January - Authors Lost

January 2010 has been a significant month in literature with the deaths of several prominent authors. Here are some quotes from characters in their work.

Iconic, reclusive novelist J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, 91 (January 28)

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."

A People’s History of the United States historian, activist Howard Zinn, 87 (January 27)

"One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and the unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country."

Novelist of manners, literary critic Louis Auchincloss, 92 (January 26)

"We'll get you dressed up in the finest dark suits and white stiff collars — no color except for a gorgeous Charvet tie ... "

Spenser mystery writer Robert B. Parker, 77 (January 18)

"I sat at the end of Hayden's street with the motor idling and the heater on until nine o'clock, when I ran low on gas and had to shut off the motor. By ten fifteen I was cold. The hamburgers were long gone, though the memory lingered on the back of my throat, and I was almost through the bourbon. During that time Hayden had not come to me and confessed. He had not had a visit from Joe Broz or Phil, or the Ghost of Christmas Future. The Ceremony of Moloch had not shown up and sung 'The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi' under his window. At eleven o'clock the lights in his living room went out and I went home--stiff, sore, tired, crabby, dyspeptic, cold, and about five-eighths drunk."

Love Story novelist Erich Segal, 72 (January 17)

"Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Filmmaker, story writer Eric Rohmer, 89 (January 11)

"... thoughts rather than actions."

Feminist Mary Daly, 81 (January 3)

"Women of the world unite! Stand up and fight! Say our own names! Go up in flames!"

This Week in Reading July 12 - 18

Obituaries: Journalist / fantasist John A. Keel (79), novelist Vassily Aksyonov (76), playwright / screenwriter Judi Ann Mason (54).

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist S. Y. Agnon (1966), poet Pablo Neruda (1971), playwright Wole Soyinka (1986)

Novelists and story writers
William Makepeace Thackeray, Isaac Babel, Nathalie Sarrault, Christina Stead, Jessamyn West, Irving Stone, Hammond Innes, Margaret Laurence, Anita Brookner, Clive Cussler, Iris Murdoch, Susan Howatch, Richard Russo, Christopher Priest, Joe Keenan

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Reinaldo Arenas, Yevgeny Yevtushenko Playwrights: Oscar Hammerstein II, Clifford Odets, Arthur Laurents, Tony Kushner, J. Michael Straczynski

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Jacques Derrida, Thomas Kuhn Believers: Mary Baker Eddy Scientists: Paul Stamets Historians: Kenneth Clark, Pierre Berton

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Ida B. Wells Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller, Peter Schickele, Bill Cosby Essayists: Henry David Thoreau, Walter Benjamin, Rudolf Arnheim, Northrup Frye, Charles Champlin, Jerry Rubin, Maulana Karenga,Tony Kornheiser, Scott Ritter Journalists: Hunter S. Thompson Editors: Thomas Bullfinch, Arianna Huffington Officials: S. I. Hayakawa, Nelson Mandela Media and others: Roald Amundsen, R. Buckminster Fuller, Art Linkletter, Woody Guthrie, Richard Simmons, L. Brent Bozell

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Erle Stanley Gardner Crime: Donald E. Westlake Suspense: Jean-Christophe Grange

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Science Fiction: George E. Slusser

Western / Historical Fiction Writers
Westerns: Owen Wister

Visual Artists
Illustrators: Bruno Schulz

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Clement Moore, Cheech Marin, Brian Selznick Teens: Leon Garfield

Events to read about:
Rembrandt, Joshua Reynolds, the Rosetta Stone, Henry James and J. D. Salinger's books, Wrong Way Corrigan, the last tsar, H. L. Mencken watches the Scopes Trial, Nadia Comaneci earns the first "10."

This Week’s Questions:

Sometimes a new word needs to be coined for a specific literary concept; sometimes a word is created by a typo which looks like it could fit a literary concept. For example:

Lilterature - Sappy books meant primarily to lift one's spirits.

Silence Fiction - Novels about censorship

Buyographies - Ghost written life stories paid for by celebrities

Wisterns - Romance novels with ranch settings

Franticsy Fiction - Suspenseful horror novels

Mastery and Detection Fiction - How-to novels

Deference Encyclopedias - What you want to hear, not what you need to know

And the obvious ones:

Hysterical Fiction
Court Stories

Any others? Send us your humorous literary concepts.

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

In 1971 Francis Steegmuller won a National Book Award for her biography of playwright Jean Cocteau, Cocteau: a biography.

In 1982 David McCullough won a National Book Award for his biography of Teddy Roosevelt, Mornings on Horseback.

Short story writer Alice Munro won the United Kingdom's Man Booker International Prize for 2009. The prize is for the author's significant work in fiction overall and is given only every other year.

The books discussed last week in the National Book Awards temporary blog of the 77 Fiction Winners of the National Book Award were The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren, The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, From Here to Eternity by James Jones, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This week we get novels by Saul Bellow, another Faulkner, John O'Hara, Wright Morris, John Cheever, Bernard Malumud, and Phillip Roth. Enjoyable to read.

This Week in Reading March 1 - 7

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982)

Obituaries: Science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer (1918 – 2009) To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Venus on the Half Shell, Riverworld, Dayworld; Playwright Horton Foote (1916 - 2009) The Young Man from Atlanta.

Novelists and story writers: Allessandro Manzoni, William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, Ralph Ellison, Alan Sillitoe, Tom Wolfe, John Irving, Bret Easton Ellis, Khaled Hosseini

Poets and Playwrights: Martial, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, Channing Pollock

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Hans Eysenck

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Sholem Aleichem, Ring Lardner

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: James Ellroy, Robert Harris

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Peter Straub, Steven Barnes, Mike Resnick, Patricia Kenneally-Morrison

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Howard Pyle, Milt Gross, Ronald Searle, Will Eisner, David Fury, Mark Evanier

Children’s / Teen Authors: Dr. Seuss, Dav Pilkey

Events to read about: Artists, musicians, and politicians: Chopin, Vivaldi, and Ravel; Botticelli, Michaelangelo, and Mondrian; Social moments: the Boston Massacre, the US Congress, Dred Scott and the Missouri Compromise, FDR’s inauguration, the Iron Curtain, and the Peace Corps.

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME begins next Sunday, March 9 so set your clocks back one hour on Saturday and lose an hour of reading. (You'll get it back in the Fall.)

This Week’s Questions: Think you know style? Who, born this week, wrote these lines?

“If I had nothing to do and to avoid getting bored I'd hole up at the school library, where they had the Aldeana collection. I read the whole thing!”

“Thus every healthy-minded child – no matter if he develops in later years to be a financier or bootmaker – is a story teller. As soon as he begins to talk he tells stories. … he dramatizes every object of his surroundings. The library shelves are files of soldiers, the rugs are islets of the seaway of the floor …and the child creates … an entire and complex work of fiction of which he is at one and the same time hero, author and public.”

“But the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she read, and rather proud of it.”

“We were talking about books and reading, and he asked me if I liked poetry – only he called it ‘poultry’ – and I said I was wild about it and Edgar M. Guest was just about my favorite, and then I asked him if he liked Kipling and what do you think he said? He said he didn’t know; he’d never kipled.”

“I lived to read and fantasize. I shoplifted books, food, and car models.”

Answer to Last Week’s Question: No blogger, although he would have been at least a twitterer if alive today, the often self absorbed, and ever quoting but often quoted essayist of the French Sixteenth Century was Michel de Montaigne.

John Steinbeck told young authors to not edit themselves until done with the work.

Irwin Shaw kept going and would write whether he got paid or not, but he was well paid for it.

Elizabeth George reminds new writers to “suit up and show up.” She has dozens of mystery novels and one very good book of advice to writers with examples from other famous writers.

This Week in Reading February 15 - 21

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Toni Morrison (1993)

Novelists and Story Writers: Henry Adams, Nikos Kozantzakis, Anais Nin, Carson McCullers, Chaim Potok, Jean Auel, Wallace Stegner, Amy Tan, Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace, Richard Ford, Mo Yan.

Poets and Playwrights: Raymond Queneau, W. H. Auden, Andre Breton, Russell Crouse.

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Jeremy Bentham, Alfred North Whitehead, John Rawls, Eckhart Tolle, Van Wyck Brooks,

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Erma Bombeck.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Sax Rohmer, Ruth Rendell, Margaret Truman, Len Deighton, Gregory McDonald.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Andre Norton, Laurell K. Hamilton, Iain Banks.

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Warren Ellis, Gahan Wilson, Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening.

Literary Obituaries: Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih.

Events to read about: Both Corpenicus and Gallileo were born this week; the first magazine in America and later the New Yorker started up in the same week the Post Office was begun to deliver them; the US denied some Japanese Americans the right to citizenship during WWII and a president visited China to re-open it to the West; and we went from a computer the size of a room to You Tube appearing on handhelds.

This Week’s Question: One of this week’s authors said some of the best things ever about the process of writing for people who want to read. Who said the following?

"The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time."

"I wrote my first [x] because I wanted to read it."

"I never wanted to grow up to be a writer. I just wanted to grow up to be an adult."

Answer to Last Week’s Question: We showed you a site with pictures of beautiful libraries from around the world, called Curious Expeditions. We asked you which of these exquisite libraries have you visited. Some of our librarians in the course of their studies and travels have been to several reading rooms shown, including UC, Berkeley, the New York Public Library, our nearby neighbor, the Huntington Library (which has many rare first editions to see,) the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Trinity College in Dublin (where you can see the Book of Kells on display.) The list is probably endless because some of us like also to visit other public libraries from small towns to big cities when we’re on vacation. It’s great to have themes for your vacations over your life, from all the libraries you can see to all the theaters you can see or all the ball parks or roller coasters you can visit. We have the books to show you where everything is.

This Week in Reading February 8 - 14

We're winding down one of the two times of year that seem to produce the most prolific authors. There are some extremely popular frequently releasing novelists, relentless essayists, a mystery writer who published more than anyone, and fantasy and teen writers who have filled whole shelves by themselves. Also, some very important people to our culture, who also wrote a bit, were born this week.

Literary Names of Note This Week

Literary Obituaries: Playwright Robert Anderson, (1917 - 2009), Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for my Father; playwright Hugh Leonard, (1926 - 2009), Da.

Nobel Prize in Literature: Boris Pasternak (1958)

Novelists and Story Writers: Kate Chopin, Sidney Sheldon, Alice Walker, John Grisham

Poets and Playwrights: Amy Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Bertolt Brecht, Brendan Behan

Thinkers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers: Robert Burton, Charles Darwin, Martin Buber, David Friedman.

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists: Charles Lamb, John Ruskin, Frank Harris, George Meredith.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Georges Simenon, Janwillem van de Wetering.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Jules Verne.

Children’s / Teen Authors: Jane Yolen, Judy Blume.

Events to read about: Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12, 1809 and are receiving bicentennial celebrations this week. Inventors Thomas Edison and Ray Kurrzweil were born a day apart, just over a century apart. Plus, there’s the Beatles, Bill Clinton, and a few literary dates to note, as well.

This Week’s Question: The writers above, and, of course, the writers from every week of the year, have filled many of the world's most beautiful libraries with their books which take us on many curious expeditions. In fact, we’ve just been sent a link to a wonderful website called, strangely enough, Curious Expeditions, which has an amazing set of photographs of some of the most beautiful libraries in the world to please those who love libraries. How many of these exquisite libraries have you visited? Which ones would you like to visit?

Answer to Last Week’s Question: According to Wikipedia, besides theme parks, museums, and festivals, (some in winter and some in summer,) in England, there are four major Dickens festivals in the United States. San Francisco has the annual Great Dickens Christmas Fair (which often includes a performer from the festival in Kent, England.); Port Jefferson, New York has a Dickens Festival in the Village; Galveston, Texas has Dickens on the Strand; and Riverside, California has the Riverside Dickens Festival which was held last weekend. We don’t know anyone who’s been to any of them but a search of the Internet reveals many smaller and more temporary ones as well.

Novelist John Updike, 1932 - 2009

Prolific novelist, short story writer, light verse poet, art critic John Updike has died. He was most well known for his series of Rabbit novels, beginning with Rabbit Run in 1961 and ending with Rabbit at Rest in 1990. In this series and others Updike focuses on the problems of suburban Americans as they age through various psychological and socioeconomic conditions.

While his works were both praised and dismissed by critics for political views and levels of depth, Updike has been considered a major American literary figure. He also wrote The Witches of Eastwick and its recent sequel, The Widows of Eastwick, dozens of poems and essays, some of which are included in his most recent anthology, Still Looking: essays on American Art.

“Art is, as I understand it, reality passed through a human mind” "John (Hoyer) Updike." Contemporary Novelists, 7th ed. St. James Press, 2001. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. available through Online Resources at www.glendalepubliclibrary.org with a current library card.

Recent Author Passings

Within the past few days not only have we lost the great painter Andrew Wyeth but we have also lost three somewhat promiment authors:

W. D. Snodgrass, 1926 - 2009, was a poet who wrote wrote what many call "confessional poetry" but who hated that description for his very personal poems. He is known also for his teaching in universities and workshops, explemified in his humorous but very educational book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems gone bad. But, as he dryly, noted in his 1971 poem Old Apple Trees:

Not one of us got it his own way.
Nothing like any of us
Will be seen again, forever.

Hortense Calisher, 1911 - 2009, was noted more for her many short stories than for her few novels but she was highly anthologized. Her stories frequently appeared in the New Yorker magazine and, like many cartoons in that publication, her stories were as much sad and subtle as well drawn.

John Mortimer, 1923 - 2009, the creator of the BBC character Rumpole of the Bailey was a lawyer who became drawn to fiction and playwriting instead. Particularly adept and beloved for his comic characters in the British legal system, both in London and in rural settings, Mortimer said, "comedy is the only thing worth writing about in this despairing world."

Donald E. Westlake, mystery novelist 1933 - 2008

Prolific comic caper mystery writer Donald E. Westlake died New Years Eve. Westlake, who has been called both “the Neil Simon of the crime novel”* and “the Mel Brooks of mayhem”* wrote seven days a week producing more than a hundred novels under several pseudonyms. Several of his books and stories have been made into film, among them The Hot Rock,The Bank Shot, and The Grifters, for which his script won him the Academy Award.

He has also written as Richard Stark, Samuel Holt and Tucker Coe. One of his long standing anti-hero characters is John Dortmunder who is a burglar, last appearing in What’s So Funny in 2008. Westlake’s next scheduled publication will come out in April. He was 75.

*From the New York Review of Books and Kevin Moore of the Chicago Tribune quoted in Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. [Database available to Glendale Public Library card holders at our Online Resources page.]

Hillary Waugh, mystery novelist, 1920 - 2008

Detective novelist, one of the first to create the police procedural genre, Hillary Waugh has died. He was 88. After reading a book on true crime, and inspired by the post war fad of semidocumentary crime films, he came to believe mysteries that implied that law enforcement personnel were bumblers who needed the insights of amateur sleuths were not correct. He began to write a series involving the painstaking, but still dramatically absorbing work of a Connecticut small town police chief, Fred Fellows. Whereas today's police procedurals often involve several cases his focused on one case at a time just like traditional mystery novels.

He said, "I try to put a little meat into my stories in hopes that the reader won't digest the book in a gulp and forget it, but will have something to chew on afterward. I would like my books to make the reader think, without the books telling him what to think. Lastly, I try to make sure that none of my books ever ends on an anti-climax. The tension should build to an explosion, not a let-down."*

*From Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. [Database available to Glendale Public Library card holders at our Online Resources page.]

Harold Pinter 1930 - 2008

Nobel prizewinning playwright and screenwriter, considered by many to be the most important British playwright in the last century, Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve. He was 78. His plays have had a remarkable impact on generations of audiences and actors. On the edges of absurdism, often dealing with atrocities committed by mean people, his dark "comedies of menace" have skewered the hypocrisies of authoritarian powerholders. He was outspoken in his criticism of real political figures; his controversial speech to accept the Nobel prize in 2005 lambasted those who met terrorism with harsh tactics that cause more.

The list of his important plays include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, The Caretaker, The Dumbwaiter, Old Times, and Betrayal. He also wrote novels, poems, and articles and books about writing and about politics, and has had many books and articles written about him and his influence on modern theatre.

[Pinter image from Gale Biography Resource Center accessible through Glendale Public Library Online Resources page.]

Author Passings

Two more authors of note, popular exemplars of opposite political views, passed away in the last week.

Oral history - radio and television interviewer Louis "Studs" Terkel died on Friday, October 31, 2008. He is most well known for Working: people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Early works included Hard Times: an oral history of the Great Depression, and Division Street, America, as well as The Great Divide: second thoughts on the American dream. Later he compiled Coming of Age: the story of our century and the people who lived it, and a compilation of his best interviews in My American Century, which show his strong interest in the social issues that plagued and divided people. He told librarians and their friends, "The average American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit. It's only a question of piquing that intelligence." Because of involvement in WPA theatre programs in the 1930s he was among authors and performers who were blacklisted for supposed Anti-American views during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. He was 96.

Blockbuster suspense novelist and screenwriter Michael Crichton died on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 here in Los Angeles. He wrote to raise a little money for medical school and even before he became a doctor his books became huge hits because he knew how to maintain interest and supense. Appropriately, most of his "techno-thrillers" involve biololgical or scientific fears, but later ones exploited poltical, particularly conservative, fears and beliefs such as global warming. His early books include The Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Jurassic Park and many of his novels became movies, and in some cases, theme park rides. He directed as well, and wrote screenplays for movies, for example Westworld. He was only 66. (Picture from Gale Biography Resource Center.)