Wednesday this week, George Macdonald Fraser died. GMF was the author of the Flashman series, among other books. He was my favorite historical novelist and a recipient of the highest honor I am humbly able to bestow upon any author: he was one of the few authors whose new books I buy immediately upon seeing them in the shop for the first time, regardless of price, commonsense or circumstance.
The first book of GMF's I ever bought was 'Flashman And The Redskins'. At the time I was working for the Housing Trust in Adelaide and every time I stepped into the Angus & Robertson's near Beehive Corner (now sadly long gone) I would see a half-dozen of the Flashman books, all in the same style of cover, sitting in the remaindered table. Initially I was not terribly interested, being put off by blurbs that proclaimed it to be the second literary coming; you know the type. Eventually, however, I was jonesing and so I picked up the one about the Wild West. I started reading it on the way home and I was hooked. The others at the remainder table got bought in short order. I began to hunt. Once all had been read, his other stuff got read, like "Mr American" and "Black Ajax", and both were excellent. I even went to far as to order a particularly hard-to-get copy of his fantastic "The Pyrates" from Amazon US, and have never once regretted the expenditure.
But of all his creations it was Ol Flashy that I loved best. Swashbuckling, cowardly, the very epitome of the Victorian cad. That didn't stop me from wanting to be him, however, and I think that's the mark of the very best books. No-one was more pleased than me when Celtic Films announced that the followup to their very successful "Sharpe" movies was to be three tales from the Flashman Papers, with GMF editing the scripts, no less!
Off you go, GMF. Go join Flashy, Elspeth, Scud East, Count Ignatieff, John Charity Spring and the rest of your rogues gallery!
No comments:
Post a Comment