It is about a Nordic boy who escapes a cholera outbreak in a wooden canoe, setting off for the Pacific Northwest. “Northwind” reads in an elemental, back-to-basics register. But he finished one last book, which plays like the culminating words of a life stuffed with incident. He died of cardiac arrest last fall at his home in New Mexico. He left and faced down nature, then as an adult, he sought out adventure. Indeed, he before he left Chicago, he had lived a childhood so harsh and cruel, Dickens would have paused. The children he wrote about were like himself, forced to grow up quickly. He wrote more than 200 books, for young adults, and grown-ups, though that line was fuzzy. He was so prolific that sometimes it seemed we would reading something new by Gary Paulson indefinitely. He wrote many, many adventure tales, most of which were culled from the details of his own life. Read enough of Gary Paulsen and you’ll think: Well, of course he did that, too. You’ve only dreamed of leaving home to join the circus.
#HARD KNOCK LIFE SERIES#
He also made cheese, and was a writer for the original TV series of “Mission: Impossible.” As an adult, he lived in the Minnesota woods for nearly 20 years, deeply impoverished. He was an animal trapper, and sometimes a farmworker. Paulsen was a soldier, a truck driver, a paperboy, an actor, an alcoholic (sober for the last 50 years of his life). After all, he once told NPR that Jack London - whose “Call of the Wild” and “White Fang” were obvious forerunners to Paulsen’s work - was a great writer but he “didn’t know what he was talking about.” London had a modest childhood, though compared with what Paulsen lived, none of us know what we’re talking about.
#HARD KNOCK LIFE FULL#
He was often compared with Ernest Hemingway, who was also fond of the wilderness, wrote brisk sentences full of violence, and wore a white beard and weathered face but Chicago can’t claim two Hemingways, and I suspect Paulsen would have found Papa Hemingway kind of soft. Sometimes literally, certainly spiritually, he rarely left.
This guy escaped into the Minnesota woods along the Canadian border and flourished. Paulsen grew up in Chicago, then crafted meaning out of hopelessness.
You just want to stay in and read stories about people who made calm out of chaos, and here you go. A lake so slate and overcast you don’t know where the sky begins. January in Chicago, February in Chicago, mud season, ice season, the doldrums of another pandemic winter, the settling depression of a fresh chance at normality already slipping away.
Either way, your children will know him, and their children will know him. His books sold more than 35 million copies, and if you came of age in the past four decades and had a thing for survival stories, chances are good you read him. Rappers, Hov (reportedly) did that so hopefully you won't have to go through that.It’s a shame that you don’t know Gary Paulsen, that his name was never as recognizable as a Beverly Cleary (“Ramona the Pest”) or an Eric Carle (“The Very Hungry Caterpillar”), all of whom wrote books for children and all of whom died last year.Īt least, I’m assuming you’ve never heard of Gary Paulsen. Anyway, they bought it, cleared it, and I had one of my biggest hits. Of course, I’d never been to see Annie on Broadway. I wrote that from the moment the curtain came up I felt like I understood honey’s story. I wrote that as kids in Brooklyn we hardly ever came into the city. I made up this story about how when I was a seventh grader in Bed-Stuy, our teacher held an essay contest and the three best papers won the writer a trip to the city to see Annie. I decided to write the company a letter myself. At press time, we have received no reply.įor those unfamiliar with the origin story of Jay managing to clear the Annie sample, we highly recommend reading the now-defunct Grantland's 2014 oral history, which includes this gem from Hov himself: To confirm Nipsey's claims that Jay managed to both clear the sample for himself and for all future rap artists, we have reached out to the Warner/Chappell Music representative listed by performance rights organization ASCAP, who, per their public database, oversees 50% of the copyright on the original song by Andrea McArdle, an even split between Charles Strouse Publishing and Morris Edwin H.
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