Monday, March 18, 2024

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 3/17/24


Chandrika Radhakrishnan

My Story Mama's Kitchen finally (deep, deep sigh) found a home at Lit Sphere, and the Mama in the story is going to have a goodnight's sleep in India!

Each time I posted it on the Fiction list, I only got kindness and ways to improve it further until I grew tired of it and stopped posting it!


Friday, March 15, 2024

Notes For March 15th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 15th, 1956, My Fair Lady, the acclaimed hit musical based on the classic 1913 play Pygmalion by the legendary Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, opened on Broadway.

It premiered at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City. The production then moved to the Broadhurst Theatre, and finally, to the Broadway Theatre, where it closed in 1962 after 2,717 performances.

Set in Edwardian London, My Fair Lady told the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics who meets a young flower seller named Eliza Dolittle when she tells off a young man named Freddy Eynsford-Hill for spilling her violets. The girl speaks with an ear-torturing Cockney accent, her words full of slang and colloquialisms.

Professor Higgins makes a wager with his linguist friend Colonel Pickering, betting that Eliza could be taught to speak and act like a proper lady, after which, he will introduce her at the Embassy Ball. Pickering doesn't believe that he can make a lady out of such a vulgar girl.

Eliza moves into Higgins' house and begins taking lessons from him. Her father soon pays a visit, concerned that the Professor is compromising her virtue. Higgins buys him off with five pounds.

As Eliza's lessons progress, she grows frustrated and fantasizes about killing Higgins. But soon, the flower seller begins to bloom.

Eliza's first public presentation, at the Ascot Racecourse, proves successful, but then she suffers a relapse, returning to her Cockney vulgarity. This charms Freddy Eynsford-Hill, the young man she had met and scolded earlier. He falls in love with her.

Higgins continues with Eliza's lessons. She faces her final test at the Embassy Ball and passes with flying colors. Afterward, Colonel Pickering praises Higgins for his triumph in making a lady out of Eliza.

When she learns of their bet, she feels that Higgins used her and is now abandoning her. Their relationship ends when Higgins insults Eliza and she storms off. Soon, even Colonel Pickering becomes annoyed with Higgins, who has always been a self-absorbed misogynist.

When Eliza plans to marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Higgins realizes that he loves her, but can't bring himself to confess his true feelings to her. The musical ends on an ambiguous note, suggesting a possible reconciliation between Higgins and Eliza.

My Fair Lady became a huge hit, one of Broadway's most famous and popular musicals. It was written by the legendary team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe.

The original cast featured Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins, and a young, virtually unknown British actress named Julie Andrews as Eliza. The Original Cast Recording was the best selling album of 1957 and 1958.

George Bernard Shaw died in 1950; he didn't live to see the Broadway musical adaptation of his play, Pygmalion. Had he lived, there wouldn't have been a musical for him to see.

In 1908, Shaw's classic play The Chocolate Soldier was adapted as an operetta, and he hated it so much that he vowed that none of his plays would ever be set to music again. He kept that vow for the rest of his life.

In 1964, eight years after the musical debuted on Broadway, My Fair Lady was adapted as a feature film, directed by George Cukor.

Rex Harrison reprised his role as Professor Higgins, but producer / studio boss Jack Warner cast Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Dolittle instead of Julie Andrews.

This decision angered fans of the musical, but Warner was concerned that casting Andrews would be risky because she had no film experience. Then he found that Audrey Hepburn couldn't sing, so her vocals had to be dubbed by Marni Nixon.

But Julie Andrews got the last laugh; she gave an Oscar winning performance in the title role of the classic Disney movie musical Mary Poppins that year - beating Hepburn for the Academy Award!


Quote Of The Day

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

- George Bernard Shaw


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete live performance of My Fair Lady. Enjoy!

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Notes For March 14th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 14th, 1916, the famous American playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote was born. He was born Albert Horton Foote, Jr in Wharton, Texas. When he was ten years old, he determined to become an actor.

By the age of sixteen, Foote had convinced his parents to let him go to acting school. So, he moved to California, where he studied at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Two years later, he moved to New York City to continue his studies and begin his acting career in the theater. He scored several minor roles that got him noticed, but good parts were few and far between.

Foote decided that the best way to get good parts was to write his own plays, so he took up play writing. His first play, Wharton Dance, debuted in 1940. It was the first of many plays that were set in his Texas hometown.

Wharton Dance and Foote's other early plays would be produced Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and at many local theaters. He often acted in his own plays. In 1944, he debuted on Broadway with his play Only the Heart.

Although Horton Foote had originally become a playwright to help his acting career along, he found that he got far better reviews for his writing than his acting. So, he decided to become a full time playwright, and spent the rest of the 1940s writing for the theater. He wrote both mainstream and experimental plays.

By 1948, Foote found a new dramatic medium that he could write for, which would allow him to support himself and subsidize his theatrical career. It was called television, and in its golden age, live TV theater was hugely popular.

Foote wrote his first "teleplay" for the Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1948. He would also write for other celebrated live drama series, including The United States Steel Hour and Playhouse 90, where Rod Serling made his name as a playwright before he created the legendary TV series, The Twilight Zone.

Besides writing original teleplays, Foote also adapted classic novels as teleplays. His skill at adapting novels as teleplays would lead him to become a screenwriter. He would also adapt his own plays for the screen and write original screenplays as well.

In 1962, Foote adapted Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird as a feature film. The movie, which starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and featured an incredible performance by 8-year-old Mary Badham as Scout Finch, is rightfully considered one of the greatest films of all time and one of the greatest novel adaptations of all time.

Foote personally recommended a young actor named Robert Duvall for the part of Boo Radley, and Duvall's stunning performance made his name as an actor. Gregory Peck would win the Best Actor Oscar for his role as Atticus Finch.

Horton Foote also won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay Adaptation, but he didn't go to the Oscars ceremony because he was sure that he wouldn't win. It was a mistake that he wouldn't make again.

Years later, in 1984, Foote won another Oscar, for Best Original Screenplay for Tender Mercies, which featured his old friend Robert Duvall as a broken down, has-been country singer struggling to rebuild his troubled personal life. This time, Foote attended the ceremony and accepted his Oscar in person.

Actress Tess Harper, who co-starred as Rosa Lee in Tender Mercies, famously described Horton Foote as "America's Chekhov," saying that "If he didn't study the Russians, he's a reincarnation of the Russians. He's a quiet man who writes quiet people."

The year after his original screenplay for Tender Mercies won him a second Oscar, he was nominated for a third Oscar for his screenplay adaptation of his own play, The Trip to Bountiful, which he wrote in 1962.

Throughout his incredible theatrical career, Horton Foote wrote nearly 60 plays. He was most famous for The Orphans' Home Cycle, a trilogy of plays that were each comprised of three one act plays.

All these works were written between the early 1960s and mid 1990s. They were set in Foote's Texas hometown and took place between the turn of the 20th century and the early 1930s.

In 1995, Foote brought back characters from The Orphans' Home Cycle for a new play called The Young Man From Atlanta that would win him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Horton Foote died in March of 2009, ten days short of his 92nd birthday. The following year, the last feature film he wrote was released. It was called Main Street.


Quote Of The Day

"I've redone plays of mine and made changes. A play is a living thing, and I'd never say I wouldn't rewrite years later. Tennessee Williams did that all the time and it's distressing, because I'd like the play to be out there in its finished form. And then you also have new interpretations. At the same time, you do realize how much you are at the mercy of your interpreters."

- Horton Foote


Vanguard Video

Today's video features the first part of a 3+ hour interview with Horton Foote. Enjoy! Note: you can watch the whole interview on this site.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Notes For March 13th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 13th, 1891, Ghosts, the classic play by the legendary Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, opened in London. Like Ibsen's previous classic play, A Doll's House, it dealt with women suffering at the hands of self-centered, hypocritical, weak men.

However, Ghosts proved to be even more of a shocker to Victorian English audiences and critics because it also dealt with adultery, venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia.

The play opens with the widowed Helene Alving about to open an orphanage she built in dedication to her late husband, the respected Captain Alving. She also built the orphanage to prevent her son Oswald, a degenerate painter, from inheriting his father's wealth.

It turns out that the late, respected Captain Alving was far from respectable. He was a compulsive philanderer who died of syphilis. His wife Helene's clergyman, Pastor Manders, advised her not to leave her husband, believing that Helene's love would ultimately reform him. It didn't.

Still, Helene remained with her husband, but not because she still loved him. Her top priority was to protect the family's reputation from scandal. So, she projected a phony air of respectability and superiority. But now, she's paying the price for her moral smugness.

Her son, Oswald, has inherited Captain Alving's depraved character. He's having an affair with Regina Engstrand, his family's serving maid. His mother soon learns that Oswald has also inherited his father's syphilis, condemning him to the same fate: progressive, incurable insanity and death.

Helene's wall of denial finally crumbles when it's revealed that Regina's real father wasn't Jacob Engstrand, the carpenter who raised her - it was Captain Alving. Oswald has committed incest with his own half-sister.

At the end of the play, knowing that he will suffer the same fate as his father, Oswald asks his mother to euthanize him. Helene is left to contemplate her decision, and the audience never knows what that is.

Ghosts was perhaps the most controversial play of its time, shunned by most European theaters. Even copies of the play script were banned, but that didn't stop young libertines from gathering for secret readings and impromptu performances.

How then, you might ask, did the play's London producers get around the Lord Chamberlain - England's ferociously strict theater censor - and stage an uncensored production of Ghosts?

The same way they got around the censor to put on other controversial plays like George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession. They formed a private club called the Theatre Society and staged plays behind closed doors at their own private theater for members only.

Speaking of Shaw, he attended the premiere of Ghosts, which was a one-night-only performance, due to its extremely controversial nature. He described the audience as being "awe-struck" throughout the play.

Critics, who were either Theatre Society members themselves or guests of members, also attended. They reacted with absolute horror. Ghosts was described as:

An open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly... gross, almost putrid indecorum... Nastiness and malodorousness laid on thickly as with a trowel... As foul and filthy a concoction as has ever been allowed to disgrace the boards of an English theatre... Maunderings of nook-shotten Norwegians... If any repetition of this outrage be attempted, the authorities will doubtless wake from their lethargy.

The author, Henrik Ibsen, was described as "a gloomy sort of ghoul, bent on groping for horrors by night," and his London audience was comprised of "lovers of prurience and dabblers in impropriety."

The critics were outraged that the Lord Chamberlain would allow such plays to be staged even behind closed doors for the members of a private club. Fortunately, he didn't move to censor private theatrical clubs.

Years later, Ibsen's Ghosts would be staged again in London, and the legendary Irish writer James Joyce saw the play. He loved it. Remembering how he had been denounced by moralists over his classic epic novel, Ulysses, Joyce was inspired to write a poem called Epilogue to Ibsen's Ghosts:

... Since scuttling ship Vikings like me
Reck not to whom the blame is laid,
Y.M.C.A., V.D., T.B.,
Or Harbourmaster of Port-Said.

Blame all and none and take to task
The harlot's lure, the swain's desire.
Heal by all means but hardly ask
Did this man sin or did his sire.

The shack's ablaze. That canting scamp,
The carpenter, has dished the parson.
Now had they kept their powder damp
Like me there would have been no arson.

Nay, more, were I not all I was,
Weak, wanton, waster out and out,
There would have been no world's applause
And damn all to write home about.



Quote Of The Day

"People want only special revolutions, in externals, in politics, and so on. But that's just tinkering. What is really is called for is a revolution of the human mind."

- Henrik Ibsen


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete performance of Henrik Ibsen's classic play, Ghosts, starring Dame Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh, which aired as an episode of the BBC TV series, Theatre Night. Enjoy!

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Notes For March 12th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 12th, 1922, the legendary American writer Jack Kerouac was born. He was born Jean-Louis Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French Canadian parents who had emigrated from Quebec. They called him "Ti Jean," which meant "little Jean."

Kerouac's parents were both devout Catholics and ferocious anti-Semites. In an interview with the Paris Review, Kerouac recalled a time when his father assaulted a rabbi for allegedly disrespecting him.

When Jack Kerouac was four years old, his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine, which he would write about in his 1963 novel, Visions of Gerard.

The loss of his brother would have a profound effect on him. He didn't speak English until he was six years old and began formal schooling. He continued to speak French at home.

As a teenager, Jack's athletic talents led him to become a hurdler on the high school track team and a running back on the football team. His football skills earned him scholarship offers from Boston College, Columbia University, and Notre Dame.

He went to Columbia. During his freshman year, he cracked a tibia playing football and argued constantly with his coach, Lou Little, who kept him on the bench. So, he dropped out of university.

Kerouac moved to New York City, where he would meet his friends and fellow Beat writers William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and Herbert Huncke. He began a relationship with Edie Parker, whose friend and roommate, Joan Vollmer, would later marry Burroughs.

Kerouac joined the Merchant Marine in 1942. A year later, he joined the Navy and was honorably discharged - for psychiatric reasons. They diagnosed him as having a schizoid personality. By 1944, he was back in New York, where he found himself caught up in a murder.

His friend, Lucien Carr, called him for help after killing another friend, David Kammerer. When Carr, who was not gay, spurned Kammerer's sexual advances and declarations of love, the obsessed Kammerer refused to take no for an answer and stalked him relentlessly.

Carr ended up stabbing him to death, supposedly in self-defense, but was afraid to call the police. So, Kerouac helped him dispose of the evidence and dump Kammerer's body in the Hudson River. Later, on the advice of William Burroughs, Kerouac and Carr turned themselves in.

Jack's father refused to pay his bail and disowned him. His girlfriend Edie's parents bailed him out and he married her in return. Since Kammerer was seen as a disturbed, predatory homosexual, Carr would serve only two years in prison.

Kerouac, who had been charged as a material witness and possible accessory, was cleared of wrongdoing. Free of legal trouble, Jack began his literary career. He collaborated on a novel with William Burroughs, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.

A fictionalized account of the killing of David Kammerer, it wouldn't be published in its entirety until 2008. It was a raw early work that demonstrated the burgeoning talents of Burroughs and Kerouac, whose parents moved to Queens. Jack lived with them after his marriage ended in an annulment.

Kerouac kept writing, and soon completed his first solo novel, The Town and the City, which was published in 1950 under the name John Kerouac. The epic autobiographical novel of life in rural Massachusetts, like his future works, employed a stream-of-consciousness narrative, but was not nearly as experimental.

The epic novel was cut by 400 pages prior to publication during the editing process. The reviews were good, but the novel sold poorly. Lack of commercial success failed to discourage Kerouac. On the contrary; he vowed to never again compromise his artistic vision for commercial success. He wrote constantly, both at home and while traveling the country in search of himself.

By 1951, Kerouac was living in Manhattan with his second wife, Joan Haverty. He completed the first draft of his second novel, which would go through many changes and become his greatest work. Early titles included The Beat Generation and Gone On The Road.

To write this novel, Kerouac used a new technique, one that he would continue to employ. He typed the manuscript on one long roll of paper instead of separate sheets. He did this because he found that pausing to load new sheets into his typewriter interfered with the flow of his writing, a style he called spontaneous prose.

It took a long time for Kerouac to get the novel published; its style was experimental and it painted a sympathetic portrait of minorities suffering from racist persecution. Editors were also uncomfortable with its graphic sexual content (which included both straight and gay sex scenes) and depictions of drug use.

Meanwhile, Kerouac's pregnant wife left him. She gave birth to his only child, a daughter named Jan, but he refused to accept that she was his daughter until she was nine years old and a blood test proved his paternity.

Not long after his daughter was born, Kerouac took off and spent several years traveling extensively throughout the U.S. and Mexico. During this time, he wrote extensively and fell into periods of depression accompanied by heavy drug and alcohol abuse.

In 1954, Kerouac came across Dwight Goddard's book, A Buddhist Bible, in a public library. It began his nearly lifelong interest in Buddhism. A year later, he wrote a biography of the Buddha, Wake Up, which would be published posthumously, in a serialized version, by Tricycle: The Buddhist Review from 1993-95.

In 1957, after being rejected numerous times over the last several years, Kerouac's second novel, the classic On The Road, was bought by Viking Press. They demanded major revisions, which included removing most of the sexual content.

Based on Kerouac's travels throughout America and Mexico with his best friend, Beat icon and future Merry Prankster Neal Cassady, the novel told the story of two disillusioned young men in postwar America embarking on an existentialist journey in search of themselves.

Along the way, they make friends, enjoy the pleasures of wine, women, grass, and jazz, and earn a few bucks to keep the trip going. In the end, the narrator finds himself and settles down with his true love, but his self-absorbed best friend hits the road again for more kicks.

Since Kerouac had used the real names of his relatives and friends, his publisher, fearing libel suits, demanded that he use pseudonyms. So, Kerouac became Sal Paradise and Neal Cassady became Dean Moriarty.

The publication of On The Road brought Kerouac rave reviews, good money, and nearly overnight fame. He was dubbed "the king of the Beat generation." He soon developed a distaste for celebrity, as not everyone appreciated his novel.

Conservatives believed that On The Road was the bible of immorality and despised its popularity with young people. Once, Kerouac was attacked outside a bar in New York by three men and savagely beaten.

Nonetheless, his celebrity continued to grow. In 1959, he made a memorable appearance on The Steve Allen Show, reading from On The Road and an early novel, Visions Of Cody. Allen accompanied him on the piano.

During the years Kerouac traveled before the publication of On The Road, he had written the first drafts of what would become his next ten novels. He continued to work on them. His classic novel The Dharma Bums was published in 1958.

Also autobiographical, the novel follows Ray Smith (Kerouac) as he goes on a journey in search of enlightenment, which he finds while communing with the outdoors, (hiking, bicycling, and mountain climbing) traveling aimlessly, and discovering jazz clubs, poetry readings, drunken parties, and of course, Buddhism.

The existentialist novel is most famous for Kerouac's depiction of the legendary 1955 Six Gallery Reading in San Francisco, where the East and West coast factions of Beat literati met to read their works.

The co-promoter of the event was Kerouac's friend, legendary poet Allen Ginsberg, who performed his first public reading of his celebrated classic poem, Howl, which appears in the novel as Wail.

The Dharma Bums became a huge hit with literary critics and readers, who rightfully declared it Kerouac's second masterpiece. Unfortunately, the novel was rejected by the leaders of the American Buddhist community.

Disillusioned and depressed, Kerouac abandoned Buddhism and returned to Catholicism. To care for his elderly mother and escape his celebrity, he moved to Northport, New York. He continued to write and published a succession of memorable novels.

These included Visions Of Cody, Doctor Sax, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Lonesome Traveler, and Big Sur. He also wrote collections of poetry.

As a poet, Kerouac was famous for making the Japanese haiku popular in America. His haiku did not follow the traditional three line, seventeen syllable structure, as he knew that more words could be formed in seventeen English syllables than in seventeen Japanese syllables.

He wrote his haiku shorter to make them more authentic. His 1959 spoken word album, Blues and Haikus, featured a lengthy reading of haiku, accompanied by the jazz riffs of legendary saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.

In the 1960s - the last years of his life - Kerouac's drinking problem grew worse. Although he had been a symbol of rebellious, free spirited, and disaffected youth whose writings defined one generation (the Beats) and set the stage for another, (the Hippies) Kerouac had changed dramatically.

Too old to hit the road again, not knowing what to do with his life, bitter, and suffering from depression and the ravages of his increasingly severe alcoholism, Kerouac had crashed, burned, and plunged into a quagmire.

In recent years, scholars have speculated that Jack Kerouac's downfall was the end product of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) resulting from multiple head injuries. When he played football in college, he suffered a concussion so severe that he was knocked unconscious. When he woke up, he didn't know who or where he was, or what he was doing on the field.

It wasn't until after he'd taken that horrific beating outside the bar in New York, which included having his head slammed repeatedly into the pavement by the conservative thugs who attacked him, that his friends began to notice startling changes in his behavior.

The formerly shy, quiet, fun loving and sweet-natured writer began suffering severe mood swings which ranged from sudden outbursts of rage to crippling depression with unexplained crying jags that could last all night. He was coming apart at the seams and it only got worse. His alcohol and drug use escalated alarmingly.

In a letter to a friend, Kerouac himself wrote, "I think I got brain damage."

He had become as fanatically devout a Catholic as his mother and politically conservative. He denounced the hippies, supported the Vietnam War, and befriended conservative icon William F. Buckley. Though he never inherited his parents' racial prejudices, he did inherit their hatred of communists.

After his mother died, a devastated Kerouac drank harder than ever, consuming a large quantity of alcohol every day. On October 21st, 1969, he was rushed to the hospital after he began hemorrhaging from cirrhosis - veins in his esophagus had burst.

Jack Kerouac died the classic drunkard's death, drowning in his own blood at the age of 47. He had said, "I'm Catholic and I can't commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death." Which is exactly what he did.

In 2007, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's classic novel, Viking Press finally published the original, unexpurgated version of On The Road. The novel would finally be adapted as a feature film in 2012.


Quote Of The Day

"I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures."

- Jack Kerouac


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a 50-minute documentary on Jack Kerouac. Enjoy!


Monday, March 11, 2024

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 3/10/24


Pamelyn Casto

First, my prose poem Night Sight was published at Dog Throat Journal. This journal publishes both flash fiction and prose poetry.

Second, my interview with talented prose poet Maxine Chernoff was published by OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. You can read the interview here.

You can also see the chapbook project that was published on Maxine Chernoff and her work - five of her prose poems, her essay on her love for prose poetry, and the interview I did with her.

The book is free so take advantage of that offering. OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters publishes various genres: flash fiction, prose poetry, haibun, and more.


Friday, March 8, 2024

Notes For March 8th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 8th, 1935, Of Time and the River, the classic second novel by the legendary American writer Thomas Wolfe, was published. It was a sequel to Wolfe's highly acclaimed debut novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929).

Of Time and the River, subtitled A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth, a semi-autobiographical novel, picked up where Look Homeward, Angel left off. It opens with Wolfe's protagonist, 22-year-old Eugene Gant, leaving North Carolina to do his graduate studies at Harvard University.

An aspiring writer, Gant studies play writing and strikes up a close friendship with Francis Starwick, his professor's assistant. Starwick, a Midwesterner and cultured, fastidious scholar, enjoys getting drunk with Gant and talking about writing and philosophy.

Feeling little support for his literary aspirations from his professors and his family, Gant finds a kindred spirit in Starwick. After his father dies, Gant returns to North Carolina, but having tasted life outside the stifling confines of his Southern home town, he determines to become a writer.

He goes off with Francis Starwick to Europe, where he embarks on an existentialist odyssey as he and Starwick try find happiness and enlightenment as they live the bohemian lives of artists. Ultimately, Gant returns to the United States.

That's just a threadbare outline of the plot. Of Time and the River is a huge epic novel that originally clocked in at over 300,000 words.

It took Thomas Wolfe and Max Perkins, his editor at Scribner's, a few years just to edit the finished manuscript down to a publishable length, which turned out to be just over 800 pages of Wolfe's dazzling, richly descriptive, philosophical prose.

Unfortunately, the cuts included numerous important passages pertaining to the friendship of Eugene Gant and Francis Starwick, including the revelation of Starwick's homosexuality, which was only briefly mentioned in Of Time and the River.

In the cut material, which would be published later as The Starwick Episodes, Starwick's homosexuality is given an open and honest treatment, as he is depicted as a tormented gay man who longs to find acceptance and escape the closet.

Gant's reaction is also honest - he's initially shocked and repulsed to learn that Starwick is gay. But as they engage in soul-baring conversations about sexuality, Gant begins to lose his homophobia.

The character of Starwick was based on Wolfe's college friend, playwright Kenneth Raisbeck, a gay man who was murdered - a crime that would never be solved.

Sadly, Thomas Wolfe died suddenly from tuberculosis of the brain in 1938. He was 38 years old.

In 2016, the acclaimed feature film Genius was released. It told the story of the close yet tumultuous relationship between Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) and Max Perkins (Colin Firth), his editor at Scribner's.

Perkins had previously discovered legendary writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and edited their work for publication. He was also the only editor to recognize the genius of Thomas Wolfe and sign him to a book contract.

Colin Firth and Jude Law give excellent performances as Perkins and Wolfe, as they battle over editing down Wolfe's impossibly long novels for publication, the brilliant writer's lack of discipline, fondness for whiskey, and burgeoning ego taking a toll on their relationship.

Directed by Michael Grandage, working from an excellent screenplay by John Logan, Genius is a film not to be missed.


Quote Of The Day

"This is Man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false - yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes."

- Thomas Wolfe


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a documentary on Thomas Wolfe. Enjoy!