Film critic and hardboiled novelist Hunter may not have liked The Patriot but is an interesting chap anyhow. I recommend a collection of reviews and essays he wrote on violent movies which attempted to illuminate the changing perception of brutality in entertainment and America's investment in firearms.
Jeff
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/07/16/books/BAUTH16.htm
Sunday, July 16, 2000
He tried, but couldn't keep his life secret
By Thomas J. Brady
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
When Stephen Hunter tells you there are elements of autobiography in his books, the details come like a punch in the gut. "My father was an alcoholic, and he was an abusive personality, and he was murdered," the author of the recently released Hot Springs (Simon & Schuster, $25) said in a recent interview.
"He was actually beaten to death on the streets of Chicago in the mid-1970s" during a robbery, Hunter said. "The death of a father figures in a lot of the books" he's written, Hunter adds. "It's kind of a searing experience. I would never write a book about my life, but one of the things that happens is when you write [something] that long, eventually without meaning to, without planning to . . . you go into your reserve tanks - your reserve tanks being what feels real and what was important in your real life." There's only so much research a writer can do on things such as Thompson submachine guns, Hunter observes. "If the books work, I would like to think it's because that [personal] stuff is real, not because the stuff about the Thompson submachine gun is real. Though Thompson submachine guns are really cool, I hasten to add," he says with a rolling laugh. The death of Charles Swagger, father of Earl and grandfather of Bob Lee, is a prime element in Hot Springs. Earl's own death in 1955 at the hands of robbers was investigated by his son, Bob Lee, and reporter Russ Pewtie in Hunter's earlier book, Black Light. Hunter's own father's name was Charles. "Charles [Swagger] is very much like my father," he says. Hunter said his father, a speech professor at Northwestern University, "had a dark side, like Charles Swagger - he was drawn to secret adventures in the city, and one of those secret adventures resulted in his death, just like Charles Swagger's." When pressed for details, Hunter says, "Let's just leave it at 'secret life.' " Hunter says the effect of his father's murder was for him "a very profound and unsettling experience, and it really alters your perception of the universe, particularly if you're imaginative and if you're in some way attracted to or stimulated by representations of violence. . . . The horrible thing about it is that as tragic and wasteful and grotesque as it was, it probably made me a better writer." Hot Springs is the story of Hot Springs, Ark., the City of Vapors, in 1946, one of America's great "sin cities" of the time - scene of open vice and corruption as promulgated by Owney Maddox, English-born bon vivant and gangster. Into this world comes World War II Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger, who's been hired to help clean up the town, and proceeds to do so nearly singlehandedly. And as with all of Hunter's novels, guns, guns and more guns play a central role in a novel that crackles like a burst of machine-gun fire. Although guns did figure in Hunter's first few books, he says his understanding of the weapons up to that point "was all theoretical, it was all secondary knowledge." Although he enjoyed firing guns as a child on his uncle's farm in southeastern Missouri, he says that "from the age of 23 to 33, I don't think I touched a gun." It was just a couple of years before that that he felt as though he'd been "reborn" when he began reading Shooting Times in a drugstore while waiting to see a movie.
As he gradually educated himself about guns and shooting, he says, the result showed in his books. "I feel that the books became better. Certainly, the first book that I wrote when I was a shooter as opposed to the three previous books, where I had been a closet shooter, was a better book and did better financially." That was The Day Before Midnight, "the first of my books to really do something commercially." Although Hunter spent two years in the Army, he did so not in Vietnam but in the Old Guard, a Washington-based ceremonial unit "that dealt with demonstrations, but mainly buried people in Arlington Cemetery, including a guy named Dwight Eisenhower. We buried colonels who had died of alcoholism and privates who'd died of land mines." Hunter, 54, was born in Kansas City, and grew up in Evanston and later Northfield, Ill. He earned a B.S. in journalism at Northwestern, and after serving in the Army began a distinguished career in journalism, most notably as a movie critic, first at the Baltimore Sun, and now, for the last three years, at the Washington Post. When writing his books, of which Hot Springs is his 11th, he says, "I work very steadily and I always try to do 75 lines on the computer screen, which is about 21/2 typed pages. . . . Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, sometimes it takes three hours.
"To me what a writer is is a diddler. I'm a diddler. I diddle. I go into that office and I pound the keys for 15 or 20 minutes, and then I run dry and I'll go out . . . and then I'll go back and do some more diddling. It's not a heroic battle with the Muse; it's like all foreplay. It's just going in and doing a little bit here and a little bit there, but just doing it consistently."
Thomas J. Brady's e-mail address is tbrady@phillynews.com
Jeff
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/07/16/books/BAUTH16.htm
Sunday, July 16, 2000
He tried, but couldn't keep his life secret
By Thomas J. Brady
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
When Stephen Hunter tells you there are elements of autobiography in his books, the details come like a punch in the gut. "My father was an alcoholic, and he was an abusive personality, and he was murdered," the author of the recently released Hot Springs (Simon & Schuster, $25) said in a recent interview.
"He was actually beaten to death on the streets of Chicago in the mid-1970s" during a robbery, Hunter said. "The death of a father figures in a lot of the books" he's written, Hunter adds. "It's kind of a searing experience. I would never write a book about my life, but one of the things that happens is when you write [something] that long, eventually without meaning to, without planning to . . . you go into your reserve tanks - your reserve tanks being what feels real and what was important in your real life." There's only so much research a writer can do on things such as Thompson submachine guns, Hunter observes. "If the books work, I would like to think it's because that [personal] stuff is real, not because the stuff about the Thompson submachine gun is real. Though Thompson submachine guns are really cool, I hasten to add," he says with a rolling laugh. The death of Charles Swagger, father of Earl and grandfather of Bob Lee, is a prime element in Hot Springs. Earl's own death in 1955 at the hands of robbers was investigated by his son, Bob Lee, and reporter Russ Pewtie in Hunter's earlier book, Black Light. Hunter's own father's name was Charles. "Charles [Swagger] is very much like my father," he says. Hunter said his father, a speech professor at Northwestern University, "had a dark side, like Charles Swagger - he was drawn to secret adventures in the city, and one of those secret adventures resulted in his death, just like Charles Swagger's." When pressed for details, Hunter says, "Let's just leave it at 'secret life.' " Hunter says the effect of his father's murder was for him "a very profound and unsettling experience, and it really alters your perception of the universe, particularly if you're imaginative and if you're in some way attracted to or stimulated by representations of violence. . . . The horrible thing about it is that as tragic and wasteful and grotesque as it was, it probably made me a better writer." Hot Springs is the story of Hot Springs, Ark., the City of Vapors, in 1946, one of America's great "sin cities" of the time - scene of open vice and corruption as promulgated by Owney Maddox, English-born bon vivant and gangster. Into this world comes World War II Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger, who's been hired to help clean up the town, and proceeds to do so nearly singlehandedly. And as with all of Hunter's novels, guns, guns and more guns play a central role in a novel that crackles like a burst of machine-gun fire. Although guns did figure in Hunter's first few books, he says his understanding of the weapons up to that point "was all theoretical, it was all secondary knowledge." Although he enjoyed firing guns as a child on his uncle's farm in southeastern Missouri, he says that "from the age of 23 to 33, I don't think I touched a gun." It was just a couple of years before that that he felt as though he'd been "reborn" when he began reading Shooting Times in a drugstore while waiting to see a movie.
As he gradually educated himself about guns and shooting, he says, the result showed in his books. "I feel that the books became better. Certainly, the first book that I wrote when I was a shooter as opposed to the three previous books, where I had been a closet shooter, was a better book and did better financially." That was The Day Before Midnight, "the first of my books to really do something commercially." Although Hunter spent two years in the Army, he did so not in Vietnam but in the Old Guard, a Washington-based ceremonial unit "that dealt with demonstrations, but mainly buried people in Arlington Cemetery, including a guy named Dwight Eisenhower. We buried colonels who had died of alcoholism and privates who'd died of land mines." Hunter, 54, was born in Kansas City, and grew up in Evanston and later Northfield, Ill. He earned a B.S. in journalism at Northwestern, and after serving in the Army began a distinguished career in journalism, most notably as a movie critic, first at the Baltimore Sun, and now, for the last three years, at the Washington Post. When writing his books, of which Hot Springs is his 11th, he says, "I work very steadily and I always try to do 75 lines on the computer screen, which is about 21/2 typed pages. . . . Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, sometimes it takes three hours.
"To me what a writer is is a diddler. I'm a diddler. I diddle. I go into that office and I pound the keys for 15 or 20 minutes, and then I run dry and I'll go out . . . and then I'll go back and do some more diddling. It's not a heroic battle with the Muse; it's like all foreplay. It's just going in and doing a little bit here and a little bit there, but just doing it consistently."
Thomas J. Brady's e-mail address is tbrady@phillynews.com