Wise Up!
Authors
By David Bruce
Athens NEWS Contributor
March 31, 2008
• When Gary Paulsen wrote his novel “Hatchet,” which is about a young boy who finds himself alone in the wilderness with only a hatchet when the person piloting the small plane he is in dies of a heart attack, he wanted the novel to be as realistic as possible. Therefore, whatever the hero Brian experiences in the novel, Mr. Paulsen also set out to experience in real life. In doing this, he was remarkably successful, even creating fire using a hatchet and a stone. However, he experienced a setback when he attempted to eat turtle eggs. The eggs so nauseated him that he vomited, despite three valiant attempts to eat them. Fortunately, his lead sled dog, Cookie, enjoyed eating the eggs — and his vomit. Despite his lack of success in eating the turtle eggs, Mr. Paulsen decided to leave the egg-eating scene in his novel — he figured that Brian would be so hungry that he would be able to eat the eggs and not vomit.
• Maya Angelou’s early life was difficult. When she was 8, her mother’s boyfriend raped her, and she stopped talking. Fortunately, he was arrested and convicted. When she graduated from high school early, she gave her parents a note: “Dear Parents, I am sorry to bring this disgrace on the family, but I am pregnant.” She gave birth to her son, Guy, when she was 16, and she worked to support him. The birth of her son was a gift from God, she said later. She knew that she would have to educate him, so she began to educate herself. Whenever he asked her a question she didn’t know the answer to, she would research the answer to the question. Later, Ms. Angelou became the author of a critically acclaimed series of autobiographies that began with “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
• The Nobel Prizes are awarded by a committee of 11 Swedish men. For a prize to be given, the 11 men have to vote unanimously; otherwise, there is no prize in that category in that year. This means that one or two men on the committee can keep certain nominees from winning year after year. In 1976, Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Previously, he had been on the short list of writers considered for the award, but two men on the selection committee had opposed his winning. However, the two men died, and Mr. Bellow won the award. When he heard the inside story of how he had been chosen for the award, Mr. Bellow said, “Oh, you mean it only took two men to die for me to get the Nobel Prize!”
• Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Meyer Berger used to do odd jobs around the house while thinking about how to write an article. Once, the deadline was approaching for a difficult magazine article, so his wife decided to leave him at home so he could write. She entertained some visitors, taking them to a movie and dinner, and when she returned, she discovered that her husband hadn’t typed a single word — but he had polished the silver and run the vacuum cleaner. However, the time spent doing housework was also time spent planning the article. The next day, Mr. Meyer sat down before the typewriter and quickly wrote a very good article.
• Peter Benchley’s first novel was the mega-best seller “Jaws,” which he and his editors had a difficult time naming. They tried out many different titles, and they finally noticed that the only word they liked in any of the titles was “jaws.” With time running out, they decided to name the novel “Jaws,” a title that really didn’t satisfy anyone.
According to Mr. Benchley, they felt that “the bottom line was, who cares? Nobody reads first novels anyway.” (Mr. Benchley’s father, Nathaniel, the son of humorist Robert Benchley, earlier had suggested the title “Who’s That Noshin’ on My Laig?”)
• When he was a young boy, Samuel Langhorne Clemens saw a piece of paper flying down the street. He chased after it, caught it, and discovered that the page came from a biography of Joan of Arc. He asked his brother who she was, discovered that she was a French heroine who had died by being burned at the stake, and started reading as much as he could about her. As an adult, he wrote a book titled “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” using his world-famous pseudonym, Mark Twain.
• When Marvel Comics maven Stan Lee was 15 years old, he started entering a news contest run by the New York Herald-Tribune. Contestants were supposed to write in 500 words or fewer their pick for the top news story of the week. Mr. Lee entered the contest three times in a row, he won three times in a row, and the editor of the Herald-Tribune wrote him, saying to stop entering the contest so someone else could win for a change.
• In 1981, Stephen King’s wife, Tabitha, wrote her first book, “Small World.” She received $165,000 for the paperback rights, a huge sum for a first-time novelist, and she acknowledges that some of her success was made possible by her being the wife of a best-selling novelist. However, she also says, “I put 10 years into helping his career, so if his name helps me with mine, I think it’s (fair).”
• John Adams insisted that Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. To persuade Mr. Jefferson to do so, Mr. Adams gave a number of reasons: “Reason first — You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second — I am so obnoxious and unpopular. Reason third — You can write 10 times better than I can.”
• Dancer Ann Pennington felt that the best writer in the world was George White — because he wrote her paychecks.
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