Today's New York Times carries an obituary of Alison Lurie, who wrote the novels The War Between the Tates and Foreign Affairs, among other books, and who died Thursday at the age of 94. The War Between the Tates I read long ago, not long after it came out in 1974. Foreign Affairs I read within the last few years. The War Between the Tates is set among academics and their families in upstate New York, Foreign Affairs shows American academics in London. Both repay the reading.
I would have supposed from The War Between the Tates that Lurie was somewhat younger; but on reflection that was careless reading. The book is set about 1967, and the main characters are about 40. Foreign Affairs is set about 1980, and the leading character is fifty or in her early fifties. That character, Vinnie Minor, is an academic and authority on children's literature, as Lurie was.
The obituary says that the obnoxious literary critic Leonard Zimmern turns up in The War Between the Tates, though I remember him only from Foreign Affairs; he turns up also in a couple of other novels that I have not read. On reflection, I knew which minor character he must have been in The War. But he gave Vinnie Miner a bad review shortly before the beginning of Foreign Affairs, and in a memorable scene she sits in the London Zoo and imagines one of the polar bears repeatedly dunking him. Given how writers have dealt with obnoxious critics, Lurie/Miner left him off easy.
Oooh, I like that! I wonder how many of this take revenge of a sorts in story? I did turn a boss into a slave owner once, and the teacher who thought I was "a moron" for my Southern drawl inspired a character.
ReplyDeleteIt's proving a tough month for the writers. John le Carré. Walter Hooper. Etc.
Anthony Burgess could be vindictive that way. The surnames of a couple of loathed military superiors ended up attached to awful characters in some novels. And gibes at the critic Geoffrey Grigson turn up even in the very late The End of the World News. The assassin for the bad guys in Dune, a character done in within the first fifty pages, is named Piter De Vries: I infer that a his near namesake must have given Frank Herbert a stinker of a review at some point.
DeleteYes, a hard month. This week the Times ran an obituary of Anthony Veasna So, an up and coming writer of Cambodian descent. He was 28.