RIP Thomas Berger

[trysail]

From NPR:

Thomas Berger, the witty and feverishly prolific author of Little Big Man, died July 13 in Nyack, N.Y., following an illness, his publisher said Monday. He was 89. Although Berger was most famous for Little Big Man, which became a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, he wrote dozens of other books in genres varying from sci-fi to crime to Westerns. "Berger's books are accessible and funny and immerse you in the permanent strangeness of his language and attitude, perhaps best encapsulated by Berger's own self-definition as a 'voyeur of copulating words,' " Jonathan Lethem wrote in a 2012 essay. "He offers a book for every predilection: if you like westerns, there's his classic, 'Little Big Man'; so, too, has he written fables of suburban life ('Neighbors'), crime stories ('Meeting Evil'), fantasies, small-town 'back-fence' stories of Middle American life, and philosophical allegories ('Killing Time')." In a 1980 interview, Berger told The New York Times, "I should like the reader to be aware that a book of mine is written in the English language, which I love with all my heart and write to the best of my ability and with the most honorable of intentions — which is to say, I am peddling no quackery, masking no intent to tyrannize, and asking nobody's pity. (I suspect that I am trying to save my own soul, but that's nobody else's business.)"​

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...s-thomas-berger-author-of-little-big-man-dies


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[trysail]

Little Big Man was a truly imaginative work of fiction.

The enormous success of the film (and its memorable scenes and lines) had the unfortunate effect of overshadowing the book upon which it was based.

It is a reflection of the nature of our culture that 120 minutes of images and sound supersede a towering work of literary art in our collective memory.

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[about_average]

I liked both the movie and the book.
I remember reading when they were making the movie that they trucked in several tons of buffalo dung to make the scenes more authentic. I don't know how well they achieved it overall, but from what I read in "The Indian Tipi", and another book I can't remember the name of, about that period, they captured life on the plains fairly well.

 

[trysail]

I'll bet that 90% of the people who have seen the film Little Big Man have absolutely no idea who Thomas Berger is.



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