Tag Archives: books

John Crowley Has Died

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John Crowley, certainly one of my top ten favorite authors, has died. He was not a best-selling writer, though pretty well known among science fiction and fantasy fans. His most celebrated novels are “Little, Big,” and the four book “Aegypt” series. He also wrote film documentaries and taught creative writing at Yale. Of him the great critic, Harold Bloom said: “Crowley writes so magnificently that only a handful of living writers in English can equal him as a stylist, and most of them are poets…of novelists, only Philip Roth consistently writes on Crowley’s level.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crowley_(author)

Although my writing style is nothing like his (If only!), Crowley’s work has had a profound effect on my the way I approach writing a novel. The circumstances of my discovery of Crowley are almost as strange and uncanny as something from one of his stories.

In 1983 my my little family moved to Skagway Alaska, where I began building a log house. (See those images and comments elsewhere on this website.) My wife worked as a bartender and waitress, and I worked part time as a sort of carpenter/handyman. One day, while cleaning out a rental house I was doing some maintenance on, I found a box of cast away clothing, kitchen odds and ends, and paperback books left behind by one of the seasonal workers who came to Skagway every year to work in the tourist industry.

Normally I choose the books I want to read very deliberately, usually after reading reviews or getting suggestions from people with similar tastes in literature. I can’t recall ever before or since discovering a favorite author or book by chance alone. But something about the cover image and the intriguing title of “Engine Summer” made me pause and separate it from the rest of the things in that cardboard box. The name of the author also appealed to me. I had recently read two books by Aleister Crowley, and wondered if this John Crowley might be a relative. (In one of his blogs John Crowley assured his readers was not related, as far as he knew, and that Crowley is a fairly common English surname.)

I opened the book and read the writing on the inside of the cover. Immediately I wondered if this was a quote from the book, and if not, why was it there and who could have written it? (As you can see the name was scribbled out, as if the writer thought better of revealing his identity — see image below). I was hooked and began reading that same evening. Since then I have read the little novel dozens of times over the years. The book has some sort of strange hold on me, and each time I read it I discover something new. It is a melancholy tale, and profound on many levels.

Since that summer of 1983 I’ve bought and given away many copies of Engine Summer, (including copies to all the actors and musicians in my musical, “Evermore”), but I’ve kept my treasured original Bantam 1980 edition. I’ve never found out who left that book behind, or wrote the words on the inside of the cover. I’ve also gone on to read most of Crowley’s other works. My favorites by him are “The Deep,” “Little, Big,” the “Aegypt” series, and several of his short stories.

In 2012 I got the idea of creating a musical based on Engine Summer. I extracted the basic love story, and my musical partner, Jim Nelson and I wrote songs for the play, which I entitled, “Evermore.” In 2013 the play was produced on two stages in Mt. Vernon and Bellingham, WA. (Images and commentary about Evermore are also elsewhere on this website.) I sent a link to a video of one of the performances to John Crowley. He remarked that he really enjoyed the music, but refrained from commenting on my bowdlerization of his novel.

Beyond the obvious inspiration for my play, Crowley has influenced me in other ways. He referred to “snakes-hands”— the parts of stories that don’t obviously advance the plot or character development—as some of the best parts of a tale. I agree, and to hell with critics or editors that say every word and sentence must serve the plot. I always include “snakes-hands” in my novels.

It is evident to me that Crowley knew the value of the role of the subconscious in good writing, and he admitted that some things in his novels seemed uncanny. I know what he is talking about. There are times when an idea will come to me seemingly “out of the blue,” or a character will simply not obey my desires. Sometimes, after days or weeks of no progress, I will wake knowing just exactly how a plot puzzle should be resolved. I never thought this way before reading Crowley’s works, particularly “Engine Summer,” “The Deep,” and “Little, Big.”

Certainly John Crowley was one of the great masters of the novel form, and deserves a much wider readership. But enough talk. If like me you love great writing, get a copy of one of Crowley’s novels or short story collections from your local bookstore or library. John Crowley has passed on, but fortunately for us most of his books are still in print and here for us to enjoy and marvel at. To paraphrase John from “Little, Big,” his fictional world gets bigger the further in you go.

“The world is older than it was. Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were.” (from Little, Big)

73 Is Not The New 43! Lessons From My Great-grandfather

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After the age of seventy death walks closely behind, scythe at the ready. Only a fool thinks otherwise. Everybody I know over about sixty-five has some sort of chronic health issue. We suffer from various aches and pains that seem to wax and wane with the weather, and most have hypertension, and soreness and stiffness from old injuries. Most conversations with people our age eventually devolve into “organ recitals” — a litany of our infirmities, impairments, surgical procedures, and pharmacopeia.

The actuarial tables don’t lie, and very few over the age of seventy are physically or mentally up to new challenges. Although more of us live longer, we’re not necessarily living healthier. Many are overweight, and most out of shape. Medical science keeps us out of the morgues a little longer, but human biology has not changed. The most reliable way to predict your life span, assuming you don’t slip on a banana peel and break your skull, or get in a car wreck, is to see how long your ancestors lived — a good reason to do some genealogy. 

It’s time to write my memoirs or autobiography if I’m going to do it. Why do that if you’re not famous? Not many readers are interested in the lives of the not-famous or infamous. But I think there are several good reasons, besides hubris, to leave a first person written account of your life, even if you don’t publish it. Aside from the value to future historians who may be researching our era, a firsthand record of your life is perhaps the most valuable thing you can leave your descendants, unless you are wealthy — then leave money and property! 

Rediscovering my great grandfather’s long lost writings was a remarkable event, and the year long editing and researching prior to publishing the book was fascinating. (“The Roving Fitzgeralds,” 2021.) The months I spent preparing the book for publication led me down many paths, intellectually and emotionally. I connected with my family history in ways I hadn’t before. I experienced a sense of what it was like to live in the era before all the mechanical and electronic gadgets we take for granted existed.

I wish more of my ancestors had written about their lives. It would be wonderful to have Selleck or Mary Fitzgeralds’s first hand notes on their wagon train trip from Iowa to California in 1862, and their subsequent travels by horse and wagon to Oregon and Montana. I wish Selleck’s grandparents would have left a first hand record, even a diary or journal, of their immigration from Ireland to Virginia in the 1740s. Alas, I know of no written records other than Roy Fitzgerald’s from either side of my family.

I’ve never been a fan of the sort of confessional or tell-all memoirs that often make the bestseller’s lists. I’m not very interested in Einstein’s sexuality or relations with women, but I am fascinated with his intellectual development, his breakthroughs in physics, his interactions with other scientists, politicians, and his ties to the Manhattan Project.

If I decide to write an autobiography or memoir, I’ll approach the project much as my grandfather, Roy Fitzgerald did. His intention was to relate the most notable incidents in his life, and to give the reader a sense of what it was like to be alive during those years, while imparting interesting information about the history of Yellowstone Park, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon, during an era when the the automobile was replacing the horse, and the phone, rails, and roads were connecting the West to the rest of the world. Considering that Roy dropped out of school after the eighth grade, he did a nice job of it. I would be happy to do as well.

Roy’s memoirs almost didn’t get written. He began writing when he was in his early eighties, and died at the age of eighty-seven. It was a near thing, as his health was failing, but he still managed to make several trips from Oregon to Montana to verify his memories of some of the events he recalled from his youth in Gardiner. He barely lived to finish his memoir, and did not live to see it published. 

I don’t want to make that same mistake, and it’s certainly not given that I will be mentally or physically capable of writing my memoirs or autobiography in the future. So I’d best be about it, and so should you if you’re over sixty-five, because seventy-three will never be the new forty-three!