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ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY......
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Great thread, Joann ! Quotes & books. Two of my favorite things. :)This is the first I've heard of the Writers Almanac.
I've signed up for their free newsletter.
Thanks !
My favorite quote about libraries is said to have been above the doors at the Library of Thebes--Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.
Thanks for the notation, JoAnn.
deborah
Mod
That's Anne Lamott, born in San Francisco (1954). She did well in school, she was a tennis star, went to Goucher College in Maryland on a tennis scholarship. But she drank too much, became an alcoholic and bulimic as well, and dropped out of college after two years. She struggled to get back on her feet, even though she was doing well as a writer � she wrote for magazines and published two novels, Hard Laughter (1980) and Rosie (1983). But her health was getting worse, with even more drugs and drinking. One night, feeling weak and drunk and miserable, she said: "I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner. ... The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there � of course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this. And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, 'I would rather die.' "
Instead, she started attending a tiny church, and slowly changing her life. She published her third novel, Joe Jones (1985), which got bad reviews � and caused her to drink even more. Every morning, she woke up not knowing what had happened the night before, and she had to call friends to find out. Finally, she was speaking at a benefit for 150 people who had all paid to come hear her talk, and she drank so much during her speech that she passed out in the middle of it. So she decided to get sober, and slowly she did, and has been ever since.
A few years later, she got pregnant and decided to keep the baby, even though its father left when she told him that. She wrote her first nonfiction book about it, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year (1993), and she talked about how hard it was to be a mother, and also about her conversion to Christianity. It got rave reviews
Mod
Fitzgerald knew there was something missing in his novel. He wrote in a letter: "The worst fault in it I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe."
It didn't sell very well, either. But The Great Gatsby slowly gained popularity, and by the 1960s, it was considered a classic of American literature. Today it is one of the most-taught books in high schools.
Mod
After college, he went into the Peace Corps in Malawi, but he was thrown out for helping a poet who was a political opponent of the government and had escaped to Uganda. So Theroux went to Uganda himself, and the poet got him a job at Makerere University in Kampala, the capital city. And it was there that he met the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who was a visiting professor at the university, and became Theroux's mentor and friend for the next 30 years.
Theroux started publishing novels, the first few set in Africa, including Waldo (1967) and Jungle Lovers (1971), and then Saint Jack (1973), about Singapore, where he taught for a few years. He went back to England, wrote a novel, dropped the manuscript off with his publisher, and that same day, he left for an epic journey from London to Tokyo and back again, all by train. He wrote about his experience in The Great Railway Bazaar (1975),his first travel book, which was also his first best-seller.
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In The Wings of the Dove, he wrote: "It was the accident, possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves, of his straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the latter, neatly smooth, and apt, into the bargain, at the time of quite other calls upon it, to throw itself suddenly back and, supported behind by his uplifted arms and interlocked hands, place him for unconscionable periods in communion with the ceiling, the treetops, the sky."
Virginia Woolf wrote in 1907: "Well then, we went and had tea with Henry James today ... and Henry James fixed me with his staring blank eye � it is like a child's marble � and said 'My dear Virginia, they tell me � they tell me � they tell me � that you � as indeed being your fathers daughter nay your grandfathers grandchild � the descendant I may say of a century � of a century � of quill pens and ink � ink � ink pots, yes, yes, yes, they tell me � ahm m m � that you, that you, that you write in short.' This went on in the public street, while we all waited, as farmers wait for the hen to lay an egg � do they? � nervous, polite, and now on this foot now on that."
Mod
It was on this day in 1939 that John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. The novel tells the story of three generations of the Joad family, who lose their farm in Oklahoma and set off across the country for the paradise of California, only to encounter extreme poverty and corrupt corporations trying to make a profit off them. He wrote the novel at an incredible rate � about two thousands words a day � in a tiny outhouse that had just enough room for a bed, a desk, a gun rack, and a bookshelf. He finished it in about five months. When he was done, he wasn't very satisfied with it: He wrote in his journal, "It's just a run-of-the-mill book, and the awful thing is that it is absolutely the best I can do." And he warned his publisher that it wouldn't be very popular.
Last night while reading Push, of all things, i thought of Steinbeck's book & its ending. And now this. Thanks, JoAnn. His warning to his publisher makes one wonder.deborah
The Grapes of Wrath is one of the few books I've read more than once. I thought the ending was so powerful. The first time I read the book I was in tears.
Mod
Wuthering Heights got mostly good reviews, and Jane Eyre was an even bigger success. But as soon as critics started to suspect that the novels were written by women, they turned against them, calling them "coarse," "unfeminine," and "anti-Christian." Within two years of the publication of Jane Eyre, all of Charlotte's siblings had died. She continued to write novels, including Villette (1853), but she was often sick and usually unhappy. She married her father's curate in 1854 but died soon after from complications with her pregnancy.
I don't usually like reading novels about authors but i accidentally did several years ago. Glyn Hughes wrote µþ°ù´Ç²Ô³Ùë, which i liked very much for its depiction of the area and events around the family. The novel's name comes from their father but his role throughout seemed less important, until, of course, all his children were dead.deborah
Mod
It's the birthday of the man who said, "I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around." That's food writer and advocate James Beard, born in Portland, Oregon (1903). He's called "the Father of American cooking," or as Julia Child said, "In the beginning, there was Beard." He was probably the first American food celebrity, at the forefront of writing and talking about food, of thinking about a unified American cuisine.
His father worked in the customs house in Portland, and he had made the journey from Iowa in a covered wagon. His mother ran a small hotel and loved food, a trait that she passed on to her son. They employed a Chinese cook, so young James ate a lot of Chinese food; he said later, "The Chinese have the perfect palate." When he was a toddler, he went to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, which was a lot like a World's Fair. He said: "The thing that remained in my mind above all others � I think it marked my life � was watching Triscuits and shredded wheat biscuits being made. Isn't that crazy? At two years old that memory was made. It intrigued the hell out of me." He went with his mother to shop at the farmers' markets in Portland, and his family spent summers on the Oregon coast, where they caught fish and found berries and cooked with whatever they could find or catch.
But even though James Beard loved food, he didn't consider it as a career. He wanted to go into music or theater. He went to Reed College briefly, but was kicked out for having an affair with one of his male professors. He went on to study voice in London and Paris, but ended up back in Oregon, with brief stints in Hollywood and New York, trying to find jobs in theater, film, or radio. But nothing panned out for long, and he went back to Oregon several times, and to pay the rent he sometimes taught cooking classes. He liked using the local food of Oregon, but he had also picked up tips from various European cuisines while he traveled, and he had a gift for incorporating other cuisines so that they still felt familiar.
He went back to New York to try to make it in the theater one last time, and in 1938 he met a brother and sister from Germany who loved food as much as he did, William and Irma Rhode. They talked about how much mediocre food New Yorkers ate to go with their cocktails, so they formed a catering service called Hors d'Oeuvre Inc. that would serve quality cocktail food. It was a success, and it catered an event for the International Food and Wine Society, whose secretary liked Beard so much that she got him a book deal with her publisher. In 1940, he published Hors d'Oeuvre & Canapés, the first cookbook all about cocktail food. He left the catering business and wrote a second cookbook, Cook It Outdoors (1941), drawing on his love of outdoor food from his summers on the Oregon coast.
In 1946, he launched the world's first cooking show, called I Love To Eat. He was a frequent contributor to magazines, and he served as the associate editor of Gourmet. But as he said, "I don't like gourmet cooking or 'this' cooking or 'that' cooking. I like good cooking."
And that's what made James Beard so popular. He believed in using local ingredients and in cooking from scratch. But he understood the appeal of quick meals, and he was not a gourmet snob, a counterculture health nut, or an advocate of one particular foreign cuisine. Instead, he believed in American food, but that American food could incorporate a lot of ideas from other countries, and that it could be really good.
James Beard's American Cookery has recipes for Sloppy Joes, "My Favorite Hamburger," Cheddar Cheese Ball, and Frankfurters in Sour Cream; but it also has recipes for Tempura Batter, Tuna Fish Dandelion Salad, Jerusalem Artichokes in Vinaigrette, and two separate recipes for Tongue and Eggs in Aspic.
Beard was a large man, 6'4". Julia Child said he had "a big belly and huge hands." And although he wrote in his books about the quintessential nuclear American family gathered around the table, Beard was gay, which he did not publicly discuss, even in his memoir.
In 1955, he started the James Beard Cooking School in Greenwich Village and Seaside, Oregon, and taught there until his death in 1985, at the age of 81.
When someone asked him what his philosophy was, he said: "Feel free and take a fresh look. My emphasis is on options. My motto: 'Why not?'"
He said: "I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing."
We have a paperback copy of The James Beard Cookbook 3 Ed, which is so worn out the way to recognize it among our cookbooks is by the most tattered, stained spine. Beard's attitudes were so healthy and refreshing; he covered the waterfront on food, in contrast to all those superspecialized cookbooks; and my only quibble is that some of his meat cooking times seem a little underestimated (unless you like extremely rare meat). I was a little surprised to read it was all the way back in 1985 that Beard left us. He seems so present, still! One of the greats.
Mod
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It was by all accounts a mutually adoring and loving relationship, though some scholars have speculated that the couple never actually consummated their marriage. She became ill with tuberculosis and soon was an invalid. The state of her health, which would improve and then worsen, plunged Edgar Allan Poe into dark depression. He wrote to his friend: "Each time I felt all the agonies of her death � and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
In her early 20s, the tuberculosis symptoms flared up again, and this time people held little hope for her recovery. One person who visited her bedside wrote: "Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look." Virginia told Edgar that after she died she would be his guardian angel. She lived to be 24 years old.
Most Poe scholars agree that Virginia was the inspiration for his great poem "Annabel Lee," about the death of a beautiful young woman whom he loved.
The poem begins:
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
Mod
After months of questioning, she was told that if she didn't sign a confession, she would be put to death. She finally signed it, but a few days later she renounced the confession, and on this day in 1431, she was burned at the stake. She was 19 years old.
Joan of Arc has been portrayed in more than 20 films; the first was made by director Georges Méliès in 1899. And she's the subject of more than 20,000 books.
Mod
In the center of the Place du Vieux Marché (Market Square), next to where Joan was burned at the stake, is the modern church of Saint Joan of Arc, a large, modern structure which dominates the square. We were told that the form of the building represents the pyre on which Joan of Arc was burnt.
The church is non-denominational, if I recall correctly. It contains 16th century stained glass windows from the church that was previously on the site - that church was bombed in World War II but the windows had been removed to a place of safety.
You can see lots of photos of modern day Rouen here:
and Joan of Arc Square.
The modern church has a fresh-food market tucked into one sides, and little carousels outside.
JoAnn/QuAppelle wrote: "We visited Rouen a couple of years ago and it is a charming city despite what it is most well-known for. (Joan was burned) ..."Can't say the same for Chinon, a small town SW of Tours, where the episode lives on. This goes back to before we had children; my wife and I were eating in a reputedly good local restaurant when a group of locals started pointing at us and declaiming. They had been "lively" to begin with, so it didn't register immediately that we had become the object of their attention. I caught the word "brulee" and wondered if they could be saying something about my wife's (gorgeous) red hair. Flaming red?? But no -- they took her, and us, for Brits and were rehashing the history with great sourness. We had burned Joan. They were quite unhappy with us, and we were getting quite unhappy with the owner, who had to be summoned to put out these new flames. Chinon, it turns out, does figure directly in Joan's history, and apparently some part of the population is still living it out.
Mod
My use of the word "charming" only applied to the town/city itself, not the people. On the whole, we did not find the French to be very nice or welcoming to "outsiders". Compared to the countries we had visited in the three years prior to our trip to France (Ireland and Italy), the French ranked first for rudeness.
Except in Normandy, where the populace is still thanking its "liberators". Every town we went through was flying American and British flags and one town even had a sign that said "Thanks to our Liberators".
Mod
Webb grew up in Pasadena, California, and he turned down an inheritance from his father who was a wealthy doctor. He wrote The Graduate in the poolside bar of the Pasadena Huntington Hotel, and he based it loosely on his own experience: He was attracted to the wife of a friend of his parents, and he decided "it might be better to write about it than to do it."
When The Graduate was published, Webb was 24 years old.
Yesterday was the birthday of novelist Charles WebbThanks for the info on Webb and the Graduate....I remember he was a young author at the time he wrote the book, but I didn't know why he wrote it. It makes me smile to think of how well he was rewarded for turning his attention to something positive!
BTW, you have some good reading ahead of you. The Housekeeper and the Professor and Major Pettigrew's Last have been two books I have highly recommended in the past few months.
Mod
Good to hear. A "good reading" friend of mine told me today that Major Pettigrew was boring, but I have only heard good things about it. I was surprised by her "review" because she likes really good, well-written books.
LOL Different strokes and all that.....Perhaps she prefers a faster, plot driven book. I love books where the characters are so well drawn that the reader really cares what happens to them. Please let me know what you think of Major Pettigrew when you read it, JoAnn. I value your opinion even if we don't agree.
Lois.
Mod
Perhaps she prefers a faster, plot driven book. ..."
no, that is not usually the case. She loved many books that others here have loved--- but were ones that I could not get into.....ones that were mostly too wordy for me. Cutting for Stone, the Steig Larsen books, Let the Great World Spin, Richard Russo's books, The Book Thief, etc.
Will keep you posted. I am going into it with an open mind as I read and liked the first few pages.
From the The Writer's Almanac for June 21Today is the summer solstice, and the first day of summer. It is the longest day and the shortest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere, not because the planet is closer to the sun than on other days of the year, but because it is tilted on its axis so that the northern part receives more direct sunlight.
So what's on your summer reading list?
A few of my next reads are:
Women Making America ~ Heidi HemmingI plan on reading this book because I saw the exhibit, The Dinner Party at the Museum and it piqued my interest in women in history.
Nineteen Minutes ~Jodi PicoultI like to read Picoult. A friend loaned me this book.
Mount Pleasant ~ Steve PoiznerI picked this one off the New Books shelf at the library. The author is planning a run for governor of California in 2010.
from WRITER'S ALMANAC June 22On this day in 1878, Walt Whitman (books by this author) took a steamboat ride up the Hudson River and wrote a letter to his niece Hattie. He wrote: "I came up here last Thursday afternoon in the steamboat from NY � a fine day, and had a delightful journey � every thing to interest me � the constantly changing but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of the river all the way for nearly 100 miles here � the magnificent north river bay part of the shores of NY—the high straight walls of the rocky Palisades � the never-ending hills � beautiful Yonkers � the rapid succession of handsome villages and cities � the prevailing green—the great mountain sides of brown and blue rocks � the river itself � he innumerable elegant mansions in spots peeping all along through the woods and shrubbery � with the sloops and yachts, with their white sails, singly or in fleets, some near us always, some far off � etc etc etc..."
He went up for a visit with John Burroughs, who Whitman said had "plenty of strawberries, cream etc. and something I specially like, namely plenty of sugared raspberries and currants."
Leaves of Grass
The Portable Walt Whitman: Revised Edition
The Complete Poems
Walt Whitman: A Life
from WRITER'S ALMANAC June 23Tonight is Midsummer Night's Eve, also called St. John's Eve. St. John is the patron saint of beekeepers. It's a time when the hives are full of honey. The full moon that occurs this month was called the Mead Moon, because honey was fermented to make mead. That's where the word "honeymoon" comes from, because it's also a time for lovers. An old Swedish proverb says, "Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking." Midsummer dew was said to have special healing powers. In Mexico, people decorate wells and fountains with flowers, candles, and paper garlands. They go out at midnight and bathe in the lakes and streams. Midsummer Eve is also known as Herb Evening. Legend says that this is the best night for gathering magical herbs. Supposedly, a special plant flowers only on this night, and the person who picks it can understand the language of the trees. Flowers were placed under a pillow with the hope of important dreams about future lovers.
Shakespeare set his play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on this night. It tells the story of two young couples who wander into a magical forest outside Athens. In the play, Shakespeare wrote, "The course of true love never did run smooth."
A Midsummer Night's Dream~ 
William Shakespeare
A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them ~ Sue Hubbell
The Backyard Beekeeper: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden ~ Kim Flottum
Hooray for Beekeeping! ~ Bobbie Kalman
William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition ~ William Shakespeare
from WRITER'S ALMANAC June 26On this day in 1818, John Keats wrote a letter to his brother Tom about a hike through the Lake District of England. He wrote: "We walked here to Ambleside yesterday along the border of Winandermere, all beautiful with wooded shores and Islands � our road was a winding lane, wooded on each side, and green overhead, full of Foxgloves � every now and then a glimpse of the Lake, and all the while Kirkstone and other large hills nestled together in a sort of grey black mist. Ambleside is at the northern extremity of the Lake. We arose this morning at six, because we call it a day of rest, having to call on Wordsworth who lives only two miles hence � before breakfast we went to see the Ambleside water fall. The morning beautiful � the walk easy among the hills. [...:]
"I shall learn poetry here and shall henceforth write more than ever, for the abstract endeavor of being able to add a mite to that mass of beauty which is harvested from these grand materials, by the finest spirits, and put into ethereal existence for the relish of one's fellow."
Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats
The Writer's Almanac July 24It's the birthday of French novelist Alexandre Dumas, born in Villers-Cotterêts, France (1802). He wrote swashbuckling adventure novels like The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844).
The Three Musketeers
The Count of Monte Cristo
It's the birthday of Robert Graves, born in Wimbledon, England (1895). Over the course of his life, he wrote almost 150 books of fiction, essays, and poetry.
Robert Graves
The Writer's Almanac July 25It's the birthday of writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer, born in New York City (1902), who said, "When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements~ Eric HofferIt's the birthday of novelist and playwright Elias Canetti, born in Ruse, Bulgaria (1905). His family was one of the oldest Sephardic Jewish families in Bulgaria, a family of successful merchants.
The family lived in England for a while, then in Vienna after his father died, then in Germany. His first book to gain much notice outside the German-speaking world was Crowds and Power (1960), about the mentality of crowds and how leaders are able to control them. After Crowds and Power became famous, people went back to look at what else he had written, and started reading his novel, Auto-da-Fé (1935, first published in German as Die Blendung). He won the Nobel Prize in 1981.
In The Human Province (1978), he wrote: "His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations."
Crowds and Power~Elias Canetti
The Human Province~ Elias CanettiIt was on this day in 1897 that Jack London, 21 years old, set off for the Klondike Gold Rush. He developed scurvy and severe muscle pain, and he didn't make any money. But he was inspired by the adventurous lifestyle and wrote about it. Five years later, his book The Call of the Wild (1903) made him suddenly famous.
The Call of the Wild~ Jack London
The Writer's Almanac July 26It's the birthday of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw,born in Dublin (1856). He's the author of dozens of plays, including Pygmalion (1912), and Saint Joan (1923).
Pygmalion
Saint Joan
Shaw said, "All great truths begin as blasphemies."
It's the birthday of writer Aldous Huxley, born in Surrey, England (1894). He's best known to us today as the author of the novel Brave New World (1932), about a future in which genetically engineered people take drugs to keep them happy, have sex all the time, and never fall in love.
Brave New World
It's the birthday of Carl Jung, born in Kesswil, Switzerland (1875). He was the founder of analytic psychology. He noticed that myths and fairytales from all kinds of different cultures have certain similarities. He called these similarities archetypes, and he believed that archetypes come from a collective unconscious that all humans share. He said that if people get in touch with these archetypes in their own lives, they will be happier and healthier.
Man and His Symbols
The Portable Jung
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
<>Much as I would like to believe this hypothesis, I suspect that it's as much baloney as truth. Sure, most of us are afraid of the dark, and imagine bloody catastrophes in other challenging situations.... or innocence destroyed, etc. But I wonder if a serious scrutiny of this piece of Jung's thought would find it measures up to the truth. Maybe that's even been done, and I don't know about it.
I did read Jung's book, written (or at least published) when he was around 80, on the Biblical Book of Job Answer to Job. It's nothing more, nor less, than a psychoanalysis of God!
Book quotes:I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
~ Anna Quindlen
Beware the man of one book.
~ St. Thomas Aquinas quotes
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
~ Winston Churchill quotes
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
~ Thomas Carlyle quotes
It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have
~Seneca quotes
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
~ Anonymous quotes
Each time we re-read a book we get more out of it because we put more into it; a different person is reading it, and therefore it is a different book.
~ Anonymous quotes
When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.
~ Anonymous quotes
The Writer's Almanac ~ July 28
It's the birthday of the children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, born Helen Beatrix Potter in London, England (1866). She's the author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903), The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904), and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908).
The Tale of Peter RabbitBeatrix Potter
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
And it's the birthday of the poet John Ashbery, born in Rochester, New York (1927). His father was a fruit farmer and his mother a high school biology teacher, and neither of them was very interested in literature. But his grandfather lived nearby and had a big library, and the boy would spend hours in there reading everything he could. He said, "There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army."
Selected Poems
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: Poems
~ John Ashbery
The Writer's Almanac ~ July 29
It's the birthday of filmmaker Ken Burns, born in Brooklyn, New York (1953), who has made documentaries about the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, baseball, jazz, women suffragists, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, and Frank Lloyd Wright, among other subjects. His nine-episode series on the Civil War, which came out in 1990, is considered his masterpiece. It won more than 40 major awards and more than 40 million people have seen it.
~Ken BurnsIt's the birthday of the man who became poet laureate the year he turned 95: Stanley Kunitz, born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1905).
The Collected Poems~ Stanley KunitzIt's the birthday of French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, born in Paris (1805). He's the author of Democracy in America (1835), in which he wrote about the court system, the role of religion, education, business, race relations, associations, and every other detail that went into American democracy and the character of Americans.
Democracy in America~ Alexis de TocquevilleIt's the birthday of the writer who won both the 2009 National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for his book The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2009). That's biographer and historian T.J. Stiles, born near dairy and hog farms in rural Benton County, Minnesota, on this day in 1964.
He figured that his book about railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt would take two years to complete, from the start of research through the end of writing. Instead, it took seven years. One of the issues was that documents about Vanderbilt were simply hard to find. There had not been a biography of Vanderbilt written in a very long time � and there was so little to go by because Vanderbilt left no collection of papers. Complicating things further, much of Vanderbilt's career was during a period of American history that has not been written about very much � the 1830s and 1840s, long past the Revolutionary War, still many years before the Civil War.
Stiles spent a lot of time at the New York Public Library, digging through obscure archived collections like the New York Central Railroad papers. He would learn bits and pieces about Vanderbilt from unexpected places, things like lawsuits where plaintiffs would describe their meetings with Vanderbilt. They'd tell what his office looked like, where his desk was positioned, even the way that he put on his reading glasses. T.J. Stiles nearly despaired and quit the book, for which he'd been given an advance. He told his friends that if he were ever to win an award for the biography, at the ceremony he would ask for "a moment of silence for the 401(k) that gave its life so that this book could live."
It turns out that Stiles' book did, in fact, win major prizes. For The First Tycoon, Stiles won the National Book Award for nonfiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
T.J. Stiles once said, "When I write, I try to tell a good (and accurate) story, both for its own sake and as a means of drawing out the underlying meaning, the themes that explain to us how we became what we now are."
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt~ T.J. Stiles
The Writer's Almanac ~ July 30It's the birthday of the novelist Emily µþ°ù´Ç²Ô³Ùë, born in Thornton, England (1818). Emily µþ°ù´Ç²Ô³Ùë wrote Wuthering Heights(1847), considered one of the greatest love stories of all time, but she never had a lover.
She said, "I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."
Wuthering Heights~ Emily µþ°ù´Ç²Ô³Ùë
The Writer's Almanac ~ July 31It's the birthday of the author of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling, born Joanne Rowling in Yate, England (1965).
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone~ J.K. Rowling
Those are interesting & kneat facts. =)~
The Writer's Almanac ~ August 1It's the birthday of Herman Melville, born in New York City, (1819). In 1841, he joined the crew of the whaler Acushnet. Inspired by his adventures at sea, Melville returned to New York and settled down to write about his travels. He got married, had four children, and moved to a farm in Massachusetts, where he became friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville went to work on Moby-Dick,and Hawthorne encouraged him to make the novel an allegory, not just another adventure story. Melville thought it was his best book yet. But when Moby-Dick came out in 1851, the public did not agree. It was too psychological. His American publisher only printed a few thousand copies, and most of those never even sold.
He moved to New York and got a job as a customs inspector on the New York docks, where he worked for 19 years. The manuscript of his final work, Billy Budd, was found in his desk after he died, by which time he had become so obscure that The New York Times called him "Henry Melville" in his obituary.
Moby-Dick~ Herman MelvilleOn this day in 1876, Colorado became the 38th state admitted to the Union. It's one of only three states in the U.S. without any natural borders � something like a river or mountain range or desert, which separates it from its neighbors. The other two states with no natural borders: Colorado's neighbors Wyoming and Utah.
Colorado, 1870-2000~ William Henry Jackson
Colorado, Yesterday & Today~ Joseph Collier
From The Writer's Almanac ~ August 2It's the birthday of novelist and military historian Caleb Carr, ( born in New York City (1955). He's the author of The Devil Soldier (1991), The Alienist (1994), The Angel of Darkness (1997), and The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians; Why It Has Always Failed (2002).
His dad was Lucien Carr, an editor who was involved in the Beat scene � he was the man who introduced poets Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs to each other. The Beat poets were always hanging around Carr's Manhattan home when Caleb was growing up.
But even as a child, Caleb Carr was totally turned off by the Beat movement. The Beat poets who hung out at his house were nice people, he said, but "they weren't children people. ... What they were up to was not gonna make any child feel reassured." He said, "They were noisy, drunken people, living very alternative lifestyles. ... You needed to be grown-up to be around them if you wanted to not be terrified."
He rebelled by studying military history. It broke his mother's heart; she equated her son's interest with killing. But he said that the orderliness and stability of the military appealed to him, since he found these things missing from his own childhood.
He was especially enchanted with the life of Teddy Roosevelt, who developed big ideals as a child and stayed true to those ideals. Carr's first published book about military history was called America Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security, from 1812 to Star Wars (1988, co-author James Chace).
His most recent book is a detective novel: The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (2005).
The Alienist~ Caleb Carr
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It's the birthday of the journalist James Fallows, (books by this author) born in Philadelphia on this day in 1949. He's written for The Atlantic Monthly magazine for more than 25 years now, reporting on things like technology, the economy, immigration, war and national security.
He majored in history and literature at Harvard, edited Harvard's student newspaper, The Crimson, and went off to Oxford and studied economics on a Rhodes scholarship. He became the youngest presidential speechwriter in history, drafting speeches for Jimmy Carter when he was 26. Then he went to work as a foreign correspondent, reporting from places like Japan and China.
He's been nominated for the National Magazine Award five times. Fallows has written a lot about Iraq; the articles are collected in his book Blind into Baghdad (2006).
His most recent book is Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China (2009).
James Fallows said, "Make the important interesting."
Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China~ James Fallows
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It's the birthday of the novelist Isabel Allende, born in Lima, Peru (1942), the author of many books, including Eva Luna (1987) and Portrait in Sepia (2000). Her father's cousin, Salvador Allende, became Chile's first elected socialist president. But on September 11, 1973, a military coup led by General Pinochet overthrew the government and assassinated Salvador Allende. Isabel and all her family were put on a wanted list and received death threats, so they fled to Venezuela. While she was in Venezuela, Isabel Allende found out that her beloved grandfather was dying in Chile, and she couldn't go back to see him. So she started to write him a letter, to reassure him that she wouldn't forget all his stories and memories.
It became her first novel, The House of the Spirits (1985), a novel of magical realism that tells the story of four generations of the Trueba family and their lives in Chile from the turn of the century through the coup.
The House of the Spirits~ Isabel Allende
That is such a telling thumbnail sketch of Caleb Carr! Makes perfect sense.
From The Writer's Almanac ~ August 3
It's the birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ernie Pyle, born on a farm near Dana, Indiana, in 1900. He dropped out of college and got his first big job as a reporter for a Washington, D.C., tabloid newspaper.
Within a few years, he hit the road with his wife, a brilliant bipolar woman from Minnesota who was often sick, and who drank too much and used drugs. Together, they traversed America in a Ford, crisscrossing the country dozens of times. He wrote about the daily lives of ordinary people across the nation.
When the United States entered World War II, he began working as a war correspondent. He reported from North Africa and from Asia. He suffered badly from combat stress, was hospitalized for two weeks with "war neurosis," and nearly died in an accidental bombing by the U.S. in Normandy.
His column was syndicated by 300 newspapers around the U.S. and was read by more than 14 million people. His reporting read as if he were writing a letter to a close friend back home. In one column, he apologized for having "lost track of the point of the war."
Ernie Pyle's most famous column was written from the beachhead at Anzio, in Italy. It's called "The Death of Captain Waskow." Pyle wrote:
I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.
Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.
[...:] The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip [...:] Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road [...:]
Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.
And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain's shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.
After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.
Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. The next year, he died in combat off the coast of Okinawa, shot in the temple by enemy gunfire while embedded with American troops. His columns are collected in the books Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War (1943), Brave Men (1944), and Last Chapter (1946).
Ernie Pyle
Ernie's war : the best of Ernie Pyle's World War II dispatches
Ernie Pyles Southwest
Brave Men
Here Is Your War
Home Country
Last Chapter
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It was on this day in 1833 that America's first tax-supported public library opened, in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Today, there are more than 9,000 public libraries in the United States, including the Peterborough Town Library, which is still going strong.
Jorge Luis Borges said, "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."