Most of the time, Erle Stanley Gardner seems like a figure out of the distant past. It’s easy to forget that, although the creator of defense attorney Perry Mason, private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, and District Attorney Douglas Selby was born way back in 1889, he died only 40 years ago today, at age 80.
Growing up, I didn’t appreciate Gardner’s literary contributions. I thought of him only as the man behind the TV series Perry Mason, which--while I enjoyed both Raymond Burr in the title role and some of that show’s dramatic courtroom scenes--always seemed too consistently formatted. It has only been over the last few years that I’ve come to recognize Gardner as the author of some highly imaginative, and usually complexly plotted, novels. He wasn’t a poetic author, and he sometimes rushed to wrap up his tales. But he was definitely a prolific writer, turning out 80 Mason novels and dozens of other books beyond those. I’ve only read a fraction of this former California lawyer’s oeuvre, but enough to know now that when I pick up a Gardner novel, I am guaranteed a consuming and imaginative adventure.
Maybe this 40th anniversary of his death should be another excuse for me to indiscriminately pluck a title from my shelf of Gardner books. I could certainly choose my reading matter less wisely.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
At some point, I want to write an appreciation of Gardner's *The Court of Last Resort*. Part of that book contains some rather fascinating crime stories; the other part contains some of the wisest and sanest writing on criminal justice I've ever read, material that still stands up today. (Among other things, Gardner saw the flaws of the War on Drugs, even in 1950.)
Of course, that's going to have to wait until I find the box my copy is stashed in...
Post a Comment