Is it a thing of the past, or what? I’m currently reading a book by Erle Stanley Gardner (whom I think is dead), a Perry Mason novel, of course. and it has these little neat paragraph’s under each cast members name. I don’t know if that was done by the author or what, but I really kind of like them.
Some examples from the current book:
[ul]
[li]Perry Mason–Nodding over a lawbook, he caught sight of a lovely pair of legs on the fire escape. That started it. [/li][li]Virginia Colfax–her figure was hard to believe, and so was her alibi.[/li][li]Senora Inocente Miguerinio–Well padded hostess of the Vista de la Mesa Inn.[/li][li]Hamlin L. Covington–Imposing district attorney who sets out to cure Mason of using courtroom razzle-dazzle but subsides in a frazzle.[/li][/ul]
Hey, way cool.
FTR the book was written in the late 40’s, it’s title is The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom and the copy I’m reading is a Pocket Book edition from 1975. Really cool reading, no foul language, only implied sex, etc.
It was very popular in detective novels between, roughly, 1920 and 1950. Ellery Queen did it all the time, as did S.S. Van Dine, the author of the Philo Vance books.
I think the underlying idea was that the author didn’t trust himself as a Master of Characterization, so he figured he’d give the reader a little help. When Brock Bromsen comes through the door with a gun in his hand in the middle of Chapter Twenty-Six and you can’t for the life of you remember that he’s supposed to be Rosie O’Grady’s long-lost kid brother and Reginald Van Wildebeest’s junior partner in the Haddock Canning Factory, you can flip back to the Cast of Characters to find out just who the hell he is.
Today’s crime writers, aspiring literati, expect that you’ll be keeping their whole roster in your head.
They were big in SF/Fantasy novels in the '80s. I don’t know about other generes, but in SF/F they were ususally the same sort of warning sign that “IN THE TRADITION OF TOLKIEN/HEINLEIN” usually were.
When you saw 'em, it was code for “I’m not a good enough author to give each of these seven-hundred characters a seperate voice, so rather that accept my limitations and work within my skill-set, I’m just gonna make a handy-dandy checklist so you can keep 'em all straight. That way, I won’t have to.”
In this same vein, remember the old movie posters with the star studded “line-ups.” I seem to remember this especially with 70’s disaster movies, ala THE POSEIDEON ADVENTURE.
IIRC, many Agatha Christie books included these lists. But then, the point of an Agatha Christie book isn’t to read and watch how Hercule Poirot grows as a human being and comes to grips with his Belgianness. In this context, like Ukulele Ike mentioned, I’m glad that they’re there.
Harry Turtledove’s done this with some of his series like World War or Great War. These series have about a dozen plotlines and a hundred characters each so it’s hard to keep everyone straight sometimes.
