short stories

A Categorical Take on Short Stories

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As with other literary genres, short stories have different “categories.” Two of those “categories” include tales that are psychologically insightful but not very plot-oriented, and more “escapist” tales that have a strong, perhaps even exciting story line leading inexorably to a conclusion.

I like many stories from each camp, and also enjoy tales that combine the two styles. As with novels, it’s great to experience reading variety!

Obviously, psychologically insightful tales can offer plenty of food for thought and reflection, even if they’re not purely entertaining. But it’s nice sometimes to just sink one’s teeth into an adventure tale that gets the blood racing.

Thanks to James Joyce, I thought about all this after reading his Dubliners collection of short stories. (Previously, I had only gotten to that collection’s final, sublime, most-famous tale, “The Dead,” by finding it online.) Many of the Dubliners stories are subtle, slice-of-life works; they don’t exactly yank a reader toward Jack Reacher-like thriller endings. Yet they delve deeply into the human psyche and the difficulties and epiphanies of life for everyday people, and also give readers a panoramic view of the Dublin of 100-plus years ago.

Many of Anton Chekhov’s short stories are similar — usually not that plot-driven, but very rich in emotions, nuances, philosophical thoughts, and character delineation. And of course it helps to be a great wordsmith, as Joyce and Chekhov were.

Contrast those kinds of tales — which can often be categorized as literary fiction — with something like Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” or Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” that seem to run on adrenaline as they move readers toward a breathtaking climax. Or with mostly comedic stories — such as Mark Twain’s career-making “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” — that may not have a huge amount of depth but sure are funny.

Then there are stories that seem to have “the best of both worlds” — psychological insight and (perhaps propulsive) drama. They include — among various other tales by various other writers — Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Aleph,” Leo Tolstoy’s “Master and Man,” George Eliot’s “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” O. Henry’s “The Last Leaf,” Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” Graham Greene’s “Proof Positive,” Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case,” Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost,” John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” and Margaret Atwood’s more recent “Stone Mattress.”

What are some of your favorite short stories with psychologically insightful or escapist approaches, or a combination of the two?

(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.

Avoiding the Classics But Not the Authors of Classics

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Some people don’t read long, challenging, and/or depressing classic novels because of time constraints and worry about feeling bored, frustrated, or sad. So, left by the wayside are Ulysses, Moby-Dick, Middlemarch, War and Peace, and various other iconic books — some of which are actually quite compelling and even entertaining.

A possible compromise: People could read the authors of classics, but read those writers’ shorter/easier works rather than the longer/tougher stuff. That approach might eventually lead readers to the longer/tougher stuff, but, even if it doesn’t, they’ve at least experienced some literary greatness.

The alternatives to reading authors’ most famous/demanding works might be in the form of novels, novellas, or short stories — with some of that work early-career efforts written before the authors jettisoned simplicity.

I thought about that last week while being riveted by a collection of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories. I had read Anna Karenina and War and Peace many years ago, and was of course impressed, but I realized that briefer Tolstoy tales might be attractive to readers who want to avoid that author’s long and very long books. Among the Russian writer’s shorter classics: “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (a grim masterpiece about a life lived too conventionally), the almost-novella-length “The Kreutzer Sonata” (an intense saga of lust, marriage, and jealousy), and the literally chilling “Master and Man.”

Moving on to other authors, I’d recommend reading James Joyce’s fairly straightforward and hauntingly sad story “The Dead” instead of/before reading Ulysses and his other brain-straining novels.

Readers who want to temporarily or permanently avoid the majestic Moby-Dick might instead try Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd or stories such as “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno” (the latter a mesmerizing slave-ship tale).

Before tackling George Eliot’s exquisite but at times slow-moving Middlemarch, readers might consider her Silas Marner — which has a bad reputation among some high-school students but is actually a very poignant short novel.

Scared of reading late-career Henry James novels (such as The Ambassadors) that are excellent but filled with dense verbiage? Try Washington Square and other absorbing earlier James works that are written quite clearly.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is an incredible novel but not the easiest book, so one alternative could be his also deep but much more linear Love in the Time of Cholera.

Before getting to Willa Cather’s beautifully written but oh-so-earnest Death Comes for the Archbishop, readers might consider something like her Shadows on the Rock — an appealing historical novel starring a daughter and her widowed father in 17th-century Quebec City.

More before-or-instead-of possibilities (with the authors’ outstanding-but-somewhat-“taxing” classics in parentheses): Toni Morrison’s Sula (Beloved), Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings), Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter), Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet (Old Goriot), Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Delight (Germinal), Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Tips story collection (The Handmaid’s Tale), Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and its sequel Pigs in Heaven (The Poisonwood Bible), and John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday (The Grapes of Wrath).

What would be some of your suggestions for less “grueling” fare by authors of classic novels?

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

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

First Meetings in Fiction

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Last week’s post was about memorable goodbyes in literature. This week, I’m flipping that around to discuss characters’ memorable first meetings — which can help hook readers early in a work of fiction.

I’ll start by again mentioning Jane Eyre, in which Charlotte Bronte’s quiet but feisty governess heroine initially encounters a galloping Rochester on a path where his horse slips and injures him. It’s significant — and portentous — that Rochester’s temporary disability puts him on a somewhat equal footing with Jane despite being her employer.

In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to help with the farm chores. When Matthew goes to the train station to meet him, the “boy” is a girl: Anne Shirley. That mistake and Matthew’s shyness make for awkward acquaintance-getting, but, before the horse-and-wagon ride home is done, the orphaned Anne wins over Matthew with her talkativeness, enthusiasm, intelligence, and (understandable) neediness.

Moving from England to Canada to France, we have German surgeon Ravic in Paris on the run from the Nazis when — in the opening page of Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph — he dramatically meets an almost catatonic Joan Madou on the street as she’s (possibly) contemplating suicide. What ensues is loosely based on Remarque’s relationship with famed actress Marlene Dietrich.

Then there’s A.S. Byatt’s Possession, in which little-known scholar Roland Michell and better-known scholar Maud Bailey meet to try to solve a long-ago mystery involving two 19th-century poets. The initial Maud-Roland encounter is somewhat strained, but things gradually warm up between the two.

Or how about the part-comedic/part-scary first meeting of Moby-Dick characters Ishmael and Queequeg when they’re forced to share the same inn room before boarding Captain Ahab’s ill-fated ship?

Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for the 1956 movie version of Herman Melville’s classic work — three years after the publication of Fahrenheit 451. In that Bradbury novel, the meeting between professional “fireman” (book burner) Guy Montag and free-thinking teen Clarisse McClellan is the spark that causes Guy to question his beliefs and what he’s doing with his life.

Another fascinating first meeting is when Kiki Belsey visits Carlene Kipps in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. Their annoying, self-centered husbands are academic and authorial rivals, yet the two women manage to carve out something of a friendship.

There are many memorable meetings in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — Dorothy coming across the Scarecrow, the two of them meeting the Tin Woodman, the three of them encountering the Cowardly Lion, the four of them meeting the Wizard, etc. (And black-and-white meets color in The Wizard of Oz movie. 🙂 )

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the title character learns he’s a wizard when meeting Hagrid; then, on the train to Hogwarts, he encounters the two people (Hermione and Ron) who will become his closest friends; then Harry is introduced to Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore; then he later meets arch-villain Lord Voldemort; and so on.

There are also first meetings — often in a continuing series of novels — that are long anticipated/delayed. For instance, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series has Jack first hearing Major Susan Turner’s voice on the phone in 61 Hours, but our curious hero doesn’t come face-to-face with that potential romantic interest until four books later, in Never Go Back. A meeting teased that long is often worth waiting for — and, in this case, it is.

An engineer visiting a Massachusetts town is also curious — about the dour, limping Ethan Frome when he first meets him in Edith Wharton’s novel. Readers soon learn about Ethan’s melancholy, tragic history.

Then there are meetings with celebrities, as when the time-traveling Sam Fowler encounters Mark Twain, President Grant, and other notables in Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back.

Not to mention difficult meetings between people who don’t understand each other’s language, as in Zhilin’s initial “conversation” with his captor in Leo Tolstoy’s tale “The Prisoner of the Caucasus.” (I’m currently reading a collection of that author’s short stories.)

What are your favorite first meetings in literature?

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

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.

Obsession in Lit and From Many a Political Twit

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After right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died this month, Republicans proved once again that they’re obsessed with obstructing Barack Obama at every turn. Refusing to consider ANY Scalia replacement nominee from the Democratic, biracial president with almost a year left in the White House? How partisan — and, yes, racist — of the GOP. Sure, Obama’s pick would change the ideological bent of the Supreme Court, but them’s the breaks.

Since I’m a literature blogger, I also started thinking of obsessed fictional characters — both negative (like the Republicans in their vicious hatred of the more-centrist-than-liberal Obama) and positive. Whether the single-mindedness is political, romantic, or otherwise, it can be riveting in a protagonist.

For instance, there are the rulers obsessed with control of the populace in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the hyper-ambitious, Huey Long-like Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.

Or how about the fanatical police inspector Javert, who focuses to the nth degree on trying to capture Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? And the escaped prisoner Edmond Dantes, who devotes his life to revenge against the men who framed him in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. And the guilt-ridden lovers Therese and Laurent, who are hyper-focused on the memory of the man they killed in Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin. Heck, those three examples are just from 19th-century French literature alone.

Also obsessed is the man (Nathanael) who becomes infatuated with a (robot?) woman in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 story “The Sandman,” the woman (Katerina) who stays intensely/criminally attached to the no-good Sergei in Nikolai Leskov’s “The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” and various Edgar Allan Poe protagonists — including the murderers in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” and the love-struck young man in the partly comedic “The Spectacles.”

Then there’s the title character in Toni Morrison’s Sula who’s obsessed with being independent, unconventional, and not bound by gender norms.

A torrid affair begets homicide in Therese Raquin, but romantic obsession has different results in other novels such as W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. In the first book, would-be doctor Philip Carey becomes totally fixated on a waitress (Mildred Rogers) who holds him in contempt until… In Garcia Marquez’s novel, Florentino Ariza carries a torch for Fermina Daza over many decades until…

Theo Decker carries something else — a painting — out of a museum after a terrorist attack in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and remains obsessed for years with Carel Fabritius’ famous bird portrait — partly because of its association with Theo’s beloved mother, who died in the attack.

Another creature filling the mind of a protagonist is the huge marlin relentlessly reeled in by Santiago the fisherman as he tries to defy bad luck and aging in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and Sea.

Still another creature is the fixation of Captain Ahab, who, in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, angrily pursues the huge white whale that bit off part of his leg. (Some latte-drinking readers might also be obsessed with the novel’s Starbuck character and how his name was appropriated by a certain coffee chain. 🙂 )

Speaking of 20th-century/19th-century connections, Octavia Butler’s Kindred novel sends Dana Franklin back in time to America’s slave-holding South. As the black character navigates that horrid world, her obsession is making sure her ancestor is born so that she (Dana) can exist 150 years later.

Many Americans are also known for single-mindedly climbing the corporate or social ladder, and an example of someone who ascends the latter ladder is Undine Spragg of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country. It’s not a coincidence that her initials are U.S.

The title character’s initials in Martin Eden represent Jack London’s semi-autobiographical “me” — a self-educated, working-class protagonist hell-bent on becoming a successful writer.

Also obsessed with having a writing career is Jo March, the Little Women character partly based on the author herself — Louisa May Alcott.

Last but not least, we have Lord Voldemort’s obsession with killing Harry Potter. I’d compare the GOP’s many obstructionist politicians to Voldemort, but that would be an insult to J.K. Rowling’s gruesomely evil creation. 🙂

Who are your favorite fixated fictional fellows and women? (Also welcome are any thoughts on the late Harper Lee, who died Feb. 19 following decades of being obsessed with maintaining her privacy after the great To Kill a Mockingbird rocketed her to fame.)

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

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

A Look at Intoxicating Literature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prolific Prose Practitioners

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some prolific novelists from other countries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

Said to Some Authors: ‘Burb, Your Enthusiasm’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

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

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

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

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

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights

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

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

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

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

Sea Literature Is a Sight for Shore Eyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

Reverse Chronology in Fiction (Or Maybe This Headline Should Be at the End of This Post)

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The start comes before the finish, right? That’s what I hear, but some literary works don’t follow that timeline.

Back in 2013 (which reportedly preceded 2015), I wrote a Huffington Post piece about how some fiction is chronological while other fiction jumps around via flashbacks and such. Today, I’m going to take that a step further by discussing literature in which you know the fate of the protagonist from the start.

That removes much of the suspense and story development, doesn’t it? Well, in a way. But things can still be interesting — sometimes even more interesting — when the conclusion comes first. We’re more alert to foreshadowing as we continue to read, and we’re curious how the protagonist gets to the “place” we’ve already witnessed. Plus we want to know why things ended up the way they did.

I thought about that last week while reading Camille — the novel by the Alexandre Dumas who was the son of the more famous Alexandre Dumas. Camille (originally titled The Lady of the Camellias) features the “courtesan” Marguerite Gautier, who is dead at the start of the book. Then the emotionally powerful story unfolds about how she lived her short life.

Camille was adapted for the stage and screen — two places where Betrayal also found its home. Harold Pinter’s play begins at the end of an affair and then backtracks to the start of that liaison — a stunningly effective device that adds to the reading or watching experience.

There’s also Susan Vreeland’s novel Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which traces a painting — and the painting’s profound effect on various people’s lives — from the 20th century to the 17th century. The scrolling back in time adds to the mystery and poignancy.

Or how about Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome? It’s not strictly “reverse chronological,” but we soon know that the title character has become physically damaged and very unhappy. The rest of the riveting novel goes back in time to explain how that came about.

There are also introductory sections set years or even centuries after the events in the novel unfold. For instance, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Custom-House” essay that precedes his iconic The Scarlet Letter tells about finding — in the 19th century — a faded “A” that Hester Prynne wore in the 1600s. Also, Old Mortality first focuses on an 18th-century man re-engraving the tombstones of Covenanter martyrs before Sir Walter Scott starts telling the compelling 17th-century story of those deceased people who wanted to re-establish Presbyterianism in Scotland.

Many other novels, such as Margaret Atwood’s excellent Cat’s Eye and The Blind Assassin, show middle-aged or old protagonists in the book’s present time and then flash back to those characters’ much younger years.

While this is not strictly on-topic, I also think of Graham Greene’s (very) short shocker of a story “Proof Positive.” Is Philip Weaver dead at the start of the tale? At the end of the tale? Or both? You can read it here.

What are your favorite works that start at the end? What are the pros and cons of literature with that kind of chronology?

Given that there might not be many examples of the above, you’re also welcome to name your favorite works that don’t necessarily begin with a concluding event but are non-linear (jumping back and forth through time via flashbacks or other narrative devices). Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five would be among countless examples.

(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. Also, please feel free to read through comments and reply to anyone you want; I love not only being in conversations, but also reading conversations in which I’m not involved!)

—

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

I’m also 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 New York City and 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.

Presenting Protagonists Placed in Prison

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In last week’s post about author aliases, I mentioned a couple of writers (O. Henry and Voltaire) who spent time in jail. That gave me the idea to focus this week’s post on some of literature’s incarcerated characters.

Yes, I know all characters are imprisoned inside book covers or Kindles, and are sentenced to appear in sentences. But only some protagonists are actually caged in fictional slammers.

Being in jail can certainly make for dramatic, intense reading. Is the character guilty or innocent? A “regular” prisoner or a political prisoner? In a brutal facility or (if rich enough) a “country club” jail? On death row? A prisoner of war? Is racism involved? How is the detainee dealing with the loss of freedom? How long before release? Is an escape planned or possible? Etc. All of that can “raise the bars” in keeping a viewer glued to the page.

In Charles Dickens’ life and work, debtors’ prisons loom large. The author’s father was sent to one, and Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield and Mr. Pickwick in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club were also jailed for monetary reasons. Two fictional examples of how Dickens depicted and expressed his indignation at poverty and economic inequality.

Dickens’ pal Wilkie Collins wrote A Rogue’s Life, in which the protagonist ends up being shipped to a penal colony in Australia.

George Eliot’s Adam Bede includes the jailing of a despondent Hetty Sorrel after the young working-class woman abandons an infant born from her liaison with a rich squire. The prison scene between Hetty and preacher Dinah Morris, just before Hetty’s scheduled hanging, is memorable.

Rebecca is unjustly imprisoned for “witchcraft” in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe — a fate that also befalls a number of women in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, which is set in 17th-century Salem, Mass., but is also a parable of the McCarthy era that saw many progressives jailed for their beliefs.

A jailed Canadian woman, accused murderer Grace Marks, is the focus of Margaret Atwood’s set-in-the-19th-century historical novel Alias Grace.

In France, Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo sees the innocent Edmond Dantes banished for years to an island prison off Marseille. His escape is clever and riveting.

French author Stendhal’s Italy-set novel The Charterhouse of Parma has the young and charismatic Fabrizio sentenced to a 12-year term in a tower prison for a self-defense murder. But it’s really political and romantic intrigue that gets him locked up. Several months later, the two women who love Fabrizio urge him to try a highly dangerous escape to avoid possibly being poisoned.

Near the end of Herman Melville’s Pierre, the title character is jailed for murder in New York City, where he’s visited by the novel’s two main female protagonists. What happens in that cell to Pierre, Isabel, and Lucy is shocking, and reflects Melville’s despair at negative reaction to his poor-selling Moby-Dick masterpiece of the year before.

One of the most famous 19th-century novels with a prison element is Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, although Raskolnikov’s Siberian jailing doesn’t come until almost the end of novel. Still, that conclusion conveys a compelling mix of painful punishment and future hope.

A later Russian writer’s book — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich — depicts the unjustly held Ivan’s boredom, huge difficulties, and tiny satisfactions in a harsh Soviet gulag.

Then there are Holocaust novels, such as William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life, that show the horrors of those genocidal years by focusing on a few individual characters. Also, Billy Pilgrim is a World War II prisoner of war who somehow survives the bombing of Dresden in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

Many other 20th-century and 21st-century novels have prison elements. Tom Joad is just released from an Oklahoma jail as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath begins. A huge South Dakota penitentiary is a major presence in Lee Child’s 61 Hours, starring Jack Reacher.

The way the U.S. “justice” system treats African-Americans more harshly than whites is all over literature, as can be seen in novels such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Tom Robinson is falsely accused of attempted rape, nearly pulled from jail to be lynched, and outrageously found guilty — before things get even worse.

Things aren’t always good outside the U.S., either. John Grady Cole, a teen cowboy from Texas, is thrown into a brutal Mexican jail for having an affair with a powerful ranch owner’s daughter in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, while the Spanish Inquisition prisoner in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” story is in danger of being executed in the most painful way imaginable.

Dorothy L. Sayers’s Strong Poison features crime writer Harriet Vane in jail on murder charges when she’s visited by amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Drama and love (?) ensue. Obviously, the mystery and detective genres have many a person locked up — as do dystopian novels.

Characters are also sent to prison for white-collar offenses, as is the case with Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist after his conviction for alleged libel in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Who are the fictional prisoners you remember most? What are the literary works with incarceration elements you remember most?

(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. Also, please feel free to read through comments and reply to anyone you want; I love not only being in conversations, but also reading conversations in which I’m not involved!)

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

I’m also 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 New York City and 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.