The grandfather of the great writers of Florida, John D. MacDonald.
A native of Utica, NY, John D. Macdonald got his M.B.A. from Harvard before being sent off to WWII where heserved in theChina, Burma, and India Theater (CBI). While in serving, he wrote his first short story and sent it home to his wife, and she had it sold before he even got back from the war.
Upon returning, as a Lt. Colonel and Harvard graduate, he had his choice of plum career options yet he took an undemanding job so he could concentrate on writing. He moved to Florida, the land of light, the place where "the curtains were never drawn" and blossomed into one of the preeminent fiction writers of the 20th century.
When he moved there, FortLauderdale had been the scene for several bad movies but hardly any books. This would quickly changee. He put it on the literary map by writing over fifty stand alone novels that included the world famous Cape Fear which became a movie twice, once with Robert Mitchum and then again with Robert DeNiro playing the ex-con psychopath antagonist.
And then there is the Travis McGee series, which chokes me with emotion even just to write about. With the base of my throat swelling, overwhelmed by the imaginary feel of white sand between my toes, I say thank you John D. MacDonald for so much.
In the reissuing of the Travis McGee series in the mmid-1990s, the introductions to each novel where penned by some of the leading authors of the time, each writing about how influential MacDonald was to them. Stephen King, Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Dean Kootz, Donald Westlake, Jonathan Kellerman, Ed McBain, Robert B. Parker... and of course my favorite Florida writer, Carl Hiaasen.
Rugged and sentimental, fearless and flawed, McGee is everything a connoisseur of private eye capers could ever want; a knight in rusty armor', a knock about retriever of lost fortunes and a savior of spiraling souls Travis is gritty and yet tender. A Korean war vet living on a houseboat he won in a card game, the "Busted Flush", docked in Ft. Lauderdale, he engages in 'salvage work' and keeps half of what he recovers to pay his slip-fees and put beer on the table, his is a character for the age. The first fictional character of the 'disillusioned-with-Norman Rockwell's-America' genre, he was a precursor to the social movements of the 1960's and it is worth reading these novels just to hear his bearing witness to the changes in America from his incarnation in the early 1950's until his last adventure in the early 1980's.
Written with a wise cynical eye that evokes Raymond Chandler, he tells rip roaring yarns but also he nails mid to late 20th century Florida for all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise and breath taking beauty. He wanted his readers to do more than see Florida, he wanted them to care about it deeply, celebrate it as he did, marvel at it, laugh about it, grieve for it and even fight for it.
Travis McGee was a poet-naturalist who was also a hard bitten sleuth, a samurai writing poetry. He was a very special character and with MacDonald's' unexpected death in 1986, millions of fans worldwide were left wondering what would happen to him. For me, I prefer to think he just moved the "Busted Flush" from slip F-18 and is still out there to this day. For if he's really gone, I prefer not to know.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Noah Hawley
Having only read one of his works, but recognizing his meteoric rise for its impact on the zeitgeist, Noah Hawley deserves to be recommended as quickly as I can.
Hawley has made a career of adapting for TV the unadaptable. In 2014, he transformed the classic, some say the perfect, Coen brothers film "Fargo" into an FX television series that embraced the idiosyncrasies of the movie to great acclaim. Now with "Legion" on FX, Hawley is tackling the most challenging of iconoclasts, a superhero of the mind.
Hawley is one of a handful of writers who currently enjoy unprecedented creative freedom and TV has never been better because of it. In the midst of all this, he manages to write mystery novels, and I can highly recommend Before the Fall (2016) which is already being adapted for film.
Before one writes off this talented writer as just a TV guy, know that his love of literature shows in all he does. His next project is adapting for FX Kurt Vonnegut's acerbic classic Cats Cradle, I for one can hardly wait.
TV has never been better and it is because writers are, for now, in control, long may it last.
Hawley has made a career of adapting for TV the unadaptable. In 2014, he transformed the classic, some say the perfect, Coen brothers film "Fargo" into an FX television series that embraced the idiosyncrasies of the movie to great acclaim. Now with "Legion" on FX, Hawley is tackling the most challenging of iconoclasts, a superhero of the mind.
Hawley is one of a handful of writers who currently enjoy unprecedented creative freedom and TV has never been better because of it. In the midst of all this, he manages to write mystery novels, and I can highly recommend Before the Fall (2016) which is already being adapted for film.
Before one writes off this talented writer as just a TV guy, know that his love of literature shows in all he does. His next project is adapting for FX Kurt Vonnegut's acerbic classic Cats Cradle, I for one can hardly wait.
TV has never been better and it is because writers are, for now, in control, long may it last.
James Michener
Once I overheard my grandmother laughing along with some of my friends as they discussed me. She said, "You ask him the time and he tells you how to build a clock". Unable to deny this, I can only offer in my defense that people trained by the military have a compulsive need to educate everyone around them as practical knowledge is a very good thing to spread around in war.
James A. Michener was forty when he decided on writing as a career and had just come back from war. Prior to that he had been an academic, an editor in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater during WWII. He did not simply have a compulsive need to educate those around him, he was a 'patient zero' radiating knowledge and explaining it more passionately than anyone who had ever come before.
His first novel, Tales of the South Pacific won the Pulitzer Prize and became the basis for the award-winning and long-running musical "South Pacific." Over the course of the next forty years, Michener wrote such monumental bestsellers as Sayonara, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Hawaii, The Source, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Alaska and Caribbean.
He was an author I remember my mother reading while I was growing up (first edition hardcover of Alaska still on the shelf). His authtority is that whenever I need to learn as much about a place as possible from a single portable source I turn to Michener. Known for a style of novel that starts with the geological formation of a place and then continues with the story of that place as seen through the lives of multiple generations of the same, or linked, families as the place is first populated by man and then on through the ages. None of his novels - or his non-fiction travelogues - are less than exhaustively thorough.
He became one of the world most popular writers with over forty works published and the accolades, awards, and associations poured in. We lost him in 1997 and since then his influence has continued growing. One of the great Americans of the twentieth century, one of the great patrons of the arts in America and a writer not to be missed whenever one is curious and wants to know almost everything there is to know about a place.
James A. Michener was forty when he decided on writing as a career and had just come back from war. Prior to that he had been an academic, an editor in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater during WWII. He did not simply have a compulsive need to educate those around him, he was a 'patient zero' radiating knowledge and explaining it more passionately than anyone who had ever come before.
His first novel, Tales of the South Pacific won the Pulitzer Prize and became the basis for the award-winning and long-running musical "South Pacific." Over the course of the next forty years, Michener wrote such monumental bestsellers as Sayonara, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Hawaii, The Source, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Alaska and Caribbean.
He was an author I remember my mother reading while I was growing up (first edition hardcover of Alaska still on the shelf). His authtority is that whenever I need to learn as much about a place as possible from a single portable source I turn to Michener. Known for a style of novel that starts with the geological formation of a place and then continues with the story of that place as seen through the lives of multiple generations of the same, or linked, families as the place is first populated by man and then on through the ages. None of his novels - or his non-fiction travelogues - are less than exhaustively thorough.
He became one of the world most popular writers with over forty works published and the accolades, awards, and associations poured in. We lost him in 1997 and since then his influence has continued growing. One of the great Americans of the twentieth century, one of the great patrons of the arts in America and a writer not to be missed whenever one is curious and wants to know almost everything there is to know about a place.
Nasuo Korino
Rabbit holes...oh how I love to go down them. The warren I am currently exploring is feminist Japanese writers. Make no mistake, this is a category that holds high interest, for if anyone has a cultural curiosity about modern, and women's roles in it, then reading authors such as Natsuo Kirino is imperative.
Margaret Atwood said: "Men worry about women laughing at them. Women worry about men killing them." Until a man recognizes the truth in that statement, he can not properly appreciate the female perspective. There is no more enjoyable way to begin to understand, as a man, women's perceptions than to read an incredible author like Natsuo Kirino.
Originally referred to by the legend himself, Murakami (more on him separately), in one of his novels of modern Japan, I knew she was not to be missed. Having read several other popular Japanese authors before, other than Murakami, Kirino had quite a field to compete with. She left them all standing still with a blast of talent that leaves only one regret; that only five of her novels have been translated into English. Until I learn Japanese, I can only wait impatiently for the rest of her catalog to become available, meanwhile we have these:
In her novel Grotesque, Kirino deals with the self-perception of a female protagonist; adolescent and adult insecurities, self-delusions, and illusions. In sum, we spend so much time trying to maintain, shadows, struggles, and dependence issues. The most psychologically astute coming of age story of a woman I have ever read.
Out is tense. A mesmerizing hard-boiled novel that depicts the bottom of society in ways that subtly written, not just as sadomasochistic entertainment as so many novels do when they try to do gore, but as social protest. The reader becomes engrossed in the storytelling and learns a great deal indeed about the subjugation of women in Japanese society.
In The Goddess Chronicles, this revered crime novelist takes on the Japanese creation myth, retelling it from a feminist perspective in elegant writing that delivers a taut, disturbing and timeless tale that shows the battles that woman have to fight every day, battles that have existed since the moment of creation.
Margaret Atwood said: "Men worry about women laughing at them. Women worry about men killing them." Until a man recognizes the truth in that statement, he can not properly appreciate the female perspective. There is no more enjoyable way to begin to understand, as a man, women's perceptions than to read an incredible author like Natsuo Kirino.
Originally referred to by the legend himself, Murakami (more on him separately), in one of his novels of modern Japan, I knew she was not to be missed. Having read several other popular Japanese authors before, other than Murakami, Kirino had quite a field to compete with. She left them all standing still with a blast of talent that leaves only one regret; that only five of her novels have been translated into English. Until I learn Japanese, I can only wait impatiently for the rest of her catalog to become available, meanwhile we have these:
In her novel Grotesque, Kirino deals with the self-perception of a female protagonist; adolescent and adult insecurities, self-delusions, and illusions. In sum, we spend so much time trying to maintain, shadows, struggles, and dependence issues. The most psychologically astute coming of age story of a woman I have ever read.
Out is tense. A mesmerizing hard-boiled novel that depicts the bottom of society in ways that subtly written, not just as sadomasochistic entertainment as so many novels do when they try to do gore, but as social protest. The reader becomes engrossed in the storytelling and learns a great deal indeed about the subjugation of women in Japanese society.
In The Goddess Chronicles, this revered crime novelist takes on the Japanese creation myth, retelling it from a feminist perspective in elegant writing that delivers a taut, disturbing and timeless tale that shows the battles that woman have to fight every day, battles that have existed since the moment of creation.
Elena Ferrante
Referred by a friend to Elena Ferrante and her _Neapolitan Quartet_ in the summer of 2016, surprisingly, given that I knew nothing of the author or the subject matter, I truly enjoyed them. As the author writes under a nome de plume, I can not refer to a body of work or anything about the author specifically in my reviewing of this work. There has since been a huge search for the author's true identity and I am sure the rest of the internet can provide a great deal for those curious to know party.
As to the works; the four novels consist of a single story of female friendship in Italy over the course of a lifetime that challenges misogyny and patriarchy. It is brutally honest about the roles assigned to and embraced by, women. I found it fascinating and recommend it highly as late-twentieth-century feminist fiction. Whoever Ferrante is, they are a talent and I wish they would write more stories.
UPDATE: Wonderful news for we fans of the best selling book My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante as it is set to be a TV series from HBO cooperating with RAI, Italy's national public broadcasting company. According to Libby Hill at the Los Angeles Times, it will be set in Naples and will center on Elena Greco as she recalls her lifelong relationship with her dear friend - and dear enemy - Lila, beginning with their first year of primary school in 1950 and through the next sixty years of their lives. The exploration of complicated female friendships will fall into the hands of some of the most qualified in the industry to realize it Italy's Saverio Costanzo directing. Production is scheduled to begin on the eight-episode drama series this summer, 2017.
As to the works; the four novels consist of a single story of female friendship in Italy over the course of a lifetime that challenges misogyny and patriarchy. It is brutally honest about the roles assigned to and embraced by, women. I found it fascinating and recommend it highly as late-twentieth-century feminist fiction. Whoever Ferrante is, they are a talent and I wish they would write more stories.
UPDATE: Wonderful news for we fans of the best selling book My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante as it is set to be a TV series from HBO cooperating with RAI, Italy's national public broadcasting company. According to Libby Hill at the Los Angeles Times, it will be set in Naples and will center on Elena Greco as she recalls her lifelong relationship with her dear friend - and dear enemy - Lila, beginning with their first year of primary school in 1950 and through the next sixty years of their lives. The exploration of complicated female friendships will fall into the hands of some of the most qualified in the industry to realize it Italy's Saverio Costanzo directing. Production is scheduled to begin on the eight-episode drama series this summer, 2017.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Mary Renault & Greek studies
Often cited as the finest writer of historical fiction that specializing in the ancient Greek world, the late and great Mary Renault had a love for classical Greece that she displayed through fourteen novels and a biography of Alexander the Great, entitled The Nature of Alexander.
Born in London and educated at Oxford, she trained as a nurse and wrote her first three novels while serving in WWII. After the war, she settled in South Africa and traveled extensively in Africa, Greece and the Mediterranean. It was her travels to Corinth, Samos, Crete, Delos, Aegina and other islands as well as to Athens, Sounion and Marathon that resulted in her brilliant reconstructions of ancient Greece in her novels.
As openly gay as the times would allow, she lived with her partner until her death in Cape Town in 1983 and was hailed as being a gay literary icon for accurately displaying the full range of sexualities found in the ancient world in her works, just as they would have existed openly back then. Well ahead of her time in so many ways, she is sorely missed.
I became aware of her work in college while taking a course on Alexander the Great I read her trilogy of fiction on his life; The Persian Boy, The Praise Singer and Funeral Games_. All personalized the most famous secular figure in world history and one can tell when Oliver Stone made his film he had read them.
Other works by Renault I adore include Last of the Wine, the story of Athens at the time of Socrates told through the eyes of one of his students, and a brilliant recreation of the ancient Minoan culture in The Bull From the Sea. There are really none of her works I can not wholeheartedly endorse to a lover of the ancient world or anyone who wants to see what day to day life was like during the period.
Non-Fiction on Ancient Greece:
From the summer of 2015 until the fall of 2016, I decided to revisit a period in ancient history that I had only a cursory knowledge of from previous course work, that is ancient Greece and its neighbors from pre-history until the Roman ascent in the second century. Thousands of scholarly works have been published on these subjects, so I reached out to friends in academia to recommend titles and these are the ones I managed to read and can personally endorse. I found them instrumental in giving me a foundation to my studies and enjoyed them all immensely. My apologies to the authors and to you, readers, for not reviewing each individually, but this could quickly turn into a blog about ancient Greece if I did so.
If you have a question, I will gladly direct you to a specific source if you email me your query.
A. Andrews: The Greek Tyrants
W. Burkell: Greek Religion
P.J. Bicknell: Kleisthenes as a Politician
Thomas Cahill: Sailing the Wine Dark Sea
P. Cartledge: The Greeks. A Portrait of Self and Others_, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 -362 B.C.
J.M.Cook: The Persian Empire
Franz Cumont: The Mysteries of Mithra (Cumont was a legendary genius and all his works are still benchmarks in their field)
Desborough: The Last Mycenaean's and their successors
C. Dougherty: The Poetics of Colonization
C.W.J.Elliot: Coastal Demes of Attika
Finley: Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, The Ancient Greeks
A.J. Graham: Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece
Robert Graves: Greek Myths
Peter Green: Alexander of Macedon, Alexander to Action
Edith Hall: Introducing the Ancient Greeks
Hans Hauben: Alexander Heirs
F. Hartog: The Mirror of Herodotus
C. Hignett: A history of the Athenian Constitution
A. Jacquemin: Delphes, Oracles, Cultures et Jaux
Kagan: The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War
R.W. Livingston: The Greek Genius and its Meaning To Us
Lloyd: Greek Science After Aristotle
Long: Hellenistic Philosophy
S.L. Marchand: Down From Olympus. Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany 1750-1970
N. Marinatas: Art and Religion in Thera
Meander: Plays and Fragments
R. Meiggs: The Athenian Empire
C. Morgan: Athletes and Oracles
Ober, Josiah: The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece
Plato: The Last Days of Socrates
Pouncy: The Necessities of War
Ronilly: The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens
A.M. Snodgrass: The Dark Ages of Greece
St.Croix: The Origins of the Peloponnesian War
Oliver Taplin: Greek Fire
D.A. Traill: Excavating Shlieman
P. Warren: The Aegean Civilizations
Winkler: The Constraints of Desire
M. Wood: In Search of the Trojan War
Ian Worthington: By the Spear
Zeitlin: Nothing to do with Dionysus
Born in London and educated at Oxford, she trained as a nurse and wrote her first three novels while serving in WWII. After the war, she settled in South Africa and traveled extensively in Africa, Greece and the Mediterranean. It was her travels to Corinth, Samos, Crete, Delos, Aegina and other islands as well as to Athens, Sounion and Marathon that resulted in her brilliant reconstructions of ancient Greece in her novels.
As openly gay as the times would allow, she lived with her partner until her death in Cape Town in 1983 and was hailed as being a gay literary icon for accurately displaying the full range of sexualities found in the ancient world in her works, just as they would have existed openly back then. Well ahead of her time in so many ways, she is sorely missed.
I became aware of her work in college while taking a course on Alexander the Great I read her trilogy of fiction on his life; The Persian Boy, The Praise Singer and Funeral Games_. All personalized the most famous secular figure in world history and one can tell when Oliver Stone made his film he had read them.
Other works by Renault I adore include Last of the Wine, the story of Athens at the time of Socrates told through the eyes of one of his students, and a brilliant recreation of the ancient Minoan culture in The Bull From the Sea. There are really none of her works I can not wholeheartedly endorse to a lover of the ancient world or anyone who wants to see what day to day life was like during the period.
Non-Fiction on Ancient Greece:
From the summer of 2015 until the fall of 2016, I decided to revisit a period in ancient history that I had only a cursory knowledge of from previous course work, that is ancient Greece and its neighbors from pre-history until the Roman ascent in the second century. Thousands of scholarly works have been published on these subjects, so I reached out to friends in academia to recommend titles and these are the ones I managed to read and can personally endorse. I found them instrumental in giving me a foundation to my studies and enjoyed them all immensely. My apologies to the authors and to you, readers, for not reviewing each individually, but this could quickly turn into a blog about ancient Greece if I did so.
If you have a question, I will gladly direct you to a specific source if you email me your query.
A. Andrews: The Greek Tyrants
W. Burkell: Greek Religion
P.J. Bicknell: Kleisthenes as a Politician
Thomas Cahill: Sailing the Wine Dark Sea
P. Cartledge: The Greeks. A Portrait of Self and Others_, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 -362 B.C.
J.M.Cook: The Persian Empire
Franz Cumont: The Mysteries of Mithra (Cumont was a legendary genius and all his works are still benchmarks in their field)
Desborough: The Last Mycenaean's and their successors
C. Dougherty: The Poetics of Colonization
C.W.J.Elliot: Coastal Demes of Attika
Finley: Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, The Ancient Greeks
A.J. Graham: Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece
Robert Graves: Greek Myths
Peter Green: Alexander of Macedon, Alexander to Action
Edith Hall: Introducing the Ancient Greeks
Hans Hauben: Alexander Heirs
F. Hartog: The Mirror of Herodotus
C. Hignett: A history of the Athenian Constitution
A. Jacquemin: Delphes, Oracles, Cultures et Jaux
Kagan: The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War
R.W. Livingston: The Greek Genius and its Meaning To Us
Lloyd: Greek Science After Aristotle
Long: Hellenistic Philosophy
S.L. Marchand: Down From Olympus. Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany 1750-1970
N. Marinatas: Art and Religion in Thera
Meander: Plays and Fragments
R. Meiggs: The Athenian Empire
C. Morgan: Athletes and Oracles
Ober, Josiah: The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece
Plato: The Last Days of Socrates
Pouncy: The Necessities of War
Ronilly: The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens
A.M. Snodgrass: The Dark Ages of Greece
St.Croix: The Origins of the Peloponnesian War
Oliver Taplin: Greek Fire
D.A. Traill: Excavating Shlieman
P. Warren: The Aegean Civilizations
Winkler: The Constraints of Desire
M. Wood: In Search of the Trojan War
Ian Worthington: By the Spear
Zeitlin: Nothing to do with Dionysus
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)