Notes For November 7th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 7th, 1913, the legendary French writer, philosopher, and journalist Albert Camus was born in El Taref, Algeria. Throughout his life, Algeria was a French colony, and what he saw of colonial life was reflected in his writings and philosophy.

Camus never knew his father Lucien, who died when he was a year old. Lucien was killed in the Battle of the Marne during World War I. Albert and his mother, who was Spanish and half-deaf, lived in poverty in the Belcourt section of Algiers.

While studying at the University of Algiers, Camus excelled at both academics and soccer. His career as a star goalkeeper was cut short when he contracted tuberculosis. The disease came and went over the years.

After graduating from university, Camus joined the French Communist Party. He was not a hardcore communist, and when he became involved with the Algerian People's Party, the Soviet Union denounced him as a Trotskyite and had the French Communist Party expel him.

The Algerian People's Party was a socialist party led by prominent Algerian nationalist Messali Hadji - one of many leftist parties that had formed a coalition centered around Algerian independence from French rule.

The fragile coalition would break apart due to infighting; the Soviet Union was determined to see a communist Algeria under its control, but the parties not allied with the Soviets were calling for a fully independent Algeria.

After being expelled by the French Communist Party, Albert Camus would associate himself with the French anarchist movement. He began a career in journalism and wrote for socialist newspapers. Meanwhile, the looming threat of Hitler increased.

Camus went to France and tried to enlist in the military but was disqualified because of his recurring tuberculosis. During the Nazi occupation of France, he joined the French Resistance.

The French Resistance cell Camus joined was called Combat, and he served as the editor-in-chief of its underground newspaper of the same name, writing under the pseudonym Beauchard.

When the Allies liberated France, Camus was there to witness and report on the defeat of the Nazis. Later, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, he was one of the few French newspaper editors to speak out against the bombing and express disgust.

It was during the Nazi occupation of France that Albert Camus would publish his first novel. The Stranger (1942) was a classic work of existentialist philosophical fiction.

Meursault, a young Algerian, drifts aimlessly through the tumultuous French Algerian landscape. Unable to feel for anyone including himself, he attends his mother's funeral, meets a girl, becomes entangled in the life of a local pimp, and ends up inexplicably killing a man.

Arrested, jailed, and put through an absurd trial, Meursault's defense is obviously a deficiency of character - he's a product of his environment. In telling his story, Camus explores the paradox of existentialism - the search for meaning in a meaningless world.

A year after The Stranger was published, Camus met the legendary French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play, The Flies. The two men became close friends. Camus referred to Sartre as his "study partner."

In 1947, Camus published his second novel, The Plague. Although set in the 1940s, this classic novel was inspired by an epidemic of cholera that ravaged the population of the Algerian city of Oran in 1849 - right after France colonized Algeria.

In the novel, the streets of modern Oran become infested with rats carrying the plague. The rats start dying en masse, but not before transmitting the disease to the human population.

Dr. Bernard Rieux, a wealthy physician, is the first to recognize that a plague is spreading. He alerts the authorities, who waste time quibbling over what action to take. Rieux opens a plague ward in the town hospital, and its 80 beds are filled in three days.

As the city struggles to contain the plague, the authorities are left with no option but to seal the city to keep the plague from ravaging all of Algeria. One man tries to get criminals to smuggle him out of the city.

Dr. Rieux teams up with civil servant Joseph Grand and tourist Jean Tarrou to treat all the incoming plague cases. Meanwhile, Father Paneloux, an ambitious Catholic priest, declares that the plague is an act of God unleashed to punish the citizens for their sins.

The desperate people of Oran flock to the Church in droves and a new plague begins to ravage the city - the plague of religion. When Father Paneloux witnesses firsthand the efforts to contain the plague and the horrors that the disease causes, the priest has a change of heart.

In the 1950s, Camus devoted his life to human rights causes. He worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but resigned when the UN decided to recognize Spain's fascist dictatorship under General Franco.

When the Algerian War broke out in 1954, Camus found himself at a political crossroad. He was in favor of Algerian independence, but opposed the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) freedom fighters - Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas backed by the Soviet Union.

As the vicious FLN guerrillas fought the equally vicious French colonial army, Camus feared for the lives of the innocent Algerian and French citizens caught in the crossfire. He ultimately sided with the French, alienating himself from his friends, including Jean-Paul Sartre.

Undaunted by the criticism, Camus worked behind the scenes to save the lives of imprisoned Algerians who had been sentenced to death by the French colonial government. He was a vocal opponent of capital punishment, a position he expressed in his classic essay, Reflections on the Guillotine.

In 1956, The Fall, Camus' last novel published during his lifetime, was released. The following year, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to his novels, he wrote plays, short stories, essays, and nonfiction.

Four years later, on January 4th, 1960, Albert Camus was riding in a car driven by his publisher and friend, Michel Gallimard, when they were both killed in an accident. Camus had originally intended to travel by train with his wife and twin daughters, but decided to ride with Gallimard instead. He was 46 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

- Albert Camus

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the full length documentary Albert Camus - The Madness of Sincerity. Enjoy!

Notes For November 6th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 6th, 1921, the famous American writer James Jones was born in Robinson, Illinois. In 1939, at the age of eighteen, Jones enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Oahu, Hawaii, at Schofield Barracks.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (which he witnessed) that led his country into World War II, Jones was stationed on Guadalcanal island, where he was wounded in action.

After the war, Jones wrote an autobiographical novel called They Shall Inherit The Laughter, but getting it published proved unsuccessful - it was rejected several times as being too shrill and lacking perspective.

So, Jones abandoned it and began writing what would become his first published novel, an 850+ page epic novel based on his experiences in the Army before and during the war.

From Here To Eternity (1951) was considered a landmark novel for its expose of the dark side of life as a soldier in the U.S. military. The book chronicles the Army's violent subculture of company boxing, its hazing rituals, and the profane language and sexual exploits of its soldiers.

It proved to be quite a shocker, offending both the Army and conservative readers. Nevertheless, it became a best seller. Critics savaged the novel over its frequently misspelled words and numerous punctuation errors.

They didn't realize that the mistakes were deliberate and part of a writing style conceived by the author for this particular book, which won the 1952 National Book Award and has been named one of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century by the Modern Library.

The novel opens in the summer of 1941, at Schofield Barracks, Oahu, months before the Pearl Harbor attack. It follows several soldiers in G Company. First Sergeant Milt Warden begins a passionate affair with Karen Holmes, the neglected wife of Captain Dana "Dynamite" Holmes.

Meanwhile, in the conflict at the heart of the novel, Private Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt, an infantryman from Kentucky, refuses to fight on the G Company team, although he's the best boxer. That's because in his last boxing match, he ended up blinding his opponent.

Prew's refusal to fight angers his superiors, (Warden and Holmes) who put him through the Treatment in order to break his will. The Treatment is a daily hazing ritual of brutal physical and psychological torture.

Prew grew up dirt poor and joined the military not out of patriotism, but because it was the only honest way out of poverty. An aspiring career soldier, he understands the motive behind the Treatment and won't allow it to break his will. Prew has a love interest - Lorene, a prostitute who helps him when he gets into trouble.

Trouble comes in the form of Old Ike, a sergeant with whom Prew gets into a scuffle. Sentenced to the stockade and forced to break rocks with a sledgehammer, he must also endure solitary confinement in the "hole" and physical abuse at the hands of the sadistic guards.

When one of the guards beats another inmate to death, Prew vows revenge, which leads to his downfall. The man who once lived for the Army is destroyed by it. In 1953, From Here To Eternity was adapted as a highly acclaimed feature film, directed by Fred Zinnemann.

Due to the novel's length and wealth of objectionable elements (Hollywood's Production Code was still in effect) many wondered if it could be adapted for the screen.

It took over a year to write a suitable screenplay that remained (mostly) faithful to the novel, while at the same time, taming the objectionable elements. Finally, screenwriter Daniel Taradash had a workable script.

Taradash decided that most of the novel's brutality would be better communicated through suggestion. Instead of sending Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) to the military stockade, run by the sadistic Sgt. "Fatso" Judson, (Ernest Borgnine) the screenplay sends his friend, Maggio (Frank Sinatra), instead.

This left Prewitt alive for a heroic and happy ending, where he kills Judson to avenge Maggio's death. Since producer Buddy Adler needed the permission of the Army to do location shooting at the actual Schofield Barracks, he and Taradash agreed to make two major changes.

Instead of being promoted as he was in the novel, Captain Holmes, (Philip Ober) who ordered Prewitt to get the Treatment, is cashiered and condemned by his outraged superiors. A long standing animosity is used to explain Judson's torture of Maggio; in the novel, torture is standard procedure.

Taradash's screenplay already cleaned up the soldiers' language, so only one more element needed to be changed for PCA (Production Code Administration) head censor Joe Breen to pass the film: the New Congress Club brothel was changed into a social club for soldiers, a sort of low rent USO instead of a house of prostitution.

In the movie, when one of the girls explains to Prewitt that the "privileges" of Club members are "dancing, snack bar, soft drink bar, and gentlemanly relaxation with the opposite gender so long as they are gentlemen, and no liquor is permitted. Get it?" Prewitt slyly replies "I get it," making it appear that a lot more is going on.

As for the adulterous affair between Warden (Burt Lancaster) and Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr), Breen's only victory in censoring it was getting Taradash to push back the start of their sexual relationship so that they appear to have become involved out of love for each other rather than lust.

Breen still demanded that they be punished for their affair, but that only comes in the form of a single line of condemnation spoken by Karen when she and Warden end their affair, which seems to have been justified by the buildup of Captain Holmes's bad behavior, including his own infidelity.

Ironically, the famous love scene featuring Karen and Warden wrapped up in each other's arms and kissing passionately on the beach amidst the pounding surf, (which was seen in the film's trailer and print advertising) caused the most moral outrage.

James Jones followed From Here To Eternity with Some Came Running (1957), the story of an Army veteran with literary aspirations and personal problems. Former soldier Dave Hirsh is a cynical alcoholic who finds himself back in his hometown of Parkman, Illinois, after being put on a bus in Chicago while intoxicated.

Also on the bus is Ginny Moorehead, a woman of seemingly loose morals and poor education who is being stalked by her hoodlum ex-boyfriend. Dave doesn't think much of Ginny at first, but eventually, he will see past her flaws and fall in love with her.

He will also be reunited with his embittered older brother, Frank. Frank married well and inherited a successful jewelry business from his wife's father. To Frank, social status is his and his wife's highest priority.

Frank sees his brother as a threat to that, so he tries to make him respectable. Instead, Dave strikes up a friendship with Bama Dillert, a gambler. In 1958, Some Came Running was adapted as a feature film by director Vincente Minnelli.

Featuring Frank Sinatra as Dave Hirsh, Shirley MacLaine as Ginny Moorehead, and Dean Martin as Bama Dillert, the film is rightfully considered a masterpiece. It received five Academy Award nominations.

In 1962, James Jones published The Thin Red Line, the second book in a trilogy of military novels that began with From Here To Eternity. Praised by critics who compared it to Stephen Crane's classic novel The Red Badge Of Courage (1895), The Thin Red Line is a fictional account of the Battle of Mount Austen on Guadalcanal during World War II.

The story focuses on a number of characters and their different, individual reactions to combat, effectively capturing the horrors of the Pacific campaign. The author presents a chillingly realistic, non-judgmental depiction of battle, where ordinary people experience murder, terror, dread, helplessness, frustration, cruelty, emptiness, and other elements of war, including war crimes committed by American soldiers against Japanese soldiers.

For example, Japanese corpses are disinterred for fun or to steal their gold teeth, and Japanese prisoners of war are summarily executed. The author places no moral judgment on these acts, shown as the natural reactions of American soldiers to their environment. The novel was adapted as a film first in 1964, then remade in 1998.

With money earned from the success of From Here To Eternity, James Jones helped form and fund the Handy Writers' Colony in Marshall Illinois, which was conceived as a Utopian commune where aspiring writers could concentrate on their writing.

Organized by Jones' then girlfriend Lowney Handy, (who was still married at the time) the colony dissolved after a few years due to Handy's erratic behavior and Jones' focus on his own novels. He married his wife, Gloria Mosolino, and relocated to Paris.

James Jones continued to write novels. His last book, Whistle, was the third novel in his military trilogy. Suffering from a terminal heart condition while he wrote it, Jones died of congestive heart failure on May 9th, 1977, at the age of 55.

He had died before completing the last three chapters of Whistle, but left extensive notes and recorded conversations, enabling his friend, writer Willie Morris, (best known for his autobiography My Dog Skip) to complete the novel.

Whistle is about four wounded American soldiers in the South Pacific who are taken by hospital ship to a veteran's hospital in the fictional town of Luxor, Tennessee.

Before he began writing it, Jones said that he expected that the novel would say "Just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war and what it means to us, as against what we claim it means to us."

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Quote Of The Day

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"There are so many young guys, you know - young Americans, and yes, young men everywhere - a whole generation of people younger than me who have grown up feeling inadequate as men because they haven't been able to fight in a war and find out whether they are brave or not. Because it is in an effort to prove this bravery that we fight - in wars or in bars - whereas if a man were truly brave, he wouldn't have to be always proving it to himself. So therefore, I am forced to consider bravery suspect, ridiculous, and dangerous. Because if there are enough young men like that who feel strongly enough about it, they can almost bring on a war, even when none of them want it, and are in fact struggling against having one. And as far as modern war is concerned, I am a pacifist. Hell, it isn't even war anymore, as far as that goes. It's an industry, a big business complex."

- James Jones

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 64-minute, 1985 documentary on James Jones. Enjoy!

Notes For November 5th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 5th, 1943, the famous American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor Sam Shepard was born. He was born Samuel Shepard Rogers IV in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. His parents were teachers.

After graduating from high school, Sam briefly attended college, then dropped out to join a traveling theater group. In 1963, he was working as a busboy in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

He delved into illicit drugs and for a time became a drummer for the eccentric folk-rock group The Holy Modal Rounders, which were featured in the classic movie, Easy Rider (1969). He avoided the draft for Vietnam by claiming to be a heroin addict.

Shepard returned to the theater, becoming involved with New York's off-Broadway theater scene. Although he acted occasionally, he was primarily interested in writing. His plays were staged at several different off-Broadway venues, mostly at the Theatre Genesis in the East Village.

Richard O'Brien, author and co-star of the musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which would be adapted in 1975 as one of the greatest cult classic films of all time, cited Shepard's 1969 science fiction play The Unseen Hand as an influence.

Though Shepard wrote for the stage, he also earned some impressive early screenwriting credits. He contributed to the screenplays for Robert Frank's indie classic Me And My Brother (1968) and Michelangelo Antonioni's classic film, Zabriskie Point (1970).

In the early 1970s, Sam Shepard lived in England for three years, then moved back to the United States, where he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and became playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre, which produced his works.

Some of his notable plays from this period include Geography Of A Horse Dreamer (1974), Suicide In B Flat (1976), and Angel City (1976).

Shepard's 1978 play, Buried Child, won him a Pulitzer Prize for drama the following year and brought him international fame. It was the first time that an off-Broadway play won a Pulitzer Prize.

Buried Child debunks the mythology of the American Dream in its tale of Dodge, the aged, failed patriarch of a dysfunctional Midwestern farm family.

A weak, sardonic alcoholic who is bullied by his wife and children, Dodge represents the archetypal American father's failure to create the environment of "family values" idealized by the American Dream.

Dodge's sons, Tilden and Bradley, are also failures. One is handicapped physically, the other emotionally. They are unable to take over the family farm or care for their parents in their old age.

Never able to make a success of his farm, the now elderly Dodge sits in his living room and decays, his immobility a metaphor for his disappointment and disillusionment. His wife Halie, now in her mid-60s, still worships her late third son Ansel, whom she sees as an All-American hero.

Ansel, a former star basketball player, was found dead in his motel room under suspicious circumstances. Other characters in the play include Reverend Dewis, the family minister - a married man who drinks and carouses with women and once had an affair with Halie.

A subplot finds Shelly, the girlfriend of Tilden's son Vince, (who hates being at his grandparents' house) uncovering the shocking family secret - Vince is the child of an incestuous union between his father and grandmother.

Although Sam Shepard's film career began as a contributing screenwriter, he would turn to acting, debuting as the wealthy farm owner in Terrence Malick's 1978 epic film, Days Of Heaven.

Shepard would follow his debut with a memorable co-starring role in the 1980 movie, Resurrection. It was about a woman, Edna McCauley, (Ellen Burstyn) who survives the horrific car accident that kills her husband.

Paralyzed from the waist down, Edna discovers that she has gained the power to heal herself and others. Her new boyfriend Cal Carpenter, (Shepard) a young hellraiser, begins to think that Edna is the second coming of Christ.

Cal becomes a born again Christian. Edna fails to see what her survival and healing powers have to do with religion, and this disturbs Cal greatly. His mental state begins to deteriorate to the point that he becomes dangerously unbalanced, believing that Edna is the Antichrist - and must be destroyed.

In 1983, Sam Shepard co-starred as astronaut Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Although he had a fear of flying, he allowed the real Chuck Yeager to fly him high in preparation for the role.

Shepard appeared in memorable supporting roles in numerous films. He was the voice of the narrator in the 2006 live action feature film adaptation of E.B. White's classic children's novel, Charlotte's Web.

He also co-starred in the 2008 prison drama, Felon, which starred Stephen Dorff as a loving family man who finds himself sent to prison for killing a burglar who had broken into his home.

Shepard would return to screenwriting in 1984, co-writing the Wim Wenders film, Paris, Texas. The following year, he wrote and starred in an adaptation of his play, Fool For Love, directed by the great Robert Altman. In 2005, he co-wrote and starred in another Wim Wenders movie, Don't Come Knocking.

Shepard played an aging Western movie star disgusted with his decadent, meaningless life. So he flees the set of his latest film and hits the road on horseback in search of his past and the woman (Jessica Lange) he left behind twenty years ago.

Sam Shepard proved himself to be one of America's best modernist playwrights. He wrote over 45 plays, eleven of which won Obie Awards, and one the Pulitzer Prize. He also earned Tony Award nominations.

In 1986, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which in 1992 awarded him the Gold Medal for Drama. In 1994, he was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame. He taught drama for many years.

His classes in play writing and theater arts were held at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. During the 1970s, he served as a professor at the University of California, Davis.

Sam Shepard died in 2017 at the age of 73, following a battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. His final play, A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations), was written in 2014.

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Quote Of The Day

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"There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over."

- Sam Shepard

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Sam Shepard reading from his work at Trinity College, Dublin, in 2012. Enjoy!

Notes For November 4th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 4th, 1948, the famous American poet and playwright T.S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in literature. Born in St. Louis, he emigrated to England in 1914 at the age of 25. He later became a naturalized British subject.

Eliot is probably most famous today for his whimsical poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, (1939) which was adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber as the avant garde hit Broadway musical, Cats.

By the time he'd written that book, Eliot had already established himself as one of the most profound poets of his time. His classic poems The Waste Land (1922), Ariel Poems (1927-31), and Ash Wednesday (1930) were steeped deep in spirituality and philosophy.

Eliot's first major work, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, (1917) introduced his poetic style, which combined blank verse with long, fragmented images, a style that still influences poetic voice to this day.

Although some scholars consider The Waste Land to be Eliot's masterpiece, most believe that Four Quartets (1945) was his greatest work and what led him to win the Nobel Prize.

Four Quartets was a collection of four long poems (Burn Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding) inspired by Eliot's considerable knowledge of mysticism and philosophy.

T.S. Eliot's winning the Nobel Prize award came as quite a shock, as he was a controversial figure. A devout Anglican and staunch conservative, Eliot had voiced support for fascism and praised Italian dictator Benito Mussolini before the outbreak of World War II.

He had also been accused of anti-Semitism, an idea that is still hotly debated to this day. In a series of lectures he gave at the University of Virginia in 1933, which were published a year later as After Strange Gods, Eliot said:

What is still more important is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.

He would later disavow After Strange Gods and prevent any part of it from being reprinted.

Eliot was defended by his friends, poet Stephen Spender and writer Leonard Woolf, (the husband of Virginia Woolf) who were both Jewish. Woolf said that Eliot was "slightly anti-Semitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite genuinely."

In 2003, Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University published the details of a previously unknown series of letters written by T.S. Eliot to Horace Kallen, a Jewish American philosopher.

The letters revealed that during World War II, Eliot helped German and Austrian Jewish refugees settle in England and the United States. In letters he wrote after the war, Eliot voiced support for Israel as a Jewish state.

Despite the controversy surrounding his personal and political beliefs, T.S. Eliot still remains a strong influence on modern poetic voice.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

- T.S. Eliot

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of T.S. Eliot reading his classic epic poem, The Waste Land. Enjoy!

Notes For October 31st, 2025

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Happy Halloween!

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I'd like to wish all of you who celebrate it a happy and safe Halloween. As part of your celebration, I recommend reading the classic horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Washington Irving, and Guy de Maupassant!

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 31st, 1892, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the classic short story collection by the legendary English writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published. The twelve stories in it had been previously published in The Strand literary magazine from July of 1891 through June of 1892.

These short stories introduced the world to Conan Doyle's most famous character, a detective called Sherlock Holmes. The brilliant, analytical, and laid-back Holmes was assisted by his friend, Dr. John Watson, who also served as narrator for the duo's adventures.

Sherlock was inspired by two figures - Edgar Allan Poe's fictional French detective C. Auguste Dupin and Joseph Bell - a real life surgeon and expert in forensic medicine who served as a police consultant.

Arthur Conan Doyle had met Bell when studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Doyle took up writing to supplement his struggling medical practice, as doctors didn't make much in the 19th century.

When he wasn't solving crimes, Holmes's passions included playing the violin and enjoying a good game of chess. He was also quite fond of cocaine. As a detective, he wasn't above deceiving the police or concealing evidence if necessary to solve the crime.

Sherlock Holmes's greatest nemesis was the evil Professor Moriarty, who possessed an equally formidable intellect. But, in his very first adventure, Holmes is outwitted by a woman.

In the first short story, A Scandal in Bohemia, the detective is called upon by the King of Bohemia, whose engagement to a Scandinavian princess is being threatened by a blackmailer.

The King's blackmailer is his jealous old flame, American opera singer Irene Adler, who possesses an incriminating photograph of them together. She's threatening to release it to the press.

Believing that the photograph is somewhere inside Adler's home, Sherlock Holmes executes a brilliant ruse to get inside the house, but Adler counters with a brilliant ruse of her own, leaving him with a picture of herself alone and escaping with the incriminating photo.

Adler also leaves Holmes a letter praising his detective skills and promising not to release the incriminating photo if the King takes no action against her. The King agrees and Holmes keeps Adler's picture as a souvenir of the woman who outwitted him.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes also features classic stories such as The Adventure of the Red-Headed League, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Man With the Twisted Lip, and The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

Sherlock Holmes would become one of the most popular, iconic literary characters of all time. His adventures would appear not only in print, but also on the stage, screen, radio, and television.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic short story collection, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Enjoy!

Notes For October 30th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 30th, 1938, the Mercury Theater radio program, famous for its radio play adaptations of classic literature, broadcast a production of War Of The Worlds, an adaptation of the classic science fiction novel by the legendary English writer H.G. Wells.

The radio play was written by and starred the legendary actor, filmmaker, and writer Orson Welles, who had co-founded the Mercury Theater company with actor / director John Houseman.

Welles was only 23 years old at the time of the broadcast, yet he had already established himself as a renowned stage and radio actor, having starred as the voice of the Shadow on that popular suspense series.

The Mercury Theater program aired on Sunday nights at 8PM. Many people would tune in around 8:12PM after the comedy sketch on the Chase & Sanborn Hour variety show (starring legendary ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy) had ended and a singer filled out the remaining time.

Had these late comers tuned in at the beginning of this particular episode of Mercury Theater, they would have known that what they were listening to was Orson Welles' adaptation of War Of The Worlds.

Instead, they thought they were listening to a real newscast describing an actual Martian invasion of Earth! That's because the radio play was presented in the format of a mock news broadcast.

It began with an announcer reading a weather report, then taking listeners to "the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra."

After a few minutes of dreadful dance music, an announcer broke in with a news bulletin: a scientist, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory, had detected explosions on Mars.

The lame dance music returned, then an announcer broke in again to report that a large meteor had crashed into a farm in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Soon, an on-the-spot reporter at the crash site begins describing a space alien emerging from a large metallic cylinder:

Good heavens! Something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... it... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate...

The Martians initiate a massive attack, wiping out 7,000 National Guardsmen and lobbing canisters of poison gas across America. The incredibly realistic radio play featured sophisticated sound effects and a first rate cast of actors portraying announcers and other terrified characters.

When one announcer character reported that widespread panic had broken out at the crash sites, with thousands of people trying to flee, it wasn't far from the truth: a minor panic broke out across the country, as perhaps a million people believed that Martians really had attacked Earth!

The total population of the United States in 1938 was approximately 130,000,000 people, so it wasn't the mass panic of legend that some believe, but a lot of people were frightened by the broadcast.

In New Jersey, people fleeing in terror caused huge traffic jams on the highways. Others begged police for gas masks to protect them from the Martians' poison gas and pleaded with electric companies to shut off the power so that the Martians couldn't see their lights.

In Indianapolis, a terrified woman ran into a church during evening services, screaming that New York had been destroyed and warning the congregation that the end of the world had come. News of the panic reached CBS studio bosses, who also panicked.

Orson Welles then broke character to remind people that they were listening to a radio play. After the broadcast, the Federal Communications Commission investigated the Mercury Theater program and concluded that no laws had been broken.

Radio networks promised to be more cautious with their programming in the future. Nevertheless, people were furious that the War Of The Worlds broadcast caused so much unnecessary duress.

Most believed that the broadcast was a Halloween prank played on listeners by Welles and his cast mates. It wasn't, but Welles gave them the impression that it was in his snarky on-air apology:

This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theater's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying boo. Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night... so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the Columbia Broadcasting System.

You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please, for the next day or so, the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian. It's Halloween.

Despite Welles's apology, many still believe that the notorious War Of The Worlds broadcast was indeed a mean spirited practical joke aimed at a nervous American public weary from the Great Depression and wary of the looming threat of Hitler and another world war.

Orson Welles feared that his career had been ruined by the controversy, but just the opposite happened. The publicity helped him land a lucrative movie contract with RKO Pictures, for whom he would write, direct, and star in what many (including me) consider to be the greatest film ever made - Citizen Kane (1941).

To this day, the 1938 War Of The Worlds broadcast is rightfully considered an Old Time Radio (OTR) classic and is a treasured favorite of OTR enthusiasts like myself.

The famous radio broadcast would be recreated many times and inspire tribute productions such as the 1994 TV movie, Without Warning. The movie aired on the CBS network as both a Halloween special and a tribute to the Welles radio broadcast.

Taking the form of a mock newscast, the movie told the story of an extraterrestrial contact misinterpreted by the paranoid military, who attacks them. The unseen aliens then attempt to wipe out the human race - and succeed.

Like Orson Welles's famous radio play, the film included disclaimers before and after the commercial breaks stating that it was just a movie. Still, CBS and its affiliate stations were flooded with phone calls from frightened viewers wondering if the film's mock newscast was real.

The other TV networks - ABC, NBC, and Fox - were also flooded with calls asking why they weren't covering the same important story as CBS. The CBS network was later condemned as irresponsible for broadcasting the film on Halloween night.

Like the listeners who tuned in late to Orson Welles's famous radio broadcast, many adult TV viewers who tuned in late to Without Warning because of trick-or-treating or Halloween parties were not sure what they were seeing. Real CBS News graphics were used for the film's mock newscast.

No TV network has attempted a similar Halloween night broadcast since then. Two years before CBS aired Without Warning, the BBC broadcast Ghostwatch, a mock BBC TV reality program supposedly broadcast live from a haunted house and hosted by the legendary British TV journalist Sir Michael Parkinson in the BBC studio.

Many terrified viewers thought it was real, including an 18-year-old developmentally disabled man who then committed suicide, believing that the demonic entity in the film had come into his home, as seen in the film, which ended with the studio possessed and the entity escaping through the live TV cameras into people's homes.

The broadcast also caused some children to suffer post traumatic stress. So great was the uproar it caused that Ghostwatch was never rebroadcast and went unseen for many years until it was finally released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and streaming services.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."

- Orson Welles

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the complete 1938 Mercury Theater broadcast of War Of The Worlds. Enjoy!

Notes For October 29th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 29th, 1740, the famous Scottish writer James Boswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Alexander Boswell, was a judge and the 8th Laird of Auchinleck. His mother, Euphemia, was a strict Calvinist.

As a child, James Boswell was delicate and sickly. He suffered from an inherent nervous ailment. At the age of five, Boswell was sent to the James Mundell Academy, which was an advanced school for its time; students were taught English, Latin, writing, and mathematics.

Boswell was unhappy living at the school, and his nervous ailment manifested itself in forms such as extreme shyness and night terrors. Finally, three years later, at the age of eight, he was removed from the Academy and taught by private tutors who awakened his passion for literature.

When he was thirteen, Boswell enrolled in the arts program at the University of Edinburgh. He studied there for five years, then suffered a bout of severe depression and nervous illness. When he recovered, he had finally lost his childhood delicacy and gained good health.

Boswell continued his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he was taught by the legendary writer and philosopher Adam Smith, who became famous for his treatise on economics, The Wealth Of Nations (1776).

While at Glasgow, Boswell decided to convert to Catholicism and become a monk, which prompted his irate father to demand that he return home. Instead, Boswell ran away to London, where for three months, he lived the unrestrained life of a libertine until his father came to bring him back to Scotland.

When he returned to Edinburgh, Boswell re-enrolled at university to finish his education. On July 30th, 1762, he took his oral law exam, which he passed easily. The following year, he met Samuel Johnson for the first time, and they became close friends.

Johnson was a legendary English writer, literary critic, scholar, and lexicographer (he wrote a dictionary of the English language that was the standard for many years) who has been rightfully described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history." He called Boswell "Bozzy."

Three months after he met Johnson, Boswell left for the Netherlands, where he planned to continue his law studies at Utrecht University. Although deeply unhappy at first, Boswell came to enjoy his time in Utrecht greatly.

He met and fell in love with an eccentric, vivacious young Dutchwoman named Belle van Zuiylen, who proved to be his social and intellectual superior. She wouldn't marry him, so Boswell left Utrecht and traveled around Europe for two years, where he met legendary French writers and philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

He also met one of his heroes, the Italian independence leader Pasquale Paoli. The diaries that Boswell kept during his time in Utrecht and his travels through Europe would later be published as Boswell In Holland (1763-64) and Boswell On The Grand Tour (1764-66).

In 1766, Boswell returned to Scotland, where he took his final law exam, passed it, and became a practicing advocate for over a decade. Once a year, he would go to London to see his friend Samuel Johnson and hobnob with London's literati. His journals and letters from this time chronicled his libertine exploits.

In a 1767 letter to W.J. Temple, Boswell wrote:

I got myself quite intoxicated, went to a Bawdy-house and past a whole night in the arms of a whore. She indeed was a fine strong spirited girl, a whore worthy of Boswell if Boswell must have a whore.

Earlier, Boswell had written of a one night stand he had with an actress named Louisa. Though he occasionally used a condom for protection, Boswell would contract venereal disease at least seventeen times.

In November of 1769, Boswell married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. She bore him seven children, two of whom died in infancy. He also had at least two illegitimate children who died in infancy. Despite his frequent visits to brothels, Margaret remained with him for twenty years, until she died of tuberculosis in 1789.

Boswell achieved moderate literary success with the publication of his travel journals, but was unsuccessful as an advocate. By the late 1770s, he had plunged into a quagmire of alcoholism and gambling addiction, and also suffered from severe mood swings, most likely the result of bipolar disorder.

After his old friend Samuel Johnson died in 1784, Boswell moved to London to try his hand at the English Bar, but was even less successful than he was as an advocate in Scotland. So, he spent most of his last years writing a biography of Johnson, which was published in 1791.

It was a masterpiece, considered to be the greatest biography ever written. Unlike most biographies of the time, which just provided the dry details of the subject's public life, Boswell's biography of Johnson was revolutionary.

The book included far more personal information than readers of the time were accustomed to, providing them with not only a record of Johnson's public life and works, but also a vivid personal account of Johnson the man. Boswell even included transcripts of conversations he'd had with Johnson.

The longevity of Samuel Johnson's fame owes itself mostly to James Boswell's biography. With the publication of The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell finally received the literary recognition he'd sought for so long. It remains a classic to this day.

After the book was published, Boswell's health began to deteriorate from the ravages of alcoholism and venereal disease. He died on May 19th, 1795, at the age of 54.

Over 120 years after his death, a large collection of his papers, including intimate journals he'd kept throughout his life, were discovered at Malahide Castle, North of Dublin. They were sold to an American collector and later passed on to Yale University, which published them.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."

- James Boswell

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a BBC documentary on James Boswell. Enjoy!