5 x 5: Authors

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5 facts and trivia items about 5 authors . . . 

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J K Rowling: 

Although she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, her name is Joanne Rowling. Her publishers originally thought that a book written by a woman might not attract young boys as readers so they asked her to use her initial instead, She added the initial K after her grandmother Kathleen. 

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Rowling’s Harry Potter manuscript was rejected 12 times before being accepted for publication by Bloomsbury. The first manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was produced by Rowling while sitting in small cafes around Edinburgh. She lived here with her daughter, and they survived off of government benefits. 

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Rowling became a mother at the age of 25 whilst involved in a very short-lived and unhappy marriage that included domestic abuse. She suffered from clinical depression for years while she fought for her daughter’s survival, obtaining only the bare minimum from government benefits. She argues that depression and sadness are very different experiences; while sadness involves feeling, depression does not. Her creation of the dementors later in the book series is her putting depression onto paper. The dementos were the creatures that fed off of the happiness of the living; hollow, torturous beings that suck life out rather than create. 

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Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life in which she progressed from living on benefits to being the world's first billionaire author. She lost her billionaire status after giving away much of her earnings to charity but remains one of the wealthiest people in the world. 

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In 2015, following the referendum on same-sex marriage in Ireland, Rowling joked that if Ireland legalised same-sex marriage, Dumbledore and Gandalf could get married there. The Westboro Baptist Church, in response, stated that if the two got married, they would picket. Rowling responded by saying "Alas, the sheer awesomeness of such a union in such a place would blow your tiny bigoted minds out of your thick sloping skulls." 

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Joseph Heller: 

Heller served in the US Army Air Corps during World War II. He flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. 

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The initial chapter of Catch-22 was published in 1955 in New World Writing, issue 7. It was titled Catch-18. The title was changed because Leon Uris’ novel, Mila 18, came out at the same time. 

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Heller’s agent sold the unfinished manuscript of Catch-22 to Simon and Schuster. The publisher paid $750 and promised another $750 when the manuscript would be delivered 3 years later. Heller missed the deadline by 5 years. 

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Today the term Catch-22 means “a dilemma with no easy way out”. 

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Heller’s novels after Catch-22 sold respectably well but could not duplicate the success of his first novel. Told by an interviewer that he had never produced anything else as good as Catch-22, Heller famously responded, "Who has?" 

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God: 

John 1:1 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

The Bible states in many passages that it is the word of God but, whilst there are many analyses of the meaning and interpretation of the book itself, there are very few notes about the author. Naaah, just messing with you. God didn’t sit at a keyboard, or with a quill for the Old testament, and write it out himself/herself/?, rather it is maintained that persons inspired by God wrote it. 

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Some books of the Bible were written in the clear light of history and their authorship isn’t controversial. Other books can be reliably dated to a given period by either internal clues, in the way that books written in the 1700s do not mention aeroplanes, for instance and by their literary style, which develops over time. 

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The Bible was written over a span of 1500 years, by 40 writers. 

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All mainline Christians have agreed since the fourth century about which 27 books belong in the New Testament. Thus, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are there, but the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary, and many others are not. The Council of Trent of 1546 reaffirmed that finalisation for Catholicism in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England and the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for English Presbyterians established the official finalisations for those new branches of Christianity in light of the Reformed faith. 

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The Old Testament canon is slightly more complicated because there are two lists. The older one predates Jesus and includes seven books that were either translated from Hebrew texts or were originally written in Greek. The newer list was drawn up about 70 years after Jesus died and includes only books originally written in Hebrew. For over 1,000 years, all Christians accepted the older list. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he chose to use the shorter list. Other Protestant translations followed suit, giving the name deuterocanonical (second canon)—or sometimes apocrypha (hidden or not genuine)—to the seven books and parts of Daniel and Esther. The Canon of Trent is the list of books officially officially approved at the Council of Trent. The list confirmed that the deuterocanonical books were on a par with the other books of the canon (while Luther placed these books in the Apocrypha of his canon) and affirmed Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate. 

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Victor Hugo: 

French novelist, poet and playwright Victor Hugo is today best remembered for his novels Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables (The Miserable Ones), published in 1830 and 1862 respectively. The goal behind the publication of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was ultimately to raise awareness of the decrepit state of the massive cathedral in Paris. Hugo also wanted to point out the importance of Gothic architecture in general. At the time of writing, the Notre-Dame Cathedral had fallen into disrepair. Les Miserables takes place in the early 19th century and was written to show the social injustice and the difficulties of the poor in Paris at the time. 

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Les Miserables contains 5 volumes, with 365 chapters and 1,400 pages (in the original French 1,900 pages). It is considered to be one of the longest novels in history. 

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Apart from also writing poetry and plays, Hugo was also an illustrator. Over the course of his lifetime, he produced more than 4,000 drawings. Hugo kept these drawings to himself, as he didn’t want them to take his writing out of the spotlight. 

Drawing by Victor Hugo, 1847 

The Casquets Lighthouse’ (1866) 

‘Ecce Lex (Hanged Man)’ (1854) 

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Hugo spent 15 years in exile. Deeply involved in French politics, he fought for social reform and shed light on the miserable conditions of the poor in France. Elected to the National Assembly, he made speeches against the death penalty and social injustice, and advocated for free education. In 1851, Napoléon III came to power and called for an anti-parliamentary constitution. Hugo was furious and publicly denounced the new leader as a traitor to France. He subsequently fled to Brussels, and then onto Guernsey, an English island off the coast of Normandy. Hugo lived in exile from 1855 until 1870. While he was exiled, he published pamphlets and completed and published Les Misérables. 

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To ensure writing output, Hugo would strip naked, give his clothes to his servants, and allow them to lock him in a room. He would have to write his pages for the day before he was to be given his clothes back or let outside of the room. On cold days he was provided a blanket. 

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Steve Matthews: 

Australian author Steve Matthews was born in the UK in 1953, migrating to Australia in 1985. At the age of fifty-five, he sold his business interests so he could to fulfill a lifetime’s ambition to write full time. Since then, Steve’s children’s books have been published in Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA, and his work in children’s literacy at home and abroad has been acknowledged in the Australian State Parliament. 

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Books by Steve Matthews:

Children’s books:

Charming 

The Psycho Scientist 

Slug’s Revenge 

Lord Grott of Grott Hall 

Brain-In-A-Box 

Adult books: 

The Skinny Girl 

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Steve's passion for promoting literacy has taken him around the globe, visiting thousands of school students across Australia and even an orphanage in India. “Literacy is far more significant now than it has been for very many years. I think it is critical that we share books with our kids from a very early age - read to them, read for them, read with them!” – Steve Matthews 

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The Skinny Girl, Steve’s first adult novel, tells the story of Daisy Croucher, a victim of emotional and psychological domestic abuse, an often hidden sutuation.  The book shows that such victims can escape and overcome.  It prompted the New South Wales Attorney General, Mark Speakman, to say in January 2019: "Domestic abuse is endemic in society today and The Skinny Girl goes a long way to showing readers just how mentally and physically debilitating it can be, through the eyes of a victim. A great story, well told." One further aspect: Steve is donating 100% of his earnings from the novel, in perpetuity, to causes that help victims of domestic abuse and domestic violence. 

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Steve is my friend.