Skeletons in the Writer’s Closet
Sep 9th, 2005 by Ashok
This is another of my old Footsie columns from The Daily Pioneer.
FOOTSIE
Ashok Banker
About the Author–and his mistress too
While everybody’s out reading Tom Clancy novels and the prophecies of Nostradamus in an attempt to deal with the worldwide changes after last week’s attacks on the USA, here’s a book that may help entertain and inform you for a while.
About the Author is a nonfiction book by Alfred and Emily Glossbrenner recently published in the US.
This husband and wife co-writer team researched hundreds of famous authors, both dead as well as living ones, to compile this fascinating book.
If you love list books and books about writers, this one’s worth a look.
For instance, you know about Lord Jeffrey Archer’s recent expose and arrest.
You probably also know that he’s doing quite well in jail, keeping in touch with all his friends (those he has left, anyway) and generally seeming to enjoy his incarceration.
But did you know he has a fetish for dyed-Di?
What’s that, you ask?
Well, it’s a painting he bought in 1998, a portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, by the iconoclastic painter Andy Warhol, who was a personal friend.
Diana herself sat for the portrait. But get this–the painting depicts her with green and black hair!
Not weird enough for you?
Then get this–Lord Archer is said to have paid a whopping $8.5 million for it.
No wonder he resorted to fraud schemes to make more money!
Then there’s Margaret Atwood, the Booker-prize winning author of Cat’s Eye and Alias Grace and several other critically acclaimed literary novels.
She has a love for gardening.
Fine, you say, but here’s the point: She’s not a very good gardener, by her own admission.
In fact, she’s so bad at it, that her gardens end up full of weeds which she euphemistically calls “native wildflowers”.
Then why does she do it?
In her own words: “I get seducted by catalogues, with their glossy photos and adjectives, and by pictures of rose-covered trellises and beds of mature perennials.”
Talk about loyalty.
Nobel Prize winning novelist Saul Bellow owed a great deal to Harriet Wasserman, his (literally) one-time lover and longtime literary agent.
Wasserman not only accepted that their relationship couldn’t go beyond that one-night stand, she represented Bellow for 30 years very successfully.
She even typed his novels for him and used to spend hours on the phone discussing editorial changes–one marathon session lasted seven hours, but five hours was common.
Yet Bellow left her to move on to another agent, the super-agent Andrew Wylie.
Wasserman’s only option was to write a book about Bellow, titled Handsome Is: Adventures by Saul Bellow.
Small consolation for a lifetime’s loyalty.
Speaking of Tom Clancy. 
The world’s highest-paid novelist (on a per book basis–he gets over $20 million per novel), Clancy is known for his meticulous research and carefully plotted 1000-page tomes.
Yet you may be surprised to learn that Clancy does not plan his books out in advance and sits for a mere 4 hours or so, writing 10 unplanned pages every morning!
Now that’s a great way to earn Rs 100 crores a year, isn’t it?
Patricia Cornwell is growing into one of the world’s most popular crime novelists, and certainly one of the biggest selling.
But did you know that her research is often too close to comfort?
Whether it’s stepping on crack vials in the darkness of a New York alley, avoiding stepping on rats in sewers, placing her gloved hand in the chest cavity of a corpse–only to find the blood is cold–Cornwell thrives on writing from first-hand experience.
Sometimes, she does her research too well–Cornwell still needs to have bodyguards everywhere she goes, and carries not one but two loaded guns in her purse.
Because she personally knew one of the female serial murder victims in the real-life case that inspired her novel Postmorten, and fears she might become a target of the still unapprehended killer!
Richard Ford, the author of the acclaimed The Sportswriter and other novels, was in the news recently.
A reporter asked him about a rumour that he had shot a well-known American critic’s debut novel with a gun.
Ford replied that he had done nothing of the kind.
It was his wife, Kristina, who had used the book for target practise in their backyard!
Apparently, the author, a critic for the New York Times, had panned Ford’s novels mercilessly in the past.
Richard Wright was one of the first African-American authors to achieve literary success, fame and fortune.
Today he’s considered one of the most influential writers of the last century.
His books Native Son and Black Boy have both come back into print and sell steadily even now.
But back in the 1920’s he was only 15 and living in Memphis, a mid-West American city where the only public library had a strict “whites only” policy.
Wright forged a note from a white patron and showed it to the librarian.
The note read: “Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by H. L. Mencken?”
The librarian let him take the books and that’s how he began reading and preparing to become a writer.
Talk about writing fiction!
Fact is crazier than the made-up stuff anyday, and this book is living proof of it!
