Today is the birthday
… of Russell Banks, 68.
He was an exceptionally bright student and won a scholarship to Colgate, the first in his family to go to college. But he dropped out after only eight weeks, feeling that he, a poor boy, didn’t fit in among the privileged preppies, “the sons of the captains of American industry,” as he called them. He left the North for Mexico and Florida and intended to join Castro’s rebellious army, but he ended up in Florida fishing, writing, and working as a gas station attendant. By his early 20s, he was married and had a daughter, but the relationship ended in divorce when he was 22. He later called this period “the terrible years.”
When he was 24, he went back to college, entering the University of North Carolina, and this time around he felt well adjusted was a good student.
He wrote a novel, Hamilton Stark (1978), in which he experimented with narration techniques and perspective, using shifting points of view to frame the novel. His novel Continental Drift (1985) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and called by Atlantic reviewer James Atlas “the most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America: its greed, its uprootedness, its indifference to the past. This is a novel about the way we live now.”
Since then, Banks has written several more novels, including Affliction (1989), The Sweet Hereafter (1991), Cloudsplitter (1998), and most recently, The Reserve (2008).
… of two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest. She’s 60. Ms. Wiest won supporting actress Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway. She was nominated for the same award for Parenthood.
… of Reba McEntire, 53.
McEntire was the single most successful female country vocalist of the ’80s and ’90s, scoring a consistent stream of Top Ten singles and a grand total of 18 number one singles. (allmusic)
… of Vince Vaughn. He’s 38.
… of Julia Stiles. Bourne’s Nicky is 27.
August Anheuser Busch Jr., “the master showman and irrepressible salesman who turned a small family operation into the world’s largest brewing company” was born on this date in 1899. Quotation is from his Times obituary.
Bandleader Paul Whiteman was born on this date in 1890.
. . . There he soon became the best-known American bandleader, particularly with his recording of Whispering and Japanese Sandman (1920), which sold more than a million copies. By the early 1920s his lush orchestral style was widely copied on countless bandstands at home and abroad.
. . .Whiteman was a key figure in American popular music. While jazz purists accused him of diluting the character of early jazz for commercial purposes, less biased observers applauded the high polish and versatility of his orchestras, which had to be as comfortable in the concert hall as at a college dance. He employed a number of talented musicians: in the original arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue three of his reed players were required to play a total of 17 instruments. Although his dance music tended to be sedate, there were occasional jazz solos from musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, Eddie Lang, Bunny Berigan, and Jack Teagarden.
And, of course, it’s the birthday of Jason, official youngest child of NewMexiKen. Happy Birthday Jason!