Tag: In Memoriam (31-40 of 40)

Jan 20 2010 03:05 PM ET

Robert B. Parker, who died at his desk, was working on a Spenser novel

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The sudden death Jan. 18 of crime-genre master Robert B. Parker caught everyone by surprise, including Helen Brann, his agent of 37 years. “It was a complete shock to all of us,” Brann told EW. “His wife, Joan, had breakfast with him [Monday] morning, went out for her walk, came back an hour later, and he was sitting at his writing desk, dead.”

According to Brann, Parker was 30-40 pages into a new novel featuring Spenser, his iconic Boston-based PI, when he suffered what appears to be a fatal heart attack. However, due to his notorious prolific writing habit, there is substantial Parker material still to be published. According to Chris Pepe, his longtime editor at Putnam, there are two books set for release early this year (Split Image, a mystery featuring Jesse Stone, will be out next month, while Blue-Eyed Devil, a Western, hits bookstores later this spring) as well as a couple more in the pipeline. Brann says the author’s tremendous productivity was due to his strict, Updikean writing rate of five pages a day.

“Anybody that has that kind of output, some books are better than others,” she admits. “They weren’t all at the peak of his form, but many were. And at his peak form, he couldn’t be beat. If there’s any justice in the world, he’s got to be up there with the best. With Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald, and all them.”

But it wasn’t just his command of the genre that made him such an important figure. His influence helped birth an entire new generation of novelists. “Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly are just two people who I see must have gotten something from him,” says Pepe. “I honestly just don’t see how there’s a working crime writer today who hasn’t learned something from Robert Parker.”

Jan 19 2010 05:11 PM ET

R.I.P. Erich Segal: Love of books means never having to say you're sorry for the schlock you've read

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Books come in all forms, from high to low. And few writers were more aware of that high-low divide than Erich Segal, who died Sunday in London at age 72. A classics professor at some of the world’s finest universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford), Segal also happened to produce a number of best-selling pot-boilers.

Most notably, he wrote the 1970 novel Love Story, the sappy and sentimental story of a star-crossed romance between a well-to-do Harvard student and a Radcliffe scholarship student that ends in tragedy shortly after their marriage. (Depending on the account you read, the Oliver Barrett character may have been based in part on former Vice President Al Gore, who was a golden-boy Harvard undergrad when Segal was a visiting professor in the ’60s.)

Love Story‘s phenomenal success was bolstered by an equally maudlin hit movie starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw that was released just 10 months after the book’s Valentine’s Day publication (and based on a script by Segal himself). Likewise, both versions of the story were boosted by a catchphrase — “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” — that became a signature expression of a distinctly ’70s-style approach to romance. The phrase was widely quoted — and perhaps even more widely parodied, in everything from Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 film What’s Up, Doc? (when O’Neal himself dismisses the line as “the dumbest thing I ever heard” to costar Barbra Streisand) to The Simpsons to Rugrats to a Cobra Starship song (“Being From Jersey Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry”). The line was also tweaked by John Lennon — “Love means never having to say you’re sorry every 15 minutes” — which is fitting, since Segal also co-wrote the famed 1968 Beatles movie Yellow Submarine.

Still, it is for Love Story that Segal is most likely to be remembered. Segal later wrote a sequel, Oliver’s Story, as well as other melodramatic best-sellers like The Class (about five Harvard classmates from the ’50s) and Doctors (about med school classmates). For a while, Segal established himself as the Nicholas Sparks of his era — all while maintaining his credibility in the academic world and churning out scholarly volumes on Caesar Augustus and the Roman playwright Plautus. (To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Sparks is not moonlighting as an expert in astrophysics.) Like Sparks, et al, Segal’s fiction may not have ranked as great literature, and yet his books were compelling page-turners with the tug of the familiar narrative forms.

Jan 19 2010 04:43 PM ET

In Memoriam: Robert B. Parker

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Robert B. Parker, who evoked the streets of Boston in over 60 bristling, crisply witty crime novels, died on January 18 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77. According to his agent, Parker suffered a heart attack and died at his desk, perhaps not surprising for a man who wrote religiously every day (and sometimes published three books a year).  I read his Jesse Stone novels, I read his Sunny Randall novels, but, like many of Parker’s readers, what I loved best were his Spenser novels, featuring the blunt, wisecracking Boston private investigator with a heart of gold. (“The question of spelling Spenser’s name has arisen,” he once wrote on his blog. “I may be the only one who has never misspelled it. Spenser with an S, like the English poet…”)  Parker, a onetime English professor, was clearly influenced by such writers as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett , but his main characters were starkly different from theirs. Spenser was social. He was a gourmet cook (his dishes feature prominently in each of his books – so  much so that Parker had apparently once considered writing a cookbook), and he had complicated, loving relationships with women. “He’s not unhappy and he’s not isolated,” Parker said once. “He doesn’t say, Get me off this frozen star, as Marlowe does in one of the books. The loneliness is the price Marlowe pays for his integrity. Spenser is able to maintain it in context, unlike Marlowe, who has to remain separate in order to remain pure.”

I’m still reeling from news of Parker’s death and trying to come up with my list of his favorites. How about any of you? Which Parker books do you love most?

Jan 4 2010 09:08 AM ET

'Pride and Prejudice' updates: Enough!

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Yesterday, as I was rifling through the mound of galleys that publishers oh-so-kindly sent our way, I came upon a book that made me sigh. No, not Heidi and Spencer Pratt’s How to Be Famous. That book made me scream. Instead, I became immediately fatigued upon finding a copy of The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy, by Sara Angelini — a 2007 novel (newly in paperback) that’s billed as Legally Blonde-meets-Pride and Prejudice.

Why, you ask? Because I completely, 100 percent supported the trend of Jane Austen mash-ups — until now. Can you say oversaturation? Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was hysterical, and wholly original. But the novelty has worn thin, with dozens of authors jumping on board to sell their updates of Austen’s work in every genre from romance to mystery to sci-fi. How many more supernatural remixes will we find (see: all those Prejudice-themed vampire books)? How many more chick-lit updates?

Because, really, there are hundreds of other identifiable, classic authors whose work could use an imaginative update. Let’s leave Austen alone for once. Why not desecrate the work of John Steinbeck, Louisa May Alcott, or, hell, even Dante? Tell me, Shelf Lifers, are you as tired of the Prejudice trend as I am? And whose work do you wish contemporary authors would update?

Nov 24 2009 08:55 AM ET

Pop-up entrepreneur Waldo Hunt dies

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Chances are you enjoyed Waldo Hunt’s work when you were a child. After all, Hunt — an entrepreneur who revived the art of the pop-up book in the 1960s — was the man who brought us the awe-inspiring 3-D imagery in such famous books as David Pelham’s The Human Body and Jan Pienkowski’s Haunted House (pictured at left). Sadly, the we will see no more new work from Hunt: On Nov. 6, the pop-up king died of congestive heart failure in Porterville, Calif., at age 88, the L.A. Times reported. But his legacy continues to live on. Along with creating the art in the pop-up books listed above, Hunt produced 1,000 3-D books under his company, Intervisual Books, which counted Disney as a client. He also built up an impressive 4,000-title collection of antique and contemporary pop-up and movable books.

Nov 11 2009 06:02 PM ET

Lemony Snicket to publish new series

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Little, Brown Books for Young Readers announced this afternoon that they will be publishing a new four-book series for teens by Lemony Snicket—his first since the phenomenally successful A Series of Unfortunate Events—as well as a YA novel from Daniel Handler, Snicket’s alter ego. “I was distressed to learn that Little Brown Books for Young Readers would also be offering the works of Lemony Snicket and have insisted that my book be published first.  No one knows better than I that his writing delves into dangerous material, and inspires a spectrum of villainous reaction. In fact, I think I hear a nefarious knocking at the door right now!” Handler said. Handler’s novel is due out in 2011; the first Snicket, in 2012.

Oct 17 2009 02:37 PM ET

Manny Farber's collected movie reviews: 'Farber on Film' is a two-fisted treasure

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Manny-Farber_lMother lode, treasure trove – the usual clichés of value plenitude don’t do justice to the just-published Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (The Library Of America), edited by the critic and poet Robert Polito. Movie critics and fans of movie criticism know what an event this is, which, given the neglected, beat-down state of professional film criticism these days, will only sell about 39 copies of this 824-page $40 mother lode/treasure trove of prose pleasure.

So I’m writing this for anyone who’s never worn out a copy of the only previous collection of Farber’s reviews, Negative Space, to try and convince you of the immense pleasures that await you here. Manny Farber (1917-2008), critic and painter, wrote movie reviews for publications ranging from the starchy New Republic to the raunchy girlie mag Cavalier. This is your first bit of proof that Farber had an itch to get his opinions in print anywhere he could (one measure of a critic who wants to communicate, not just simmer in theory-juice). He never READ FULL STORY »

Sep 30 2009 12:01 AM ET

Patrick Swayze's final performance: The audiobook version of his memoir

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Patrick-Swayze_lShortly before his tragic Sept. 14 death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 57, actor Patrick Swayze completed work on what would be his final performance: the abridged audiobook version of The Time of My Life, the memoir he wrote with his wife, Lisa Niemi, which was published Sept. 29. (According to Jennifer Smith at Simon & Schuster Audioworks, the three-time Golden Globe nominee completed his work in the recording studio on Aug. 23.) Thanks to the good folks at Simon & Schuster Audioworks, we’re able to share three short clips of the late actor reading from his sadly now-posthumous work.

In the first audio clip from The Time of My Life, Swayze talks about shooting the memorable love scene in 1990′s Ghost with costar Demi Moore. “The best love scenes don’t require what I call ‘humpage,’” he notes.

In the second clip, the actor discusses recovering from the death of a loved one, and finding “a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.”

In the third clip, he shares how he responded to his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in January 2008. “Show me where the enemy is and I’ll fight ‘em,” he recalls telling his doctor. “Facing your own mortality is the quickest way possible to find out what you’re made of.”

Photo Credit: Andy Bradshaw/Photoshot/Landov

Aug 26 2009 10:07 PM ET

Legacy: Dominick Dunne, an American original

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They don’t dominick-dunne-author_lmake lives like Dominick Dunne’s anymore. A movie producer and TV exec who then forged a late career as a best-selling author and journalist (and telegenic raconteur), Dunne, who died today in New York at age 83, was an American original. In his best work, he cast a cool, stylishly bespectacled eye on the national fascination with celebrity and high society — as well as the effect that crime and tragedy could wreak on that rarefied world.

But Dunne didn’t just write about the nexus of celebrity and crime, as he did in his witty Vanity Fair reports on the O.J. Simpson trial or Princess Diana’s death. He also lived it: While Dunne was composing his 1985 novel The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (inspired by a real society murder case from the 1950s), his 22-year-old daughter, Poltergeist actress Dominique Dunne, was murdered by her former boyfriend. (The culprit, John Sweeney, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served less than four years of a six-year sentence.)

Dunne traced his interest in celebrity to a childhood trip to L.A. with his aunt, but he spent much of his life hobnobbing with A-listers. His brother, John Gregory Dunne, became a noted novelist (and husband of the writer Joan Didion). He earned a Bronze Star for heroism in WWII’s Battle of the Bulge. As a student at Williams College, he appeared in plays with future Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. He moved in Hollywood circles as a director, TV executive, and producer of movies like 1970′s The Boys in the Band. But after struggling in Hollywood, he found his true calling rather late in life as a writer: He published his first book, The Winners, in 1979.

Like Truman Capote, Dunne the writer/journalist was often as famous as his subjects. And like Capote, he could be quick with a cutting remark, as when he referred to record producer Phil Spector as “a drama queen, albeit straight.” But in all his books and articles, Dunne explored the obsession with fame in late-20th-century American culture. And with all his inside-the-velvet-rope connectedness, he managed to embody it as well.

Peter Kramer/AP Images

Jul 19 2009 07:36 PM ET

Frank McCourt: Regular guy, extraordinary artist

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Lisa Schwarzbaum, left, with McCourt and his wife, Ellen

Frank McCourt’s telephone answering machine message always promised that he would return all calls “with alacrity.” Of course, the man who wasn’t home could have said “as soon as possible.” But why waste such a beautiful word? The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, who died in New York at age 78 on July 19  after a battle with melanoma, loved words the way others love chocolate. And he told stories the way others brush their teeth — regularly. Thousands of fortunate former students know this from classroom experience, since Frank was proud of his long career as a teacher in the New York City public school system. Millions of fortunate readers know this from falling in love with his spellbinding memoirs Angela’s Ashes, ’Tis, and Teacher Man.

I know this because for a few enchanted summers in the last century, I shared a summer house with Frank and his wife, Ellen, on the banks of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. And in that house, Angela’s Ashes was born. I am blessed among godmothers. READ FULL STORY »

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