Erle Stanley Gardner learned quite a bit about writing from his reading of “The Youth’s Companion,” a magazine published in the 1930s, by Perry Mason & Company.
Robert B. Parker, author of innumerable mediocre mysteries about Boston PI Spenser pictured his main character as a tough guy who is a knight in shining armor, and named him after the poet Edmund Spenser.
Mickey Spillane, whose wives' charms - read ass- appear on the jackets of many of his books, drew a comic strip featuring detective Mike Danger, that no publisher was interested in. He decided to write a novel, and changed Mike’s surname to Hammer, after Hammer’s Bar and Grille, one of Spillane’s hangouts.
Arthur Conan Doyle, after christening Mr. Holmes as Sherringford, re- baptized him as Sherlock, after a famous violinist of the time, Alfred Sherlock, thence the pervasive droning violin.
John D. MacDonald started writing the wimpy Travis McGee - oops, that’s Dallas McGee, novels in 1962. Before Dallas appeared in print, President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and Dallas became Travis, perhaps unwittingly maintaining the Texas connection.
No comments:
Post a Comment