by NRB | 6 Oct 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Do popular writers in particular, but other writers in general, compete with each other? This thought was prompted by a quote from historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, which I’ll return to. Did Georgette Heyer compete with Baroness Orczy for top spot in the Regency...
by NRB | 21 Jul 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I have no idea what percentage of mainstream films is based on books. Does anyone? I suspect it’s quite high. In the crime field there have been notable failures. I’ve written before about Howard Hawks’s version of The Big Sleep (1946). It captures some of the...
by NRB | 31 Mar 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
‘Where do your ideas come from?’ is a question often put to authors, especially crime writers. When I was busy at the trade I tended to fob it off with answers about my imagination and picking up on things I’d overheard when I was a journalist or listened...
by NRB | 24 Feb 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
In 1986, when Jean was working as a commissioning editor for Transworld Publishing, she recommended a book to me. It was an historical novel by Robert Goddard, published that year. The title was Past Caring and the publishers, who had some of their bigwigs in...
by NRB | 4 Nov 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve written before about how audio books have enabled me to enjoy works I found too ponderous when I tried in recent years to re-read them – books by Hardy, Trollope, Galsworthy and others. So far, two authors regarded as classic have defeated me – Melville and...
by NRB | 26 Aug 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
We lay under cover by the side of the road for the ambush and Paco passed me the wineskin which was heavy with the resin-tasting wine of that part of the country which feels good when it hits the back of your throat in a spurt but you must be careful to cut the spurt...
by NRB | 23 Oct 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
At one time I had a lot of Hemingway’s books on my shelves – novels, short story collections, journalism, even Death in the Afternoon (1932), although I never sympathised with his passion for bullfighting. I’ve always thought that the story ‘Fifty Grand’, about a...
by NRB | 15 Feb 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Lately I’ve had Ernest Hemingway coming at me from all directions. For the second time I watched Woody Allen’s brilliant romantic comedy Midnight in Paris, in which a Hollywood hack writer fantasises that he’s back in the Paris of the 1920s. The look-alike actor...
by NRB | 21 Sep 2012 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Patrick White worried about his drinking. He told biographer David Marr there were times when he drank half a bottle of spirits a day and wine as well. He consulted doctors, almost hoping, Marr suggests, for a diagnosis of alcoholism, which would relieve him of...