Word: novelizations
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DIED. William Diehl, 81, late-starting novelist who penned popular, mayhem-ridden novels including Sharky's Machine and Primal Fear; in Atlanta. A decorated World War II veteran, he got a job as an obituary writer at the Atlanta Constitution after the war, then became a reporter and freelance photographer. His move into fiction was inspired in part by boredom--he began writing Sharky's Machine, his first novel, at age 50, while serving as a juror. His fast-paced thrillers translated easily to film--Burt Reynolds played the title character in the 1981 adaptation of Sharky's Machine...
Next (HarperCollins; 433 pages) is Michael Crichton's 15th novel, and I can't say for sure that it's his worst, but I can say for sure that it's the worst I've read, and I've read a bunch. And that includes his last book, State of Fear, in which he attempted to frighten us with the idea that global warming is not actually happening but is instead a hoax staged by a shadowy network of overzealous environmentalists...
These plots are acted out by a large and largely interchangeable cast of characters--Next feels less like a novel than some kind of interminable convention. You can recognize the good guys, who are sober and clear-eyed. You can recognize the bad guys, who are reckless and shortsighted, and if you still don't get it, they're mean to children. The villains here are all people, which is a problem, since Crichton's people are a lot less plausibly human than his dinosaurs, of which there are zero in Next. There's only one authentically chilling moment, when...
John Ridley is a commentator and author of The American Way, a graphic-novel series to be published in February
...English and American Literature Philip J. Fisher did just that last month: in a competition inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s famous short story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” students in his class, “English 178x: The American Novel: Dreiser to the Present” were allowed exactly six words to write a story—plot, characters, conclusion, and all. The competition, proposed by a student in the class, mimicked a similar online contest held by Wired magazine this fall. According to Joshua D. Rothman, a TF for Fisher?...