A whole stack books were given to me from a friend one day as he was moving out of our student apartments. At first I wanted nothing to do with these huge dime novel looking books. I was fully inthralled within a reading era of Voltaire, Charles Dickens, and Victor Hugo. I didn't think anything of artless writers who just cranked out these mass market paperbacks. I thought of them as greedy storyless hacks, well, I repented after I decided to give one of the books a try (for a lack of nothing else to read) and boy was I wrong.
Wilbur Smith's works pulled no punches, he told it like it was and once I started reading I couldn't put them down. I think I read seven of his books in one summer, and each was 600 to 1000 page novels. While reading one of his books, Cry Wolf, (which was set during the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia) I remember being incredibly nervous because I only had two pages left and the heroes were in the middle of the climax; there seemed to be no hope and no more pages for any. In those two pages he not only resolved the dilemma but did so satisfyingly. I laid the book down and actual clapped waking up my room mate, (who I told to mind his own business and go back to sleep)
He consistently blew my mind with how unafraid he wrote reality. In His book Shout at the devil (set in South Africa during world war I) The baby of the main characters was slaughtered by enthusiastic African soldiers serving the Germans. The babys mother, who witnessed this, goes on a killing rampage willing to do whatever it took to exact revenge. I read and re-read that part over and over trying to comprehend what I was reading because he describes the death in horrid detail, yet so few words were used I was dumbfounded and amazed, and a little freaked out!
He is the writer who taught me how to use a character's own pride and selfishness to launch them into a spiraling adventure that doesn't have to end well. He taught me that you could fill your pages with information in a way that felt like you were living what was written rather than reading them. He taught me that characters and the story demand a level of truth. Its truth that makes the hero relatable, thus lovable. In I am shadows part 8 my hero was trying to kill himself and bashed in his own head, this scene was Wilbur Smith's influence; not the violence, but the truth of my heros depression that would cause that desperate act.
His heros are not perfect people full of nobility and honor, but very flawed and often very selfish people. They have mental problems and low self esteem. In Men of Men (the second book of his Ballantyne series) a young man is struggling with his own sexual identity, so in the middle of the night he tries to cut off his penis with a dirty carving knife. Smith makes his characters so relatable that you can't stop reading about them. (not that we would all run for the dirty knife, but we have all felt low and desperate) I'm not just talking about the main character, but his supporting characters are treated with as much respect; finishing and fleshing out their stories into little sub plots that fit snug into the main story. You know that saying "you can't write the kind of stuff life brings at us" well... Smith does it, borrowing heavily from reality and history. Wilbur Smith could very well be the grandfather of every character I write because of the level of reality I now demand.
For this I thank you Wilbur smith.
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