Writers Who Disappear

 

The evanescence of popular writers is the damndest thing. And as I’ve galloped toward senescence, I’ve seen it occur, over and over in my lengthening life.

Today, for example, having lunch in our family room, I noticed a couple of shelves of books by Ed McBain (see pic above). Who reads him anymore? Who even knows his name? He was once very popular.

Evan Hunter lived from 1926 to 2005 and wrote under some pseudonyms—including McBain. He wrote scores of books—it seemed that one was coming out every few months. He used numerous pseudonyms (check them out on Wikipedia). He also wrote screenplays, plays, etc.

As McBain, he wrote a couple of series that got me hooked: the 87th Precinct (about a group of cops), as Matthew Hope he wrote books with clever folklore-related titles, like There Was a Little Girl and Mary, Mary). I gobbled them up like bon-bons.

But I couldn’t read them all—there were too many. But I did buy a lot.

Later, after Hunter died, we were downsizing, and we tried to sell his books (all first printings).

Ha!

No one, it seems, had ever heard of him. Or cared to own—or read—what he had published.

And that’s when I began to notice that fictioneers like him—but also “serious, ” “literary” writers whose names, perhaps, still resonate—wrote books (I am guessing) that are not all that frequently read—not the way they used to be.

Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Thomas Berger, Gore Vidal, and numerous others—their books used to fly off the bookstore shelves and flap over to my house—as they did to the houses of countless other readers.

I could be wrong (I kind of hope I am), but I haven’t heard anyone talk about these writers in a long time.

Of course, I don’t get out much ... too much to stream ...