One author, one book
Some authors write only one book in their life time. Some of them
shoot to stardom with that one book. The first author that comes to mind
is one of those short listed for the first ever Swarna Pusthaka Award in
2007. The book was ‘Kindura Gosin Vatunai Pura Madulle. The author was
Karunadheera Alwis. Since the award committee failed to pick one of the
five short-listed novels Alwis could consider himself as a co-winner as
the prize money was shared among all five.
He has not written another novel, while most of the others who were
short-listed have kept on writing, some of them facing an accusation
that they are writing with the Swarna Pusthaka award in mind.
All over the world we find this phenomenon of one-book authors. Some
of them are all-time greats, their works listed among the best novels in
the world. Reasons for not continuing with their writing could be many
and varied, and sometimes we would never know.
Our closest neighbour is the eternal Thiruvalluwar, the sage from
South India who wrote the Sacred Kural or Thirukkural over one thousand
years ago. He wrote only one book, and that book is revered for ever,
shining above thousands of books written by other poets.
Going back further into the past and further north, we meet Valmiki,
and his one-and-only Ramayana with the 24,000 verses still sung today
and grew into over 400 different versions of the Rama legend.
In China, Wu Chengen wrote ‘Journey to the West’ during the 16th
century, a fictional account of a legendary Buddhist monk Tsuangzang who
travels to India in search of Buddha Dhamma.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ won the Pulitzer and has been read by
millions of readers around the world. Harper Lee is believed to have
been working on another novel, the ‘Long Goodbye’, and a book about a
serial murderer, which never came out in print. She published her only
novel in 1960, when she was 34 years old, at 86 today, she had not
published another novel.
Yet the tragedy of most one-book authors was that their lives were
cut short in mid-stride, so we would never know what they would have
created, had they lived for a few years more.
Among them, perhaps the most tragic is the fate of Margaret Mitchell,
who wrote the immortal book, ‘Gone with the Wind’, published in 1936.
She had written it in secret and had only sent it to a publisher when a
colleague had mocked her about her talent for writing. The book went on
to win the Pulitzer. Unfortunately she was knocked down by a car and
died when she was only 49. She had written a novella, ‘Lost Laysen’ when
she was 15, and given to a boyfriend. She would never have wanted it
published. Nearly 50 years after her death the novella was published. As
a teenager she had also written another 400 page novel, ‘The Big Four’,
which is said to be lost, but probably she had destroyed it herself.
Mitchell had also written another novella ‘Rope Carmagin’, which had
been submitted to the same publisher along with Gone with the Wind, but
had been rejected. That is how she ended up being a one-book author in
her lifetime
Emily Bronte published ‘Wuthering Heights’ in 1847, when she was 29.
She fell ill soon after and died just one year later, when she was only
30 years old. A tragedy not only for her family, but to the entire
literary world.
One of the earliest stories, about animals, and humane treatment of
animals, was written by Anna Sewell. Black Beauty, is an all time best
seller. Sewell died just five months after publishing Black Beauty.
It is open to argument if she would have been happy with the response
to her book, because with all the millions of readers who have read her
book, there is still very little love and kindness on earth, especially
when it comes to animals. For she said in her book , “.... there is no
religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about
their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man
and beast, it is all a sham....Ó—Black Beauty, Chapter 13, last
paragraph.
Sylvia Plath committed suicide one month after publishing her only
novel, ‘The Bell Jar'. She was only 30 years old.
John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, from depression, five years
after he had completed his novel ‘Dunces’ in 1964, because he had failed
in all his attempts to get a publisher interested in the novel. His
mother had continued looking for a publisher, and finally in 1980
Luisiana State University Press published the first draft of the book,
which went on to win the Pulitzer.
John Okada was a Japanese American immigrant, who wrote ‘No No Boy’
in 1957, dealing with the internment of Japanese-Americans during the
World War II. He died in 1971, without publishing any more novels.
The Russian philosopher who proposed Time as the fourth dimension,
wrote one novel, in addition to all his other books and papers. The
novel was ‘Strange Life of Ivan Osokin’
Arundhati Roy is our closest neighbour to have written only one book,
‘The God of Small Things’, which was published in 1996, and won the
Booker Prize in 1997. She had announced in 2007 of a new novel she had
started to work on, but so far she has been silent about it.
Perhaps some authors know when to say enough.
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