In the last few days, in alarming succession, four writers who have had a great influence on my life have died.
Robert B. Parker, the prolific mystery writer, died on January 18, 2010, while at his desk producing his daily five-page output. I remember hearing an interview with Parker once on CBC Radio, when he told the host Michael Enright about his PhD thesis based on Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald – the writers I read obsessively to get me through law school. l was inspired by a guy who gave up being a university English professor (one of the many occupations I thought I’d do in my life) to write crime novels.
Paul Quarrington, the agile Canadian writer/musician/screenwriter died three days later. I’d followed Paul’s career for years, and marveled at his ability to jump from creative project to creative project with great enthusiasm and skill. I met him for the first time this summer and he was exactly what I’d expect. Straight forward, engaging and most of all tremendously welcoming to me – a rookie writer – into the world of words.
Louis Achincloss died five days later. He was a New York City wills and trusts lawyer, cut from the American upper class, who worked full time as a partner in a major law firm and wrote about a book a year. I read about him years ago in Time Magazine, when I was at law school. I loved the idea of being a lawyer by day, writer by night. If he could do it, I thought…
J. D. Salinger died the next day. There was a time in my life when Salinger was almost everything to me. I was in grade ten. My older brother, the writer David Rotenberg, was in grade thirteen (we had that back then in Ontario) and he had a wonderful English teacher who had David’s class read The Nine Short Stories. I soon read them and became a secret Salinger snob. The Catcher in the Ryewas okay I thought, but rather common, compared to his other three books. I was so into Salinger, I remember spending days at the high school library finding his obscure New Yorker short stories that never made it into his four books. When I was nineteen, a friend of mine and I drove around New England in a van, and I made him detour and go all around Cornish, New Hampshire. To this day,The Nine Short Stories is in the bedside stack of books I read over and over. Two stories that I never hear mentioned, Down at the Dinghy and The Laughing Man, are the ones I read the most.
When a writer dies, I think all their readers lose a small part of themselves. As I write this, my eyes drift up to my bookshelf. These authors have a place there. And I’ll miss knowing that they’re not still out there, typing away.
Can you believe this story from Denver?
I just saw this story and had to share it with all of you.
This poor woman, just can’t believe that this actually happens in this day and age, what a shame.
I just thought it was important to share.
(CNN) — Three police cars pulled into Christina FourHorn’s front yard one afternoon while working from home just before she was supposed to pick up her daughter at school. The officers had a warrant for her arrest.
“What do you mean robbery?” FourHorn remembers asking the officers. Her only brushes with the law had been a few speeding tickets.
She was locked up in a Colorado jail. They took her clothes and other belongings and handed her an oversize black-and-white striped uniform. She protested for five days, telling jailers the arrest was a mistake. Finally, her husband borrowed enough money to bail her out.
“They wouldn’t tell me the details,” she said.
Later, it became clear that FourHorn was right, that Denver police had arrested the wrong woman. Police were searching for Christin Fourhorn, who lived in Oklahoma.
Their names were similar, and Christina FourHorn, a mother with no criminal record living in Sterling, Colorado, had been caught in the mix-up.