‘The Goldfinch’ and Other Modern Masterpieces

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Are the days of very ambitious novels over? Some readers think so.

They lament that we no longer have sweeping, sprawling, often-lengthy classics like Moby-Dick (Herman Melville), War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy), Middlemarch (George Eliot), The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham), East of Eden (John Steinbeck), Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison), Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), History (Elsa Morante), and other amazing works.

Why? Those who feel the classic-novel days are finished might blame such things as anti-intellectualism (which became accentuated under the Reagan presidency of the 1980s), shorter attention spans (symbolized by MTV’s emergence in the ’80s), and the many media distractions of the digital age (which flowered starting in the 1990s with the Internet and in the 2000s with social media).

But amid the fun, shallow, and/or escapist novels published from the 1980s on (heck, there were fun, shallow, and/or escapist novels before that, too 🙂 ), there are also a number of jaw-dropping works in our modern era that are as good or nearly as good as literature’s long-ago masterpieces. These hyper-ambitious novels ask (and often answer) the big questions about life, death, love, family, friendship, art, religion, politics, violence, injustice, oppression, and more — while simultaneously offering lots of memorable characters and entertainment.

I thought of that last week after finishing Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch — an impressive, riveting, very readable, almost-Dickensian novel that might well be considered an all-time classic a century from now. Partly a coming-of-age novel, partly a thriller, partly a howl against the seeming meaninglessness of existence, partly a funny satire of upper-class frivolity, and wholly written like a dream, The Goldfinch is 771 pages of literary firepower. It’s the story of Theo Decker, and how being at the site of a terrorist attack that kills his mother profoundly affects his (ill-fated but not completely ill-fated) life — which becomes strongly connected to the renowned “The Goldfinch” painting he dazedly takes before stumbling out of the bombed museum.

In addition to Tartt’s 2013 book, there are various other late-20th-century and early-21st-century novels with transcendent, go-for-broke content. From the start of the 1980s on, I would include in that group Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, and Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, among others.

I would also include wildly popular series such as J.K. Rowling’s seven Harry Potter books — and perhaps Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and its two sequels, and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its two sequels.

Do you agree or disagree with the premise that there are some recent/relatively recent novels as great or almost as great as literature’s older iconic works? What are some novels, from the 1980s on, that you feel are the most ambitious and 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.

Literature’s Surprising Turns, Turns, Turns

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Have you ever read a novel in which the story is chugging along until the book takes a very unexpected turn?

That’s a good or bad thing, depending on the nature of the turn and how it’s handled. Surprises can be welcome and “un-boring,” but sometimes an author completely jumps the shark.

My latest encounter with a veer in the fiction sphere occurred while reading Three Junes last month. That Julia Glass novel starts off focusing on the Scottish dad Paul, a newspaperman who’s sort of interesting but not exactly Mr. Charisma. Then the second section of the book abruptly shifts to Paul’s oldest son Fenno, a gay man who left Scotland for a life in New York City. While he’s also not very dynamic, Fenno’s life and choices and interactions are more compelling to read about than Paul’s. Then, as we become used to Fenno being the protagonist, Three Junes puts the spotlight on Fern, an interesting artist type who we first met when Paul was traveling in Greece.

Going back many, many Junes — to the 19th century — we have Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit suddenly sending the English title character to America. Reportedly, Dickens did this at least partly because sales of the serialized novel’s initial installments were not going as well as those of his earlier books.

Lee Child is an Englishman who moved to America, and I experienced one of the biggest surprises of his Jack Reacher novels in Running Blind. Reacher is known as a drifter without a home or car who wanders around the U.S. after leaving the military, so it was no surprise that he happened to be in Manhattan when Running Blind began. But instead of checking in to yet another hotel, he shockingly drives to his own house in upstate New York. Turns out he inherited it from a man who was sort of a surrogate father — although Reacher does not stay domesticated for long.

Speaking of long, seeing the backstory of the Mayfair women unfold a number of chapters into Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour is not an initial surprise but then becomes one when that backstory goes on for several hundred pages. But the 300-year history is so fascinating and well told that it’s riveting to read.

Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy surprises early on when there’s virtually nothing about Rob Roy for many pages. Instead, the focus is on the character Frank Osbaldistone. In this case, my first seeing the Rob Roy movie — which put the spotlight on the title character from the start — contributed to the puzzlement.

A similar situation involved seeing the Field of Dreams film before reading the Shoeless Joe novel it was based on. I was going “what?” when J.D. Salinger showed up in the W.P. Kinsella book; he was eliminated from the movie under legal threat from the reclusive author.

Then there’s John Steinbeck’s novel-play hybrid Burning Bright, which first focuses on several circus characters. The second part disorients readers by featuring the very same characters as farmers before the third part raises our eyebrows again when the identical cast turns into a bunch of sailors.

Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin startles readers when it begins toggling between the novel itself and a fantastical/fascinating novel within the novel.

Last but not least, a number of John Irving’s novels grab your attention with odd plot twists.

What are some fictional works that take unexpected turns?

(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.)

WordPress sends each of its bloggers an annual report that mentions which people posted the most comments, how many countries visitors came from, the total number of views, which columns were the most popular, etc. Here’s the 2015 report for this blog.

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.

A Look at Intoxicating Literature

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Drinking is an important “device” in many literary works. It can feel like real life, it can be fun, it can be dramatic, it can be disastrous. And one reason why the quaffing of adult beverages is often conveyed so believably in fiction is that some authors have had plenty of personal experience with it. 🙂

Few novels are as drenched in alcoholism as Emile Zola’s The Drinking Den, in which booze sends a hardworking former teetotaler (Gervaise Macquart) into a horrible downward spiral. Liquor also plays a big role in the grim descent of Dick Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night.

Then there’s Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in which Helen escapes an awful marriage to the hard-drinking Arthur Huntington — taking their young son with her. (The last straw for Helen was Arthur encouraging the boy to imbibe.) Leaving one’s husband was quite a proto-feminist act for a novel published in 1848, when wives were basically expected to accept whatever abuse their “worser half” dished out.

Another alcoholic is Crime and Punishment’s Semyon, who’s a pathetically interesting character in his own right but more importantly the father of Sonya — the woman who becomes so important to protagonist Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel.

Plus Huck Finn’s father, whose drunkenness and destitution shape his son and are transcended by his son in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Often, drinking can be part of a memorable single scene in a novel. The wild banquet in Honore de Balzac’s The Magic Skin is vividly described, and is representative of Raphael de Valentin’s dissolution. An intense tavern scene in George Eliot’s Silas Marner features the loner title character in a state of agitation after being robbed. Anne and Diana getting soused with currant wine the girls thought was raspberry cordial is pretty darn funny in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Then there are novels in which characters are employed serving drinks. In Alistair MacLean’s Where Eagles Dare, village barmaid Heidi is actually an undercover agent for the Allied forces in World War II Germany. Julia Glass’ elegiac Three Junes has Maureen working as a barkeep when she meets Paul — after which the Scottish couple have a less-than-idyllic marriage. One of their sons moves to America, where Fenno mostly resists the gay bars of 1980s Manhattan as the AIDS scourge hits.

And the star of Grail Nights is a New Orleans bartender named Sheila whose place of business is a perfect locale for author Amanda Moores to spin one interrelated tale after another as the protagonist interacts with different people — creating a “short-story cycle as novel” a la Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. (Ms. Moores is the wife of jhNY — who, as you know, regular posts great comments here. He tells me that 100 copies of Grail Nights have been printed, signed by Ms. Moores, and numbered — and that about a dozen of those copies are being offered free to readers of this blog. If you’re interested, email me at dastor@earthlink.net and include your mailing address. I’ll give your address to jhNY, and he’ll send you the book. No postage costs, either. I read Grail Nights a couple of weeks ago, and found it enthralling and beautifully written. Plus jhNY provided the artwork for the front and back covers — with the design of the book handled by Roger Lathbury.)

Speaking of short stories, intoxication is a major factor in the macabre Edgar Allan Poe classic “The Cask of Amontillado.”

And there are countless other fictional protagonists who turn to drink when beaten down by tragedy, poverty, bigotry, disappointment, and life in general. But there are also many characters who enjoy beer, wine, or spirits in moderation — alone or in a social setting.

What are some memorable literary works you’ve read featuring alcoholics, drinking themes, and/or drinking moments?

(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 won’t be posting a column on Dec. 27 because of a trip, but will occasionally check the blog that week to respond to comments. Back with another column on Jan. 3!

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.

If You Were Trying to Convince People to Read Fiction, What Would You Say?

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Most people who follow this blog are avid fans of literature. But we all have family and friends who don’t read any or much fiction — unless they stumble across a Donald Trump speech. 🙂

Everyone has their own interests and time constraints, so I never harangue the book-averse for not reading more novels. You’re probably the same way. But what if you hypothetically took aside people who don’t read literature and tried to convince them to do so? What would you say? What arguments would you use? (And I don’t mean threatening to smack them with a hardcover copy of War and Peace.) This column will consist of my hypothetical talking points, and then I’ll ask for yours.

I would tell the book-averse that reading fiction is fun and entertaining — as well as relaxing in some cases and exciting in other cases.

Educational, too. You learn about different locales (in the U.S. or abroad or even outer space), you learn about different cultures, and you learn about different time periods. You also learn about things that are a little harder to pin down — such as the variety of human emotions.

Literature can also be comforting. There’s something soothing about letting your mind go to another mental place, and about realizing that people from thousands of miles away or centuries ago might have similar thoughts as you. Part of this can involve learning from history so we’re not doomed to repeat it, to paraphrase the famous phrase attributed to George Santayana — whose writing included fiction.

Not soothing but also very important is how literature can take us OUT of our comfort zone and challenge us to look at things in a different way than we’re accustomed to.

Can you get all of the above from, say, watching TV programs or movies? Some of it. Yet images on a screen SHOW you things; you don’t use your imagination as much as you do when seeing things only in your mind’s eye when reading.

On a more prosaic level, reading fiction will give you interesting things to talk about (at parties and elsewhere) — including lines like: “Harumph — I just saw yet another film not as good as the novel it’s based on.” 🙂

And reading literature means you’re monetarily supporting some very creative author minds. Not to mention helping independent bookstores, if that’s how you roll when shopping for fictional works.

When hypothetically trying to convince people to read literature, it wouldn’t hurt to urge them to start with popular page-turners — and then hope those readers eventually throw some older or modern classics into the mix.

I realize much of what I said in this piece is obvious, but…okay, okay…books are also good for propping up the legs of uneven tables. Unless you use a Kindle, which might not do as well in that table-leveling capacity…

What would you tell literature-avoiding family members or friends to try to get them in fiction-reading mode?

(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.

A Transportation Compilation

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It’s the holiday season, and that often means traveling in planes, trains, and automobiles — to reference the title of a 1987 movie.

Well, I once wrote about cars in literature, so I’ll focus this post on fiction’s planes and trains — and throw in a few buses, too!

Of course, lots of literature has characters taking incidental flights or railroad rides to get somewhere, but this piece will focus on plane or train appearances that are important to the story. And I’ll keep in mind that fiction published before a certain 1903 invention by the Wright Brothers featured more trains than planes. I wonder why? 🙂

Emile Zola’s riveting 1890 novel The Beast in Man practically stars a train. Driving that majestic locomotive is troubled Jacques Lantier — whose train and life both end up crashing. Speaking of 19th-century literature, a train also plays a VERY major role in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Tracks continued to appear in 20th- and 21st-century fiction. For instance, a train wreck in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake causes a survivor to name his son Gogol, because that’s who the father was reading when the accident occurred. Also, authorities covered up their massacre of many banana workers by secretly carrying the bodies away by rail and tossing them in the sea — a real-life 1928 atrocity devastatingly recounted in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. And it’s hard to forget Agatha Christie’s mystery classic Murder on the Orient Express.

On a less grisly note, the Hogwarts Express is a big player in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. That train takes students from London to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and it’s where Harry first meets his pals Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley — not to mention Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin boy with whom he’ll have many tangles over the course of seven books.

In Darryl Brock’s page-turning baseball novel If I Never Get Back, a train figures prominently when 20th-century protagonist Sam Fowler travels back in time to 1869. Later in the book, Sam meets Mark Twain on another train and then eventually takes a long, arduous 19th-century rail trip from Cincinnati to the West Coast. If only Sam could have flown…

Heck, if only the Bundren family could have flown when transporting the coffin of wife and mother Addie to her grave. But not having a harrowing land journey would have made for a much different As I Lay Dying, the tour de force novel by William Faulkner.

Which leads us to planes.

A past flight mishap in Alaska is one reason why the title character in Stanley Elkin’s The Rabbi of Lud doesn’t want to leave his New Jersey town despite the fact that it’s mostly “populated” by the buried dead (not Addie Bundren, though). Larry Darrell in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge seeks the meaning of life after being traumatized by his World War I pilot experiences. Wally Worthington’s military plane is shot down in John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, and his being injured and missing for a long time has a profound effect on the plot and other characters.

Then there’s Richard Matheson’s iconic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” story — perhaps best known as a Twilight Zone episode starring a pre-Star Trek William Shatner — that will make anyone terrified of looking out a plane window. And Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s brother Robert Serling wrote several novels with aviation themes, including The President’s Plane Is Missing and Stewardess.

Plane rides are also important in several Jack Reacher novels. Without Fail, for instance, has an airborne Reacher getting a chance to talk with America’s vice president-elect after Jack and others are assigned to protect him from very real assassination attempts.

Reacher and other forms of transportation? There’s a suicidal New York City subway scene in Gone Tomorrow you won’t soon forget. And Lee Child’s drifter protagonist has ridden quite a few buses — in 61 Hours, for instance. Which reminds me of John Steinbeck’s quirky novel The Wayward Bus.

Planes, trains, and buses of course also appear in many children’s books — such as Richard Scarry’s A Day at the Airport, The Little Engine That Could (of which the best-known version is by “Watty Piper”), The Railway Series (by Wilbert Awdry and Christopher Awdry) that stars Thomas the Tank Engine of later television fame, and The Magic School Bus books (by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen) that also got the TV treatment.

Of course, one could emulate the great band Rush and fly without being on a plane, but I don’t recommend it without a good special-effects person. Watch this very ’80s video and see. 🙂

What are you favorite fictional works featuring the transportation modes I mentioned?

(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.)

On Dec. 5, Brian Bess kindly posted a review (unsolicited!) of my 2012 memoir Comic (and Column) Confessional. As readers of this blog know, Brian frequently posts excellent comments here — and his book reviews are equally terrific!

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.

Seeing or Not Seeing Authors’ Lives in Their Books

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When we read fiction, how much do we see of an author’s life situation, personality, emotions, and neuroses? Her or his happiness or unhappiness?

In a way, all fiction is somewhat autobiographical, because the content is emerging from and filtered through the author’s brain. Even “neutral” facts can be given a spin that’s individual to each writer. Yet it’s interesting how much or how little a particular literary work reflects its author’s psyche.

Case in point: Edgar Allan Poe was often depressed, haunted, frustrated, and broke — with much of his brilliantly disturbing work reflecting that state of mind. Similar situation for another accomplished horror writer: the Poe-admiring H.P. Lovecraft.

But we’re not just talking about masters of the macabre. The fact that Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath had bouts of depression is apparent in their writing, whether directly or indirectly. For instance, there’s something of Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway‘s suicidal Septimus Smith character.

Also, the melancholy of loner protagonist Lucy Snowe in the melancholy Villette novel is clearly a reflection of Charlotte Bronte’s devastation at having lost her siblings Emily and Anne.

Then of course there’s Fyodor Dostoyevsky — whose near-execution, imprisonment, health issues, and money problems profoundly influenced his darkly transcendent writing.

And Erich Maria Remarque’s traumatic World War I experiences, departure from Germany after the Nazis publicly burned his anti-war novels, and devastating knowledge that the Third Reich beheaded his youngest sister Elfriede (partly to punish Erich) all had a major impact on his riveting, heartbreaking novels.

Having a mentally husband may have been one of the factors indirectly contributing to the downbeat nature of some of Edith Wharton’s great novels.

L.M. Montgomery also had a mentally ill husband — and sued her publisher AND became somewhat tired of writing the many Anne of Green Gables sequels her adoring readers wanted. Yet while Montgomery included harsh realities in her novels, many of the chapters were quite sunny. Obviously, countless authors write at least somewhat about how they (and their readers) would like life to be — putting wish fulfillment in the pages they produce.

Another example of that would be Jane Austen, whose life wasn’t as cheery as that of the couples experiencing happy endings in her novels. Yet Austen was of course not totally sentimental in her books; some of her characters never became content, and she often depicted sadness, death, hypocrisy, materialism, and other negative things.

Then there are authors who seem happy — with some of those writers creating upbeat work and others going darker. An example of the latter would be Stephen King, who’s rich and famous and seemingly well-adjusted yet continues tapping inner demons to write his scary/spooky stuff. But, like almost everyone, King’s life has not been without difficulties — including early struggles to get published, being wrongly considered just a mass-market writer when he also has some literary chops, and getting badly hurt in 1999 when a vehicle hit him as he walked.

Charles Dickens’ adult life was also full of wealth and success, but the author never forgot the childhood trauma of having his father and other family members thrown into debtors’ prison. All of which could help explain the mix of hilarity and calamity in many of Dickens’ novels.

Finally, we can’t forget how the racism, sexism, and/or homophobia experienced by various authors sparked legitimate anger that often showed up overtly or covertly in their work. Think of novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Drabble, Marge Piercy, Rita Mae Brown, and many others.

Who are your favorite authors whose personalities, feelings, life situations, etc., match or don’t match their fictional works? What are some of those works?

Thanks to “Clairdelune” for inspiring the idea for this column!

(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.

Dysfunctional Families in Literature

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As Thanksgiving Day nears, thoughts turn to tender family bonds. People will gather with those dear to them, and be bathed in the love emanating from their parents, siblings, children, and various relatives.

Yeah, right.

Ideal, heartwarming, Norman Rockwell-ish Thanksgiving gatherings do exist — and it’s wonderful when they happen. But many a family resides in the dysfunctional spectrum, so I’ll perversely mark Turkey Day 2015 by discussing fictional kin that put the flaw in flawed — and not just on the fourth Thursday of November.

Dysfunctional families in literature are hard to resist for several reasons. Reading about negative dynamics is often more interesting and dramatic than reading about positive stuff. Leo Tolstoy kind of addressed that when he opened Anna Karenina with this line: “All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I don’t agree with the first part of that sentiment, but…

Also, we might have a satisfying feeling of superiority if our real-life families are (allegedly) more together than the train-wreck households we see in some novels. And we might learn something from literature about how to avoid or reduce dysfunction in our own clans.

What causes real or fictional families to live lives of not-so-quiet disapprobation? The reasons can include financial stress, mental issues, medical problems, drunkenness, drug addiction, infidelity, tragic events, sibling rivalry/jealousy, couples being mismatched, parents raised by problematic parents who repeat the pattern by problematically raising their own progeny, parents who want their children to be like them rather than let them be themselves, parents who are too strict, parents who play favorites with their kids (perhaps for sexist reasons), and so on.

Families that range from troubled to totally cray-cray abound in quite a few older novels now considered classics. Among those books are Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Herman Melville’s Pierre, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Emile Zola’s The Drinking Den, Henry James’ Washington Square, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain.

Dysfunctional families also frequent a number of more recent novels, including Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast, Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story, Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour, Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years, Margaret Drabble’s The Witch of Exmoor, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland.

With the rise of modern psychology, novelists these days have even more tools to depict and dissect troubled relationships and try to address the Rodney King-like plea of why we can’t just get along.

Heck, some households this week might even spar about roast turkeys vs. Tofurky vegetarian roasts. 🙂

Which of literature’s dysfunctional families have you found 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.

Literary Fiction vs. Popular Fiction: a Big or Not-So-Big Divide?

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Fiction is often described as either “literary” or “popular.” But the lines are often blurry between those two categories — and between authors associated with each category.

I read and love fiction in both categories, and I’m sure most of you do, too. Actually, many a novel is both literary and mass-audience-oriented — making the so-called divide rather artificial (snobbish?) and perhaps unnecessary. Even books that are clearly in one category or the other might be by authors who wrote different works that belong in the opposite category.

Before I get into specific titles, I want to discuss the difference between literary and popular fiction — when they are indeed different. Popular fiction of course often sells better (though not always), but what about the content?

I’m generalizing here, and there are many exceptions, but the best literary fiction has excellent prose, psychological complexity, characters who are finely drawn and nuanced (not totally good or bad), some challenging aspects (such as stories that don’t unfold chronologically), and frequently ambiguous endings, among other elements.

Popular fiction might or might not be very well-written; is often linear, fun, plot-oriented, action-packed, and sentimental; might confirm a reader’s worldview rather than question it; and so on.

Genre fiction such as mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, thriller, and romance novels often get placed in the popular category even though some specific books in those categories have plenty of literary moments.

I would add that many book lovers intuitively know the difference between literary and popular fiction when they see it, even if they can’t always articulate the specifics defining each category.

This topic occurred to me as I’ve been reading Anne Rice for the first time this month. Rice is considered a popular-fiction writer, but her 965-page The Witching Hour has many passages that feel literary. One of many examples from the novel: “When the sun had vanished, a great fiery layer lay upon the horizon from end to end of the world. That lasted perhaps an hour and then the sky was but a pale pink and at last a deep blue, blue as the sea.” Plus The Witching Hour interestingly bounces around in time — including an extended section that starts in 1689 and takes readers through 300 years of the Mayfair family and how some of its women seemingly possess supernatural powers.

Stephen King is another prominent author who comes to mind when discussing a mass-audience approach, but the guy clearly has literary chops, too. For instance, his From a Buick 8 is a writing gem that’s popular fiction yet transcends popular fiction.

Among the many other novels I feel straddle the popular/literary divide are Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Colette’s The Vagabond, Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Erich Maria Remarque’s The Black Obelisk, Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye, James Clavell’s Shogun, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, and most fiction works by Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and John Irving, to name a few boundary-crossing authors.

In countless cases, authors get deeper and more literary as their careers go on. Herman Melville first penned mass-audience novels like Typee before entering heavier territory with novels such as Moby-Dick and short stories such as Bartleby, the Scrivener. Robert Louis Stevenson was known for popular fiction like Treasure Island and popular/literary hybrids like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde before becoming quite literary with his exquisite final unfinished novel Weir of Hermiston.

One can also see how authors’ later writing matured when comparing J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit with his subsequent The Lord of the Rings, and when contrasting J.K. Rowling’s first two Harry Potter books with the more complex installments that followed.

Of course, there are terrific popular-fiction authors (such as Lee Child and John Grisham) who offer readers only the occasional literary flourish. And there are iconic literary authors (like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison) who are almost never boring amid their brilliance — meaning they’re sort of popular-fiction writers, too.

What are your thoughts about the literary fiction/popular fiction divide? What is it about the content of a novel that places it in either category? Which literary-fiction authors write/wrote some popular fiction? Which popular-fiction authors write/wrote some literary fiction? Or combine the two approaches in one novel? What are some of those hybrid 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.

Odd Job Is Not Just a James Bond Villain

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Literature is full of professions such as doctors and lawyers and teachers, but some protagonists have more unusual jobs. What are some examples of that?

Well, Tom Sherbourne is a lighthouse keeper in M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans, and priests Lankester Merrin and Damien Karras of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist double as exorcist guys (the priests between oceans…of pea soup).

Of course, fictional characters’ unusual jobs are only a small part of what makes a fascinating novel fascinating, but they do add some…fascination. Heck, readers are curious about the logistics of jobs they never or rarely run across in real life. And of course what protagonists do for a living sheds some light (not just from a lighthouse) on their personalities and needs. For instance, Sherbourne at first welcomes the isolated nature of the lighthouse-keeper position after being traumatized by his war experiences.

Another isolated and relatively rare profession is held by Jean in Morag Joss’ Half-Broken Things. She’s a long-term house sitter — who’s not alone for long in her managed mansion of the moment.

The job of park ranger is not super rare, but it’s certainly not as plentiful a profession as many others. One memorable person holding that position is Deanna Wolfe in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.

Then there’s Robert Paterson’s job (actually, more a hobby) that takes him to cemeteries rather than parks to re-engrave the tombstones of Covenanter martyrs. Based on a real-life person, Paterson appears in Sir Walter Scott’s Old Mortality.

There are also fictional professions in fiction. Ephraim Gursky is basically a Jewish Eskimo (if one can call that a profession!) for a while in Mordecai Richler’s Solomon Gursky Was Here. His mom might have plaintively asked, “Ephie, you couldn’t have been a doctor or lawyer?”

Or how about the “fireman” in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? Nope, not the kind of firefighter who puts out blazes, but the kind who torches books — as Guy Montag does in the novel until he questions his role in obliterating literature and other accumulated knowledge.

Another fictional (in more ways than one) profession is that of “literary detective” Thursday Next in Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. Ms. Next even pursues a criminal into the pages of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre by traveling through “The Prose Portal.”

In sci-fi and speculative fiction, professions can get real interesting. Crake of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is a geneticist — a normal-enough job — but he’s actually more of a mad scientist who practically wipes out the human race while creating a new race of beings called the Crakers.

There are also jobs that are not so unusual, but only occasionally found in works of fiction. For instance, Anne Lamott’s Blue Shoe includes an exterminator — who’s so averse to killing living things that he quits after arriving at the house of protagonist Mattie. Daniel basically ends up working as a handyman after that.

And there are jobs that now seem unusual but weren’t so offbeat back in the day. An example of that would be Queequeg as a harpoonist in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Or how about jobs that were formerly almost always held by men and thus catch our attention when held by women — as was the case with circa-World War II characters who ran a filling station in Fannie Flagg’s appropriately titled The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion. (Well, a better title would have had “Woman” in it rather than “Girl.”)

What are some unusual jobs you remember from your fiction reading?

(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.

Stack to the Future

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Most of you who comment here are avid fiction readers. To misquote an Oscar-accepting Sally Field, “You like novels; you really, really like novels!” As do I. 🙂

But even literature lovers don’t have enough hours in their busy lives to read more than a modest percentage of excellent authors, dead or living. “So many books, so little time,” as Frank Zappa observed. In the back of our brains, we’re nagged by the thoughts of writers unread. Getting to their novels is among our New Year’s resolutions for 2016, 2017, the year 2525*, and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine year of 802,701 — when the last new episode of The Simpsons finally aired. (*Old pop song reference.)

Heck, I’ve annually read 50 or so novels during much of my adult life, yet there are still countless authors I’ve never had a chance to try. I’m sure most of you have a similar lament.

But with the help of your recommendations, I’ve made a dent in my author no-shows since I began blogging about books in 2011 (and I’ve also read a higher percentage of 20th- and 21st-century writers after years of often focusing on 19th-century ones). Writers I finally experienced for the first time included — among others — Isabel Allende, Paul Auster, Geraldine Brooks, Rite Mae Brown, A.S. Byatt, Eleanor Catton, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, James Fenimore Cooper, Don DeLillo, Junot Diaz, Harriet Doerr, Margaret Drabble, Jeffrey Eugenides, Fannie Flagg, Neil Gaiman, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nikolai Gogol, Nadine Gordimer, Graham Greene, John Grisham, Khaled Hosseini, James Joyce, Anne Lamott, Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Stieg Larsson, Billie Letts, H.P. Lovecraft, Alistair MacLean, Robin McKinley, Elsa Morante, V.S. Naipaul, Patrick O’Brian, Walker Percy, Arundhati Roy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Lisa Scottoline, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Zadie Smith, Wole Soyinka, Colm Toibin, John Kennedy Toole, William Trevor, John Updike, Mario Vargas Lllosa, Robert Walser, and P.G. Wodehouse. (So many names listed, so little time to read a bloated paragraph like this one. 🙂 )

Trying to end the gaps in one’s reading can mean not having the time to reread many of our favorite books and authors — so there’s some downside to ringing in the new. (As in not Lord-of-the-Ringing in the old; I’ve read J.R.R. Tolkien’s terrific trilogy several times.) Also, we may feel pulled to read mostly shorter novels, but I still include medium-long and long-long books in the mix. And we may feel the impulse to read just one novel by an author before moving on to another author, rather than explore a specific writer’s canon for a while. (Okay, okay, I can’t stop reading Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books!)

Authors on my future read-for-the-first-time list? Anne Rice is one; I’m about to start The Witching Hour. I’ll also hopefully get to — among others — Thomas Berger, Octavia Butler, Paulo Coelho, Joan Didion, Stanley Elkin, John Fowles, John Green, Hermann Hesse, Tony Hillerman, P.D. James, John D. MacDonald, Thomas Mann, James Michener, Liane Moriarty, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Terry Pratchett, Ayn Rand (for morbid curiosity reasons), Donna Tartt, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, George Sand, Alexander McCall Smith, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (who should have also written Little Library on the Prairie 🙂 ).

There’s one aforementioned author I’ve read so far only in short-story form: James Joyce and his memorable near-novella “The Dead.” Which means I really ought to try one of his full-length fiction works (Ulysses?). Then again, if I’m not up for that challenge, surely there must be a novelization of TV’s Here Comes Honey Boo Boo…

Which authors are you eager to try for the first time?

(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.