Birthday for The Entertainer

Author John Grisham, who turns 53 today, would likely be the first to say he isn’t writing for legacy. And it’s quite possible the literary criticism heaped on his mega-selling work doesn’t bother him that much, nor make a dent in his paychecks (reportedly $9 million last year alone). In a recent interview with AP, he says he’s more concerned with the entertainment value of his work than with his own place in history:

“I’m not sure where that line goes between literature and popular fiction,” the mega-selling author says. “I can assure you I don’t take myself serious enough to think I'm writing literary fiction and stuff that’s going to be remembered in 50 years. I’m not going to be here in 50 years; I don’t care if I’m remembered or not. It’s pure entertainment.”

In the same piece, Grisham admits to being an avid -- though erratic -- reader as well as a collector of books and he loves “to buy books. Love to stack ‘em up in the house. We’ve got a million books in the house.”

And though he doesn’t have to work as hard at it now, he loves to make books, too. Grisham says that, early in his second career as a writer, while still lawyering full time, he was very disciplined with regard to his fiction.

When he first started writing, Grisham says, he had “these little rituals that were silly and brutal but very important.”

“The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I’d jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week.”

His goal: to write a page every day. Sometimes that would take 10 minutes, sometimes an hour; ofttimes he would write for two hours before he had to turn to his job as a lawyer, which he never especially enjoyed. In the Mississippi Legislature, there were “enormous amounts of wasted time” that would give him the opportunity to write.

“So I was very disciplined about it,” he says, then quickly concedes he doesn’t have such discipline now: “I don’t have to.”

Even so, the books keep coming. The Appeal (Doubleday), Grisham’s 22nd book and 21st novel, went on sale at the end of January.

The AP piece runs in the International Herald Tribune today and it’s here.

The Ill-Tempered Clavichord

Today is the birthday of American humorist, author and stylist, Sidney Joseph Perelman (1904-1979).

S.J. Perelman was best known for his contributions to The New Yorker, and his collaborations in writing for film, including work on Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and the Marx Brothers films Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932).

Perelman’s books were mainly collections of essays he’d done for The New Yorker which, according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography include “Acres and Pains (1947), Westward Ha! or Around the World in Eighty Clichés (1948), The Ill-Tempered Clavichord (1952), The Road to Miltown or Under the Spreading Atrophy (1957), The Most of S. J. Perelman (1958), Chicken Inspector No. 23 (1966), and Baby, It's Cold Inside (1970), which introduced the raffish Irish poet Shameless McGonigle. But the best of Perelman, culled largely from Crazy Like a Fox (1944), is to be found, quite aptly, in The Best of S. J. Perelman (1947).”

Perelman died in New York City in 1979.

Birthdays for Dowd and “Nobody Said Not to Go” Hahn

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maureen Dowd was born on this day in 1952. Though the Washington, DC-based New York Times columnist has likely churned out millions of words in her career and her name is so well known it’s practically a household word (depending, I guess, on the household) there have only been two books thus far: 2004’s Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (Putnam) and the slightly ridiculous Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (Putnam) from 2005.

The year her most recent book came out, New York Magazine called Dowd, “the most dangerous columnist in America.” Which seems at least a little like overstatement, especially since she’s sometimes a little slow on the uptake.

Emily (“Mickey”) Hahn, who shares Dowd’s birthday, was considerably more prolific. Born in 1905, Hahn wrote 52 books and had a career at The New Yorker that lasted 68 years. Today in Literature asks the obvious when they point out that she had a “personal life of storybook proportions” and when they ask “why Hahn is not better known.”

Similar nay-saying and head-shaking attended her cigar-smoking, her enjoyment of men and alcohol, her trip across the U.S. in a Model T with her girlfriend (both disguised as men), her journey to the Belgian Congo as a Red Cross worker, her time as the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai, her addiction to opium, her affair and illegitimate child with the head of the British Secret Service in Hong Kong, her pioneer work in environmentalism and wildlife preservation, and the captivating candor with which she wrote about all of this “Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict,” one of her collected New Yorker pieces begins, “I can’t claim that as the reason I went to China.”

The Literature Today tribute is here. Hahn’s Wikipedia entry includes a bibliography.

Happy Birthday, F. Scott!

Jazz Age writer Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby) was born on this day in 1896. He died of a heart attack when he was way too young, on December 21, 1940. Who knows what he could’ve produced, had he lived past age 44?

King at 60

In his book On Writing, Stephen King commented on his relationship with his wife, Tabitha:

Our marriage has outlasted all of the world's leaders except for Castro, and if we keep talking, arguing, making love, and dancing to the Ramones -- gabba-gabba-hey -- it'll probably keep working.

King, who is the author of over 50 bestselling novels, was born on this day in 1947.

Agatha at 127

Today marks what would have been the 127th birthday of the creator of what are -- arguably -- some of modern literature’s best-loved and best known characters.

According to Christie’s official Web site, Agatha Christie was born Agatha Miller in Torquay, England, on September 15, 1890. She got the last name -- Christie -- when she married her husband, Archibald Christie, in 1914. The couple’s daughter, Rosalind, was born in 1919. The couple divorced in 1928.

By that time, Christie had already gained a reputation as a writer. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and included that nutty but now internationally beloved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Christie would go on to include Poirot in 54 short stories and 33 novels.

In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan. She accompanied Mallowan on many of his digs and was undoubtedly creatively influenced by the relationship and her time spent in the Middle East. This is best seen in the novels Murder in Mesopotamia, from 1936, and Death on the Nile, from 1937.

Christie was given England’s highest honor in 1971 when she was awarded to the Order of Dame Commander of the British Empire and created as Dame Agatha. She continued to write prolifically until the time of her death in 1976. Her last novel, Sleeping Murder, was published the year she died and featured her other much beloved recurring sleuth, Miss Jane Marple.

Dame Agatha died peacefully at home on January 12, 1976.

According to The Writer’s Almanac, September 15th is a big day in the world of literary birthdays. In addition to Dame Agatha, other writers born on this day include Robert Benchley, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert McCloskey and François VI, duke de La Rochefoucauld.

One of a Kind

Tomorrow, May 22, will mark not only the birthdays of novelist Arthur Conan Doyle and comic-book creator Hergé, but also the first birthday of The Rap Sheet, January Magazine’s sister blog, a popular resource for crime-fiction fans. To celebrate, we’ve asked more than 100 novelists, critics and book bloggers--running the gamut from Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Ian Rankin, Michael Marshall, Rhys Bowen, Peter Temple and Zoë Sharp, to Lee Child, Gary Phillips, Sarah Weinman, Barry Eisler, Sara Paretsky and Declan Hughes--to answer one question: What one crime, mystery or thriller novel do you think has been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten or underappreciated over the years?

Most of the works selected are familiar; others are out of print, but apparently worth tracking down. The Rap Sheet will be rolling out these nominations over the rest of this week.

The only downside to this birthday project is that it may cause you to add a lot more books to your to-be-read pile.

Read the first installment of The Rap Sheet’s commemorative “one book project” here.