literature

Comparing the Not So Comparable

Posted by

61

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Sad Book Journey? Don’t Stop, Be Reading

Posted by

180

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

There Are Places They Remember

Posted by

74

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


—

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Fiction That Reflects Other Fiction

Posted by

103

Many novels spring mostly from an author’s brain and nowhere else. But some fiction is directly inspired by previous works, or satirizes previous works, or in some other way reflects previous works. The creative approach might be original, but the starting point is not.

That can be a praiseworthy or not-so-praiseworthy thing. We’re curious what the author will do with her/his riff on the story that came before, and are aware that a different angle on that story can be interesting and instructive. On the other hand, we might sit there thinking the author used the previous work only as a writing crutch.

I’m of course talking about novels that reflect work by another author, not sequels or series in which a writer references her/his own previous work as “the saga continues.”

This topic occurred to me while reading Robin McKinley’s absorbing 1997 novel Rose Daughter last week. It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which is best known as a Disney film but has its origins in a fairy tale that includes a 1756 version by French writer Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.

Speaking of the 18th century, Henry Fielding directly satirized/parodied Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela with Shamela (1741) and indirectly did the same thing with Joseph Andrews (1742). The latter is a hilarious book starring a man who, like Pamela, fights off all attempts to be seduced as he holds out for marriage.

Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 Gothic romance novel The Mysteries of Udolpho helped inspire Jane Austen to write Northanger Abbey, which was published in 1817 but partly penned in the late 1790s. Austen’s book stars a young woman who loves reading Gothic novels that make her imagination rather…over-imaginative. The Mysteries of Udolpho is mentioned about a dozen times in Northanger Abbey, which isn’t top-notch Austen but still a good novel.

(I am NOT going to discuss the 2009 book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. 🙂 )

Moving closer to the present day, there’s John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and its many biblical references, including several characters who share the same first initials as Cain and Abel. If you consider The Bible literature — heck, at least some of the stuff in it HAD to be made up — then Steinbeck’s ambitious novel belongs in this blog post. (When God blogs, is it called a glog? But I digress…)

Then we have Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847). Rhys’ hypnotic work of fiction chronicles the pre-Jane Eyre life of the “madwoman in the attic” in Bronte’s novel, including how she met and married Edward Rochester.

There’s also Jasper Fforde’s engaging 2001 novel The Eyre Affair, in which detective Thursday Next enters the pages of Jane Eyre — and doesn’t have to cross a wide sea to do so. She uses “The Prose Portal” instead.

And there’s Margaret Atwood’s interesting/quirky The Penelopiad, which focuses on what Penelope was thinking and doing while her hubby Odysseus was experiencing the epic thing in Homer’s The Odyssey.

What are your favorite novels (or other fiction) that connect to previously published works? What do you think of authors doing that?

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

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

The Pleasures of Reading an Author’s Second-Best Novel

Posted by

63

Isn’t it a thrill to read, for the first time, what turns out to be one of your very favorite novels? It’s an experience hard to duplicate. You can reread the book, and greatly enjoy it again, but it’s not quite the same as that initial “adventure.”

Yet one can partly re-create the experience by reading what’s considered an author’s second-best novel. You’ll get a percentage of the aforementioned thrill — and also get the opportunity to think about what’s similar to the favorite book, what’s different, and why one novel is better than the other.

Of course, what you think is an author’s first- or second-best novel is subjective, and may differ from the critical and popular consensus. For instance, The Brothers Karamazov is actually a more impressive accomplishment than Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s amazing Crime and Punishment, yet I like the latter a bit better. It has a leaner narrative, and a feverish intensity that the more rambling, albeit even deeper The Brothers Karamazov doesn’t 100% match.

Jane Eyre is by far Charlotte Bronte’s most famous book — and, as some of you know, it’s my favorite novel by any author. But I got a good dose of satisfaction reading Bronte’s excellent Villette — whose lonely, brooding, self-reliant, buffeted-by-life Lucy Snowe protagonist reminds me of Jane, and whose crusty M. Paul Emanuel character has elements of Jane’s romantic partner Edward Rochester. Still, the set-in-France Villette doesn’t have quite the unforgettable heartache and primal passion of Bronte’s earlier book, though it does have plenty of melancholy that partly stems from being penned after the early deaths of Charlotte’s sisters Emily and Anne.

My favorite John Steinbeck novel is The Grapes of Wrath — a powerful, compassionate book that cries out for social justice while never losing sight of the need to have that cry filtered through the prism of memorable, three-dimensional characters like Tom Joad, Ma Joad, and Jim Casy. But I also got a lot of pleasure reading what I and many others consider Steinbeck’s second-best novel: East of Eden. The book doesn’t quite pack the emotional wallop or economic-inequality indignation of The Grapes of Wrath, but it’s actually more ambitious in certain ways — with its multigenerational drama covering decades, and its frequent use of biblical symbolism.

The Great Gatsby is of course thought of as F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s best novel, and that iconic book indeed contains beautiful prose and more (even if one wants to sometimes say “who gives a … about these rich people” 🙂 ). But Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night also offers readers much to enjoy and admire, despite not having Gatsby‘s near-perfect construction.

Then there’s the case of George Eliot. Middlemarch is her most impressive novel, and it’s my favorite of hers in a way. Among other things, it’s hard to find troubled marriages dissected as expertly as the two unions spotlighted in that book. But the lengthy Middlemarch can be a slog at times, unlike Eliot’s very readable yet still multidimensional Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, and Adam Bede. Heck, I think I prefer the riveting Daniel Deronda over Middlemarch.

A similar discussion can be had about Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Not surprisingly, the epic One Hundred Years of Solitude is my favorite novel of his; there are few literary works that as compellingly and comprehensively cover “the human condition.” But the legendary novel can be confusing at times — partly because of all those similar names! Love in the Time of Cholera is a very respectable second for me among Garcia Marquez’s works, as it depicts many facets of romance while maintaining a fairly linear story line.

Also not surprisingly, the acclaimed The Poisonwood Bible is my favorite Barbara Kingsolver novel. It unsparingly looks at the devastation of colonialism and evangelicalism while three-dimensionally depicting the Price family: the vile missionary father, and the beleaguered mother and four daughters. Prodigal Summer is my second favorite of Kingsolver’s other excellent novels; it’s less ambitious than Poisonwood, but does nicely challenge and entertain the reader with three separate story lines that come together at the end.

Mass-audience novels? If one considers the Harry Potter series to be one long book, then that’s my favorite J.K. Rowling work. Her much different The Casual Vacancy is a distant but satisfying second despite its grim subject matter and its much smaller canvas. But if one looks at the Harry Potter series as seven books (which it is!), my favorite is the initial one: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Not as complex and well-written as the later novels, but the thrills of first discovering Rowling’s wizard world are many. The series’ third installment — Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — is my second favorite, and a memorable read.

Well, I could go on and on, but it’s time for this week’s questions: What are examples of your favorite and second-favorite novels by an author? Does the second book give you some or a lot of the thrill of the first? What makes your favorite books better than the runners-up?

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

—

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Text and Context: How Our Mood Affects Reading

Posted by

76

In and of itself, any novel is good or bad, funny or sad, etc. — right? Well, yes…and no. A literary work does have an intrinsic value (or lack of one), but a reader’s intelligence and experience and mood affect how the book will be perceived. I’m going to focus on the mood thing in this column.

For instance, my main reading when I was on vacation earlier this month was Henry James’ The Ambassadors. It’s a novel (James’ favorite of the many he wrote) that’s beautiful but SLOW. Little action (this is not Jack Reacher, people!); long, intricate sentences; subtle psychological insights; and delicately detailed interplay between characters (one of whom is an American sent to Paris to try to bring a young man back to the U.S.). The fact that I was often relaxing by a lake while reading so leisurely a book seemed appropriate, and probably added to my enjoyment. There was a matching of text and context.

Despite a 10-hour trip from hell to drive 285 miles home, the vacation had made me less stressed than usual when I began rereading Charlotte Bronte’s excellent Villette. Near the start of the novel, I found myself laughing out loud at the interaction between the prim Paulina character and the Graham teen who comically goads her. Would I have found that quite so hilarious if I were in a tense mood? Probably not. (Paulina knows how to jab right back at Graham, literally and figuratively.)

Or how about being angry at someone, yet knowing that real-life revenge is out of the question — unless you want to peruse books in prison? 🙂 You can vicariously revel in virtual vengeance when reading something like Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Stephen King’s Rose Madder, or any of Lee Child’s visceral novels starring the aforementioned Reacher. Those books are page-turners no matter what mood you’re in, but they can have even more impact when you’re feeling irate.

When you’re feeling melancholy, a novel with melancholy moments can seem even more…melancholy. Try George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda when your mood is sad, and you’ll be sighing more than a person watching a Republican presidential debate. (Eliot’s magnificent novel also has some wonderfully upbeat plot threads.)

Of course, when you’re falling in love, or in a troubled relationship, or in an unrequited-love situation, etc., that can heighten the experience of reading novels with memorably happy or tumultuous romances. I’m thinking George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, James Clavell’s Shogun, and so many other books.

Many of us have experienced bad treatment at the hands of the rich and powerful, at the hands of people who are racist or sexist or homophobic, and so on. When there is that kind of hurt in our lives, it can be especially intense and/or comforting (in an “I’m not in this alone” way) to read books with social-justice elements written by such authors as Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, and John Grisham.

And when life gets too burdensome or boring, it’s especially pleasant to escape into fantasy novels or magic-filled books — with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series two obvious examples.

Which books have you read that have been enhanced by you being in a particular mood?

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

—

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Prolific Prose Practitioners

Posted by

140

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.)

—

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

Posted by

138

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!

—

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

Posted by

235

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.)

—

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

Posted by

88

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.)

—

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.