James Baquet

    Most Americans of a certain age will remember a TV show called “Perry Mason,” about a lawyer who sometimes seemed more of a “private eye” (private investigator) than an attorney.

    In fact, his creator was a lawyer who also had numerous interests. Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) had had numerous jobs but was, most famously, a writer.

    Long before the making of the movie “Pulp Fiction,” “pulp magazines” were inexpensive collections of stories printed on newsprint. The fiction pieces printed in those magazines were called “pulp fiction,” “pulp” being a reference to the low quality of the paper (as opposed to “glossy” or “slick” magazines).

    Though he managed to pass the bar exam in 1911 without any formal training, Gardner became bored with the law and its practice. So in the early 1920s, he set himself a standard of writing 1.2 million words a year — 3,000 to 4,000 words a night — until he sold his first story to the “pulps” in 1923. At the time of his death, he was considered the best-selling American author of the 20th century.

    By 1933, he had set his sights higher and wrote and published his first novel, starring a character named Perry Mason, the protagonist in 81 more novels. Mason was supported by a loyal secretary named Della Street and a private detective named Paul Drake. This trio evolved through novels into films, radio scripts, and on into television.

    Gardner wrote other series, and even non-fiction. Aside from crime stories and novels, he wrote six books about his travel adventures, especially in Baja California, a peninsula in Mexico located south of the American state of California. These books carry romantic titles like “The Land of Shorter Shadows,” “Hunting the Desert Whale,” and “The Hidden Heart of Baja.” He sponsored archaeological expeditions in the peninsula, and one site filled with rock paintings, Gardner’s Cave, was named after him.

    When Erle Stanley Gardner died of cancer at 80, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Baja desert he loved.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. cheap paper used for printing newspapers

    2. shiny

    3. test for lawyers

    4. (of a body) burned to ash instead of buried

    5. related to the study of human and cultural remains from the past

    6. in addition to

    7. different from, opposite of

    8. a piece of land surround on three sides by water

    9. smooth

    10. main character in a story