It's the birthday of novelist Dan Brown, born in Exeter, New
Hampshire (1964). He's the author of one of the best-selling books of
all time: The Da Vinci Code (2003). It's estimated that there are
about sixty million copies of The Da Vinci Code in print worldwide.
Brown's first three novels have all become paperback best-sellers.
Even books that Brown used as sources for The Da Vinci Code are
seeing their sales increase thanks to all the publicity. A movie of
the novel came out last month (2006).
THANKS for stopping by, I do my best to acknowledge when someone leaves a comment,you do not have to be a member here & everyone is welcome. Ps: This site is monitored but not actively posting on a regular basis. Mostly these are stories & some photos saved from a defunct site known as Verdun Connections which was on MSN Groups initially then on a social network called Multiply.
251 comments:
1 – 200 of 251 Newer› Newest»It's the birthday of novelist Pearl S. Buck, born Pearl
Sydenstricker in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were
Presbyterian missionaries, and Buck was born while they were on
vacation in the United States. When she was three months old, they
took her back to China.
She was the youngest of her parents' seven children, and all but two
of her older siblings had died of tropical diseases. Her parents
lived in the Chinese community, and Buck learned to speak Chinese
before she learned to speak English. She said, "I almost ceased to
think of myself as different, if indeed I ever thought so, from the
Chinese."
In 1922, she wrote a description of Chinese daily life and sent it to
The Atlantic Monthly, which began to publish her articles regularly.
Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published in 1930 and
became a small success. The following year she published The Good
Earth (1931), about a Chinese peasant who becomes a wealthy
landowner. At the time, Westerners saw China as one of the most
exotic places on earth. Pearl Buck was the first writer to portray
the ordinary lives of Chinese people for a Western audience. The
novel won a Pulitzer Prize and became an international best-seller.
Many critics didn't take Buck seriously because her novels were so
popular. In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize committee, she
said she didn't mind being a popular novelist. She said, "[A
novelist] is a storyteller in a village tent, and by his stories he
entices people into his tent. ... He must be satisfied if the common
people hear him gladly. At least, so I have been taught in China."
Pearl S. Buck Pearl S. Buck Born June 26, 1892
Hillsboro, West Virginia, United States Died March 6, 1973
Danby, Vermont, United States ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dan Brown
Born: June 22, 1964
Exeter, New Hampshire Occupation(s): Novelist Genre(s): Mystery Magnum opus: The Da Vinci Code Website: danbrown.com _____________________________________________ Steve
It was on this day in 1936 that the novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was first published. When she handed the manuscript over to editors, it was in terrible shape, with more than a thousand pages of faded and dog-eared paper, poorly typed and with penciled changes. But they loved the story. They asked Mitchell to change the original title, "Tomorrow Is Another Day," because at the time there were already thirteen books in print with the word "Tomorrow" in the title. They also asked her to change the main character's name from Pansy to Scarlett.Mitchell later said, "I just couldn't believe that a Northern publisher would accept a novel about the War Between the States from the Southern point of view." But Gone with the Wind broke all publication records. The year it came out, employees at the Macmillan publishing company received Christmas bonuses for the first time in nearly a decade.
It was on this day that in 1880 that George Bernard Shaw quit his job
in order to write full time . He followed his mother to London when
he was twenty, hoping to make something of himself. His aunt got him
a job at the Edison Telephone Company. He tried to write in his spare
time, but eventually decided that he couldn't write and work at the
same time. So on this day in 1880, when the Edison Telephone Company
announced the consolidation with a competing firm, he used that as an
excuse to quit. It was the last non-literary job he ever had.
At first, his decision seemed to be a disaster. He had to live on one
pound a week from his father and whatever his mother could spare from
her job as a music teacher. He spent his days in the British Museum
Reading room, reading and writing, but his first five novels were all
rejected. He caught smallpox while writing one novel, managed to
complete it in spite of his illness, and then saw it rejected too.
He finally gave up on fiction and began to focus his energy on
becoming a critic, and that was where he finally had some success.
It was on this day in 1951 that the J.D. Salinger's first and only
novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published. In 1941, Salinger sent
The New Yorker a story called "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," about a
troubled teenager named Holden Caulfield, and The New Yorker bought
it. It was November of 1941, and The New Yorker planned to run the
story in their Christmas issue. But that December, Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor, and Salinger's story was put on hold. It was considered too
trivial in a time of war.
Salinger enlisted in the army and he participated in the invasion of
Normandy on D-Day. For the next several months he saw some of the
bloodiest fighting of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. At
the end of the war Salinger checked into an Army general hospital in
Nuremberg, suffering from a nervous breakdown.
It was after Salinger's release from the hospital that he sent out
for publication the first Holden Caulfield story narrated by Holden
Caulfield himself, a story called "I'm Crazy." It was published in
Collier's in December of 1945. One year later, in 1946, The New
Yorker finally published "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," which they
had been holding onto since before the war began.
Salinger continued publishing short stories for the rest of the
1940s, most of them in The New Yorker, and in 1949, the editor,
Robert Giroux, wrote him to ask if he wanted to publish a collection
of short stories. Giroux didn't hear back from Salinger for months,
and then, one day, Salinger walked into his office.
Giroux said, "A tall, sad-looking young man with a long face and deep-
set black eyes walked in, saying, 'It's not my stories that should be
published first, but the novel I'm working on ... about this kid in
New York during the Christmas holidays.'" Giroux said he'd love to
publish it, but when it was finished one of his superiors thought the
kid in the book seemed too crazy. So Salinger published The Catcher
in the Rye with Little, Brown and Company, and it came out on this
day in 1951.
It reached the best-seller list after being in print just two weeks,
and it stayed there for more than six months. It has gone on to sell
more than sixty million copies.
It was on this day in 1954 that the first part of the Lord of the
Rings trilogy was published—The Fellowship of the Ring. Seventeen
years had passed since the publication of The Hobbit (1937), to which
The Fellowship of the Ring was a sequel. The Hobbit had gotten a
great review in The Times Literary Supplement, and it went on to
become a best-seller. So J.R.R. Tolkien (books by this author) began
working on a sequel, about the nephew of the hobbit Bilbo, the nephew
being named Frodo. He decided that the story would center on the
magical ring, which hadn't been an important part of The Hobbit.
Tolkien spent the next seventeen years working on The Lord of the
Rings. He was well into his first draft by the time World War II
broke out in 1939. The book became more complicated as Tolkien went
along, and it was taking much longer to finish than he had planned.
He went through long stretches where he didn't write anything and
considered giving the project up altogether. He wanted to make sure
all of the details about the geography, language, and mythology of
Middle Earth were consistent. He made elaborate charts to keep track
of the events of his story, showing dates, days of the week, the
direction of the wind, and the phases of the moon.
Finally, in the fall of 1949, Tolkien finished writing The Lord of
the Rings. He typed the final copy out himself, sitting on a bed in
his attic, balancing the typewriter on his lap, and tapping it out
with two fingers.
The Lord of the Rings turned out to be more than half a million words
long. Tolkien wanted to publish it in one volume, his publisher
wanted to divide it into three volumes and so the first volume, The
Fellowship of the Ring, came out on this day in 1954.
Only about three and a half thousand copies were printed, but it
turned out to be incredibly popular, and it went through a second
printing in just six weeks.
It's the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois
(1899). He was just twenty-two when he moved to Paris with his wife,
having taken a job as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily
Star. Even though he was making decent money, he liked the idea of
living like a bohemian, so they moved into an apartment in the Latin
Quarter, in a neighborhood full of drunks, beggars, and street
musicians. Rent was two hundred and fifty francs a month, or about
eighteen dollars, which left them plenty of money to travel around
Europe when they wanted to.
He rented himself a room in a hotel, and every morning, after
breakfast, he would walk to his writing room and work. But instead of
writing stories, he just tried to write what he called "true
sentences." He said, "I would stand and look out over the roofs of
Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and
you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence that you know.'"
Between January and April 1922, Hemingway had composed only six
sentences that he was proud of. One of those sentences read, "I have
stood on the crowded back platform of a seven o'clock ... bus as it
lurched along the wet lamp-lit street while men who were going home
to supper never looked up from their newspapers as we passed Notre
Dame gray and dripping in the rain."
His first important book was the collection of short stories In Our
Time (1925), and he followed that with The Sun Also Rises (1926). But
it was A Farewell To Arms (1929) that most critics consider his
greatest novel. It was Hemingway's first big success, selling 80,000
copies in just four months.
It begins, "In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a
village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue
in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the
dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the
trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw
the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves,
stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and
afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves."
'The Big Sleep' was a great page turner.
S.A.
It's the birthday of crime novelist Raymond Chandler, born in
Chicago, Illinois (1888). He lived with his mother in England growing
up and then came back to this country. He became a wealthy oil
executive and didn't begin writing until the stock market crash of
1929. He went on to write several novels about the private detective
Philip Marlow, such as The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1954).
Chandler was never any good at coming up with plots. He believed that
readers enjoyed his stories for his descriptions, not the action. He
said, "The things [my readers] remembered, that haunted them, were
not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of his
death he was trying to pick a paper clip up off the polished surface
of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a
look of strain on his face and his mouth was half open in a kind of
tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was
death."
Second Ave, Thanks for the info re the writers. What are you reading lately? Being on vacation I'm plowing through some books...a luxury I don't have when I'm working. I finished Capote's In Cold Blood which was excellent. I read his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms and you can just see how he developed as a writer. I also finished Sue Monk Kidd's, The Secret Lives of Bees. Another excellent book. I'm reading a novel about China now which translates into Going Home. Written by an Asian Toronto Writer. I'm not into historical novels but this book was given to me by China Doll, a friend for whom I did some letter writing. I never ask for payment when I freelance for my friends, so they pay me in books or lunches. I really don't need anymore lunches. Sigh! I'm also reading some books about the craft of writing. Can't remember when I last read a book as a reader. I'm always studying other writers. Become a habit now. Anyhow, thanks for the info and reminders. I've been meaning to re read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye also. Take care. Dolly
I'm reading 'Angels and Demons' right now. One of my favorite modern
authors is Pat Conroy, but not sure if he is still writing. I have a
book ready to go about Sandy Kofax the pitcher for the Brooklyn
Dodgers and the L.A. Dodgers in the 60s. An incredible left
hander.
S.A.
It's the birthday of mystery novelist John D. MacDonald , born in
Sharon, Pennsylvania (1916). He's famous for novels such as The Deep
Blue Good-By (1964) and Nightmare in Pink (1964), featuring Travis
McGee, a beach bum detective who lives on a houseboat that he won in
a poker game.
Btw houseboat called 'The Busted Flush'.
It was on this day in 1897 that the novelist Jack London left for the
Klondike to join the gold rush. He was only twenty-one and had to
borrow money from his stepsister for the voyage. Winter came before
London could look for gold. He spent the winter in an abandoned fur
trader's cabin the size of a tool shed, living on beans and bread. He
wrote of that winter, "[It was] a world of silence and immobility.
Nothing stirred. The Yukon slept under a coat of ice three feet
thick." He read the books he'd brought with him, including Dante's
Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost.
In the spring, London realized that all the good claims had already
been made. Instead of looking for gold, he talked to everyone he
could and soaked up all their stories. On the way home, he almost
died of scurvy, and he barely survived a huge swarm of Alaskan
mosquitoes, but he knew he had great material for fiction.
He went on to write about his experiences in books like The Son of
the Wolf (1900) and Call of the Wild (1903), and he became one of the
most popular writers of his time.
Hey there Bill
I have been away from the VC site for a bit, but returned to find a refeernce to John D. MacDonald. Wow. I was hooked on all of the Travis McGee books for years. I waited to see a new one come out. Always looked for a colour in the title. that was a signnal that it was a McGee. What a great writer he was. And to find that level in action thrillers.
I read most of his other work as well. I remember well reading in one McGee book, his intellectual foil Meyer talking about all of the regugee camps in the Middle East being breeding grounds for future problems and terroroism. Wish I could remember which book it was. Pretty prescient when you think of it today. Great stuff. I often think I will re read them all again. A knight in tarnished armour, McGee was.
It's the birthday of one of the most mysterious writers in the
history of English literature, Emily Bront챘, born in Thornton,
Yorkshire, England (1818). She grew up in a family of eccentrics. Her
father was a minister who took an appointment to a church out in the
rural moorland. His wife died a year after they arrived at his new
post, and he responded by completely withdrawing from his family.
When he came home from work each day, he immediately went to his
study, and he stayed there until he went to sleep at night. He even
took his meals in his study. The one way he chose to communicate with
the family was by firing a shotgun out his window every morning, to
announce that he was waking up.
So the Bront챘 children grew up in an extremely isolated community,
with virtually no one to talk to other than themselves. As a comfort,
Emily and her siblings invented a series of imaginary worlds to write
stories about. The Bront챘s lived like this for years, educating
themselves, making up their own private stories and writing their own
poetry. It was finally the oldest sister, Charlotte, who decided that
they should grow up and find something useful to do. She persuaded
Emily to go to a finishing school with her so that they could open a
school together. But Emily hated being out in the real world so much
that she eventually stopped eating and returned home.
Back at her father's house, she began to look after her brother,
Branwell, who had recently been fired from a tutoring job. It was
rumored he had an affair with the mother of the children he was
supposed to tutor. He was also suffering from alcoholism and
addiction to laudanum after a failed attempt at becoming a painter in
London. Scholars aren't sure what transpired between Emily and her
brother, but some believe that Branwell began to tell his sister
about all his life experiences, his addictions, his love affairs, and
his thwarted hopes as an artist.
It's one of the only theories of how she could have gotten the idea
for the tragic love story at the heart of Wuthering Heights. No one
knows exactly when she wrote the novel, or how long she worked on it.
She might never have even published it if her sister Charlotte hadn't
come up with the idea of all three sisters publishing their work.
They released a combined book of poems, and then each came out with
novels, Charlotte's Jane Eyre (1846), Emily's Wuthering Heights
(1847), and Anne's Agnes Grey (1847).
At the time, Wuthering Heights was the least successful of the three
novels. People found it shocking. Just after it came out, Emily's
brother began to fall ill. She took care of him for the next several
months, until he died in September 1848. She came down with a cough a
month later and she died before the end of the year. She was only
thirty years old.
Emily Bront챘 remains mostly a mystery. Few of her letters were saved
and she kept no diary. Almost all the writing she left behind
concerns imaginary places and imaginary people.
Not sure if this thread is worth posting. No one has complained so
someone probably is reading it with interest. Hope so.
S.A.
..................
It's the birthday of the novelist J K (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling,
born on the outskirts of Bristol, England (1966). In school, Rowling
often entertained the other children at lunch by telling stories in
which all of her friends performed heroic and daring deeds. Her
parents encouraged her to study French in college so that she could
get a job as a bilingual secretary, but she found that she hated
secretarial work. Instead of taking notes in the meetings, she
daydreamed and wrote possible names for fictional characters in the
margins of her notebooks.
Rowling was in her mid-twenties when she took a four-hour journey by
train across England. The train was stopped somewhere between
Manchester and London when Rowland looked out at a field of cows and
suddenly got the idea for a story about a boy who goes to a school
for wizardry. She later said, "Harry Potter just strolled into my
head fully formed." What she liked about the idea was that it was a
story about a boy who is powerless in the ordinary world, but who
gets to travel to a place where his power would be almost limitless.
By the time the train ride was finished, she had already invented
most of the major characters that would appear in the Harry Potter
books.
The series features the young wizard Harry Potter, his best friends
Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, his teachers Albus Dumbledore and
Severus Snape, and his archrival classmate Draco Malfoy.
She worked on the first Harry Potter book for about four years,
during which time she got married, had a daughter, and then got
divorced. She was living in Scotland as a single mother, and her
apartment was unheated, so she would go to the local caf챕 and write,
while her daughter slept in the baby carriage. She eventually quit
her job and lived on public assistance to finish the book. She
finally got an agent in 1995. He told her that he might be able to
sell her book, but he advised her to try to write something for
adults instead. He told her she'd never be able to make a living
writing for children.
But after the publication of her first book, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone (1998), Rowling became one of the best-selling
authors of all time. She now has more than 300 million books in
print. Her last few books have been among the fastest-selling novels
of all time. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which came out
in 2005, sold 5.8 million copies in a single week.
Keep 'em coming , Bill. You've already made me start to rummage through boxes looking for some old Travis McGee tales. Now I may do the same with the Bronte sisters. Worlds apart....but that's the beauty of it all.
BobB
Hi Second Avenue, Yes, love your posts. Rowling is now a billionaire which is a rarity if you write but it can happen. And speaking of writers....I've had a bad day. Flooding in the basement after all the rain we've had here and $500 later for a new sump pump... Plus tonight, was going to continue on my novel and the diskette is damaged and can't open the folders.. So I have to re-write Chapter 6. At least Chapters 1 to 5 are in hard copy. I just had a good cry and thought coming on this site would cheer me up. So thanks Second Avenue for Rowling's story as an inspiration to keep me going. Tomorrow will be a better day. Dolly
Last one.
It's the birthday of Herman Melville, born in New York City (1819).
He's the man who wrote in his novel Moby-Dick (1851), "Whenever I
find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp,
drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily
pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every
funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper
hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me
from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon
as I can."
Melville had only become a writer by chance. When he was twelve, his
father died, after having racked up a huge amount of debt. Melville
was pulled out of school and sent to work at a bank for $150 a year.
After several years of boring desk jobs, Melville decided to get out
into the world, and so at the age of twenty he signed on with a
whaling ship.
Melville's adventures as a sailor changed his life. He came back to
the United States and began writing books about adventures on the
high seas. His first book, Typee (1846), became a big success. Then
in 1847, he borrowed an edition of Shakespeare from a friend. He'd
always had trouble reading Shakespeare because he had poor eyesight,
and most of the Shakespeare editions were printed with small type.
But this one was printed in large type, and Melville was blown away
by what he could finally enjoy. He wrote in a letter to his friend,
"Dolt ... that I am, I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few
days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William. ...
I now exult over it, page after page."
Around the same time, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne for the first time,
and between reading Shakespeare and meeting Hawthorne, he started to
think about trying to write a great book that would rank with the
masters of English literature. And so he began Moby-Dick, the story
of a young man named Ishmael who joins a whaling expedition only to
find that the ship's Captain Ahab is dangerously obsessed with
hunting down a mysterious white whale that once tore off his leg.
Melville started Moby-Dick in the winter of 1850 and finished in the
summer of 1851, writing all day every day without eating until four
or five in the evening. But Moby-Dick was a total flop. Melville's
readers wanted adventure stories, and Moby-Dick was an adventure
story, but the adventure was obscured by the language. It takes more
than a hundred pages before the characters even get on the boat. And
once they're at sea, Melville keeps interrupting the action with
philosophy and poetry. He devotes an entire chapter to describing the
whiteness of the whale. It got terrible reviews, and almost nobody
read it.
It wasn't until the 1920s, when American literature professors began
a revival of interest in American fiction that Melville's work was
rediscovered, and people realized that Moby-Dick was one of the
greatest novels in the English language.
Dolly here is an appropriate saying I use for bad days.
'This Too Shall Pass'.
Bob I'll continue then. I've read many Travis Mcgee.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rufener/
Thank you both for the feedback.
S.A.
That's great Bill. I was inspired to look up Travis on the net and found this site with quotes from some of the books. One of the reasons I loved these stories so much:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._MacDonald
BobB
And it did second ave. Today is better. Dolly
It was on this day in 1934 that the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that
James Joyce's novel Ulysses was not obscene and could be admitted
into the United States.
George Bush says he's been reading British History. He wants to carry on spreading democracy in the same manner as that great Brit that invented it Alexander Cromwell. Ed
On this day in 1912, Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf. She was
thirty, he was thirty-one, and they married at London's St. Pancras
Registry Office. Together, the couple founded the Hogarth Press in
their dining room. They taught themselves how to print. Their first
project was a printed and bound pamphlet containing a story by each
of them. They published Virginia Woolf's novels, a collection of
Freud's papers, and the works of writers who were then unknown,
including Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, and E.M. Forster.
My brother who is a Sherlock Homes nut, said the detective in the
stories was addicted to drugs. Bill
It's the birthday of essayist Thomas De Quincey, born in Manchester,
England (1785). He's best known as the author of Confessions of an
English Opium Eater (1822), the first drug addiction memoir, which
greatly influenced later generations of bohemian writers, from
Charles Baudelaire to William S. Burroughs.
De Quincey began using opium at a time when it was a perfectly legal,
common painkiller, sold in liquid form as laudanum. He was a nineteen-
year-old college student when he had his first experience with the
drug. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, and he'd been suffering from a
toothache.
De Quincy soon dropped out of college and started reading Romantic
poetry. He bummed around, hung out with intellectuals, and impressed
everyone he met with his brilliant conversation. He became friends
with Coleridge and Wordsworth, who encouraged him to write, but he
was a terrible procrastinator and never got anything done, especially
since he was taking opium every day. Finally, instead of quitting
opium in order to write, he decided to write about taking opium, and
his anonymous memoir became a huge best-seller.
I finally finished 'Angels and Demons'. My own personal opinion: Way
way too long. Had he cut a couple of hundred pages from the story I
know it would have been an enjoyable read for me. Reading 'Time and
Again', by Jack Finney. So far so good.
Second Avenue.
My personal favorite of his short stories, 'A Cat in the Rain'.
http://www.gs.cidsnet.de/englisch-online/Leistungskurs2/hemingway3.htm
It was on this day in 1952 that Ernest Hemingway came out with his
last novel, The Old Man and the Sea.
After he published his first two novels, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
and A Farewell to Arms (1929), he was considered the best living
American writer, and he was probably the most famous writer in the
world. But he began to write less and less fiction in the 1930s. He
went on long hunting and fishing expeditions. He became an intrepid
journalist, covering the civil war in Spain. He covered the invasion
of Normandy on D-Day and the liberation of Paris, and he was one of
the only armed journalists fighting alongside the other soldiers.
After participating in the war, he had a hard time getting back to
writing. He said, "[It's] as though you had heard so much loud music
you couldn't hear anything played delicately." He finally published
his first novel in ten years in 1950, Across the River and Into the
Trees, about World War II. It got terrible reviews.
Hemingway had been working on a long novel that he called The Sea
Book. It had three sections, which he called "The Sea When Young,"
"The Sea When Absent," and "The Sea in Being," and it had an epilogue
about an old fisherman. He wrote more than eight hundred pages of
"The Sea Book" and rewrote them more than a hundred times, but the
book still didn't seem finished. Finally, he decided to publish just
the epilogue about the old fisherman, which he called The Old Man and
the Sea.
It won the Pulitzer Prize, and two years later Hemingway won the
Nobel Prize for Literature. He didn't publish another novel in his
lifetime.
It's the birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, born in St. Paul,
Minnesota (1896). He was born in a rented apartment on Laurel Avenue
in St. Paul, down the street from Summit Avenue, where the richest
citizens of the city lived. His mother came from a well-to-do family,
but his father was the proprietor of a wicker furniture business that
never made a whole lot of money. Fitzgerald grew up feeling self-
conscious about his family's social status.
His father's wicker furniture business eventually failed, and the
family had to move to Buffalo, New York, where Fitzgerald's father
sold soap for Procter and Gamble. Then, one day, Fitzgerald saw his
mother answer the telephone, and he knew by watching her face that
something terrible had happened. He later wrote, "My mother, a little
while before, had given me a quarter to go swimming. I gave the money
back to her. ... I thought she could not spare the money now." It
turned out that his father had lost his job, and the family had to
move back to St. Paul, to live with his wealthy grandmother.
Fitzgerald started writing when he got back to St. Paul, mainly as a
way to keep from being bored during his classes. He said, "I wrote
all through every class in school in the back of my geography book
and first year Latin and on the margins of themes and declensions and
mathematics problems."
He did so poorly in school that his parents sent him off to a
Catholic boarding school on the East coast, but he didn't do well
there. He might have gone on to the University of Minnesota, but just
before his graduation from high school his grandmother died and left
her fortune to his mother, which made it possible for Fitzgerald to
go to Princeton. He had a vision of becoming a Princeton football
star, but he weighed only 138 pounds and he was cut from the team on
the first day. He found that he felt just as out of place at
Princeton has he had always felt. He said, "That was always my
experience a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's
school, a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton.
"In 1914, Fitzgerald met a beautiful, rich 16-year-old girl named
Ginevra King, and he fell madly in love with her. He followed her
around at dances and parties, but she was unwilling to commit to
dating just one man. One night, he overheard someone say that poor
boys should not try to marry rich girls. A year later, Ginevra
informed Fitzgerald that she was engaged. He later wrote in a letter
to his daughter, "She was the first girl I ever loved ... [and] she
ended up by throwing me over with the most supreme boredom and
indifference."
So he wrote his first novel about her, while he awaited commission as
an army officer. He called the novel The Romantic Egoist. It tells
the story of young man named Amory Blaine who falls in love with a
beautiful blond debutante named Rosalind Connage and then loses her
because she doesn't want to marry someone with so little money.
Fitzgerald eventually changed the title to This Side of Paradise.
When it came out in 1920, it made Fitzgerald famous almost over
night. He finally got to be rich, if only briefly. By the time the
stock market crashed in 1929, Fitzgerald's marriage was falling apart
and his books weren't selling anymore. He died in 1940 at the age of
44. That year, all of his books sold a total of 72 copies, with
royalties of $13.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "What people are ashamed of usually makes a
good story."
Hemingway and Faulkner had a love/hate relationship. Faulkner said, "Hemingway never wrote a word that sent anyone to the dictionary." Hemingway answered, "Poor Faulkner, does he really think big emotions come from big words?" Talking of literary put downs, Licoln said, "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I Know." Moses Hadas said, "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it." G.B.Shaw to Churchill, "I am enclosing two tickets to my new play. Bring a friend if you have one." Churchill answered, "Cannot attend first night. Will attend second if there is one" Ed
It's the birthday of William (Cuthbert) Faulkner, born in New Albany, Mississippi (1897). He grew up listening to stories about his family, including several stories about his great-grandfather, a colonel in the Civil War, who once killed a man with a bowie knife and later killed another man who tried to avenge the first man's death. And then there were stories about Faulkner's father, who was once sitting in a drug store with a girl when the girl's spurned boyfriend walked in and shot Faulkner's father in the back with a shotgun. Somehow, Faulkner's father survived.
Aside from family lore, Faulkner's literary education came not from school but from an older friend named Phil Stone, who had gone to Yale. At that time, Faulkner had been reading Moby-Dick and Shakespeare, but it was Phil Stone who introduced him to modern literature like the works of James Joyce and Joseph Conrad.
After dropping out of high school, Faulkner spent several years trying to figure out what to do with himself. He went to the University of Mississippi for a year, where he got a D in his English class. He went to New York City, where he was fired from a job at a bookstore because he told the customers they were reading trash. Then he worked for a while at a post office, until he lost that job because he failed to deliver the mail and often closed down early to go golfing.
He published a book of poems and two relatively conventional novels, and then he met the writer Sherwood Anderson, who advised him to write about his hometown. So Faulkner began observing Oxford, Mississippi, more closely, and he began to invent an imaginary version of Oxford he called Jefferson, located in an imaginary county he called Yoknapatawpha.
He later said, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it, and by sublimating the actual into apocryphal I would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top."
One of the first novels he wrote about his new imaginary landscape was The Sound and the Fury, about a wild young woman named Caddy Compson and her three brothers: Benjy, who is mentally handicapped; Quentin, who falls in love with her; and Jason, who feels she has ruined the family's name by getting pregnant out of wedlock.
Faulkner went on writing through the 1930s, but he never really broke through to popular success. By 1944, all but one of his books were out of print. But in 1945, Malcolm Cowley helped publish a Portable Faulkner edition, which brought attention back to his work. Then in 1949, he won the Nobel Prize for literature. All his books were brought back into print, and they have stayed in print ever since.
Seems Mr. Faukner signed up with the Canadian armed forces during WW1
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-bio.html
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-bio.html
On this day in 1955, poet Allen Ginsberg (books by this author) read
his poem "Howl" for the first time at a poetry reading at Six Gallery
in San Francisco. He had graduated from Columbia University back in
1948, and hadn't been having an easy time figuring out what to do
with himself. He'd gotten involved with a bohemian crowd that
included Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, but the same crowd
also included hardcore criminals. One night, he was out with a friend
in a stolen car, and they got caught by the police. His friend was
sent to jail, but Ginsberg wound up in a mental hospital.
On his first day in the hospital, Ginsberg met a man named Carl
Solomon, and the two became instant friends. Carl had been committed
to the hospital when he'd shown up at the front door demanding to be
lobotomized, because he didn't see any point in having a brain in
American society. He and Ginsberg spent their time in the hospital
discussing French avant-garde poetry and Dostoyevsky. Ginsberg
thought Carl Solomon was one of the most brilliant people he'd ever
met, and he decided that if this man was in a mental hospital, then
there was definitely something wrong with America.
When he got out of the hospital, Ginsberg worked a series of
respectable jobs, doing market research for advertising companies. He
eventually wound up in San Francisco, where he spent his nights
living like a bohemian with his friends, but he kept going to the
same respectable job during the day.
In the spring of 1954, Ginsberg suggested to his boss that he be
replaced with an IBM computer, and his boss took the advice. Ginsberg
knew he'd have six months of unemployment pay to live on, so he
decided to make the most of it. One afternoon that August, he sat
down at his typewriter with the goal of writing down whatever came
into his head as quickly as he could. For some reason, he thought of
Carl Solomon, the guy he'd met at the mental hospital, and he began
to type the famous opening line, "I saw the best minds of my
generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked."
He wrote the whole first section of the poem that afternoon,
cataloguing the lives and experiences of all his bohemian friends who
hadn't fit in with contemporary society. But he kept coming back to
his friend Carl Solomon. At the top of the first page of the poem, he
wrote in pink pencil, "Howl for Carl Solomon." He later revised and
greatly expanded the poem, and shortened the title to the single word
"Howl."
Ginsberg had never given a public reading before, but he decided to
debut his new poem at a reading with five other poets, at the Six
Gallery, a converted auto-repair shop on the corner of Union and
Fillmore in downtown San Francisco. Allen Ginsburg was the second-to-
last reader, and when he took the stage he was a little nervous. But
after a few lines of the poem, he began to chant the words like a
preacher, and the audience began to cheer at the end of every line.
One of the people in the audience that night was the poet and upstart
publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He went on to publish Howl and Other
Poems (1956), and an obscenity scandal turned Ginsberg into one of
the most famous poets in America.
Interesting story Secondave,........
Hi Second Ave. Thanks for the story of Ginsberg and Solomon. I remember reading Howl and really getting into Gingsberg and Kerouac and Ferlinghetti in the sixties. I had just discovered the beat poets, and was into my bohemian period. I went around dressed in black turtlenecks and hung around Montreal's coffee houses like the Yellow Door and this other tiny place that had the best coffee and pastries on the planet. I've forgotten the name but it was located on a tiny side street off de Maisonneuve a block from Guy. Anyone else out there remember some of the coffee houses in sixties/seventies Montreal? Dolly
Hi Dolly , Hi Bill
Dolly the coffee shops I remember from the sixties were the Pam Pam . That's the one I thought of when you mentioned best coffee and patries. I also remember Cafe Prague. I think they had jazz on Sunday afternoons. Then there was the Yellow Door, the Back Door, the New Penolope. They were great.
As for good old Gingsberg, I was lucky enough to see him in person in Toronto at U ot T's Convocation Hall a few years before he died. It was a great event that meant a lot to an old freak from the sixties.
BobB
http://www.levity.com/corduroy/ginsberg.htm
What I remember about Ginsberg is that along with Jerry Rubin he preached 'drop out, light up' and 'never trust anyone over thirty'. Perhaps I was too old to appreciate him but I know some kids were sorry they took that advice. It caused young people to leave university and do nothing. They encouraged kids to turn their back on the parents that loved and raised them and literally go on the bum following the lead of Kerouac and others. The hippie movement worked because it was a time of much prosperity and loose money. People were 'fat' and willing to give. When the Republicans got control in '68 the corporate greed took the loose money and hippies had to find work Ed
Oh well, I guess everybody has a boogieman.
BobB
Turn on, tune in and drop out. Timothy Leary
US psychologist & promoter of mind-altering drugs (1920 - 1996) It wasn't Ginsberg..................
Hi Bob, Yes, How could I forget the Yellow Door and Pam Pam on Stanley Street! Used to go to Pam Pam after work to write or study, killing time before going to Sir George Williams for classes. I was studying Fine ARts at night. Had all this energy then...I think I'm paying for it now. I remember it was always dark in there and the hostess with black teased hair and slick eyeliner out to there, all dolled up and no where to go.... Didn't the Back Door become the Yellow Door? A friend was going out with this guy Don Kilgour and he and Auf de Mer who later grew up and became city counciller of Montreal turned it into the Yellow Door. I remember Eric Anderson playing there--- thought he was great and Penny some one or other. All those folksinger types. It was the best time to be young. We were going to change the world ....and then reality set in... Dolly
I think LSD and other drugs changed youth. Let's blame it on Timothy! Ha!. But you know, the sixties were a decade of much transition. The music and fashion changed, women's lib, the pill, Vietnam, the assasinations of Bobby and John and Martin Luther King, the Kent killings. Can't pinpoint to one thing. But there was never that much change in our society as then. And you know what? I'm glad I was there! Dolly
Sabby it was Penny Lang that you heard sing back then. If you google Penny Lang you'll fine her web site. I remember seeing her too back in the day! Dianne
Here's another Timothy Learry quote: Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Timothy Learry Sounds reasonable enough,............I like him better than some (present day leaders,??,of the modern world) How's the saying go, "If you Remember the 60's--- -----You weren't there......... ......................................................
If you would like to get a beautifully accurate idea what is was
really like to live in the 1880s' New York city, read Jack Finneys
book 'Time and Again'. He went overboard on the research he admits.
The tiniest of historical details way beyond most readers or New
Yorker's knowledge. Did you know for instance there was a 1880
baseball team called the Mets, and the arm with torch of the Statue
of Liberty was erected first in one of the city parks? Horse driven
taxies & street cars, gas street lighting. The story is centeralized
out of the 'Dakota' building off Central Park, which was build in the
1800s as many remaining building long forgatten are. John Lennon was
assassinated outside of The Dakota btw. I believe it would describe
life in Montreal.
S.A.
Hio Dolly
Good memories, eh? I spent many a night at the Yellow Door & the Penelope. I discovered Jesse Winchester at the Penelope and now I go and see him once a year at Hugh's Room in Toronto. And , BTW, Penny Lang is performing a CD release party at Hugh's Room on Oct 26. I'll be there.
Yes, that rascal , Tim, convinced me to try a few hundred mics Didn't regret that either. Glad I was there too.
And Bill, I have definitely added Jack Finney to my reading list after reading your post. Sounds too good to miss. Maybe I'll find my way into a book store today. I need to add another book to my backlog.
BobB
www.hughsroom.com
Les, You're right. The quote was Leary's but Ginsberg and Rubin were the writers that promoted it. I never read anything of Leary's but read a lot of the culture books in those days trying to understand. Ginsberg and Rubin bragged about cheering kids on at the University burnings. Ed
BobB and dianne, Yes, Just as I clicked the send message I remembered Penny Lang and yes, of course, Jesse Winchester. Senior moment. The Pam Pam wasn't a coffee house though unless it changed later. It was a Hungarian restaurant with really great food and atmosphere. Lucky you in Toronto and hearing these guys. Wonder if they ever come to Montreal now? Dolly
Hi Dolly
You're right, Pam Pam wasn't a coffee house in the traditional sense. There was also another place called Carmen's. Can't remember where exactly.
I think Penny Lang is still based in Montreal. Although I may be wrong. But, I'm not sure what the folk / roots scene is like in Montreal now. Jesse Wincheste lived in Montreal or outside of Montreal from many years. He was a transplanted American Vietnam war resister who found Montreal in the 60's and Gary Eisenkraft, owner of the New Penelope found Jesse. When Jimmy Carter declared an amnesty, Jesse availed himself of it. He stayed in Montreal for years after that though. But, he was now able to cross the border freely.
Then a few years ago, during one of his visits south to Tennessee, he fell in love with a lady there and moved back to Memphis . He comes up to Toronto every May and performs at Hugh's Room, which is a great venue. Just Jesse and his nylon sting guitar and his beautiful songs. He holds the room in the palm of his hand for over 2 hours. He is a real treasure.
BobB
Thanks for the update, Bob. And I remember Gary Eisenkraft. Yes and Carmen's but can't seem to put my finger on it. Dolly
Great crime novelist.
S.A.
It's the birthday of novelist Elmore Leonard, born in New Orleans
(1925). His father worked for General Motors, and the family traveled
around a lot until they finally settled in Detroit, where he still
lives with his wife, and with his children and grandchildren nearby.
He said, "I live in Detroit because I like it [and] because I know
the names of all the streets."
After college, Leonard decided he would write Westerns or detective
novels, depending on which made more money. He sold his first Western
for $1,000 and quickly churned out eight more, including the popular
Hombre (1961). Then in the '60s, Westerns became less popular, so he
switched to detective fiction. It took a while for him to be
successful. To support his wife and five children, he worked in
advertising and for the Encyclopedia Britannica, working on his
novels every morning between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. By 1983, he had
written 23 novels, including Fifty-Two Pickup (1974), Stick (1983),
and La Brava (1984). In 1995, his book Get Shorty was turned into a
movie starring John Travolta. And the movie Jackie Brown, directed by
Quentin Tarantino, was based on his book Rum Punch (1992).
Elmore Leonard said about his writing, "I leave out the parts that
people skip."
It's the birthday of Irish writer Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin
(1854). Wilde was an unpromising student until he discovered ancient
Greek literature, and fell completely in love with it. He won a
scholarship to Oxford University and would have gone on to an
academic career in classical literature if there had been any
fellowships available. Instead, he moved to an apartment in London,
and he became the leader of the aesthetic movement, which held the
philosophy that that secret of life is art. Wilde said, "Even a
colour-sense is more important, in the development of the individual,
than a sense of right and wrong."
He was struggling to break into the drama scene when a friend
suggested that he go on a lecture tour in the United States to spread
his ideas. Wilde sailed to New York City on Christmas Eve 1881. When
he arrived, a customs official asked him if he had anything to
declare, and Wilde reportedly said, "I have nothing to declare but my
genius." He went on a sweeping lecture tour in the United States,
stopping everywhere from Des Moines to Denver, from St. Paul to Houston.
When he got back from the United States, Wilde fell into a love
affair with the young aristocrat Lord Alfred Douglas. It was during
that affair that Wilde wrote his most successful plays, including his
masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
On this day in 1851, Harper & Brothers published Moby-Dick, by Herman
Melville . The British publisher accidentally left out the ending of
the book, the epilogue. This confused a lot of British readers,
because without the epilogue there was no explanation of how Ishmael,
the narrator, lived to tell the tale. It seemed like he died in the
end with everyone else on the ship. The reviews from Britain were
harsh, and costly to Melville. At the time, Americans deferred to
British critical opinion, and a lot of American newspaper editors
reprinted reviews from Britain without actually reading the American
version with the proper ending. Melville had just bought a farm in
Massachusetts, his debts were piling up, he was hiding them from his
wife, and he was counting on Moby-Dick to bring in enough money to
pay off his creditors. The book flopped, partly because of those
British reviews. As a writer, Melville never recovered from the
disappointment.
It's the birthday of the novelist Andrea Barrett, born in Boston,
Massachusetts (1954). She grew up on Cape Cod and spent most of her
time near the ocean, fascinated by sea life. She decided to study
biology in college and zoology in grad school. She went on to write
about botanists, oceanographers and geologists in novels such as The
Forms of Water (1993) and The Voyage of the Narwhal (1998).
Andrea Barrett said, "It's hard to explain how much one can love
writing. If people knew how happy it can make you, we would all be
writing all the time. It's the greatest secret of the world."
C.S. (Clive Staples) Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland (1898). He
said of his childhood, "I am a product ...[of] books. There were
books in the study, books in the drawing-room, books in the cloak
room, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the
attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my
parents' interests, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for
a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In
the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume
from the shelves."
Lewis's parents were Anglicans and took him to church as a boy, but
he found religion cold and boring. He preferred pagan mythology:
Irish, Norse, and Greek myths he read in storybooks. He created an
imaginary country called "Boxen" and wrote stories about it. He said,
"My early stories were an attempt to combine my two chief literary
pleasures — 'dressed animals' and 'knights in armour.' As a result, I
wrote about chivalrous mice and rabbits who rode out in complete mail
to kill not giants but cats."
He began teaching philosophy at Oxford, where he met J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tolkien was a devout Christian and Lewis was an atheist, but they
shared a love for mythology. They took a long walks around the Oxford
grounds, debating the existence of God. Tolkien tried to persuade
Lewis that the story of Jesus was a myth but that it had also
actually happened.
The morning after one of those walks, Lewis went with his brother to
the zoo. He said, "When we set out [for the zoo] I did not believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I
did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great
emotion." He became the most prominent Christian apologist in the
world. He recorded a series of lectures for radio, which were
broadcast in England during World War II, and many people gathered
around their radios to take comfort from his ideas in the midst of
bombing raids. The lectures were collected into his book Mere
Christianity (1952).
But he is best remembered for the seven books in the Chronicles of
Narnia, which he started publishing in 1950. Lewis decided to write
for children, even though he never had any children himself and had
never had any strong relationships with children. He wanted to give
children what he had gotten himself from fairytales when he was a child.
C.S. Lewis said, "You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book
long enough to suit me."
It's the birthday of director and screenwriter Woody Allen, born
Allen Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn (1935). He hated school as a
kid. He said, "I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in
school." Every day, when Allen got home from school, he immediately
went into his bedroom and shut the door. He spent all his time
reading, learning to play the saxophone, and teaching himself magic
tricks.
He started writing jokes, and then directing movies. In the 1970s, he
started working on an autobiographical movie. When Allen turned the
rough cut of the movie into the studio, it was several hours long,
with almost no plot, and he wanted to call it Anhedonia, which is the
name of a psychological disorder in which a person is unable to
experience pleasure. The studio helped him cut the movie down to a
more reasonable length, and they found themselves cutting almost
everything except for the scenes with Diane Keaton, who played Woody
Allen's love interest. So they named the move after her character,
and it became Annie Hall (1977). It went on to win the Academy Awards
for best picture, best director, and best actress.
Woody Allen said, "My one regret in life is that I am not someone else."
It's the birthday of novelist Joseph Conrad, born in Berdichev,
Ukraine (1857), in a region that had once been part of Poland. His
father was a poet and translator of English and French literature.
Joseph and his father read books written in both Polish and French.
By the time he was 12 years old, both of his parents had died of
tuberculosis. He went to Switzerland to live with his uncle, but
after a few years he decided he wanted to go off and see the world.
He joined the French merchant marine, and began a long career as a
sailor. He sailed to Australia, Borneo, Malaysia, South America, the
South Pacific, and Africa. He joined the British merchant navy, and
in 1886 became a citizen of Great Britain.
In the fall of 1889, Conrad settled in London for a few months. One
morning, after he finished his breakfast, he told his maid to clear
away all the dishes immediately. Normally, he would sit by the window
and read from a book by Dickens or Hugo or Shakespeare. But on this
morning he felt unusually calm and perceptive. He later wrote, "It
was an autumn day ... with fiery points and flashes of red sunlight
on the roofs and windows opposite, while the trees of the square with
all their leaves gone were like tracings of an Indian ink on a sheet
of tissue paper." He began to write his first novel, Almayer's Folly,
which would be published six years later. It's about a man from the
Netherlands who trades on the jungle rivers of Borneo. Conrad said,
"The conception of a planned book was entirely outside my mental
range when I sat down to write." He said he felt "a hidden obscure
necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon."
Conrad went on to write many more novels, including Lord Jim (1900),
The Secret Agent (1907), and Nostromo (1904). But he's most famous
for Heart of Darkness (1902), about a man's journey down a river into
the middle of Africa. Conrad wrote, in Heart of Darkness, "It is
impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's
existence, — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and
penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream — alone."
Conrad said the task of the writer is "to make you hear, to make you
feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it
is everything."
I get these tidbits of info weekly so I pass them on. Maybe a V.C. member enjoys them. A lit professor once told me 'Madam Bovary' is the most perfect novel ever written. Maybe I should read it huh. I'm positive someone here has.
Second Avenue.
It's the birthday of French novelist Gustave Flaubert, (books by this author) born in Rouen, France (1821). A diagnosis of epilepsy got him out of the law school his parents had planned for him, and so he spent much of his youth around the world with his bohemian friends, going on an extended journey through southern Europe and the Middle East, going to brothels, smoking hashish, and collecting artifacts from ancient civilizations.
While traveling, Flaubert worked on his first novel, an elaborate historical romance set in the fourth century called The Temptation of Saint Anthony. When he showed it to friends, they told him to throw it into the fire and never mention it again. Instead, they recommended that he try to write a novel about ordinary middleclass French society. So Flaubert took his friends' advice and moved home with his mother to do research. He had heard a story about a young married woman who committed a series of affairs and then died, leaving her husband with numerous debts, and that gave Flaubert the idea for Madame Bovary (1857).
It's the story of Emma Bovary, a provincial housewife who spends all her time reading romance novels. After marrying an ordinary country doctor, Emma Bovary realizes that her life will never compare to the books she loves, and so she begins a series of love affairs to stave off her boredom.
It took Flaubert five years to write the novel. Part of what made the writing so difficult was that he wanted to describe even the most ordinary things in a new way. He said, "It is so easy to chatter about the Beautiful. But it takes more genius to say, in proper style, 'close the door,' or 'he wanted to sleep,' than to give all the literature courses in the world."
Madame Bovary became a big success when the government attempted to censor it, and Flaubert won the court case. We still remember Madame Bovary as Flaubert's great masterpiece, but in his lifetime he was best known for his second book, Salammbo (1862), a novel about pagan rituals and human sacrifice that became a huge best-seller when it was published, though it is rarely read today. Flaubert said, "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."
Hi Bill
I read "Bovary" what seems like 100 years ago. All I can remember is the title. That's a comment on me, not the book.
BobB
Hi Bill
I read Madam Bovary about 100 years ago. I can't remember anything except the title and the fact I read it. More of a comment on me than the book.
BobB
I think I'm repeating myself....I said.. I think I'm repeating myself.
BobB
It's the birthday of Jane Austen, born in Steventon, Hampshire, England (1775). Austen is the only novelist who published before Charles Dickens whose books still sell thousands of copies every year. Although she never got married herself, but she is best known for books about women who do get married, including Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813). She did fall in love as a young woman, but the man she loved had no money for marriage. Later, she got a proposal from an older wealthy gentleman. She said yes, but then found herself unable to sleep that night. In the morning she did something that was almost unheard of at the time: she told her fianc챕 that she had changed her mind, because she did not love him.
Austen's first two books, Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), were great successes in her lifetime, but after that her readers grew less enthusiastic. Neither Mansfield Park (1814) nor Emma (1816) was as popular. It was only after her death that she became one of the most popular novelists from the 19th century. After the First World War, Jane Austen novels were prescribed to shell-shocked British soldiers for therapy, because the psychologists found that Austen helped them recover their sense of the world they'd known before the war. Rudyard Kipling said, "There's no one to touch Jane [Austen] when you're in a tight place."
It was on this day in 1843 that Charles Dickens published A
Christmas Carol. Dickens wrote the novel after his first commercial
failure. His previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit (1842), had flopped,
and he was suddenly strapped for cash. Martin Chuzzlewit had been
satirical and pessimistic, and Dickens thought he might be more
successful if he wrote a heartwarming tale with a holiday theme.
He got the idea for the book in late October of 1843, and he
struggled to finish the book in time for Christmas. He no longer had
a publisher so he published the book himself, ordering illustrations,
gilt-edged pages and a lavish red bound cover. He priced the book at
a mere 5 shillings, in hopes of making it affordable to everyone. It
was released within a week of Christmas and was a huge success,
selling 6,000 copies the first few days, and the demand was so great
that it quickly went to second and third editions.
At the time, Christmas was on the decline and not celebrated much.
England was in the midst of an Industrial Revolution and most people
were incredibly poor, having to work as much as 16-hour days six days
a week. Most people couldn't afford to celebrate Christmas, and
Puritans believed it was a sin to do so. They felt that celebrating
Christmas too extravagantly would be an insult to Christ. The famous
American preacher Henry Ward Beecher said that Christmas was a
"foreign day" and he wouldn't even recognize it.
When Dickens's novel became a huge best-seller in both the United
States and England, A Christmas Carol reminded many people of the old
Christmas traditions that had been dying out since the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution — of cooking a feast, spending time with
family, and spreading warmth and cheer. Dickens helped people return
to the old ways of Christmas. He went on to write a Christmas story
every year, but none endured as well as A Christmas Carol.
Charles Dickens wrote, "I have always thought of Christmas time,
as ... the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year,
when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts
freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were
fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures
bound on other journeys. And therefore ... though it has never put a
scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
It was on this day in 1916 that James Joyce (books by this author) published his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The idea for the book had originated with an autobiographical essay that Joyce had written way back in 1904, when he was still living in Ireland. He'd submitted it to a journal, but it was rejected on the basis that it was too frank about sexual matters. When Joyce got the rejection letter, he sat down at his kitchen table and sketched out a plan to expand the essay into a novel about his own childhood. He told his brother Stanislaus about the idea, and the two of them began to refer to it as his "lying autobiography." They talked about characters from their family and their neighborhood that Joyce should include in the story. He decided that the character in the novel based on himself would be named Stephen Dedalus, and he tentatively titled the novel "Stephen Hero."
Within a year of sketching out his plans for the novel, Joyce had written 25 chapters and more than 900 pages. But in that same year he had also decided to leave Ireland with his girlfriend, Nora Barnacle. They eventually settled in Trieste, where he got a job teaching English to support his writing. The teaching job was exhausting, and it barely paid any money, and pretty soon Joyce had two children to support, and the writing became more and more difficult.
So rather than finishing "Stephen Hero," Joyce began concentrating on short stories. Before he'd left Ireland, he'd published a few stories in a newspaper called The Irish Homestead, but when he sent them his new stories, they were all rejected as too vulgar. Joyce kept writing, though, and eventually finished a collection of short stories he called Dubliners. The publisher accepted the manuscript for Dubliners, but asked Joyce to clean up the language in a few places. Joyce tried to be accommodating, but each time he sent the edited manuscript back to the publisher, the publisher had new objections.
In desperation, Joyce decided to return to his novel. But suddenly, it seemed too conventional, too Victorian. So he scrapped all 900 pages he had already written and started from scratch. In the new version of the novel, he decided that instead of just telling a coming-of-age story, he would tell the story of the main character's emerging consciousness.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus as he grows up, going to boarding school for the first time, discovering his sexuality, feeling guilty about his sexuality, deciding to become a priest, having a crisis of faith, and finally deciding to leave Ireland to become a writer.
Joyce had spent nearly 10 years in Trieste trying to get his fiction published when, near the end of 1913, he learned that both of the books he had written would be published. Dubliners came out the following year (1914), and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published on this day in 1916. In just two years James Joyce had gone from total obscurity to being celebrated as one of the most promising new writers in the English language.
It's the birthday of short-story writer, poet, and novelist (Joseph)
Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, India (1865). His father was a
British artist who got an appointment to run an art school in Bombay,
but after a series of typhoid and cholera outbreaks, Kipling's
parents decided to send him back to England for his own safety.
After school, he went off to the northwest corner of India, where the
British were fighting a war with Afghanistan. Kipling got a job on an
army newspaper, and he also began writing fiction and poetry. After
six years of publishing his work, he sold everything he'd written for
250 pounds to a company that began selling paperback editions of his
collected works in railway stations around India. Those paperback
editions became more successful than anyone had ever expected, and
suddenly magazines and newspapers were begging Kipling to write for
them. He moved back to London, where he'd become a literary
celebrity, but he found the life of a celebrity did not agree with him.
So he traveled the world for a few years, and finally settled in
Vermont. And it was there, in a rented cottage surrounded by snow,
that he began to reimagine the India of his childhood, and he wrote
the book for which he's best known today, The Jungle Book (1894),
about a boy raised by wolves who grows up with the other jungle
animals until a tiger forces him to go back and live with people.
Hi Les, Yes, I remember this poem. It's great and I'm with you for the first and second stanzas. There are such great writers and thinkers out there who see the world in ways that we forget or miss sometimes. It is comforting to read their work and have a moment of awareness, an ah ah moment. Dolly
Yes Sabby ,I think that 2nd stanza is pretty good too,.....on second thought,I like the whole thing,..hahahaha............I guess I see different ,or feel different things each time I read it.... top of mind awareness I guess....................... but as the old bumper Sticker says.........."If you can read this---- -----Thank a Teacher........
For a fun read and good memories check out, "Girl In A Red River Coat" written by Mary Peate of St.Anne de Belleview. Ed l
Just checked my local library Ed ,.unfortunately it's not liste here, or I would have put it on hold,... they have two other books by Mary Todd Peatte,......one seems to be done with the CBC, called "Girl in a CBC Studio"with excerpts from Tea & Trump, and another book called "Girl in a Sloppy Joe Sweater" I'll have to ask at the library in person if they can find or do an inter-library loan,and get it for me.........too bad I was there today returning a book.........
Hello Again Ed,....I've come across an excerpt from this book "I hate having her live with us. She's got my bedroom and I have to sleep in the living room. I hate HER." "It's a sin to hate somebody," Margaret said. I looked at her sharply to see how come all of a sudden she was such a Miss Pious Pockets, as my father would say. "If you hate someone you hate them," I said. "I can't help if it's a sin." "You're supposed to love everybody. Or at least, if you can't love them, you're supposed to like them," she said primly. ..........the having to share a bedroom,is familiar already..........hahaha Girl in a Red River Coat. Mary Peate.
Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, PQ: Shoreline, 1970/2005.
149 pp., pbk., $19.95.
ISBN 1-896754-42-2. Subject Headings:
Peate, Mary, 1927-Childhood and youth. Montr챕al (Queb챕c)-Social life and customs-20th century.
Montr챕al (Queb챕c)-Biography. Grades 5 and up / Ages 10 and up. Review by Ruth Latta. ...........anyone interested in looking for this book will find ,having the ISBN number a big help,..in doing any searches,......... So do with it ,what you will..................................Thanks for the lead Ed I'll check it out when i can..............
As it seems ,this is the same authour of the two books I did find,at GVPL so it's most likely going to be fairly easy to get a copy,...We'll see
Shoreline books has a few interesting books on their list. check it out: http://www3.sympatico.ca/shoreline/aboutus.htm
Les, That excerp from the book is one of the best but it stopped short. The rest goes, "The Bible says thou must love thy neighbour." "That's easy for you to say. You haven't got thy neighbour sleeping in thy bed." Ed
Kipling's 'Jungle Book' was the basis Robert Baden Powell used for the wolf cub program. Akela the wolf is the name used for the Head Scouter. A lot of Kipling's poetry was used in the circle. The one I remember was; "Now chill the kite brings home the night that Mang the Bat sets free. The herds are shut in byre and hut for loose till dawn are we. This is the hour of pride and power, of talon and tusk and claw. Oh heed the call. Good hunting all that keep the jungle law." As a boy cub at St.John the Divine in 1942 these words sent a chill through me, the way they were spoken by Cub Master Len Blaine, later Phys Ed teacher at Verdun High. When women got involved as cub masters it was decided these words were too frightening for boys so they were dropped. The book Scouting for boys took a lot of color from Kipling's 'Kim' and {owell used it when he wrote 'Scouting For Boys' Ed
Happy New Years Ed! Hmmmm.......we women always seem to ruin a good thing!!! Dianne
Amazing the things we Remember, because we were impressed by the teacher,.leader,.whoever,........ Always nice to recall certain memories,...and to have them prompted by some of these posted messages here,.............is really neat to see Thanks for the Post........Have a good New Year,
You're right Dianne. Look what you've done to Paul. He had hair when you got him. Ed
It's the birthday of the novelist Jack London, (books by this author) born Jack Chancy in San Francisco (1876). Growing up, Jack London fell in love with dime novels about adventure and exotic places, but when he was 13 years old, he had to get a job at a cannery to help support the family. The job was sheer drudgery, and London began dreaming of running away.He borrowed money from his foster mother and bought a sloop named Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate, and then Jack London became an oyster pirate himself. When his sloop became too damaged to sail, London took a job on a sealing schooner off the coast of Japan. But finally he came back to California, thinking that what he really needed was an education. He began reading books at a ferocious pace, on all subjects: philosophy, biology, history, and literature. When he heard about a special entrance exam to the University of California, he took the test and aced it, even though he hadn't even gone to high school.But London only lasted one semester in college, because he couldn't fit in with the other more privileged students. Then, in the summer of 1897, he heard about the gold rush in the Alaskan Klondike, and off he went. He hauled his equipment over the Chilkoot Pass, and spent that winter in a shack, barely surviving the 50-below-zero temperatures. When spring came, he decided he'd had enough. He'd found no gold.When he returned to California, he finally had some stories to write. His first big success was his novel The Call of the Wild (1903), about a dog named Buck who goes from living as a domestic pet to living on its own in the wilderness of Alaska. His most famous short story is "To Build a Fire" (1908), about a man struggling and failing to light a single fire in the snowy wilderness. It is one of the most widely anthologized and translated stories ever written by an American author.
Bill. I am waiting for the bio on O'Henry. I remember a tv series with Thomas Mitchel as O'Henry. Winston
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It's the birthday of one of the few Catholic priests who's ever been a best-selling novelist, Andrew Greeley, (books by this author) born in Oak Park, Illinois (1928). Soon after his ordination in 1954, Greeley decided that he had other interests beyond running a parish. He went on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and he became a professor of sociology. He began writing about the changing role of religion in society and eventually published more than 60 books on sociology, religion, and other subjects. But he also began to write novels, and he generated a storm of controversy with his fourth novel, The Cardinal Sins (1981).The Cardinal Sins tells the story of a young Irish boy named Patrick Donahue from Chicago's West Side who becomes a priest and then rises through the ranks of the church hierarchy, eventually becoming the archbishop of Chicago and a cardinal. Along the way, he takes a mistress and fathers an illegitimate child. At the time, many people thought the novel was a veiled attack on Cardinal John Cody, then the Archbishop of Chicago.Greeley went on to write several other novels that were controversial, in part because they exposed the behind-the-scenes world of the Catholic Church, and in part because they often contained explicit sex scenes. He was eventually ostracized by his local church leaders, and when he tried to donate $1 million of the proceeds from his books to the Chicago Catholic schools, they refused to take his money. He said, "It was arguably the first time in history the Catholic Church has turned down money from anyone."Greeley has now written more than 150 books, which have sold more than 15 million copies. When asked how he can write so much, he said, "I suppose I have the Irish weakness for words gone wild. Besides, if you're celibate, you have to do something."
Good one Bill. Thanks
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Is this author any good? I have seen his books for sale but haven't read him yet.Bill..........It's the birthday of one of the best-selling novelists of the last two decades, John Grisham, (books by this author) born in Jonesboro, Arkansas (1955). His father was a construction worker, and Grisham grew up traveling around the South as his father looked for work. Grisham decided to study law in college. In his first courtroom trial, he successfully defended a man who'd shot his wife's lover six times in the head. He eventually switched to civil law, and he won one of the largest damage settlements ever recorded in his county for the family of a boy who'd been burned by an exploding water heater. But he found the practice of law frustrating, and felt that he might make more of a difference in politics. He served in the Mississippi state Legislature for two terms, but he was disillusioned by the political process.He decided that maybe the best way to make an impact in the world would be to write a book. He'd recently witnessed a court case in which a10-year-old girl had to testify against a man that raped her. Grisham was overwhelmed by emotion watching that testimony, and he began to wonder what would happen if the girl's father murdered the rapist and was put on trial himself. Grisham spent the next three years writing a novel based on that idea, and the result was his first book, A Time to Kill (1989). Only a few thousand copies were printed, and it didn't even sell out that first run. It was one of the first times in Grisham's life that he'd failed to succeed at something he'd set out to do.Grisham decided that if he was going to write novels, he wanted them to be best-sellers. He did some research and found an article about the rules of suspense in Writer's Digest magazine. He used those rules to write a potboiler about a young law student who takes a job with a law firm that he later comes to realize is connected to the mafia. And that novel was The Firm, which came out in 1991 and became a huge best-seller. Grisham went on to publish another novel every year for the rest of the 1990s, all of them best-sellers.Of his formula for writing legal thrillers, John Grisham said, "You take some horrible, mean, vicious, nasty conspiracy over here, you put a very sympathetic hero or heroine in the middle of it, you reach a point where their lives are at stake — and you get them out of it."
Bill. Good one about John Grisham. Talk about not knowing about someone. That is me. Thanks for
that info. I see him in a different and awe struck light!!!!
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Now that MSN is working better I will send a reply to post 86 ! I tried several times this afternoon and gave up!! I have read several John Grisham books and enjoyed them and saw the movies 'The Firm" and 'The Pelican Brief'. However, after reading the 5th or 6th book they all seem to have the same plot. I guess this is formulaic writing that someone once mentioned. If you read for enjoyment and entertainment they are enjoyable reads. Dianne
I watched both those films and loved them. Is it worth the read now?
Winston are you a big reader?
I'm just finishing up 'False Impression' by Jeffrey Archer. Not bad.
S.A.
Bill. Not as much as I use to be. My thing is biographies and autobiographies. And of course history on WW2. Both Europe and the Pacific.
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I just finished reading a series of 6 books by Cathy Reichs. She is a practising forensic anthropologist and she works both in the US and Quebec. She is also the forensic consultant on the Fox's network show 'Bones'. What I enjoyed about these books is that in several the action takes place in and around Montreal. Surroundings that we are all familiar with and she deals in many of the major crimes that have taken place in Quebec over the last doxen years or so as she was a key player in solving some of those crimes....interesting but by the end of the 4th...you can tell where the plot is going. Good entertainment on cold winter days. Dianne
Bill how long ago did you see the movies? I try not to read the book or see the movie, which ever, too soon after either reading the book or seeing the movie...as you know the screen adaptation usually takes liberties with the plot etc. Dianne
It's been a few years since 'The Firm' and I own 'The Pelican Brief' watched it last year -- always interesting. I like Julia Roberts.
S.A.
Winston I have read 4 biography's of Ernest Hemingway. I always considered him a man's man. Big game hunter etc. Living in post WW 1 Europe with the woman I loved, is my idea of adventure and fun. Dream on 2nd Avenue, dream on.
S.A.
Bill. Thank heaven for our imagination. It can take us places where we might never be able to go. Exotic, wonderous, adventuresome, alluring, enticing, sexual!!!! You name it, it can happen. Some people have a more adventurous nature. You lived on "the high seas" for many years. Many of us went into the military for some excitement that we might never would of had otherwise. I travelled to places that I would never have seen, and enjoyed myself more than I could possibly say. The wonder of innocence that a child holds. We as adults still try to a certain extent to live or dream that innocence. Much Aloha Bill!!!!
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Winnie Your talk about books sparked
something in me I now think of all the books that I loved. They changed
depending on the phase I was in at the time. "Trout Fishing In Amercia" Richard
Brunagin I think that's how it's spelled? Was my Fav. The Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance.
Khill Garabran. I was into all the Zen Stuff for
awhile.
I guess I could go on and on. I never read any of
the books they asked us to in High School, I think I have read them all
since. I had a great Teacher in Elementary she read us Charlot's Web. I"ll
never forgot this. To this day I love when someone reads to me!! Thanks for the
SPARKS
Winnie
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Anything is possible! Myself I wanted to be in the Circus !
Lynn. I was always reading when I was a kid. I visited the library at the corner of Church and Verdun Avenues. I took my mind away to imaginary places. I forget what grade it was at Bannantyne School that we had a reading period. It was just before lunch and on my way home for lunch, I could not put that book down. I almost got hit by a car walking thru the laneway somewhere between 1st and 3rd Avenue. All thru lunch and back to school, I did not stop reading. It was Jack Londons, The Call Of The Wild. That has stayed with me to this day.
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Lynn. When I grow up, I want to be a guy that carries a big stick, beating off all the women, just so I can get some rest from being a great lover!!!!! Now that that dream has passed..........Growing up, I wanted to be a chef..but in those days, you had to go to Europe to learn the trade....I couldn't afford to get out of Verdun, let alone get a bus ticket to go to Europe......Ya YA YA, I know.....the busses stop running to Europe a long time ago!!!!!!
I think I just needed a sense of belonging to something. Even tho I was basically a loner, because I did not like "following the crowd", I joined the Air Cadets, then later on The Canadian Army Militia (When I was 15 and being a little untruthful about my age)...then joining The United States Marine Corps when I was 19. But then I have these dreams I make up, if I am having trouble falling asleep...... Works pretty good!!!!! Helps to shut part of the troubled world out.....
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Winston...I read Jack London's Call of the Wild and White Fang...both great books! Dianne
Improvise, adapt and overcome. Thank you for your serivice Winston.
Both great classic books. My first book was 'Coral Island'. I was about 10 years old, and I was so impressed with myself for actually completing it, rather than playing baseball that day.
S.A.
Lynn. I retrospect, I think I would have liked to be a comedian. Making people laugh is a aphrodisiac for me. Ya like I really need that!!!!, but if I can make someone laugh I am in my glory!!!! I think that is the way most of us are. It makes for a better world, that's for sure. Lynn being in the circus is something to imagine yourself doing...even at this age we have good imaginations....I think that helps keep us young....Winston Allison
Diane. I read them both also. They made a movie years ago, that was black and white about Jack London. I can still picture the actor, but don't recall his name. He was not a number one box office person. I will check to see if I can find his name. I really really enjoyed it. I was a kid, and it was good escapism....
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Winnie, Clark Gable plaayed Jack Thornton in the movie version of 'Call of the wild" I know what you mean about beating off the women. I have women chasing me everywhere. Unfortunately, they chase me with sticks and canes and sometimes rocks. Sigh. Ed
I have read several Jack London's books, I was/am very fascinated with the Yukon, the Gold Rush, etc. We have made several trips up north, as a matter of fact, visiting everything we had read about (my other half is a very big reader also). Came across the cabin that Jack London wrote in at Dawson City, and here's an interesting article about the cabin. Gads, I really love the north and our next trip will try to get to Tuktoyuktuk! Here's the article about his cabin: Since the cabin was of historical interest to both the Canadian and U.S. Governments we proposed a plan which was acceptable to both countries. Two identical cabins would be constructed, each having half of the original logs; one to be erected at Jack London Square in Oakland, California and the other in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. It would be necessary to photograph the cabin in its natural setting, and it must be measured accurately and marked so the replicas would be identical with the original.
Bill you also. Thanks for your service. I was stationed with a lot of navy guys and Marines. There was very little inter-service rilvary overseas. We were all in the same boat...so to speak.
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Linda Beutiful...great info..Thanks
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As is everybody else on this site, I am soooooo frustrated lately. But sometimes when I see the dreaded red 'x' usually I can get it to show up by right clicking, then clicking on 'properties'. Often by cut and pasting the address shown there up to the address bar and pressing 'enter' the picture shows up. Not always, but often. Boy, we sure are a determined bunch aren't we? Many would have moved on at this point, so good to see so many staying with the challenges. Cheers.
Have you read any of the books written by Jack O'Brien? Two that he wrote were 'Silver Chief Dog of the North' and 'Silver Chief to the Rescue'...great stories that took place in the Yukon with the RCMP and wonderful adventures. He wrote several books with 'Silver Chief' . Dianne
Ed. That is right. I did carry a big stick, but the buggers took the stick off of me, and started beating me with it..... You know, it is really strange, but after awhile, I started to enjoy it....
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Dianne. Will have to check those books out....
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Winston if you liked Call of the Wild you will like these books too. Great adventure stories! dianne
>
Linda. We all know it is worth the effort and possible frusrartion to continue to not get to upset. It is worth it to keep at it!!!!
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Linda: I'm too stubborn to give up, at least not without a fight!! Dianne
Interesting to see how the mind of a committed writer works.
S.A....................It's the birthday of the novelist Mary McGarry Morris, (books by this author) born in Meriden, Connecticut (1943). She took 10 years to write her first novel. No one knew she was writing it in all that time. Her neighbors noticed that she was going out less and less, but no one knew why. Morris didn't want to tell anyone she was writing a novel because she didn't want people to ask how it was going. If someone came to the door unexpectedly, she'd jump up and run to the kitchen, so no one would see her at the typewriter. One night, Morris was on such a roll that she decided not to go to a party she'd been invited to. She said, "I remember sitting there thinking, I would much rather spend an evening with [these characters] than whoever may be at that cocktail party."Morris finally finished the book, called Vanished. It was rejected by almost 30 different publishers and agents, but when an agent finally agreed to take the book, it was purchased by Viking Press just a few weeks later. It came out in 1988 and got great reviews, becoming a finalist for a National Book Award.Her third novel, Songs in Ordinary Time (1995), sold more than a million copies. Her most recent book is The Lost Mother (2005).
True writers never give up no matter how many times they get rejected. It's a passion ---writing is breathing. Dolly.
It's the birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, (books by this author) born in Rockland, Maine (1892). Her mother couldn't afford to send her to college, but when she was 19, she entered a poem called "Renascence" in a poetry contest hoping to win the large cash prize. One of the judges was so impressed that he started a correspondence with her, fell in love, and nearly divorced his wife. Her poem didn't win first prize, but when she recited it at a public reading in Camden, Maine, a woman in the audience offered to pay for her to go to Vassar College, and Millay accepted.At Vassar, she was the most notorious girl on campus, famous for both her poetry and her habit of breaking rules. Vassar's president, Henry Noble McCracken, once wrote to her, "You couldn't break any rule that would make me vote for your expulsion. I don't want a banished Shelley on my doorstep." She wrote back, "Well, on those terms I think I can continue to live in this hellhole."She had red hair and green eyes and people had often stopped and stared at her on the street, she was so beautiful. When Millay moved to Greenwich Village after college, most of the men in the literary scene fell in love with her. The critic Edmund Wilson was one of those smitten men.Millay wrote poems about bohemian parties and free love in her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), and she became one of the icons of the Jazz Age. When she gave readings of her poetry, she drew huge crowds of adoring fans, more like a rock star than a poet. One man who saw Millay perform her own work said, "The slender red-haired, gold-eyed Vincent Millay, dressed in a black-trimmed gown of purple silk, was now reading from a tooled leather portfolio, now reciting without aid of book or print, despite her broom-splint legs and muscles twitching in her throat and in her thin arms, in a voice that enchanted."
You gotta try everything Dolly. In a poetry classI had at McGill I gave everyone a booklet of poems that I wrote. I checked all the garbage cans after they left and didn't find one. I consider that a great success. Ed
Poem: "The Shipfitter's Wife" by Dorianne Laux, from Smoke. 짤 BOA Editions. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
The Shipfitter's Wife
I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I'd go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me — the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.
On this day in 1923, Robert Frost's (books by this author) poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was published in The New Republic magazine. It was Frost's favorite of his own poems. Though it's a poem about winter, Frost wrote the first draft on a warm morning in the middle of June. The night before he had stayed up working at his kitchen table on a long, difficult poem called "New Hampshire" (1923). He wrote "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" in just a few minutes, almost without lifting his pen off the page. He said, "It was as if I'd had a hallucination."
I've known that feeling Bill. Some of my better poetry has astounded me. I look back and think I can't believe I wrote that. Taylor Caldwell wrote 'The Captains and the Kings' in 28 days. She says she remembers very little about doing it. My Mother said the same thing. I have included one of her poems written when she was 17. Ed The Paper Boy “Ere, yer, are sir, ere yer are sir second extra evening news”. Cried a ragged little urchin, Boasting neither hat nor shoes. I watched his poor appearance, as he shivered in the cold and tried to count the coppers for the papers he had sold. He must have seen me standing and came over with a run. “Ere, yer are Sir, ere yer are sir, Yus, the British troops has won. Thank ye, Sir, it’s worth a penny and it won’t go to the pub.. There’s a kid and Mother waiting till I bring’s them ome the grub”. “Wot af a dollar, so elp me, are you the Price of Wales..? Or maybe Baron Rothschild, wot we read about in tales. God bless ye Cernel, this will be a bit of fire for weeks and somethin, ot for muuver”. And the tears rolled down his cheeks The old gel won’t think I pinched it for she knows I’m going straight Why she’s av a fit of fright Sir, if I only stayed out late. Heavy fighting, I believes Sir, ere’s a full list of the dead. My father’s out there fighting, so I has to earn the bread. would you mind just taking a look for me-- Sir, Ello “ What makes you cry. Ave you found out your’ve lost a pal, Well some has got to die. Wot, you’ve found my old man’s number, ah fer God’s sake, say you’re kidding. He dropped his papers in the street, his little face was hidden. I has to go now Curnel. Gotta bring the news to Mum. She hasn’t been too well and this will really shake her some. But I haven’t the heart to tell her so I’ll keep it in me cuff. With me little brothers passing the old girl’s had enuff. I watched him go off down the street his shoulders drooping low And to this very day I wish that it hadn’t happened so.
I wonder if anyone can tell me why I get those strange marks on each line. They are not there until I click send message. Then it's too late to edit. Ed
Did you copy/paste the poem with unrecognizable characters? If you try to paste computer language along with typical typing fonts, it with do what it did to your post. Great poem btw.
Bill
Edbro - I think that I have read all of Taylor Caldwell's books and loved the lot of them except perhaps the one about the wicked little kid - he pushed his pregnant mum down the stairs - did you read that one? It was one of the quicker reads not a thick book.
Shirley, I haven't read that. Taylor Caldwell,s books are incredible. 'In the Captain's and the Kings' she uses a whole chapter to describe a plantation. By the time I was finished reading it I felt like I'd been there. Her books are hard to put down. There's a very interesting book called 'The Psychic lives of Taylor Caldwell'. It makes an amazing case for reincarnation. Ed
Thanks, Bill. Ed
Edbro - have you read any of Wilbur Smith's books??
No Shirley, I haven't. Do you recommend one? Ed
They are all good Ed, there are a few families and the books are about these families the Courtney's and different branches of the family- one of the books is about Hunting Elephants for the Ivory, another is about Diamonds - I would get one of the old books and start there - you actually feel like you are in Africa on the hunt he goes into great detail - I love a good story and if I can learn something about geography and history so much the better. You just can not put the books down when you get into them. By the way my husband also loves Wilbur Smith in fact he got me started on his books and Ihave read many of them.
I'm almost finished reading There is a Season, a memoir by Patrick Lane and can't put it down. Patrick is a poet who has authored more than twenty books of poetry and this book is a Governor General's award winner. (I'm not into poetry because most of it sucks but Patrick has won me over!) Patrick Lane is one of our biggest Canadian poets and lives on Vancouver Island with his poet wife, Lorna Crozier. He was an alcoholic/drug addict for 45 years and wrote this book after leaving a detox centre. He wasn't sure if he could ever write again and decided that autumn after he left the centre to tend to his garden instead and write about it in his personal journal He wrote about his garden throughout the 4 seasons and by the end of the year, he had a memoir. It is an exquisite book, beautifully written and will make you understand the true meaning of what is important in life and the beauty of words. He is an inspiration and I head him speak at one of my writer's meetings in November. His workshop was full---I had no idea who he was and sorry I missed it. This book is for recovering alcoholics/drug addicts for writers or those who want to write for gardeners for those who enjoy the beauty of words for those who live on the west coast for those who support Canadian authors. Have a look. His web site is www.patricklane.ca Dolly
It's the birthday of Beat novelist Jack Kerouac, (books by this author) born Jean-Louise Kerouac, in Lowell Massachusetts (1922). He grew up speaking French, and couldn't speak English fluently until junior high. He was a football star in high school and got an athletic scholarship to Columbia University. It was there that he became friends with Allen Ginsberg.In 1951 he sat at his kitchen table, taped sheets of Chinese art paper together to make a long roll, and wrote the story of the cross-country road trips he took with Neal Cassady. It had no paragraphs and very little punctuation and Allen Ginsberg called it ''a magnificent single paragraph several blocks long, rolling, like the road itself.'' And that became Kerouac's novel On the Road (1957).
Never heard of this writer but I think should.S.A.It was on this day in 1891 that Henrik Ibsen's (books by this author) play Ghosts opened on the London stage. Ghosts was considered a controversial play because it contained details about incest and sexually transmitted diseases, and Ibsen refused to give his audiences the happy endings they were used to. The play had already been banned in St. Petersburg on religious grounds when it premiered in London.Henrik Ibsen wrote in Act 2: "I almost think we're all of us Ghosts. ... It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light."
It's the birthday of Sylvia Beach, (books by this author) born in Baltimore, Maryland (1887). She founded an English-language bookstore and lending library on Paris's Left Bank called Shakespeare & Company. It became a central feature of the Parisian literary scene of the 1920s, as it opened just as the "lost generation" discovered Paris. It became "the unofficial living room" of the expatriate artists there. Writers used it as a meeting place, a post office, and a place for guidance with their writing.She met James Joyce in 1920, just as he as finishing his novel Ulysses. When all the major publishers in Europe and America decided that it was too obscene to publish, Sylvia Beach said she'd publish it, even though she'd never published a book before.Beach had to contact a printer and get people to buy advanced copies to fund the cost. Because she had no editors, she edited the enormous manuscript herself, and managed to get the novel published before James Joyce's birthday, February 2, 1922.
I read L'Amour's biography which was incredible. He had done it all as in the manner of Jack London. When L'Amour named a stream in one of his novels, you can be sure there is or there was a stream with that exact name in that location.S.A.
It's the birthday of novelist Louis L'Amour, (books by this author) born in Jamestown, North Dakota (1908). He was the author of many novels, including How the West Was Won (1963) and The Quick and the Dead (1973). One of the hardest-working and best-selling novelists ever, he wrote 101 books in his lifetime, and there are almost 200 million copies of his books in circulation worldwide. L'Amour's first big success was Hondo (1953), about a love triangle between a cowboy, an Apache warrior, and a young widow living on a remote Arizona ranch.L'Amour was obsessed with the accuracy of his novels, and filled his personal library with more than 8,000 reference books, including hundreds of personal diaries by cowboys and pioneers. Whenever he wrote about a particular place, he always went there to see exactly what kinds of plants were growing, and what the geological formations looked like. He once said, "When I say there is a rock in the road in one of my books, my readers know that if they go to that spot they'll find that rock."In Ride the Dark Trail (1972), L'Amour wrote, "I just pointed my rifle at him ... and let him have the big one right through the third button on his shirt. If he ever figured to sew that particular button on again he was going to have to scrape it off his backbone."
biking2006 I enjoy reading about the author's
you post.
I have never read anything by L"Amour.
I have been stuck on reading female author's
.
I enjoy a good novel.
I know we have some good writer's on this site. The
I liked the decription of the big one through the third botton on his
shirt!
Keep posting these write up's There good. We have a
huge secondhand book store here in North Bay " Allison The Book Man" so I can go
and find pretty much anything there.
Do you have any suggestions. Thanks
Biking
My dad had read every book Louis L'Amour ever wrote and when my dad died he still had every one of those books!!! I just finished reading a series of books by Cathy Reichs...she is a forensic anthropologist in real life and has worked for the Province of Quebec crime labs and the show Bones is loosely based on her books. If you like the CSI shows you will enjoy these books, but they arn't for the weak of stomach or faint of heart.... A lot of the action takes place in and around Montreal. Dianne
Hi Di I just finished reading Crossed Bones. It was fun to read the references to some of the Montreal Streets and sites. The plot was a grabber also. Wayne
Hi Wayne: Glad you liked the book........I've read all of them in that series and am waiting for her to publish the next one. Di
Bill, It's interesting that Kerouac was often happy to be a loner. In the sequel to 'On The Road,' called 'The Dharma Bums" he tells how he spent a winter in a ranger's tower, doing fire watch on Big Sur in California. Ed
My husband has read all the Louis L'amour books also. A big fan. I go in phases. Right now I'm reading books by Albertans (since I live here)--- Rudy Weibe just won the Charles Taylor prize for his memoir about a Mennonite childhood. He teaches writing at the U of A here. I've always enjoyed reading biographies and autobiographies, about people who've overcome difficulties and made something of their lives --- quite inspirational. Love so many writers. Loved Kerouac and the Beat poets, and the Quebecois writers like Yves Beauchemin and Michel Tremblay. Yes, writers are introverts, shy and work in solitude but when they have to sell their work, they have to hide that part of themselves. Gulp! Ed, thanks for the updates on books and writers. Dolly
Dolly, I think Bill does a much better job on that than I do. Ed
Thanks for the compliment Ed. You're a true gentleman. Actually I am a slow reader. Sometimes takes me a month to read a novel, and I enjoy authors who write from what they know personally, such as the novels and short stories of Hemingway. His short story, 'Cat in the Rain', took me to the 20s and that little hotel on the Spanish coast.S.A.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Our_Time_(book)
http://www.qca.org.uk/14-19/6th-form-schools/downloads/cat_in_the_rain.pdf
biking2000 I woke up early and read "A cat in
the rain " Thanks for your post Nice way to start the day Cup of coffee and a
nice read!
And Bill too! I'm glad there are some book lovers and writers on this site! I love Hemingway and his style of writing also. He uses a lot of dialogue and show me instead of tell me, and so do I. Cuts right to the chase especially in his short stories. "A house without books is a house without windows." anon. Dolly
I just recieved this message from M. Laurel Buck, author of Roots beneath the pavement, A tribute to Verdun. 100 copies of Roots Beneath the Pavement (2001 edition) have just been reprinted at John Abbott College's Print Services at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC. I am now in a position to take orders for Roots .... The price of the book is $25.00 plus cost of mailing, approximately $2.70. mlbuck@shaw.ca
In searching for M.Laurel Buck stuff,.I came across this site,.that seems to have quite a selection of Canadian Artists,.......... http://www3.sympatico.ca/shoreline/books.htm Might be of interest to some......................................................................
Sabby. A house without books is a house without windows????? I have so many books, they are blocking all the windows!!!! Is is daytime yet?????
Winston
The average US Credit Score is 675. The cost to see yours: $0 by Experian.
............and a Window without a frame,...is just a Pane !!!
Les, That's paneful. Ed
Could have been worse Ed,.it may have been a Picture Window,...and then you'd really should have a frame,.....................
Winston, Then you need to buy more bookshelves and let the sun shine in ---books are the windows to the soul. :-) Not to be a pane in the a--. :-) Dolly
Thanks Les, Yes, interesting site. Didn't realize there were so many memoirs out there from Quebec. When you think of all the books published and what are the chances of becoming a best seller? I know one of the authors listed---Joan Eloyson Cadham. She's the National President now of the Canadian Authors Association. I'm a member of the Alberta branch and Joan spoke at one of our meetings last year and I ended up taking one of her writing classes. She now lives in a small community in Saskatchewan (forget the name --- something with a Lake---). Moved out there many years ago. She said it was cheap living there. Quite a character. She wore her viking hat and has her grey hair in braids. She's retired but is a freelancer and writes for various Canadian magazines like Canadian Living. Dolly Dolly
Winston, got the quote wrong. A home without books is like a house without windows. Is that clearer? Or am I being a pane in the a---again? Dolly
She sounds like an interesting character.............I like the Viking Hat.....hahahah I wonder if it was Blaine Lake Sask,..by any chance ,? I will check the local Library here to see if there's something she has done there,....I like to learn of Canadian characters,.........they seem 'real' to me: Thanks for the lead,...................................I've already checked for stuff by a gal named Mary Peate.....(but nothing came up)...but it doesn't stop me from getting them to do an 'inter-library loan' that's a neat deal,.they will go and find and borrow a book,and lend it to you.......Library's are a neat thing:
Dolly. There is always something that causes a pain in the A**, as some of our other ladies know. But not in this case!!!!
Winston
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Hi Les, I looked up my newsletter about Joan's appearance at our meeting. She spoke January 2006 about how to turn ancient fairy tales into very real cash. Dressed in her authentic Viking costume, and spear nearby, she ranted about unpaid freelance work. She's originally from Montreal but has been retired for a while and lives in Foam Lake, Sask. She took the 10 hour bus ride from there instead of taking a plane because, get this, the airport officials told her that her Viking helmet was deemed a weapon. She began her career working with kids in Quebec telling specifically Icelandic fairy tales. Quote from the newsletter "She relishes the fact that Icelandic women are strong and influential in comparison to women in European or Asian fairy tales. One could imagine a delicate princess lying on a soft mattress, unable to sleep because of a single pea underneath; whereas the Icelandic woman may flip the mattress over and eat the pea." I'll be leaving soon for the library and Writers Corner to listen to Darrin Hagen, playwright, actor and drag queen. Should be interesting. My one act, one character play done in Montreal in the late seventies was acted by a drag queen. The play like many first plays was badly written but by having a friend who was a drag queen act the part of the persona, the play became more meaningful. It was called The Plexiglass Box and we won for best production and best director at the Quebec Drama Festval of one act plays. I still love theatre and seeing Darrin will bring it all back to me--- Montreal's theatre scene in the seventies! Have a good Sunday all, Dolly
It was on this day in 1941 that the novelist Virginia Woolf (books by this author) drowned herself in a river near her house in East Sussex. She had long suffered from periods of depression, and modern scholars believe these depressions may have been symptoms of manic-depressive illness, also known as bi-polar disorder.In her diaries over the years, Woolf had often written about her volatile mood swings, and she seemed to think that they were brought on by her sense that her writing wasn't good enough. She was relatively healthy for most of the 1920s as she published many of her greatest novels, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). But she struggled with her book The Years (1937).Woolf's mood only grew worse as the Second World War broke out in 1939. She and her husband moved to their country house in East Sussex when Germans began to bomb London, because they thought it would be safer. But their country house lay under the flight path of the German bombers. More than once, during the summer of 1940, Woolf watched from her garden as the German planes flew over, close enough that she could see the swastikas on the undersides of the wings.By March of 1941, she was writing in her diary that she had fallen into "a trough of despair." She wasn't at all satisfied with her most recent book, and she felt as though the war made writing insignificant. She wrote, "It's difficult, I find, to write. No audience. No private stimulus, only this outer roar."She finally wrote three letters, possibly as much as 10 days before she committed suicide, explaining her reasons for wanting to end her life. In the longest of the three, she wrote to her husband, "I feel certain that I am going mad again. ... I shan't recover this time. ... I can't fight it any longer. ... What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you." Woolf left the letters where her husband would find them, and then on this day in 1938 she walked a half-mile to a nearby river and put a heavy rock in the pocket of her fur coat before jumping into the water.One of the last people to see Virginia Woolf in good spirits was the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who visited Woolf just a month before her death. Bowen later wrote of the visit, "I remember [Virginia] kneeling on the floor ... and she sat back on her heels and put her head back in a patch of sun, early spring sun. Then she laughed in this consuming, choking, delightful, hooting way. This is what has remained with me."
biking2006 I was very much into reading
Virginia Woolf novels. I got into it during my time at Concordia University.I
have read Mrs . Dalloway also to the Lighthouse. I had a fascination with her
diary's . ( many published)
I knew that she had taken her live by just simply
walking to the water and jumping in with a rock in her pocket.
I enjoy your posts on the author's ! Thanks
for sending them! I didn't know that today was the day back in 1941 had
she a did the walk to the water!
I read Mrs. Dalloway a few years ago out of curiosity. It was difficult, but who am I to criticize a genius.. Rent the film ‘The Hours’ if you will. Three separate stories all connected to this novel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hours_(film)
I mentioned in my previous post about going to listen to a playwright, actor, drag queen speak about his two published books. Darrin was funny and I enjoyed listening to his journey as a writer. I found it remarkable that usually these meetings are standing room only. There were only 8 of us there Sunday. It's sad when people remove themselves from anything, anyone who is different whether it is their religion, politics, disability or gender. As Imentioned once before, we all bleed, s___ and then we die. We are all the same. My purge today. Dolly P.S. Virginia Woolf is also known for her essays including, A Room of One's Own. It is something she felt every woman or woman writer should have.
biking, Yes, I too want to thank you for taking the time to share author information with the book lovers on this site. Some books are indeed difficult to read. I had a tough time with Mrs. Dalloway also and I read it after I read The Hours and saw the movie, but sometimes, we need to exercise our brains, make us think, and books is one way. Some people do crossword puzzles....So again, thanks for your input. Dolly
Thanks for acknowledging my humble contributions to our excellent site, and once again apologize for the unintentional fonts on steroids.
S.A.
EXCERPT FROM ROOTS BENEATH THE PAVEMENT, a Tribute to Verdun by one of her reluctant children, 1930s-1940s In retrospect, there was a strong attitude of live and let live in Verdun. I recall that when we children became old enough to go to school, eventually we would hear, of course, two different perspectives on what happened in the eighteenth century battle of the Plains of Abraham. Then we would call each other les maudis Anglais and French pea-soupers. Why? I didn't really know because my mother frequently made pea-soup which I greatly enjoyed. Were we Verdunites of those days, generally, the consummate example of the two solitudes? Perhaps, but each solitude was buttressed by institutions that created community that fostered culture as communities do. The German poet, M. Rainier Rilke, first coined the phrase, two solitudes, in reference, as I understand, to the need of respect for one another's individual identity within a relationship. I believe, therefore, the meaning of two solitudes was not to convey the inevitability of sharp division, but the challenge for a balance in relationship; it seems to me that the Canadian novelist, Hugh MacLennan meant to convey nothing less than this in his novel, Two Solitudes, set in Montreal. I remember the crest of Verdun, a fortress supported by two towers; beneath, are the words, E Viribus Duorum, [built on the strength] of two peoples. My perspective today, therefore, is that the Verdun of my childhood and youth, with few exceptions, was marked by tolerance, which, in spite of change in the makeup of the people, continues as an important part of Verdun's legacy. provided by M. Laurel Buck:
Thanks for that excerpt, Maggie. I believe those of us whose mother tongue is English and who grew up in Montreal before Bill-101 have a different world view from any other Canadians. We were exposed to a richness of experience unavailable anywhere else in the country. We lived in what is seen as two cultures. But we melded both so that for us it was just a single culture with many facets. Today Canadians from outside Quebec travel to Montreal and experience it as a culture very different from that of their home towns. We, on the other hand, shared in it, modified it and were modified by it. What a great place it was to grow up in. Phyllis
Maggie is this book published?
Yes, Roots Beneath the Pavement was first published in 1998. You can order a copy from the author, she has just had 100 copies reprinted by John Abbott College The price of the book is $25.00 plus cost of mailing, approximately $2.70. mlbuck@shaw.ca
80 year old Laurel Buck is the invited guest at the Dawson Cultural Centre on Woodland in Verdun on the 12th of April in the evening, organized buy Kathryn Harvey, historian. Needless to say, everyone is invited and no doubt her book Roots beneath the Pavement will be availbale. Guy
It's the birthday of Washington Irving, (books by this author) born in New York City (1783). He made his name as a writer in 1809, when he published his first book, A History of New York, a satirical history of the city from the point of view of an eccentric old Dutch professor named Diedrich Knickerbocker. The book became so popular among New Yorkers that they began to call themselves Knickerbockers, and the term became the source of the name for the basketball team.The stories we remember him for were included in his book called The Sketch Book (1819). The first of these was "Rip Van Winkle," about a man who falls asleep during British rule of the American Colonies, and wakes up years later to find that he lives in the independent United States. The other was "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," about Ichabod Crane's fateful encounter with the Headless Horseman. At the time "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was published, there were no internationally known American writers of fiction. One English critic wrote in 1818, "The Americans have no national literature and no learned men." And another said, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" Irving's Sketch Book was the first international best-seller by an American author, and it was greatly admired by British writers such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens.
Hi Di - I've read all Kathy Reichs books too.....can hardly wait till her next one comes out! I hope it's a 'Montreal' based story - they're the most interesting! One of her last ones that was based in the Point on Sebastopol Street was pretty neat as my cousin lived on Sebastopol when she was growing up and remembered that house - she said that it was a pretty weird place. Have you ever heard of Janet Evanovitch??? She's a very funny author and it takes a couple of her books to get hooked then you want to read all of them. They are all independent of each other but the titles are numbered (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, etc). Happy reading! judy in NB
Hi Judy...How are things in Hampton? Probably damp and cold, same as here! I will look for that author Janet Evanovitch. Cathy Reichs was in Halifax last week for the writers fest...I would have loved to have gone into town to see her. I too am waiting for her next book. Have you read Patricia Cornwall books? They are of the same genre as Cathy Reichs' books but Cathy's I like better because of the Montrela connection. Happy reading to you too! Dianne
Hi Di - I have a couple of Patricia Cromwell's books but haven't read them yet. Yeah - the weather is the same here.....the Easter Bunny will have to wear his snuggies this Sunday. Four of us 'girls' are heading down to Halifax this weekend to see Il Divo in concert and then we'll hit the Casino....can hardly wait. judy in NB
Hi Judy...hope you have fun in Halifax...hope you win the jack pot at the casino...LOL!!!...and enjoy the concert, too!!! We are installing hardwood flooring and it is taking forever...but Easter Sunday we are going to our daughter Jennifer's house in Bridgewater. Jennifer is our daughter who has 3 kids....so it will be fun!!! Dianne
in toronto today, went to a book
store?
to look for cd's on books
THE SECRET???
got the 4 cd set _plus the dvd
to watch this weekend.
look in www.THESECRET.TV
author rhonda byne
It was just mentioned to me that M. Laurel Buck will be at the Verdun Memorial Society (Library at Brown) tomorrow afternoon (April 5). Is this an additional engagement or was there a mix-up of some kind?
I sent a check to Laurel's address in Calgary for the purchase of her book. Can't wait.
S.A.
It was on this day in 1926 that the Book-of-the-Month Club shipped out its first selection, Lolly Willows, or, The Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner (books by this author), to just about 5,000 members. Within a few decades, the Book-of-the-Month Club would become one of the most influential publishing forces in the history of American literature.The Book-of-the-Month Club let customers sign up to buy one book a month at $3 apiece. The books were selected by an independent panel of experts, but if members didn't like the book chosen each month, they could choose an alternate.Numerous literary critics thought the book club was a terrible idea, that it would result in a standardization of literature, and that readers would lose their ability to think or make decisions. But the Book-of-the-Month Club was being launched at a time when there were very few bookstores outside of big cities. Buying new books through the mail was the only way that most Americans could get their hands on those books.In just its first 25 years, the Book-of-the-Month Club shipped more than 100 million books, averaging about 200,000 copies of each selection. Among the authors whose careers were launched in part by the Book-of-the-Month Club were Margaret Mitchell with Gone with the Wind (1936), John Steinbeck with Of Mice and Men (1937), Richard Wright with Native Son (1940), J.D. Salinger with The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Harper Lee with To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960), and Toni Morrison with Song of Solomon (1977).
Bill. As usual, good info. Keep up the good work. It is getting to a point where I am anxious to see what has gone on in the past on each passing day.
Winston
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How did this short story reappear?? I didn't send it twice. Gremlins afoot.
Hi Bill
Was the author Dick Francis ?
BobB
Yup you got it Bob. Good stories I remember.
Bill
"Saturday Matinee" by Mary Crow, from I Have Tasted the Apple.
Saturday Matinee
Gene Autry galloping hard on his pony,
in black and white, the ground and bushes gray,
toward gray mountains under a gray sky
where white clouds drift, hooves pounding
in the small theater as I sat forward
in my seat, my heart in my mouth with envy,
with longing for freedom, for Gene Autry,
the boy beside me sliding his hand over
for mine, the odor of popcorn in place
of sagebrush, and I saw myself inside
that movie, black hat on my head while
I rushed after him, my pony dapple-gray,
my hair long and blown back by the wind,
galloping so hard but upright western style,
a real cowgirl, and the hand in the theater
like some kind of insect I was brushing away,
my body wanting to rush after my mind—
away from that kid in his button-down shirt,
away from the white clapboard houses,
the dark deciduous forest on the edges
of town, the asphalt, the street lights,
and my father forbidding me to go
to the movie while I sobbed, sobbed
for love of Gene Autry, for love
of the wide open west, of horses
and galloping, for love, for love.
Thanks Bill for sharing the poem by Mary Crow. It says alot!
Bill, I too am an avid mystery reader, especially anything to do with CIA, Mi5 or 6, fighting terrorism, etc. I've attached list of novels I read in 2006, courtesy of our public library. I'm no literary expert but included my grading of the novels as to how much I enjoyed them. By the way, I found Devils and Demons (Dan Brown) to be far better than the DaVinci Code and I hear that the book is coming out as a movie in the next year or two as a prequel to DVC. I also enjoy anything that features Alex Cross. When I was at VHS, I read anything by Rex Stout that included Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.
Attachment: Sonny's Reading List.xls
Sunny lots of fun reading there!
Trivia: Do you recall a boat called 'The Busted Flush'? My favorite sleuth lived aboard it.
Bill
Smeone may be interested in this guy; not me so much.
Today is believed to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, (books by this author) born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (1564). He left behind no personal papers whatsoever—no letters, no diaries, not even any manuscripts. For that reason, most of the details about his life are a mystery. What we do know is that he was born at a time when England was just beginning to calm down after decades of religious civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Historians can't be sure, but it is likely that Shakespeare himself grew up Catholic, even though it was technically illegal to be a practicing Catholic at the time. We know that his mother came from a Catholic family, and his father secretly signed a Roman Catholic "Spiritual Testament" and hid it in the rafters of his home.
So Shakespeare may have grown up with the idea that his family was secretly attached to an ancient but now forbidden religion. And there's some evidence that when he was about 16, after attending the public school in his town, he may have taken a job as a tutor for two wealthy Catholic families in Lancashire. If he did, then he would have met a famous Catholic dissident named Edmund Campion who was living in secret with those two families at that time, and who was eventually caught and executed.
If Shakespeare was working as a tutor in his late teens, he must have returned to his home town in 1582, because it was that year that he was forced into a marriage with a woman he'd gotten pregnant: Anne Hathaway. It was apparently not a happy marriage. In 1587, Shakespeare left his family in Stratford and went to live in London by himself, where he began his life as an actor and playwright.
As a playwright, Shakespeare first made his name as a writer of comedies. His most successful early plays were The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, and within a few years, he was among the most popular writers in England. His plays generally attracted an audience of about 3,000 people, at a time when London had a population of about 200,000. So whenever one of Shakespeare's plays was performed, one out of every 65 people in the city was in the audience.
His early popularity made him a lot of enemies. The very first person ever to write about Shakespeare was the poet Robert Greene, who accused Shakespeare of plagiarism, calling him, "An upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers." And in fact most of Shakespeare's plays were not original, but based on historical events or old stories. What made them great was his extraordinary ability with language. He used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words.
But despite his success, he continued to live in a series of small rented rooms around London, a two-day journey from his family's home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Then, in 1596, Shakespeare learned that his son, Hamnet, died. And even though he hadn't spent much time with the boy, the event apparently had a huge effect on him. It was not long after that news that Shakespeare began writing his first great revenge tragedy, Hamlet, which was first brought to the stage around 1600. Scholars believe that Shakespeare chose to play the role of the ghost.
He went on to produce a series of tragedies in the next several years that are generally considered his greatest work, including Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1605). He planned to retire in 1611, after writing his play The Tempest (1611). But he came out of retirement to write at least one more play: Henry VIII (1613).
I'm always fascinated by rain in the arts and otherwise.
Bill
"After the Rain" by Penelope Barnes Thompson, from Deconstructing the Nest and Other Poems.
After the Rain
I look out on my patio after a soft rain.
The birds won't stop singing.
The geraniums are an impossible pink.
I want to swallow them, whole.
Every flower has a shine,
like a woman who has just been loved.
Her body glistens. She struts when she walks,
has time to be generous,
to spread that glow around a little.
Bill, "Busted Flush" would have to be Travis McGee's boat and if I'm not mistaken, someone pointed it out to me many years ago when I used to visit Lauderdale. I used to stay at a hotel not far from Bahia Mar and was having breakfast on a friend's boat and he either pointed it out to me or mentioned that it had been moored there. I play a lot of poker and have been subjected to 'busted flushes' on more than one occassion....lol...... By the way, I gather you have a vessel.........where do u keep it? Take care, Sonny
It's the birthday of Niccol챵 Machiavelli, (books by this author) born in Florence, Italy (1469). He grew up at an extremely unstable period of Italian history. Italy wasn't even a country at the time, but just a collection of city-states that were constantly at war with each other. By the time he was 30, Machiavelli became the secretary to Florence's governing council, which meant he was the most influential bureaucrat in the city.But at the height of Machiavelli's career, the influential Medici family took power in Florence, overthrowing the elected city council and purging the government of enemies, including Machiavelli. He lost his government position, and then the authorities arrested him and threw him in a dungeon, where he was tortured for 22 days.Machiavelli was eventually released from prison and sentenced to house arrest. He decided that the only way to get his life back was to offer some kind of gift to the Medici family, and the thing he had to give was his knowledge of politics. So he holed up in his tiny villa just outside of Florence and set out to write a handbook, incorporating everything he knew about being an effective ruler in a dangerous and volatile world. It took him just a few months to complete his book in 1513, and that was The Prince, the book for which he is remembered today.Machiavelli's main point in The Prince is that an effective ruler should use whatever means possible to keep his country secure and peaceful. He wrote, "Men must be either pampered or crushed, because they can get revenge for small injuries, but not for grievous ones. So any injury a prince does a man should be of a kind where there is no fear of revenge."Despite Machiavelli's hopes, The Prince didn't win over the Medicis. A few years later, a new republic was established in Italy, but Machiavelli's name had already become so associated with evil and violence that he wasn't able to get another government job for the rest of his life. Today, the word "Machiavellian" has come to mean "marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith."Niccol챵 Machiavelli said, "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
Busted Flush! You are correct sir. Now what did our hero drive?
S.A.
Hi Bill
I have to weigh in on this. I 'm big Travis Mcgee fan. Read all the books and other John D, novels as well. I remember driving up A1A from Lauderdale Airport and my eyes just jumped when I saw Bahia Mar. My wife and I went to the condo we were stayinig at in Pompano beach, unpacked and came back down to Bahia Mar just to be there. Couldn't believe I was doing this .... all for some fictional charactar.
Anyway, the vehicle he drove....I recall a truck...pretty jazzy I think ....a Rolls Royce truck or converted truck? Is that it?
Bob B
Yes it was a Rolls Royce pickup truck. Converted of course.
You used to be able to buy the entire Travis Mcgee series from the Jimmy Buffet web site for Parrot Heads, but I see it is no longer available there. Buffet is a fan as well btw. We're in good company Bob.
Bill
Yes, we are in good company. I'd love to re-read teh entire series of books again. After a few moves, I cdan't put my hands on all of his books. Probably still in some boxes somewhere. I'd buy them again if I could. I think the first book is The Deep Blue Goodbye or something like that. I loved them. I loved the soapboxes John D. got on through Travis and Meyer.
BobB
http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/quotes.htm
It's the birthday of poet John Masefield (books by this author), born in Ledbury, England (1878). He wrote the famous lines, "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
Did anyone read this book besides myself. Just curious.
S.A.
I read 'The Da Vinci Code' 4 times.S.A.
It's the birthday of novelist Dan Brown, (books by this author) born in Exeter, New Hampshire (1964). He's the author of one of the best-selling books of all time: The Da Vinci Code (2003). Brown grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father was a math teacher. From an early age, he and his family members loved to invent and communicate through codes. Every Christmas, Brown and his sister were given poems that provided clues to the locations of their gifts.Brown wrote his first novel, Digital Fortress (1998), about the culture of NSA cryptographers, and he went on to write Angels & Demons (2000) and Deception Point (2001). The three novels sold about 20,000 copies combined.Brown got the idea for The Da Vinci Code when he heard about some conspiracy theories that there were secret messages in Leonardo da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper. The day before the book came out it got a great review on the front page of the New York Times arts section. It sold 6,000 copies on the day it hit bookstores, and by the end of the week, it had sold about 25,000 copies, enough to put it on the top of the best-seller list. It's estimated that there are now more than 60 million copies of The Da Vinci Code in print worldwide.
Da Vinci code was a great read . jim
It was on this day in 1483 that Richard Plantagenet ascended to the throne to become King Richard III. He would go down in history as perhaps the worst ruler in the history of England, and Shakespeare would immortalize him as one of literature's great villains.This view of Richard III lasted for hundreds of years, but eventually historians began to realize that it wasn't quite accurate. The people who wrote biographies of Richard III in the wake of his death turned him into an almost mythological monster. They claimed that he had been in his mother's womb for 2 years and that when he was born he already had teeth. They also invented the idea that he was a deformed hunchback. In fact, he was in great shape and was said to fight bravely in battle.He did seize power from his 12 year old nephew, and may have had that nephew executed, but those evens occurred after a long civil war known as the War of the Roses, during which the English throne changed hands numerous times. Historians believe Richard was probably just trying to bring some stability to the country, knowing that his 12 year old nephew would have been a puppet king.Today there is a Richard III Society in England with several thousand members who do whatever they can to improve his reputation, petitioning the government to build statues of him and to educate the public about his life. They call themselves Ricardians and in support of the slandered king they wear Richard's badge of the White Boar on their shirt lapels.
The people of England thought otherwise at the time, Bill. Richard was a hunchback and his nickname was Humpty.When his horse was killed at Bosworth Field he climbed onto a wall and fought from there but he was cut to pieces. The people used to sing: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the Kings horses and al the Kings men. Couldn't put Humpty together again. Richard imprisoned his nephew Edward Fourth in the Tower Of London. Edward's Mother went around complaining that her son was the true King and should be on the throne. People told her to shut up. If wind of what she was saying got back to Richard he would kill the child. She kept at it until he murdered the twelve year old along with his brother Richard who was Duke of York. The fact that he might have been a puppet King did not excuse murder and certainly a murdering Monarch does not stabelize a country. The two boys were only a few of the people Richard murdered. The people sang: Rock a bye baby in the tree top, when the wind blows the cradle will rock.\ When the bough breaks the cradle will fall. Down will come baby cradle and all. The cradle referred to was the throne of England. Ed
I should have said Edward Fifth. Ed
I think I might have posted some of this before, but the ancient Lononers were great at creating nursery rhymes related to history. The wandering minstrels sang them as they went from village to village. Just as lyricists wrote songs about todays events so did the minstrels.
Little boy Blue come blow your horn the sheeps in the meadow The cows in the corn;- referred to Charles II who always wore blue. During his self imposed exile to France, Cromwell's men, the so called Protectors' were looting the corn and wheat store rations which were meant to feed Londoners during the coming winter. The King was always trumpeted in by horns. Londoners begged him to come back and correct things.
Another was:- Ring around a rosy, A pocket full of Posy
Achoo, achoo, and we all fall down.
The great plague of 1665 was a mystery to the people. The people had no idea it was caused by the bite of fleas from Norway rats. They thought it was spread by sneezing as a cold often is. The rash made a little rose colored circles on the skin and people thought that carrying flowers in the clothing would help. Ed
Ed that info is interesting! Have you read the The Last Plantagenets (1962) by Thomas B. Costain? ..not the same period of history but interesting. Costain was a Canadian born in Brantford, Ontario and wrote many interesting novels on history. check out this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_B._Costain Dianne
Hemingway has been my favorite for many years. I love his short stories which said so much with such few words. He is said to have wrote the one sentence short story below.
"For sale, one pair of baby shoes, never worn."
It was on this day in 1961 that Ernest Hemingway (books by this author) committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho. He'd had trouble writing since he'd participated in World War II. After the war was over he said, "[It's] as though you had heard so much loud music you couldn't hear anything played delicately." He'd been struggling to write a long novel called The Sea Book, but it wasn't coming together so he was only able to publish a small part of it called The Old Man and the Sea (1952). It got great reviews, and won the Pulitzer Prize, but he was frustrated that all he'd been able to produce was a small novella.
And then, in 1953, he decided to go on a safari in Africa, and during the safari he got into two separate plane crashes. He fractured his skull, got a concussion, cracked two discs in his spine, and suffered from internal bleeding. He never really recovered from the injuries he sustained in those crashes, and he began to drink more and more as a way to self-medicate. He began to suffer from insomnia, depression, and paranoia. His wife persuaded him to check into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was subjected to electroshock therapy. The treatment did not help his depression, and he hated it. He wrote in a letter, "What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business?"
After being released from the hospital in January 1961, Hemingway was asked to write a tribute to John F. Kennedy for his inauguration. It took him an entire week to write four sentences. After two suicide attempts, his wife got him to go back to the hospital for more shock treatments, which left his mind so blank that he was unable to read for six weeks. It was the longest he'd gone without reading since he was a boy. He told one of his doctors, "If I can't exist on my own terms, then existence is impossible."
He was released from the hospital in June of 1961. He went back to the house where his wife was staying in Ketchum, Idaho. On the morning of July 2, 1961, he got up early, found his favorite shotgun and shot himself in the foyer, before his wife had awakened. She later said that the noise that woke her sounded like a drawer slamming shut.
It's the birthday of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, born in Nottinghamshire, England (1489). In the late 1520s, King Henry VIII was trying to get the Pope's permission to divorce his wife so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Cranmer suggested that the king didn't need the Pope's permission. After presiding over the divorce trial, Cranmer was made an archbishop. He helped encourage England's break from Rome, which resulted in the Anglican Church.
After the death of King Henry VIII, his daughter Mary by his first marriage became queen. She was Catholic and didn't think much of Thomas Cranmer, who had helped her father divorce her mother. She had him imprisoned for attacking the Catholic Church, and he was eventually burned at the stake.
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