Lost classics (and guilty pleasures)
Compiled by Davis Macklin and Andrea Caron
For the debut of our new feature, we have debut author Brian Freeman, whose first novel, the psychological suspense thriller Immoral, was the main selection of both the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. One of the most inventive thrillers of the past several years, Immoral was recently nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was selected by Bookspan as International Book of the Month. A second novel, Stripped, is due in bookstores this summer. Mr. Freeman hails from St. Paul, Minnesota.
The question we pose to each writer is as follows: Is there any book that you would nominate for “Lost Classic” status? (That is, something you consider brilliant, but which no one seems to read anymore.) Also, somewhat alternately, what would your literary guilty pleasures be?
Brian Freeman on Irving Wallace
Can a lost classic and a guilty pleasure be one and the same thing? I hope so.
When I was growing up, I enjoyed reading epics — the longer the better. I loved books like James Michener’s The Source, Leon Uris’s Trinity and James Clavell’s Tai-pan. Of course, I couldn’t get enough of Robert Ludlum, too — he practically invented the modern thriller. When I read the Chancellor Manuscript, I thought, ‘that’s what I want to do with my life. I want to write those kinds of books.’
Those could all be considered lost classics, although you can probably still find them in many bookstores. But one book that stands out in my mind that most people today probably don’t remember is The Plot by Irving Wallace. It was written in 1967, and it is a big, sweeping drama with numerous character stories that slowly wind their way together into a marvelously suspenseful climax. It was long, melodramatic — this was the era of Valley of the Dolls, after all — and clearly a product of the 1960s. Guilty pleasure? Absolutely. Like a Sidney Sheldon book on steroids. I loved it.
The Plot has one of the best opening pages I’ve ever read. That’s still how I judge a book today: Does the opening page make the book impossible to put down? Read the first couple of pages of The Plot and then don’t make plans for the next few days.
It had amazing sex scenes, too (an Irving Wallace trademark). Obviously that had an influence on me, since more than one person has pointed out that I’ve launched a niche by writing sexually-driven thrillers. (If you didn’t catch it, that’s the advertisement for my Edgar-nominated novel Immoral.)
Wallace only wrote a couple of books that I consider stellar. (The Word is his other masterpiece — it was The Da Vinci Code decades before Dan Brown ever put pen to paper.) But he opened my eyes to the way an author can give his or her characters life on the page and make a reader wonder how all the pieces of the puzzle will come together. That’s what suspense is all about. So if you can find a used copy of The Plot, check it out.
