This month's Puzzler
Editor's note: Thanks to the alert readers who spotted our error in the last Puzzler. We appreciate your keen eyes, and would even more appreciate someone donating those eyes to our proofreaders.
On August 22, 1920, this man was born in Waukegan, Illinois. Raised in a blue-collar family, he was an intellectually curious child who preferred reading to playground games with friends. When he began elementary school, he was drawn to science fiction and fantasy tales featuring heroic figures like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
Within a few years, he moved on to masters of the genre—including H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allen Poe. By age eleven, he began writing his own short stories, and at age twelve, he embarked on his first serious writing effort, an attempt to write a sequel to an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.
At age fourteen, he and his family moved to California. While attending Los Angeles High School, he became a huge movie fan, but also deepened and expanded his sci-fi interests. He graduated from high school in 1938.
After publishing his first story in 1938—at age 18—he spent nearly a decade trying to make it as a writer (severe vision problems kept him out of military service in WWII). While some stories were published in pulp fiction magazines (“the pulps”), he had no success in getting into “the glossies.”
In 1946, he entered a short story (“Homecoming”) in a Mademoiselle magazine competition. The story was about a young boy who, lacking supernatural powers himself, felt like a complete outsider at a family reunion of witches, vampires, and werewolves. The tale resonated with a young staffer named Truman Capote, who plucked it from a slush pile of submissions. After it was published, it went on to become one of the year’s best American short stories.
Over the next several decades, he became one of literary history’s most popular and influential writers.
Who was this man? (Answer below)
The Log of the Printed Page: A bookseller's diary
April 25, 2024
The first guy in the door this morning came bearing helpful information. He generously shared that a book I had priced lower than any comparable copies on the market was, in fact, more than two times the amount two of his friends of his had paid for the same title. Just sayin', he said. He thought I should know this, and he said in a tone one would use to tell a friend his fly is open. Clearly, he didn't want me to embarrass myself. He said he wanted the book, but, well...he couldn't pay a lot more than the copies his friends got because they got theirs at the correct price.
I thanked him bringing this to my attention. "Maybe you can find a copy where your friends found theirs," I suggested. He said that there were no copies left at the prices his friends paid, and the only copies available for sale were the erroneously priced ones like mine.
This reminded me of a story a friend who worked at Barnes and Noble once told me. He had a customer who wanted to buy a copy of Madonna's "Sex," but he hesitated at the price. "Walden Books sold these for 25% off, but they're out now." My friend said, "When we're out, our copies will be 25% off, too."
Eventually, my guy bought a book. He offered me cash for it "walking out the door," which is what people say when they don't want to pay sales tax. I told him I had to collect tax because "commit crimes" is not on my bucket list.
I should have suggested he get one of his friends to buy it.
- Dan Danbom
