David Geherin - Carl Hiaasen: Sunshine State Satirist

Also by DAVID GEHERIN
AND FROM MCFARLAND

Funny Thing About Murder: Modes of Humor in Crime Fiction and Films (2017)

Small Towns in Recent American Crime Fiction (2015)

The Dragon Tattoo and Its Long Tail: The New Wave of European Crime Fiction in America (2012)

Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction (2008)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-3459-3

2019 David Geherin. All rights reserved

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Front cover images 2018 iStock

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
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To my favorite young readers:
Anna, Gino, Sofia, Maxine, Giada, and KK.
This ones for you!

In 1982, I published a book on John D. MacDonald who at the time was one of Americas most popular crime writers. He was best known for a series of mysteries featuring a Florida beach bum named Travis McGee, whom he used as a spokesperson to celebrate Floridas natural beauty and to bemoan its constant assault due to overdevelopment and overpopulation. That same year, Carl Hiaasen was a young investigative reporter for the Miami Herald. Over the next three decades, he too would become one of Americas most popular and critically acclaimed crime writers. He would also assume MacDonalds mantle as a fierce advocate on behalf of saving whats left of Floridas natural beauty.

Hiaasen is a triple-threat author who has successfully made the rare jump from reporter to nationally known columnist; from columnist to best-selling author of comic crime thrillers; and then on to a third career as an award-winning writer of novels for young readers. His distinctive blend of crime, outrageous humor, and biting satire gives his books an appeal that extends beyond just mystery fans to include readers who love comic fiction as well as those interested in novels that address serious social and environmental issues.

I have previously written on aspects of Hiaasens fiction in two of my earlier books: Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction (2008) and Funny Thing About Murder: Modes of Humor in Crime Fiction and Films (2017). This book gives me an opportunity to examine in greater detail his entire body of work, from his college satirical columns in the early 1970s up to his latest novels for adults and young readers. The book begins with a brief biography of Hiaasen followed by separate chapters devoted to his journalism, his nonfiction, and his early collaborations with Bill Montalbano. Chapters 4 and 5 consist of commentaries on each of his adult novels and novels for young readers. Chapters 6 through 8 focus on the major literary influences on his work, the critical role Florida plays in his writing, and his use of humor and satire. The book concludes with an interview with Hiaasen conducted by phone in November 2017.

On a personal note, I would like to express my appreciation to Carl Hiaasen for providing me with copies of some of his earliest writings and for graciously answering my questions, especially for the interview included in this book.

He may not have been born with a pen in his hand, but Carl Hiaasen knew from an early age he wanted to be a writer. At the age of four, he began reading the sports section of the Miami Herald to his father at the breakfast table. At age six, he asked his dad for a typewriter, which he got, a red manual model. He taught himself to hunt and peck and soon began banging out little stories and reports about neighborhood kickball and softball games which he passed out to friends. I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world to be able to write a story, he says (Woods).

Carl Andrew Hiaasen (his Norwegian surname is pronounced HIGH-uh-son) is a third-generation Floridian. His grandfather, Carl Andreas Hiaasen, was born in a Norwegian farm community in Devils Lake, North Dakota, in 1894 and didnt learn to speak English until he was fourteen. As a young boy he almost died in a blizzard, so its not surprising that he eventually sought to settle in a warmer climate. In 1922, he moved to Fort Lauderdale, population 1000, and opened the first law practice in town. His son, Carls father, later joined him in the practice of law.

Carl Andrew Hiaasen was born 12 March 1953 in Fort Lauderdale, the oldest of four children to K. Odel and Patricia (Moran) Hiaasen, a former English teacher who was raised in a strict Roman Catholic household in Chicago (her brother became a Paulist priest, her sister a nun). The family, which included two younger sisters, Judith and Barbara, and a younger brother, Rob, lived in Plantation, a small town a few miles west of Fort Lauderdale. (Rob, a journalist like his older brother, was one of five victims killed in a mass shooting at the office of the newspaper where he worked in Annapolis, Maryland in June 2018). The defining experience of Hiaasens young life, one which would shape virtually all his writing, was growing up in a very rural place at the edge of the Everglades, just a short bike ride away from his home in Plantation. It was a magical place for a young boy:

We lived in a pretty isolated rural section of Broward County, Florida, on the edge of the Everglades. Where there is now an eighteen-lane highway, there was just a dirt road. We didnt even have a convenience store within five miles of my house until I was thirteen or fourteen. We had nothing else to do but get on our bicycles and ride until the pavement stoppedwhich wasnt that far. Then we would get off our bikes, and hide them in the bushes or trees, and go exploring, or collecting snakes or turtles, or fishing or boating. Kid stuff. Tom Sawyer stuff [Marcus 108].

He and his buddies Bob Branham and Clyde Ingalls would ride their bikes to an Edenic place that seemed to the young Hiaasen to be as exotic as the Serengeti. There they would fish and catch poisonous snakes to sell to dealers (poisonous snakes brought in more money than non-poisonous ones because dealers couldnt find that many kids dumb enough to try to catch them). But this childhood paradise wouldnt last forever. The dirt path they rode their bikes on would soon become a major highway lined with shopping malls. When the bulldozers began arriving, the trio fought back the only way they knew how, by pulling up surveyor stakes: We didnt know what else to do. We were little and the bulldozers were big (Stevenson xv).

It is a very difficult thing for a kid to watch that unfettered part of your childhood being paved before your eyes, he says (Freeman). The anger at the utter devastation he witnessed has never left him, although he has put it to good use in his writing. The other dramatic blow to his idyllic life came a few months before high school graduation when his buddy Clyde Ingalls drove to the Everglades and ran a hose from the exhaust pipe into the car, killing himself at age seventeen.