Tag Archive for ‘Don’t Know Much About Literature’
A Lady and a Penguin — Not a “Dirty Story”
Generally, we don’t associate the iconic Penguin Books with “dirty books.” And neither did a British jury. On November 2, 1960, Penguin won a landmark British publishing case when Lady Chatterley’s Lover was deemed “not obscene” by a jury of three women and nine men. Penguin had published the novel, written in 1928, to mark [...]
Today in Literature: Oscar Wilde and Eugene O’Neill
Born this day are two great and influential writers. Irish-American Eugene O’Neill, born in 1888 in a New York City Broadway hotel. Son of a famous actor, he became arguably America’s greatest playwright. Four Pulitzer Prizes went to his work, including one posthumously for Long Day’s Journey Into Night Read more about O’Neill at the [...]
Don’t Know Much About Truman Capote
“Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!” It’s not the first line many people associate with Truman Capote, born September 30, 1924 in New Orleans. But it is in one of my favorites, A Christmas Memory, a 1956 short story originally published in Mademoiselle. This Depression-era story of a young boy and his favorite aunt making holiday [...]
Don’t Know Much About Faulkner
Yesterday Fitzgerald. Today Faulkner. This American master was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. The past is never dead. It’s not even past. History haunts the present in William Faulkner’s novels, as this famous line from Requiem for a Nun (1951) suggests. Faulkner’s great novels focus on the decline of the southern [...]
Don’t Know Much About F. Scott Fitzgerald
Born September 24, 1896: F. Scott Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was named Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald after the author of The Star-Spangled Banner, a distant relative of his mother’s. It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of [...]
TODAY IN HISTORY: The Fugitive Slave Act
Congress, in its infinite wisdom, often makes bad law. Today is a reminder of that fundamental truth. When: On September 18, 1890, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slave owners to reclaim slaves who had escaped to other states. Why: The Fugitive Slave Act was part of a larger “Compromise of 1850,” intended [...]
A Tale of Two Libraries
The headline was a shocker. All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009 I read about the possible closing of the Philadelphia Free Library –in the city where Benjamin Franklin helped invent the public library in 1731—with shock, sadness, and dismay. And more than a [...]
Don’t Know Much About the Birmingham Bombings
September 15, like September 11, deserves to be remembered. On this day in 1963, a murderous bombing took the lives of innocent Americans –four children. The terrorist bombers were also Americans –members of the Ku Klux Klan. In recording the bombing 20 years later, Howell Raines once wrote, In the mindlessness of its evil, the [...]
Richard Wright
One of the most powerful reading experiences in my life was discovering the work of Richard Wright when I was a teenager in the 1960s. Like many great writers, Richard Wright offered that vision of truth and reality that can change our perspectives forever. Grandson of slaves, Wright was born this date (September 4) in [...]
Don’t Know Much About Nabokov
Today in 1958, America met Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov’s most sensational novel was first published in New York by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on this date, almost three years after the book was originally published in Paris. It became an instant bestseller. But there’s a lot more to Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) than Lolita. Born into wealth in [...]
