This Day In Literary History
On August 13th, 1961, the famous American writer Tom Perrotta was born in Garwood, New Jersey. His father was a postman, his mother a secretary. From an early age, Perrotta was a voracious reader. He devoured the works of authors such as O. Henry, J.R.R. Tolkein, and John Irving, and dreamed of becoming a writer himself.
Perrotta became involved with his high school's literary magazine, Pariah, in which he published several short stories. He earned a Bachelor's degree in English at Yale in 1983, and a Master's in English and Creative Writing at Syracuse University.
While at Syracuse, Perrotta was a student of writer Tobias Wolff, best known for his 1989 memoir This Boy's Life, which was made into a feature film. Perrotta praised Wolff for his "comic writing and moral seriousness."
During the time he taught creative writing at Yale, Tom Perrotta wrote three novels, all of which he had trouble getting published. In 1994, Perrotta finally published his first book, a short story collection titled Bad Haircut: Stories Of The Seventies.
It received good reviews; a Washington Post critic said that it was "more powerful than any other coming-of-age novel." That year, Perrotta left Yale and began teaching expository writing at Harvard.
In 1996, one of Perrotta's unpublished novels, a dark comedy called Election, was optioned for a film by director Alexander Payne. This attracted the attention of publishers, and the novel was released in March of 1998.
A year later, the film was released to theaters and critical acclaim. In Election, Tracy Flick, a popular, pretty, intelligent, and thoroughly amoral high school girl, is running for student body president. She will do anything to win.
Tracy projects the perfect image, but she has a dark side. She had an affair with a teacher, and after she told her mother, the teacher's career and marriage were ruined. Her current teacher, Jim McCallister - whose best friend was the teacher she ruined - decides that she doesn't deserve to win the election.
A caring teacher who believes in ethics, McAllister doesn't let his lofty ideals stand in the way of his determination to sabotage Tracy's campaign at all costs. He convinces Paul, a popular but dumb star athlete, to run against her.
Paul's disgruntled younger sister Tammy also runs for president - in order to prove that the election is a farce and won't change anything at school. In a rousing speech, Tammy encourages the other students not to vote.
Perotta followed Election with another novel, Joe College (2000), but his next book, Little Children (2004) established him as one of America's best modern novelists. Little Children follows the lives of various people living in a middle class suburban neighborhood.
College-educated Sarah wonders how she became one of the vacuous, judgmental housewives who bring their children to the neighborhood park to play. She remembers a lesbian affair she had during college and wonders if she married her husband Jack just to escape a dead-end job and life.
After accepting a silly dare from a friend, Sarah is drawn into a steamy affair with Todd, a handsome married father whom the women have nicknamed Prom King. Her predicament is nothing compared to that of Larry.
Larry is a 33-year-old ex-cop who left the force after shooting and killing a black kid who was holding a toy gun. Overcome with guilt, Larry sees his chance at atonement when paroled child molester Ronald moves into the neighborhood to live with his mother.
Furious that Ronald was allowed to live near children, Larry begins a one-man campaign of harassment and intimidation in order to drive the sex offender out of the neighborhood. Despite his good intentions, his actions once again result in tragedy for innocent people. Sarah must face the consequences of her actions as well.
Little Children received rave reviews. The New York Times critic declared Tom Perrotta to be "an American Chekhov whose characters even at their most ridiculous seem blessed and ennobled by a luminous human aura."
The novel appeared on numerous "best books of 2004" lists. It was adapted as an acclaimed 2006 feature film starring Kate Winslet as Sarah, Noah Emmerich as Larry, and in a bravura performance, Jackie Earle Haley as Ronald. Tom Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay with director Todd Field.
Also in 2006, Perotta sold an original screenplay to New Line Cinema that he had co-written with Frasier producer Rob Greenberg. Titled Barry and Stan Gone Wild, it was described as "a shameless comedy [about] a 40-something dermatologist who goes on spring break."
Perrotta's next novel, The Abstinence Teacher, was published in October of 2007. Set in suburban New Jersey, it told the story of Ruth Ramsey, a feisty high school sex education teacher who finds herself drawn into a culture war against the local conservatives and evangelical Christians.
Warner Independent bought the film rights and Perrotta wrote the screenplay. The film, still in development, will tentatively be directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who directed the acclaimed 2010 film, The Kids Are All Right. She is replacing Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who were originally slated to co-direct The Abstinence Teacher.
Perrotta's 2011 novel, The Leftovers, a work of dystopic science fiction, is a compelling, satirical take on the biblical Rapture and the dreadful but popular Left Behind series of suspense novels by evangelical Christian writers Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
The Leftovers opens several years after a Rapture-like event occurred, resulting in the sudden disappearance of 2% of the world's population. The town of Mapleton NY, like other places around the world, struggles to move on.
Not everyone who vanished in the Rapture-like event called the Sudden Departure were devoutly religious - some were far from righteous - while many good Christians were left behind.
The confused survivors are still trying to come to terms with the Sudden Departure - the loss of their loved ones and the fate of mankind. Thus, a new religious cult called the Guilty Remnant rises to power. Meanwhile, others openly rebel against religion.
In 2014, HBO adapted The Leftovers as a TV series starring Justin Theroux, Liv Tyler, Christopher Eccleston, and Ann Dowd. It ran for three seasons, from June 2014 through April of 2017, for a total of 28 episodes.
Tom Perrotta's most recent novel, Tracy Flick Can't Win, was published in 2022. In this sequel to Election, Tracy Flick is now a law school dropout and single mother who takes a job as a subsitute teacher and manuevers her way up to become vice principal of her high school.
A few months after its publication, a film adaptation of Tracy Flick Can't Win for the Paramount+ streaming service was announced, with Reese Witherspoon starring again as Tracy and producing, and Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne returning as screenwriter and director.
Quote Of The Day "I don't want to become one of those writers that develop a bottomless fascination with their own myth... nor do I see myself writing one great masterpiece. What I'd really love is to be like Graham Greene, and get to 75 and see a whole shelf full of consistently good books, all remarkably similar in length."
- Tom Perrotta
Vanguard Video Today's video features a 65-minute interview with Tom Perrotta, who discusses his most recent novel, Tracy Flick Can't Win, on the Book Report Network. Enjoy!
This Day In Literary History
On August 12th, 1774, the famous English writer Robert Southey was born in Bristol, England. Southey was educated first at Westminster School, where he was expelled for publishing a magazine article where he condemned the practice of flogging students.
He later attended Balliol College, Oxford. Later, Southey would poke fun at the lax standards of the college, quipping that "All I learnt was a little swimming... and a little boating."
Southey became friends with writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge and they began a writing partnership. Their best known collaborative effort was a three-act play called The Fall Of Robespierre. In 1794, Southey published his first solo work, a collection of poems.
He remained friends with Coleridge, and they and a few others discussed going to America and setting up a utopic commune. They later decided to set up the commune in Wales. Southey became the first member of the group to reject the whole idea as unworkable.
In November 1795, Southey married his girlfriend Edith Fricker - the sister of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's wife, Sara. She and her children would later move in with Southey after Coleridge abandoned them.
Southey continued to write. In 1808, writing under the pseudonym Don Manuel Alvarez Espirella, Southey published Letters From England, a nonfiction account of a tour of the country.
In other words, England as seen through the eyes of (allegedly) a foreigner. It has been said that the book features the most accurate descriptions of early 19th century English life ever written.
Beginning in 1809, Southey became a regular contributor to the Quarterly Review literary magazine. By 1813, he had become so well known as a poet that he was appointed Poet Laureate of England after Sir Walter Scott declined the honor.
Although Southey had been a political radical most of his life, (he was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution) by the time he had become Poet Laureate, his political views had changed to that of a staunch conservative. The Tory establishment embraced him and gave him a small stipend.
Southey used his position as Poet Laureate to voice support of the repressive Liverpool government and argue against Parliamentary reform. He even sided with the government following the notorious Peterloo Massacre of August 16th, 1819.
Approximately 60,000 people gathered at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, for a demonstration to demand Parliamentary reform that featured a speech by radical orator Henry Hunt.
The local magistrates called in the military to arrest Hunt and disperse the crowd. The military's idea of crowd dispersal was to have the cavalry charge into the crowd with sabers drawn.
As a result, 15 people were killed and another 400 to 700 injured. The event was nicknamed the Peterloo Massacre in reference to the Battle of Waterloo.
Robert Southey's political views resulted in him falling out of favor with his fellow writers. He had gone from political radical to establishment tool who demanded the prosecution of his former fellow travelers.
He was seen as a sellout. In 1817, he was brought to task for hypocrisy when, after arguing against the publication of radical literature, Wat Tyler, a radical play Southey had written himself when he was young, was brought out to embarrass him.
One of Southey's most scathing critics, William Hazlitt, wrote that Southey "wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very reputable lady, called Legitimacy."
Southey's fellow poets mocked him and denounced his works as sycophantic odes to the King.Lord Byron's classic epic poem Don Juan opens with a scathingly funny, deliberately long-winded dedication to Robert Southey, whom Byron loathed.
Byron suspected him of spreading rumors about the relationship between himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's wife Mary, and her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, accusing them all of being involved in a "League of Incest" while they lived together on Lake Geneva in 1816. Southey denied spreading the rumors.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Robert Southey's conservative politics alienated him from his contemporaries. Today, most of his work remains obscure for the same reason, but he did make some important contributions to literature.
In addition to his poetry, he wrote biographies of John Wesley, Oliver Cromwell, Horatio Nelson, and other figures. He introduced new words to the English language, including the term autobiography.
A prolific writer, Southey's works also included children's stories and poems. He wrote The Story of the Three Bears - the classic fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
It first appeared in his 1834 novel, The Doctor. He also wrote the nursery rhyme What Are Little Boys Made Of? and to this day, British schoolchildren still read his poems in class.
Robert Southey served as Poet Laureate for thirty years until his death in 1843 at the age of 68. He was buried in the churchyard of Crosthwaite Church, Keswick, to which he belonged for forty years. Inside the church is a memorial to Southey written by his friend William Worsdworth, who succeeded him as Poet Laureate.
Quote Of The Day "Write poetry for its own sake; not in the spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally obtain it."
- Robert Southey
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Robert Southey's poem The Battle Of Blenheim. Enjoy!
This Day In Literary History
On August 8th, 1818, the legendary English poet John Keats returned home from a strenuous walking tour of the United Kingdom. The tour took him through Scotland, Ireland, and the Lake District of Northwestern England.
Keats was accompanied by his friend, Charles Armitage Brown. Keats' brother George and his sister-in-law Georgina accompanied them as far as Lancaster. The couple then went to Liverpool. From there, they emigrated to America.
In July of 1818, while on the Scottish Isle of Mull, John Keats caught a bad cold. He continued on the walking tour and his cold worsened. He began showing the early signs of tuberculosis. Soon, he became too ill to remain on the tour.
Back home by August, Keats set about nursing his brother Tom, who was dying of tuberculosis, exposing himself to more infection. Tom died a few months later.
At that time, tuberculosis, then known as consumption, had not yet been identified as a bacterial infection of the lungs. It was seen as a weak person's illness, contracted by the physically or spiritually weak, in the latter case a symptom of either severely repressed or unbridled lust.
Since tuberculosis was believed to be caused by engaging in sexual practices considered sinful, (or the desire to engage in such practices) the disease carried with it a huge social stigma. Contracting tuberculosis was as humiliating as contracting a venereal disease.
John Keats would die of tuberculosis at the age of 25, three years after returning home from his walking tour. As his health deteriorated, he established himself as one of the greatest English Romantic poets of all time.
Ironically, during his short life, Keats' works were savaged by critics to the point that he was driven to despair by the bad reviews. His close friend and fellow poet Lord Byron urged him to buck up and not let the critics get to him.
Byron, recalling his own reaction to negative reviews, quipped, "Instead of bursting a blood-vessel, I drank three bottles of claret and began an answer." In his classic poem Don Juan, Byron described Keats' fate this way:
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.
When John Keats died in 1821, tuberculosis had finally been identified as a bacterial infection. Though he was no longer shamed by the disease, a new myth began that dragged his name through the mud.
It was said - and even his friend Percy Shelley believed - that John Keats had been killed by bad reviews, too weak to withstand the critics' onslaught. In Adonais, Shelley's classic poem eulogizing Keats, he depicted the poet's critics as loathsome creatures like worms and reptiles.
Although Keats' girlfriend Fanny Brawne blamed Shelley's poem for exacerbating the myth of Keats' fragility, the real culprits were Keats' executors. He had wanted his epitaph to read, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," but this is how his executors engraved his headstone:
This Grave contains all that was Mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone.
Quote Of The Day
"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion - I could die for that."
- John Keats
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a reading of John Keats' classic poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn. Enjoy!
This Day In Literary History
On August 7th, 1934, the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that Ulysses, the classic novel by the legendary Irish writer James Joyce, was not legally obscene.
To be specific, the Court of Appeal upheld a lower court's ruling declaring that Ulysses was not legally obscene. It was a major First Amendment victory, one that British Joycean scholar Stuart Gilbert called "epoch making."
Beginning in 1918, Ulysses was published in serialized form in the American literary magazine The Little Review. In 1920, the magazine published the novel's controversial thirteenth episode,Nausicaä.
This outraged a moralist group called The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV) which objected to the content and determined to keep Ulysses from being published in America in any format.
The NYSSV was founded in 1873 by the notorious Anthony Comstock and his supporters in the Young Men's Christian Association. (Yes, that YMCA.) Comstock was a United States Postal Inspector.
The same year that he founded the NYSSV, Comstock persuaded Congress to pass the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to send obscene materials through the mail.
The passage of the Comstock Act resulted in the enacting of "Comstock Laws" at the state and federal level. The last of these laws wouldn't be struck down by the Supreme Court until 1965.
The Comstock Act was a nightmare. Comstock's definition of obscenity was so vague that he even used the law and his power as a Postal Inspector to block the shipment of certain medical textbooks to medical students.
When Comstock had copies of George Bernard Shaw's classic play Mrs. Warren's Profession blocked, calling Shaw "an Irish smut dealer," the furious playwright said:
Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all.
Although Comstock enjoyed a public reputation as a devout Christian guardian of morality, privately, he was corrupt - and notoriously so. As a moralist, he destroyed the lives of many innocent people.
Comstock proudly admitted to being responsible for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides. In his later years, he suffered from poor health after having suffered a severe blow to the head from an unknown attacker.
Before he died in 1915, Comstock attracted the attention of an admirer - a young law student named J. Edgar Hoover who agreed with Comstock's political beliefs and was interested in his shady methods of investigation, prosecution, and conviction.
Comstock's NYSSV was successful in its prosecution of The Little Review for publishing the offending episode from Ulysses.
At the first trial in 1921, the literary magazine was ruled legally obscene, and as a result, Ulysses was banned in the United States. The ruling was a product of its time. The Nausicaä episode contained a scene which must have been shocking to 1920s sensibilities.
At the beach, Leopold Bloom (one of the main characters) meets Gerty MacDowell, who has come to watch a fireworks display. Gerty notices Bloom staring at her. Her passion stirred by both Bloom and the fireworks, Gerty deliberately exposes herself to him.
Bloom becomes aroused and starts to masturbate, which arouses her in return. They both reach orgasm as a Roman candle explodes overhead, gushing out "a stream of rain gold hair threads." Afterward, Gerty leaves and reveals herself to be lame, leaving Bloom to contemplate her lameness.
With Joyce's playful punning, the erotic scene becomes a parody of the Catholic Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament ceremony, with Bloom acting out his own version of an Adoration where Gerty's body serves as the body of Christ. The revelation of her lameness is Joyce's biting metaphor for the Catholic Church.
The trial that resulted in Ulysses being banned in the United States drew a huge amount of publicity. As a result, pirated editions of the novel were published and sold on the black market or under the counter in bookshops.
Joyce's novel became a runaway bestseller, but he didn't earn a penny from the sale of those pirated books. In 1933, after twelve years of frustration, Joyce's official U.S. publisher, Random House, decided to set up a test case.
The publisher imported a shipment of uncensored French editions of Ulysses and had Customs confiscate a copy after the ship was unloaded.
That year, the case of United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses came to trial. On December 6th, 1933, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that Ulysses was not legally obscene.
The NYSSV was outraged and appealed the decision. The case reached the United States Second Court of Appeal, which affirmed the lower court's ruling on August 7th, 1934. Ulysses was finally published uncensored in the United States.
Since then, most U.S. editions of the novel - including the one that I have - feature the text of the Woolsey ruling as part of the forward. Woolsey ruled that Ulysses was not pornographic because it contained no "dirt for dirt's sake."
Also, the novel was so hard to understand that people would be unlikely to read it for the purpose of titillation. The ruling changed the standard for literary obscenity and made it impossible for an entire novel to be declared obscene because of a few offending lines or passages.
When the Second Court of Appeal affirmed Woolsey's decision, they called Ulysses a "sincere portrayal" and said it was "executed with real art." I couldn't agree more.
Quote Of The Day "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."
- James Joyce on his novel Ulysses.
Vanguard Video Today's video features a lecture on the legacy of James Joyce's classic novel, Ulysses. Enjoy!
This Day In Literary History
On August 6th, 1809, the legendary English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Although his father, George Tennyson, was a rector, (who married a vicar's daughter) the Tennyson family were descendants of King Edward II.
George Tennyson's skill at money management made him far more affluent than the typical country clergyman, and the family was thus able to spend summers vacationing at Mablethorpe and Skegness on the East coast of England.
Alfred Lord Tennyson was the fourth of twelve children. When he and his older brothers Charles and Frederick were teenagers, they began writing poetry. By the time he was 17, they had published a collection of their poems.
Charles Tennyson would later marry the younger sister of Alfred's wife. Another one of Alfred's brothers, Edward Tennyson, would end up institutionalized at a private asylum, where he died.
First educated at Louth Grammar School, Tennyson entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he would join an intellectual secret society called the Cambridge Apostles. While studying at Cambridge, he met poet Arthur Henry Hallam, who became his best friend.
The same year, his first commercially published book, Poems by Two Brothers, came out. It also contained works by his older brother, Charles. In 1829, Alfred Lord Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for his poem Timbuctoo.
A year later, his first solo poetry collection, Poems Chiefly Lyrical, was published. It contained two of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, Claribel and Mariana.
Although some critics derided it for being too sentimental, Tennyson's verse proved to be very popular with readers. It also caught the attention of fellow writers, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
When Tennyson's father died in the spring of 1831, he had to leave Cambridge before obtaining his degree. He lived at the rectory and took responsibility for his widowed mother and his siblings.
His friend Arthur Henry Hallam came to live with the Tennyson family, and later became engaged to Alfred's sister, Emilia. In 1833, Tennyson published his second book of poetry, simply called Poems.
This collection, which included his famous poem, The Lady of Shalott, met with such critical scorn that Tennyson wouldn't publish another for ten years, though he continued to write.
That same year, Arthur Henry Hallam died suddenly of a stroke while on vacation in Vienna. His death had a profound effect on Tennyson, who composed a poem in tribute to his friend called In Memoriam A.H.H.
Considered one of Tennyson's masterpieces, it included the famous lines "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Then never to have loved at all." The poem became a favorite of Queen Victoria, who found solace in it after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861. In 1862, she requested a meeting with Tennyson.
In 1842, while living in London, Alfred Lord Tennyson published two more volumes of his Poems series of poetry collections. Unlike the first volume, they met with immediate success. They featured Tennyson classics such as Locksley Hall, Tithonus, and Ulysses.
His writing career back on track, he continued to write and publish poetry collections. By 1850, Tennyson reached the pinnacle of his career. That year, he finally published his masterpiece In Memoriam A.H.H..
On top of that, he was appointed Poet Laureate following the death of William Wordsworth. Also in 1850, at the age of 41, Alfred Lord Tennyson married his childhood sweetheart Emily Sellwood, who bore him two sons, Hallam and Lionel.
In 1855, Tennyson wrote another one of his classics, The Charge Of The Light Brigade. The poem is a tribute to the British cavalrymen who were involved in an ill-fated charge on October 25th, 1854, during the Crimean War.
In 1884, Queen Victoria - a huge fan of his work - bestowed on Tennyson the title Baron Tennyson of Aldworth, and he took a seat in Parliament's House of Lords.
Alfred Lord Tennyson continued to write into his 80s. Near the end of his life, he revealed that he had pretty much rejected religion and become an agnostic. It was a shocking revelation, even in the waning years of the Victorian era, but not a surprise.
He'd blasted Christianity in Maud, writing that "the churches have killed their Christ," and in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, he wrote that "Christian love among the churches look'd the twin of heathen hate."
Tennyson died in October of 1892 at the age of 83. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. He is rightfully considered one of the greatest poets of the English language.
Quote Of The Day "Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within."
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Alfred Lord Tennyson's classic poem, The Lady of Shallott. Enjoy!
This Day In Literary History
On August 5th, 1850, the legendary French writer Guy de Maupassant was born in Dieppe, France. He grew up in Normandy, where he collected in his photographic memory a lot of information he would use in his short stories, which often dealt with the Norman people.
Maupassant's parents separated when he was eleven years old. He lived with his mother, to whom he was very close. They lived in the Villa de Verguies, which was located between the sea and the countryside.
In these surroundings, the young Maupassant developed a passion for outdoor adventure. He would fish with the local fishermen off the coast. In 1868, when he was eighteen years old, Maupassant saved poet Algernon Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Eterat.
That wasn't the first writer he met; when he started junior high school, Maupassant met the legendary novelist Gustave Flaubert, a childhood friend of his mother. Her father was Flaubert's godfather.
After receiving his primary education, Guy de Maupassant entered a seminary, but he got himself expelled, as he came to hate religion and the prospect of joining the clergy. He went to university instead.
Shortly after he graduated in 1870, the Franco-Prussian War broke out. Only twenty years old, he volunteered for military service and fought bravely. After the war ended, he returned home and moved to Paris.
Maupassant joined Gustave Flaubert's literary circle. He became Flaubert's protege and was introduced to famous writers such as Emile Zola, Henry James, and Ivan Turgenev. From Flaubert, Maupassant learned the craft of writing.
He set out to start his own writing career, supporting himself by working as a civil servant in two different positions. He hated the jobs. For recreation, he canoed on the Seine and pursued women.
In 1880, Maupassant established himself as a short story writer when he published Boule de Suif (Ball of Fat) in the anthology Les Soirees de Medan (Evenings at Medan) along with works by Zola and other writers.
Set during the Franco-Prussian War, "Boule de Suif" is the nickname of a well-known prostitute traveling in a coach with some bourgeois passengers. The coach is detained by a Prussian officer who demands that Boule de Suif sleep with him. She refuses, and he continues to detain the coach.
The other passengers grow restless and demand that she sleep with the Prussian. She swallows her pride and agrees. Afterward, he allows the coach to leave. The other passengers treat her like she had the plague.
Remembering how these hypocrites had devoured the food and drink in the basket she brought with her, all Boule de Suif can do is weep. Although Guy de Maupassant had written six novels, he was best known as the master of the short story.
He wrote over 300 stories, one-tenth of which were horror stories. His most famous horror story was Le Horla (1887). In this disturbing tale, a wealthy young Norman believes that he has unwittingly summoned a horla.
Horlas are invisible monsters, cousins to vampires, and they are said to eventually bring about the downfall of Man. As the young Norman grows more fearful of the horla he has summoned, he tries to destroy it.
He eventually burns his house down, killing all of his servants. Believing that the horla is still alive, he decides to commit suicide. Was the horla real or just in his mind?
Madness is a recurring theme in Maupassant's stories; in A Night In Paris, the paranoid narrator suffers from a compulsion to walk the streets. In A Madman, a judge commits murder just to see what it feels like to kill, then sentences an innocent man to death for the crime.
And in The Inn - which may have inspired Stephen King to write his classic novel The Shining - two caretakers are living at a remote inn in the French Alps that becomes snowed in and unreachable. When one of them goes missing, the other starts to go mad. Or is the inn haunted by an evil presence?
Ironically, Guy de Maupassant's fascination with madness in his writings would soon cross over into real life, as an undiagnosed case of syphilis, contracted in his 20's, progressed over the years and eroded his sanity.
In middle age, Maupassant developed a desire for solitude, a fear of death, and growing paranoia. In January 1892, he attempted suicide by cutting his throat. He was committed to the famous celebrity asylum of Dr. Esprit Blanche, where he died in July 1893, a month before his 43rd birthday.
One of the great masters of the short story, Maupassant's work has inspired the writings of W. Somerset Maugham, O. Henry, and other great writers. H.P. Lovecraft credited Maupassant's horror tales - especially Le Horla - as the inspiration for his classic The Call Of Cthulhu.
All writers of short stories owe it to themselves to read Guy de Maupassant.
Quote Of The Day “You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.”
- Guy de Maupassant
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a complete reading of Guy de Maupassant's classic short story, The Horla. Enjoy!
This Day In Literary History
On August 1st, 1949, the legendary American writer and musician Jim Carroll was born in New York City. Born to an Irish Catholic family, he grew up on the Lower East Side. When he was 15, his family moved to Manhattan.
In 1961, at the age of twelve, Carroll began keeping the diaries that would make him famous. His two passions were basketball and writing. He excelled at basketball.
Carroll became a star basketball player for Trinity School, an elite Catholic High School. While there, his talent led him to the 1966 National High School All Star Game.
Carroll's coach and teammates didn't know that he was living a secret double life as a heroin addicted poet. He first tried heroin at the age of thirteen. He financed his habit by stealing, hustling, and prostituting himself.
In 1967, while he was still in high school, Carroll's first poetry collection was published. Organic Trains got him noticed by the literary world, and very soon, his work was being published in prestigious literary magazines such as The Paris Review and Poetry.
After his second poetry collection, 4 Ups and 1 Down was published in 1970, Jim Carroll began working for legendary artist Andy Warhol as a screenwriter, writing dialogue and creating character names for Warhol's films.
Also during the 1970s, Carroll published his third poetry collection, Living at the Movies (1973), and his most famous book, The Basketball Diaries (1978).
The Basketball Diaries was a collection of excerpts from the diaries he kept as an adolescent, covering his high school basketball career, his nightmarish heroin addiction, and his passion for writing.
Considered one of the last great works of Beat literature, The Basketball Diaries painted a stark and vivid portrait of the hard drug culture of early 1960s New York City. It would be adapted as an acclaimed and controversial feature film in 1995.
The film, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll, sparked controversy due to a scene where Carroll fantasizes about gunning down his classmates at school.
In 1997, a mentally ill 14-year-old boy named Michael Carneal opened fire on students at Heath High School, killing three and injuring five more. The Basketball Diaries was one of Carneal's favorite movies.
Three of the victims' families filed multi-million dollar lawsuits against the movie studios who distributed The Basketball Diaries and the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers, and the producers of violent video games.
Their lawyer, Jack Thompson, claimed that violent movies, violent video games, and Internet pornography inspired Carneal to go on a rampage. The lawsuits were thrown out and Thompson was later disbarred for his unethical conduct, including perjury.
It was this same case that made Stephen King decide to pull his novel Rage (1977) out of print. Michael Carneal was found to have had a copy of Rage - which was about a mentally ill high school student who guns down two teachers and takes his classmates hostage - in his locker.
After the publication of The Basketball Diaries in 1978, Jim Carroll, having finally kicked his heroin habit for good, moved to California to make a fresh start.
There, with encouragement from his old friend and former roommate, legendary rocker and poet Patti Smith, Carroll formed a punk rock group called The Jim Carroll Band. Their debut album, Catholic Boy, was released in 1980.
Catholic Boy, which hit the Billboard Hot 100 chart at #73, featured the single People Who Died, which appeared in the 1985 feature film, Tuff Turf. The band also had a cameo appearance in the film.
The Jim Carroll Band would release several more albums, the last being an EP called Runaway (2000). As a songwriter, Carroll would collaborate with such famous artists as Lou Reed, Boz Scaggs, the Blue Oyster Cult, ELO, and Pearl Jam.
In the 1990s, Carroll became a spoken word performance artist, giving live readings of his works, including his first and only novel The Petting Zoo, which would be published posthumously in 2010.
Jim Carroll died of a heart attack in September of 2009. He was 60 years old.
Quote Of The Day
“Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you - call it heart, call it mind, call it soul - accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination.”
- Jim Carroll
Vanguard Video
Today's video features Jim Carroll giving a 93-minute spoken word live performance in 1995. Enjoy!
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