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.

From Kid to Post-Kid

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Many novels telescope their stories into a few years, a few days, or even a few hours. But other books take the protagonists from childhood well into adulthood, and it can be quite compelling.

Following characters from kid to post-kid can help us see what makes them “tick.” How were their personalities shaped by parents, siblings, and other people they encountered when babies, toddlers, tykes, and teens? How did factors such as household income, school, first love, etc., turn them into adults who were happy or sad, optimistic or pessimistic, nice or nasty, leaders or followers, and so on? Meanwhile, we compare our own remembered childhoods with the characters’ fictional upbringings.

Also, we’re hopefully impressed with an author’s skill in depicting the formative years — a skill that includes getting inside the head of a kid and then inside the head of that kid as a grown-up, with all the dialogue differences and other nuances necessary to show those respective stages of life.

Lots of novels chronicle the child-to-adult transition in a chronological way, but there are of course many books that look at a protagonist’s youthful years in flashbacks. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye is among countless examples of the latter.

W. Somerset Maugham’s riveting Of Human Bondage devotes many pages to showing the orphaned Philip Carey as a kid and teen: getting raised by his narrow-minded/religious uncle and meek aunt, living a sheltered life that includes little contact with girls, dealing with ridicule for having a clubfoot, etc. Philip is a kind person, but those trying formative years also make him an insecure person with low self-esteem — and thus have a major impact on how he behaves as an adult. Most notably, he falls for a shallow woman totally wrong for him, and behaves embarrassingly.

Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is also semi-autobiographical (note how CD’s initials are reversed to DC) as the protagonist goes from boy to man. David’s difficult upbringing is undoubtedly a big reason why he makes some questionable life choices as he grows older, but, as is often the case with Dickens novels, things tend to work out well in the end (at least for some characters).

Charlotte Bronte’s Villette opens with protagonist Lucy Snowe as a girl, during an extended stay at her godmother’s home. The scenes there are crucial in giving readers insight into Lucy’s personality — she’s a (mostly) self-reliant loner — and we meet several people she’ll encounter again as an adult.

There are also kid-to-adult novels starring siblings, with much of the drama created by those characters being mismatched. For instance, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss features the appealing Maggie and her unappealing brother Tom, who often treats Maggie badly when they’re kids and when they’re adults in a 19th-century England that’s depressingly patriarchal. Their tragic “reconciliation” is made even more intense by how we’ve known the siblings since their childhood.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland starts with the boyhood years of brothers who are timid (Subhash) and daring (Udayan). We figure those traits will remain when both grow up, but are still fascinated with how that manifests itself in later chapters. Udayan becomes a revolutionary, and Subhash picks up the pieces of Udayan’s life.

Where a kid resides also has a major impact on her or his development. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Lacuna, Harrison spends part of his childhood with his mother in Mexico. That leads to eventual employment with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and the exiled Leon Trotsky (though Harrison is not particularly political) and then to getting hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Harrison’s life is ruined — or is it?

Among the many other novels with memorable kid-to-adult segues are Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (in the persons of Celie and Nettie), Toni Morrison’s Sula (Sula and Nel), Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (Clyde), Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (gender-confused kid who finds some clarity over the years), and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (from Afghanistan to the U.S. back to Afghanistan back to the U.S.).

Of course, the kid-to-adult transition can play out over several novels, not just one. A memorable example of that is L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and its many sequels that take Anne from preadolescence to teenhood to young adulthood to middle age.

What are your favorite novels in which the protagonist ages from child to grown-up?

(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.

When Readers Finally Enjoy Their Masterpiece Theater

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Oftentimes, we read an author’s best and/or most famous novel before moving on to her or his other works. This can be a personal choice, or the result of assigned reading from our school days — when teachers introduced us to top novels such as Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, etc.

But sometimes we don’t read an author’s best and/or most famous novel first, and the reasons vary. Maybe we want to experience an author chronologically, to see how her or his writing style developed from the first novel on. Or perhaps we want to first read a short book by an author, to sample how we feel about the writer’s prose prowess. Or maybe we want to initially try a book less challenging than the author’s masterpiece. Or perhaps we mostly use the library rather than buy books, so we’re at the mercy of what’s on the shelves at the time.

Whatever the reason, if we end up liking an author before reading her or his top effort, we have an even greater sense of anticipation as we at last start the writer’s most transcendent title.

I thought about all this last week when I finally began Of Human Bondage — widely considered the best of W. Somerset Maugham’s many novels. OHB is always checked out of my local library, I don’t have much of a book-buying budget, and I don’t use a Kindle, so during the past couple of years I instead read the Maugham novels my library did have on its shelves: The Razor’s Edge, The Painted Veil, The Moon and Sixpence, and Cakes and Ale. All excellent books, so I figured if the much longer OHB has an even better reputation, it must be great indeed. And after reading a good chunk of OHB this week, I’m VERY impressed so far.

In other cases, I tried various authors’ shortest or near-shortest novels before deciding whether to tackle their longer iconic works. For instance, the first George Eliot book I read was the 200-something-page Silas Marner, which I loved so much that I quickly polished off much of that author’s longer fiction. Middlemarch is considered her masterpiece — and it is indeed a magnificent accomplishment — but Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda also approach that rarefied level of quality.

I chose Ethan Frome as my first Edith Wharton book because it was a novella, and it packed such an emotional wallop that I quickly moved on to that writer’s two best (and lengthier) works of fiction: The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth.

Same for Henry James, whose short The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller got me interested enough to read that author’s widely acclaimed The Portrait of a Lady and his lesser-known but subtly masterful The Ambassadors. Both are many-paged novels.

While many people read Charles Dickens’ short A Christmas Carol before segueing into his longer and more intricate fiction, I eased into Dickens with the not-hard The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club — which was not only the author’s first novel but has the reputation of being his funniest. It is indeed hilarious.

For which authors did you read the best and/or most famous novel first? For which authors did you take a different reading route — and why?

(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.

‘Bring Out Your Dead!’

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For a long time, I’ve wanted to write a blog post about some of literature’s most memorable deaths and death scenes. But there was a “spoiler” problem: I would be revealing very important plot developments, and those who hadn’t read the fictional works in question might avenge my indiscretion by creating a real-life death — mine. 🙂

Yet I’m going to risk The Grim Reaper today and tackle this mortal topic. As one does with cremated remains, I’ll liberally scatter spoiler alerts throughout this post. Also, I’ll bury the names of the characters I discuss — as in mostly not giving those names. And I’ll camouflage things in other ways, as one might cover a coffin with dirt. Finally, I’ll consider hiring 24-hour security in case I angered anyone with this paragraph’s tasteless wordplay about death. (Of course, 24-hour security leaves a person unprotected during the other 144 hours in a week…)

First some general thoughts: Death is a tragic/dramatic subject almost like catnip to authors — a subject that can make plots highly interesting, both in terms of the deceased and the way survivors react to the character being gone. In short, a death is a way to potentially grab the attention of readers, who may also relate what they’re seeing fictionally to the real-life deaths of people they knew and to their own inevitable demise.

More general thoughts: Literature of course usually reflects the time in which it’s written. So in pre-20th-century fiction, many characters died of diseases that would become curable in our modern age. Then, from roughly World War I on, weaponry became VERY lethal — meaning more characters died on the battlefield or as civilian “collateral damage” (I hate that dehumanizing term). But one can’t totally generalize. After all, America’s Civil War was a carnage nightmare, and many people today still die of curable diseases in the poorer parts of the U.S. and world.

In Jane Eyre (skip this paragraph if you haven’t read Charlotte Bronte’s novel!), there are several deaths crucial to the story. Among them is the passing of an almost saintly student, whose masterfully depicted demise is not only heartbreaking but helps lead the Lowood institution to be run in a healthier way — and perhaps saves Jane from eventually dying there, too. Another death, of an adult woman near the end of the novel, is very dramatic (think fire and roof) and makes all the difference for Jane and her former fiance Rochester.

Louisa May Alcott’s also-19th-century Little Women (those who haven’t read it drop your laptop or mobile device NOW!) features the poignant passing of one of the four young March sisters. The event is especially wrenching because the dying sister is so darn nice — even knitting stuff in her sickroom to give to children passing by the window. And her death, not surprisingly, makes her surviving sisters more resolved to do good and appreciate life to the fullest.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (your watching eyes need an immediate screen break if you haven’t read that novel!), Janie Crawford’s third husband is a mixed bag but much better than her first two spouses. Then, while heroically saving Janie from danger, something happens to this charismatic guy that soon kills him. Hard to see a silver lining in that, but Janie sort of personifies the struggles and resilience of African-American women.

The main character in Emile Zola’s Nana is not admirable, though her difficult childhood certainly helps explain that. (Zola was French, so non-Nana readers should now take a spoiler-avoiding trip to Paris!) Anyway, after the protagonist’s death in that novel, a queasy and striking scene ensues — a scene designed to say a lot about not only the deceased individual but about France as a whole.

Tragic, watery suicides depicted in riveting fashion? Your go-to novels include (get a snack this second if you haven’t read Kate Chopin or Jack London!) The Awakening and Martin Eden.

(If need be, stay in the kitchen for another snack instead of reading the next two paragraphs!)

Other fictional passings that will stay with you include the deaths of two siblings in George Eliot’s magnificent The Mill on the Floss; the deaths of a saintly slave and an angelic girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s gripping Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the lingering demise of the wilderness-loving loner in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie (the fifth and final novel of that author’s compelling “Leatherstocking” series); and the killing of a girl in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. (There are of course countless fictional murders in general fiction and especially in genre fiction such as mysteries.)

Also, there are the killings of Mexican priests (including a particular one) in Graham Greene’s desolate/absorbing The Power and the Glory; various deaths in Alexandre Dumas’ stirring The Count of Monte Cristo (shedding their mortal coil are Edmond Dantes’ mentor/fellow prisoner and the evil guys who framed the innocent Dantes); and the death of a soldier in Erich Maria Remarque’s heartbreaking A Time to Love and a Time to Die. (Hmm…that last title certainly telegraphs a character’s fate, as do the titles of novels such as Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop and Colette’s The Last of Cheri.)

Obviously, I’ve barely scratched the surface in this post. Let’s take this six feet under with your examples of memorable deaths and death scenes in literature. It’s up to you how much of a spoiler alert you want to include with your comments. 🙂

My headline of course references this famous Monty Python scene.

(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.

Dealing With End-of-Reading Melancholy

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I just finished reading my 13th Jack Reacher book, and am feeling kind of sad. Is it because Running Blind included several innocent people being killed? Is it because Jack’s girlfriend Jodie was in possible danger? Is it because Jack visited New York City’s doomed World Trade Center in the 2000 novel? Is it because the roaming Reacher was implausibly living in a house and even (gasp!) paying utility bills as the book began? Well, yes — but I’m also feeling sad because in a few months there will be no more Reacher novels for me to enjoy.

It wasn’t until 2014 that I began reading the 1997-launched series, after several commenters here enthusiastically recommended Lee Child’s thrillers. (Thank you!) Since then, I’ve polished off roughly one Reacher book a month (but not chronologically; I take out whichever titles my local library has at the time).

The sadness thing? Now that I’ve finished Running Blind, there are only seven of Child’s 20 novels left for me to read — at least until the 21st comes out! I’m so addicted to the series — reaching for Reacher every four or five books (while making sure I don’t neglect more literary fare) — that I’ll profoundly miss it. Rereading is a possibility, of course, but that’s not as satisfying as a first read.

All of this is a long-winded way of introducing today’s column theme: As wonderful as it is to read fiction, there’s also some melancholy when one completes every published book in a series. Or when one finishes every novel by a great deceased author who will obviously write no more. Or even when one finishes a very absorbing novel lengthy enough to be called a door stop. I’m going to talk about that melancholy, and about how to get over it.

I remember how unhappy I was when finishing the seventh and final Harry Potter book in 2007. That fantastic series was over! 😦 But at least there were three of the excellent HP movies still to come. Another silver lining was rereading J.K. Rowling’s series within a two-month span, which helped me see clues and connections more clearly than when I read each of the seven books as they were published a year or more apart.

A different silver lining arose after I read 11 out of Willa Cather’s 12 novels. Those 11 ranged from good to great (My Antonia being among the latter), and I was feeling downbeat about nearing the end of Cather’s fiction-book canon. Then I started reading her last novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, and found it to be such a dud that I suddenly had my psychological fill of that author’s longer works.

Still, I eventually satisfied my Cather craving by reading one of her excellent short-story collections — which is a way of easing the sadness of having none of a particular writer’s novels left to enjoy. I also turned to a Margaret Atwood short-story collection after reading all the great Atwood novels my local library stocked. In addition, one can turn to a writer’s poems, plays, nonfiction, and other works when the novels have all been perused.

With John Steinbeck, I found that reading three of his lesser novels (Cup of Gold, To a God Unknown, and Burning Bright) helped me move on to other authors despite the lingering glow from top Steinbeck books such as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

Long books? One example of a massive novel that felt sad to let go is James Clavell’s thousand-page Shogun, which wonderfully places a reader in another time and place (circa-1600 Japan) for many days. But my next book adventure — Fannie Flagg’s terrific Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe — soon had me immersed in another world.

Ultimately, the best way to escape the sadness of ending a particular literary “journey” is of course to start reading another great series, author canon, or novel. 🙂

Which series, author canons, and long books were you especially sorry to see end? How did you deal with that sad feeling?

(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.)

Two recent appearances:

This summer, I was filmed and interviewed for 20 or so minutes about my former life covering famous cartoonists and columnists for a magazine. I talked about Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”), Jim Davis (“Garfield”), Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), Stan Lee (“Spider-Man”), Ann Landers, “Dear Abby,” and others. The video, posted on Sept. 28, is from talented Canadian multimedia guy Dan St.Yves.

And last month I was taped for the “Robin’s Nest” show on Montclair, New Jersey’s TV34. The half-hour program began airing Oct. 2, and I appear in the first 10 minutes discussing my weekly “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column (which runs in The Montclair Times) and other topics. This literature blog is mentioned briefly on the show, which is hosted by the also-talented Robin Ehrlichman Woods.

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.

Comparing the Not So Comparable

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Do you ever play intellectual games with books? For me, this sometimes involves trying to find the similarities between two very different novels I’ve read consecutively or fairly close together. Why do I do this? I don’t know — it’s sort of fun.

For instance, the last two novels I read were Lisa Scottoline’s The Vendetta Defense and Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus. The first is a start-of-the-21st-century legal thriller about a long-delayed revenge killing, while the other is a 1950s class-differences story with nothing more violent than a hard-fought tennis match.

So what possible connections are there between those two books? Well, both focus on a certain group of people — Italian-Americans in The Vendetta Defense and Jewish characters in Goodbye, Columbus. Each features a romantic couple who seem somewhat mismatched — lawyer Judy Carrier and stonemason Frank Lucia in Scottoline’s novel, and lower-middle-class Neil Klugman and upper-class Brenda Patimkin in Roth’s novel. Both books are essentially serious but have plenty of humor. And they share a palpable sense of place — Philadelphia and its environs in The Vendetta Defense and Essex County, N.J.’s gritty Newark and affluent Short Hills in Goodbye, Columbus. Heck, my Essex County town of Montclair is mentioned and disparaged twice in Roth’s book. Thanks, Philip!

Last year, I reread George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov back-to-back. (How did I remember it was back-to-back? I keep a list! 🙂 ) What those books share is length (lots of it!), some slow pages that are more than made up for by many brilliant pages, and authors with virtually concurrent life spans (Eliot 1819-1880 and Dostoyevsky 1821-1881). On a deeper level, both novels depict interesting sibling relationships, bad marriages, some questionable moral choices, profound thoughts about religion and religious hypocrisy, etc. Yet the books are also as disparate as disparate can be: England vs. Russia, female vs. male perspective, and much more.

Several years ago, I consecutively read T.C. Boyle’s The Road to Wellville, a part-comic historical novel set in corn flakes inventor John Harvey Kellogg’s Michigan sanitarium more than a century ago; and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, a deadly serious dystopian trilogy set in the future. What in the world could those two works have in common?

On a surface level, the title of Collins’ trilogy and first trilogy book obviously remind one of food — even as Will Lightbody in Boyle’s novel is desperate for some unhealthy grub while reluctantly staying with his wife Eleanor at Kellogg’s health-oriented sanitarium. More seriously, there is a LOT of death in The Hunger Games but also some weirdly unexpected dying in The Road to Wellville. And both novels depict abuse of power — of course on a much smaller scale in Boyle’s book.

Do you have two very different novels you’d like to contrast here to see if they have some commonalities?

And here’s a 2013 post I wrote that looks at similarities in novels that might not be so different from each other. You’re welcome to discuss those types of books, too!

(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.

Sad Book Journey? Don’t Stop, Be Reading

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If a lousy or mediocre novel is making you feel bad, it’s an easy decision to stop reading it. But what if an excellent novel is making you feel bad? I don’t know about you, but I keep reading. After all, some of the best literature ranges from depressing to tragic.

I experienced this while recently reading Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor. The title character is a teen girl who leaves Ireland for England to try to find the feckless young man who got her pregnant. Felicia ends up being “helped” by the oily Mr. Hilditch, a middle-aged guy who has major psychological issues (we later find out why) and might be a serial killer.

Ugh, I thought as I read — this won’t end well. And the conclusion is indeed sad. But I’m glad I didn’t ditch the book. Trevor’s prose was superb, and the melancholy ending was different than I expected. One may figure something bad is going to happen in a depressing novel, but exactly what that something will be isn’t always predictable. Surprise in literature is often a good thing!

Other depressing novels I’ve read that I couldn’t put down? A classic that comes to mind is Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. One is 99% sure that the trajectory of Lily Bart’s life will never stop being downhill, but her story is masterfully told — and there’s always that unlikely 1% chance for redemption in any unhappy book.

Then there’s Richard Wright’s Native Son, in which an African-American character (Bigger Thomas) is dealing with poverty, racism, and a criminal-justice system with little justice. Those three strikes don’t augur well for a happy ending, but the novel is riveting.

Elsa Morante’s History is also a magnificent achievement even as readers can guess than Ida and her son Giuseppe are probably doomed because of their personalities and the World War II carnage that surrounds them.

Or Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, which involves a hostage situation. It’s fascinating how Patchett humanizes the hostage takers almost as much as the hostages, but you just know that there will be plenty of deaths before you turn the last page.

George Eliot wrote novels with both sad and part-happy endings, but there’s something about Maggie Tulliver’s life in The Mill on the Floss that early on gives readers a sinking feeling about her ultimate fate. But what a masterful book!

In Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast, Allie Fox is brilliant but borderline nuts. So when he takes his family from the U.S. to live in the Central American rain forest, it’s like watching a car crash (if a car could drive in a rain forest). But it’s hard to avert one’s eyes.

Then there’s Edgar Allan Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. As is also the case with most of Poe’s iconic short stories, things don’t end well, but the horror and spookiness are memorable.

Of course, with certain historical-fiction works, we absolutely know disaster awaits — perhaps from remembering what we read in our high school history books. But if the story is compellingly told, we’re willing to experience the heartbreak. One of many novels in this category is Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, in which we obviously don’t expect the protagonist to reach a ripe old age.

We also expect total disaster, or at best a mixed ending, in dystopian novels — yet are still fascinated by many of them. For instance, George Orwell’s harrowing Nineteen Eighty-Four is almost impossible to put down.

And don’t forget novels whose titles telegraph their “depressing-ness.” To name just two, there are Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None — though readers of the former know it contains a measure of amazing uplift at the end.

In the theater world, some plays are literally labeled tragedies, so upbeat conclusions are clearly not in the offing. But Shakespeare is worth the time, isn’t he? 🙂

What are some novels that you avidly continued reading despite having a bad feeling about what would happen to the characters?

Here’s Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” — the song referenced in my silly headline!

(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.

There Are Places They Remember

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When you see the names of the authors Stephen King, Charles Dickens, Anne Tyler, and L.M. Montgomery, what places in their novels come to mind? Maine, London, Baltimore, and Canada’s Prince Edward Island.

When you see the name of the author Lee Child, what place in his novels comes to mind? Um…well…uh…is there a town called Mayhem?

Yes, some authors write fiction that’s often set in the same locale, while other authors send their characters all over the map. In the latter case, Lee Child’s justice-dispensing former military cop Jack Reacher has drifted to California, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, London (where he didn’t meet Charles Dickens), Maine (where he could’ve met Stephen King), Nebraska, New York City, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, DC, and elsewhere.

And of course many authors are in between when it comes to geography — having a go-to locale for a number of their books, but mixing things up in other works. An example of that would be John Steinbeck, whose best-known novels unfold in California but who also wrote fiction set on Long Island, NY (The Winter of Our Discontent), in an unnamed European country under Nazi occupation (The Moon Is Down), etc. There’s also Mark Twain, who’s best known for his books set in and near the Mississippi River, but who also wrote novels such as Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (which takes place in France) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (duh — the Constitution State and England). Twain’s site-jumping is not surprising given how much of a world traveler he was.

Advantages for often keeping characters in one state, city, or town? An author has a rock-solid knowledge of that particular locale — where she or he might have grown up and perhaps still lives — and thus can showcase the locale in a totally authentic way. Also, writers who focus on one place don’t have to spend as much time researching and traveling for their next novel, leaving more time for crafting the actual prose. And many a reader likes the comfort level of always knowing where characters are living their fictional lives.

But putting protagonists in various locales can keep things fresh — and draw in new readers interested in seeing (among other things) how accurately their neck of the woods is depicted.

As noted before, there are various lines on the geographical continuum for where authors situate their books. For instance, Henry James changed his locales but had favorites he returned to. So you’ll see his characters more than once in New York City, Paris, London, etc., but not in as many places as Lee Child sends Jack Reacher. (Why Henry James didn’t create a justice-dispensing former military cop is for psychologists to mull over… 🙂 )

And it’s exciting, surprising, and intriguing when an author we mostly associate with one locale suddenly puts a novel in a different place — as when Dickens sent Martin Chuzzlewit‘s title character to America, the usually Scotland-focused Sir Walter Scott chose France for Quentin Durward, the usually U.S.-centered Willa Cather wrote the Quebec City-based Shadows on the Rock, the usually New England-centered Nathaniel Hawthorne picked Rome for The Marble Faun, the usually ship-at-sea-chronicling Herman Melville kept Pierre on land in New York State and New York City, and the often-NYC-focused Edith Wharton put Ethan Frome in rural Massachusetts.

Where do your favorite authors set their books? Do they mostly focus on one locale, or put their characters in many places, or fall somewhere in between?

(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.)


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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.