13 Surprising Celebrity Novelists

The list, care of the AV Club.

From said list...

7. Gene Hackman, Wake Of The Perdido Star (1999), Payback At Morning Peak (2011)Of all the collaborations for Gene Hackman to pursue, a series of historical-fiction novels with underwater archaeologist Daniel Lenihan was probably the least expected. Their first project together, the seafaring 19th-century pirate adventure Wake Of The Perdido Star, was published in 1999, and two more collaborative novels followed after Hackman retired from acting in 2003: 2004’s Depression-set Justice For None and 2008’s Escape From Andersonville, about a Civil War prison break. Although Hackman reportedly has some voiceover work in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film The Wolf Of Wall Street, he’s been far more prolific as a writer recently. His first solo novel, a Western paperback called Payback At Morning Peak, came out in 2011.

8. Johnny Cash, Man In White (1986)Johnny Cash’s only novel, Man In White, is a fictional biography of St. Paul, the fanatical, murderous enemy of Christianity who experienced a visionary conversion on the road to Damascus and became an equally fanatical proselytizer for the new religion. The book, which Cash began writing in the ’70s, grew out of the same period as The Gospel Road, the 1973 movie about the last days of Christ that Cash produced, co-wrote, and narrated. (He eventually grew frustrated while writing the book and set it aside, only to resume work on it at the urging of Billy Graham.) By the time Man In White appeared, Johnny Cash, the reformed pill-popping wild man, was probably the best-known “saved” figure in popular culture, and the book is most notable for how openly he identifies with Paul, a figure who even hardcore Christians tend to regard as more than a little scary.

How the American Novel Lost Its Religion

American fiction was once inseparable from proselytizing. How did it become the anticlerical, ego-theistic literature of today? Cultural historian Philip F. Gura looks at the evolution.

From a piece in the Daily Beast...

The early 19^th century was characterized by major transformations of traditional patterns of belief. In 1800 the overwhelming majority of Americans defined themselves as subjects of a distant, all-powerful God. A quarter century later, as the secular, republican beliefs of the revolutionary generation took deeper root, religious belief moved hesitantly and not without conflict toward the idea of free will. Then, in the two decades prior to the Civil War, there occurred a momentous shift from free will to self-consciousness. As Emerson put it, “the mind became aware of itself.” To him, to like-minded contemporaries, and to many if not most Americans since, the once-accepted notion that a person should spend his time on earth building his Christian character was obsolete. Instead, each American should spend his days cultivating his individualism, his selfhood.

As it developed, the American novel embodied these monumental changes in belief and consciousness. At the start of the century, novelists often took religious tracts as the models for their fiction. These were short allegories and parables aimed at the pious Christian that circulated widely due to enterprising clergymen and the advent of new publishing technologies. Sarah Savage’s Factory Girl (1814), one of the first novels set in a manufacturing village, made a statement about the rewards of patient and pious suffering that would have resonated with readers of religious tracts.

Ingmar Bergman - Novelist?

Indeed.

From a piece on Slate...

“I have maintained open channels with my childhood.  Sometimes in the night, when I am on the limit between sleeping and being awake, I can just go through a door into my childhood… I remember the silent street where my grandmother lived, the sudden aggressivity of the grown-up world, the terror of the unknown and the fear from the tension between my father and mother.”

Bergman told Michiko Kakutani the above for a Times Magazine profile in 1983, but I read the quote first in his obituary, which is where I also learned that, in addition to leaving behind nearly fifty films, he’d written three novels in his lifetime.  At the heart of this trilogy—written between 1990 and 1994, after he officially retired from directing—is his parents’ tumultuous courtship, and the ensuing long but unhappy marriage.  In the first installment, titled The Best Intentions, we are introduced to Henrik Bergman, a twenty-three year old divinity student.  Things aren’t going so well for young Henrik: in the opening scene of the book, he refuses to make amends with his dying grandmother, then fails his oral exams, knowing that his mother cannot afford to pay for the extra six months of schooling incurred.  On top of this, he has a sweet but simple fiancée, a big-bosomed waitress named Frida, but although they’ve been betrothed for two years and living together for almost as long, he hasn’t told anyone about her.  All Henrik’s struggles might be looked on as surmountable by a normal fellow, but a normal fellow Henrik is not.  No, Henrik is self-pitying, awkward, often unsympathetic, and moody.  As the narrator puts it, “[Henrik] lived in a mire of his own constraints and other people’s expectations.”  (It’s likely that the real-life Ingmar, who was estranged from his father for years, inherited his fader’s dyspepsia; in interviews, he often said he was a “humorless” child.)

Debut Novelists Who Were Over 40

The list, care of Word Love.

Jesus Lit

Besides the Gospels, what’s the best literary treatment of the life of the Messiah? David Masciotra, for the Daily Beast, looks at the many efforts, from Anne Rice to Norman Mailer. 

From the piece...

In addition to inspiring an entire religion, Jesus also inspired many works of fiction. Some are loyal to the account of Jesus’s life told in the Synoptic Gospels, and some take poetic, dramatic, and speculative license. The Jesus novel is a small and largely unrecognized genre of literature that often gives Christians new insight into the story of their savior, and provides non-believers with an artistic means of accessing a tale containing all of the most effective tools of drama—pity, terror, sadness, heroism, tragedy, and redemption.

The biography of Christ is considered “the greatest story ever told.”

How Much Do Novelists Make?

John Evison opens his wallet for the Stranger.

From the piece...


$0 The amount that Jonathan Evison made for his first eight books—six novels, one memoir, and one story collection—which he says "were all unpublished, and will mercifully remain unpublished."

$4,500 The advance that Soft Skull Press gave Evison for his ninth book, and first published novel, All About Lulu. The money was "paid out in two payments, half on signing, and half on publication."

$300 Approximately how much Evison made a week at his day job as a landscaper. He worked 25 hours a week—"just enough to get by"—while writing and editing Lulu.

Unpublished Truman Capote Story Now Published

It'll be in the December issue of Vanity Fair.

From a story in the Los Angeles Times...

In the December issue of Vanity Fair, which hits shelves this week, readers can get a taste of a missing chapter from Truman Capote's famously unfinished novel, "Answered Prayers." In Vanity Fair's table of contents, look for the piece by Capote titled "Yachts and Things."

Capote was at work on "Answered Prayers" for almost 20 years. He signed the contract in 1966, which was postponed, renewed and recalculated for larger and larger advances. It is rumored that he was offered $1 million to finally complete his manuscript -- but he couldn't meet the deadline. Parts of the manuscript that had appeared in Esquire magazine were gathered together after his death in 1984 and published, incomplete, as "Answered Prayers."

"Yachts and Things" was known to be a chapter planned for the book; the six-page story that appears in Vanity Fair was found among Capote's archives at the New York Public Library.

How Do You Write a Book in 30 Days?

Follow these steps, care of the Guardian.

The Testament of Mary

She is the most famous mother in history, yet her story is unknown. A new novel voices the grief-filled thoughts of Mary, as she pieces together the events that led to the death of her son, Jesus. Its writer, Colm Tóibín, describes the origins of the book for the Guardian.

From the piece...

The painting of the crucifixion here is more than 12 metres wide. Its size means that the idea of transcendental space soaring towards the heavens above is replaced with the vast, long, busy world around. Tintoretto shows that while Jesus hung on a cross until he died, many other things happened too. If the sound of the Titian is of angels' unearthly voices, this painting by Tintoretto is filled with the brutal noise of the world.

I think the gap between these two paintings made me wonder about how the imploring, powerless figure of Mary at the foot of the cross as her son was crucified could have become, in Catholic doctrine and Italian painting, the queen of heaven. The more time I spent looking at paintings in Venice the more I came to feel that the story of her transformation fulfilled a pictorial need, or a storyteller's need, as much as it did anything else.

Nixon Protagonistes

Did you know that Steinbeck was once asked to write a novel about Richard Nixon to take him down?

From an essay in the New York Times...

Steinbeck fell “madly for Adlai” in 1952 during Stevenson’s first race against Dwight D. Eisenhower, writing the introduction to a book of Stevenson’s speeches. After the Ike landslide, Steinbeck lamented to Stevenson that the country had “lost our chance for greatness when greatness was needed.” The two became friends, and when Steinbeck signed on to the 1956 campaign he helped shape Stevenson’s speeches. 

So it wasn’t out of the ordinary that in May 1958 Steinbeck would be having lunch in New York with Stevenson’s right-hand man, William McCormick Blair Jr., and the New York socialite Marietta Tree, a prominent Stevenson supporter (and also his lover). Rumors were rife that Stevenson wanted to make another run for the White House. But Blair didn’t ask Steinbeck to write speeches. He had a more unusual request: Would Steinbeck write a novel to kneecap the likely 1960 Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon? 

Today it’s hard to fathom that anyone would think a political novel might be an election game-changer. But 1958 was a different time. Major novelists were celebrities, best sellers could be cultural events and Steinbeck himself had credibility as a moral authority. The Stevenson camp was trying to use an unorthodox media strategy to attack the man they saw as their greatest foe, just as politicians today use social media to bypass traditional gatekeepers and influence public opinion. The question was, would Steinbeck agree?

Twitter Fiction

The Guardian challenged well-known writers – from Ian Rankin and Helen Fielding to Jeffrey Archer and Jilly Cooper – to come up with a story of up to 140 characters.

From the piece... 

Andrew O'Hagan

Clyde stole a lychee and ate it in the shower. Then his brother took a bottle of pills believing character is just a luxury. God. The twins.

AL Kennedy


It's good that you're busy. Not great. Good, though. But the silence, that's hard. I don't know what it means: whether you're OK, if I'm OK.

Jeffrey Archer


"It's a miracle he survived," said the doctor. "It was God's will," said Mrs Schicklgruber. "What will you call him?" "Adolf," she replied.

New Novel Based on Classic Rush Album

Clockwork Angels - the Novel.

From a story on the Huffington Post...

I've known Rush's drummer and lyricist Neil Peart for more than 20 years (a friendship that began, appropriately, when I acknowledged that my first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was inspired by the Rush album Grace Under Pressure). Neil approached me as he was developing the overall story for Clockwork Angels. He had visions of a steampunk world and a grand adventure; I helped as a sounding board as he created some of the scenes, characters and plot twists. We had written a short story together years ago and were looking for a larger project to merge our different creative toolkits. Clockwork Angels seemed to be that project--we were off and running, as Neil finished writing the lyrics to the songs, and I fleshed out the characters and mapped the details of the plot. 

Like young Owen Hardy, the main character in Clockwork Angels, I grew up in a very small town (mine was in Wisconsin, while Owen's is in the imaginary land of Albion). I was surrounded by cabbage farms that serviced the local sauerkraut factory; Owen is an assistant apple orchard manager--but we both had dreams of grand adventures and imaginary lands. To quote the lyrics of "Caravan," the album's first track: "In a world where I feel so small, I can't stop thinking big."

Fallen Rock Stars in Contemporary Fiction

The New York Times takes a look at how rock and roll music is currently being translated to the pages of novels.

From the article...

Invariably, however, I would run into friends from the rock universe who would inquire, as pasty-skinned record collectors will do, about the bands I was currently digging. Over time, I learned to mumble something about Wild Flag or Tune-Yards just to move the conversation along. But in truth, there were four recently discovered artists I could not shake from my brain yet whose names I was reluctant to share: the cultish singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe; the newly unearthed punk weirdo Scotty Hausmann; the outsider artist Nik Worth; and Richard Katz, a nihilistic rogue. 

All were vivid, unique singers, ambivalent toward fame yet too gifted to avoid flirting with it. All had taken their share of lumps from the roller-coaster ride that comes with a rich, torturous music career. And of course, all four men — my favorite new rock singers — did not actually exist. They were characters gracing the centers or fringes of recent novels by Nick Hornby (“Juliet, Naked”), Jennifer Egan (“A Visit From the Goon Squad”), Dana Spiotta (“Stone Arabia”) and Jonathan Franzen (“Freedom”). 

I didn’t have any kind of rock ’n’ roll agenda when I went into these books. Really. In fact, I inherited the Hornby from my wife, purchased “Stone Arabia” out of admiration for Spiotta’s previous novel and was lent both “Goon Squad” and “Freedom” by my mother, who had showered each with what, for her, amounts to high praise: “Eh — could’ve been better.” 

Nevertheless, falling for these characters in such accidental succession made me wonder whether rock music, long rumored to be deceased, was functioning better on the page than in the recording.

Molly Ringwald's Next Act

Why Scientists Need Novelists, and Vice Versa

There's a symbiotic relationship between the two, notes the New Scientist.

From the piece...

McKenzie’s first book, Blood Ties, is about two teenagers who discover they are clones of other people. Her interest was in the emotional consequences for the characters, rather than the process itself. She turned to discussion forums where scientists were debating the ethics of creating clones of human beings and discovered this an excellent source of material: “One guy said, ‘What’s it going to be like for kids growing up knowing that they’ve been created as a copy of another person?’” She asked herself: "Why would people do that? To replace a dead child? Your son or daughter dies, say as a teenager, and maybe you’re too old to have more children naturally. Why wouldn’t you clone that dead child and create a new child that will look very similar to the one that you lost?"

Fiction has another effect too, says Elfick: it can inspire scientists about the future. As McKenzie reminded us, no one took much notice of the mobile telephony that was all the rage in Star Trek in the 1960s, but how ahead of its time was that?

So how do fiction writers and film-makers find out about science and scientists? McKenzie made sure she did her homework for her books. When she was writing The Medusa Project series, which follows a group of teenagers who were implanted at birth with a gene for psychic abilities, she asked a scientist; “How do I get a gene into an unborn child?” And she was told, “Wrap it in a virus.” So she did.

Woody Guthrie Novel to Be Published

House of Earth, thought to have languished for years in a closet, is said to be influenced by Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

From a story in the Guardian...

House of Earth is Guthrie's only "fully realised" novel, they said, influenced by his experiences in America's Dust Bowl, as well as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Tracing the story of Tike and Ella May Hamlin, "hardscrabble farmers" in Texas, it is a "searing portrait of the Panhandle and its marginalised Great Depression residents". Despite a slightly esoteric focus on the importance of adobe housing, House of Earth also includes graphic sex, including "a scorching lovemaking scene on a hay bale".

At the time of its writing, Guthrie apparently shared House of Earth's first chapter with musicologist Alan Lomax, who called it "quite simply the best material I'd ever seen written about that section of the country". But Guthrie only showed the finished manuscript to one person, film-maker Irving Lerner, and it languished for decades in a Coney Island closet. After learning of its existence in the late 90s, Brinkley finally tracked down the manuscript last year, with help from Guthrie's daughter, Nora.

Bad Book, Great Movie

Laura Miller, for Salon, argues that bad books can make for great movies.

From the piece...


Yet it’s a truism in Hollywood that bad (or, at least, not especially good) novels make better films than great books do. There’s sense in this: A filmmaker may feel more obliged to subordinate his vision to an author’s if the book is a patent work of genius, and creative people become less agile when they approach a project on bended knee. Furthermore, what makes a novel great — the elaborate architecture of the characters’ inner lives in “The Portrait of a Lady,” say — is often what’s hardest to capture in a dramatic, visual medium, precisely because those are the things that novels do best.

Still, the computer programmers’ slang GIGO (for “garbage in, garbage out”) remains a reliable rule of thumb: Did anyone really expect the film versions of “The Da Vinci Code” or “Marley & Me” to transcend their source material? The most commonly cited examples of good films made from not-good books are “The Godfather,” “Jaws” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” Many critics were surprised at the quality of the first “Twilight” film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Others point to “Children of Men,” which was based on an indifferent science fiction novel by mystery author P.D. James.

It’s notable, though, how the same handful of titles comes up over and over again when you ask for examples of bad books that became good films.

Open Yale Courses

Care to take a lit course at Yale in the comfort of your own home? Okay!

From YouTube...

In "The American Novel Since 1945" students will study a wide range of works from 1945 to the present. The course traces the formal and thematic developments of the novel in this period, focusing on the relationship between writers and readers, the conditions of publishing, innovations in the novel's form, fiction's engagement with history, and the changing place of literature in American culture. The reading list includes works by Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones. The course concludes with a contemporary novel chosen by the students in the class. 

12 of the Most Surprising Sophomore Novels Ever

The list, care of Online Education Database.

From said list...

When you think of Charles Dickens, chances are good that the first novel that pops into your head is not The Pickwick Papers. Although it was popular in its time and adapted into both film and television, it is a fairly obscure work. Dickens is much more widely known for his famous works including A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and his second novel, Oliver Twist. This social novel exposed the troubles of child labor and the recruitment of children as criminals, and took a much darker tone than the comically adventurous Pickwick Papers. Dickens' Pickwick fans were certainly in for a surprise when they found this exceptional social commentary that became an instant success.

Words Per Minute

The New York Times discusses the slowness of novel writing in this new digital world of fast short writing.

From the piece...

But I am a novelist, so I also know about slowness. Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I’ve begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me. This doesn’t worry me. I like the slow pace of novel writing, the feeling that I have employment for a long period. I don’t crave the quick result that would only leave me with the problem of what to do next. 

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a “rate of production,” for whom it’s a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year. But I think most novelists, after writing their first two or three, take philosophical stock of the fact that in an average lifetime they will produce a finite and not so large number of novels and that the point of being a novelist is not to see how many you can write or how quickly you can do it. Quite a few novelists, I suspect, even carry in their heads the notion of the one, all-sufficient and perfect novel they might write, which would render all further effort redundant. It’s only because this ideal and singular novel is unattainable that they have to keep writing another, then another.