When a writer of note and particular importance dies, I often like to write a column of tribute exploring the writer’s work and the influence it had on my life and my thinking. These are not proper obituaries, but more of a personal remembrance of a connection with someone whom I’ve never met but has still had some indelible effect on my life.
Sadly, I could do these pieces just about every week. Though maybe this isn’t sad. To be able to say that so many writers have been meaningful to you is not a horrible thing.
Sometimes I consider doing a column about a particular writer but decide that my connection isn’t quite sufficient to carry a full installment, and I move on. But there have been two recent deaths of writers who did very different things in their work and that I encountered at two very different times in my life who now feel strangely paired.
Frederick Forsyth, one of the great political/spy thriller writers of all time, died June 9 at the age of 86. In the early ’70s, Forsyth had one of the great consecutive runs of commercial fiction, releasing “The Day of the Jackal,” “The Odessa File,” and “The Dogs of War” all between 1971 and 1974. These tales of Cold War intrigue often folded in real-life figures — the plot of “The Day of the Jackal” revolves around an assassination plot of then-French president Charles de Gaulle — and read like someone tapped into a trove of top-secret files.I read these novels in the back of the car as a tween/young teen, escaping from the tedium of a family road trip into a world of daring and intrigue. What did I know about secret geopolitical machinations? Nothing, but the books were thrilling, and few have topped him when it comes to the thriller genre.
Forsyth’s later work was marred by an overt preoccupation with right-wing politics, but I cannot forget the first adult writer I ever read.
I came to the work of Edmund White, who died on June 3 at the age of 85, via a writer who was influenced by him, Garth Greenwell. Greenwell’s quasi-trilogy “What Belongs to You,” “Cleanness” and “Small Rain” delivers powerful stories of gay life in contemporary America written with a frankness that breaks through what I can only describe as my own ignorance rooted in my straight, white male experience of the world. Greenwell has described White as a kind of progenitor who made his subsequent work possible, and I became curious about his progenitor.
I went back to start White’s own semi-autobiographical quasi-trilogy of “A Boy’s Own Story,” “The Beautiful Room Is Empty” and “The Farewell Symphony” and it was like being introduced to The Beatles after you’d first heard Nirvana. “A Boy’s Own Story” is an amazing experience as White unfolds the life of a 15-year-old narrator (at the opening) just as he comes to understand and misunderstand his homosexuality. This is the 1950s in the Midwest and the boy feels that his own deepest desires are taboo and therefore attempts to deny them.
But these desires cannot be denied. Told retrospectively when the narrator has emerged into adulthood, we feel both external and internal turbulence of the narrator’s life. At the same time, White also shows that his view of the world, colored by his sexuality, is a kind of superpower that reveals self-knowledge hidden from most people.
I doubt I’ll ever run out of writers who have something fresh to reveal to me about the world. I’m grateful to have encountered these two.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Hang on St. Christopher” by Adrian McKinty
2. “The Dragon Republic” by R.F. Kuang
3. “Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong” by Katie Gee Salisbury
4. “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth” by Zoë Schlanger
5. “A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage” by Asia Mackay
— Rosary A., Naperville
I have just the book for Rosary. The first in a series of witty, unconventional mysteries, “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone” by Benjamin Stevenson.
1. “Tom Clancy: Defense Protocol” by Brian Andrews
2. “Battle Mountain” by C.J. Box
3. “Perfect Storm” by Paige Shelton
4. “The Medici Return” by Steve Berry
5. “Den of Iniquity” by J.A. Jance
— Ken K., Chicago
I’m going to lean into the thriller, though a mystery would work too: “The Gray Man” by Mark Greaney.
1. “Never Flinch” by Stephen King
2. “Framed” by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey
3. “Lost City of the Monkey God” by Douglas Preston
4. “Rabbit Moon” by Jennifer Haigh
5. “Middletide” by Sarah Crouch
More Top Picks Patio Heaters
— Sue R., Rockford
For Sue, I’m recommending a book by one of the three authors I covered last week, “Dare Me” by Megan Abbott.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to [email protected].