A Brief Look Inside My Twisted Mind

I recently got what I think -- hope? -- is a really cool idea for a story.

I must "confess" to having several writing influences. Some of them -- most of them, truth be told -- go back pretty far, both in terms of the authors' eras and in terms of how young I was when these gents became my influences. Today's post concerns four of them: Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville (actually, less Melville himself and more his most famous novel, Moby-Dick), and last but not least, Herman Raucher, who wrote Summer of '42.

Let's concentrate on Summer of '42 for a bit. The book and the movie, both written by Raucher -- although the movie screenplay was written first -- concern three adolescent boys in their mid-teens. The boys are Benjie, Oscy, and the narrator, Hermie, who call themselves "The Terrible Trio" as they scamper around Nantucket Island during -- you guessed it -- the summer of 1942. All of them are as obsessed with sex as the average male of fourteen or fifteen, and the story focuses on this fact.

I once read an interview with Herman Raucher in which he joked
about how the first edition of the novel sported a cover illustration
in which the artist drew a TV antenna on the roof of a 1942 home!
A great anecdote, sure... but it looks more like a weathervane to me!

Anyway, in the early 1970s, when the novel and film were released, I was that age, albeit roughly thirty years later than the year in which the Terrible Trio's story occurred, and some publicity about the film -- which I didn't get to see until many years later -- sent me in search of the novel.

(By the way, need I add that I, too, was obsessed by sex at that age? Probably not. In fact, at 52, I still wonder if I'll ever outgrow that. But I obsess... I mean, I digress.)

Raucher was incredibly entertaining. Not only was the book told from Hermie's point of view, but we were also allowed inside his head for constant smartass comments on the events he was relating. I readily admit that I often do the same thing in my own work, and that's where it started.

Now here's my weird idea:

Instead of Hermie, Oscy, and Benjie, how about a "Terrible Trio" made up of Hermie, Charlie, and Eddie?

As in "Hermie" Melville, "Charlie" Dickens, and "Eddie" Poe.

Picture them as 18th-century post-adolescents scampering about on Nantucket Island. After all, Melville was indeed involved with the whaling community, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, was as tied up with whaling as was New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the story of Moby-Dick began.

This would obviously be a sure test of my readers' willing suspension of disbelief. The main things that I'd stick to from fact would be the characters' ages, and what I perceive as their basic personalities. Anything else... not so much.

The beauty of it, of course, is that all three men were alive at roughly the same time. I've decided to focus on one particular summer, the one in which morbid "Eddie" Poe was 33, serious-minded social activist "Charlie" Dickens was 30, and the young, adventurous, and impressionable "Hermie" Melville turned 23.

And exactly which summer was that? Oh, you're ahead of me here?

Yep, it was the summer of '42.

1842.

Now, all I need is the time to devote to writing this sucker. Wish me luck.

And thanks for your time.