But Could He Have Spelled Nonagenarian?

A quick reminder from Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, that today would have been novelist Mickey Spillane’s 90th birthday:

It’s the birthday of crime novelist Mickey Spillane ... the pen name of Frank Morrison, born in Brooklyn, New York (1918). He spent his childhood defending himself as the only Irish boy in a tough Polish neighborhood. His father worked in a hardware store, and it was there that Spillane saw a typewriter for the first time. He later said, “I would type on it. ... I loved the sound it made ... [and] I knew I was going to be a writer.”

The item concludes with these notes:

Spillane was once asked why detective Mike Hammer is always depicted drinking beer. He said, “Mike Hammer drinks beer, not cognac, because I can’t spell cognac.”

And, “If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. [But] a writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.”

It would be great to know what he could have turned out, had he lived to see this 90th birthday and more. Unfortunately, Mickey Spillane passed away in July 2006.

READ MORE: “M-I-C-K-E-Y ...,” by B.V. Lawson (In Reference to Murder).