One of the writers I've long aspired to emulate has died. The New York Times carried the obituary of William W. Warner yesterday. His book Beautiful Swimmers has been a favorite of mine since at least the 80s, both for its subject matter (the blue crabs of Chesapeake Bay and the watermen who harvest them) and his writing style. I never knew I wanted to know so much about crabs until I read it. As for the quality of writing, it won a Pulitzer Prize. Not too shabby for a first book...
I first heard about Warner from William Least Heat-Moon (William Trogdon), who lived in my town in Missouri at the time and taught at the university where I worked. After dozens of rejections of his first book, Blue Highways, he said he decided to figure out who was publishing books in the same spirit as his. He settled on Warner's book and reached out to Warner's editor. The editor was on vacation, so Trogdon persuaded his assistant that Warner had referred him figuring that the assistant wouldn't verify that. The assistant felt he or she had better read the manuscript if Warner thought it was good. The rest is history - it spent nearly a year on the NYT bestseller list.
Interesting tidbit from the NY Times obit:
-->> “Beautiful Swimmers” has never gone out of print since its publication in 1976. In 1994 Back Bay Books reissued it in paperback with a preface by the novelist John Barth and an afterword by the author, who in the meantime had returned to the sea in “Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman” (1983), a look into the world of giant commercial trawlers. <<--
Impressive!
Posted by: C Velo | May 03, 2008 at 12:00 AM
Yeah, I have "Distant Water" around here someplace too. Another good read, as I recall, but not as impressive as the first book.
Posted by: RMA | May 03, 2008 at 12:08 AM