The LadyKillers

Is this a test?

 

I sometimes feel like I'm being tested when someone asks me who my favorite author is. What if I say a name that's too lowbrow? Out of fashion? Will my friends still respect me? Well, I can't worry about that now. Here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Like everyone else here, I can't pick just one. Of course there are my friends on this blog and elsewhere--I adore their voices, their POV, and look forward to each new book.

Let's not forget my husband, whose graphic novel Tales of the Moonlight Cutter is unfairly overlooked by the comics majors and the film industry. Of course I'd feel that way, though, I'm his wife!

As for the writers who formed and informed my voice, here's a few of them:

 

Fiennes in the Tempest in London? Yay!

I remember the first time I really understood a passage from a play or perhaps it was a sonnet, by Shakespeare. His voice, reaching out to me from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, defined "timeless" for me. I wouldn't have that feeling again until I read a Dickinson poem.*

 

The first poem I ever memorized was Resume by Dorothy Parker, when I was eight or ten years old. I used to be able to recite half a dozen of her bitter, funny poems.  No wonder I write crime novels as an adult!

 

A stunning book

 

When a professor introduced me to Flannery O'Connor, she rocked my world. How could someone see the foibles of human nature so clearly, write about them with such honesty, and still hold a deep and abiding faith in God?

I once tried to buy the right to write a screenplay of The Violent Bear It Away. Sadly, my pockets aren't that deep. But someone should make the movie of it. Truly challenging material!

Of course, when I discovered Dashiell Hammett (whom I found by way of Lillian Hellman, another favorite!), and much later, Cornell Woolrich, I was doomed to a life of writing old fashioned noir. Not Tarantino-esque splatter noir, but books that contain the old-fashioned notion that just because the world is violently out of order doesn't mean it should be that way.

At my family's Fourth of July party, a new friend lent me a copy of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I've never had the pleasure of reading this author, but am looking forward to getting to know him. Whether he is an author whose skill will school me, like Joyce or Faulkner or Hemingway, or whether I'll really and truly embrace him remains to be seen. That's part of the fun of discovering a new author--that frisson of connection, like the connection I felt to an English playwright long mouldering in his grave. 

Writing is magic, don't you think?

______

* About that Dickenson poem. Someone told me you can sing any poem she ever wrote to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texeas, and that knowledge has destroyed my ability to read her poems. Don't ever try it, especially with Death, or you may never be able to go back!

Books of My Life - First Friday with Rita Lakin

How can I possibly name all the ones I’ve loved? Or the ones that imprinted on my life? I see those Ladykillers who came before me only picked three or so. A good idea or madness might follow.

 Haven’t we all read thousands of books?

How does one judge? Or pick? Does it mean books that I come back to over and over? I don’t really do that, but I do it with favorite films.

The favorite books I glance at once in a while with fondness and there are those I no longer own. I must feel that if I went back to these choices, they will no longer affect me the way they once did.

Some books affected me because they arrived at a certain age. And I responded to them because I was that age. Perhaps if they came at a different time, they might have left me cold. My prerequisites for these books would have these characteristics. I couldn’t bear it when they ended and wished they had gone on and on.

When Marjorie Morningstar, written by Herman Wouk came out I devoured that book. It spoke to me. It could have my story. Or I wished it had been. I went to the mountains in the summers as did Marjorie. I met that world of people. I no longer remember the plot points, but I do remember the emotion.

Little Women. by Louisa May Alcott And I assume that book was beloved of many women. Again identification. I was Jo. Of course I was Jo.

Somewhere along the line, in my teens I found a series of books from way back in the 1930s. It was the Ruth Fielding series for girls. Author Alice B. Emerson. She had adventures and always saved somebody. And a number of them were mysteries as well. I think there were about twenty of them. One of them perhaps planted the seed of what my career would someday become. Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures!

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden was another important book for me. I don’t know why. It just was.

In order that I won’t ramble on forever, I’ll just add this: At some point I discovered English women writers. Started with Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and others in that period. Which kept on growing with the mystery writers, starting with Margery Allingham and Dorothy L Sayers and naturally the queen, Agatha Christie, P. D. James and Ruth Rendell and I still read and enjoy all the Brits.

Looking forward to everyone else’s choices.

Can I Choose Them All?

My favorite authors -- much like my favorite books -- are clear indicators of the stages of my life. Forget a photograph -- a book and it's author can sum up every memory needed for me.

• Elementary School (When I wanted to be a spy): E.L. Konisgburg's From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

 

-Thirty years later, I still find myself considering stealing away to The Met should this writing business not pan out.

• Junior High (When I wanted to be blond, named something like Jennifer or Stacie (dotted with a heart) and date a guy in a letterman's jacket): Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High/Twins series

-Just a few months ago, I had the opportunity to sip coffee with Sweet Valley's amazing author Francine Pascal; when I admitted that I told everyone in school I wasn't too upset over Jeff Nichols' dumping me because my real boyfriend was "all-American-guy Todd Wilkins," she didn't seem all that surprised.

• High School (When the problems of an upper-middle class white girl with a Honda Accord are nothing short of smothering): Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

-Because nobody knows the trouble I've seen (spiral perms! Color Me Badd! Stretch pants!).

• College (When I still believed that writing the Great American Novel and becoming rich weren't mutually exclusive): Jill McCorkle's July 7th and The Cheerleader

-The world was my oyster, and for some reason, I developed a Southern drawl (even after leaving Duke) and a desperate need to include a matriarch and a biscuit reference in every book. 

• Post college (When my life was all pink-and-ecru Martha Stewart Wedding magazines and olive boats): Anna Maxted's Behaving Like Adults

-I'm still reasonably proud of myself for not developing (or at least adhering to) a British accent at this particular stage. Also, I hate olives, so the need for them to become seafaring still eludes me. But it seemed really damn important when I was 22.

• Post-post college (When I realized that I am, quite possibly, the last single woman in America and informercials seem to be hocking some really useful things): Jonathan Hayes' Precious Blood

-Does that read as bitter/completly given up as I think it might?

Favorite All-Time Authors By Michael A. Black

A list “Favorite All-Time Writers” is kind of a hard to assemble. I suppose you could base it on writers you’ve liked for a long time. Moving along with that premise, my list would be impossibly long. I’ll start off listing a few of the authors who inspired me, whose work I love to read (and reread), and who are no longer with us. That way, all my current favorites can be glad they’re still around and continue hoping they don’t make this list any time soon.

I have to start with the man who probably influenced my writing more than anyone else. John D. MacDonald was the author of more than seventy books and is probably best known for his Travis McGee series. I was first introduced to McGee as a teenager when I picked up a copy of Darker Than Amber and read it through while visiting my grandparents in Florida. McGee lived in Fort Lauderdale on a houseboat called The Busted Flush. He’d won the boat in a poker game and made his living doing “salvage consulting work.” If you lost something valuable, McGee would get it back for you, minus fifty percent. But McGee was far more than a run-of-the-mill adventurer. He had a unique philosophy about life and a code of honor that was forged out of his own personal experiences. After I finished Darker Than Amber I ran to the Farmer’s Market in West Palm Beach and bought as many other paperbacks in the series as I could find. I read them all, and MacDonald’s series eventually became so well-regarded that they began releasing the novels in hardcover and he shot to the top of the bestseller lists. MacDonald was a working-man’s writer who pursued his craft with vigor and professionalism. For a generation of young writers, he was the idol, the man we most wanted to emulate.

Although he wasn’t nearly as prolific as MacDonald, James Dickey is another “automatic” on my all-time favorite’s list. Although he started out as a nationally recognized poet, he came out with his first novel, Deliverance, in 1970. The book, which was a thriller, was an immediate bestseller and was released in paperback and made into a highly successful movie. Some high-brow critics at the time blasted Dickey for not writing a more literary book, and dismissed Deliverance as a “male fantasy.” I don’t know if Dickey ever forgave those critics, but I’d like to meet a few of them now and ask them to step outside to settle the issue. Not that Dickey would have needed my help. He was an enormous man who fought in two wars and could no doubt handle himself. On an interview on a talk show actor Burt Reynolds told a story about just how physically imposing Dickey was when they were in Georgia filming the movie version of Deliverance. Reynolds told about a minor confrontation in a bar where Dickey stood next to him and looked as “big as a house.” He only wrote two more novels (Alnilam, and To the White Sea), but his prose sang with a poet’s voice. Some of the descriptions of the rural country along the fictional (and mythological) Cahulawassee River will leave you breathless.

I’d be remiss if I left Raymond Chandler off my list. I was introduced to Chandler (and his peerless private eye, Philip Marlowe) in my teen years as well when they started rereleasing his work in paperback form. I found a copy of The Big Sleep in a used bookstore. The opening line, It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills,” was so perfectly written that I immediately bought the book and began reading. It wasn’t until after I’d finished it that I began watching for reruns of the old movie versions on the late, late shows. Who can forget Bogart as Marlowe being teased by the prodigal daughter, Carmen, in the foyer of her daddy’s big mansion? “You’re not very tall, are you?” she quips. “Well, I try to be,” Bogie replies with his trademark grin. The screenwriter, William Faulkner, adjusted the line slightly from Chandler’s book to allow for Bogart’s shorter stature. Chandler only wrote seven novels, but had an extensive array of short stories and novellas, most of which he “cannibalized” to get material for his Marlowe books.

Like Dickey, Chandler had a problem with booze. There’s no telling how many more books these two would have produced if they hadn’t been alcoholics. Whenever I think of Chandler and Dickey together I’m reminded of one of the last disagreements I had during my grad school experience. Each member of the class had to pick a novelist for an oral and written presentation and I stated my choice was James Dickey. “No, no, no,” the professor replied. “Dickey was a poet. This is a novelist class.” I reminded the professor that Dickey wrote three novels in addition to his poems, but the professor waved at me dismissively. “He’s primarily known as a poet. Pick someone else.”

Now I admit I thought about handling this situation as Dickey might have, getting up and walking over to the professor as I said, “I’ve already made my choice.” But I didn’t. I quickly said, “How about Raymond Chandler?” The professor agreed. The next few choices went to obscure authors and I sat in a huff until one of my classmates chose J.D. Salinger. “Excellent choice,” the professor cooed. “Hold on a minute,” I said. “Salinger only wrote one novel, didn’t he? How come it’s okay for him to choose an author who wrote one book and I can’t have my first choice of James Dickey when he wrote three?” The professor made some fluttering motions with his hands and went into a most unsatisfactory repetition of Dickey not being a true novelist. I couldn’t help but wonder if this prof was a kissing cousin to one of the ones who’d jumped on the anti-Deliverance bandwagon back in the day.

In the end I did the presentation on Chandler and it turned out well. This was one of the last classes I took on the road to get my master’s, and was one of the cornerstones for my pledge never to set foot on a college campus again after I’d graduated. (I’ve since relented and even teach a few college courses now.) But I’ve digressed from our topic a bit, haven’t I? Perhaps therein lies the problem of trying to assemble an “all-time” list of favorite authors. There’s so much extra baggage accumulated along the way that list becomes too cumbersome to handle.

News and All-Time Faves

NEWS FLASHES!!

The big news this week: LadyKiller Staci McLaughlin (every other Saturday) has her debut cozy mystery coming out Tuesday, July 3! Cue the fireworks for Going Organic Can Kill You.

 

Favorite All-Time Authors

This week, the LadyKillers talk about their favorite all-time authors. Who are your favorites? Be sure to drop by this week and let us know!