Things I didn't know about Erle Stanley Gardner

[xiphias]

Writer's Almanac today had stuff about Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason. I've been reading the Perry Mason books, because they're exactly the kind of thing I like to read while exercising or just killing time -- interesting and fun, without being heavy, and the good guys always win. And they're mostly reasonably Playfair, too.

• He was born in Malden, one town south of here. (But he went to high school in Palo Alto, so I don't know how long he was here.)
  
• He was kicked out of college, after one month, for brawling (he'd later claim that he'd slugged a professor), and and never went back to school. He ended up as a typist in a law firm.
  
• He figured that he was at least as smart as the guys for whom he was doing the typing, so he took the bar exam, having had only one month of higher education. He passed, and became a lawyer, focusing on defending indigent Chinese and Mexican workers.
  

I DID know that, after he became famous, he used all his contacts in the law and forensic fields to form a foundation to look into and overturn wrongful convictions.

From http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/gardner.html

In his pulp days, Gardner was notorious for killing off the final heavies with the last bullet in the hero's gun, which led to some editors teasing him about how all his good guys seemed to be such bad shots. Gardner's alleged explanation? "At three cents a word, every time I say 'Bang' in the story I get three cents. If you think I'm going to finish the gun battle while my hero still has fifteen cents worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you're nuts."

Comments

[jhitchin.livejournal.com]

Where are you getting your Perry Masons from? I've been wanting to read The Case of the Buried Clock for some time and so far haven't been able to secure a copy (our library doesn't have it).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Just from our local library. But I've now finished off the Melrose collection, so have to start foraging into neighboring libraries.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I've had great look with ABE:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?tn=buried+clock&sts=t&an=gardner&y=0&x=0

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

He figured that he was at least as smart as the guys for whom he was doing the typing, so he took the bar exam, having had only one month of higher education. He passed, and became a lawyer, focusing on defending indigent Chinese and Mexican workers.

So, apparently, there was a time in this country when the laws actually were logical?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Or, at least, when a scrappy fast-talker could bullshit his way past the bar exam.

He loved trial work, but hated the rest of lawyering -- so long as he could talk and debate and bullshit, he did great -- the boring parts, not so much.

To me, this suggests the possibility that that's how he passed the bar, too. . .