Disaster at Sea Was No Disaster on Silver Screen

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Disaster movies were fixtures in theaters in the 1970s.

"The Poseidon Adventure," which premiered on this day in 1972, wasn't the first disaster movie and it most assuredly was not the last, but it may have been the best.

It included five Oscar winners in its cast — Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson and Red Buttons — and won two Oscars — for Best Original Song and a Special Achievement Award for special effects.

In the movie Carol Lynley appeared to be singing the song — "The Morning After" — but, in fact, it was sung by an unseen vocalist, Renee Armand. Maureen McGovern recorded the song and made it a hit.

On a fictional cruise ship closely modeled after the RMS Queen Mary, a group of people fought to survive after the ship capsized in a tsunami on New Year's Eve. Up was down and down was up. To survive they had to make their way to what had been the lowest level of the ship — but was now the highest.

I always thought "The Poseidon Adventure" was a cut above most of the disaster movies of that era. Its characters were developed better; consequently, the viewers empathized more than they did in other disaster movies that were more superficial in their character treatments.

The disaster movies of the '70s benefited when the acting was good — which was seldom — and, to be sure, some of the stars of "The Poseidon Adventure" were guilty of flagrant overacting — most notably Hackman, Winters and Borgnine. By and large, though, the acting in "The Poseidon Adventure" was good. It was truly an all–star cast, although some of the stars made little more than cameo appearances.

There were some truly harrowing moments in "The Poseidon Adventure," too. Oh, sure, sometimes they were kind of cheap thrills, the ones that make you involuntarily recoil from the safety of the theater seat you're occupying when the characters on the screen face some kind of threat. Because the acting was better than usual for a disaster movie, audiences cared more about the characters in "The Poseidon Adventure."

Of course, the acting was never the main attraction in a disaster movie. It was the special effects that mattered — and, as I mentioned earlier, the special effects in "The Poseidon Adventure" received a special award at the Oscars.

In hindsight, sure, the story was over the top. I mean, this giant tsunami struck precisely at midnight on New Year's Eve. Perfect timing, huh?

(There has always been a segment of the movie market, though, that responds to escapism — while discerning viewers usually prefer plausible escapability, for some people escapism of any kind will do. Hence the appeal of the "Sharknado" movies. Somehow "The Poseidon Adventure" qualified as plausible escapability.)

But that was the thing about '70s disaster movies. They were always over the top.

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Roger Ebert was more cynical in his review of the movie, saying it was "the kind of movie you know is going to be awful and yet somehow you gotta see it."

Like a car accident or a train wreck, I suppose.

But I disagree with that assessment. I didn't think it was an awful movie when I first saw it, and I didn't expect it to be (unlike, say, "The Towering Inferno"), but I was rather young and not as jaded as I later became. Maybe I should have expected worse.

But if I had, I would have been wrong.

The story was plausible enough that it sustained the viewer's interest, and that is a credit to the writers.

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But, while "The Poseidon Adventure" received seven other Oscar nominations in addition to the one for Best Original Song, it was not recognized for its writing.

And that bothers me because it seems that it is from the story that the other categories — especially sound, art direction and cinematography — take their leads. If they were worthy of Oscar consideration, the writing that inspired them should have been as well.

The 400th Anniversary of the Bard's Death

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If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that I write about many entertainment–related topics. I have written about William Shakespeare — directly or indirectly — four times. This is the fifth.

I last wrote about Shakespeare around the 450th anniversary of his birth. I say "around" because the exact date of his birth is not known.

The date of his death is another matter. That was 400 years ago yesterday, and it prompted observances the world over.

One of the grandest celebrations was at Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford–upon–Avon, where more than 10,000 people attended a parade marking the occasion.

If you think that it is inappropriate to have a parade at Shakespeare's birthplace on the anniversary of his death, you are obviously unaware of something I have mentioned in this blog before. Shakespeare's actual birth date is unknown. It is only known that he was born in April 1564, but many people have speculated that he was born on April 23. If that is true, then the bard died on his birthday.

When I wrote about the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, the emphasis of my post was the many ways Shakespeare has influenced modern English. That continues to fascinate people in all kinds of ways. For example, on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, The Sun focused on the top insults from his plays.

You never know when a good 16th–century putdown is going to be called for.

If you happen to be in the Boston area, a more enlightening experience may be found at the Boston Public Library's exhibit of rare first and early editions and forgeries.

Chicago, it seems, would be the best place to satisfy a hunger for the bard. A yearlong festival in that city will feature "Shakespeare–themed menus from Chicago chefs,"

The best way to honor Shakespeare, it seems to me, would be to watch a Shakespearean play. A live performance would have been best, and Barack Obama marked the occasion suitably by visiting the famed Globe Theatre and observing Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy where it was almost certainly first performed before an audience.

R.I.P., Harper Lee, I Wish I Had Known You

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"You see, more than a simple matter of putting down words, writing is a process of self–discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer."

Harper Lee, 1964 interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints

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There haven't been many famous people I have really wanted to meet — and, in my career as a journalist and journalism professor, I have met some famous people. Most I have met in the course of my work — and probably wouldn't have wanted to meet otherwise.

If I had to compile a list of the famous people I did want to meet, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that they are (or were) writers all. Even if they were famous for doing something else, they wrote about whatever it was that they did.

I would have liked to meet Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken.

You know those conversations people often want to start, the ones in which you're asked to identify the four — or six or eight or however many — people from throughout recorded history you would want to have over for dinner? Many people would probably say Jesus or Mahatma Gandhi, but I would start my list with Twain and Mencken. I know they would have something clever to say, and the conversation — whatever it was about — would be lively.

I guess it would depend on the kind of dinner conversation I wanted to have, though. If I wanted it to be theological, Jesus and Gandhi would be obvious choices, but I have a feeling that would be a rather somber conversation.

But taking dinner out of the equation, nearly all the famous people I would want to meet, as I say, would be writers — and not necessarily the obvious ones, either, like Shakespeare.

I'm a journalist, and I have always wanted to meet Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In fact, I have achieved half of that goal. When I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, Bernstein came and delivered a lecture one evening. I attended — with my hardback copy of "The Final Days" — and introduced myself to him when his lecture was done. I even got him to autograph the book.

Well, Woodward is still alive so there is still a chance I could meet him and get him to autograph that book, too, but so many of the writers I would have liked to meet — Ernest Hemingway, James Michener, Theodore H. White, J.R.R. Tolkien, Allen Drury — are gone, and I will never get to meet them.

Add one more to the list. Harper Lee died today. She wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird," which earned her the Pulitzer Prize of 1961. She spent the next half–century largely avoiding the spotlight, rarely giving interviews.

When she died, she apparently died quietly — in her sleep. If we could have our druthers, as Li'l Abner used to say, I expect most of us would like to go that way.

That's how my grandfather died. I assume he went quietly. My grandmother wasn't awakened and had no idea anything was wrong until she tried to rouse Grandpa the next morning.

I always wanted to meet Harper Lee. It would have been great to interview her if I could, but I would have been happy just to sit down and have a conversation with her about writing.

I've kept a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on my desk for years. Last summer I purchased and read her second (and, as it turns out, final) book, "Go Set a Watchman." It, too, rests on my desk; I keep them both handy because there are times when I want to refer to them.

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I grew up in a Southern town that, I suspect, was much like the one in which Harper Lee grew up in Alabama — and I found a lot of country wisdom in the pages of her books.

If I substituted some of the names, I probably could have told the story of my hometown in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Not necessarily word for word or event for event but certainly with some relatively minor changes. Perhaps that is why "To Kill a Mockingbird" has always had such a hold on me.

I would have liked to have had a conversation with her about the people and the culture of the South. I'm sure she would have some intriguing insights to share.

Four Shotgun Blasts, Six Dead

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"The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger — with, rather, a measure of sympathy — for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage or another."

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)

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I suppose the fact that I grew up in a small town has something to do with it, but I always related to how Truman Capote described the town of Holcomb, Kansas, in his book about the murders of the members of the Clutter family in 1959.

My hometown has always been considerably larger than Holcomb, and my hometown is still a small town today, even though it is much larger than it was when I was growing up there. The folks in Holcomb probably would regard my hometown as a city, but it will have to get much bigger than it is today before it can justify being called a city. Until that day comes — and it may never come — my hometown is a small town, and what was true of Holcomb in 1959 is true of any place that qualifies as a small town.

I guess that explains why I have always found the descriptions of the town to be the most compelling parts of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," which was published in book form 50 years ago this month after running in a serialized form in The New Yorker.

After all, Capote's observations of small–town America — and how such a small town reacts to an event as horrific as the murders of four family members in their own home in the dead of night — are rooted in his experience. He was born in New Orleans, but he spent his formative years in tiny Monroeville, Ala., where he became friends with Harper Lee, the eventual author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and Capote's assistant in his research for "In Cold Blood."

There was a time in my life when a senseless murder reverberated through my hometown. Having lived through that, I think I can imagine what it was like in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959.

"In Cold Blood" was truly a tragic tale, not just about the four lives that were taken in the middle of a November Kansas night but also about the two men who took them and the price they ultimately paid for it.

It was a powerful book, the book that defined Capote's life and career. My current copy of the book — and I have owned several over the years — is always on my desk because there are often times when I want to refer to it in one way or another or there are times when I simply want to confirm something that I know from having read the book so many times. Sometimes I just want to re–read certain passages.

(My current copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is always on my desk, too.)

I don't remember when I first read "In Cold Blood." College, probably. I read a lot of true crime books at that time — but I did read "Helter Skelter" when I was in high school so it is possible, but not probable, that I read "In Cold Blood" in high school.

Whenever I did read it for the first time, that is probably when I got my first copy of the book — because I have no memory of being assigned to read it in any sort of English class I ever took. Therefore, I must have chosen to read it, and I have seldom borrowed books from libraries. I usually buy them — paperbacks preferred, although they are no bargain these days.

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"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.' ... The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive: horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them."

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)

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So while I can't be sure when I first read it, I'm quite sure that, when I did, I did so on my own — independently of anything I did for school.

At this point, though, that really isn't important, is it?

I thought Capote summed things up very succinctly when he wrote of the events that transpired on that night in 1959: "Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives."

That's what matters.

The Start of a Great Writing Career

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"I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself."

Hercule Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

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Ninety–five years ago this month, Agatha Christie published the first of dozens of mystery novels — "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" — and introduced the world to one of its most enduring literary detectives, Hercule Poirot.

Christie wrote her first novel during World War I, published it in 1920, then neatly took things full circle 55 years later with "Curtain," a novel she wrote during World War II and brought Poirot and his sidekick Hastings back to Styles for their final case together.

As I have heard the story, Christie's career as a writer began a decade before "Styles" was published — when she was recovering from influenza at her family's home. Convalescence bored her, and her mother suggested that she try her hand at writing. Agatha resisted, saying she didn't think she could. Her mother observed that she had never tried, then left briefly and returned with a writing exercise book. By the following evening, she had finished her first story, a tale of "madness and dreams" that Christie herself, after re–reading the unpublished manuscript half a century later, said showed "the influence of all that I had read the week before" — which had "obviously" been D.H. Lawrence — although a biographer called her story "compelling."

Well, regardless of the merits of the story, it is beyond dispute that it launched an astonishing career. Christie has been dead nearly 40 years, but "The Guinness Book of World Records" recognizes her as the world's best–selling novelist of all time, with more than 2 billion copies of her books having been sold. Her estate claims her novels are behind only the works of Shakespeare and the Bible on the list of the world's most widely published books.

For years before her first book was published, Christie treated her writing as a hobby — like embroidery — but that hobby was preparing her for her life's work.

That tale she wrote while recovering from the flu may have been her first writing effort, but it was "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" that was her first to be published.

It wasn't the first Christie book I ever read, but I immediately recognized something in her writing that was drilled into us when I was a journalism student in college. For lack of a better term, call it the Joe Friday technique — Just the facts.

Christie let her characters speak for themselves. She resisted the temptation to suggest what the characters ought to be saying or to explain to the readers what the characters intended to say. She had the wisdom to let the characters' statements speak for themselves.

It was an element that often made for her best novels. She allowed the readers to reach their own conclusions (which were often wrong) based on what the characters said. Characters often said things that were self–serving and misleading — as they did and do in real life. Readers who reached conclusions based more on the evidence than a witness' testimony usually fared better.

If Christie received any criticism for her initial work, it was that she was perhaps a bit too clever. Critics were virtually unanimous in their verdict that it was a clever plot — but, as one critic complained, there were too many clues in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" that had the effect of canceling each other out. At times it may have been too clever for its own good.

Of course, there were plenty of red herrings in Christie's books, as there are in any good mystery. I have never tried to write a mystery, but I suppose it is tempting to connect the dots for the reader, to explain what is relevant and what is not.

I know it was often tempting in my work as a reporter to connect the dots for people, but I was guided by advice from my news writing professor, a fellow who worked for the New York Times for many years. He told me to give the readers the facts, the statements that others made, the evidence that was presented and let them make up their own minds.

That, I think, was the secret to Christie's fiction–writing success. Novelists write about the worlds they create; reporters write about the world that already exists. But the key to success for both is to let the readers reach their own conclusions.

'Go Set a Watchman' Tells a Human Story

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"She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance the reflex,'What would Atticus do?' passed through her unconscious; she never realized what made her dig in her feet and stand firm whenever she did was her father; that whatever was decent and of good report in her character was put there by her father; she did not know that she worshiped him."

Harper Lee, "Go Set a Watchman"

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It has been said that the moment of both a child's greatest joy and greatest sorrow is the moment when he/she bests a parent at something for the first time — and, in the process, learns the parent is imperfect. I think it also applies to learning something about the parent that wasn't known before.

Perhaps it is when a boy beats his father at arm wrestling or some other physical competition, but, many times, that moment is when the child beats the parent at some kind of game, a game of cards perhaps or a board game. That's what it was with me. My father taught me to play chess when I was little, and he routinely beat me as I was learning the game. I remember the first time I beat him; to this day, I am not certain if I really did beat him or if he permitted me to win. At the time, though, I believed I had won fair and square — and it really did create a tremendous conflict in my young mind.

I was maybe 8 or 9 at the time, and I had always regarded my father as infallible. I know now, of course, and have known for a long time that he isn't, but I didn't know it then. I suppose that is part of being a child and making that transition to maturity — going from believing that your father can do no wrong to understanding that he is a mortal man with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else and that, if you haven't already, the two of you will disagree about some things. That doesn't make him any more or less what he was before — except in your mind.

I was thrilled to have beaten Dad — and profoundly sorry as well — and I think that is the point of Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman." Well, it's one of the points. Let me explain.

First of all, I won't assume that you already know the circumstances surrounding this book so I'll try to briefly go over them for you. This was Lee's original book, the one she submitted to her publisher first. The publisher said it would be more effective if she wrote from the children's point of view so Lee wrote a new book set in the 1930s — at the time that the main female character's father, Atticus Finch, was defending in court a black man who was accused of raping a white woman.

If you are familiar with "To Kill a Mockingbird," it won't be hard for you to recognize Lee's style — and reading "Go Set a Watchman" will make it easier for you to see the influence Lee's editor had on the final product of "To Kill a Mockingbird." I can almost see Lee and her editor working together, her editor recommending a word or a phrase that softens or hardens a passage.

Lee created the book, but it was the editor who really polished it. We owe as much to her as we do to Lee for "To Kill a Mockingbird," which has long been regarded a classic of American literature. I know you already know that, but it is the kind of thing that cannot be said too frequently. Its hero, Atticus, has taken on almost mythical qualities. It is for that very reason that "Go Set a Watchman" has evoked such an emotional response.

But "Go Set a Watchman" tells a very human story.

Nearly everyone from "To Kill a Mockingbird" was there, only it was a couple of decades later. Many things had changed. Jean Louise (also known as Scout) had been living far away, but she was back in her Alabama hometown for a vacation visit and clearly still idolized her father. Her discovery of Citizens Council literature in his home caused a crisis for the adult Jean Louise and the child Scout (who happened to inhabit the same body simultaneously) — who had once believed, the reader learned, that she thought she became pregnant because she French–kissed a boy.

NPR's Maureen Corrigan writes that "Go Set a Watchman" is "kind of a mess" that will "forever change the way we read a masterpiece."

That isn't how I see it.

Half a century ago, Lee wrote a masterpiece, and no one thought we would ever see another book with her name on it. Now we have been given another chance to read something new from her, an opportunity to get caught up with the characters who became like old friends for a generation of readers.

In our supercharged, hyper–politically correct environment, I'm certain there will be some people — probably many people — who will be upset that, in "Go Set a Watchman," Harper Lee's sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird," Atticus Finch's attitude about blacks appears to have changed.

And I realize that is a difficult thing for some readers to accept. But accept this: These are Harper Lee's characters. She created them — no matter who inspired them or how much real–life truth was included in her books, it is up to her to do with them as she pleases. It is her story. You may disagree, but what is done with them is not your decision to make, just as it is not your decision which colors an artist uses on his canvas or which notes a musician uses in his composition. It is your decision whether to like it or not — but that is all.

Now, personally, I would prefer that people reach that conclusion on the basis of the book's merits, not what they have been told about it by others. But, unfortunately, you can't make people think for themselves.

I have always understood that Atticus was inspired by Lee's own father. In her original book, perhaps she was examining that moment in her life when she realized that her father was not living up to the standard she had set for him in her mind. In "To Kill a Mockingbird," we were permitted to see the life she had lived as a child and the things that had stayed with her. Was it idealized? Probably. Almost certainly. But, while it may not be a perfect reflection of reality, it is necessary if we are to take away a different lesson from Harper Lee's saga of Maycomb, Alabama, than the one we took from only the snapshot of Scout's childhood.

Few modern writers have been better at character development than Lee. Take, for example, her physical description of Scout's aunt: "There was no doubt about it: Alexandra Finch Hancock was imposing from any angle; her behind was no less uncompromising than her front. Jean Louise had often wondered, but never asked, where she got her corsets. They drew up to her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Alexandra's had once been an hourglass figure."

That is the kind of description that could have been written about many of the women I knew in the small Arkansas town where I grew up.

She also makes the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb a character. After a brief description of the town's history — and an explanation why the population hadn't changed much in a century and a half — Lee wrote, "What saved it from becoming another grubby little Alabama community was that Maycomb's proportion of professional people ran high: one went to Maycomb to have his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his mules vetted, his soul saved, his mortgage extended." In a few sentences, Lee irrevocably established how vital the town was in the lives of everyone it touched.

Again, that reminds me of the Arkansas town in which I grew up. It had three colleges in it — all small by most college standards — but it gave the town a special status as a producer of college–educated folks. When I was growing up, it was almost assumed that, if someone local went on to college after finishing high school, it would be to one of the three colleges in town. I think it was that way when I graduated from high school. Even though my hometown has grown considerably, it's probably still that way to an extent.

All the time I was reading "Go Set a Watchman," I was reminded of an episode of "M*A*S*H" in which Hawkeye encouraged Radar, who had always looked up to Hawkeye, to go into Seoul to lose his virginity — and Radar was injured by a mine and wound up in the O.R. at the 4077th. Hawkeye, who operated on Radar, felt so guilty for putting him in that position that he got drunk and then got sick. The next day Radar told Hawkeye that he was disappointed in him, and Hawkeye blew up. "I'm not here for you to admire," he shouted at Radar. "I'm here to pull bodies out of a sausage grinder, if possible without going crazy."

Later Col. Potter was talking to Radar about Hawkeye — who had slipped several notches in Radar's eyes — and he pointed out that the 4077th was a rather small compound and the two of them were bound to bump into each other sooner or later. They might start out talking about the weather or the food in the mess tent and, before long, he would realize that Hawkeye was the same guy he'd been when Radar had Hawkeye on a pedestal.

In fact, Col. Potter said, things might be even better — now that they could see things more eye to eye.

Occupying a World of His Own

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"I made you too strong. I forgot to add some human frailty."

Keenan Wynn

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On this night in 1960, Twilight Zone concluded its first season with an episode that I have always liked.

I wouldn't say it is in my top 10 Twilight Zone episodes, but it is probably in my top 20. Hey, that isn't bad. There were 156 episodes of the Twilight Zone between 1959 and 1964. The #20 episode on my hypothetical list would be in the top 13%, and I figure that the episode that aired 55 years ago tonight, "A World of His Own," probably deserves to be in my top 10% — which, I suppose, would put it around #15, and that is about right.

That really shouldn't surprise anyone. The theme was writing, and, for good or ill, I am a writer. (I also admire the work of the man who wrote this episode, Richard Matheson.)

Now, I understand about the drawbacks of profiling, but there are advantages to it, too. Profiling can be helpful in understanding why certain people seem predisposed to do certain things in life. To me, it has often seemed to be that way with writers. I often ask myself, why do writers write? Why do I write? Profiling could be useful in answering those questions.

Of course, writers come in all races so racial profiling doesn't really help. Nor does gender profiling because I have known both female writers and male writers. For that matter, age, religion, sexual orientation aren't very helpful. All those things contribute to the life experiences that writers so frequently write about.

After a lifetime of reflecting on the experience of being a writer — and writing about that experience — I have reached a conclusion. Writers want to be able to control their lives better than most of them actually do. Even writers of nonfiction — like the reporters with whom I have worked on newspaper staffs — want to have more control over things in their lives, and being able to write a complete eyewitness account of something that happened, whether a criminal trial or a football game, is a way of exerting that control.

I think most nonfiction writers secretly would like to be fiction writers because, in the pages of a novel, the writer alone decides what happens. If what happens in those pages seems unlikely but not entirely impossible, the writer's persuasiveness is what will determine whether the readers believe it is plausible.

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In "A World of His Own," Keenan Wynn played a writer who had found a way to control his world. He used a dictaphone — one of those old–fashioned contraptions that busy people used to record ideas, dictate letters and other documents and so on half a century ago. Today's business executive probably sends out emails from his smartphone, which would require some extensive rewriting of this episode if someone was to remake it.

Anyway, Wynn's character could conjure up his ideal woman and the woman to whom he was married — different women — simply by dictating a description into this dictaphone. To make the character go away, he would take the tape describing that person and toss it on the fire in the fireplace in his study. That was how he "un–created" characters.

As you can imagine, his wife was skeptical. She was sure she had seen a woman through the window and was baffled about how that woman could have gotten out.

So Wynn's character did a demonstration for her, conjuring up his ideal woman — Mary.

It was all too much for his wife, who started to leave the house but was stopped when Wynn's character conjured up a rogue elephant to block her way. She assured her husband that she would escape at the first opportunity and have him committed.

Well, that left Wynn with no alternative. He had to dispose of his wife the same way he disposed of Mary — by throwing the tape describing her character into the fire. And that is what he did.

In an amusing twist, Rod Serling assured viewers, in the final scene, that it was a fictional story, that people couldn't really get rid of other people by tossing tape into a fire — to which Wynn took exception and tossed an envelope labeled "Rod Serling" containing tape into the fire.

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And Serling dissolved, not to be seen again until the second season of Twilight Zone began in September.

Don't Fixate on One Word: 'Huck Finn' Was Mark Twain's Best Work

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"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Sometime in February of 1885, Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There are those who will tell you that it was published 130 years ago today — but I haven't been able to confirm the exact date, only the month and year.

I admit, I got around to reading it a lot later than I should have. I've tried to make up for lost time by re–reading it several times, though, and I believe it really is the fabled great American novel (although, interestingly, it was first published in England in December 1884). I've read a lot of Twain's writing in my life — I admire his work as only another writer can, and much of his best work can be found in the pages of Huckleberry Finn.

(I would be tempted to drop the "much of" portion of that preceding statement — except there are just too many excellent books and articles that Twain wrote in his lifetime to be that absolute.)

It is also a great glimpse into 19th–century America told by a man who lived in that century. Twain was a gifted writer, and his descriptions of people and places Conversations were written in the regional dialect of eastern Missouri where Twain grew up. The dialogue of the black characters was in the race–specific dialect — much of which survives to this day.

To an extent, I suppose, that was responsible for some of the attempts over the years to ban Huckleberry Finn from school libraries and such. But, mostly, the objection has been to the use of the word nigger, which is used frequently in the book — but, strange as this may sound, it wasn't intended in a racist way. It was a descriptive word, not a slur — unless it was preceded by words that were more specific accusations, and that definitely would change the context of the use of that word.

Fact is, Abraham Lincoln used the word nigger in conversation — and I think we all would agree that Lincoln was not a racist. Language has struggled in the last century or so to find an acceptable descriptive word for that segment of the population. When nigger came to be seen as a slur by most, the word colored came into favor, then the word black was preferred.

I believe that books that are about particular times and places should use, as much as possible, the language that was used in that place in that time, just as the characters should dress as the people of that time did and see the things those people saw — especially if the writer lived in those times.

And make no mistake — Twain definitely was writing from memory. The world he described in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had ceased to exist a couple of decades before that book was published.

Not so long ago, there was a movement to sanitize Huck Finn by inserting a politically correct term every time nigger appeared in the book, but I have never felt right about that. It isn't used maliciously in the book, and by inserting a 21st–century word, you're forcing 19th–century characters to live by linguistic rules that were not of their time. There is no need to subject them to that just because we in the 21st century struggle with that issue. It changes the writer's work. You may not think it is much of a change, but I do. Writing is a form of self–expression. It is an art form and such external editing changes it, no matter how subtle you may think the change is. It reminds me of several years ago when there was a movement to "colorize" black–and–white movies. I tried to watch a colorized movie once, and it was like watching someone paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

Only the artist should change an artist's work.

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"We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."

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Twain had a great memory, though. He was nearly 50 when he wrote Huckleberry Finn — and, in spite of what Huck said in those first sentences, maybe he did make up a lot of it, but his memory was sharper than that, and I think the world and the people he described really were those of the antebellum South. It is almost a time capsule, a glimpse at a world that existed nearly two centuries ago. Warts and all.

A point that those who complain about the use of the word nigger always seem to miss is that Huckleberry Finn was intended as a satire — and a scathing satire it was, too, on the attitudes of the time, particularly racist attitudes. In the story, Huck Finn was about 13 or 14 so, if Twain was using himself at that age as the model for the character and the time he was that age, the times he described were probably more than a decade before the start of the Civil War.

Huckleberry Finn is an entertaining history lesson that must never be allowed to vanish. I have the same copy on my shelf that I have had since I was in college. It's a bit ragged and dog–eared now, but I wouldn't part with it for anything.

As one who often laments the absence of knowledge of history in young Americans, I believe young people should be encouraged to read Huckleberry Finn, not discouraged. At the very least, it should not be banned from libraries — for libraries are supposed to contain knowledge for generations to come, to enlighten those who walk through their doors.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

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"Brush up your Shakespeare
Start quoting him now
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow."

Cole Porter

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Most of the people I know will tell you they only glanced at a Shakespeare play when they were assigned to read one in school — and some of them didn't even do that. Shakespeare was widely seen as having no real relevance to modern readers.

Those folks probably would be shocked at how often they actually quote Shakespeare, some on a daily basis. He had a far greater influence on our modern English than you probably think.

For instance ...

A few months ago, when the nation marked the 50th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy, the word assassination was used a lot, right? It is the word that has always been used when a prominent person is killed by someone else.

Or is it?

A person who murders a prominent person has been called an assassin for a long time. That word has Arabic roots that go back more than a thousand years. But the act of killing a prominent person was not called an assassination ... until Shakespeare came along and used that word in "Macbeth."

When Shakespeare was writing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, there was more freedom for writers to do what he did practically routinely — which was to take an existing word and sort of play with it, like a sculptor plays with clay, until a functional shape emerged. Thus, a noun like assassin became a verb (assassinate) — and yielded another noun to describe the action (assassination).

(Of course, we do quote Shakespeare in whole sentences or phrases, too, such as "all's well that ends well" or "foregone conclusion.")

When I was in school, I knew a lot of people who complained when they were assigned to read something Shakespeare had written. His language wasn't modern enough, they complained.

I'm not much of a linguist, but I am something of an historian, and I know that, if the idea was that Shakespeare wrote in Old English, that was plain wrong. Old English began to fall from favor several hundred years before Shakespeare was born.

(Old English really has a lot more in common with the Germanic mother tongue of the Anglo Saxons than modern English does.)

Shakespeare didn't write in Middle English, either. There were a lot of changes in the English language after the French–speaking Normans invaded in 1066, and Middle English came to prominence about 200 years before the Bard was born.

If my friends had to read the same text in both Middle English and Old English, they would find Middle English easier to comprehend — but not by much.

(If you don't believe me, try reading Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," which was written in Middle English. Here's an excerpt from the prologue: "To telle yow al the condicioun, Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, And whiche they weren, and of what degree, And eek in what array that they were inne, And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.")

In fact, Shakespeare wrote in what is known as Early Modern English. It came into use about a century before he was born and is nearly indistinguishable from the English that is written and spoken today.

Now, as you may have noticed, I have mentioned Shakespeare's birth a couple of times. That was intentional — or premeditated, to use another Shakespearean creation (from "King Henry VI, Part I") — because, in about six weeks, we will observe what is probably the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.

I say "probably" not because it was a Shakespeare word — it might have been, I just don't know — but because it isn't known exactly when Shakespeare was born. It is known that he was baptized on April 26, 1564, and his date of birth, while not known for certain, has been traditionally observed on April 23.

If that is when he was born, then Shakespeare died on his 52nd birthday because we know that he died on April 23, 1616.

The "Oxford English Dictionary" estimated that Shakespeare created some 3,000 words that one can find in the dictionary today — words like countless, for example (from "Titus Andronicus").

That is an astonishing influence on the language, especially when you consider there was no dictionary in Shakespeare's day. The dictionary came into existence about a decade before he died. Shakespeare was sparsely educated, but he would have had no more resource for studying the language he spoke and wrote than anyone else of his time. Grammar texts didn't come along until a century — or more — after his death.

I'm inclined to think that it isn't so much the words that Shakespeare used that tend to confound people — it's the way they're arranged.

Of course, one cannot disregard the fact that words do change meaning — and some fall from use entirely — over time, which can affect the reader's comprehension.

But I still think a lot of the negative reaction to Shakespeare stems from his habit of organizing words in sentences in ways that sound strange to modern ears — even if the meaning isn't altered.

Need an example? Take this five–word sentence: "The governor made a speech."

You could arrange those words in six unique sentences that essentially say the same thing but in different word orders. (Warning: Sometimes it reads like something Yoda might write.)

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The governor made a speech.
The governor a speech made.
Made a speech the governor.
Made the governor a speech.
A speech the governor made.
A speech made the governor.

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The key to reading and enjoying Shakespeare's work is not learning another language. It is using the language you already know, sometimes rearranging the words in an order that makes sense to you. It really isn't that arduous.

In the meantime ...

The next time you hear the word addiction ("Henry V") or elbow ("King Lear") or rant ("Hamlet"), you can thank Shakespeare.

Of course, someone might have come up with those words someday, anyway. But who knows?

Maximilian Schell Dies

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Maximillian Schell died overnight at the age of 83.

I have admired his Oscar–winning work in 1961's "Judgment at Nuremberg" ever since I saw it for the first time. I've never seen it on the big screen, only on TV screens, but I don't think that matters.

It is the acting, not the cinematography, that tells the story in that movie, and Schell's performance, as brilliant as it was, was only one part of it. Other parts were co–star (and co–Best Actor nominee) Spencer Tracy and many other stars in lesser — but no less important — roles, some of whom believed in the project so deeply that they accepted no pay for their work.

Still, Schell's performance was, as I say, brilliant. I wish to take nothing away from it. I've never seen anything like it — and I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about movies. I've seen many admirable performances, but Schell's may have been was the best.

(Well, upon further review, I might have to put it second behind Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mockingbird.")

Unfortunately, I think it led to the Austrian–born Schell being pigeonholed in Nazi–related roles — ironic, really, since Schell's family fled Austria after it was annexed by Nazi Germany. That may have been a mixed blessing; he received additional Oscar nominations for his work in two World War II–themed movies in the 1970s.

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But he never won another statuette.

He did take steps to avoid being typecast, appearing in a variety of roles through the remainder of his career. I've seen many of them, and I always come away with a renewed respect for Schell's work.

Schell was a remarkably talented man. His family relocated to Zurich, Switzerland, where the young Schell read the classics — and wrote a play at the age of 10. His mother was an actress, and his father was a writer; as a result, Schell said he grew up in a "theater atmosphere," and his artistic talents initially gravitated more to writing, painting and music than acting.

He did a lot of writing in his college years, including part–time work for newspapers to supplement his income. Ultimately, though, he settled on a career in acting, which he launched at the age of 24.

I suspect he still felt torn, even after he had settled on a career in acting. "I don't actually have a profession," he once said. "I wander through life and through all areas of art."

I guess you could say he was something of a pioneer. When he won his Oscar, it was the first awarded to a German–speaking actor since World War II — a real breakthrough for that time in history.

Maximilian Schell certainly left his mark.

The Maker of Middle Earth

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"I am, in fact, a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe and like good plain food (unrefrigerated) but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."

J.R.R. Tolkien

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When J.R.R. Tolkien died 40 years ago tomorrow, I had not yet read "The Hobbit" or the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

"The Hobbit" might have been about my speed at that time in my life. The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, though, definitely would have been beyond my years.

I read those books later when I was in high school. And I learned what all the cool kids had learned long before. I'd seen those kids carrying around their copies of whichever volumes of "Lord of the Rings" they happened to be reading at the time like emblems of some kind of exclusive club, a club to which I did not belong until later.

By then, though, they had moved on to other things.

When I finally joined that club, I was filled with admiration for the things Tolkien wrote. To put things in perspective, I had been doing a lot of writing by that time in my life, and I felt a great appreciation for well–written pieces, be they articles or books. Still do.

But on this day in 1973, I'm not sure I even knew who Tolkien was.

Consequently, I often feel as if I missed out on something special that everyone else got. Not permanently, of course. I finally got it, but I didn't get to experience it along with everyone else in my peer group. I felt out of step, somehow.

That was really kind of the story of my life when I was growing up. My family lived in the country, and there were many times when I felt isolated from my friends in town. When the school day ended, I got on the school bus and it took me home. A few kids my age lived in the general vicinity of my house, but most of my friends lived in town, and it always seemed to me that they experienced things as a group before I experienced them.

Tolkien was like everything else.

I was really isolated from my friends when Tolkien died. My father was a college professor, and he was on a four–month sabbatical in another state (with my mother, my brother and me). But, at that time, I doubt that many (if any) of my friends had read Tolkien yet.

Now that I think of it, I don't recall seeing any of my friends with their copies of volumes of the "Rings" trilogy until years later.

When I finally read "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, I kept thinking it would make a wonderful movie. As it turned out, it inspired three great movies.

But I also kept thinking that it wouldn't be possible technically to put Tolkien's vision on film. And that was true — at that time.

But 30 years after Tolkien's death, the film trilogy based on his books was being honored in every possible way.

I've often wondered what Tolkien would have thought of that.

Projected moving pictures made their debut when he was small, and the medium was evolving through most of his adult life, which was largely devoted to writing, either doing it or teaching it. My guess is he gave little thought to movies — and probably less to whether anything he wrote would be made into one.

There are times when I think that Tolkien, with his knack for story telling, must have mused about the possibility that his works would be preserved on film — even if filmmaking was primitive at that time.

But then I think that his devotion to the fantasy world that he had created — as well as his scholarly interest in language — would not permit him to tolerate anything less than perfection in its film representation. And filmmaking was decidedly imperfect during his lifetime.

Of course, that's just an educated guess — and, perhaps, some wishful thinking.

As I say, he probably never gave it a thought.

Christie's Least Favorite Novel

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"I saw a particular personage and I threatened him — yes, Mademoiselle, I, Hercule Poirot, threatened him."

"With the police?"

"No," said Poirot drily, "with the press — a much more deadly weapon."

Agatha Christie
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

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On this day in 1928, Agatha Christie was a rising young writer of 38.

She had published seven novels since 1920 — including some that are still considered among her best — but she didn't have much regard for the one that was published on this date in 1928, "The Mystery of the Blue Train."

Christie called it "easily the worst book I ever wrote," although she acknowledged that "many people, I'm sorry to say, like it." Count me among them.

I guess it was irresistible for me. I read it a year or two after I first saw "Murder on the Orient Express" — and read the book upon which it was based (which, as I understand it, was one of her favorites) — and I guess I had something of a weakness for a mystery that takes place on a train.

Before I say any more, let me say a few words about writing.

I've been writing most of my life, and I've always prided myself on being able to write about many different topics. But I've admired the ability to focus on a specific niche. I've always had too many interests, I suppose, which may well mean that, when I worked as a general assignment reporter, I was in the job for which I was best suited.

But it seems to me that the writers who find a specific niche are the ones who also find the greatest success in this business. Not so much the nonfiction writers. The nature of their work requires them to be curious about many things.

A niche is particularly important, I suppose, for writers of fiction, and when one discusses the writing career of Agatha Christie, it is hard to avoid certain conclusions.

Obviously, her niche was the detective novel, but she did write other things. Not many, but a few. Nevertheless, she is still known, more than 35 years after her death, as a crime writer — odds are, she always will be.

Within that genre, she focused on Britain's well–to–do, and her plot device frequently was to have her detective (more often than not, that was Hercule Poirot — although Miss Marple was another detective who was familiar to Christie's fans) either stumble onto a murder (or, on occasion, several murders) or be asked by an old friend/colleague to investigate an existing case that was baffling others.

That detective proceeded to question each of the suspects, which supposedly provided all the clues the reader would need to solve the crime. I say "supposedly" because there have been some who have suggested that prominent mystery writers have pulled some fast ones. Among those dissenters is playwright Neil Simon, who alleged, in "Murder By Death," that some of the greatest fictional detectives of all time deceived their readers with clues and suspects that didn't appear in the books until the final pages, if at all.

That wasn't entirely fair.

Quite often, Christie's stories would have another character killed near the end — but that was usually because that character had discovered something crucial and was silenced by the original guilty party. Furthermore, those characters weren't introduced in the final chapter. They had been around for awhile.

Christie wrote more than five dozen novels, many of which were made into movies or TV adaptations. Nearly a dozen of her books have inspired video games. Most of this has come since her death in 1976.

Not bad.

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But "The Mystery of the Blue Train" has not been turned into a movie. It was an adaptation on the British TV series "Agatha Christie's Poirot" in 2005 — more than 75 years after it was published.

But that's it, and I find that surprising.

I'll grant you, I didn't think "The Mystery of the Blue Train" was her best book. But I wouldn't go as far in the other direction as Christie herself did. Neither would fellow English crime writer Robert Barnard, who has said that Christie is his favorite crime writer. Despite modest criticism, Barnard wrote in 1980 that "there are several fruitier candidates for the title of 'worst Christie'."

The victim in "The Mystery of the Blue Train" is a young heiress who is traveling to the French Riviera by train. She is found strangled in her compartment and a valuable piece of jewelry is determined to be missing.

Poirot just happens to be on the train and is approached by the victim's father and his secretary to investigate.

As usual, there were some modest differences between the book and the TV adaptation — and I say "modest" because, as far as I am concerned, they did not make significant changes in the story, only cosmetic ones designed to appeal to viewers in the early 21st century rather than readers in the early 20th century.

I'm inclined to think Christie would have approved.

A Slice-of-Life Movie

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When I was growing up, Neil Simon was probably the biggest name in the playwrights' world universe.

I admired many writers as a young man. Most were writers of nonfiction, but among the fiction writers, Simon was in a league by himself. Even those who did not read much — and there were (and are) many of those — Simon was known for his many works that were brought to the big and small screens.

Like anyone, Simon has missed the target on occasion — but he's had more hits than misses. He may have been hitting his stride 35 years ago today when "The Goodbye Girl," made its theatrical debut.

The title was an example, I think, of what made Simon so popular. His characters always seemed to have occupations that were exotic — when compared to most humdrum, routine jobs — and sometimes it seemed that the common man could have very little in common with them.

But those characters weren't seen as distant because they were always facing very human predicaments, things to which anyone could relate. They were multi–dimensional.

In "The Goodbye Girl," Marsha Mason played a former Broadway dancer who became known as the Goodbye Girl because of all her failed relationships. The story found her living in the apartment of her latest ex (who had skipped out) with her precocious 10–year–old daughter, Lucy (Quinn Cummings).

Younger viewers may only know Mason as Martin Crane's love interest on Frasier in the late '90s. Similarly, they may only know Dreyfuss as Mr. Holland. And they probably don't know Cummings at all.

But, in "The Goodbye Girl," they played people with whom audiences could sympathize. Dreyfuss played his role so well he was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Actor.

Mason, Cummings and Simon were all nominated for Oscars, and the movie was nominated for Best Picture, but only Dreyfuss won.

And it really wasn't hard to understand why. Dreyfuss had been showing up on TV and in movies for about a decade, but he had rarely been the featured star (exceptions had been 1975's "Jaws," 1977's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and a few others).

Cummings, of course, was a bit of a newcomer. If she had won for Best Supporting Actress, she would have been in exclusive company — a few years older than Tatum O–Neal was when she won the Oscar for "Paper Moon," and she was a couple of years older than Anna Paquin was when she won Best Supporting Actress for "The Piano."

But all that is irrelevant because, of course, Cummings did not win. I suppose there is an argument to be made that, if Cummings had won the Oscar, she might have become more of a presence in movies than she became. Most Oscar winners do.

But, as I say, Cummings did not win, and she hasn't appeared in a movie in more than 20 years.

Dreyfuss, who did win, has appeared in many movies since then, and he has become a familiar face to moviegoers in the process.

It wasn't just the acting that drew me to this movie, however. As is true with most of the movies that I really like, a lot of its appeal is in its witty dialogue. We can thank Simon for that. He put some great lines in the characters' mouths.

For example, early in the movie, when Mason and Dreyfuss are still testy with each other, Dreyfuss's character says, "I love listening to you talk. I hate living with you, but your conversation is first rate."

Dreyfuss had the most immediately memorable lines — or perhaps he made them memorable with the quality of his acting — but I discovered, upon reflection, that many of Mason's lines had a staying power of their own.

For instance ...

When Mason's character tells her daughter to be tactful in her interaction with Dreyfuss.

"What's that?" Lucy asked.

Without batting an eye, Mason replied, "Lie!"

Or when Dreyfuss — in what could only be charitably referred to as his first negotiation with Mason — suggested that she was a "sharp New York girl."

"No a dull Cincinnati kid," Mason replied, "but you get dumped on enough and you start to develop an edge."

"The Goodbye Girl" was a real slice of life.

'Not Good But Great'

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"American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither."

Gore Vidal

Two Sisters: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel (1970)

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The death yesterday of writer Gore Vidal cannot reasonably be seen as unexpected.

He was, after all, 86 years old, and when one has reached that age, even if one has been in apparently good health, things can change quickly.

I can't honestly say that I know what the state of Vidal's health had been. His nephew said his death was caused by complications from pneumonia, which may or may not have been a long–term condition.

But one thing I can say is that his death — at any age and regardless of the circumstances — is an unexpected blow for anyone who appreciates good writing and independent thinking.

And writers who survive him are heaping praise upon him at the time of his death — even if they didn't always agree with what he said or wrote during his life.

Vidal was an "elegant, acerbic all–around man of letters," writes Charles McGrath in the New York Times.

He "was impossible to categorize," says Elaine Woo in the Los Angeles Times, "which was exactly the way he liked it."

He always seemed to be around in one form or another, whether it was in person (i.e., his regular appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) or through the mere mention of his name.

I recall once on one of my favorite TV shows, Frasier, Roz was trying to persuade Frasier to agree to be a celebrity host of a cruise in exchange for a trip to Alaska. Frasier was reluctant to, as he put it, "trade on one's good name," but he had second thoughts when Roz told him Gore Vidal had gone on two such cruises in the preceding year.

"Gore Vidal?" Frasier asked incredulously. "He hates everything!"

Maybe he didn't hate everything. But if he didn't, he did seem to make an effort to be even–handed with things and people that most of the rest of us do not like.

His career spanned parts of six decades, but it was early in Vidal's career when his novel "The City and the Pillar," made him a literary outcast because of its treatment of homosexuality.

One could say he made a career of being the devil's advocate.

He corresponded with convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and wrote an extensive defense of McVeigh for Vanity Fair. McVeigh initiated the correspondence after reading an article Vidal wrote about the erosion of the Bill of Rights in the raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

And he alienated many with his insistence that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were inside jobs.

But no matter what kind of reaction his words and writings received, he remained convinced of the rightness of his views.

"There is not one human problem," he said, "that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise."

One of the things I admired about Vidal was his passion for history and politics. His book about Lincoln was and still is, in my opinion, one of the best historical novels ever written — and I minored in history in college. History has always been one of my passions, too.

Vidal knew, though, that his wasn't exactly a warm and fuzzy personality.

"I'm exactly as I appear," he said. "There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water."

It's been my experience that many writers are like that. But few are as honest about it as Gore Vidal.

And that, I suppose, is what I will miss the most about Vidal — the honesty of his words.

Even if you didn't agree with him, you could not help but appreciate his candor.

A Dickens of a Birthday

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"It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

"we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Charles Dickens
"A Tale of Two Cities"

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As one who has always aspired to be a writer, I am left breathless by the greatest of the writers, so many of whom came along in the 19th century — Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, the Brownings, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, many others.

And Charles Dickens.

Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth, an event that is being marked the world over, and I feel safe in stating that few, if any, writers of Dickens' time — or of any other — possessed his flair for realism, comedy and characters.

Especially the characters.

I've always held that a good story has good characters, and there have been few characters who were more enduring than Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Wilkins Micawber, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. Others, too.

Every Dickens novel has memorable characters who, as none other than Virginia Woolf said, "exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks."

But even that doesn't capture the full range of Dickens' character development.

Take, for instance, Madame Defarge in "A Tale of Two Cities."

In the reader's first encounter with her, she is silent. But the reader is acutely aware of her knitting. It makes her seem harmless, in a way — submissive, devotedly domestic — but the reader comes to see how she is driven by bloodlust during the French Revolution and the role her knitting plays in her life as a tricoteuse at the public executions.

As I say, she is silent at first, communicating with her husband through darting glances and subtle nods. The reader comes to understand these things better, but, to the naked eye, it is tragically deceptive.

Often, those characters were modeled after people in Dickens' life. That's a common strategy for writers — I have frequently been advised, whether by teachers, professional colleagues or friends, to write about what I know — as is the time–honored method of writing (in as disguised a way as possible) about one's life experiences.

There wasn't anything new about those literary devices in Dickens' day. He just used them more effectively than his contemporaries. Maybe it was more personal for him than anyone ever realized.

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"[L]ike many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."

Charles Dickens
"David Copperfield"

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Well, "David Copperfield" had several autobiographical elements to it. There was never really any secret about that, even in Dickens' time.

But there was certainly more to Dickens.

He was a passionate advocate of social reform and took the occasion of his first visit to America in 1842 to write of his objection to slavery.

I am certain he would, at the very least, empathize with the modern–day Occupy movement. Financial disparity is a kind of slavery; the issues aren't the same, of course, although that may depend upon one's interpretation.

Anyway, following Dickens' death in June 1870, Queen Victoria wrote of him in her diary: "He had a large loving mind and the strongest sympathy with the poorer classes. He felt sure a better feeling, and much greater union of classes, would take place in time. And I pray earnestly it may."

Still waiting on that one. But it may yet come to pass.

In the last six or seven decades, though, it hasn't been necessary to wait long for a movie or TV adaptation of Dickens' works. When I was a child, a movie based on "Oliver Twist" was a big winner at the Oscars and a top money earner, and its success apparently inspired another Dickens adaptation (this one based on "A Christmas Carol") a couple of years later.

There have been others since. The stories have a timeless appeal.

As Annie Fischer observes, in the Kansas City Star, Dickens' "cultural relevance lives on."

Indeed it does.

Andy Rooney: The Last Curmudgeon?

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curmudgeon — noun
a surly or miserly person
[of unknown origin]
cur'mudgeonly — adjective

Collins English Dictionary, 10th edition

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Andy Rooney died yesterday.

And that is the sort of thing that I would usually discuss on my Freedom Writing blog. That is where I normally write about current events and journalists.

But this is the blog where I write on entertainment topics — and therein lies my dilemma.

Andy Rooney certainly was a journalist, but that is really too confining, given the pigeonholing to which most people seem to be inclined these days.

Rooney was a writer. That is what he called himself, and that is what he was. I've been writing most of my life, and it seems to me that one never really stops being a writer — at least, not until one is dead.

His writing was not limited to the printed page, though.

"After the war," he told his 60 Minutes viewers when he stepped down on October 2, "I went to work in radio and television because I didn't think anyone was paying enough attention to the written word."

But Rooney was a writer. He went on television as a writer, not as an entertainer. "I'm a writer who reads what he's written," he said.

There are all kinds of writing, and there are all kinds of journalists. Reporter is but a single type (pardon the pun) of journalist, and Rooney was a reporter in the early days of his career, writing for Stars and Stripes during World War II.

In his final broadcast on CBS last month, Rooney told viewers that a high school teacher had told him he had a flair for writing, and so he pursued it. He pursued it in many different directions, and reporting for Stars and Stripes was only one.

It affected his life and his writing in profound ways, but it wasn't the only direction he took in nearly a century of living. "I've done a lot of complaining here, but of all the things I've complained about, I can't complain about my life," he told the viewers who tuned in for his farewell.

He was a columnist, but he was also a humorist, and he shared many of his insights with his radio and TV audiences. His 60 Minutes audiences were treated to them for more than three decades.

"I’ve learned," Rooney told that audience near the end of his tenure, "that one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them."

We knew we were going to miss Andy Rooney when he retired. We shall miss him all the more knowing he is gone for good.