What To Do When You Run Into A Literary Dead End
We are a family in crisis.
No, it is not divorce or drugs. It is books.
You avid readers out there will know what I mean: I’m referring to that crucial moment when you realize that there are no more books available by that favorite author whose complete output you’ve been devouring.
Since I started reading mysteries for fun, in between more serious biographies and history and fiction, I’ve been hitting the dead-end signs with appalling regularity. When you gallop through all of P.D. James or Ngaio Marsh or Elizabeth Peters or Elizabeth George, and you realize there are none left, it’s a grim moment indeed.
Most recently, it is Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, whose “An Orchestrated Death” and its sequels (not enough sequels!) were recommended by Seattle mystery writer Mary Daheim (I’ve run out of her books, too). How horrid to turn that last page in the most recent Harrod-Eagles, to race off to the bookstore and to hear that indeed, there are no more.
Running out of an author’s catalog is like being given a box of delicious chocolate truffles, and finishing the last one only to be told there are no more chocolate truffles left in the entire world. Other types of chocolate, certainly; chocolates with creams and crunchy or chewy stuff inside, yes; but no more chocolate truffles. Not unless the company that originally made them, the company that holds the exclusive recipe, might possibly issue some more - one truffle at a time, over a period of several years.
In vain do you ration those “truffles.” In vain do you slow down, hoping to postpone the inevitable end. When you’re done, there are no more, at least not for a long time. And not at all if you are hooked on an author who has gone to that big library in the sky.
The first, and still worst, literary dead end I hit in college, when I came to the end of Jane Austen’s immortal but very brief canon of six completed novels. It was a blow anticipated well in advance; Austen is almost as well known for her brevity as for her genius. That didn’t, however, make it any easier, not after saving the bittersweet “Persuasion” for last and rationing its pages as slowly as possible.
It was then that I evolved my re-reading system. Keep all those books by favored authors in one place; let enough time elapse; and then read them all over again. With Austen, I usually let a year elapse, and get a sharper new perspective each time.
This doesn’t work for all readers, particularly readers of mysteries. Once they’ve raced through to the finale and unwoven the plot, they might not want to travel that way again.
It’s that unwillingness to let beloved characters go that gives rise to so many sequels, authorized and unauthorized.
When you’ve run out of sequels, it’s time to hit the bookstore or the library to consult people who can recommend an author you’ll like almost as well as your current obsession.
And if you’re fortunate enough to be a fan of a living author, be patient. In interviews, Daheim, Peters and Patricia Veryan - all involved in long-running series with the same or related characters - speak of their awareness of agents, publishers and readers drumming their fingers on the coffee table waiting for the next book to arrive.
So relax, re-read and get recommendations. Sooner or later, that next truffle will come.