"Gardner slept as little as three hours a night, instead staying at his typewriter until he had produced the 4,000-word daily target he set for himself. Gardner was a writing machine, a story industrialist... in recent years he'd hammered out millions of words and sold hundreds of stories."—Richard Rayner in his latest book, A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age (Doubleday).
(Twelfth in a series. Here's the whole danged thing so far. )
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3 comments:
There's a story--maybe true, maybe not--that in the days when Gardner was dictating to the secretary he eventually married he was two chapters into a new book when his secretary said, "Erle, you wrote this book three years ago." According to legend, Gardner built himself a new pipeful of tobacco and then said,"All right. Chapter One" and set to work on a brand new book.
I have never read any of the Perry Mason books, but I'm a big fan of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Gardner was an entertainer on par with a couple of my other faves, Rex Stout and Leslie Charteris.
I'm with Graham on the Cool/Lam books. The banter between them is worth the price of admission. Sometimes I feel the story is overly complicated, but the dialogue, oh the dialogue!
Regarding Ed's story about Gardner. Even if it isn't true, it sure has the ring of truth. He flat turned out a shlew of books. Seems like he opened a tap and they poured out.
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