Howard Lachtman

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Born
Howard Lawrence Lachtman

(1941-07-08) July 8, 1941 (age 84)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
EducationM.A., Ph.D.[1]
Occupation(s)Critic, editor, author
Notable workSherlock Slept Here[2]
Howard Lachtman
Born
Howard Lawrence Lachtman

(1941-07-08) July 8, 1941 (age 84)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
EducationM.A., Ph.D.[1]
Occupation(s)Critic, editor, author
Notable workSherlock Slept Here[2]

Howard Lawrence Lachtman[3] (born July 8, 1941) is an American academic, literary critic, editor and author, who has written extensively on the life and works of Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle,[1][4] and on crime fiction as a whole.[5]

Born in San Francisco on July 8, 1941, Lachtman is the second-born child of Florence (née Jacoby) and George Lachtman.[6][7][8] He attended Winfield Scott Elementary School,[9] Lowell High School, UC Berkeley and UC Hastings Law,[10] and obtained his M.A and Ph.D. from University of the Pacific.[1]

Assessing Lachtman's contribution to a 1979 collection of London's own essays entitled Jack London: No Mentor But Myself, Los Angeles Times critic Sal Noto states:

This collection also contains a broad and perceptive foreword by Howard Lachtman, who has three books in the making on London. Lachtman shows the unfamiliar side of the London persona; he pares away much of the myth surrounding the man and offers a candid look at a writer who has all too often been dismissed or overlooked by critics of American literature.[11]

Reviewing Lachtman's 1982 anthology, Sporting Blood: Jack London's Greatest Sports Writing, the El Paso Herald-Post's David Innes notes that the book "could serve as a pattern for what a good theme anthology should be," adding that "Lachtman's introductory essay is a fine one, as are his short, scene-setting paragraphs."[12] Regarding the 1984 collection, Young Wolf: The Early Adventure Stories of Jack London, El Paso Times critic Dale L. Walker writes:

Lachtman's fine collection of London's early career adventure stories adds an important link to an astonishingly long chain of London stories published in the past two decades. [It] includes some of London's best early work. Here are 16 stories that ought to be read in high school and college classrooms today in lieu of the shopworn "To Build a Fire".[13]

Writing two years later in the same paper, Walker calls Lachtman's Sherlock Slept Here a "superb and authoritative little study [of] Arthur Conan Doyle's debt to the United States," commending in particular Lachtman's "thoroughly fascinating analysis of that most American of Holmes stories, 'The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor'."[2]

Lachtman also reviewed books—primarily mysteries—for the Los Angeles Times between 1976 and 1981, and, from 1977 to 1986, for the San Francisco Examiner.[14][15][16][17]

A decidedly unimposing fictional character named Howard Lachtman,[a] who happens to be at least the nominal leader of a small group of Sherlock Holmes devotees, figures prominently in Chapter II of Stuart Kaminsky's 1983 detective novel He Done Her Wrong.[18]

Personal life

Since 1962, Lachtman has been married to the former Mendelle Corren,[10] a union which produced at least one child, their daughter, Tiffany.[19]

Works

Books

  • Sporting Blood: Selections from Jack London's greatest sports writing. Novato, CA : Presidio Press. 1981 OCLC 1151317362.
  • Young Wolf: The Early Adventure Stories of Jack London. Santa Barbara, CA : Capra Press. 1984. ISBN 9780884962106.
  • Sherlock Slept Here ; being a brief history of the singular adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in America, with some observations upon the exploits of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Santa Barbara, CA : Capra Press. 1985. ISBN 088496227X.

Essays

Poetry

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

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