George Clayton Johnson: Fictioneer by Vivien Kooper

George Clayton Johnson: Fictioneer by Vivien Kooper is the engrossing memoir of a writer of short stories, novels, and screenplays. Johnson, however, is best known for his screenplays or screen adaptations of his short stories. Most people don't pay much attention to the credits flashing across their screens after a show has ended, but the chances are pretty good that you've seen one of Johnson's stories. Why? The answer is simple: George Clayton Johnson wrote for some of the most popular shows that have appeared on television, episodes of which have become iconic. Johnson developed plots or wrote screenplays for such shows as Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Kung Fu, Route 66, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Additionally, he co-wrote, with William F. Nolan, a novel that was later translated into the film Logan's Run. Johnson, together with Jack Russell, also developed the story that would evolve into Ocean's Eleven (both the original 1960 movie and the later series of films starring George Clooney).

The first chapters of the book detail Johnson's early life, the most pivotal event of which was when he fell into a twenty foot pit that had been dug for a septic tank. With a splintered thigh bone, he spent lonely months recovering in a hospital, much of the time being chloroformed when it was time for the doctor to make an adjustment to the weights applied to his mending leg. The chloroform filled his head with "fuzzy cotton ghosts," and it was at this time that Johnson first began to develop a keen imagination, one that would always be most concerned with the future.

As Kooper describes the childhood of Johnson, who would suffer from a broken home and later run away, we learn that this fascination with the future will remain with him for a lifetime, a belief that what "might be" is more real than present events. By skillfully using the present tense, the author places the reader directly inside Johnson's life so that we may walk with him through seminal events that will help him use this developing imagination to become a "fictioneer." The present tense also merges seamlessly with Johnson's own recollections of how he became an avid reader and paid his dues while observing some of the greatest writers in the twentieth century, men such as Ray Bradbury, William F. Nolan, Rod Serling, and Charles Beaumont.

At the beginning of chapters, Kooper frequently uses historical and scientific "place markers" (e.g., the rise of Fascism or the invention of the modern television set) to delineate the world that Johnson explores in early life. It is a world that he will study and later write about, thematically examining ideas such as freedom, death, aging, and technology.

Of special note is the author's ability to know when to use Johnson's own voice and observations to highlight his artistic and personal maturation, as well as the work that he is best known for. This wise use of source material in Kooper's narrative, and its logical, thematic organization, is the mark of a professional biographer who knows exactly how to best portray the many facets of the book's subject.

The memoir's truly engaging quality is in how it chronicles Johnson's ability to create magic from the ordinary, to infuse his stories with the willing suspension of disbelief. His greatest talent, we learn, is to have readers become willing participants in the alternate realities he has invented. If you have wondered how writers get their ideas or what compels them to practice the craft of writing--or if you are an aspiring artist of any type yourself--you will, in these pages, metaphorically sit at the feet of a master storyteller, a man whose stock in trade is to take almost any situation, turn it on its side, and then say "what if ..."

This is a fascinating book and highly recommended for anyone who wishes to learn about the creative process of one of the most remarkable writers of the twentieth century.

~ William Hammett

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