The New York Times comes to the mailbox in fits and starts, sometimes three papers a day, often none at all. The hard copy was my Christmas gift for my husband and, admittedly, for myself. We both hate reading newspapers online.
Despite the lateness and feast-or-famine delivery, it is good to be almost buried alive in newsprint. Whenever I need a fix, I grab up whatever section is handiest, and always find news of interest and discover things I did not know before.
This morning I plucked the obituary page, B-16, of a week-old issue. I read that Rod McKuen had died. He was a poet, songwriter and butt of many critics and jokes. McKuen laughed at his detractors all the way to the bank. He lived in Beverly Hills in a 15,000-square-foot mansion.
Everyone in the early 1970s had one of his books or records or, at the least, a greeting card with his romantic poetry as text. If my college dormitory in the early 1970s was any indication, Rod McKuen was the poet of the people, at least those who loved emotional writing about love, loss, cats and flowers.
The poet believed his incredible success had “soured the critics,” The Times said. It’s an age-old pattern. If something becomes too popular, has mass appeal, it can’t possibly be any good. At least that’s the way the critics read it.
As if to prove McKuen’s theory, on Page B-15 was the obituary of Colleen McCullough, author of “The Thorn Birds,” which sold 30 million copies and became a popular television mini-series. She died the same day as McKuen.
McCullough wrote 20 books in all, but it was the Australian love story involving a beautiful wife’s illicit affair with a handsome Catholic priest that sold best and made her millions.
McCullough wasn’t a darling of the critics, either. Reviewers “took the author to task for sins ranging from stilted dialogue to the profligate use of exclamation points,” The Times said.
Like McKuen, McCullough didn’t seem to give a fig what the critics thought. At least it didn’t stop her from typing. Known for her speed, she could write up to 30,000 words a day, which might sound like a lie if, say, William Faulkner had said it.
I’m not sure there’s a moral to this Tale of Two Obits, except, maybe, love is a state that allows, even demands, escapist literature. The critics can pan poetry that’s too accessible, or judge harshly a plotline punctuated with exclamation points, but if the objective is to communicate, these writers did.
This measure of worth for literature doesn’t always work. One would have to dismiss Shakespeare and Harper Lee as hacks. I’ve never read “The Thorn Birds” and haven’t thought about Rod McKuen in decades. But I know from personal experience it is every writer’s wish to have written something, anything, which people actually will read.
Both writers had terrible childhoods. They wrote about them in their respective memoirs. Perhaps that’s why they erred on the side of sentimentality and romance in their work.
Perhaps they, too, were escaping, from “crowded rooms and lonesome tunes and very little sky…,” as poet McKuen wrote.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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