Jerry Peterson's Blog

What makes a good read . . .

Scott Turow, that Chicago lawyer who has written nine superlative legal thrillers, was first an academic.

He studied creative writing at Stanford University. He and his fellow students were expected to come away writing literary novels.

“In the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Turow said in a recent essay for the NPR news program All Things Considered, “most English departments exalted modernism, modernism whose innovations and defiance… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 30, 2010 at 12:31am — 1 Comment

Lilies of the Field

Wow, what a response a couple weeks ago to my posting of pictures of flowers on Facebook.

The Asiatic lilies are blooming here in Marge’s garden in southern Wisconsin, so I shot a series of pictures and put them up in an album I titled “Lilies of the Field.” In the blurb, I said the album title came from the 1963 Sidney Poitier film of the same name.

Said Jean Dregne, “Love the film.”

Mary Ann Macomber: “That was a fantastic… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 29, 2010 at 9:09am — No Comments

Why there are no James Bonds in Alan Furst's books

After 10 books writer Alan Furst set in the 1933-1942 time period in Europe, he discovered he was writing spy novels.

But you won’t find a James Bond or a Jason Bourne in one of them.

Furst prefers characters who struggle with huge moral questions, just as his readers would if they were there in that period just as the Germans were about to invade their country, their city.

“Those are the people who are going to say, well,… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 26, 2010 at 3:26am — No Comments

A series that never moves on

Alan Furst has written 11 novels set in the beginning years of World War II.

Eleven novels.

Most of us who write series work a period for a couple years, a couple books, and move on. We let our characters age because either we’ve mined out the stories of that period or we’ve become bored with the period.

Says Furst he doesn’t write anything after 1942 because then the story becomes how can we survive until the end of this… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 25, 2010 at 1:40am — No Comments

A master of description

I admire craft.

A lot of books you and I have read are just not very good, and often the failure can be chalked up to the writer having failed to master the craft of writing.

So when we read a good one, we say, wow, this story sings . . . it’s a real page turner . . . I wish I could write like this, she/he makes it look so easy.

Gerry Spence is a master of our craft of writing. When he describes a character, whether… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 24, 2010 at 4:42am — No Comments

Where do book/movie/play titles come from?

I have no imagination when it comes to creating titles for the books I write. I titled my current one – out last year in hardback and now out as an e-book – Early’s Fall . . . Early, from the name of the principal character, James Early, and Fall, from the time of the year in which I had set the story.

The name Herman Melville gave the great white whale – Moby Dick – in his 1851 adventure novel became… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 23, 2010 at 3:10am — No Comments

Fly-in season

In Wisconsin this is fly-in season. Probably in your state, too.

Every Saturday and Sunday during summer some airport somewhere holds a fly-in breakfast. Okay, it’s a drive-in breakfast if you don’t have an airplane. Fact is more people drive in than fly in for these events.

A couple weeks ago, my brother and I drove down to the Beloit Airport for the local EAA chapter’s annual fly-in pancake feed. We had our eyes on the sky . . .… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 22, 2010 at 5:13am — No Comments

Why you should buy this month's Smithsonian -- Allen Ginsberg

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a photographer. I didn’t know that.

He had an eye for what makes an interesting picture.

Now you and I may scribble a note on the backs of our pictures about when we took them and who we see, but Ginsberg wrote detailed narratives – captions – on the bottom margin on the front. He married image to text, claiming rightly each picture has a story to tell.

Seventy-two of Ginsberg’s photographs are… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 19, 2010 at 12:48am — No Comments

Why you should buy this month's Smithsonian -- the fake William Shakespeare

I’ve read Shakespeare, taught Shakespeare, even acted in and directed a number Shakespeare plays, but nobody ever told me there was a fake William Shakespeare out there, a forger so good he fooled just about everybody around.

I had to read it in Smithsonian Magazine.

Former book and magazine editor Doug Stewart wrote the book The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare – it came out four months ago from… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 18, 2010 at 1:30am — No Comments

Why you should buy this month's Smithsonian -- Harper Lee

Hard to believe that that enduring American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published 50 years ago. It’s a staple of high school lit classes. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been called in to sub for an English teacher who’s sick of having to teach the book one more time. No, the truth is they’re always out with the flu. That’s what they say, but I tell their students they are out playing golf and to be… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 17, 2010 at 2:03am — No Comments

Richard Wright in Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

Ri

chard Wright has to be the most controversial selection for inclusion in Chicago’s Literary Hall of Fame, not for his work, but for his life.

His childhood and teen years in Mississippi and Tennessee were wretched as he was bounced from one family member to another to raise. He finally made his escape to Chicago in 1927, at age 19. Wright got on with the post office as a clerk only to have his job wiped out four years later by the… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 16, 2010 at 1:22am — No Comments

Studs Terkel in Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

I was cheering for Studs Terkel to be inducted into Chicago’s Literary Hall of Fame as were all my friends who are current and former newspaper people. We considered him one of us, although he worked in radio. He interviewed people, people of note and people off the street. Did it for 45 years, a daily one-hour program on Chicago’s WFMT.

And because Terkel carried on conversations with his guests rather than fired questions at them, the… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 15, 2010 at 12:44pm — No Comments

Lorraine Hansberry in Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

I knew the 1961 movie A Raisin in the Sun – starred Sidney Poitier – but I didn’t know until I read Poitier’s autobiography that there first had been a play and that he had starred in its 1959 Broadway production . . . that the play had been written by Lorraine Hansberry, a young black woman who had grown up in Chicago.

A decade ago, I was teaching a high school-level plays as literature course. I… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 12, 2010 at 6:01am — No Comments

Gwendolyn Brooks in Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

Gwendolyn Brooks came from as humble a circumstance as one can get.

She was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917, her father a janitor, his father a runaway slave who fought in the Civil War.

The family moved to Chicago when Brooks was six weeks old. Chicago would be home to her from that time until her death in 2000.

Poetry was in Brooks. A children’s magazine published her first poem when she was all of 13. By 16, she had 75… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 11, 2010 at 5:21am — No Comments

Saul Bellow in Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

No question, Saul Bellow deserves to be in the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Among his credits, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1976), the Pulitzer Prize for Literature (1975 for Humboldt’s Gift), three National Book Awards (1954 for The Adventures of Augie March, 1964 for Herzog, 1970 for… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 10, 2010 at 12:00am — No Comments

Nelson Algren in Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

Talk to Chicago writers my age or a little younger – I have silver hair – and most will tell you they have been influenced by Nelson Algren.

Algren was 41 when he won the very first National Book Award for his novel The Man with the Golden Arm. That was in 1950. It’s a novel of drug addiction, gambling, and life and death among the people of Chicago’s Polish Downtown district. Algren lived there. He knew well the drunks, pimps, prostitutes,… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 9, 2010 at 1:31am — 1 Comment

Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

A gaggle of Chicago writers were sitting around a table – maybe at the Billy Goat Tavern with a beer in hand – wondering how they could honor the best of their numbers. And someone said, “Hey, we need a hall of fame. They got ’em for football players, race car drivers, and Greyhound dogs [the National Greyhound Hall of Fame is in Kansas]. Surely we can have one for writers.”

And thus the Chicago Writers Association created the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame a year and a month ago. The… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 8, 2010 at 2:35am — No Comments

A week of newspaper humorists -- today me!

I once was the resident humor columnist for the Douglas County News-Press. You’ve heard of it, right? We were a tri-weekly newspaper. We tried to come out three times a week, Monday and Thursday in Castle Rock, Colorado, and Wednesday in our sister city of Parker.

Editor Jeanie Adkins hired me in 1978 to be a news reporter and photographer. After I was there a couple months, I wrote what I thought was… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 5, 2010 at 7:43am — 2 Comments

A week of newspaper humorists -- today Bill Stokes

Bill Stokes launched this week’s series of posts. Marge and I were over visiting with friends, and there on their coffee table laid Stokes’ book, “Hi-Ho Silver, Anyway”.

Well, I picked it up and paged into it while we talked.

Jackie, taking note of my interest, said, “You can take that home and read it if you want. I just finished it.”

Said I, “Anyone who starts his book with a load of manure, that’s a I book I have to… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 4, 2010 at 12:16am — No Comments

A week of newspaper humorists -- today Sam Venable

Sam Venable, a funny guy and as nice as they come, was the Knoxville (Tennessee) News Sentinel’s outdoors editor for 15 years before the front office bumped him over to humor columnist in 1985. That’s two years after the Miami Herald hired Dave Barry as its humor columnist.

Twenty-four years later, Sam is still at it. Not Barry. He shuttered his humor column six years ago.

As you may recall from yesterday’s post, Barry has a second… Continue

Added by Jerry Peterson on June 3, 2010 at 2:29am — No Comments

Jerry Peterson's Blog – June 2010 Archive (21)