Category: Books & Writers

Pearl Zane Grey…

was born in Zanesville, Ohio, on this date in 1872.

Zane Grey was the first American millionaire author. According to the Zane Grey’s West Society web site:

The breakthrough success of Heritage of the Desert in 1910 enabled Zane Grey to establish a home in Altadena, California, and a hunting lodge on the Mogollon Rim near Payson, Arizona; and the family of five moved West for good. A lifelong passion for angling and the rich rewards of his writing also allowed Grey to roam the world’s premier game-fishing grounds in his own schooner and reel in several deep-sea angling records which stood for decades. A prodigiously prolific writer, Grey would spend several months each year gathering experiences and adventures, whether on “safari” in the wilds of Colorado or fishing off Tahiti, and then spend the rest of the year weaving them all into tales for serialization, magazine articles, or the annual novel.

Zane Grey wrote to live and lived to write — surely a balance rarely attained — until his untimely death of heart failure on October 23, 1939. He left us almost 90 books in print, of which about 60 are Westerns, 9 concern fishing, and 3 trace the fate of the Ohio Zanes, the rest being short story collections, a biography of the young George Washington, juvenile fiction and baseball stories.

Everyone should read the classic Riders of the Purple Sage.

Thomas Merton…

was born on this date in 1915.

Thomas Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools in France, England, and the United States. At Columbia University in New York City, he came under the influence of some remarkable teachers of literature, including Mark Van Doren, Daniel C. Walsh, and Joseph Wood Krutch. Merton entered the Catholic Church in 1938 in the wake of a rather dramatic conversion experience. Shortly afterward, he completed his masters thesis, “On Nature and Art in William Blake.”

Following some teaching at Columbia University Extension and at St. Bonaventure’s College, Olean, New York, Merton entered the monastic community of the Abbey of Gethsemani at Trappist, Kentucky, on 10 December 1941. He was received by Abbot Frederic Dunne who encouraged the young Frater Louis to translate works from the Cistercian tradition and to write historical biographies to make the Order better known.

The abbot also urged the young monk to write his autobiography, which was published under the title The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) and became a best-seller and a classic. During the next 20 years, Merton wrote prolifically on a vast range of topics, including the contemplative life, prayer, and religious biographies. His writings would later take up controversial issues (e.g., social problems and Christian responsibility: race relations, violence, nuclear war, and economic injustice) and a developing ecumenical concern. He was one of the first Catholics to commend the great religions of the East to Roman Catholic Christians in the West.

Merton died by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Thailand, while attending a meeting of religious leaders on 10 December 1968, just 27 years to the day after his entrance into the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Many esteem Thomas Merton as a spiritual master, a brilliant writer, and a man who embodied the quest for God and for human solidarity. Since his death, many volumes by him have been published, including five volumes of his letters and seven of his personal journals. According to present count, more than 60 titles of Merton’s writings are in print in English, not including the numerous doctoral dissertations and books about the man, his life, and his writings.

Brother Patrick Hart, OCSO [Abbey of Gethsemani]

Grisham’s latest — ‘one of his best’

John Grisham’s latest novel is one. His books have a way of hitting best-seller lists (with advance orders online) long before anyone even knows what they are. By happy coincidence, “The Last Juror” turns out to be one of his best: a thoughtful and atmospheric thriller that for the first time brings the author back to the fictionalized town of Clanton, Miss. This is the setting for another of his best efforts, “A Time to Kill.”

— Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Edward Abbey…

was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on this date in 1927.

If you’re never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You’ve only missed out on one half of life.

The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.

In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.

Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland.

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Edward Abbey died in 1989.

The social life of the mind

Readerville is a gathering place for anyone and everyone who has an interest in books — readers, writers, publishers, editors, agents, teachers, students, booksellers, librarians, etc, etc.

Every intelligent, articulate, book-minded person I know wishes he or she knew more avid readers. The readers I know thrive on the exchange of book recommendations, love to brag about their recent acquisitions and wish publishers paid more attention to what readers actually want. The writers I know like nothing better than having discerning readers to talk to about their work and other writers to talk to about the traumas and joys of the craft. In other words, the people I know who love books love to talk about books and about the ideas contained within them.

Which is why I launched Readerville. Readerville is founded on the idea that literature — and discussion thereof — is one of life’s finest pursuits. The Readerville Forum provides a broad and flexible space for readers, writers, librarians, publishers, critics and anyone else who loves books to have thoughtful and engaging discussions about everything from favorite books and authors to why they buy what they buy to current writing conundrums to the latest literary news. Our reading groups — Fresh Ink, Young Adult, Biography and more — organize lively discussions on varying schedules…And Forum members are able to start new discussions about any book-related subject that interests them. It’s a welcoming, challenging, entertaining and endlessly fascinating environment that has proven deeply addictive to avid readers from around the globe.

But Readerville is more than just the Forum. Readerville Events bring visiting authors and industry insiders to Readerville for week-long discussions of their work. Our Author Gallery affords you the opportunity to discover writers you might not have heard of, and to learn more about those you already know and love. In our Features section, you’ll find Mignon Khargie, DG Strong and me singing the praises of the Most Coveted Covers, as well as thoughtful reviews of recent books from astute members of the Readerville community. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Registration (free) is required.

Thanks to Veronica for the link.

The Invisible Library

The Invisible Library “is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library’s catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.”

For example, anyone remember what the author Gordon Lachance wrote? Or Jo March? Or who wrote Fighting Sailor? Or There and Back Again? Do you own any books by Gilderoy Lockhart?

An intriguing site. Thanks to Veronica for the link.

Robert Burns…

Scotland’s bard and most famous son, was born on this date in 1759.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ auld lang syne.

NewMexiKen, undereducated that I am, couldn’t have told you much about Burns before today. Thanks to The Columbia Encyclopedia courtesy of Bartleby.com (truly one of the web’s great resources) I can tell you this:

Burns’s art is at its best in songs such as “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” “My Heart’s in the Highlands,” and “John Anderson My Jo.” Two collections contain 268 of his songs—George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (6 vol., 1793 –1811) and James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum (5 vol., 1787 –1803). Some of these, such as “Auld Lang Syne” and “Comin’ thro’ the Rye,” are among the most familiar and best-loved poems in the English language. But his talent was not confined to song; two descriptive pieces, “Tam o’ Shanter” and “The Jolly Beggars,” are among his masterpieces.

Burns had a fine sense of humor, which was reflected in his satirical, descriptive, and playful verse. His great popularity with the Scots lies in his ability to depict with loving accuracy the life of his fellow rural Scots, as he did in “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.” His use of dialect brought a stimulating, much-needed freshness and raciness into English poetry, but Burns’s greatness extends beyond the limits of dialect. His poems are written about Scots, but, in tune with the rising humanitarianism of his day, they apply to a multitude of universal problems.

2003 National Book Critics Award Nominees

National Book Critics Circle chooses award nominees:

Fiction
Monica Ali, Brick Lane
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore
Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing
Tobias Wolff, Old School

General Nonfiction
Carolyn Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Anne Applebaum, Gulag
Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx
William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down

Biography/Autobiography
Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates
Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage
George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards
Carol Loeb Shloss, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

Poetry
Carolyn Forche, Blue Hour
Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means To Me
Venus Khoury-Ghata, She Says
Susan Stewart, Columbarium
Mary Szybist, Granted

Criticism
Dagoberto Gilb, Gritos
Nick Hornby, Songbook
Ross King, Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling
Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

If only he’d had a laser printer

On this date in 1961, 87-year-old Robert Frost recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Although Frost had written a new poem for the occasion, titled “Dedication,” faint ink in his typewriter ribbon made the words difficult to read in the bright sunlight, so Frost recited “The Gift Outright” from memory.

The Raven

The Raven and other works of Poe on-line.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more.”

Edgar Allan Poe…

was born in Boston on this date in 1809 but moved to Richmond as a small child. According to the Poe Museum

After attending schools in England and Richmond, young Poe registered at the University of Virginia on February 14, 1826, the second session of the University. He lived in Room 13, West Range. He became an active member of the Jefferson Literary Society, and passed his courses with good grades at the end of the session in December. Mr. Allan [Poe’s foster father] failed to give him enough money for necessary expenses, and Poe made debts of which his so-called father did not approve. When Mr. Allan refused to let him return to the University, a quarrel ensued, and Poe was driven from the Allan home without money. Mr. Allan probably sent him a little money later, and Poe went to Boston. There he published a little volume of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems. It is such a rare book now that a single copy has sold for $200,000.

The Poe Museum biography continues the story.

High Plains Drifter

Reviewer Terry Castle is enamored with the new Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote.

So the best thing to say up front, perhaps, is get hold of Don Quixote and make time for it. It will be worth the television sitcoms you skip, the thirty or so quiet evenings you spend on it. Edith Grossman actually makes it easy for you, O frazzled reader, because she has produced the most agreeable Don Quixote ever. Don’t be put off by Harold Bloom’s introduction (major windbag alert in effect); go right to the thing itself. Don Quixote, famously, is the first major work of Western literature to take ordinary human life for its subject—specifically, a life that is replete with accidents, fiascoes, and indignities—and make it over into something luminous with meaning. It does so without pomp or sententiousness—it’s the friendliest and least formal of all the Great Books—yet will overwhelm you, in the end, with its moral and imaginative splendor….

I confess that I wasn’t especially looking forward to my second reading of the work—so shopworn, at this point, was much of my existing mental Quixote imagery (think cheap Picasso posters, Man of La Mancha, a groggy Frank Sinatra singing “The Impossible Dream”). But the book quite staggered me with its charm, beauty, and profundity. Once you enter (or re-enter) its expansive, ruminative, deeply nourishing world, the literary equivalent of eating “slow food,” it’s hard not to become a bit of a bore about how stupendous it is.

Horatio Alger, Jr….

was born on this date in 1832.

The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans provides this background.

Horatio Alger, Jr. was the author of over one hundred books that inspired young people from the post-Civil War era through end of the nineteenth century. His novels of courage, faith, and hard, honest work captured the imagination of generations of young Americans and gave them a model of hope and promise in the face of hardships.

Born in Revere, Massachusetts, on January 13, 1832, he was the son of a Unitarian church pastor who instilled a strong religious belief in his son. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Horatio Alger, Jr., studied under Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and had intended to become a poet. Alger worked at one time as a teacher and a newspaper correspondent for the Boston Transcript and the New York Sun. Affected by asthma, Alger was rejected by the Union Army and eventually became a minister on Cape Cod.

Horatio Alger, Jr., wrote more than 120 books with the inspiring theme of onward and upward. He began writing his rags-to-riches tales just after the Civil War. He patterned the hero of his book, Ragged Dick, after the homeless newsboys and bootblacks he observed in his neighborhoods in New York. The heroes of his books almost always had the same qualities-moral, brave, generous, kind, diligent, industrious, and persevering. His novels told everyone, no matter how poor, orphaned or powerless, that if they persevere, if they do their best, if they always try to do the right thing, they can succeed. Success was earned by hard work and right action. Alger trumpeted the doctrine of achieving success through self-reliance, self-discipline, decency, and honesty. His books were always best sellers and almost every home, school, and church library in America boasted a large collection of his works. Horatio Alger, Jr. died in 1899 of lung and heart ailments at the age of 67. More than 250 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. Through his body of work, Horatio Alger, Jr., captured the spirit of a nation and helped to clarify that spirit.

MPR’s The Writer’s Almanac adds this to the story.

His career as a minister ended when he was accused of molesting two boys in his parish. He left New England, vowed to redeem himself by helping the poor, and set about writing novels about the homeless children who lived in the streets of New York City. His first novel, Ragged Dick; or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks, was serialized in a magazine, where it picked up more readers with every issue. When it was published in book form in 1867, it became an instant bestseller. Groucho Marx once said, “Horatio Alger’s books conveyed a powerful message to me and many of my young friends—that if you worked hard at your trade, the big chance would eventually come. As a child I didn’t regard it as a myth, and as an old man I think of it as the story of my life.”

Keeping the metaphor alive

TMQ writes:

Many readers, including Mary Ellen A. of Charlotte, N.C. and Aaron L. of Washington, D.C., supposed that since TMQ called Steve Spurrier Dobby the Elf, I must now refer to Joe Gibbs as Professor Dumbledore. For those whose kids do not compel them to follow the Harry Potter saga, Dobby the Elf is a sniveling, wretched creature — and somehow Spurrier seemed to get smaller each week on the sidelines, in another year he might have become an elf — while Dumbledore is an all-knowing good wizard.

Dumas Malone…

was born in Coldwater, Michigan, on this date in 1892.

Professor Malone, who died in 1986, was a historian, biographer and editor. His foremost work, the six volume Jefferson and His Time, is the most authoritative biography of the William and Mary alumnus who became author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia. The last volume, Sage of Monticello was completed when Malone was 89 years-old.

Dumas Malone was presented the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan in 1983.

Umberto Eco…

was born in Alessandria, Italy, on this date in 1932. Look here for an interesting web site devoted to Eco.

“But why doesn’t the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?” I asked, for no good reason. “Is Jorge right?”

“Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn’t interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .”

— The Name of the Rose

Well read, redux

Elsewhere Debby takes exception to some of the “well read” list posted below.

I think that a lot of the titles offered ought to be required (or perhaps suggested) college reading, but high school? In fact, I think to require high school students to read some of those titles would only turn them off to reading–perhaps permanently. It could even effect their self-concept (or GPA) in a negative fashion when they couldn’t muddle through the complexities of Karl Marx or the language of Plato, Aristotle and Sophocles. Of course they were polling a bunch of brainiacs and elitists (educators, businessman, politicians and journalists) 😉 and, in all fairness, not all of the titles got high marks.

One hundred years ago bright young people read Plato, Aristotle and Sophocles in Greek. Have we come so far that young people can’t even read them at all now for fear their GPA or self-image would be upset? Can’t education require effort on the part of the student?

Well read

Some years ago the National Endowment for the Humanities polled educators, businessman, politicians and journalists for the books they felt high school students should read (or should have read). The leading works are listed with the percentage of responses for each.

71 Macbeth, Hamlet — Shakespeare
50 Declaration, Constitution, Gettysburg Address
49 Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain
48 Bible
28 Iliad, Odyssey — Homer
26 Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
21 The Republic — Plato
19 Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
17 Scarlet Letter — Hawthorne
17 Oedipus — Sophocles
13 Moby Dick — Herman Melville
13 1984 — George Orwell
13 Walden — Henry David Thoreau
12 Collected Poems — Robert Frost
11 Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman
9 Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
9 Canterbury Tales — Chaucer
9 Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx
9 Politics — Aristotle
7 Collected Poems — Emily Dickinson
7 Crime and Punishment — Dostoevsky
7 Collected Works — William Faulkner
7 Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger
7 Democracy in America — de Tocqueville
6 Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
6 Essays — Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 The Prince — Niccolo Michiavelli
6 Paradise Lost — John Milton
5 War and Peace — Tolstoy
5 Aeneid — Virgil

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

was born in Bedford, England on this date in 1886. From MPR’s The Writer’s Almanac:

He’s the author of the Antarctic travelogue, The Worst Journey in the World (1922). His book is about a search for the eggs of the Emperor Penguin in 1912. He and his two companions traveled in near total darkness and temperatures that reached negative 77.5 degrees Fahrenheit. He wrote, “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.”

As noted in Outside, “25 (Essential) Books for the Well-Read Explorer”

Cherry-Garrard’s first-person account of this infamous sufferfest is a chilling testimonial to what happens when things really go south. Many have proven better at negotiating such epic treks than Scott, Cherry, and his crew, but none have written about it more honestly and compassionately than Cherry. “The horrors of that return journey are blurred to my memory and I know they were blurred to my body at the time. I think this applies to all of us, for we were much weakened and callous. The day we got down to the penguins I had not cared whether I fell into a crevasse or not.”