The Guardian on Carl Hiaasen

The Guardian has a great piece on one of my heros, Carl Hiaasen. Some highlights:

"He's just really, really funny," adds Dave Barry, a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist who works with Hiaasen at the Miami Herald. "Even when I don't agree with his point, I love the way he writes it. He presents his rage in an entertaining way. Carl is a literary Eeyore with his air of gloom. Which is funny because he's this extremely good-looking guy with a beautiful wife, a house on the Key, he's extremely successful." The Wall Street Journal described Hiaasen's style as a combination of the "scrutiny of Tom Wolfe and the twisted imagination of Hunter S Thompson".

... and:

In the columns he has written for the Herald since 1985, Hiaasen is known for being fearlessly direct. In one, he described as "boneheaded" the decision of a city commission to withhold funding for a convention out of fear that communists might attend. When the commission demanded a clarification to this "false and misleading statement", Hiaasen replied that because the column was neither false nor misleading he couldn't so much as add "a cheerfully instructive footnote".

... and:

He researches his novels just as he did his investigations. Strip Tease (1993), set in an erotic dancing club, is full of journalistic observational detail, such as the "studious and impassive expressions [of the clients], like judges at a cattle auction". "When Carl was doing Strip Tease , he wanted to go to strip joints, which is the last place you'd usually find him," James Savage recalls. "So he called up my wife and asked her if she'd mind if I accompanied him, and off we went. Of course, Carl being Carl, he spent most of the time talking to the girls about problems they had with child care."

... and:

But it is his wildly comic plotting that has secured Hiaasen his popularity with readers. "You can see elements in the books that he can't use in his journalism: his descriptions, dialogue, characters -they are all so wonderful and funny as hell," says Barry. "And there's always this weird twist, like that guy with a WeedWhacker [a kind of strimmer] for an arm in Skin Tight. It makes you wonder what's going on in his brain. I'm glad he writes because if he didn't he'd probably be out there killing people."

... and:

The musician Warren Zevon, who died last year of lung cancer, was a particularly close friend, and the two bonded over a shared "dark, visceral kind of humour". Zevon was one of the few people who was allowed to read Hiaasen's novels in progress. Hiaasen sent him the manuscript of Skinny Dip chapter by chapter, and it was Zevon who suggested the title. The last conversation Hiaasen had with him was on a Friday when Zevon requested the final chapters. But Hiaasen wanted still to tweak them so he hesitated before posting them. Zevon died on the Sunday. The chapters arrived on Monday. "As a fellow perfectionist," Hiaasen says, "Warren would have understood."

And that's just a handful. Fans will want to click through if for no other reason then to learn the surprisingly touching story of how the character Skink came about.