In the 90s, I went back to school and finally got my degree in English Lit. (Because I had no idea what to do next, I also got a Master’s level diploma in French-English translation, but that’s a subject for another time.)
I’ll never forget a professor who illustrated a really important lesson for me. We were standing in the stacks in the library. He said, “Lee, look down this aisle of books. If you did nothing for the rest of your life, you couldn’t read all of them. Be very careful with what you read!”
Not all writers read. Go figure. And that’s not necessarily bad.
I don’t remember where, but I read an article decades ago about Clive Cussler. Someone in an audience asked him what he read. He said he was so busy writing books that he didn’t have time to read.
I got a real kick out of that.
I suspect that made a few intellectual’s heads explode. But then, Clive Cussler isn’t for intellectuals, is he? I mean, Dirk Pitt is about as unwoke as you can get.
And the fact that Cussler made millions from his writing and lived on a nice estate in California probably doesn’t help his image with the elites.
I cried when Clive Cussler died in 2020. I called my wife at her work.
“Why are you calling me? What’s the matter?”
“Clive Cussler died!”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry!”
The first Cussler book I ever read was Sahara. I read a lot, always have. But I’m all over the map with what I read.
The end of September and the first half of October, I read a lot.
Three books by Len Deighton
Jaws
Finished Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn
The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
And, as a palate cleanser, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (but that was only 70 pages or so—not sure if it counts)
I love to read and am intensely interested in how things are written.
I picked up Saraha from a pile of sale books in a grocery store in the 80s. I had just read a biography of Sir Richard Burton—the 19th-century explorer, not the 20th-century actor.
Here’s the Wikipedia link if you want to know more about him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton
Also, let me quote from there:
His best-known achievements include undertaking the Hajj to Mecca in disguise, translating One Thousand and One Nights and The Perfumed Garden, publishing the Kama Sutra in English and attempting to discover the source of the Nile. Although he abandoned his university studies, Burton became a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and academic articles on subjects such as human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices and ethnography.
Can you imagine an infidel taking the Hajj to Mecca today? Shit, you’d start WWIII. Or at least a few riots in Britain!
I’ve always been interested in Sir Richard Burton. When he came back from Africa, he was broke. So, what did he do? He wrote! Not only that, but he wrote several books at the same time. In his study, he had several tables, each assigned to a particular book.
Writing for money is something I admire!
(Again, with the unwoke, Lee. Ha! The unwoke is kind of like the undead—might have to write an essay about that. Philistines shambling about the landscape and all that—but can you say “Philistines” nowadays? I can’t keep up.)
But I cried when Clive Cussler died because way back in the murky recesses of my twisted brain, I had always harbored the idea of being one of his co-writers. I don’t know why I thought that. But for me, that would have been the pinnacle!
Alas, that will never be.