This Day In Writing History On July 10th, 1871, the legendary French novelist, essayist, and critic Marcel Proust was born. He was born Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust in Auteuil, France. His family was affluent, as his father, Achille Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist whose work was dedicated to stopping the spread of cholera in Europe and Asia. He wrote many articles and books about medicine and hygiene.
Marcel's mother, Jeanne, was the daughter of a wealthy and intellectual Jewish family. He was very close to her.
As a boy, Marcel Proust was a sickly child. He suffered his first serious asthma attack at the age of nine. At the age of eleven, he enrolled as a student at the Lycee Condorcet. Despite the fact that his education was often interrupted by his health problems, he excelled at literature studies and won an award in his final year.
Proust began writing at an early age. In 1890, when he was nineteen and still in school, in addition to being published in literary magazines, for a year, Proust published a regular society column in the journal La Mensuel. In 1892, he helped found a literary review called La Banquet, where his short pieces would often be published. He was also published in the famous Le Revue Blanche.
As a young man, the dandy Proust was a dilettante and social climber, lacking at first the discipline to fulfill his aspirations to be a great novelist. He garnered a reputation as an amateur and a snob, but he soon got down to business and began writing what would become his magnum opus: a 3,000+ page epic semi autobiographical novel called À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, or In Search Of Lost Time, which would be published in English as Remembrance Of Things Past.
After numerous rejections, Remembrance Of Things Past would be published in a series of seven volumes over a period of 14 years, with the last two volumes published posthumously. Proust's dazzling novel is rightfully considered one of the greatest ever written, and continues to influence writers and scholars to this day. It was shaped by people and events in Proust's life, including his own experiences. He was openly gay, and homosexuality is a major theme in the book. He was one of the first European writers to depict homosexuality openly and at length.
Writing Remembrance Of Things Past would take a toll on Marcel Proust's chronically poor health. During the last three years of his life, he was mostly confined to his bedroom. He slept during the day and wrote at night, struggling to complete his novel. In 1922, after he had finished the book, Proust contracted pneumonia and later died of a pulmonary abscess at the age of 51.
Quote Of The Day "Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself." - Marcel Proust
Vanguard Video Today's video is the first of a two-part discussion of the works of Marcel Proust, called The Proust Experience. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On July 9th, 1775, the famous Gothic novelist and playwright Matthew Lewis was born. He was born in London, England to an affluent family. He received his education at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. Lewis spent most of his vacations abroad, studying modern languages. His ambition was to become a diplomat, and at the age of nineteen, he served as an attache to the British Embassy at the Hague in the Netherlands.
As a teenager, Lewis took up writing as a hobby and developed a passion for it. During a period of ten weeks, while he worked at the British Embassy, he wrote a novel which would cause a furor and become one of the greatest works of Gothic literature. It was called The Monk, and it was first published in 1796, under the name M.G. Lewis.
The Monk was both a masterpiece of Gothic horror and a scathing satirical attack on the brutality, corruption, and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in the 18th century. Set in Madrid during the Spanish Inquisition, the title character is Ambrosio, a pious and respected Cappuchin priest and teacher at a monastery who is beloved by everyone in Madrid. Ambrosio becomes obsessed with one of his students - a beautiful young man named Rosario who reveals himself to be a woman in disguise named Matilda.
Ambrosio's piety is shown to be false; pride and vanity are his main motivations for establishing himself as a respected priest. That and his lust make him a prime target for seduction, made even easier considering that Matilda is really a demon in the guise of a human. She seduces Ambrosio into a downward spiral of perversion and degradation. Even a painting of the Virgin Mary arouses the priest's uncontrollable lust. Later, another object of purity arouses Ambrosio and leads to his horrific downfall.
The novel switches gears and tells the story of the romance between Lorenzo and his beloved, a virginal young girl named Antonia. A subplot reveals the injustices suffered by Lorenzo's sister when she is tortured by nuns. There's also a narrative about a character called the Bleeding Nun. Later, Ambrosio, overcome with lust for the innocent Antonia, kills her mother and uses Matilda's black magic to assist in his seduction of her. He rapes Antonia, then ends up killing her in a fit of anger.
Ambrosio's sins finally catch up with him and he is delivered into the hands of the Inquisition, where he is tortured horribly and sentenced to death. Ambrosio sells his soul to Satan in exchange for saving his life, after which, the Devil prevents the priest's last, pathetic attempt at repentance and reveals that Antonia - the girl Ambrosio raped and killed - was actually his long lost sister. Then he subjects Ambrosio to an agonizing death.
The Monk caused quite a furor when it was published. Lurid, lewd, and shockingly graphic, it was the first novel to feature a Catholic priest as the villain. The novel was a sensation with readers and critics alike and made its author a celebrity. Eventually, a magistrate issued an injunction restricting its sale on the grounds of obscenity. Lewis removed some elements that he thought were the reason for the magistrate's ruling and published a second edition. The novel still retained most of its horror.
The furor didn't die down, though. Matthew Lewis had since become an elected Member of Parliament, and when it was discovered that he was the M.G. Lewis who wrote The Monk, it caused quite a scandal. The novel would continue to earn praise, provoke outrage, and become one of the greatest Gothic novels of all time. Lord Byron paid tribute to Lewis in his poem English Bards And Scotch Reviewers. The Marquis de Sade praised Lewis' writing skills in his classic essay, Reflections On The Novel.
Over the years, The Monk would become a major literary influence. Jane Austen satirized it in her classic novel, Northanger Abbey (1818), and it would inspire the writing of the infamous book The Awful Disclosures Of Maria Monk, or The Hidden Secrets Of A Nun's Life In A Convent Exposed. First published in 1836, the book was supposedly a memoir written by an actual nun, Maria Monk, who lived at a convent in Montreal. In her book, Maria Monk describes the victimization of herself and her fellow nuns by priests from the seminary next door.
According to the book, the priests, who were driven mad with sexual frustration from the vows of chastity imposed on them, would sneak into the convent at night through a secret tunnel and force the nuns to submit to them sexually - with the help of the Mother Superior. In a Gothic style similar to that of Matthew Lewis, Maria Monk provides a graphic and sensational account of perversion and corruption. Nuns who refuse to submit to the priests end up mysteriously disappearing. Should a nun become pregnant as the result of her rape, after giving birth, the priests baptize her baby, then strangle it and throw it into a lime pit.
Although it was published as a memoir - a true account - historians agree that The Awful Disclosures Of Maria Monk was a work of fiction. Some believe that Maria suffered from schizophrenia as the result of a childhood head injury and had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Others believe that she was a disgruntled nun manipulated by fundamentalist Protestants into wildly exaggerating her claims of abuse. The book is still used today by fundamentalist Protestants as an anti-Catholic tract.
Despite the controversy over The Monk, Matthew Lewis continued to write, and in addition to his short story collections, he wrote a play, The Castle Spectre (1796) - a Gothic romance that would become extremely popular on the British stage. After his father died, Lewis inherited his large fortune. In 1815, Lewis traveled to the West Indies to visit his father's plantations in Jamaica. In the summer of 1816, he went to Switzerland and visited his friends, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, and told them five ghost stories which were later recorded in his journal.
In 1817, Lewis - an abolitionist - returned to Jamaica to try and improve the living conditions of the slave population. He recorded his experiences in his journal. Unfortunately, the following year, he contracted yellow fever and died at the age of 42. His journal of this period would be published posthumously as Journal Of A West Indian Proprietor (1833), and a volume of his personal correspondence would be published as The Life And Correspondence Of M.G. Lewis in 1839.
Quote Of The Day "An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom everybody is privileged to attack; for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them." - Matthew Lewis
Vanguard Video Today's video is a short film adaptation of Matthew Lewis' classic novel, The Monk. Unfortunately, it's in German with no English subtitles. But it's easy to follow - and a riot! Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On July 8th, 1952, the bestselling writer Anna Quindlen was born in New York City. When she was nineteen years old, Quindlen's mother died of ovarian cancer at the age of 40. Quindlen's relationship with her mother would become a big influence on her writing, which often deals with mother-daughter conflicts.
Anna Quindlen graduated from Barnard College in 1974. For her thesis, she wrote a collection of short stories, and one of them was published in Seventeen magazine. After graduating, she took up journalism and became a reporter for the New York Post. Three years later, in 1977, she left to work for the New York Times, and over the years, she held different positions with the venerable newspaper, including that of a columnist, and her column Life In The 30s became hugely popular. She later became a columnist for Newsweek, and her column Public And Private won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. She married attorney Gerald Krovatin and bore him three children.
Quindlen wrote in her spare time, and her first book, a non-fiction work called Living Out Loud, was published in 1988. In 1991, she published her first novel, Object Lessons. It told the story of Maggie Scanlan, a 13-year-old girl coming of age in the 1960s as the only daughter in a family ruled by a domineering, intolerant, and sexist Irish-Catholic father. Maggie's mother also struggles to find a place for herself.
Quindlen's second novel, One True Thing (1994) was an even bigger bestseller. It incorporates more elements from her personal life. Ellen Gulden, a writer for a New York newspaper, has always idolized and been close to her father George, a celebrated novelist and college professor. She has never been close to her mother. When her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ellen's father orders her to come home and take care of her, even though he could afford to get professional help. Angered that her father would ask her to jeopardize her job, Ellen refuses, but her father guilt-trips her into becoming her mother's caregiver.
When George asks Ellen to write the introduction to an anthology of his writings, she's delighted. But soon, she begins to see a different side of him. As she takes care of her mother, he acts like she isn't sick at all, and he soon manipulates Ellen into doing his wife's chores, such as washing and mending his clothes. Ellen begins to question the reality of the image she always had of her father, and comes to reconcile with her mother. She realizes that although he's a brilliant writer, her father is also a very flawed man who has made many mistakes, including philandering - a memory Ellen had tried to suppress for years. Yet, he loves his wife dearly and can't bear to watch her slip away into death.
In 1995, following the success of One True Thing, Anna Quindlen realized that her schedule had become too hectic, so she resigned as a journalist and became a full-time writer. Her next novel, Black And Blue (1998) was selected by Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. It told the story of Fran Benedetto, a woman who flees with her 10-year-old son to escape her savagely abusive husband. Fran builds a new life for herself and her son and tries to put the past behind her. There's just one little problem: Fran's psychopathic ex-husband is a police officer, and he knows how to find people...
Anna Quindlen continues to write bestselling novels, as well as a series of non-fiction books and children's books. She has established herself as one of the top authors of women's fiction. She still writes a bi-weekly column for Newsweek.
Quote Of The Day "I sometimes joke that my greatest shortcoming as a writer is that I had an extremely happy childhood." - Anna Quindlen
Vanguard Video Today's video features Anna Quindlen reading an excerpt from her most recent novel, Rise And Shine. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On July 7th, 1907, the legendary science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was born. He was born in Butler, Missouri, but grew up in Kansas City, and growing up in the "Bible belt" (a phrase Heinlein coined) would have a strong effect on his writings and personal philosophy. In 1929, Heinlein entered the Naval Academy and later served as an officer in the U.S. Navy - another experience that would have a strong effect on him. In 1932, he married his second wife, Leslyn MacDonald, (his first marriage lasted only a year) who was a radical leftist. He told his friend and fellow writer Isaac Asimov that he was "a flaming liberal" like his wife, but that would change dramatically by the end of World War 2.
In the 1930s, Heinlein was active in writer Upton Sinclair's "End Poverty in California" socialist movement, and when Sinclair became the Democratic candidate for Governor of California in 1934, Heinlein worked for his campaign. Sinclair lost the election by 200,000 votes, thanks in part to slanderous propaganda shorts produced by Hollywood studios, featuring actors pretending to be real people interviewed on the street. The studios were determined to destroy Sinclair because part of his plan for economic recovery called for increased taxes on Hollywood studios and the creation of independent public studios where struggling filmmakers could make movies free of Hollywood's influence.
Heinlein was discharged from the Navy that same year due to tuberculosis. During his recovery, he came up with the concept of a water bed, and later included his designs in three of his books. When water beds became common in the 1960s, Heinlein was able to block a company's attempt at securing a patent because their designs infringed on the ones he had published decades before. Heinlein first took up writing as a means of paying his bills, as all he had to live on at the time was a small pension from the Navy. His first novel, For Us The Living: A Comedy Of Customs (1939) wasn't published during his lifetime, but the manuscript was discovered and published in 2003.
Heinlein began selling short stories and then serialized science fiction novels to magazines. His first novel published in book form, Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) was initially rejected because its concept - the first manned space flight to the moon - was considered too far out. He began writing juvenile science fiction, and found a publisher, Scribner's, who agreed to publish one of his juvenile novels per year, for the Christmas season. These novels, now referred to as "the Heinlein Juveniles" dealt with adolescent and adult themes, and his protagonists were often very intelligent teenagers trying to deal with an adult world that made little sense to them. His novel Red Planet (1949), for example, is set at a boarding school in a colony on Mars where the students join in a revolution against the colonial authorities.
During World War 2, Heinlein worked as an aeronautical engineer for the Navy and recruited his friends Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp to work at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. After the war ended, Heinlein began to reevaluate his life and work. He and his second wife divorced in 1947, and a year later, he married his third wife, Virginia "Ginny" Gerstenfeld, whom he remained with for forty years, until his death. His political beliefs took a dramatic shift to the far right. During the Cold War, he defended the anti-Communist witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and when anti-nuclear proliferation activists urged President Eisenhower to stop developing and testing nuclear weapons, Heinlein decried their aims as "Communist-line goals concealed in idealistic sounding nonsense."
Heinlein and his wife Ginny formed a conservative group called The Patrick Henry League and later worked for the Barry Goldwater campaign. Though Heinlein claimed that it happened before he met her, Isaac Asimov believed that Heinlein's abrupt and dramatic political shift was the result of his relationship with Ginny, who was both a ferocious arch conservative and a determined, intelligent feminist whom Heinlein would model some of his female characters after. Heinlein wasn't your typical arch conservative, either. Although a staunch advocate of militarism and rabidly anti-communist, he was also opposed to racism and an advocate of personal and sexual liberation. He was a nudist and a believer in what the 1960s counterculture would call "free love."
Heinlein also opposed the encroachment of religion on the government and culture of America. He blasted Christianity in his 1984 novel Job: A Comedy Of Justice, a savagely funny tale of Alex, a pious Christian political activist who is seduced and corrupted by a pagan cruise ship hostess - and loves every minute of it. His lover Margrethe is a Danish woman who worships the Norse father god Odin. Alex still maintains his Christian faith. They make a life together, which seems to be comprised of one misfortune after another. Alex compares himself to Job from the Bible. He and Margrethe are eventually separated by the Rapture. While Alex goes to Heaven as a reward for his faith, he finds it worthless without her - a boring place ruled by snooty angels. Meanwhile, Margrethe goes to Hell for being a pagan. She finds that eternity in Hell is wonderful at best and productive at worst. Alex decides to leave Heaven and search for his lost love.
During the early years of the Cold War, Robert Heinlein broke out of juvenile fiction and became a major novelist. His novel The Puppet Masters (1951) was an allegory of the anti-communist hysteria of the time, on a par with Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, although Heinlein's novel is set over 50 years in the future. Despite the technological advances of the time, Earth finds itself in a horrendous battle with slug-like alien parasites that invade the bodies of humans and control their minds. The novel was plagiarized as a 1958 science fiction film called The Brain Eaters. Heinlein sued the producers and won a settlement. In 1994, an official adaptation of The Puppet Masters was released.
Heinlein's 1959 novel, Starship Troopers, was both controversial and a classic. Chronicling the exploits of Juan "Johnnie" Rico, a young soldier in a futuristic military unit called the Mobile Infantry, Starship Troopers was supposed to be published as a juvenile science fiction novel, but it was rejected as militaristic - if not pro-fascist. In the distant future, Earth and its allies are engaged in an interstellar war against spider-like aliens called "the Bugs." Despite the objections of his wealthy father, after graduating high school, Johnnie Rico joins the military instead of going to Harvard. As he serves in the Mobile Infantry, we see Johnnie progress from recruit to officer.
Some have called the novel pro-fascist because in the futuristic Earth setting, war is depicted as a glorious adventure and only veterans have the right to vote, the right to teach history in the schools, and full citizenship. Civilians lack full citizenship and can't vote or teach history. Another criticism of the book is that it proclaims the morality of capital punishment. Defenders of the book point out that although democracy is limited in this future world, there is still freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and personal liberty. The political system and military are both comprised of people of various races and religions, and men and women are considered equal. There is no draft. Starship Troopers was adapted as a feature film in 1997. It received mixed reviews from critics and fans, as it differed greatly from the novel in terms of themes and plot, as director Paul Verhoven was a prominent critic of the book, which won its author a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.
In 1961, Heinlein published what is considered to be one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, Stranger In A Strange Land. It told the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the son of two astronauts who were part of an ill-fated expedition to Mars. After the crew dies, Smith is orphaned and raised by Martians, becoming integrated with their advanced minds. Years later, he is discovered by another crew on a second Martian expedition and brought home to Earth. On Earth, Smith is imprisoned in a hospital by the Federation of Free States (the successor to the United Nations) who want him to renounce any rights he may have to the ownership of Mars.
As Smith becomes a pawn in a feud between Federation factions, he adjusts to Earth's gravity and acquires supernatural powers and superhuman intelligence. After he escapes the hospital with the help of a nurse, Gillian Boardman, Smith becomes a celebrity and is approached by the leader of the Fosterites - a huge Christian fundamentalist order with its own TV network and businesses. They train the teenagers and young adults of their Spirit-In-Action League to physically attack members of other religions and anyone else who disagrees with their religious beliefs.
Smith is introduced to Fosterite Bishop Digby, whom he ends up killing. Moved by the fact that there's so much misery on Earth, Smith founds his own religion, a "Church Of All Worlds" based on Martian teachings. He teaches his followers how to rise above suffering such as "pain and sickness and hunger and fighting." He also teaches them the Martian language. Soon, Smith's followers begin to acquire powers like his and become superhuman as well. Smith's core teaching that "Thou art God," and his church's practices of communal living and group sex outrage the Fosterites, who accuse him of practicing blasphemy.
The novel ends with Smith allowing himself to be brutally assassinated. His last words, spoken to a grasshopper, are "I love you" and "Thou art God." Smith is resurrected and ascends to a higher plane of existence, similar to Heaven. Stranger In A Strange Land won a Hugo Award and later became a classic of the 1960s American counterculture. Heinlein's original, completed manuscript clocked in at 220,000 words. His publisher, Putnam, made him cut 60,000 words and remove some elements that were considered too shocking for the time - 1961. After his death in 1988, his wife Ginny arranged for an uncut version of the novel to be published, and it was released in 1991. Critics are still debating which version was the best.
When Robert A. Heinlein died in 1988 at the age of 80, he had published over 30 novels, almost 60 short stories, and 16 collections, establishing himself as one of the greatest and most prolific science fiction writers of all time.
Quote Of The Day "Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil. Limit it to ritualistic breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word psychology was ever invented. It works, too." - Robert A. Heinlein
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading from Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 novel, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On July 6th, 1942, the Franks, a German-Jewish family living in Amsterdam, went into hiding to protect themselves from the Nazis. Father Otto Frank, his wife Edith, and their teenage daughters Anne and Margot, were joined by some friends - Hermann and Auguste Van Pels and their teenage son, Peter. Although Otto had planted a note at home to fool the Nazis into thinking that the Franks had fled to Switzerland, they and their friends had actually moved into a living space located above the offices of the Opekta Works - a company that manufactured pectin, a fruit extract used for making jam. Otto Frank was the former director of the Opekta Works.
The Franks' new living quarters consisted of two small, adjoining rooms and a toilet on one level, a small and larger open room on the second, and an attic that could be accessed from a ladder in the smaller room on the second level. 13-year-old Anne Frank called these quarters Het Achterhuis - The Secret Annex. When she and her family fled, they could only take a few meager possessions with them. One of Anne's belongings was a diary she had been given as a birthday present less than a month before.
In her diary, Anne Frank chronicled not only her daily life in hiding, but her hopes, fears, dreams, and feelings. She had a difficult relationship with her mother and older sister, and disliked Mr. and Mrs. Van Pels. When another family friend, dentist Fritz Pfeffer, came to stay at the Achterhuis, he shared a room with Anne and she came to hate him. She wrote of her growing love for Peter Van Pels, news she heard of the war, and fears for the safety of all her Jewish friends. She wrote of her and the others' frustrations at being confined, and their fears of being discovered.
On the outside, the Franks were helped by a circle of friends that included Johannes Kleiman (current director of the Opekta Works), Victor Kugler, Jan and Miep Gies, secretary Bep Voskuijl, and her father, Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl. They provided the Franks and their roommates with food and supplies bought mostly on the black market, all of them knowing that if they were caught, they would face execution for helping to hide Jews.
For over two years, Anne Frank, her family, and their roommates lived in the Achterhuis. Then, someone - it's not clear who - betrayed them. On August 4th, the Achterhuis was raided by the German Security Police, and everyone was arrested. When Miep Gies came for a visit, she found the Achterhuis vacant. She discovered Anne's diary and other writings (in notebooks and on looseleaf paper) and saved them, hoping that Anne would survive to reclaim them.
Anne, her sister Margot, and their mother Edith were eventually sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, her father Otto to Auschwitz. At Bergen-Belsen, Anne developed a severe case of scabies. Her mother died from sickness brought on by starvation after giving her food rations to her daughters. When typhus swept the camp, Margot contracted the disease and Anne cared for her until she died. Anne then contracted typhus herself. Believing that her father had also died, Anne lost her will to live. She died of typhus in March of 1945, just three months before her sixteenth birthday.
In 1945, Otto Frank returned from the war. After the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of Anne and Margot Frank, Miep Gies gave Anne's diary and other writings to her father. Impressed with Anne's writing talent, the depth of her thoughts and feelings, and the way she chronicled the family's life in hiding - and remembering how she longed to be a writer - Otto considered having the diary published.
Anne herself had wanted to publish her diary, after she heard a radio broadcast in March of 1944 by Gerrit Bolkestein - a member of the Dutch government-in-exile - who planned (after the war ended) to create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under Nazi occupation. Anne prepared her diary for future publication by editing, rewriting, and using pseudonyms for her family, and her roommates. The Van Pels family became the Van Daans, and Fritz Pfeffer's name was changed to Alfred Dussel - Dussel meaning idiot in German.
After Anne's death, Otto Frank edited her diary himself, restoring the Frank family's names, but retaining the other pseudonyms. He cut some sections, including Anne's harsh criticisms of her mother and biting comments about her parents' strained marriage. He also removed sections dealing with Anne's growing sexual awareness and her experiences with puberty. Otto gave the edited manuscript to historian Annie Romein-Verschoor, and she tried, unsuccessfully, to get it published. When her husband Jan wrote an article about the diary titled Kinderstern (A Child's Voice), which was published in the Het Parool newspaper in April 1946, it attracted the attention of publishers.
Anne Frank's diary was published in the Netherlands as Het Achterhuis in 1947, then again in 1950. It was published in Germany and France in 1950, and then in the UK in 1952, though in the UK, it was unsuccessful and went out of print the following year. Surprisingly, the diary's first edition was most successful in Japan, where it sold over 100,000 copies. The first American edition was published in 1952 as Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl. In the U.S., the book was just as successful and critically acclaimed as it was in Germany and France. The Diary Of Anne Frank, a play by Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered on Broadway in October 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A feature film adaptation of the play, starring Millie Perkins as Anne Frank, was released in 1959. More adaptations followed, including a TV miniseries.
Over the years, the book's popularity has grown and it has sold over 25,000,000 copies worldwide. It often appears on middle school teachers' assigned reading lists; I first read it in 1983, in eighth grade English class, at the age of 13. In 1999, Cornelius Suijk, a former director of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the U.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation, announced that he possessed the sections of Anne Frank's diary that had been deleted by her father, Otto, prior to the book's initial publication. Otto had given them to Suijk. He claimed the right to publish the missing pages and planned to use the proceeds to help fund his U.S. foundation. After a court battle, Suijk agreed to turn over the pages to the Dutch Ministry of Education in exchange for a $300,000 donation to his foundation. He did so in 2001, and the diary has since been republished in an uncut "definitive edition."
A companion volume was also published - Anne Frank's Tales From The Secret Annex - a collection of short stories and an unfinished novel called Cady's Life, all written by Anne during her two years in hiding. It's a fascinating book that showcases her writing talent, which was considerable. But her diary was her legacy, and it continues to inspire over 60 years since her death. It's a testament to the courage of an ordinary teenage girl trapped in extraordinary circumstances. It's also a testament to the evils of racism and fascism - an important document of the Holocaust.
Quote Of The Day "Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?" - Anne Frank
Vanguard Video Today's video is The Anne Frank We Remember - a 57-minute lecture on Anne's legacy given by noted Holocaust scholar Alvin H. Rosenfeld. Enjoy!
The 4th of July holiday certainly didn't deter many of our IWW members, including one who traveled three and one-half hours to take photos and gather information for a newsworthy story.
It's been an extraordinary week here at the Internet Writing Workshop, and once again we celebrate a number of publishing successes in all venues. Congratulations to this week's crew for some hard-earned Yahoos!
I'm not sure where this poem came from. Perhaps it was all this Texas heat....
Norman Cooper
I am excited to announce my third Yahoo since becoming a member of the Internet Writing Workshop in January of 2008.
Joyful! has selected my prose/short fiction piece, "The Way of the Rose," for their July edition. This is the second time they have published my work. Again, I would like to thank everyone on Practice-W and Prose-W lists for their help with this story.
Mira Desai
My story "Trital," which began as a fretful, tentative sub to the Fiction list - perhaps in 2007 - finds a place in the July issue of the Birmingham Arts Journal.
My first-time solo. Thank you, IWW.
Rebecca Gaffron
I have a new, old poem, "Lysander: an apology to my wife," up at Camroc Press Review. The editor there is great!!
Joe Hendrix
Cacoethes Publishing recently sent me a sample cover for my upcoming book, "Wally McWinkleBean and the Noodle Adventure," and while I wasn't that thrilled with their design, we also disagreed on the illustrations. Then I remembered I had a cousin in Omaha who is a very talented graphic artist. I contacted him and we worked out a deal for him to design the cover and do my illustrations. I sent them to my editor, and she went gaga over the cover.
You can go to my website to see the cover and the illustration.
Mel Jacob
Got to keep up with Wayne :) Won't have so many next month.
My flash fiction "Busride Stranger" was selected as one of 57 from 900 submissions in 21 countries and six continents in The Binnacle's Sixth Annual International Ultra-Short Competition. The Binnacle editors do a fabulous job (I was also an honoree in their 2007 contest so I know whereof I speak). Check them out--and also their cool book arts program. I'll post again when the piece goes online.
Second hooray: My short-short "Committing a Foe Paw" is up on Postcard Shorts.
Frances Mackay
This one really excites me. I'd been asked to write a page for The Flinders Whisper, a weekly communication that is distributed throughout Hughenden, Richmond, Prairie, Torrens Creek, Pentland and all rural properties in the three shires. The editor had heard of my newsletter by word of mouth so asked me to write the page to represent my area -- Torrens Creek.
My first submission was from last week's Practice exercise, "Nature." It works well as my intro and can be found on page 12.
My essay "Everything You Need to Know to Write a Novel, in 1,000 Words" will be one of the five guest posts on literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog next week.
Roger Poppen
My (rather long) short story, "Confession," is up at Amarillo Bay.
This is one of the first stories I wrote. It was rejected in several venues, but I kept tweaking and polishing and resubmitting and am pleased it got to the right place at the right time.
LC Russell
This is my first yahoo I've posted on the list and it's a little different; it took two of us to pull it off.
I traveled to the California State Capitol where some 200 physicians, clinic professionals and residents had gathered to protest health care cuts to Medi-Cal benefits. I took photos and spoke with a number of individuals, then sent my work to the News Café online newspaper where another writer added more details and posted the story on the paper's website.
It was a great collaborative effort -- kind of like the old days of journalism!
Rebeca Schiller
My review of Gerald Martin’s "Gabriel García Márquez: A Life" has been posted on Feminist Review.
Carole Sutton
May I be greedy and claim two Yahoos? :>)
The first one sees the publication of my second crime fiction novel, "And the Devil Laughed." Some of the older members of IWW may remember critiquing it under its working title "Draper's Wharf." Published by YouWriteOn last month, it is now available on Amazon (both US and UK), and B&N with others to follow. The book cover can be seen on Amazon.
Secondly, I was featured in Author's Spotlight on Goodreads this month in an online interview with Todd Fonseca, author of "The Time Cavern." (IWW gets a mention.)
Elizabeth Westmark
Yahoo times 2:
My prose poem, "A Bed for Drunken Robins," was published at Camroc Press Review on June 22.
Prepared by Alice Folkhart Posted on 5 July 2009 ____________________
Exercise: Write a 400-word story that starts with "I thought I saw..." You may write in first or third person. _________________________
"I thought I saw..." is a fine opening for a fantasy or sci-fi story, but also a good beginning for a mystery or psychological novel, even a love story. Did the bride think that she saw her groom's old girlfriend lurking behind a pillar in the church? There's certainly a story there. This exercise will give us practice in exploring the great 'what if?' Think about how you'd feel if you had seen something that you thought was impossible or didn't exist--a dragon, an intergalactic alien, a character from your favorite book, a dead lover. Think about how you'd feel if you'd seen something you weren't supposed to see--your parents hiding your birthday present, the lady next door kissing the mailman, a friend shoplifting. Would you doubt yourself, your eyesight, your sanity? _________________________
Exercise: Write a 400-word story that starts with, "I thought I saw..." You may write in first or third person. _________________________
Critiquing: Did you find the writer's take on "I though I saw... " Interesting? Scary? Exciting? This is a good exercise to practice showing instead of telling. Did the writer clearly relay what he saw and what the consequences were? If you liked the piece, tell the writer why, and if you didn't, please say what it was that didn't work for you and what might have helped it to be better.
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writers Workshop (http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).
The Internet Writing Workshop has monitored critique groups for fiction, nonfiction, novels, romance, short prose, poetry, scriptwriting, and practice writing. Each have participation requirements. The IWW also has groups discussing the art and craft of writing in general, creative nonfiction, speculative fiction, and marketing. The IWW is a cooperative. Membership is free.
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