NewMexiKen

The New York Times has published its Notable Books lists — high points in this year’s fiction and poetry, nonfiction, children’s books, mysteries and science fiction. There’s separate essays for travel and photography.

was born on this date in 1936. Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac has an interesting essay on Burke.

He’s best known for his series of detective novels featuring Dave Robicheaux, an ex-New Orleans policeman, Vietnam veteran, and recovering alcoholic. Burke’s novels have been compared to those by master crime novelists like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Burke started writing stories when he was in fourth grade, published his first story when he was 19, and wrote his first novel when he was 23. Half of Paradise (1965) was published just after he finished graduate school, and it got great reviews. Burke wrote a few more novels, but none of them sold well. He fell into depression and alcoholism. He had finished a book called The Lost Get-Back Boogie, but he couldn’t find anyone to publish it. He collected ninety-three rejection slips for the book over a period of ten years. He worked as a newspaper reporter, a land surveyor, a social worker, a forest ranger, a teacher, and a truck driver. He later said, “I reached a point . . . where I didn’t care whether I lived or died.” Finally, in 1985, The Lost Get-Back Boogie was published by Louisiana State University Press. The novel is about a released prisoner who goes to live on a Montana ranch with the family of one of his friends from prison. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Burke’s novels have been doing well ever since.

Burke said, “I believe that whatever degree of talent I possess is a gift and must be treated as such. To misuse one’s talent, to be cavalier about it, to set it aside because of fear or sloth is unpardonable.”