Reunited And It Feels So Good, Or Bad

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Many people like to connect with their past. Finding old friends via Facebook, attending high school and college reunions, perhaps even falling in love again with first loves. Or, on the non-nostalgic side, wanting to tell off old foes or feel satisfaction that you’re now doing better than them.

So it’s no surprise that fiction can be compelling when characters re-meet after many years.

Charlotte Bronte depicts such a scenario in Jane Eyre when Jane sees the aunt (Mrs. Reed) who treated her so badly years before. At the time of this visit, Jane is doing a lot better and can deal with her former nemesis almost dispassionately. Later in the novel, of course, there’s also that legendary reunion of Jane and Rochester.

In Jane Austen’s Persuasion, the thwarted relationship between Anne Elliott and Frederick Wentworth has a chance to be rekindled seven years later, and it warms the heart.

Five decades after a youthful relationship, Florentino has an opportunity to reunite with Fermina after her husband dies in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.

The adult protagonist of William Goldman’s Magic meets the woman he had a crush on when he was a loner boy and she a popular girl in school. Now he’s sort of famous and she’s flailing in life, and they reconnect in a seemingly successful way. But what ensues doesn’t exactly warm the heart.

Childhood relationships resumed in adulthood permeate Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. As a boy, the protagonist Theo sees a girl (Pippa) in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art just before the museum is bombed, and eventually meets and re-meets her — all while maintaining an unrequited love. Also, the adult Theo ends up in a mismatched engagement with the younger sister (Kitsey) of his boyhood friend Andy. And the adult Theo reconnects with an even closer boyhood friend — the brilliant/volatile Boris.

People in the military can develop such strong bonds during the trauma of war that they still have deep ties when seeing each other again. That’s illustrated in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night when Lord Peter Wimsey meets Padgett, the head porter at a women’s college who had served under Wimsey during World War I. Immediately, the two are talking as if just two minutes rather than two decades had passed.

The Count of Monte Cristo villains who framed the innocent Edmond Dantes into a long prison term don’t want to meet him many years later. But the avenging Dantes — aka The Count in Alexandre Dumas’ novel — is quite eager to “renew acquaintances.”

Also not happy is the reunion of the adult Bela with the mother (Gauri) who abandoned her as a girl years earlier in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland. Forgiveness is not always forthcoming, or possible.

Sometimes, it takes more than one book to effect a reunion — as is the case when the time-traveling Sam Fowler is separated from the 19th-century woman he loves (Cait) when he involuntarily returns to the 20th-century in Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back. The sequel Two in the Field focuses on Sam’s efforts to return to the past to find Cait.

But Dana Franklin, the African-American protagonist of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, does not enjoy being yanked back in time to keep reuniting with her white, racist, slave-holding ancestor Rufus.

Another sci-fi-ish novel, Andy Weir’s The Martian, focuses on Mark Watney’s efforts to return to his crew after he’s stranded alone on Mars. It’s an emotionally powerful plot driver, as many want-to-reunite scenarios are.

Of course, there are potential meet-agains that don’t necessarily come off. In Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, for instance, the circumstances seem ripe for the reunion of two characters who had once seemed to love each other. Widowhood has happened and they’re both in Paris, but…

Reunions don’t just apply to people. I defy anyone not to shed some tears when the cat and two dogs reunite with their humans after the animals’ lengthy/perilous wilderness trek homeward in Sheila Burnford’s The Incredible Journey. Or when dog and person meet again after years of war in L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside.

One final thought: A subtext of many fictional or real-life reunions is the poignant passage of time — something conveyed in this beautiful song.

What are some of your favorite literary works with reunion scenarios?

(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.

Female-Focused Fiction

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Compared to decades ago, today there is more fiction written by women and more literary works in which female characters significantly outnumber the male ones. Still, like almost everything else, much of literature unfortunately remains a majority-male world. So it’s especially nice when one stumbles on, or deliberately seeks out, fiction with a female focus.

And some of that literature isn’t very recent. I just read Dorothy L. Sayers’ interesting 1935 mystery Gaudy Night, which is set at a British women’s college and thus features many female students, alumnae, professors, and staffers. One of the alumnae is Harriet Vane, a well-known crime author who is asked by the college to investigate some weird goings-on in its hallowed halls.

Gaudy Night‘s frequent feminist elements are among the novel’s pleasures — which reminds me that female-dominated literature often strongly or subtly addresses women’s rights, patriarchy, sexism, mother-daughter relationships (good and bad), gender issues in the workplace, and more — usually to a greater extent than male-centric lit does.

And given that women often act differently when they’re around women rather than men, it’s interesting to see how that manifests itself in female-centric lit. (Men also often act differently when they’re around men rather than women, but that’s another story…)

Another school-set novel featuring many females is Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, in which the unconventional teacher of the book’s title is assigned six girl students who become known as “the Brodie set.”

Many other female-focused novels star sisters — whether it be two, three, four, or five of them. Among the most famous are Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Those and other multi-daughter books often feature memorable mother characters, too. (By the way, Happy Mother’s Day!)

Friendships between women also play a large role in various female-focused novels — including Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, Toni Morrison’s Sula, and Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride. While those relationships are often positive and nurturing, there are obviously some marked by jealousy and worse. For instance, The Robber Bride spotlights the wonderful long-term friendship of three women, even as a fourth woman they all know makes life hell for the trio.

Of course, novels featuring characters who are lesbian (such as Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle) or who are experimenting with lesbianism (such as Colette’s Claudine at School) usually have a strong female focus.

Then there’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, in which the friendship between co-workers Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison has a lesbian subtext that’s understated — partly because the characters are interacting in the pre-World War II American South. Fannie Flagg’s book also includes the wonderful cross-generational friendship between Evelyn Couch and Ninny Threadgoode, who meet in the novel’s 1980s present-day.

And women are the focus of many plays — including Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles and Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, to name just two.

What are your favorite female-centric works of fiction?

(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.

Why YA Novels Can Be A-One Reading

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It’s hard to define young-adult fiction or even pinpoint when it became a category known as “YA.” Heck, YA books have been around for much longer than they were called YA books, and many of them can be enjoyed by readers younger or older than the presumed target audience of preteens and teens.

But I’ll take a stab at describing YA fiction. It often stars preteen and teen characters, and is often told from their viewpoint — whether the format is first person or third person. And it deals with topics and issues that are frequently of especial interest to younger people: growing up, family, friendship, peer pressure, dating, sexuality, school, racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, cars, alcohol and drug use (or non-use), concern about looks, etc.

Also, YA novels are of course usually written somewhat more simply than grown-up books, though they’re hardly simple. In fact, some are as deep as books aimed at older adults. And YA novels are usually not super-long, though there are some exceptions.

Last week, I read The Yearling — which might be the only YA novel to win the Pulitzer Prize (in 1939, before YA books were called YA books). Yet, like much of the best YA fare, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ masterful novel is a YA book and a grown-up book. A major YA aspect is the novel’s focus on the preteen Jody Baxter, and the relationship that only child has with an orphaned pet fawn. But The Yearling also focuses a lot on Jody’s parents, and on the Baxter family’s interactions with other adults in 1870s rural Florida. Plus the author doesn’t spare readers the very harsh realities of life and death (of animals and people). Last but not least, the coming-of-age book is 400-plus pages — longer than most YA literature.

My favorite YA novel might be L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables — which mixes heartwarming, humorous, and sad moments as it chronicles the adolescent years of orphan girl Anne Shirley after she’s adopted by aging siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The many Anne sequels range from good to great, but none quite match the first novel. (This would be a good place to mention that a number of YA authors also write/wrote adult books, as did Montgomery with “The Blue Castle.”)

Other YA novels in my top 10 — or top 12-18, said by some sources to be the target age range of YA readers: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Louis Sachar’s Holes, Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I listed the above books — which can also be enjoyed by kids and adults — in random order. And, yes, most of them are not that recent. I’m sure there are many terrific YA novels published in the past few years; I just haven’t read them. 🙂

Then there are grown-up works that are sort of YA literature, too: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, etc.

Certain books can be read on two levels. For instance, younger readers thrill to Gulliver’s amazing adventures, while older readers might also admire Swift’s scathing satire. The same could be said for Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which on one level is about a cool raft trip but on another level is a serious look at racism.

I didn’t discuss certain other notable YA novels — including S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars — because I haven’t read them (yet). I’d also like to read more of Robin McKinley’s work.

What are your favorite YA or YA-ish novels, and why?

I won’t be posting a column May 1 because I’ll be in Florida for my mother’s 90th birthday. New column on May 8!

(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.

Avoiding the Classics But Not the Authors of Classics

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Some people don’t read long, challenging, and/or depressing classic novels because of time constraints and worry about feeling bored, frustrated, or sad. So, left by the wayside are Ulysses, Moby-Dick, Middlemarch, War and Peace, and various other iconic books — some of which are actually quite compelling and even entertaining.

A possible compromise: People could read the authors of classics, but read those writers’ shorter/easier works rather than the longer/tougher stuff. That approach might eventually lead readers to the longer/tougher stuff, but, even if it doesn’t, they’ve at least experienced some literary greatness.

The alternatives to reading authors’ most famous/demanding works might be in the form of novels, novellas, or short stories — with some of that work early-career efforts written before the authors jettisoned simplicity.

I thought about that last week while being riveted by a collection of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories. I had read Anna Karenina and War and Peace many years ago, and was of course impressed, but I realized that briefer Tolstoy tales might be attractive to readers who want to avoid that author’s long and very long books. Among the Russian writer’s shorter classics: “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (a grim masterpiece about a life lived too conventionally), the almost-novella-length “The Kreutzer Sonata” (an intense saga of lust, marriage, and jealousy), and the literally chilling “Master and Man.”

Moving on to other authors, I’d recommend reading James Joyce’s fairly straightforward and hauntingly sad story “The Dead” instead of/before reading Ulysses and his other brain-straining novels.

Readers who want to temporarily or permanently avoid the majestic Moby-Dick might instead try Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd or stories such as “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno” (the latter a mesmerizing slave-ship tale).

Before tackling George Eliot’s exquisite but at times slow-moving Middlemarch, readers might consider her Silas Marner — which has a bad reputation among some high-school students but is actually a very poignant short novel.

Scared of reading late-career Henry James novels (such as The Ambassadors) that are excellent but filled with dense verbiage? Try Washington Square and other absorbing earlier James works that are written quite clearly.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is an incredible novel but not the easiest book, so one alternative could be his also deep but much more linear Love in the Time of Cholera.

Before getting to Willa Cather’s beautifully written but oh-so-earnest Death Comes for the Archbishop, readers might consider something like her Shadows on the Rock — an appealing historical novel starring a daughter and her widowed father in 17th-century Quebec City.

More before-or-instead-of possibilities (with the authors’ outstanding-but-somewhat-“taxing” classics in parentheses): Toni Morrison’s Sula (Beloved), Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings), Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter), Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet (Old Goriot), Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Delight (Germinal), Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Tips story collection (The Handmaid’s Tale), Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and its sequel Pigs in Heaven (The Poisonwood Bible), and John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday (The Grapes of Wrath).

What would be some of your suggestions for less “grueling” fare by authors of classic 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.

First Meetings in Fiction

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Last week’s post was about memorable goodbyes in literature. This week, I’m flipping that around to discuss characters’ memorable first meetings — which can help hook readers early in a work of fiction.

I’ll start by again mentioning Jane Eyre, in which Charlotte Bronte’s quiet but feisty governess heroine initially encounters a galloping Rochester on a path where his horse slips and injures him. It’s significant — and portentous — that Rochester’s temporary disability puts him on a somewhat equal footing with Jane despite being her employer.

In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to help with the farm chores. When Matthew goes to the train station to meet him, the “boy” is a girl: Anne Shirley. That mistake and Matthew’s shyness make for awkward acquaintance-getting, but, before the horse-and-wagon ride home is done, the orphaned Anne wins over Matthew with her talkativeness, enthusiasm, intelligence, and (understandable) neediness.

Moving from England to Canada to France, we have German surgeon Ravic in Paris on the run from the Nazis when — in the opening page of Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph — he dramatically meets an almost catatonic Joan Madou on the street as she’s (possibly) contemplating suicide. What ensues is loosely based on Remarque’s relationship with famed actress Marlene Dietrich.

Then there’s A.S. Byatt’s Possession, in which little-known scholar Roland Michell and better-known scholar Maud Bailey meet to try to solve a long-ago mystery involving two 19th-century poets. The initial Maud-Roland encounter is somewhat strained, but things gradually warm up between the two.

Or how about the part-comedic/part-scary first meeting of Moby-Dick characters Ishmael and Queequeg when they’re forced to share the same inn room before boarding Captain Ahab’s ill-fated ship?

Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for the 1956 movie version of Herman Melville’s classic work — three years after the publication of Fahrenheit 451. In that Bradbury novel, the meeting between professional “fireman” (book burner) Guy Montag and free-thinking teen Clarisse McClellan is the spark that causes Guy to question his beliefs and what he’s doing with his life.

Another fascinating first meeting is when Kiki Belsey visits Carlene Kipps in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. Their annoying, self-centered husbands are academic and authorial rivals, yet the two women manage to carve out something of a friendship.

There are many memorable meetings in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — Dorothy coming across the Scarecrow, the two of them meeting the Tin Woodman, the three of them encountering the Cowardly Lion, the four of them meeting the Wizard, etc. (And black-and-white meets color in The Wizard of Oz movie. 🙂 )

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the title character learns he’s a wizard when meeting Hagrid; then, on the train to Hogwarts, he encounters the two people (Hermione and Ron) who will become his closest friends; then Harry is introduced to Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore; then he later meets arch-villain Lord Voldemort; and so on.

There are also first meetings — often in a continuing series of novels — that are long anticipated/delayed. For instance, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series has Jack first hearing Major Susan Turner’s voice on the phone in 61 Hours, but our curious hero doesn’t come face-to-face with that potential romantic interest until four books later, in Never Go Back. A meeting teased that long is often worth waiting for — and, in this case, it is.

An engineer visiting a Massachusetts town is also curious — about the dour, limping Ethan Frome when he first meets him in Edith Wharton’s novel. Readers soon learn about Ethan’s melancholy, tragic history.

Then there are meetings with celebrities, as when the time-traveling Sam Fowler encounters Mark Twain, President Grant, and other notables in Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back.

Not to mention difficult meetings between people who don’t understand each other’s language, as in Zhilin’s initial “conversation” with his captor in Leo Tolstoy’s tale “The Prisoner of the Caucasus.” (I’m currently reading a collection of that author’s short stories.)

What are your favorite first meetings 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.

Farewells Arm Many Novels With Dramatic Moments

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Partings are often sad and poignant, and literature is full of them. I don’t mean partings as in death, but either temporary or permanent farewells between characters who remain alive.

Those goodbyes can be spelled out in dramatically dialogued scenes, or more minimally mentioned in some narrative way by an author. The leave-takings might or might not be “for the best,” and readers wonder if the characters will meet again. Readers also think about their own real-life partings, which adds their personal emotions to the emotions evoked by the author.

Two novels that are among my favorites — Jane Eyre and The Grapes of Wrath — contain wrenching separations.

In Charlotte Bronte’s book, Jane sneaks away from Thornfield Hall after a devastating revelation convinces her that she can’t stay with Edward Rochester. There is no direct goodbye — they already said plenty during an emotionally charged conversation not many hours before — but Jane’s surreptitious departure remains a powerful scene. Plus she will be alone in the world, with no particular destination.

John Steinbeck’s novel features a meeting between Ma Joad and her in-hiding son Tom just before Tom flees to escape capture after committing a morally justifiable (but of course technically illegal) murder. A very sad encounter, made even sadder by the endless cascade of troubles that had been hitting the beleaguered Joad family for months.

Another melancholy parting, which we learn about in backstory, is between the Persuasion characters of Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth. In Jane Austen’s novel, Anne’s snobby family pressured her to break off her engagement to the admirable Frederick because he was a not-rich-enough “nobody” at the time.

There’s also the goodbye between Gwendolen Harleth and the title character of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. Gwendolen is in love with Daniel, but Daniel has just married someone else with whom he’ll be traveling far from England — perhaps for the rest of their lives. Gwendolen’s letter to Daniel in the novel’s closing pages is heartbreaking.

Another unrequited romance followed by a goodbye is part of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, in which Judith Hutter is left despondent after Natty Bumppo declines her offer of marriage. Years later, Natty thinks he sees Judith in the distance, and her life has not turned out particularly well.

Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years has Delia Grinstead leaving her husband and children — partly because they’ve been taking her for granted for a long time. In this case, Delia’s action itself is a farewell; she doesn’t literally say goodbye when she leaves to try to start a new life. Will she return?

Moving to another country can certainly set up sad family separations — as in Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, etc.

Then there are the goodbyes in times of slavery, war, and other ultra-wrenching periods. What could be worse than the inhumanly brutal forced separations of parents and their children in Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and various other novels set in the Antebellum South?

During war, we have devastating separations in such novels as Erich Maria Remarque’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, and L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside, among many other books.

Which novels contain goodbye scenarios you’ve found particularly memorable?

(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.

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.