Paperback Writer (OT)

[Comments have been added.]

I'm a reader of nonfiction—on my virtual bedside table right now is the marvelously well written and genuinely scary A Natural History of the Future by Rob Dunn, which will change your concept of this world forever—but every year I select at least one novel to read and learn about.

Usually these are classics, but this year I chose a pop bestseller from the past: Hotel by Arthur Hailey, published in 1965. The cover of the mass market paperback proclaimed it "A TOP BESTSELLER FOR 52 WEEKS! THE SENSATIONAL NOVEL THAT HELD THE WHOLE NATION SPELLBOUND!" (Lennon and McCartney's "Paperback Writer" was the A-side of a single right around the same time.)

I chose it because I remember knowing, when I was a boy, that the author was popular and successful—I saw references to him in books and magazines (I read TIME magazine cover-to-cover each week starting when I was 11) and saw his books on the shelves of my parents and their friends. Hailey's gambit was to construct a novel around a factual view of a particular industry, a different one for each book. He was known to spend three years on each project: one year for research, six months to organize his notes, and 18 months for writing.

As you might imagine, with that working method, his strength is research and plotting. He has great skill at following a variety of intersecting stories a bit at a time and writing chapters (there are lots of chapters) with page-turner cliffhangers at the end. It's a bit like a chapter-book for adolescents only written with adult subject matter. Very adroitly done.

Ultimately the program underfoot is moralistic, I felt. Every character gets exactly his or her just due, which in each case happens to be what will be most satisfying to Mr. or Mrs. Average Reader.

Along the way, perhaps predictably, we are treated to one deus ex machina after another. The term, if you don't know it, means "God in the machine," which Wikipedia defines as "a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function is generally to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, [or] to bring the tale to a happy ending." In Hotel, the "angel" and his reveal, for instance, ranks up there with the one in Dickens' Great Expectations (although in Hotel I saw it coming), and the protagonist whose reputation was ruined by a relationship we would now called inappropriate is handily tempted with another that seems perfect in every detail (a rich, beautiful 19-year-old whose parents are never home and who announces abruptly that she wants to marry him)—a test for his Galahad-like purity of heart. And so forth.

I'll note in passing that the book uses the term "Negro" which was common when it was written, but it also champions Civil Rights as they were evolving in 1965. Hotel's Galahad becomes unbending on that point.

I really hated the deus ex machina that orchestrates the ending, which involves a literal machine (saw that coming, too). To me, this is where the plot jumps the shark, but then, I tend to dislike slam-bang thank-you-ma'am endings in all things beloved of the masses, movies especially. The gentle reader will note that the event described is arranged so that each major character affected gets his or her reward or comeuppance: the conniving duchess loses her cash, the thief goes straight, poor bloodied Dodo wins her dubious prize, etc., etc. (Even though there is also collateral damage as a few bit players are sacrificed.)

The deep research into the hotel industry felt a little like cheating on my part, as it provided a dose of nonfiction along with my annual helping of fiction! But I felt a slight personal connection to the industry depicted as well, since a branch of my forebears owned a large, magnificent hotel that would have been very similar to the book's fictional St. Gregory. (Ours was the somewhat notorious Claypool Hotel in Indianapolis. My grandmother's mother was a Claypool, and my great-grandmother's husband and father were the counterparts of Hotel's Warren Trent, gentleman owner of the St. Gregory.)

Overall, it's a light entertainment that's genuinely involving, reads quickly, and, like a play, introduces us to a large and varied cast of characters along the way. We don't mind if those characters are two-dimensional and, also like the ones on stages, broadly drawn; each has his or her assigned part to play in the drama. It's no wonder it was popular. (Remembering that for a book to be popular it also has to appeal to people who aren't necessarily mavens of literature.) I can't give it more than three stars out of five, but I can't give it less, either. I'm happy to have read it at the same time as I doubt I'll be dipping further into the author's oeuvre. Then again, at a pace of one to a handful of novels a year more or less, the same can be said of a lot of the fiction authors I read! I'm not a good reader of fiction. (Consider that Larry McMurtry, the author of Lonesome Dove, who died this year, once quit a teaching job at Yale because it cut into his fiction-reading time too much. I once dated a nurse whose reading chair was surrounded by stacks of books—a large heap of yet-to-be-read and and even larger heap of ones she'd finished.)

But you can't argue with success. Hailey, who lived to the age of 84, sold 170 million books. He was famous enough in his time that his wife even wrote a book about being his wife. He retired to Lyford Cay on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods on the planet. And wrote a book about that, too.

Mike

Book o' the Week

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Holland: "My mother loved Hailey's novels and bought them all, which I inherited. I recently re-read Airport, a real pot-boiler. Lots of casual infidelity intermixed with the minutiae of running a major international airport (a poorly disguised O'Hare) during a snowstorm. The whole thing felt very dated.

"As a Canadian, we claim Hailey for our own, because although he was born in England, he emigrated to Canada after the war and started his writing career working for the CBC. He wrote a teleplay there featuring a passenger aircraft whose pilot and co-pilot are put out of action from food poisoning. It was then made into a Hollywood movie called Zero Hour, whose plot was later lifted wholesale to make the parody movie Airplane! I still love that movie, and also the movie version of Airport.

"His novels will not likely continue to be read, but instead, they will live on in the movies and TV shows they inspired.

"Which reminds me of a prediction Gore Vidal made back in the early '70s, that in future all popular fiction will be based on plots recycled from Hollywood movies. He then demonstrated his theory by reading the top 10 novels in the New York Times bestseller list that week, and comparing their plots and characters to movies made in the '40s and '50s. The only completely original book in the list (in the sense that it borrowed nothing from Hollywood) was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914."

Mel: "The Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans (where Hailey did his research) still stands after several renovations. It's a very swank place, full of marble, gilt and crystal. The Blue Room was once the place to dine in the city, to be seen and to see who was hanging around. I have a picture of my parents dining with friends there, very dressy and formal. Always interesting to realize your parents had a life before you came along!"

Mike replies: I understand the door to the Blue Room was stolen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It had apparently been signed by many luminaries and famous guests over many years. A few years ago the Roosevelt offered a public amnesty for anyone returning objects stolen from the hotel over the years, even offering a stay in the Presidential Suite as a prize, by raffle, among those returning things. The Blue Room door has not yet been found.

Comments

[Mike Ferron]

History of the Future was quickly Kindled via your link. Sounds like my cup of tea.

[jerry]

I'm going to suggest a fiction book for next year (you could even start it 1/1/22 and that would be next years book). The Overstory by Richard Powers. The overstory of the book is lots of the current research on trees and forests. Plenty of facts about the magnificent, long lived beings that manufacture the very air we breathe. And that's just a small part of what they contribute to the world. The fiction part is equally as good. It made me even more aware of all I take from the world, while giving back so little. Which is why we have the global climate crisis. Humans burning up the world.

[Andreas]

As a counterpart to your current non-fiction and if you find the time, try "The Dawn of Everything" to look into the other direction in time. Not only interesting, but also nicely written (as far as I can judge - English is my second language).

[Matt Kallio]

Ah, popular lit. This is a propos, as I am currently making my way through The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles, and wondering if it is worth it. I keep thinking of it resembling some popular TV show, with quirky characters who are supposed to be loveable, etc.
I don't need to 'pass the time,' so a fat, mediocre novel isn't really what I want. Yet I will read it all because, darn, I do want to see how it comes out. I sure hope Towles doesn't pull a Dei Ex Machina.

[Mike Chisholm]

Concerning "deus ex machina", not quite. A pedant speaks (or rather, quotes Wikipedia):

"Deus ex machina is a Latin calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós) 'god from the machine'. The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater, where actors who were playing gods were brought onto stage using a machine. The machine could be either a crane (mechane) used to lower actors from above or a riser that brought them up through a trapdoor. Aeschylus introduced the idea, and it was used often to resolve the conflict and conclude the drama. The device is associated mostly with Greek tragedy, although it also appeared in comedies."

Knew you'd want to know that. You may be mixing it up with "the ghost in the machine", a rather different concept.

Best wishes for 2022!

Mike

[That was the origin of it all right, Mike, but in lit crit it has the common meaning as specified.

We no longer believe in gods, small case, plural, except perhaps insofar as an author gets to act as one to his or her characters! --Mike]

[Grant]

Hailey's television script, Flight into Danger, set the the standard for disaster movies. I'm not sure if he had Leslie Neilson in mind when he wrote the script for Flight into Danger, but without it we might not have "....and don't call me Shirley."

[Dennis Ng]

The ending …

not related but I read an analysis of the chp 24 or the ending of odyssey lately. It is always fascinating how anyone, the Greek included (Homer may be) handle the case that it is obviously impossible for the main character to kill all his clan lead man and live ever after. But the Greek legend is that he did. What should you do.

…

[Daniel]

Why not start reading the Novels of your friend John Camp?

[I have read several! --Mike]

[Mike Chisholm]

Mike,

It's not really worth pursuing, but I refer you to the difference between the Latin prepositions "ex" and "in". Enough said!

Mike

[janekr]

In my opinion the first A. H. (with John Castle) book "Runway Zero-Eight" is also his best. It's rather short novel with a perfect plot.
I have many other books of A. H. ("Airport" and "Hotel" among them), but none of them is as good.

[Zack Schindler]

Many of us cannot own every book that we want but I may have a compromise solution. Most states like Michigan have a statewide library system (ours is called Melcat) that lets you borrow books from almost any library in your state including universities. For instance right now I have on order a DVD lecture by John Szarkowski on Eugène Atget and also a four volume set of books that he did on Atget. Also waiting on these; Vivian Maier : the color work, Picasso & the camera by John Richardson and Deus ex machina by Ralph Gibson. There is no way that I can afford to buy these but being able to just read them is the next best thing.

If you are interested in this contact you local library and see if your state has an inter-loan system. Rarely have I searched for a book and not been able to find it in the state system

[c.d.embrey]

The B52s covered Paperback Writer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCdHW9tULHM well worth a look.

I read mostly police procedurals and sci-fi.

[Patrick Perez]

John Holland said "His novels will not likely continue to be read, but instead, they will live on in the movies and TV shows they inspired."

Which reminds me of an exchange of dialog in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (aka the whale one). The crew travels back in time to present day San Francisco, and Kirk, a lover of old literature attempts to blend in with his verbiage. Spock calls him on it.

Kirk: You're referring to the colorful metaphors? The double-dumb ass on you? You'll see it in the literature of the times. The collected works of Jacqueline Susanne, the novels of Harrold Robbins.

Spock: Ahh. The Giants.

I'd give odds that dialog was from ghost writer Nicholas Meyer.

[Trevor Johnson]

I watched the original Airport film, in Vienna, dubbed into German, at the time of its release in 1970.

The original aeroplane disaster movie, that provided the template for future 'disaster' movies, is 'The High and the Mighty', 1954. Quite unknown, but rather a good film.

[John Krill]

Never read his books. Too busy reading the adventures of James Bond.