Prolific Prose Practitioners

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There’s a saying that “everyone has a book in them,” but some authors have a LOT of books in them. They’re terrific at being prolific, churning out novels and other works as fast as cartoon bird Road Runner moves (but with fewer feathers).

Many high-speed authors average at least a book a year, with some putting out even more. The vast majority of prolific novelists write mass-audience fiction, because that kind of book can be rather formulaic and thus more quickly created than literary fiction. But there are challenging novelists who also write fast.

Some quick authors, such as James Patterson, have help from assistants — meaning they are not quite as personally prolific as they seem. According to Wikipedia, the 68-year-old Patterson has 150 books to his credit!

Of course, the number of books a novelist writes is not the only proof of productivity; the size of the works has something to do with it, too. For instance, Charles Dickens penned “only” 20 or so novels before dying at age 58, but a number of them are quite long.

And Dickens is an example of an author who also kept busy in other ways — giving speeches, performing in theatrical productions, etc. Meanwhile, some writers pack their schedules by not only penning novels, but short stories, plays, poems, children’s books, nonfiction books, articles, and/or reviews as well. Yes, all that quantity can make the quality suffer, but not always. Some people just write like the wind!

First, let’s look at some literary and classic authors with many books to their credit. For instance, France can boast of Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola, who each wrote about three dozen novels (among other works) before dying at ages 51 and 62, respectively. Given that they obviously weren’t published authors as kids and teens, that’s a ton of output during their adult years. Fellow French author Alexandre Dumas penned about 40 novels, 10 travel books, several plays, and more during his 68 years.

Some prolific novelists from other countries:

Sir Walter Scott wrote a whopping two dozen or so novels and other books between 1814 and his 1832 death at the age of 61. That was after he focused on his widely read poetry during the earlier part of his career.

Henry James, who lived to 72, authored about 30 novels and novellas plus tons of other fiction and nonfiction. And his subtle, intricate, psychological writing was not the kind to be knocked off easily.

Edith Wharton, who died at 75, had nearly the same output as her friend Henry even though she didn’t become a published author until her late 30s.

W. Somerset Maugham wrote 36 novels and short-story collections, 25 plays, 15 nonfiction books, countless articles, and more before dying at the age of 91.

John Updike penned nearly 30 novels, 17 short-story collections, and other works during his 76 years.

A very prolific living author with a literary bent is Joyce Carol Oates, 77 — who has written an astounding 44 novels, 11 novellas, and 38 short-story collections under her own name; 11 other novels under a different name; and more.

Alice Walker, now 71, has written a total of 30-plus novels, short-story collections, poetry collections, and nonfiction books.

Mass-audience novelists? One of the most productive of the past was mystery writer Agatha Christie, who penned 66 novels under her own name, six novels under another name, 17 plays, and more during her 85 years.

Prolific living authors in the mass-audience (but sometimes literary) realm include Dean Koontz (well over 100 novels since 1968), Stephen King (55 novels since 1974 — plus lots of other work), Sue Grafton (24 novels since 1982), John Grisham (29 novels since 1989), Lisa Scottoline (25 novels since 1993), David Baldacci (32 novels since 1996), and Lee Child (20 Jack Reacher novels since 1997).

Last but by no means least, the great Isaac Asimov wrote or edited an incredible 500-plus books — many not science fiction — before dying at age 72.

Oh, and William Shakespeare penned 37 plays and 154 sonnets during his 52 years.

Who are some of your favorite prolific authors? (You can also name some you don’t like. 🙂 ) Can there be quantity and quality?

(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.

Animals in Literature: The Seagull…um…Sequel

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Back in 2011, I wrote a blog post about animals in literature for a Web site with the same initials as Happy Pets. The novels I mentioned as having memorable creature characters included The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Lad: A Dog, The Incredible Journey, and many others.

But that was four years ago, and I’ve read many novels since then that included animals (often dogs) as major or minor characters. Also, there were books I read before 2011 not mentioned in that previous post. So this column will be a Part Two of sorts to that old piece on the Web site with the same initials as Hairy Protagonists. (Okay, I’ll name the site — Huffington Post.)

As I wrote back then, animals can bring a lot of warmth to books — and their relationships with human characters help flesh out the personalities of the critters as well as the people. Heck, if a human character loves animals, there’s an excellent chance she or he is a good person! For instance, the very likable Sookie allows 11 pets — including an alligator! — to live in her house in Fannie Flagg’s poignant The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, and is very dedicated to feeding the birds on her property.

Fictional animals can also remind millions of pet lovers of their own appealing animal buddies.

Of course, things are not all positive when it comes to creatures in author canons. Some are not very lovable and may in fact be “villains” — as in Peter Benchley’s Jaws. And if tragedy befalls an animal in fiction, it’s very painful to read.

I thought of revisiting this topic while recently reading Rilla of Ingleside, one of L.M. Montgomery’s seven sequels to Anne of Green Gables. In the sequel, Anne has a minor role while the star turn goes to her daughter Rilla as the teen is forced to grow up fast during what later became known as World War I. But a character leaping off the page almost as much as Rilla Blythe is the canine “Dog Monday” — who, when Rilla’s brother Jem boards a train to go to war, loyally and heartbreakingly refuses to leave the station for years while waiting to see if Jem will return.

Another excellent novel featuring a dog in a secondary role is Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits — in which Clara’s huge canine Barrabas eats like crazy, knocks over things, and ends up in a scenario that reveals the lack of common sense possessed by Clara’s brutish husband Esteban.

There’s also Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard. The book draws to a close with an unforgettable symbolic scene involving long-deceased canine Bendico.

Speaking of Italian literature, the lovable dog Bella always accompanies the lonely, precocious boy Giuseppe in Elsa Morante’s World War II novel History.

In American literature, Hector the hunting dog is a constant companion to Natty Bumppo in some of the five novels that comprise James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking” series — which includes The Last of the Mohicans.

A dog tragically dies of thirst and hunger in a locked house when his owner is murdered in Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble. When Jack Reacher joins three former military police colleagues to plot revenge for that and various other killings, the thought of the poor dog is one of the things that drives him.

The dog and cat in Rita Mae Brown’s mysteries (such as Wish You Were Here) help their person (Mary “Harry” Haristeen) do amateur detective work. Animals definitely have human qualities in some novels!

Creatures in literature of course aren’t just dogs and cats. For instance, there is the horse who assists mineworkers in Emile Zola’s Germinal, and the experimented-on mouse who is so crucial to what happens in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon. Also, we can’t forget the water denizens in novels such as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and the aforementioned Jaws.

Which animals do you remember most in literature, whether in major or minor roles?

(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.)

A note: I was interviewed by a local filmmaker on July 29. I wasn’t asked about this literature blog, but hopefully you’ll still find the eight-minute-or-so video interesting. 🙂

Another note: I’ll be skipping my Aug. 9 column for the usual summer reasons, but will be back Aug. 16. And while I won’t be on the computer as much as usual between Aug. 7 and Aug. 15, I’ll reply to comments when I can!

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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.

Deceased Before Released: Novels Published Posthumously

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With all the talk these days about the late-in-her-life publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, I got to thinking about well-known novels that came out after the authors died. There are more of them than one might think.

Some posthumous books are released unfinished, while in some cases other writers are hired to complete the works. Then there are 100%-done novels that hadn’t yet reached the market when death came knocking for the authors.

Do posthumous books have anything in common? Not necessarily. Some are early-career efforts, with later author renown finally spurring the novels’ after-death publication. Other books are the last works of aging writers, and thus perhaps not the peak efforts of their careers. But most posthumous novels evoke a certain reader fascination, whether it involves lamenting that the authors aren’t around to enjoy the fruits of their labors or wondering if the books would have been better off staying in a desk drawer or computer file.

I’ll start with two authors who had summer births or deaths. The Aug. 1, 1819-born Herman Melville worked for years as an obscure customs inspector after his writing career foundered on meager sales of the critically blasted Moby-Dick and Pierre. The older Melville did write some (so-so) poetry in his spare time, and also penned much of a novella. That was Billy Budd — undiscovered and unpublished until the 1920s, more than three decades after Melville’s 1891 passing. The success of Billy Budd, along with a belated realization of Moby-Dick‘s masterpiece quality, retrospectively helped Melville join Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne in the top pantheon of 19th-century American authors.

Then there was England’s Jane Austen, who died on July 18, 1817. But it wasn’t until a number of months later that publication came for two of her six novels: Persuasion (my favorite Austen work) and Northanger Abbey (actually the novel Austen wrote first, from 1798 to 1803). Interestingly, a “Biographical Notice” written by Jane’s brother Henry for those two books was the first time the previously anonymous Austen’s name appeared with her novels.

In the 20th century, the most famous example of a posthumously released novel might be A Confederacy of Dunces. Its author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969 — at least partly out of despair over not being able to get his raucous, hilarious book published. Over the next few years, John’s mother Thelma resolutely tried to remedy that. Finally, with the help of author Walker Percy, A Confederacy of Dunces made it into print in 1980 — and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Even more recently, the page-turning Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) was published after author Stieg Larsson’s death — and became a mega-seller. A fourth Millennium novel written by a different person is slated to come out later this summer, and the existence of that book just doesn’t seem right. Some Go Set a Watchman-like publisher greed? Yes, when very popular authors die, money grabs can ensue.

Among the most famous unfinished novels published after the authors’ deaths are Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Love of the Last Tycoon (aka The Last Tycoon), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston, and Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth. The first two were good/not great Dickens and Fitzgerald works, while Weir of Hermiston was Stevenson’s deepest, most mature book. The book by Ellison — who saw only one novel, the classic Invisible Man, released during his lifetime — was a condensed version of a very long, unpublished manuscript.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote only one novel, but the posthumously released The Leopard is exquisitely written. The book was finished when di Lampedusa died in 1957, before a publisher was found.

Sometimes, novels are published long after an author’s death. One example is Alexandre Dumas’ unfinished The Last Cavalier, which was discovered in serial form in a periodical more than 125 years after Dumas’ 1870 death. Parts of it are among The Count of Monte Cristo author’s best writing.

Also many years after the author’s death, Jack London’s The Assassination Bureau was completed by another author. London’s section of the book is of course better, but still doesn’t come close to matching his top efforts (The Call of the Wild, etc.) released when he was alive.

Then there’s Maurice, which wasn’t published until after E.M. Forster’s 1970 death because of that novel’s then-controversial focus on same-sex love.

Outside the novel realm, the most famous example of posthumous publication could very well be the stellar poems of Emily Dickinson.

What are your favorite works (ones I’ve mentioned or not mentioned) published after their writers’ deaths? Also, you’re welcome to discuss the pros and cons of posthumous publication.

(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.

Born on the 14th of July

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I’ll return next week to the kind of post I usually write, but I wanted to devote today’s column to the one-year anniversary of this blog — which launched on July 14, 2014. There will be some statistics, some of my thoughts, and more.

As many of you know, I decided to start this blog after three years of writing about literature for The Huffington Post — where my columns became the most consistently popular of any on that site’s “Books” page. The “thanks” I got from HP was no pay, frequently buried posts (perhaps because I wasn’t a “celebrity”?), being ignored 90% of the time when I occasionally emailed HP with a question, etc. My readers were “thanked” by often having their great, intelligent, unobjectionable comments killed by human or “automatic” moderators, or waiting hours or even days for their comments to post. (The same thing happened with my replies to comments.) There were other problems, too.

The 2005-founded HP — which continued to not pay bloggers even after making $315 million when bought by AOL in 2011 — does have a huge audience, and I’m grateful I was able to “online-ly” meet some of that audience. Being on the site also got me several offers for other work, but unfortunately each and every offer was to again work for free. I declined.

But now it’s time to get positive! 🙂 Being only middling savvy with things digital, I was nervous about creating a blog, but WordPress made it easy. And I vowed to make things easy for readers — including adjusting the settings to make sure comments posted immediately. Still, I wondered how many current or former HP commenters would migrate to my blog, but a lot of them did. (Thank you!) I was able to tell a number of people about my new blog via email and social media, but there were some HP commenters I couldn’t find because I knew them only by their aliases.

That said, a number of my current visitors never commented at HP!

What you’re now reading is the 50th column for this blog, and, by afternoon’s end on July 14, those posts had drawn a total of 31,015 views and 8,224 comments. (As you might have guessed, WordPress offers its bloggers a handy-dandy statistics page!) Nearly every comment has been friendly and full of literary knowledge — with many also containing humor.

The most views in a day was 366, on Feb. 23 — after I posted a column about authors’ pen names. That Feb. 22 piece attracted 295 comments, second only to the 344 comments under a Nov. 2 piece about single parents in literature. Rounding out the top five were posts about novels turned into movies (249 comments), unhappy marriages in literature (236), and humor in fiction (229).

The post with the fewest comments (88) was about symbols in literature. Imagine how few comments there would have been if I had discussed cymbals in literature!

Countries where the readership originated? The U.S. was first by far (26,667 views), followed by Japan (896), Australia (729), Canada (363), Brazil (311), the United Kingdom (274), Germany (256), India (113), Italy (74), and Russia (65). Views came from a total of 111 countries on six continents.

Approximately 75% of the books and writers I read nowadays are those recommended by commenters here. Thanks to you, authors I tried for the first time during the past 12 months included, among others, Joan Barfoot (Duet for Three), Geraldine Brooks (March), Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries), Lee Child (eight Jack Reacher novels — I’m hooked!), Michael Connelly (The Lincoln Lawyer), Alexandre Dumas fils (Camille), Neil Gaiman (American Gods), Nadine Gordimer (My Son’s Story), and Graham Greene (short stories).

Also: Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son), Anne Lamott (Blue Shoe), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard), Stieg Larsson (The Millennium Trilogy), Billie Letts (Where the Heart Is), Mario Vargas Llosa (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), Alistair MacLean (Where Eagles Dare), Elsa Morante (History), Patrick O’Brian (Master and Commander), Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago), Dorothy Sayers (Strong Poison), Zadie Smith (On Beauty), M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans), and John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces).

In addition, after recommendations from you, I’ve enjoyed other novels by authors I had read before, including Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, John Grisham’s The Firm, Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, and Toni Morrison’s Sula.

And the words of commenters were part of the reason I reread and was impressed again by classics such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. (Yes, we can continue discussing Ms. Lee’s “new” Go Set a Watchman!)

Which literary works have you read during the past year at least partly because of this blog and its comments? Anything else you’d like to say is welcome as well!

One more note: During the fantastic U2 concert I attended last night, the band did not sing “One” — which reminds me that one-year anniversaries are not that significant. 🙂

(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.

The Very Well-Traveled Caterpillar

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We all remember great children’s books from when we were kids or parents of kids. I recently thought of one — The Very Hungry Caterpillar — when my family had a real-life experience with a fennel-consuming cousin of Eric Carle’s fictional character.

I’m going to recount that experience (straying from this literature blog’s usual approach) before ending with a list of several of my favorite children’s books and a request to name some of yours. It’s a true-life children’s story I’ll call…The Very Well-Traveled Caterpillar.

One afternoon last month, my younger daughter stepped off her school bus with a paper cup full of fresh fennel. On one of the stalks was a tiny black caterpillar Maria had named Spike — though she didn’t know if it was male or female. The bus ride was Spike’s first trip.

My wife Laurel ordered one of those soft caterpillar/butterfly cages online, but Spike’s “house” took more than a week to get delivered. Fortunately, Spike stayed on fennel stalks in that paper cup for several days, eating so much that Maria had to bring home new fennel from her school garden several times. Spike, who turned mostly green, grew so much that he (?) was soon perhaps 10 times his (?) original size.

But one day, Spike crawled off the fennel and paper cup and was nowhere to be found. We walked VERY carefully in the living room as we searched for about a half hour — finally spotting Spike on the floor atop one of Maria’s sandals. That was his (?) second trip, and a potentially dangerous one.

So as we continued to wait for delivery of the cloth-and-net cage, we found a large box to put the fennel and cup in. The next day, a certain mailing finally arrived, and we transported Spike from box to cage.

Spike — fortified by his (?) prodigious eating binge — attached himself to a stick we put in the cage and was encased in a chrysalis by June 22. But we were leaving June 24 for a trip to Indiana, with a return planned for June 29. The chrysalis stage was supposed to be 7-10 days, but what if Spike emerged earlier? Obviously, he (?) had to travel with us in the car.

Passenger Spike spent the first day cruising west from New Jersey through Pennsylvania — carried into rest stops, the inside of a fast-food restaurant, and then a hotel room in eastern Ohio. The next day, it was more of the same until we arrived in Indianapolis — where the National Society of Newspaper Columnists was meeting.

But there was more travel to come. As I attended the great NSNC conference, Spike joined Laurel and Maria in visiting a former Indiana State University work colleague of my wife’s in Terre Haute. So the car-cruising/cage-and-chrysalis-covered caterpillar almost made it to Illinois.

Then came a return to Indianapolis, where Spike accompanied us and friends from Bloomington to a restaurant lunch before we headed back east. More rest stops, more fast-food eateries, and another hotel stay before Spike found himself (?) in New Jersey again on June 29. Still in the chrysalis.

Several days later, Spike finally emerged as a large butterfly — mostly black, with some brilliant coloring. According to Maria, his (?) coloring indicated he (?) was…female.

Spike couldn’t immediately fly — her wings needed to dry. But when she began flapping frantically around the cage an hour later, we knew it was time. We walked to the patio area of our garden-apartment complex, slowly unzipped the cage, and Spike soared high into the air. Not west or east, but south, before disappearing above the treetops.

Believe it or not, Spike’s freedom came on July 4 — Independence Day.

So that’s the story of The Very Well-Traveled Caterpillar. My favorite children’s books? Several by Dr. Seuss, of course; Susan Meddaugh’s Martha Speaks series (talking dog!); Eric Litwin’s Pete the Cat books; Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach; Bernard Waber’s Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile; Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline; Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever; Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon; and various others. (I’m talking fictional “picture books” aimed at younger kids. 🙂 )

What are your favorite children’s books? And what are some books — kid or adult, with or without caterpillars — that you connect with real-life experiences you’ve had?

One more question: Why didn’t I discuss Go Set a Watchman in this column? Well, Harper Lee’s eagerly awaited novel won’t be released until July 14, and I’m not sure when I’ll read it. It was dismaying to see, in an advance New York Times review, that the beloved Atticus Finch is depicted as a racist in the book — and there are of course questions about whether Ms. Lee truly consented to the financially lucrative publication of this To Kill a Mockingbird “sequel” (set in the 1950s) written before TKAM (set in the 1930s). But feel free to discuss Go Set a Watchman here!

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.

Note: My next column will post Monday, July 20, rather than the evening of Sunday, July 19 — when I’ll be seeing a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden with my adult daughter. I’m sure the band will do better in MSG than pro basketball’s Knicks! 🙂

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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

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.

Jealousy Causes Friction and Frisson in Fiction

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Literature can be riveting when authors have their characters experience primal emotions such as love, hate, fear, and…jealousy.

This post will be about memorable instances of envy in fiction — a topic I thought about last month while reading Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian’s first Aubrey-Maturin novel. Jack Aubry is a ship captain, and his first lieutenant James Dillon not surprisingly wishes he had that position.

Edmond Dantes, a sailor promoted to captain at the start of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, is framed by men jealous of his promotion — and of his engagement to Mercedes Herrera. Dantes languishes in prison for many years before escaping and taking his epic revenge against the men who put him there.

The handsome, quietly charismatic title character in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is liked by his sailor peers but hated by sinister Master-at-Arms John Claggart — and that hate is at least partly caused by jealousy.

Not sure how I ended up discussing three novels in a row with sea elements, but envy of course also appears in many other kinds of books.

Examples include some novels by Indiana authors, who are on my mind because I recently attended a great National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference in Indianapolis — where one of our “field trips” was to the very interesting Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.

For instance, Terre Haute-born Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy focuses on Clyde Griffiths and that character’s envy of wealthy people with the seemingly “perfect” life he doesn’t have. Indianapolis resident Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons depicts some jealousy when the unlikable George Amberson Minafer sabotages the relationship between his likable widowed mother and the father of the woman (Lucy Morgan) George loves. Envy also rears its head when the Amberson fortune wanes and the Morgan fortune grows.

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is full of all kinds of jealousy — including the envy Edgar Linton feels when his wife Catherine is thrilled to see Heathcliff when he returns after a long absence.

Romantic jealousy in other novels? Three of many examples include the insufferable Rev. Edward Casaubon of George Eliot’s Middlemarch being envious of the interactions between his young, admirable wife Dorothea Brooke and his young, idealistic cousin Will Ladislaw; Miles Coverdale of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance being jealous of Hollingsworth’s relationship with Priscilla; and Lady Booby, the employer of the title character in Henry Fielding’s 18th-century comic novel Joseph Andrews, becoming jealous when she can’t seduce Joseph because he wants to stay chaste until marrying Fanny Goodwill.

In modern fiction, a rich criminal’s nasty son is envious of Jack Reacher’s relationship with (female) police officer Roscoe in Lee Child’s debut novel Killing Floor. Then the second Reacher installment, Die Trying, finds Jack feeling a bit jealous of the man with whom FBI agent Holly Johnson is involved.

In Joan Barfoot’s Duet for Three, the widowed Aggie and her divorced daughter June wish they had had better marriages — as well as a better relationship with each other. One poignant scene has June seeing how close Brenda (a fellow teacher) and her husband seem to be, and another scene shows Aggie being envious of her granddaughter Frances’ more fun and less isolated life.

There’s also envy of popularity, looks, success, and riches. For instance, the mischievously immature kid Davy is at times jealous of well-behaved “old soul” kid Paul Irving when he sees how much Anne Shirley admires Paul in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea. Even the stoic, philosophical Santiago feels a bit envious when other fishermen catch more than he does for 84 long days in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. But on the 85th day…

Then there’s academic jealousy, such as Howard Belsey’s envy of more prominent professor/author Monty Kipps in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.

Envy can arise even over relatively trivial matters — as when Amy March, jealous that she can’t go to a play with her older sisters, burns the only copy of a manuscript Jo March worked on for countless hours in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

In the realm of plays, I would have to say that Iago is a bit envious in Shakespeare’s Othello. 🙂

What are your favorite examples of jealousy in literature?

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

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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

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.

Libraries and Librarians in Literature

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If you’re looking for evildoing in literature, you might not find much of it in books that feature librarians, library users, and library scenes. Heck, evildoers who want to research their future evildoing probably do it on their home computers…

So, with libraries in lit, you often get characters who are likable and intelligent and other good things. Which might mean a little less drama, but still some nice reading. Nothing wrong with that once in a while!

For instance, it’s appropriate that Novalee Nation, a working-class woman always open to learning more, meets another kind person in a library. He is Forney Hull, who has a major impact on Novalee’s life after she was abandoned in Oklahoma by her no-good boyfriend in Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is.

The also-working-class protagonist of Jack London’s Martin Eden makes the ambitious transition from sailor to writer partly by spending countless hours in the library educating himself.

In L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, Valancy Stirling likes to visit the library to get the latest book by her favorite author — an author who will affect her life in a way she can never imagine.

Chicago librarian Henry DeTamblen involuntarily jumps around in time in Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. Another book in that genre, Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back, includes a poignant library scene in which the late-20th-century protagonist Sam Fowler sees a photo of the all-dead 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings team he had recently grown to know in person.

Then there’s Carol Milford, who worked as a librarian for several years before moving to Gopher Prairie, Minn., to live with her new husband Dr. Will Kennicott in Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. The liberal, free-spirited Carol tries to bring change to the narrow-minded, fixed-in-its-ways town, but is totally thwarted — ironically, even by a local librarian who doesn’t encourage reading. Can anyone say “wrong profession”?

Also less pleasant than most librarians is Hogwarts’ strict keeper-of-the-books Irma Pince in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Heck, she even makes it hard for Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore to use that wizard school’s library.

While Robin Sloan’s novel is more about a San Francisco bookstore, a secret society’s private library in New York City plays a significant role in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

At-home private libraries are ruthlessly burned in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451; a monastery library figures prominently in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose; Mr. Rochester impersonates a gypsy during a memorable Thornfield Hall library scene in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; the library is visited a number of times in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; a college library is one locale in Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys; and the main branch of the New York Public Library is mentioned in Jack Finney’s From Time to Time.

In the nonfiction realm, a memorable book is the poignant Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter. The formerly abandoned Dewey lives in an Iowa library, and becomes a feline celebrity.

There’s also The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the classic written with Alex Haley, in which the civil-rights leader recalls educating himself with the help of a prison library.

What are your favorite literary works featuring librarians, library users, and/or library scenes? Also welcome are your general thoughts on the value of libraries, your worries about adequate funding of these wonderful institutions, your recollections of library experiences, etc. 🙂

(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.)

Note: Later this month, I have relatives visiting and then a conference, so I’ll probably skip doing June 21 and June 28 blog posts. I’ll still reply to comments posted under this June 14 column, though at times more slowly — and will definitely put up a new column the evening of Sunday, July 5!

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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

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.

Sequels We’d Like to See

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After you read a great stand-alone novel or finish a wonderful series of books, do you wish the story would continue?

Of course, this isn’t possible if the author is deceased (though there’s the occasional ill-advised sequel by a different writer). And many novels don’t need a continuation — they ended perfectly. Still, one can dream, and this blog post will do that before it also asks which theoretical sequels you’d like to see.

When it comes to knowing what happens to cherished characters, readers this summer will get a chance at gratification (or disappointment) with the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman book featuring an older Scout and Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. But that’s a rare instance of wish fulfillment, so let’s return to imaginary sequels.

As some of you know, my favorite novel is Jane Eyre, and thinking of a follow-up to that book seems almost blasphemous. After all, Charlotte Bronte wrote other books after Jane Eyre‘s 1847 publication while choosing not to revisit her most famous work. But if the 1855-deceased Bronte had lived as long as her husband (Arthur Bell Nichols didn’t die until 1906), who knows what she might have done?

In a hypothetical Jane Eyre sequel by Bronte, I would love to read more details about the title character’s marriage. And if Jane’s two-decades-older husband eventually predeceased her, what would her life have been like? Remarriage? Becoming a teacher again?

Daniel and Mirah’s time in Palestine, where they were heading at the end of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, would also be something to see.

Worth reading, too, would be a chronicle of the later lives of the three memorable siblings (good and bad) in The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve read that Fyodor Dostoyevsky, if death hadn’t intervened, planned to write two more Karamazov books to complete a trilogy.

How would adult life work out for angst-ridden teen John Grimes, the semi-autobiographical protagonist in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain? If John ended up having something like Baldwin’s career, that would be impressive!

If there were a sequel to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, I’d be very curious to know what happens to disillusioned “fireman” Guy Montag and the outcast band of book lovers he joined.

The last Harry Potter book concludes with an epilogue that gives readers a glimpse of Harry, Hermione, and Ron as adults. It would be great to see that fleshed out, and there’s a chance it could eventually happen. But J.K. Rowling is certainly quite busy writing her non-magical novels.

If the authors were alive to write sequels, I’d also want to know whether Ravic the surgeon of Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph survives World War II and how Maria in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls fares after things go south for her lover Robert Jordan during the Spanish Civil War.

And I’d be curious to know what Isabel Archer — yoked to a ghastly marriage while still young in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady — ends up doing with her life. Isabel is smart, charismatic, and independently wealthy, yet wrestles with self-doubt and the restrictions and expectations women faced in the 19th century.

Days after I wrote the above paragraph, I reached a passage of The Master — Colm Toibin’s quietly engrossing novel about Henry James’ life — in which James’ niece Peggy asks her uncle if he intends to write a sequel to The Portrait of a Lady! Peggy is very dissatisfied with the momentous decision Isabel makes at the end of James’ 1881 classic.

Which novels would you like to see sequels to (in the case of deceased authors, theoretical sequels; in the case of living authors, sequels that are possible)? What would you like to see happen in those sequels?

(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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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

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.

Said to Some Authors: ‘Burb, Your Enthusiasm’

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Today’s post is about suburbia in literature, and to get you in the mood for that you might enjoy watching the band Rush perform “Subdivisions.”

Okay, welcome back! (Lyrics to that song are at the end of this post.)

For scores of years, the vast majority of fictional works were set in cities, rural areas, and isolated villages. But as time marched on, suburbs started to crop up in books — as they did in real life. And many authors made those leafy places quite “literature-worthy” as they depicted wealth, racism, gender roles, good marriages, bad marriages, happiness, dissatisfaction, conformity, “unhipness,” boredom, well-funded schools, cliques, gossip, the car culture, stressful commuting, lovely vistas, etc.

And then there’s the envy felt by suburbanites trying to “keep up with the Joneses” — a phrase first used in reference to the wealthy family in which Edith Wharton (nee Jones) grew up.

Heck, suburbia is where J.K. Rowling placed her first post-Harry Potter novel, The Casual Vacancy, which chronicles political intrigue, personal antagonisms, and family drama in the small English town of Pagford.

John Steinbeck used rural settings (often) and urban settings (occasionally), but his The Winter of Our Discontent has a suburban milieu (Long Island, N.Y.) as it addresses ethics and other matters.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake features a Bengali couple — Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli — who leave Calcutta, India, for a Boston suburb when Ashoke becomes an engineering student at MIT. Immigrants who are professionals, or studying to be professionals, often bypass cites and go straight to the suburbs when coming to America.

Other immigrants settle in cities and then see their descendants move to the land of lawns, as is the case in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. The second-generation couple Tessie and Milton Stephanides relocate their family from the Motor City to Grosse Pointe, Mich., after the 1967 Detroit riot sparked by police brutality, poverty, and segregated schools and housing.

The urban-suburban contrast is also part of many other novels. For instance, New Jersey wedding musician Dave Raymond becomes engaged to a nice but rather bland N.J. woman in Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones, but then badly betrays her during that engagement by having an affair with a Manhattan woman who is more artistic and edgy.

Patty Berglund in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom grew up in a wealthy New York City suburb, but she and her husband Walter become early gentrifiers in St. Paul, Minn. — where the Berglunds have the kind of nosy neighbors that can be found in many a suburb. So Patty is “home” in a way.

Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun is set in Chicago, but a major plot strain is the black Younger family’s plan to move to an all-white suburb. A representative from that racist burb tries to buy out the Youngers in order to keep the neighborhood segregated.

Technically, John Updike’s Rabbit, Run is also set in a city, but it’s a small city that’s kind of near Philadelphia, and protagonist Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom has aspects of the stereotypical 1950s suburban male. Star high school athlete who lapses into an ordinary life as he marries young, becomes a father young, becomes dissatisfied with his marriage, etc. — all while acting like a selfish and sexist jerk much of the time.

Another John — Cheever — wrote “The Swimmer” short story starring a man who one day has the odd idea of traversing his upscale suburb by swimming through one backyard pool after another. As Cheever describes Neddy Merrill’s unusual journey, he skillfully weaves in material about the suburb’s class differences, about whether or not wealth can bring happiness, about Neddy’s past, etc. The protagonist’s serial swim should take just a few hours, but much more time seems to go by. Cheever’s partly metaphorical tale is here.

By the way, I live in a suburb. On the positive side, my town of Montclair, N.J., has several business districts, dozens of ethnic restaurants, six train stations, a population about a third African-American, a welcoming atmosphere for gay couples, and many beautiful homes and trees dating back to the 1800s (I’m in a garden apartment complex myself). On the negative side, there are such problems as gentrification, politically connected developers building too densely, and rich “reformers” pushing for education stuff (like endless standardized tests) the vast majority of residents don’t want.

What are your favorite literary works set at least partly in the suburbs?

(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.)

Here are the lyrics to “Subdivisions” — written by Rush members Neil Peart (drums), Geddy Lee (vocals/bass/keyboards), and Alex Lifeson (guitar):

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

(Subdivisions)
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
(Subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights

(Subdivisions)
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
(Subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

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.

Sea Literature Is a Sight for Shore Eyes

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As summer nears, thoughts might turn to cruise ships, sailboats, and other relaxing watercraft. But we’re here to talk about vessels and voyages in literature, where sea things are often more dramatic.

Whether fictional characters are atop an ocean or river, it can mean adventure, discovery, danger, isolation, discomfort, romance, and other stuff that keeps readers glued to a book’s pages. Hopefully, water-resistant glue.

Among the writers who immediately come to mind when discussing sea literature are Homer and Herman Melville. (Homer’s last name was not Melville.) I haven’t read The Odyssey, so I can’t say much about that epic poem, but I’ve read most of Melville’s work — and a huge portion of it takes place off land.

There’s obviously Moby-Dick, but also Typee and Omoo (sailing to and from islands), Redburn (semi-autobiographical chronicle of an educated sailor’s voyage to England amid a rough crew), White-Jacket (an also-semi-autobiographical novel set on a U.S. Navy boat), Benito Cereno (riveting slave-rebellion story), and Billy Budd (unforgettable shipboard court martial). With his frequent emphasis on the sea, Melville certainly differed from many other authors who situated only one or a handful of their literary output amid the waves.

In addition to drawing on his own sailing experiences, Melville might have been partly inspired to write Moby-Dick (1851) after reading Edgar Allan Poe’s only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). Poe also turned to the sea for some of his riveting short stories, including “MS. Found in a Bottle” and “A Descent into the Maelstrom.”

Later in the 19th century came Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (most of which takes place on or near the Mississippi River that Huck and Jim take a raft to), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Alexandre Dumas’ The Last Cavalier (which includes a memorable historical-fiction moment depicting the shipboard death of Admiral Nelson during the Battle of Trafalgar). There are ultra-compelling water scenes, too, in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda.

Around the time the 19th century became the 20th, Joseph Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness (with its eerie voyage up the Congo River that would inspire the film Apocalypse Now) and Lord Jim (starring a young seaman whose abandon-ship cowardice colors the rest of his life).

After 1900, stories with some or many water elements continued to abound. For instance, Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf features a cruel and charismatic ship captain who makes life hell for his crew, and that same author’s Martin Eden stars a sailor-turned-writer who goes back to the sea for a fateful voyage at novel’s end.

There’s also Jim the retired ship captain who figures prominently in Anne’s House of Dreams — one of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables sequels. Another sequel — Jack Finney’s so-so From Time to Time that continues the story of that author’s haunting Time and Again — includes scenes on the Titanic. Speaking of that ill-fated ship, Robert Serling wrote Something’s Alive on the Titanic, a novel with a title that’s kind of hokey but with content that’s pretty absorbing.

A romantic river voyage for the ages ends Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, the title character of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree lives in a Tennessee River houseboat, a ship captain landing in circa-1600 Japan finds all kinds of intrigue in James Clavell’s Shogun, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex depicts a trans-Atlantic voyage of two Greek immigrants — a voyage to America so many immigrants made.

Also in post-1900 lit, a claustrophobic German submarine is the milieu of Lothar-Gunther Buchheim’s Das Boot, a shark wreaks havoc in Peter Benchley’s Jaws, the title character boards a ship to her native Greenland in Peter Hoeg’s mystery thriller Smilla’s Sense of Snow, and a shipwreck puts a boy and tiger in close proximity in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.

Speaking of shipwrecks, let’s not forget Daniel Defoe’s 18th-century classic Robinson Crusoe.

What are your favorite literary works containing ships, sea voyages, water themes, and the like?

(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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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

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.