Carrie
11-27-2004, 10:04 AM
News.Telegraph (http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/27/db2701.xml)
November 27, 2004
Arthur Hailey, who has died at his home in the Bahamas aged 84, was one of the most commercially successful authors of all time, producing 11 books which sold more than 150 million copies, were translated into some 40 languages, and brought him tens of millions of dollars; much of it from his role as the inventor of the disaster movie.
Hailey's fiction was not of the sort that inspired doctoral theses: "If Armando had been troubled before, Kettering's pronouncement had the effect of an incremental bolt of lightning" was a representative sample of its style.
But secure in the knowledge that his books would dominate the bestseller lists (Airport was lodged on them for more than a year), Hailey was sanguine about their reception by critics. "I have never had a good review from the New York Times," he admitted in 1990. To be fair, others were equally unimpressed.
Full Story (http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/27/db2701.xml)
November 27, 2004
Arthur Hailey, who has died at his home in the Bahamas aged 84, was one of the most commercially successful authors of all time, producing 11 books which sold more than 150 million copies, were translated into some 40 languages, and brought him tens of millions of dollars; much of it from his role as the inventor of the disaster movie.
Hailey's fiction was not of the sort that inspired doctoral theses: "If Armando had been troubled before, Kettering's pronouncement had the effect of an incremental bolt of lightning" was a representative sample of its style.
But secure in the knowledge that his books would dominate the bestseller lists (Airport was lodged on them for more than a year), Hailey was sanguine about their reception by critics. "I have never had a good review from the New York Times," he admitted in 1990. To be fair, others were equally unimpressed.
Full Story (http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/27/db2701.xml)