Literary Obituaries

[waltky]

She was a native of Louisville, Ky....

Mystery Writer Grafton Dies in California
December 29, 2017 — Mystery writer Sue Grafton has died in Santa Barbara, California. She was 77.

Her daughter, Jamie Clark, posted news of her mother's death on Grafton's web page Friday. She says her mother passed away Thursday night after a two-year battle with cancer and was surrounded by family, including Grafton's husband, Steve.

Sue Grafton is pictured in New York, Oct. 15, 2002. The mystery writer has died in Santa Barbara, Calif., at age 77.​

Grafton was the author of the Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Series, in which each book title begins with a letter from the alphabet. The last was Y Is for Yesterday. Her daughter concluded her posting by saying, "The alphabet now ends at Y.''

Mystery Writer Grafton Dies in California

 

[waltky]

Creator of 'Beetle Bailey,' comic strip dies at 94...

Mort Walker, creator of 'Beetle Bailey,' dies at 94
Jan. 27, 2018 -- Creator of the legendary comic strip "Beetle Bailey," Mort Walker, died of pneumonia Saturday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 94.

Walker was a lifelong cartoonist who drew his first comic strip, "Lime Juices," at age 12. By age 15 he began publishing a strip called "Sunshine and Shadow" and at age 18 he became the chief editorial designer of Hallmark Cards. Along his career path he published other comic strips including "Hi and Lois," a "Beetle" spin-off he launched in 1954.

Creator of the legendary comic strip “Beetle Bailey,” Mort Walker, died Saturday at his home in Stamford, Conn.​

According to his family, Walker died in his studio surrounded by cartoon troops in various forms including toys, comic books and strips. "Beetle Bailey," known as the longest-running comic strip drawn by its original creator, showcased calamities of a lazy Army soldier at the fictional Camp Swampy. Inspiration for the comic came to Walker as he served a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War II.

From its debut in 1950 to the day he died, Walker drew each day's "Beetle Bailey." His assistant for more than 30 years, Bill Janocha, said Walker worked ahead so "months of his work exists and will be appearing throughout 2018." Janocha said thousands of hand-drawn sketches have been saved, "so Mort's writings and layouts can potentially continue to help steer 'Beetle Bailey' for years to come."

Mort Walker, creator of 'Beetle Bailey,' dies at 94

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Dead Poets Society founder dies after ordering tombstone
Sun, Jan 28, 2018 -The founder of the Dead Poets Society of America had a fatal heart attack a little more than a month after commissioning his own tombstone.

Walter Skold enlisted the son of novelist John Updike to carve a unique tombstone that would be topped with a dancing skeleton and a quill. Michael Updike, who received the poet’s deposit last month, said he never expected to be carving the monument so soon. There was no indication of any premonition of an untimely death before Skold’s passing at age 57 on Saturday last week in Elkins Park, Michael Updike said on Friday. “He was a sweet soul,” Michael Updike said. “He was a kind person with this quirky predilection to poets’ graves and death and the macabre.”

Known as the “Dead Poets Guy,” Skold visited the final resting places of more than 600 poets after launching the Dead Poets Society in 2008 in Maine, drawing inspiration for the name from the 1989 Robin Williams movie. Along the way, Skold drew attention to bards and poetry while producing a massive repository of information on poets’ final resting places. He also had a sense of humor. He traveled in a cargo van he dubbed the “Dedgar the Poemobile,” sometimes embellishing the dashboard with an Edgar Allan Poe bobblehead.

However, he was serious about honoring poets, and he launched a movement to create Dead Poets Remembrance Day on the Sunday closest to Oct. 7, the date Poe died. “It takes a little chutzpah to say we’re starting a holiday, but we believe it’s a really good idea, and we hope it catches on,” he said in 2010. Skold was living in Freeport, Maine, when he left his job as a public-school technology teacher to pursue his passions of poetry and photography and to launch the society. A celebration of Skold’s life was to be held yesterday in York, Pennsylvania, where his family burial plot is located. There is also to be a smaller remembrance in Maine at a later date.

Dead Poets Society founder dies after ordering tombstone - Taipei Times

 

[longknife]

Also Ursula LaGuinn, a prolific scifi writer.

 

[waltky]

Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe passes...

Bonfire of the Vanities author Tom Wolfe dies aged 88
15 May`18 - Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities, has died aged 88, his agent has confirmed.

The Right Stuff, about the first American astronauts, was adapted into a film in 1983 with Sam Shepard, Dennis Quaid and Ed Harris. The Bonfire of the Vanities, published in 1987, was a satire of 1980s excesses in New York and was also made into a film starring Tom Hanks in 1990. He also wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, published in 1968. Wolfe died of an unspecified infection in a New York City hospital, his agent, Lynn Nesbit, told Reuters. He was a pioneer of New Journalism, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s, a literary style written from a subjective perspective as opposed to more traditional objective journalism.

Wolfe also pioneered New Journalism​

His writing was often littered with exclamation points, italics and improbable words. Wolfe's book The New Journalism, published in 1973, was a collection of work by the likes of Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer. The editor of the New York Times Book Review described Wolfe's death as the "passing of an era". Wolfe won the Bad Sex in Fiction prize in 2004 for I Am Charlotte Simmons and was also shortlisted in 2012 for a scene in Back to Blood.

Tom Wolfe with Gloria Steinem - he was named GQ Man of the Year in 2015​

He was known for coining phrases such as "radical chic" - a derogatory term for pretentious liberals - and "the me decade", which described the self-indulgence of the 1970s. He once told the Wall Street Journal: "I think every living moment of a human being's life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status."

US author Tom Wolfe dies aged 88