Authors Electric

Goodbye and good riddance, February 2016. You were a hideous month, a month that robbed us of two great writers: Umberto Eco and Harper Lee. I’m not going to attempt a critique of Eco’s and Lee’s respective contributions to literature – that’s already been done, and done far better than I could do it. This is just a very small personal tribute to two writers who made a big difference to me. It’s a small, belated ‘thank you’ to two people I’ll never be able to thank in person. Umberto Eco. Image credit: Bogaerts, Rob / Anefo | Wikimedia Commons I gobbled up Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in just a few sittings. It was for this mediaeval murder mystery, of course, that Eco was best known, at least in the English-speaking world. The novel was an instant, international success, and I like to believe that this was – at least in part – because Eco, in these dumbed-down times, never underestimated his readers’ intelligence. He was an unabashed intellectual, a professor of ...

Enter the Zone of the Big Time Boo-Hoo. You've just received the report card for your latest book or whatever. And you've received a C or D...or even an E or an F. Suddenly the A's, B-Pluses and B's you've received  have a pall cast over them. You feel slimed and vilified. Then, by degrees, worse happens. You start to wonder if They're right...and end up feeling crushed. Poor you. Life doesn't get too much tougher than becoming a poor crushed tomato. You envy hapless newbies who've earned their own rotten report cards. They'll grow as they go...or go under. But you? You're a veteran in the Arena and you've spent decades refining your craft. Still, you're receiving E's and F's for the very things you chose to do...and which you feel sure you've done well. What to do? Hemingway wrote that if we believe the good things people say about our work, then we must believe the bad. But did he practice what he preached? Aft...

Brawls are fun to enjoy from the bleachers. And the first great literary feud still has a lot to teach us. Meet the two combatants now. In the left corner, Lord Byron (aka George Gordon): Born in 1788. 5'8". Lover, boxer, swimmer, marksman and literary rock star. Drank wine from a human skull and had sex with his half-sister. In the right corner, Robert Southey: Born in 1774. A 6' former rebel who turned coat for a government pension. Became Poet Laureate when Walter Scott declined. Sang prolifically then for his supper. Fight genesis: Motives seem murky. Southey may have seen in Byron the sins he wished he'd been blessed to commit, while Byron saw in Southey the staid bore he feared he'd become. But three factors combined to stir up the big brawl: -- 1818 . Byron took quick playful shots at Southey in the Dedication of Don Juan. Though Lord B's English Bards & Scotch Reviewers had lambasted everyone nine years before, his new dig at Sou...