum — a neuro-developmental condition, not a mental illness. One such person is Christopher of Mark Haddon’s novel-turned-play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

What are your favorite novels featuring characters who are or may be mentally ill? Any thoughts on the way that’s depicted 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’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.

‘The Next Stephen King’ and Other Comparisons

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Before I read John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Harbor last week, I noticed that four of the eight review quotes on the back cover compared Lindqvist to the great Stephen King. Hmm…how derivative was this Scandinavian guy, anyway?

Actually, the excellent Harbor turned out to be quite original. It was obviously in the horror genre, but with a wintry, in-Sweden twist. Other differences from King, too. It all reminded me of…John Ajvide Lindqvist. With a touch of Peter Hoeg (Smilla’s Sense of Snow).

Yet I understand the reviewer shorthand of author comparisons. Some people — for better or for worse — want writers placed in a certain literary style or genre before deciding whether to read them. And many book publishers categorize authors in marketing campaigns.

Of course, comparisons to other authors might be dead-on, or barely an approximation. Also, some writers welcome being put in the company of a famous earlier author or novel, while others may feel such a comparison is a slur on their originality or even a near-plagiarism charge. But, heck, no writer or fictional work is completely unique.

Examples of other authors who’ve been compared to earlier authors? Let me count the names. To remain in the horror category for a minute, H.P. Lovecraft was definitely influenced by Edgar Allan Poe.

In more “general” literature, John Irving has been mentioned in the same sentence as Dickens for sprawling, seriocomic works such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Donna Tartt’s multifaceted The Goldfinch, Eleanor Catton’s sweeping The Luminaries, and Jonathan Franzen’s wide-ranging Freedom have also moved some reviewers to name-check Charles D.

When Isabel Allende came out with The House of the Spirits, many reviewers and readers were reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. And the comparison is somewhat apt, though Allende put her own stamp on magic realism and multigenerational storytelling — such as concentrating more on the female characters.

Then of course there’s Cormac McCarthy following in the footsteps of William Faulkner with almost-biblical prose depicting the lives of often flawed, unhappy, eccentric, far-from-affluent people. “Southern Gothic” and all that.

Speaking of the American South, True Grit author Charles Portis’ funnier novels (such as Norwood) are reminiscent of Erskine Caldwell’s comedic classics Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre.

In the “modernist” area, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway takes some inspiration from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

And A.S. Byatt — especially with her intricate masterpiece Possession — has been compared to the incomparable George Eliot.

Of course, finding a resemblance between authors can often be too facile an endeavor — especially when describing female and African-American writers. For instance, Barbara Kingsolver kind of echoes Margaret Atwood in penning fiction that’s feminist and political yet more character-driven than polemical, but their writing styles are really not alike. And the works of African-American writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker have as many — or more — differences than similarities.

Who are some specific authors who can be compared to earlier specific authors?

(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 almost finished writing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am 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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.

These Days, More Explicit Lit Is Often What’s Writ

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It’s no revelation that a lot of recent literature is more frank, candid, and graphic than fiction of the distant past — with sex or violence often spelled out rather than implied. But while this blog post’s theme might be unoriginal, I’m going to give my take and then ask for yours.  🙂

Despite the queasiness that blunt treatment of sex or violence can elicit on occasion, I’m glad overall that recent lit tends to be more forthright. It’s real life, and it can be psychologically healthy to have things out in the open and straightforwardly addressed.

Of course, one hopes the explicit stuff is not too over the top, and that young readers aren’t exposed to it until they’re ready. And there’s a part of me that does prefer mature content being presented with some mystery and subtlety — which explains part of the appeal of classic novels. Heck, it can require a heap of writing skill to effectively hint at things rather than be totally direct.

I thought of this topic when juxtaposing two recently read books — Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853) and Abigail Tarttelin’s Golden Boy (2013) — published 160 years apart.

Gaskell’s novel, which mostly focuses on the older single women of a small English town, describes their relationships and an appalling railroad accident in relatively low-key ways. It’s not a boring book — Cranford is absorbing in it’s light-yet-serious fashion — but the content is all rather…decorous.

Of course, one can’t overgeneralize about long-ago literature. For instance, Emile Zola’s 1880 Nana novel was pretty racy for its time (probably no surprise that Zola was French  🙂 ), but even some 19th-century British novels were bursting with veiled yet not completely veiled passion — as any reader of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and several of George Eliot’s magnificent novels would tell you. (But the times forced Eliot, who never wed her longtime partner George Henry Lewes, to be discreet when depicting a key non-marital sexual relationship in 1859’s Adam Bede.)

On to Golden Boy. Tarttelin’s compelling novel speaks openly of sex and sexual identity: heterosexual, gay/lesbian, and intersexual — teen protagonist Max, while identifying as male, has both male and female genitalia. The book also features an exceptionally painful-to-read rape. But everything is in the service of the plot, and Golden Boy ends up being a memorable read from a very young author still in her 20s.

Like the 1853 Cranford, Tartellin’s 2013 novel is set in a small English town — but what a difference 160 years makes! Still, Golden Boy‘s technique of having the narration switch from character to character harks back more than eight decades to how William Faulkner structured As I Lay Dying (1930) — even as Golden Boy reminds me (while being its own original self) of two more recent novels: J.K. Rowling and her depiction of teens in The Casual Vacancy (2012), and Jeffrey Eugenides and his gender-confused protagonist in Middlesex (2002).

Lee Child’s twenty riveting Jack Reacher books, from 1997’s The Killing Floor to 2015’s Make Me, are examples of how frank displays of sexuality and vivid descriptions of violence are part and parcel of many modern thrillers, mysteries, etc. Heck, as violent as some pre-1900 novels might have been, most didn’t have quite the clinical detail of some of Reacher’s bone-crushing battles with the bad guys.

Other relatively recent novels with spasms of violence rendered in a way hard to imagine in most long-ago lit include Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985), Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy (2008-10), and Frank Bill’s Donnybrook (2013). Then again, things got rather graphic when two people were murdered by Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 classic Crime and Punishment.

Do you agree that modern literature tends to be more frank and candid? If so, what do you think of that? What are some examples of novels with fairly explicit depictions of sex or violence, and some examples of books that take a more subtle approach?

(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 “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as 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.