Paul said:
> Charles Williams left home to ride the rails during
the Great Depression.
> Charles Williams went to sea instead, serving ten
years as a radioman in
the
> Merchant Marine. Later, when he became a writer, he
put his nautical
> background to good use, with many of his best
stories taking place at sea
or
> in port. When on land, his stories were usually set
in the rural South; as
> Geoffry O'Brien puts it, "When his characters talk
about going to the big
> city they usually mean Shreveport."
> Williams' fiction wasn't jam-packed with action like
that of many of his
> contemporaries, but simmered with hidden conflicts
that grew until they
> boiled over into sudden violence. Frequently the
conflict featured a woman
> whose motives were unclear, sometimes even to
herself.
> A sensitive man who was unwilling to change with the
demands of the
> marketplace and unable to face failure, Williams
drowned himself in 1975.
>
> I found this on bleekerbooks.com
********* Thanks, Paul. I found that part about him being in
the Merchant Marines on the inside cover of my DEAD CALM dust
cover. I dragged out my copy of O'Brien's HARDBOILED AMERICA
last night and read what it had on him. Not much. I've got a
Mystery Encyclopedia that has a short section on him. Not
much there, either. I can think of at least a hundred
questions about him that I'd like answered. From somewhere I
picked up that he only had a 10th grade education. I'll drag
everything I have on him together next week.
Maybe Bill Crider knows somebody in the publishing biz that
could shed some light on his life.
miker
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