copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman
In a previous post, we considered the lives of Hans Christian Andersen and H. G. Wells as examples of authors who “write what they know,” or, in other words, inform their fiction with their actual experiences--and especially a pivotal experience, a turning point--in their lives. The same is true of many other--perhaps, most other--writers, the West Coast Stephen King, Dean Koontz, as well.
In fact, Koontz is a classic case.
Koontz grew up in abject poverty, the son of an abusive alcoholic who, the writer says, taught him everything about how not to be a man. Later in life, when his father was in a serious decline in his health, Koontz not only let him live with him, but also took care of him, not, he says, because he loved him or felt any sense of duty to him, but for his own sake. Koontz never wanted to become the man his father was.
His cruel, sometimes violent, and neglectful father seems to be the basis of many of his novels’ antagonists, not a few of whom demonstrate the behavior of the true sociopath and have no socially redeeming qualities. Most are narcissistic, and some are delusional, imagining themselves to be godlike figures who are above the law.
Like Koontz himself, many of his protagonists have suffered abuse as children, coming from seriously dysfunctional homes or backgrounds, but, again like Koontz, they are financially successful, resolute, compassionate, and sometimes altruistic. They are almost always willing to help a damsel in distress, just as, perhaps, Koontz, as a boy, longed to come to the aid of his mother, who suffered much violence from her husband in order to protect her son. The heroines in Koontz’s novels are invariably of the same mold, and several are single mothers who persevere against poverty and other limitations to bring up their children as best they can. To some extent, they mat even be surrogates for the young Koontz.
Dan Simmons, author of horror and science fiction novels worth reading, also uses his own personal experience to inform his writing. His adult career was spent in elementary education. According to his website, he “grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source for his fictional ‘Elm Haven,’” the setting of his 1991 horror novel Summer of Night, which features a group of preteens who, one may assume, are much like their real-life counterparts who Simmons knew as his friends during his childhood in Brimfield. Much of the novel’s action takes place in Old Central School, a combination junior-senior high school that is in its last year. Once the current class graduates, the school is scheduled for retirement.
Many of the persons, places, and things featured in his novel had actual counterparts in the 1960’s Brimfield in which Simmons grew up. His younger brother seems to have been the model for Lawrence Stewart, and two of his boyhood friends appear to have inspired Kevin Grumbacher, Dale Stewart, Mike O‘Rourke, and Jim Harlen. Old Central School’s true-life counterpart was Brimfield School, across the street from Dan and Wayne’s (Dales’ and Lawrence’s’) house. The community’s Old Settlers’ Day is featured, somewhat altered, in Summer, as is the Saturday evening free shows that were featured in the city’s downtown bandstand park. His science fiction novels use Simmons’ extensive knowledge of romantic poetry and mythology.
Although he was not a horror novelist, another writer who wrote what he knew is playwright J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. In his case, his personal experience provided more a theme than a formula for his work. According to Wikipedia, Barrie “was a small child” who “drew attention to himself with storytelling.” His mother’s most beloved son, David, died two days shy of age fourteen, while ice skating, a loss that “devastated” his mother, and “Barrie tried to fill David’s place in his attentions, even wearing his clothes”:
One time Barrie entered her room, and heard her say “Is that you?” “I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to,” wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), “and I said in a little lonely voice, ‘No, it’s not him, it’s just me.’” Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.
To pass the time, Barrie imagined himself a pirate.
His early literary efforts, “two ‘Tommy’ novels,” Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902) “were about a boy and a young man who clings to childish fantasy, with an unhappy ending [sic].” After writing several other plays, Barrie wrote Peter Pan, which George Bernard Shaw described as “ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people.”
It is not difficult to see the parallels between Barrie’s childhood, during which he impersonated his dead (i. e., lost) brother in an effort to appease his mother’s grief, to gain her attention, and to satisfy his mother’s wish that “her dead [i. e., lost] son would remain a boy forever.”
Peter Pan is a play about a flying boy who, refusing to grow up. leads a group of other lost boys in various activities, including the fighting of pirates.
Peter Pan is a play about a flying boy who, refusing to grow up. leads a group of other lost boys in various activities, including the fighting of pirates.
Like Andersen and Wells, Koontz, Simmons, and Barrie obviously “write (or wrote) what they know (or knew).”