Flying without an airplane in The Master and Margarita. (Screenshot by me.)

Most novels are basically realistic, but quite a few others — including those in genres such as sci-fi, fantasy, time travel, and ghost fiction — are, shall we say, imaginative.

Then there novels that fall somewhere in between: containing a little or a lot of the magical/supernatural, yet also grounded in actuality — making for a potentially fascinating mix. Those hybrid-ish books are the subject of today’s blog post.

I just read Elin Hilderbrand’s The Matchmaker, an excellent novel about the life and work of Nantucket woman Dabney Kimball Beech — whose long-ago love returns to the Massachusetts island after 27 years as a foreign correspondent. All is pretty much realistic, except Dabney has the power of knowing if a potential couple is or isn’t made for each other by the color of an aura she sees surrounding them. Dabney has “arranged” 42 still-intact marriages over the decades — even as her daughter Agnes is in a toxic relationship that Dabney had warned against. What happens with them and other characters makes for compelling reading of the uplifting and tragic variety.

Another supernatural-type moment in an otherwise mostly realistic novel is when the title character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre hears Edward Rochester’s anguished voice from a distance way too far to have actually heard his voice. A reader might initially think this pivotal occurrence was Jane’s imagination, but the novel makes it clear it wasn’t.

All-too-real domestic violence perpetrated by a brutal police officer against his wife is a major focus of Stephen King’s novel Rose Madder, but things eventually take a turn to the fantastical when people can literally enter a painting. Which reminds me of Jasper Fforde’s novel The Eyre Affair, in which people can literally enter the pages of Bronte’s aforementioned classic.

Then there’s “magical realism” — the very name of which says this genre of fiction combines the material and the mystical. For instance, some people fly in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the character Clara in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits possesses paranormal powers. Also, “father of magical realism” Jorge Luis Borges wrote short stories that included such things as a library of infinite size.

In Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, there’s also a character who flies sans airplane — as well as a magical skin ointment that creates invisibility and, most notably, the appearance of Satan among humans.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series? Mostly set in the wizard world, but there are also various scenes in the human (Muggle) world where a young Harry lived for more than a decade.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Not ghost fiction but ghost fact: In the video below, my cat Misty encounters a pre-Halloween decoration during his daily leashed walk this past Friday morning. 

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a problematic former mayor who’s running for governor, the welcome possibility of a moratorium on artificial-turf fields, and more — is here.

This photo by my human Dave is misleading because the novel on my cat tree is NOT sleep-inducing.

It’s been nearly two months since I, Misty the Cat, guest-wrote a “Dave Astor On Literature” post, so the Time has come. Or was it Newsweek that arrived?

Speaking of legacy media, Cat Fancy magazine ended in 2015 — the same year of my feline birth. That’s almost as coincidental as Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes both dying in April 1616. Cervantes of course wrote Don Quixote, the saga of a kitty-knight-errant who swats at windmills; and Shakespeare penned Much Ado About Nothing, about the overreaction to me swatting Dave off his chair so I could gain access to his computer.

Anyway, why is this blog called “Dave Astor on Literature”? Does my male human sit atop novels rather than read them? “Misty the Cat on Ten Folded Blankets” is more like it. But I prefer 15 folded blankets for maximum sleeping comfort.

When not napping, the novel I read most recently was Gore Vidal’s The Smithsonian Institution — set in 1939 as World War 2 neared, but with much mind-bending manipulation of time. Quite satirical and historical and philosophical and fantastical. Heck, in the 1998-published book, dead U.S. presidents and other museum exhibits even come to life! Which is more than I can say about my little stuffed mousies that don’t move unless I swat them.

Don’t assume that I successfully swat everything. I once tried to knock War and Peace off the dining-room table, but couldn’t move it. Dave needs to buy one of Tolstoy’s novellas.

I particularly enjoy novellas that contain only one word. The plot and character development are a bit lacking, but I finish them quickly enough to get on with the important things in life — such as swatting the “e” off Dave’s computer keyboard. Which lxads to sxntxnces likx the onx I just typxd.

In more positive news (besides me putting back the “e” key), the most recent Liane Moriarty novel came out last month and I can’t wait to read it. It’s called Here One Moment, and it joins a long line of excellent Moriarty books that also include — among others — Apples Never Fall (unless I swat them from the tree). And it’s worth mentioning that the kitty editions of Moriarty’s Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers are titled Big Litter Lies and Nine Purrfect Strangers.

Then, on October 22, comes the latest Jack Reacher thriller by Lee Child and Andrew Child. That one’s called In Too Deep, which reminds me of when I briefly stepped in a 1/16th-of-an-inch puddle during one of my outdoor leashed walks. The post-traumatic stress disorder lasted for 61 hours. Tee-hee — the name of my favorite Reacher novel.

Reacher is 6’5″ and 250 pounds, which is also my size after I gobble several cat treats.

The Reacher books are escapist, mass-market fiction — albeit as well-crafted as my high-quality cat tree pictured in the photo atop this post. True literature is by an author such as George Eliot, who, like George Sand, was a woman. Female novelists, especially long-ago ones, would sometimes use male pen names to have a better chance in the publishing realm of a patriarchal world. Eliot’s real name? Mary Ann Evans. Sand’s real name? The tongue-twisting Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil. George Washington’s real name? Geddy Lee. Sorry — had to get a reference in this post to the band Rush, even though Geddy sang “Vital Signs” rather than “Vidal Signs.” Still, I think Gore Vidal signed some copies of The Smithsonian Institution.

Dave will guest-write replies to comments to allow me, Misty the Cat, the time to swat unwanted marketing pitches from the WordPress spam folder into the WordPress trash folder.

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — also written by Misty the Cat, but completely different — is here.

Some famous novels just don’t live up to the hype for some readers.

My latest experience with this involved Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, a bestseller that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and, as of today, had amassed a whopping 228,425 reviews on Amazon — with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Not that I disliked Doerr’s 2014 book when I finally read it last week; I’d give it a B. But I was expecting more — more transcendence, perhaps.

As a number of you know, All the Light We Cannot See is a World War II novel that alternately focuses on gifted blind French girl Marie-Laure and German prodigy Werner, who was pulled into the Nazi war effort for his radio expertise. Will the two teens eventually meet?

Among my disappointments with the novel: Too long for its content. Writing that was periodically beautiful while periodically straining too hard to be beautiful. Constant jumping around in time that seemed unnecessary. Not as much dramatic tension as the circumstances would warrant. Some hard-to-believe coincidences. More than one major unresolved plot line. Etc.

I did like that the main part of the novel’s conclusion defied expectations. And, along with several interesting secondary characters, the young Marie-Laure and the young Werner were quite well-drawn amid the carnage of World War II’s battlefields.

Which reminded me of the title of this 2024 song:

Anyway, my feeling about All the Light We Cannot See is just one reader’s opinion; many people obviously love Doerr’s bestseller. But I have personally found quite a few World War II novels to be more compelling — among them several Erich Maria Remarque titles, Elsa Morante’s History, Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, Kate Quinn’s The Huntress, Leon Uris’ Mila 18, and Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, to name a few.

Another well-regarded novel that disappointed me was also a Pulitzer winner: Marilynne Robinson’s 2004-published Gilead, about a minister and his much younger second wife. I found a lot of the book boring — and its May-December marriage off-putting. Not my expected reaction given that I loved Robinson’s 1980 debut novel Homecoming. (Gilead was the author’s second book despite not arriving until 24 years later.)

Then there’s Mardi, a Herman Melville novel I finally read in 2022. Though it started quite well, and had some great writing, it eventually became overlong and tedious. After having previously read most of Melville’s novels, novellas, and short stories, it became my least favorite work of his.

A year later, in 2023, I very belatedly got to Dan Brown’s mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code. An intricately plotted page-turner, but the often-clunky writing kept me from becoming completely engrossed.

When an author writes a masterpiece, another masterpiece is not super-likely to be in the offing. Such was the case with Amor Towles, whose A Gentleman in Moscow is absolutely terrific. I then read Towles’ The Lincoln Highway, which was excellent but didn’t reach the same rarified heights.

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has been widely acclaimed for, among other reasons, its rather quirky “third person present tense” writing style. I did kind of admire that approach (as well as the author’s prodigious research), but found the historical novel to be periodically confusing as I wended my way through…its rather quirky “third person present tense” writing style.

In a somewhat-related 2019 post, I mentioned several other novels that didn’t live up to my expectations — though I thought they still ranged from good to very good. They included Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and John Updike’s Rabbit, Run.

Any thoughts about, or examples of, this theme?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about the start of fall, a new library director, a new fire chief, and more — is here.

Edgemont Park in my town of Montclair, New Jersey. (Photo by me, 9-21-2024.)

I’m doing something different for this week’s blog post — reprinting my local “Montclairvoyant” humor column from this past Thursday, September 19. Why? This particular Montclair Local piece melds news in my New Jersey town with a literature theme. Some of my local references will not be understood by non-Montclair residents, but I think the column will still be an entertaining read as various famous novels and authors are mentioned.

My weekly Local column is always in a question-and-answer format — with me doing both the asking and the replying. So, I’m conversing with myself. Obviously, I have some psychological issues. 🙂

As usual with my weekly Sunday literature blog posts, there’s a link to my weekly Thursday humor column at the very end of today’s piece, where you can see local reader comments and my replies. Some weeks just a few exchanges, other weeks many.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

Montclair’s government operates under the Faulkner Act, which was explained at a recent meeting hosted by our two councilors-at-large. That Act gives a township manager lots of power, right?

Sincerely,

Clare Mont

Too much power, as granted by an Act named after late Montclair mayor Bayard Faulkner rather than author William Faulkner, whose 1932 novel Light in August chronicled 31 Montclair sunrises last month.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

Not true. But the Faulkner Act makes me think that other forms of local government could be named after novelists. Some examples, please?

Sincerely,

Nitwit for Lit

I’ll start with the Jane Austen Act, which mandates that 21st-century councilors wear clothes from the 1810s and put a needed-but-expensive new Municipal Building and Police Headquarters in Mansfield Park.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

There’s no such park in our town. What about the Stephenie Meyer Act, named after the author whose Twilight vampire novels have a high school setting?

Sincerely,

There Will Be Blood

That Act forbids Council meetings from taking place the same evening as Back to School Night, which was held at Montclair High on September 11. So, none of the impressive teachers that evening wore Dracula baseball caps.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

Are Dracula baseball caps even a thing? What about the Toni Morrison Act, named after the author of such novels as Beloved and Jazz?

Sincerely,

Sula Solomon

That form of government prevented the talented musicians at September 14’s Montclair Jazz Festival from going into executive session.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

A day later, the September 15-to-October 15 National Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month began, and it’s being celebrated in various ways in and near Montclair. Your thoughts as the parent of a Guatemalan-American daughter?

Sincerely,

Latina Heritage, Too!

I’m reminded of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Act that allows a resident’s OPRA request to remain hidden for One Hundred Years of Solitude before the requested public records are released.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

That seems exaggerated. On September 18, a special election was held to fill the seat of the late U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in a congressional district that includes part of Montclair. Is there a form of government that evokes a political novel?

Sincerely,

G.O. Peeved

Yes, the Robert Penn Warren Act named after the All the King’s Men author born early enough (1905) to walk from his native Kentucky to New York City for the 1910 opening of the old Penn Station.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

Penn Station and Robert Penn Warren are not related. What about the Marcel Proust Act?

Sincerely,

Remembrance of Pings Past

That Act, named after an author known for his LONG multi-volume opus In Search of Lost Time, codifies Council meetings that last more than five hours — a frequent occurrence in Montclair. After midnight, a pumpkin turns into another pumpkin.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

Interesting take on Cinderella’s transportation. Is there a form of government that allows a resident to make a Council meeting public comment when not physically present at a Council meeting? (A resident currently can’t do that in Montclair.)

Sincerely,

Peak Speak

The Alexander Pushkin Act allows virtual commenting, but only if the resident has the same name as Pushkin characters Eugene Onegin or Tatyana Larina.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,

Seems rather limiting. Other current councilors besides Montclair’s at-large ones have also held or will soon hold community meetings. Is there an Act besides the Faulkner law that encourages those welcome meetings?

Sincerely,

Feedback to the Future

Not the Anne Bronte Act, because that author wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall rather than The Councilor at Edgemont Park House.

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which is reprinted in the above blog post — is here.

A petrifying poltergeist protagonist. (Getty Images.)

Halloween is still six weeks away, but I wanted to discuss novels and short stories that include ghosts (after having written somewhat-similar posts in 2016 and 2021).

Why? I recently finished Elin Hilderbrand’s The Hotel Nantucket, and while that compulsively readable 2022 novel includes many compelling characters and plot lines, the highlight might be the presence of a 1922-murdered ghost still floating around the book’s Massachusetts hotel in the 2020s. That specter is 19-year-old Grace Hadley, who is bitter, funny, mischievous, and good-hearted. She keeps up on 21st-century trends, too.

A brief interlude: Three more wonderful reviews of my Misty the Cat…Unleashed book have appeared! 🙂 Author/blogger Carolyn Haynes wrote one of them on September 8, “Purrs of Wisdom” blogger Ingrid King wrote another last month that I saw belatedly, and Geri Rombach wrote still another review for the current issue of Pet Scene magazine. Links near the end of this post. Thank you very much, Carolyn, Ingrid, and Geri! 🙂

Late last year, I read George Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo — populated almost exclusively by ghosts stuck in purgatory, including President Lincoln’s recently deceased son Willie. An odd novel that’s not exactly a page-turner, but haunting.

Also a ghost of sorts hovering between life and death is Nora Seed of Matt Haig’s intriguing The Midnight Library, which I read in 2022. While in the cosmic library of the novel’s title, Nora experiences various personal timelines that might have been.

I read Toni Morrison’s famed modern classic Beloved a number of years ago, but somehow neglected to include it in my aforementioned 2016 and 2021 posts. The formerly enslaved Sethe believes there is a spirit named Beloved who is the deceased daughter she killed to prevent her from becoming a slave.

Novels and stories with ghosts mentioned in my 2016 and 2021 posts include — among others — Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (whose supernatural characters include the hilarious Peeves the Poltergeist), Edith Wharton’s many excellent ghost stories, Oscar Wilde’s humorous tale “The Canterville Ghost,” Graham Greene’s short shocker “Proof Positive,” and Dickens’ story “The Signal-Man.”

Ghosts in literature definitely give authors a chance to use their imagination, scare their readers, create dark humor, and more.

Any fiction with ghosts you’d like to discuss? And I should mention that ghosts rhyme with (blog) posts. 🙂

Carolyn Haynes’ review of Misty the Cat…Unleashed: 🙂

MOVED TO FRISSON!

Ingrid King’s review: 🙂

Review: Misty the Cat…Unleashed

Geri Rombach’s review: 🙂 It appears on page 35.

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which includes a weird take on a valuable baseball card, a welcome change in gas station ownership, a too-big townhouse proposal, and more — is here.

The career trajectories of novelists can be very different — depending on how many good ideas are in their brains, how prolific these writers are, their health, their lifespans, sales, critical acceptance, whether the authors do series or stand-alone books or both, etc.

A brief interlude to say that Rebecca Budd — the wonderfully skilled Canadian podcaster and blogger who often comments here and who many of you know — interviewed me about my 2024 Misty the Cat…Unleashed book. You can click on the link near the end of this blog post to listen to the conversation.

Back to this week’s trajectories theme…

There are of course “one-hit wonders” — with a single published novel during an author’s lifetime — such as Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), and (if one considers Go Set a Watchman an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird) Harper Lee.

Then there are authors whose first or first few books are excellent and/or very successful before things either level off or go somewhat downhill. For instance, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s and Joseph Heller’s best books were their debut novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Catch-22, respectively.

Conversely, there are authors who start with so-so (at best) novelistic efforts and then quickly or more gradually hit their masterful strides. Examples of wordsmiths who took the fast-improvement route after mediocre debut books include Edith Wharton and Jack London (never thought I’d put those two in the same sentence 🙂 ). Those who did a slower build include Cormac McCarthy and Rosamunde Pilcher; actually, it wasn’t until she was in her 60s and had written more than 20 novels that Pilcher made a spectacular leap from good to great with The Shell Seekers.

Fyodor Dostoevsky started good (Poor Folk) and ended spectacularly (The Brothers Karamazov), with the amazing Crime and Punishment written in mid-career. George Orwell’s authorial career concluded with his two best novels: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Of course, Dostoevsky and Orwell died before becoming “senior citizens,” so they might have penned some lesser works if they had lived longer.

Authors who started strong, continued strong through mid-career, and then did less well or didn’t publish as much in their later years? Mark Twain is among those who come to mind.

I’m leaving out some “categories,” but I’ll end by mentioning a number of authors who started out fairly or very strong and then sustained or are continuing to sustain that skill level for virtually their entire careers. Charles Dickens and George Eliot are past novelists among that group.

Living writers who’ve been churning out one excellent novel after another for decades include — among various others — Joy Fielding, Kristin Hannah, Barbara Kingsolver, Walter Mosley, Outlander series author Diana Gabaldon, and Jack Reacher series author Lee Child (who is gradually turning over his thriller franchise to younger brother Andrew).

If anything, several of the authors listed in my previous paragraph are doing some of their best work during the past few years. For instance, the 1955-born Kingsolver’s latest book (Demon Copperhead) won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and her previous novel (2018’s Unsheltered) was terrific. I haven’t yet read the 1960-born Hannah’s latest novel (The Women) but her three releases before that (2021’s The Four Winds, 2018’s The Great Alone, and 2015’s The Nightingale) were among her very best. And the 1945-born Fielding hit home runs with Cul-de-sac (2021) and The Housekeeper (2022). I just read The Housekeeper, about a too-good-to-be-true aide who moves into the home of a gravely ill woman, and it’s a top-notch suspense thriller with a couple of knock-out surprises.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Rebecca Budd’s podcast: 🙂

Season 6 Episode 12: Misty the Cat . . . Unleashed: The Spirited Adventures and Amusing Antics of an Asthmatic Feline on the Loose

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about the start of the school year and another too-pricey new residential building in my town — is here.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. (Photo: Google Arts & Culture.)

Museums are interesting places, educational places, entertaining places, sometimes mysterious places, and sometimes intimidating places, so why not include them in some fiction?

I just read Metropolitan Stories, a group-of-short-tales-as-novel set in New York City’s renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the intriguing wrinkles in Christine Coulson’s 2019 book are the presence of some ghosts and the fact that paintings and sculpture in the Met’s massive collection can experience emotions, have memories, etc. There’s even a chapter that would have worked as a Twilight Zone episode. But Coulson also focuses on various flesh-and-blood museum staffers — some rather eccentric.

Also set at the Met is The Goldfinch, at least in the first part of Donna Tartt’s novel — when a tragic gallery bombing gets the sprawling, dynamic plot rolling. The 2013 book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The American Museum of Natural History in NYC is the setting for The Night at the Museum. While I haven’t read Milan Trenc’s 1993 children’s book, I did see the popular 2006 movie version in which we got to visualize the museum’s exhibits come to life after sunset. I think some of us have fantasized about that. 🙂

Getting out of NYC, among the Chicago locations where the two protagonists in Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife find themselves are the Art Institute and the Field Museum. Being in places like that can telegraph things like a character’s education level and cultural awareness.

But not always. The working-class members of the wedding party in Emile Zola’s 1877 novel The Drinking Den feel out of place when they roam The Louvre in Paris, though of course there are plenty of working-class people who are avid museum-goers.

The Louvre is more prominent in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code; for instance, that museum is where a certain curator (who’s also a leader of a secret society) meets his fate.

I know there are various other novels with at least partial museum settings. Any you’d like to name? Any thoughts on this topic?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about restaurants and other places no longer in my town, and the sad demise of a 250-year-old tree after a recent storm — is here.

From the 1988 movie version of The Milagro Beanfield War novel.

When I read The Milagro Beanfield War last week, I thought about several things: the socially conscious and frequently comedic nature of John Nichols’ impressive 1974 novel, the skill in which he depicted his quirky/decidedly un-affluent characters, the book’s great sense of place, the wordy novel being longer than it needed to be (it could have lost about 100 of its 445 small-print pages), the unfortunate fates of too many animals in the book, and…”cultural appropriation.”

That’s because Nichols was a white “Anglo” author writing about a (fictional) New Mexican rural community in which most of the residents are Hispanic.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Obviously, Hispanic writers writing about Hispanic characters and culture is often the ideal; I’m certainly a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. Same for Black writers writing about Black characters and culture — whether the compelling storyteller is Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith, Buchi Emecheta, Terry McMillan, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Walter Mosley, Wole Soyinka, or Chinua Achebe…etc. (At least a couple of these authors are biracial.)

But skilled white writers can — though of course not always — make the imaginative leap into the psyches of characters with different ethnic and racial backgrounds, just as skilled writers of color can do the opposite. The same for women writing about men and vice versa. It takes care, sensitivity, some lived experience, research, a thirst for not stereotyping, and more. (It helped that the California-born John Nichols lived in Spain and Guatemala, among other places, and then moved to New Mexico — where he remained for more than 50 years.)

John Steinbeck was another white writer pretty adept at depicting Hispanic culture — mostly notably in the at-times-quite-comic Tortilla Flat, but in other novels, too. He also did a darn good job with the Chinese-American character Lee in East of Eden.

Which reminds me that contemporary Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen created some believable white characters amid the indelible Vietnamese characters in The Sympathizer and The Committed.

While Harriet Beecher Stowe’s depiction of the title character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin has drawn very mixed reactions the past 172 years (I don’t think Tom was as stereotypical as some say), there’s little to criticize about Stowe’s excellent treatment of the prominent Black characters Eliza and George in her famous 1852 anti-slavery novel.

On the flip side, the biracial French author Alexandre Dumas created scintillating portrayals of white characters in The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and various other works — while also doing a great job with his one novel (Georges) starring a Black protagonist.

I’ll add that white author John Grisham is very adroit at giving his readers three-dimensional Black protagonists in novels such as The Racketeer and The Judge’s List.

And the aforementioned James Baldwin expertly depicted the all-white cast of characters in Giovanni’s Room, one of the earlier novels with a gay theme.

Your thoughts about this topic?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about topics such as my local library temporarily closing after its aged air-conditioning failed — is here.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. (Reuters photo.)

With the August 19-22 Democratic National Convention starting tomorrow, there’s a memorable duo atop the party’s 2024 ticket: presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her vice presidential running mate Tim Walz. Harris is of course the current veep who’d be the first female commander-in-chief in U.S. history (as well as the second person of color ever to lead the country) and Walz is a populist with “everyman” charisma and a record of getting people-friendly policies passed as governor of Minnesota.

There have also been many memorable duos in literature — whether they’re friends, work partners, or in other human configurations. (I’m mostly omitting lovers, spouses, siblings, and the like from this post because I’ve focused on those kinds of characters before.) It can be fascinating to see how each member of a fictional duo interacts with the other, whether the two people are somewhat alike or “odd couple” different, whether the whole of the pairing is greater than the sum of its parts, etc.

Duos that immediately came to my mind include teen Huck Finn and runaway slave Jim in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying-to-save-their-world hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, spacey Don Quixote and his more practical sidekick Sancho Panza in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, 19th-century friends Eliza Sommers (a traveler to the U.S. from Chile) and Tao Chi’en (a cook and physician) in Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, farm woman Dellarobia Turnbow and professor/scientist Ovid Byron in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, pals-from-childhood Tully Hart (a TV journalist) and Kate Mularkey (a stay-at-home mom) in Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane, and the two Superman-creator-like cartoonists in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to name a few.

Of course, there are also plenty of dynamic duos in mystery/detective/thriller fiction. Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott of J.K. Rowling’s crime novels (written under the alias Robert Galbraith), Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey of various Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries, Joe King Oliver and Melquarth Frost of two Walter Mosley mysteries, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (first book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and Frances Neagley, among others.

In addition, I’ve enjoyed human/animal duos such as Ayla and the horse Whinney in Jean M. Auel’s prehistoric book series that begins with The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Link Ferris and the collie Chum in Albert Payson Terhune’s His Dog, to cite just two pairings.

There’s also Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But they’re actually one person, so that doesn’t quite count. 🙂

I’ll conclude by mentioning one quite nasty real-life duo: Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s Republican presidential and vice presidential opponents Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde. Oops…Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about yet another lawsuit in my town and more — is here.

An animal writing about books without a book in sight? “Sue me,” says Misty the cat. (Photo by teen human Maria.)

Hi! Misty the cat here returning for one of my periodic guest blog posts, after I filed a lawsuit against the English language for not spelling periodic “purriodic.” A legal action that promises to last even longer than the endless case in Bleak House by Charles Dickens, who also wrote The Cricket on the Hearth until I chased away that cricket. Second edition: The Cricket No Longer on the Hearth.

Anyway, my blog theme will be novels told from an unusual point of view, and I don’t mean narrating an audiobook from atop the Empire State Building. Today’s topic (along with some novelistic examples of it) was suggested by Robert Berardi, a teacher/artist/songwriter who reads this blog each week — whether the posts are written by Dave, Misty the cat (me), or a bunch of elephants slapping their trunks against a computer keyboard.

One example of a book that unspools from an unusual angle is Dave’s part-fictional Misty the Cat…Unleashed, the 2024-published work told from a feline point of view (mine). Most books aren’t in the “voice” of animals, for the simple reason that animals have trouble obtaining ISBN numbers.

Then there are novels told from a doggy perspective. (Wait…not “purrspective”? Another lawsuit coming.) Prominent examples include The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London, an author who got into the canine mindset by observing Snoopy in the 1950-launched “Peanuts” comic strip. Wait…you’re saying London died in 1916 and thus couldn’t be aware of Snoopy? Nyah-nyah, I have my paws over my ears and can’t hear you.

I’ll also mention Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself in a desperate plight: the “y” is missing from the end of his first name. (I, Misty, don’t have that problem.) Actually, Gregor-not-Gregory wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect and proceeds to express his understandably depressed thoughts about that situation. The huge spiders in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series have a different back story.

Other novels told through a critter lens include Richard Adams’ Watership Down, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, to name a few.

Of course literature’s animals are often at least partly anthropomorphized, which is defined as…a word too challenging for me, Misty the cat, to have any idea what it means. Actually, anthropomorphized means the critters have some human traits and emotions, according to Dave, who didn’t tell me that until I untied him. Why did I tie him up in the first place? How do you think I got to do today’s blog post?

Just kidding. Dave is happy that I sub for him once in a while. He suggested I do so every few months; I suggested I do so every few weeks. We compromised on every few weeks. Quite fair, no?

Novels told from an unusual point of view can obviously also star humans. Take Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones…on second thought, don’t take it…borrow it from a library instead…or buy it at a bookstore…or order it online…or find camp counselors who read it out loud alongside a roaring fire…while toasting s’mores…and flicking ashes off their clothes…and wondering why they mistook toothpaste for sunscreen…and also wondering why the small, placid lake at the camp contains a ravenous 500-foot-long shark. Anyway, The Lovely Bones has an unusual, emotionally wrenching point of view because we experience things through the eyes of a teen girl AFTER she is murdered.

Heck, some novels even contain storytelling by inanimate objects! Are those objects catnip-filled? Rarely. That’s a problem.

Your thoughts on today’s topic? Examples of today’s topic? Do you have any cat treats for me, even if those tasty morsels are off-topic?

The very talented authors/bloggers/etc. Robbie Cheadle and D.L. Finn recently posted wonderful reviews of Misty the Cat…Unleashed. The latter post also includes reviews of books by four other authors, all excellent. Links below. Thanks so much, Robbie and Denise!

https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/2024/08/07/robbies-inspiration-book-review-misty-the-cat-unleashed-the-spirited-adventures-and-amusing-antics-of-an-asthmatic-feline-on-the-loose-by-dave-astor-humour-bookreview/

https://dlfinnauthor.com/2024/08/06/93871/

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — containing my odd take on delayed tax bills — is here.