A book you must read if you love books

Oh, what a wonderful book this is. If you want to understand publishing history from an insider's point of view, then find and read the excellent The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors by Al Silverman. Here's a NYTimes book review. Milly Marmur suggested it, and as in all things, she was of course correct. Maybe I love it more because the first chapter is about my publisher for two books, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and FSG has gone through some very sad, even agonizing times this month, or maybe it makes me feel nostalgic for a publishing past I never had the privilege to know (also well-documented in At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf and Another Life: A Memoir of Other People by Michael Korda), but this is a don't-miss-it gem. Seriously, drop everything.

Michael Crichton at the National Press Club in 2006

Today I read the news about Michael Crichton's passing. He is one of the authors I've met in person, because I had the privilege of introducing him two years ago at the National Press Club. Famous authors are at the Club all the time, and if I wanted to I could have played Zelig and created a wall full of those grip-n-grin photos that are so popular in Washington (not that they'd have a clue who I am), but seldom does meeting an author really matter to me. In Crichton's case it did. He had the sort of full-package career that I admired -- his movie directing was especially impressive, and I loved his way with a story ever since I saw Westworld as a kid. He annoyed a lot of people with his political positions, and that made me like him even better. His personality really didn't seem firebrandish, however. He was laid back and gracious (not all famous authors are that way), and easily conversational.

The photo above is a little better. It was taken by Bruce Guthrie, a photographer who comes to literary events at the National Press Club from time to time. We laughed most of the time that night -- I was choosing questions from the audience, and I tried to be a little off-the-wall because he seemed to enjoy shaking things up a bit. The face he's making is him getting ready to chuckle at a particular question.

This post speaks for itself

In warm memory of Brooke Stauffer

One of Booklab's (and my) earliest literary supporters has died tragically, and I'm deeply shaken. Brooke Stauffer hired me to help him sell a novel he had written, and he also took my nonfiction book proposal seminar in 2004. He was such a gifted writer that I eventually brought him on board as a ghostwriter, and I nominated him for membership in the National Press Club, where we served together on the Book and Author Committee. Brooke was the author of many technical books, but his true gift was for fiction. He was beyond talented.

On August 24, 2007, he sent me an e-mail titled "Greetings from Mackinac Island." We had been writing back and forth about the ghostwriting assignment, and he said he'd contact me when he returned. I knew he was there with his fiancée, Karen Dodds, who was a private pilot. He was so proud of the fact that they could travel to so many great places in her plane. According to The Washington Post, Brooke and Karen died later that same day when their plane vanished in the Straits of Mackinac, near Bois Blanc Island, Michigan. Karen's body has been found; Brooke's has not.

Although I hadn't heard from him after that e-mail, I didn't worry. Brooke and I sometimes wouldn't communicate for weeks or even a couple of months when we were busy, but we usually found time to catch up, or else I'd get one of his famous hand-written postcards (apparently he sent them regularly to family and friends) with his large, block writing, explaining where he was and what was up. When a mutual friend contacted me this morning to point out the very late obituary (although they died in August, in ran on November 4), I could barely speak.

Farewell Brooke Stauffer -- magnificent and sexy-voiced writer, urbane beer companion (especially Belgian Chimay), literary friend and all-around charmingly odd duck. It doesn't make sense that you only got 56 years, and frankly, I thought you were a good bit younger than that. I believed you would publish your novel. I believed you and Karen would get married. I believed the book you were ghostwriting for me would win the Pulitzer Prize.

Maybe I still believe all of it.

Love,

Carole