pagesofjulia

This post is part of a series.

To celebrate Christmas, let’s take a look at today’s date in authorly history.

As usual, I consulted A Reader’s Book of Days for today’s happenings, and found births and deaths of some literary figures unfamiliar to me.

Born in 1924: Rod Serling (Stories from the Twilight Zone), Syracuase, N.Y.

Born in 1925: Carlos Castaneda (The Teachings of Don Juan), Cajamarca, Peru

Died in 1938: Karel Čapek (R.U.R. [Rossum’s Universal Robots]), 48, Prague

Died in 1956: Robert Walser (Jakob von Gunten), 78, Herisau, Switzerland

But of real interest I found one anecdote. In 1956,

Kept from going home to Alabama for Christmas by her job as an airline ticket agent, Harper Lee spent the holiday in New York with Broadway songwriter Michael Brown and his wife, Joy, close friends she had met through Truman Capote. Because Lee didn’t have much money they had agreed to exchange inexpensive gifts, but when they woke on Christmas morning the Browns presented her with an envelope containing this note: “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.” Given the humbling gift of “paper, pen, and privacy,” Lee quit her job and set to work, and by the end of February she had written a couple of hundred pages of a manuscript that was first called Go Set a Watchman, then Atticus, and finally To Kill a Mockingbird.

That’s the stuff right there. I had heard (or rather read) this story before, of how Lee got the chance to write her novel, the only one she’d publish and one which has made such a difference in this country and the world over a number of years now. But the detail I hadn’t heard or at least hadn’t retained was that she had the bulk of her manuscript completed by February of a “year off” that started at Christmas. Now that’s impressive! For all those who were frustrated by NaNoWriMo last month, chew on this: Harper Lee’s masterpiece was written in two months. Whew.

And on that inspiring note… happy holidays, friends. Stay tuned for my annual “best of” and “year in review” posts in the next few days.

Filed under: miscellaneous | Tagged: authors, days in book history, history | 2 Comments »

This post is part of a series.

To celebrate Halloween (today), or Dia de los Muertos (this weekend), let’s take a look at today’s date in authorly history.

According to A Reader’s Book of Days, on October 31, 1795, John Keats was born, and in 2008, Studs Terkel died. I have not read much Keats, but I think I like him. I am very grateful to have a copy of Terkel’s The Great War on my to-be-read Britannica bookshelves, a gift from my buddy Gerber that I look forward to reading…someday.

In 1967, Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America was published. I am not sure why this resonates with me. Perhaps Maclean references him?

And in 1615:

Miguel de Cervantes hinted at the end of the first book of Don Quixote that further adventures might be forthcoming, but before he could complete his own sequel, a rival appeared that credited another author, Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, on the title page and insulted Cervantes as old, friendless, and boring. Cervantes, meanwhile, took advantage of being second by adding a scene in which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza themselves mock the false sequel. In the second book’s dedication, written on this day, he mentioned “the loathing and disgust caused by another Don Quixote,” and in the book’s preface he completed his revenge: humbly declining to abuse his usurper, he instead told a tale of a madman who, after inflating a dog from behind through a hollow reed, asks, “Do your worships think, now, that it is an easy thing to blow up a dog?” “Does your worship think now,” added Cervantes, “that it is an easy thing to write a book?”

And that is a sufficiently odd anecdote, I think, to recommend its being shared here.

You may recall that I read book one of Don Quixote several years ago, and solemnly promised to get around to book two someday. I have not. And I hear book two is better, too. Sigh. So many books…

Happy weekend, friends.

Filed under: miscellaneous | Tagged: authors, days in book history, history | Leave a comment »

This post is part of a series.

Today we are celebrating my birthday, and tomorrow, Husband’s. I thought I would turn to Tom Nissley’s A Reader’s Book of Days to see what exciting things have happened on these two auspicious dates.

For myself on May 7 I am mostly disappointed (in my ignorance, I suppose). Born on this date were Gene Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun) and Peter Carey (Oscar and Lucinda). I vaguely remember a movie adaptation of the second, I think. Died on this date were Sir James George Frazer (The Golden Bough) and Clement Greenberg (“Avant-Garde and Kitsch”). These are all mysterious to me. In events there are mentions of Camus, Faulkner (bleh), Herman Wouk, and Ginsberg.

Tomorrow, May 8, Husband’s day, does slightly better. Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow, etc.) shares his birthday, and we lost both Flaubert (the book offers Sentimental Education for him, but I would say Madame Bovary!) and just recently & sadly, Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen). There is also a Hunger Games reference & others, but most importantly – and again sadly – May 8 was the day on which Ed Ricketts was hit by a train and received injuries that would end his life. Ricketts was John Steinbeck’s co-author for Sea of Cortez, which waits on my shelf for me to find time for it; and he inspired the character of Doc in Cannery Row, a book that moved me deeply in Mrs. Smith’s high school English class.

Hm, sad things for these birthdays. Sorry about the downers, friends. Have some birthday cake!

Filed under: miscellaneous | Tagged: authors, days in book history, history | 4 Comments »

As I’ve done before, I figured I’d note today’s (consumerist, contrived) holiday with some book history, courtesy of A Reader’s Book of Days.

Born today:

Frank Harris (My Live and Loves), Galway, Ireland, 1856. I do not know this man. But I have been to Galway.

Carl Bernstein (All the President’s Men), Washington, D.C., 1944. I know of this one, of course, though I haven’t read the book. Interesting to know he was (is?) a D.C. native.

Died today:

1975: P.G. Wodehouse (The Code of the Woosters and lots of wonderful others, of course), Southampton, NY, at age 93. More’s the pity; would that he had lived to write more and more of those funny books.

2010: Dick Francis (Dead Cert, all those horse racing mysteries), Grand Cayman Island, at age 89. I’ve read none of his books, but I know his fans; I was working in a library where his books were popular at the time of his death, and I remember.

Additionally, I find it amusing that Nabokov features again on Valentine’s Day, since he came up on New Year’s as well!

In 1932, Vladimir Nabokov, in goal as always, played his first match with a new Russian émigré soccer team in Berlin. A few weeks later, after he was knocked unconscious by a team of factory workers, his wife, Vera, put an end to his soccer career.

[Oops.] I am a soccer fan and former player – and Nabokov fan, naturally – so I enjoy this factoid.

And,

1935: Samuel Beckett wrote to Tom McGreevy on Jane Austen, “Now I am reading the divine Jane. I think she has much to teach me.”

Well done, Beckett!

And finally, today in Julia’s personal history: we are typically in the desert wonderland of Big Bend National & State Parks & surrounding locales on this day, and this year follows that pattern. Husband and I are playing on our mountain bikes today, but I’ll check in on you upon my return.

I’m glad I picked today for a historical review in miniature; I learned some things. You?

Filed under: miscellaneous | Tagged: authors, days in book history, history | Leave a comment »

A review of the *book in question is yet to come, but for a quick teaser today…

Born today: in 1879; E.M. Forster, and in 1919, J.D. Salinger. A big birthday for people who go by two leading initials and are well known for their classic works!! And died today: in 2002, Julia Phillips (You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again) and in 2007, Tillie Olsen (Tell Me a Riddle, Silences).

Of the other literary notes assigned to January 1st I am choosing my favorite to share with you:

1947: In a Guide to Your Child’s Development she has purchased for the purpose, Charlotte Haze notes on the twelfth birthday of her daughter, Dolores, that the girl is fifty-seven inches tall and possesses an IQ of 121. She also completes an inventory of the child’s qualities: “aggressive, boisterous, critical, distrustful, impatient, irritable, inquisitive, listless, negativistic (underlined twice) and obstinate.”

(Negativistic, indeed!)

…For Charlotte’s new husband, Humbert Humbert, this list of epithets is “maddening” in its viciousness toward the girl he calls Lolita and claims to love. But he has his own reasons to revolt at the child’s birthdays: after just a few more of them she’ll no longer be a “nymphet,” and soon after that she’ll be – “horror of horrors” – “a ‘college girl.'”

What fun!

*The book in question is A Reader’s Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year, by Tom Nissley, and was a gift from my parents on my most recent visit to see them in the chilly north. I have only flipped through it so far (which is what it’s designed for, obviously), but I will be giving it a closer inspection and writing up a proper review for you at some point this year.

The other thing I will be doing with it is keeping it handy for those few days when I’m scrambling for a blog post! (rubs hands together) Thanks, Mom and Pops, for helping out!

Filed under: miscellaneous | Tagged: authors, days in book history, history | 4 Comments »