This book is a delightful compilation of sketches and anecdotes on how some writers arrived at their characters and developed their stories. For example, Kay Thompson's Eloise was based on Liza Minelly, and Stephen King wrote the Shining after he took his children to a practically empty hotel where they misbehaved and the writer surprised himself by acting as a harsh disciplinarian toward them. From this surprise, Jack Torrance was born. The origins and reasons of birth of our popular characters like Winnie the Pooh, Detective Maigret, Lord Jim, Sadie Thompson, Dracula, Carrie, Bilbo Baggins, Auntie Mame, and many others like them are featured in this book.
Also, information on the sidebars and the italicized quotations add to the joy of reading the book. For example, in one of them, Kurt Wonnegut is asked from where he gets his characters. He answers in one word: Cincinnati. In another one, a quote by Philip Roth: "Portnoy wasn't a character for me, he was an explosion."

light reading, but it is serious enough.

everything about it.

that it finished so quickly. I wished it was a big volume. Still there was so much in it.

read all the other books by Andre Bernard, since I found out that he has written several books with literary tidbits.

André Bernard's love of reading shows in his writing for he is the trade publisher of Harcourt, a regular columnist for The American Scholar, and the author or co-author of some very interesting books.
Some of these are: Now All We Need Is a Title;
Rotten Rejections: The Letters That Publisher Wish They'd Never Sent;
Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews & Rejections;
Now All We Need Is a Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way;
Rotten Rejections: A Literary Companion;
Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes.

it is insightful, entertaining, and informative, especially for those of us who wonder where famous characters come from and for those of us who try to come up with believable characters in our own writing.

This is a small book with only 128 pages in hardcover. Its first edition shows December, 2003. I am sure many more editions will follow. I read it first in a waiting room. Then I read it again, even though I am not in the habit of reading things twice within a short time.

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Created Feb 13, 2005 at 11:31am • Submit your own review...