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Loading... Seldom Disappointed: A Memoirby Tony Hillerman
None.  auntieknickers | Apr 3, 2013 |  I finished Seldom Disappointed, Tony Hillerman's memoir, last night and a very satisfying read it was. With all the books out there about unhappy, drunken, crazy people and/or their unhappy, drunken, crazy relatives, it's a tonic to hear from people who are happy, sober and sane. (  ) BooksCatsEtc | Apr 23, 2011 | Enjoy his mysteries, and liked this autobiography, too. mulliner | Oct 17, 2009 |  ktoonen | May 6, 2008 | Interesting and fun to read. ( ) Yestare | Dec 10, 2007 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0060505869, Paperback)In this affectionate and unvarnished recollection of his past, Tony Hillerman looks at seventy-six years spent getting from hard-times farm boy to bestselling author. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, Hillerman draws brilliant portrait not just of his life, but of the world around him. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:43:23 -0500) "When Tony Hillerman looks back at seventy-six years spent getting from hard-times farm boy to bestselling author, he sees lots of evidence that Providence was poking him along. For example, when an absentminded Army clerk left him off the hospital ship taking the wounded home from France, the mishap put him on a collision course with a curing ceremony held for two Navajo Marines, thereby providing the grist for a writing career that now sees his books published in sixteen languages around the world and often on bestseller lists. Or, for example, when his agent told him his first novel was so bad that it would hurt both of their reputations, he nonetheless sent it to an editor, and that editor happened to like the Navajo stuff." "In this memoir, Hillerman offers frequent backward glances at where he found ideas for plots of his books and the characters that inhabit them. He takes us with him to death row, where he interviews a man about to die in the gas chamber and details how this murderer became Colton Wolf in one of his novels. He relates how flushing a solitary heron from a sandbar caused him to convert Joe Leaphorn from husband to widower, and how his self-confessed bias against the social elite solved the key plot problem in A Thief of Time."--BOOK JACKET.… (more) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Hillerman begins with his childhood in rural, Depression-era Oklahoma. His love for his parents and siblings was well-deserved and reciprocated, and he tells many amusing boyhood tales. Hardships, including his father's death, are met and overcome as a family, strengthened by faith.
I had not known of Hillerman's war service until I read his obituary, which mentioned that he had been awarded a Silver Star. He tells the story of being an infantryman in Europe during the difficult fighting of 1944 and 1945 with the modesty we have come to expect from the "Greatest Generation." He also continues, as he does throughout the book, to point out instances of good fortune and how events that seemed bad at the time led to life-changing experiences.
The post-war years found Hillerman finishing college, meeting and marrying his wife Marie, beginning a career in journalism, and forming, with Marie, a family of one biological child and five adopted ones; then moving into academia and finally writing his first novel, [book: The Blessing Way]. Throughout, Hillerman comes across as a person I would have been glad to know, and have been privileged, along with many others, to know through his work. I would recommend reading his novels first, but if you've read all of them and would like just a bit more Hillerman, read this book. (