Best-selling novelist Sidney Sheldon is dead!

Like my favorite curmudgeon Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes, I also think reading fiction is a waste of time. Because the dramas, comedies and tragedies of real life that are chronicled in everything from newspapers to periodical and non-fiction books provide clear and convincing evidence that truth is not only stranger, but also more entertaining than fiction.

More than 20 years ago, however, a dear friend induced me to read a novel by Sidney Sheldon entitled If Tomorrow Comes – after I teased her by suggesting that the only fiction I would read is a book that helps me understand women better “like Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance” (a book I actually read for a college “gut course”).

Nonetheless, I don’t mind admitting that in Sheldon’s novel I derived much of the guilty pleasures that many of my contemporaries got from watching Aaron-Spelling dramas like Dynasty and Melrose Place. (Although, truth be told, I actually enjoyed the few episodes I caught of Sheldon’s TV hit Hart to Hart starring Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers.) And my pleasure in reading his novels were indeed enhanced by the fact that Sheldon’s protagonists were invariably women of substance dealing with the real challenges of women’s lives, not least of which were chauvinistic men.

Sheldon was an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter before he began writing novels at the advanced age of 51. But he became so prolific and successful as novelist that the Guinness Book of World Records cited him for having over 300m copies of his books in print and published in the greatest number of foreign languages. Nonetheless, Sheldon was probably most proud of the fact the he is the only writer in history to have been awarded an Oscar for a screenplay, a Tony for a Broadway play and an Edgar Allen Poe for his mystery writing.

Sheldon clearly ranked amongst the 20th Century’s most fascinating and accomplished renaissance men. And, given the lavish and exciting life he lived, it would not surprise to learn that Aaron Spelling based his male lead in Dynasty, Blake Carrington, on the dashing and debonair Sheldon’s real life. After all, like I said, truth is not only stranger, but also more entertaining than fiction.

Sidney Sheldon died on Tuesday of complications from pneumonia at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, near his home in Palm Springs, California. He is survived by his wife Alexandra, daughter Mary and brother, Richard. Sheldon was 89.

Sidney Sheldon