Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Ira Levin, R. I. P.

The book I remember is A Kiss before Dying. One of the greats.

Ira Levin, of ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ Dies at 78 - New York Times: "Ira Levin, a mild-mannered playwright and novelist who liked nothing better than to give people the creeps — and who did so repeatedly, with best-selling novels like “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Stepford Wives” and “The Boys From Brazil” — died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78.

No specific cause of death had been determined, but Mr. Levin appeared to have died of natural causes, his son Nicholas said yesterday.

Mr. Levin’s output was modest — just seven novels in four decades — but his work was firmly ensconced in the popular imagination. Together, his novels sold tens of millions of copies, his literary agent, Phyllis Westberg, said yesterday. Nearly all of his books were made into Hollywood movies, some more than once. Mr. Levin also wrote the long-running Broadway play “Deathtrap,” a comic thriller."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And he never went in for bloat. And was probably more responsible than any other single person for the resurgence of publication of literary horror in the 1960s.

Unknown said...

You're right about the bloat factor. His books are all slim volumes. The kind I like.