In the Spotlight: John Correll

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John has lived all over the world, but he currently calls New Zealand home. But New Zealand wasn’t enough. In his own words, “I’d been looking for a writing family for about a year and nothing seemed to work. Then, by accident really, I stumbled upon the coop site. I read the stories and comments and liked what I saw, so I gave it a try. It has been great from the start, and it just gets better like a oak barreled aged port (at least 15 years, but 20 is better).”

Here’s how books have influenced him throughout his life.

My earliest reading memory:

Sam I Am, by Dr. Seuss, is the ticket. I must have been around five when my Dad turned reading this book into some sort of nauseating trauma. He bought me the book, and I shrugged without bothering to look at it. Look, in my first two formative years, I rattled off in German with my Oma, then I had to switch to American hillbilly with my Granny. And the confusing guttural transitions hit me. I can’t rightly remember, but I’m pretty sure I developed a mighty grudge against language(s). Anyway, the following day, I sat at the table waiting for breakfast. That’s kind-of what five-year-olds do. They wait around picking their noses, hoping the adults have something interesting up their sleeve or, in this case, on the plate. “Here’s your breakfast, Slick,” Dad said. He placed a plate in front of me. I choked. Something was terribly wrong with that ham. It looked gangrenous. It looked like it had died in the fridge over a decade before. Its gray-green hue resembled the closest thing to death that I ever experienced. I was too young for this horror. So I stared at Dad with my best, “What is this nightmare?” wide eyed gaze. 

“Try the soft-boiled egg,” Dad said with a grin that I later learned to be his most mischievous. I shook my head. Then Dad grabbed a sharp knife, and in a ish-wish-swish, he decapped the egg. I held my stomach. WhereThe Legos was the egg white? Where the Pop Tarts was the yellow yolk? What in the name of Robin, the boy wonder, happened here. All the eggy goodness vanished in a bright green gel. A gel that might have once belonged to a decent egg.

“I ain’t eatin’ that,” I declared, but I read the book anyway. I had to. The breakfast made me do it. 

Only later, as a father in training, did I learn the joys of surprising my kids with the marvels of mismatched food coloring and a suitable syringe. A simple hollow point creating a new family tradition. A game called, “Make the kindergartners squirm.”

My favorite book growing up:

In elementary school, I considered that books were suited solely for grown-up people. “Comic books are where it’s at. Don’t you know anything?” I remarked to my teacher’s narco-book-pushing habits. I ripped through the classics: Batman, Thor, Superman, G.I. Combat, and Spiderman. Then, I had the luxury of German, so I read the classic Max & Moritz (this horrid 1865 comic book demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that Germans were warped even before Germany existed [that’s 1871 if you didn’t want to know]). I tore through Fix und Foxi, Lucky Luke, Tin-Tin, Buck Danny, and an occasional Mosaik from East Germany. But my overall favorite was Asterix & Obelix. 

As I grew up more (I’m not sure if I’ve ever finished), new comic favs emerged: Das kleine Arschloch by Walter Moers (a brilliant satirical spotlight on West German culture in the 80s) and Life in Hell by Matt Groening are some examples. I’m sure there are more, but I’m moving on to the next question.

The book that changed me as a teenager:

I’d say there were four of these teen-changer bastards: The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain; Cyberiad, by Stanisław Lem; Foundation, by Isaac Asimov; and The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman. Tuchman’s book was the first serious history book I read. It highlighted how complicated history can seem. Then Twain’s Innocents was, for me, a different type of history. A history unfolding in the writing. Foundation turned history on its head by expressing its predictability. Of course, Asimov also alluded to the Catholic Church shepherding the foundations of the Roman Empire through the ‘dark ages.’ And Lem? He’s just a genius.

Then, there was historical writing hidden in the attic of granny’s old farmhouse. It wasn’t a book. It was a collection of magazines. A very different magazine that changed my trust in historians. This wasn’t Time, Life, Newsweek, Scientific American, or Popular Mechanics. This was the best of Yank, the Army Weekly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yank,_the_Army_Weekly). Words straight from the Second World War, right as it happened. This wasn’t a glossy, purified, sanitized history like Guns of August, Band of Brothers, or The Longest Day. These were stories and photos by, as Terry Pratchett called them, the invisibles.

The letters and stories were from the cooks, clerks, mine clearers, medics, nurses, mechanics, and more. Basically, all the people history never mentions. So many stories from all the chubby and scrawny soldiers working or fighting on the forgotten fronts: the foothills of Italy, the beaches of southern France, the jungles of Burma, and the Aleutian Islands. These weren’t stories of fighters in their prime leaping on grenades (they tend not to write stories). There was nothing about the General’s grand campaigns and ingenious strategies. These stories complained about, well, almost everything. They worried about getting paid, the mail, the bugs, the bureaucracy, or the toilets. One series of letters even complained about racism well before it became popular. The invisibles had a better grasp of history than the professionals. Their stories were raw, visceral, and, for me as a teen, eye-openingly amazing. (Note: Bill Bryson hadn’t materialized yet when I discovered Yank.)

The writer who changed my mind:

They all changed my mind in some way. Books just do that to you. In my teens, I devoured any Sci-fi I could find: H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle (including Sherlock, of course), Robert Heinlein, Philip Dick, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, and etcetera. After High School, I delved into Russian and German literature (instigated by a couple of University classes.) There was Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, and Solzhenitsyn for the Russians. Then for the Germans (read in the original): Goethe, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig (okay, he was Austrian), Bertolt Brecht (I was forced to read him in High School, so I hated him unequivocally. I’m still not sure if that opinion has changed), Thomas Mann, and Günter Grass (I like him). In the 80s, I vacuumed up classics like Joseph Conad’s Heart of Darkness, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and on and on. When I met my wife, she was keen on the French. So I read Sartre, Camus, Flaubert, and Céline. The French all seemed miserable, but at least they weren’t apocalyptic like the Germans. This, all of this reading — changed me. You’d think I’d be a halfway decent writer by now. Alas, I figure I didn’t practice enough, but I’m trying to make amends.

The book that made me want to be a writer: 

It’s never really just one book, is it? You read one book, and your mind goes, “Wow, that was weird.” Then you read another, and another, until you reach some sort of critical mass, and your mind goes, “Wait-a-minute, I could do this too.” Then, BAM, off you go.

I don’t remember the individual books that inspired. But, the initial set of authors — those I can shout about are Mark Twain, Herman Hesse, Stanisław Lem, Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Gore Vidal, and Douglas Adams. There were others, but I forget who they were. Then, after a long hiatus of hiding my pen in the basement, P. G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett made me run out to purchase one of those fancy fountain pens. You know, the type where left handers smudge the ink all over the page? After a month of blue stains, especially along the edge of my left hand, I switched to a number two pencil.

The book I could never read again: 

Dune, okay, I managed to get halfway through, then I thought, “God, what a waste of time.” My son, at 16, loves Dune and has devoured the whole tedious series. These books are massive, and I can’t fathom the reasons for his appetite. I interrogated him over his odd reading hunger, and so far, I can’t get any conclusive answer. All he says is, “They’re interesting.” Maybe I need a stronger spotlight and a more uncomfortable chair for my sessions?

The same thing happened with The Game of Thrones, which my daughter loved. My daughter has a wicked temper, so I refrained from asking any questions. It’s best not to poke the wasp’s nest when it comes to teenage daughters. That said, she’s in her twenties now. So, maybe it’s safe to inquire? I can never tell. 

The book I am currently reading: 

For the second time, Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time. 

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If you’d like to be In the Spotlight, send your own answers to those questions in the body of an email to Sue at stranscht@sbcglobal.net. (No attachments, please.) There’s no deadline.

Photo credit: Jez Timms, Unsplash.com