Literary Figures: Novelists

As a journalist, John Darnton spent 40 years at The New York Times. As a novelist, he writes colorful mysteries. His newest murder yarn, set in a big-city newsroom that seems awfully familiar: Black and White and Dead All Over.

Mystery novelist Janwillem Van de Wetering was once a motorcycle gang member in South Africa, an aspiring monk in Kyoto, Japan and a policeman in Amsterdam. The Dutch author of The Hollow-Eyed Angel, The Blond Baboon and The Maine Massacre died July 4 at the age of 77.

Author of new-wave sci-fi — and the much-loved children's story The Brave Little Toaster — took his life last week. Fresh Air remembers the novelist, poet and critic.

Before Tony Montana, there was Meyer Lansky. True-crime writer T.J. English recounts the history of a mob-ruled Havana before the 1959 revolution.

Novelist Ron Hansen is best known for his tales of Western bandits and whiskey runners, but he claims his inspiration for these unsavory characters is divine. The author of Exiles discusses writing, faith and his status as a Catholic deacon in a secular literary world.

In Blake Nelson's novel, Paranoid Park, a 16-year-old skateboarder is implicated when a transit cop is killed at the local skate park, and withdraws into silence as a way of dealing with it. Director Gus Van Sant recently released a film version of the novel.

In Meg Wolitzer's new novel, a group of smart, successful women choose full-time motherhood over promising professional careers — and come to terms with the effects of that decision a decade later.

Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price discusses his new novel, Lush Life, about the repercussions of a shooting on the Lower East side. Price has written extensively about the realities of inner city life; he is a writer for HBO's The Wire which ends a five-year run on Sunday.

Movie-theater owner Ben Tanaka is having relationship issues; his girlfriend, Miko, suspects he's secretly attracted to white women. (She's right, but he won't admit it.) In Shortcomings, Asian-American graphic novelist Adrian Tomine (Scrapbook, Summer Blonde) has finally done what many fans and critics have suggested he should: addressed race in his work.

Norman Mailer once wrote that before he was 17, he'd formed the desire to be a major writer. That wish certainly came true. One political campaign, two Pulitzer Prizes and an unprecedented level of controversy later, he became a literary grandee unlike any other. This interview originally aired on Oct. 8, 1991.