This Day In Writing History On June 30th, 1936, Gone With The Wind, the legendary novel by Margaret Mitchell, was published. She wrote the novel while bedridden with a broken ankle. To pass the time, Mitchell's husband, John Marsh, brought her numerous history books from the public library. After she'd read them all, he said, "Peggy, if you want another book, why don't you write your own?" So, she took him up on it.
John brought Margaret an old Remington typewriter, and she started writing a novel, using her vast knowledge of the Civil War and some dramatic moments from her own life as inspiration. At first, she wrote just for her own amusement and kept her writing a closely guarded secret from her friends, hiding pages in her closet, under her bed, and even disguising them as a divan. In her early drafts, she called her heroine Pansy O'Hara and Tara had been called Fontenoy Hall. Early titles for the book included Tote The Weary Load and Tomorrow Is Another Day.
Mitchell's husband acted as her proofreader and continuity editor for the manuscript. By 1929, her ankle had healed and she lost interest in writing. She soon took it up again, and most of the manuscript was written by 1930, at an apartment she called "The Dump." She gave no thought to publishing her novel, but then in 1935, she met Harold Latham, an editor from the Macmillan publishing house, who had been scouring the South in search of promising writers. She escorted him around Atlanta at the request of a mutual friend.
Latham became enchanted with Margaret Mitchell and asked her if she'd ever written a book. She told him no, and he said, "Well, if you ever do write a book, please show it to me first!" A friend of Mitchell's overheard the conversation and made a derogatory comment about "someone as silly as Peggy writing a book." Insulted, Mitchell went home, fished out her unfinished manuscript and gave it to Latham at his hotel room, just as he was about to leave Atlanta. After he got home and read it, he encouraged Mitchell to complete the book, believing that it would be a blockbuster.
Margaret Mitchell completed her manuscript in March of 1936, and two months later, Gone With The Wind was published. Latham's prediction proved to be uncannily accurate. The novel became an overnight success. Legendary Hollywood producer David O. Selznick bought the film rights, and three years later, the movie version of Gone With The Wind premiered in Atlanta. The epic movie, which starred Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, is rightfully considered one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Selznick had to fight the censors to use the famous line "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!" and other elements from the novel deemed objectionable and unacceptable for movies during the Production Code years.
Sadly, Margaret Mitchell died in 1949 at the age of 49, when she was struck by a drunken off-duty taxi driver, Hugh Gravitt, as she crossed Peachtree Street on her way to see a movie. At the time, Gravitt was out on $5450 bail and awaiting trial for a previous drunk driving arrest. Mitchell never regained consciousness. She died in the hospital five days after being struck. Gravitt, the drunk driver who killed her, later served 11 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
For many years, it was assumed that Margaret Mitchell only wrote one complete novel - Gone With The Wind. Then, in the 1990s, an earlier manuscript of hers was discovered. The manuscript was a novel called Lost Laysen - a romance set in the South Pacific. Mitchell had written it in two notebooks in 1916 - when she was just sixteen years old. In the early 1920s, Mitchell had given the novel and a collection of letters to an old boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. Angel's son had discovered the manuscript and sent it to the Road to Tara Museum, which authenticated it. Lost Laysen was published in 1996 in a volume that included an account of Mitchell and Angel's romance and her letters to him.
Quote Of The Day "The world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business." - Margaret Mitchell
Vanguard Video Today's video is the original theatrical trailer for the classic 1939 film adaptation of Gone With The Wind. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 29th, 1900, the famous French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born in Lyon, France. He was born into an old aristocratic family, but his father, the Viscount Jean de Saint-Exupéry, was an insurance broker who died when Antoine was four.
The young Saint Exupéry was a below average student and failed his prep school final exams. Nonetheless, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture. In 1921, he joined the military and was assigned to the 2nd Regiment of Chasseurs (calvary) before being sent to Strasbourg to train as a pilot. He received his pilot's license the following year, along with an offer of transfer to the Air Force.
Due to the strenuous objections of his fiancée, Saint Exupéry declined the transfer and moved to Paris, where he took an office job. Over the next few years, the couple broke off their engagement and Saint Exupéry worked at a series of menial jobs. In 1926, he became a pilot again - and not just any pilot. He flew planes for the Aéropostale as one of the first international mail flight pilots in the world - a dangerous job considering how primitive aircraft were in the 1920s.
That same year, Saint Exupéry published his first work - a short story called The Aviator - in Le Navire d'Argent magazine. In 1929, he published his first book, Southern Mail. His career as an aviator took off (no pun intended) as well. He became the Latécoère French airline stopover manager at Cape Juby airfield in the Spanish zone of Southern Morocco. He later moved to Argentina and became director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company.
In 1931, Saint Exupéry published his second book, Night Flight, a novel based on his adventures flying for the Aéropostale, which won him the Prix Femina prize and made his name as a writer. He also married Consuelo Suncin, a Salvadoran writer. It would be a stormy marriage, as Saint Exupéry was always away flying and he became a notorious womanizer. After his death, his mistress, Hélène de Vogüé, became his literary executrix and wrote a biography of him under the pseudonym Pierre Chevrier.
On December 30th, 1935, Saint Exupéry and his navigator, André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert while en route to Saigon. They had been attempting to win a 150,000 franc prize by flying from Paris to Saigon faster than any previous aviators. Both men survived the crash, but they didn't know where they were, and had only enough food and drink to sustain them for one day. They wandered the desert, experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations. By the third day, the men became so dehydrated that they stopped sweating. The next day, they were found by a Bedouin camel rider who saved their lives. Saint Exupéry wrote a memoir of their experience, Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939), and his most famous book, a children's novella called The Little Prince (1943) opens with a pilot being marooned in the desert.
The Little Prince is a delightful, clever, surreal, and poetic fairytale about a little boy who is the Prince of a small asteroid out in space. Besides the Prince, the asteroid - named B612 - is populated by a group of eccentric characters. The Prince works hard caring for his asteroid, which will die if he neglects it. He falls in love with the only rose that grows on the asteroid. The King tells his subjects that a citizen's duty is to obey the King - so long as the King's demands are reasonable. The Conceited Man lives alone, but longs to be admired by everyone. He is literally deaf to anything that isn't a compliment. The Drunkard drinks to forget that he's ashamed of being a drunkard.
The Businessman wants to own the stars, but the Prince tells him that because one cannot care for the stars or be useful to them in some way, he cannot own them. The Prince owns the rose because he cares for it. The Lamplighter lives on an asteroid that rotates once a minute. Before its rotation sped up, he had time to rest. Now, he has no time to rest, but he refuses to turn his back on his work. The Prince feels sorry for the Lamplighter because he's the only person he's met who cares for something other than himself. The Geographer spends all of his time making maps, but he never leaves his desk. He won't trust anything that he can't see with his own two eyes, but he refuses to leave his desk to explore the world around him.
The Prince comes to Earth as an ambassador at the King's request, and meets a marooned pilot in the desert, telling him about his home asteroid and the aforementioned characters who live there. As he travels the desert, he tames a desert fox and meets a railway switchman and a merchant who both comment on the absurdity of human nature. He also meets a sly and deadly snake. The story ends on a sad, surreal, and ambiguous note.
The Little Prince has become - and still is - an all-time classic work of children's literature that's also beloved by adults. In the 1940s and 50s, Disney considered making an animated feature film adaptation, but the plans fell through. In 1974, there was a live action, musical feature film adaptation released by Paramount - the last movie musical written and composed by the team of Lerner and Lowe. It starred Steven Warner as the Prince, Richard Kiley as the pilot, Gene Wilder as the Fox, and Bob Fosse (who choreographed his own dance routine) as the Snake. At the time of its release, the movie was roundly panned by critics and a bomb at the box office, but it has since become a cult classic highly sought after by film lovers. It's now available on DVD.
In 1943, after living in America for just over two years, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, then 43 years old, returned to Europe and enlisted to fly in the Free French Forces and fight with the Allies in the Mediterranean. A year later, after publishing his next book, Letter To A Hostage, Saint Exupéry took off from an airbase in Corsica and was never seen again. His plane was thought to have crashed. In 1998, a French fisherman found a silver identity bracelet bearing the names of Saint Exupéry, his wife Consuelo, and his publishers, Reynal & Hitchcock. The bracelet was fastened to a piece of cloth, most likely from Saint Exupéry's uniform. Two years later, a diver found the remains of a P-38 Lightning war plane off the coast of Marseille. In 2003, some of the remains were recovered, and investigators from the French Underwater Archaeological Department concluded that the aircraft was Saint Exupéry's missing plane.
Quote Of The Day "Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiring for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of the first two chapters of Antoine de Saint Exupéry's classic novella, The Little Prince. Enjoy!
Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. This week, we also have one member enjoying her first published essay since joining the IWW.
Congratulations to Elisha Webster Emerson and the rest of this week's crew for all your writing successes!
Jody
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Bill Barnes
An excerpt from my new novel, "The White Cockroach," is now exhibited on Free Book Excerpts.
You have to scroll down a little to see the piece. The editor makes comments about everything he puts up, but it's his site, so....
Mark Budman
A Moscow magazine, Иные берега, did an interview with me regarding my novel "My Life at First Try."
Jeannette Cezanne
Yesterday, Manhattan Theatre Club called Yellow Taxi Productions and requested a copy of my play, "The Pact." I'm told by folks who know the NY theatre scene that the mere fact of being considered is a terrific coup, and that the fact of it being a phone call (as opposed to an email or letter request) is also meaningful.
So ... yahoo!
Mira Desai
"The Neighbors," my translation of the Gujarati story "Padoshi" by Pravinsinh Chavda, is up on Calque.
This story details two very different life trajectories, mindsets and expectations on the two sides of a fence in a lower middle class locality.
Feels good.
Stacey Dye
Two of my poems, "Twister" and "Last Call" are in this week's issue of Here and Now. I'm quite excited and want to thank everyone on the Poetry list for helping me fine-tune them both.
Thanks for your continued support and encouragement!
To view the journal's contents (available on the site in pdf format) click on the "latest edition" link just below the picture. My story is on page 23 and 24.
Thanks to all who read and critiqued when I had the kernal of an idea for this story on Practice.
Elisha Webster Emerson
This is my first yahoo since joining the IWW. My essay, "Four Reasons To Make a Quilt" has been published in the zine All Things Girl.
Also, while I'm tooting my own horn, my blog, "My Inconvenient Body" (a blog about parenting and writing) was recently nominated for Nickelodeon's Parents' Picks 2009 "Best Local Blog." As of now, I have 95% of the votes!
Yahoo and Hurray. Thanks to everyone in the group for your critiques and compliments.
Rebecca Gaffron
Just learned that my prose poem "definiens" has been accepted for publication in the Fall 09 issue of Cent Magazine. Cent is a metro journal produced in London and sold not only by subscription, but also in bookstores on five continents. Each issue is themed and guest edited by some VIP in the area of the chosen theme, so that can be somewhat limiting. But the editors are friendly and easy to work with and I'd recommend checking their web site for future editions.
Alan Girling
Two from me:
Poetry: My poem "scarcity" is up at Blue Skies Poetry, currently on the front page, but soon to be found under my name in the Poets archive.
Non-fiction: My essay / memoir "Ms. Seabourne, 1975" can be found under Personal Essays at Black Hearts Magazine, a sex-themed/erotica webzine, so an Adult Content Warning applies (nothing explicit in mine).
Ann Hite
My essay, "Tacky Yard Ornaments," has been published at the Birmingham Arts Journal. Lots of good work in this issue. Thanks to those on the Practice List, where this essay began.
Wayne Scheer
I have good news to report about two flashes, originally written with the Practice list.
Word Catalyst accepted a humor piece, "What Would Cliff Huxtable Do?" for their August issue. I want to thank Tom Mahony for the market information.
Also, my flash, "In a Blues Mood," is up at Burst Literary Ezine. For you (us) mercenaries out there, Burst pays $10 upon publication.
Thanks for the critiques that make my final product appear publishable.
Mona Leeson Vanek
"Rockford develops blogspot," a press release I wrote last month for our community, was published May 28, 2009 in the North Palouse Journal.
JoEllen Wollman, Washington State University Horizons Program Assistant, invited me to contribute to the Rockford, Washington Horizons Community Blog. The Northwest Area Foundation backs this project and others in an eight-state area including Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.
I made my first post today! The coach of Rockford's project also praised my post, and Wollman asked me if I'd agree to be a co-administrator later on.
Prepared by Carter Jefferson Posted on 28 June 2009
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a portion of a story or memoir that clearly portrays the setting and its importance to the events that will follow. Your characters should show us the surroundings in which they act.
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Settings influence stories; sometimes they are almost as important as the characters. Readers may not think they pay attention to the details of the location of the drama, but they are influenced by the stage on which events unfold. They expect characters to behave differently in different settings. In a church people may be solemn, at a football game noisy, in a country club formal and polite.
Some writers start their stories by simply describing the setting, but in this exercise let the actors show us the stage and the props in such a way that readers will know where they are fairly early in the story.
Just setting the story in a barn won't do. Details are important. Is it light or dark? Mice rustling around? Horses in their stalls? Hay in racks above? Or is it completely deserted, with cobwebs in the corners and old tools rusting on the ground? How does it smell? Is it dry or damp? Barns differ, and so do the stories they house.
Here's a sample from Raold Dahl's story, "Man From the South":
"It was getting on toward six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck chair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.
I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden toward the pool.
"It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.
"There were plenty of deck chairs around the swimming pool..."
This could be done in third person as well: "he thought he'd buy himself a beer..."
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a portion of a story or memoir that clearly portrays the setting and its importance to the events that will follow. Your characters should show us the surroundings in which they act.
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In your critique, tell the writer whether you can visualize the setting. Does it hint at what might be coming? What role does the setting play in the story? What other details could have been added to improve the submission? And, as always, critique the writing.
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/).
This Day In Writing History On June 26th, 1892, the famous writer Pearl S. Buck was born. She was born Pearl Sydenstricker in Hillsboro, West Virgina. Her parents, Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, were Christian missionaries for the Southern Presbyterian Church. After they married, they went to China and set up a mission. Since three out of their four previous children, who were born in China, died from cholera and other ailments shortly after their birth, the Sydenstrickers returned to the United States so Pearl's mother could give birth to her there.
When Pearl was three months old, the family returned to their mission in China. Pearl was given a Chinese name - Sai Zhen Zhu - and Chinese became her primary language. She was tutored in Chinese language and history by a Confucian scholar, Mr. Kung. Her mother later taught her English. Pearl came to love China and the Chinese people, but when she was eight years old, the Boxer Rebellion took place. It was a revolt against foreign imperialists and the Christian missionaries who were interfering with Chinese culture in their pursuit of converting and Westernizing the Chinese. Pearl and her family were evacuated to Shanghai, where they spent almost a whole year living as refugees. The family then left China for San Francisco, only to return a year later, when the Boxer Rebellion had ended.
In 1911, Pearl left China again, this time to attend a woman's college in America. After graduating in 1914, she returned to China and served as a missionary until 1933. In 1917, she married fellow missionary John Buck. She later became a major figure in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy of the 1920s and 30s - a schism within the Presbyterian church that pitted liberal (modernist) against conservative (fundamentalist) factions.
In a 1932 article published in The Christian Century magazine, Pearl Buck voiced her support for Re-Thinking Missions, a controversial study by a Presbyterian lay group that argued for the scrapping of traditional missions. Instead of trying to convert all the peoples of the world to Christianity, a Christian mission's main function should be to help those in need through humanitarian efforts. The study also stated that Christian missionaries should ally themselves with all religions instead of trying to win converts. In her article, Buck mocked the biblical literalism of the fundamentalists by stating that the study was "the only book I have ever read that seems to me literally true in its every observation and right in its every conclusion."
Later that year, Buck gave a speech before a large audience at the Astor Hotel, where she elaborated on the views expressed in her article, describing the typical Christian missionary as "narrow, uncharitable, unappreciative, ignorant." She also rejected the concept of original sin and the need to believe in the divinity of Christ in order to live a Christian life. Buck wrote another article that was published in Cosmopolitan, and established herself as a leading liberal voice in the Presbyterian Church. The Re-Thinking Missions study, along with the efforts of Buck and other liberals outraged the conservative, evangelical faction in the church, and a schism resulted that saw most conservatives bolt from the Presbyterian Church. The few that stayed were willing to compromise and accept modernist ideals.
At the time of her participation in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, Pearl Buck had also established herself as a bestselling writer. Her first novel, East Wind:West Wind was published in 1930. A year later, she would publish her most famous novel, The Good Earth, which was the first in a three-book trilogy called The House Of Earth. The epic novel told the story of Wang Lung, a poor Chinese peasant farmer who marries a slave girl, O-Lan, lives a hard life, then unexpectedly rises to prominence, only to encounter more hardships. The second book in the trilogy, Sons (1933), follows Wang Lung's sons, and the third book, A House Divided (1935), follows the third generation of Wang Lung's family. The Good Earth won Pearl Buck a Pulitzer Prize for literature. It was adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1937.
Pearl Buck used her experiences in China as the basis for her novels, and in doing so, helped introduce Chinese culture to the West. No stranger to controversy, Buck would later write China Sky (1941), a tale of the horrors of the Japanese invasion of China during World War 2, and Peony (1948), a haunting, riveting story of a Chinese servant girl, Peony, who is sold to a wealthy Jewish family, where she embarks on a forbidden romance with the family's only son.
All in all, Pearl Buck wrote over 40 novels (four of them under the pseudonym John Sedges) and numerous short stories, including children's stories. Her last novel, The Rainbow, was completed before she died in 1973 at the age of 80. It was published posthumously the following year.
Quote Of The Day "The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." - Pearl S. Buck
Vanguard Video Today's video is the second in a two part interview with George Orwell. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 25th, 1903, novelist George Orwell, the master of dystopic fiction, was born. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in Bengal, India. His father, Richard Blair, was a civil servant. His mother, Ida, was a Frenchwoman. When he was a year old, Orwell's mother moved him to England, settling in the town of Henley-on-Thames. As a young boy, Orwell met poet Jacintha Buddicorn, and the two children became inseperable.
When they first met, Buddicorn found Orwell standing on his head in a field. When she asked him why he was doing that, Orwell replied "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up." Orwell and Buddicorn spent a lot of time reading together, writing poetry, and dreaming of becoming famous writers. He also became close to the rest of the Buddicorn family and spent time hunting, fishing, and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister.
While at prep school, Orwell wrote two poems that were published in the local newspaper. He won a scholarship, but during his college years, he was an average student at best. He co-created and co-edited a college magazine and spent more time writing for it than paying attention to his studies. He dropped out of school due to both his poor academic performance (which made future scholarships unlikely) and his desire to travel to the East.
In October of 1922, Orwell went to Burma, (now known as Myanmar) where he joined the Indian Imperial Police. He was posted briefly to Maymyo, then to Myaungmya. By 1924, Orwell was promoted to Assistant District Superintendent and posted to Syriam. In 1925, he went to Insein, home of the second-largest prison in Burma. A year later, he moved to Moulmein, where his grandmother lived. At the end of 1926, Orwell moved on to Kath, where he contracted Dengue fever. He was allowed to go home to England on leave. While home and recovering, Orwell decided that he was tired of colonial life and police work, so he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police and decided to become a writer. He used his experiences in Burma as the basis of his first novel, Burmese Days, which was published in 1934.
Orwell's first published work was a non-fiction book called Down And Out In London And Paris (1933), which is an account of his life as a struggling writer, as he worked at menial jobs to support himself while he wrote. He had moved to Paris in 1928 because of its low cost of living and the bohemian lifestyle that attracted many aspiring writers. In 1929, Orwell fell ill and all of his money was stolen from his room at the boarding house where he lived. He later returned to London and took a job teaching at a boy's school.
Orwell's early books were published by Victor Gollancz, whose publishing house was an outlet for radical and socialist books. Orwell wrote two more novels, A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) and Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936), but later disowned them, claiming that they weren't his best works - he had just written them to earn money at a time when he was broke.
Of the two, Keep The Aspidistra Flying is the better. It's a grim black comedy about an aspiring poet, Gordon Comstock, who comes from an affluent, respectable family, but believes that in order to be a poet, one must denounce wealth. So, he quits his promising new job as an advertising copywriter and takes a menial job while he writes, living in a grubby rented room. He both loves and loathes his new existence. Comstock finally feels like a real poet, but he resents having to work at boring menial jobs to support himself while he writes. His poverty is a frequent source of humiliation, and he soon becomes a deeply neurotic, absurd parody of himself.
Later, Gollancz encouraged Orwell to investigate and write about the depressed social conditions in Northern England, and he went to the poor coal mining town of Wigan, where he lived in a dirty room over a tripe shop. He met many people and took extensive notes of the living conditions and wages, explored the mine, and spent days in the town's library researching public health records, working conditions in mines, and other data. The result was The Road To Wigan Pier (1937).
The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a straightforward documentary about life in Wigan. The second is Orwell's philosophical attempt to answer the question that if socialism can improve the appalling conditions in Wigan and such places around the world - which it can - then why aren't we all socialists? Orwell places the blame on the ferocious prejudices of the middle class against the working class and other people who become associated with socialism, such as "sandal wearers" (hippies), health nuts, sex maniacs, pacifists, and feminists. (Orwell's words) He goes on to say that "The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of the proletariat, if you offer it tactfully; offer him a dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight."
The second section of The Road To Wigan Pier shows the early development of Orwell's personal philosophy and his skill as a satirist, both of which have been misconstrued as endorsements of fascism or conservativism. Orwell was, in fact, a lifelong socialist. Not long after writing The Road To Wigan Pier, Orwell volunteered to fight General Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War, using his contacts in the Labour Party to get a letter of introduction. In Spain, Orwell joined the POUM, (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista - the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) which was linked to the Labour Party.
At the time, the POUM was one of a number of leftist factions that supported the Spanish Republican goverment against the fascists. Some of these factions had different aims. The pro-Soviet Spanish Communist Party saw the POUM as a Trotskyist organization and embarked on a campaign to suppress it, first by falsely claiming that the POUM was collaborating with the fascists, then, near the end of the war, outlawing the party and attacking its members. When Orwell was accused of being a collaborator, he came to hate Soviet communism. He still fought the fascists and was shot in the throat by a sniper. After recovering in a POUM sanitorium, Orwell and his wife barely managed to escape Spain following the fall of Barcelona.
Orwell's exposure to Soviet communism and its methods of propaganda and oppression would have a lasting effect on him and lead him to write his two greatest novels, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Animal Farm was an anti-Stalinist fairy tale set on a farm where the animals are ruthlessly oppressed and exploited by the humans for whom they toil. So, the pigs Old Major (who symbolizes Lenin), Napoleon (Stalin), Snowball (Trotsky), and Squealer (Soviet propaganda minister Vyacheslav Molotov) stage a violent revolution and overthrow the humans. But soon, Napoleon assumes dictatorial power, establishes totalitarian rule, and the animals' new utopia becomes even more oppressive and miserable than their existence under human rule.
Declared unfit for military service during World War 2, (though he supervised broadcasts to India for the BBC to help the war effort) Orwell had completed Animal Farm in 1944, but no publisher would touch it because the Soviet Union was a key ally in the fight against the Nazis. It was published after the war, though, to great acclaim, and was adapted an animated British feature film in 1954, and later in 1999 as a live-action American TV movie.
Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, was Orwell's last and greatest novel. Set in Oceania, formerly England, now a dystopic, totalitarian state of the distant future, it tells the story of Winston Smith, a civil servant who works in the propaganda division. Smith grows disillusioned with the regime and its pervasive surveillance and control of the people, so he decides to start a rebellion. The regime's leader is a mysterious figure known as Big Brother, and he's always watching. The phrase "big brother" was introduced into the English lexicon by Orwell's novel. Other clever touches include names such as the Ministry Of Peace (which deals with war), and the Ministry Of Love (which tortures people).
A masterpiece of science fiction and political allegory, Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in June of 1949 to great acclaim. It remains a classic to this day. Orwell managed to complete the novel despite being severely ill with tuberculosis. He also wrote frequently to friends, including his childhood sweetheart Jacintha Buddicorn, who was shocked to learn that the celebrated novelist George Orwell was actually her childhood sweetheart, Eric Blair, writing under a pseudonym. Sadly, Orwell died of tuberculosis in January of 1950, at the age of 46. He'd had numerous lung problems over the years, including chronic bronchitis and pneumonia. He was also a heavy smoker - a habit he took to his grave.
Quote Of The Day "There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter." - George Orwell
Vanguard Video Today's video is the first in a two part interview with George Orwell. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 24th, 1842, the writer, satirist, and journalist Ambrose Bierce was born in Meigs County, Ohio. He was the tenth of thirteen children, all bearing first names that began with the letter A. He grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, where his poor but intellectual parents instilled in him a deep love for books and reading.
When he was fifteen, Ambrose Bierce left home to become a printer's devil (apprentice) at a small Ohio newspaper. In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, Bierce enlisted in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment. The following year, he was made a First Lieutenant and served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, mapping out likely battlefields. He fought in the Battle of Shiloh, which at the time was the bloodiest battle in U.S. history. Bierce used the terrifying experience as the source for several short stories and a memoir, What I Saw Of Shiloh.
Bierce continued fighting in the war and received recognition for his daring rescue of a seriously wounded comrade under fire in the Battle of Rich Mountain, West Virginia. In June of 1864, Bierce himself was seriously wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. He spent the summer on furlough and returned to active duty in September. He was discharged in January 1865, but resumed his military career in the summer of 1866, when he rejoined General Hazen on an expedition to inspect military outposts in the Great Plains.
In San Francisco, after receiving the rank of Brevet Major, Bierce resigned from the Army. He remained in San Francisco, where he became famous as both a contributor and editor for many local newspapers and periodicals. On Christmas Day, 1871, he married his girlfriend, Mary Ellen "Mollie" Day. She bore him two sons and a daughter, but the couple would separate in 1888 when Bierce discovered letters from a lover that constituted proof of Mollie's infidelity. They finally divorced in 1904. Mollie died a year later. Bierce's sons died before him; his son Day was shot in a dispute over a woman, and his other son Leigh died of pneumonia - a complication of his alcoholism.
Ambroce Bierce lived in England from 1872-75, where he wrote and contributed to magazines. He returned to San Francisco, then left again to manage a mining company in the Dakota Territory. After the company failed, he went back to San Francisco and resumed his career as a journalist. In 1887, he published a column called Prattle, becoming one of the first columnists and editorialists for William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, The San Francisco Examiner.
In January of 1896, Hearst sent Bierce to Washington, D.C. to foil the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies' plan to have a Congressional ally sneak in a bill that excused the companies from having to repay massive government loans to build the First Transcontinental Railroad. Bierce's coverage of the story - and his scathing satirical diatribes - resulted in such public outrage that the bill was defeated.
Bierce's sardonic view of human nature and scathing satire earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce." Despite his reputation, he was also known to encourage young writers to pursue and perfect their craft, including poet George Sterling and writer W.C. Morrow.
As a writer himself, Ambrose Bierce was known for both his horror stories, which were on a par with Edgar Allan Poe, and his satircal works. His best known horror story was An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, published in 1891. It told the tale of a Confederate saboteur, Peyton Farquhar, who is caught and sentenced to be hung from Owl Creek Bridge. At the hanging, the rope breaks and Farquhar falls into the water. He escapes and makes it to dry land. From there, as he tries to get home to his family, Farquhar finds that his senses have been heightened to superhuman proportions. He also experiences visual and auditory hallucinations. When he finally arrives home and runs to his wife - just as he reaches out to her - Farquhar feels a searing pain in his neck and all goes black. It is revealed that he never escaped at all. He dreamed the whole thing just as he was hung, before the rope broke his neck.
An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge was adapted numerous times, the most famous adaptation being a French short film made in 1963 called La Rivière du Hibou, directed by Robert Enrico. It won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject and was later aired on American television as an episode of the brilliant and acclaimed 1959-64 TV series, The Twilight Zone.
Ambrose Bierce was most famous for his satirical masterpiece, The Devil's Dictionary. Published in 1911, The Devil's Dictionary was a scathing, book-length parody of Webster's Dictionary, filled with humorous definitions of various words, such as:
LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.
The end of Ambrose Bierce's life turned out to be so strange that, had he lived, he might have written a short story about it. In October of 1913, at the age of 71, Bierce embarked on a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. In December, after visiting locations in Louisiana and Texas, Bierce crossed the border into Mexico, where he became involved with the Mexican Revolution. He joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and later witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca.
Bierce followed Villa's army as far as Chihuahua. He wrote a letter to his close friend Blanche Partington, which was dated December 26, 1913. Then he mysteriously disappeared, vanishing without a trace - one of the most famous disappearances in literary history. Some writers have speculated that Bierce headed North to the Grand Canyon, where he committed suicide in a remote location. No evidence exists to prove this theory or the countless other theories about what happened to Bierce. All investigations into his fate have thus far proved fruitless.
Quote Of The Day "The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." - Ambrose Bierce
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Ambrose Bierce's short story, A Baby Tramp. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 23rd, 1398 (c), Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz, Germany. As a young boy, he learned to read. This was a rare skill in the 15th century, because books were a luxury for the rich, as they had to be written by hand, (usually by monks, scholars, or scribes) a slow and expensive process. Fortunately for Gutenberg, he was born into a patrician (aristocratic) merchant family.
After he learned how to read, he became an avid reader, spending hours in the library. At the time, the few libraries that existed did not loan out their books. The books had to be read in the library, and they were chained to the wall to prevent theft. Whenever Gutenberg's father ordered a book, it would take from several months to a year for the handwritten manuscript to be completed. Gutenberg hated to wait and dreamed of a more efficient means of producing books than writing them out by hand.
In 1411, there was an uprising against the patricians in Mainz, so the Gutenberg family moved to Eltville am Rhein, where Johannes took up the goldsmithing trade, as his father was a goldsmith who worked with the ecclesiastic mint. Johannes Gutenberg became a skilled metalworker, skills that would help him create his greatest invention - the mechanical printing press.
By 1440, Gutenberg began experimenting with the elements that would form his mechanical printing process. Using his skills as a metalworker, he designed a moveable typeface, with separate metal type for each letter to be printed. He also developed oil-based inks of various colors that would hold up better on the page than the traditional water-based inks. Last, but certainly not least, he built printing presses based on the designs of the olive, wine, and cheese presses of the time.
By 1450, Gutenberg's print shop was in business. One of the first items to be printed there was a German poem. The successful operation of the press and the quality of the printed material attracted attention, and Gutenberg was able to convince Johann Fust, a wealthy and powerful moneylender, to give him an 800-guilder loan to expand the business and keep it going. He took on Fust's son-in-law, Peter Schoffer, as an apprentice. In 1452, Gutenberg borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust.
Gutenberg's print shop was nonetheless a success. He printed thousands of indulgences for the Church. Indulgences were certificates absolving the bearers of their sins and guaranteeing them a way out of Hell after their deaths. Indulgences were sold to rich parishioners - the only ones who could afford them - and made the Church a tremendous amount of money. The printing of indulgences earned Gutenberg a tidy profit as well, which he put back into the business and used to repay his loans.
Gutenberg then embarked on his greatest printing project - copies of the Bible. He designed and tested beautiful layouts that combined color and black inks. Expenses for the Bible project started piling up, and Gutenberg borrowed more money from Johann Fust. Soon he was in debt for over 2,000 guilders. The Bible project took about three years to complete, and around 200 copies of the Bible were printed.
During this time, a dispute arose between Gutenberg and Fust. Fust accused Gutenberg of misusing the money he lent him and demanded all of it back. He filed suit at the archbishop's court. The court ruled in Fust's favor, giving him ownership of Gutenberg's print shop and half the bibles that had been printed. Fust also gained control of the Gutenberg name. Though effectively bankrupt, Gutenberg did run a small print shop in Bamberg and participated in another Bible printing project in 1459. None of the materials he printed bore the Gutenberg name, (because Fust owned it) so it's uncertain exactly what Gutenberg printed in his little Bamberg shop. It has been speculated that he may have printed 300 copies of the 744-page Catholicon Dictionary there.
Johannes Gutenberg died in 1468 at approximately 70 years of age. By 1500, there were more than a thousand print shops in Europe. Gutenberg's dream of distributing information to the masses came true. In 1971, Project Gutenberg was launched, taking the inventor's dream into the digital age. The idea of Project Gutenberg was to digitize public domain documents into plain ASCII text so they could be stored on computers and read on monitor screens. It was the precursor of the e-book.
Project Gutenberg has since digitized over 28,000 documents (novels, poetry, plays, non-fiction, etc.) in various languages. With the advent of telecommunication, Project Gutenberg e-texts have been distributed on bulletin boards and the Internet.
Quote Of The Day "The most important human being whoever lived, if you want to leave out religious figures, would be Johannes Gutenberg... that's when the liberation of human thought happened, because people could read the thoughts of people across the world, and have thoughts of their own, and publish them and spread information around." - Tom Clancy
Vanguard Video Today's video is a short presentation about Johannes Gutenberg. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 22nd, 1964, novelist Dan Brown was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. Brown's father was a teacher, and he grew up on the campus of Philips Exeter Academy, where his father taught. He was an avid reader, but didn't care for most modern fiction, preferring to read the classics or non-fiction. After graduating college, Dan Brown went to Los Angeles, where he hoped to make it as a singer and songwriter.
In Los Angeles, Brown joined the National Academy of Songwriters and met Blythe Newlon, the Academy's Director of Artist Development. They fell in love, and later, when they moved back to New Hampshire, they were married. Brown worked as a teacher while he pursued his singing career. He released his first album, Dan Brown, in 1993. It was followed by Angels & Demons in 1994. He would later use that title as the title for his second novel.
His musical career floundering, Dan decided to try his hand at becoming a novelist after reading Sidney Sheldon's suspense thriller The Doomsday Conspiracy while on vacation in Tahiti. He began work on his first novel and co-wrote a humor book with his wife - 187 Men To Avoid: A Guide For The Romantically Frustrated Woman - under the pseudonym Danielle Brown. Dan Brown's first novel, a techno thriller called Digital Fortress, was published in 1998.
With Digital Fortress, Brown first began exploring his fascination with cryptography. In the novel, NSA (National Security Agency) cryptographer Susan Fletcher is called upon to stop Digital Fortress - encryption code software that the NSA's code-cracking supercomputer TRANSLTR is incapable of cracking. If Digital Fortress spreads through the Internet, it could cripple the NSA. The novel addresses civil rights issues in the Internet age, like government agencies hacking into citizens' private data, such as messages in e-mail accounts, and reading it.
In Dan Brown's second novel, Angels & Demons (2000), Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon is called upon to help in the investigation of a bizarre murder. A respected nuclear physicist has been found murdered, with one eye removed and an ambigram of the word Illuminati branded on his chest. Langdon is an expert on the Illuminati - a secret brotherhood of scientists founded during the Renaissance dedicated to advancing science and challenging the authority of the Church.
At the time of the murder, the Pope has died and a papal enclave has convened at the Vatican to elect the new pontiff. The Preferiti - the cardinals who are candidates to become the new Pope - turn up missing. They are being murdered, one by one, in the same way as the nuclear physicist. Langdon discovers that the fabled Illuminati brotherhood still exists and are planning to destroy Vatican City with an antimatter bomb as retribution for the massacre of their predecessors, which was carried out by the Church centuries ago.
Angels & Demons was a huge success for Dan Brown - a bestseller. He followed it with the sci-fi suspense thriller Deception Point (2001) which told the story of Rachel Sexton, an NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) intelligence analyst sent as part of a team of experts whose mission is to authenticate findings made by NASA deep within the Arctic's Milne Ice Shelf. The findings are fossils of insects within a meteor, which NASA claims may constitute proof of extraterrestrial life. What the team doesn't know is that their activities are being secretly monitored by a Delta Force unit.
Rachel suspects that the meteor may be a fraud. But who would want to discredit NASA? Could it be her own father, ruthless conservative Senator Sedgewick Sexton, a presidential candidate running on a platform of reducing government spending? He wants to scrap NASA and turn space exploration over to the private sector. His opponent, the incumbent President, is a huge supporter of NASA. If the meteor is real, will the Delta Force unit assassinate the team of experts to hide the truth?
In 2003, Dan Brown published The Da Vinci Code - a prequel to Angels & Demons - that proved to be a runaway bestseller, selling over sixty million copies and causing a huge controversy. In The Da Vinci Code, Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon is called upon to assist in the investigation of another bizarre and brutal murder - one that took place in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Jacques Sauniere, the museum's curator, was found murdered, with a strange cipher near his body. Teaming up with Sauniere's granddaughter Sophie, Langdon follows a bizarre trail of anagrams, ciphers, number puzzles, and other brainteasers, as he tries to solve the murder.
The trail also leads the pair to mysterious clues hidden within the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci, a cryptex invented by Da Vinci, and the Holy Grail - proof that the foundation of Christianity was a fairytale propagated by the Church. Jesus Christ actually escaped crucifixion and fled to France with his pregnant wife, Mary Magadelene, where she bore the child, whose descendants became royalty. Mary Magdalene was the real rock upon which Jesus built his church, not Peter, which infuriated the fiercely misogynistic disciple. Years later, the Church tried to exterminate all of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's descendants to conceal the truth. But some of them survived, and a secret brotherhood (whose members over the years included Leonardo Da Vinci) pledged to protect them and the proof of the "con of Man."
Blending thrilling, intriguing suspense fiction with historical facts and theories, The Da Vinci Code became hugely popular and hugely controversial. The Vatican denounced the novel as anti-Catholic. The Christian Right called it blasphemous, and both factions published numerous non-fiction books dedicated to debunking the historical facts and theories Dan Brown based his novel on.
After a movie adaptation was released in 2006 (directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon) and became hugely successful itself, some disgruntled writers filed suit to get a piece of the pie. First, Lewis Purdue sued Dan Brown, claiming that Brown plagiarized his novels The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter Of God (2000). Then, writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh filed suit, claiming that Brown based The Da Vinci Code on theories put forth in their noted 1982 non-fiction book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Dan Brown won both lawsuits, as the plagiarism claims were ruled to be baseless.
Brown's third book in his Robert Langdon series, The Lost Symbol, is due for release in September, 2009.
Quote Of The Day "If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do push ups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing." - Dan Brown
Vanguard Video Today's video is the last in a three part series about the evolution of the word processor, taken from the 1980s TV series, The Secret Life Of Machines. Enjoy!
It's been another great week for Internet Writing Workshop members, who continue to find publishing success in all venues.
Congratulations to this week's crew!
Jody
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Barry Basden
"Missing Her," a 50-worder, has been published in the Summer Issue of the Boston Literary Magazine.
Stacey Dye
My current poem "Immeasureable" with a major revision is up at Camroc Press Review. Thanks to everyone who helped with comments and suggestions to make it better. You guys are wonderful. It is a much better poem for your input.
Thank you so much for your continued support!
Sue Ellis
The new issue of Ken Again has a story, "Maxed Out," from me. It is a story begun in practice and polished with the help of many.
Also have a book review of "Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire" in this month's Internet Review of Books. Lots of great reviews there.
Warren Jamison
The galleys of my article about the easy way to publication that started my career as a pro writer just came. The article is information dense with stuff some of you may find to be of great interest. Anyway, check it out if you get the chance.
Although I've written, coauthored or edited over 50 published books, this is my first article in a major national magazine. The editor was top-notch, very cordial, accessible and prompt, unlike the experiences many members of ASJA report with different publications. Nevertheless, I stick by my conclusion reached many years ago, that in the time it takes to develop ideas, query editors and write a couple of magazine articles, one can launch a book. The book, of course, has the potential to pay far better than articles.
My article will appear on page 34 of The Writer magazine's September 2009 issue, which will be available in August.
After receiving almost a dozen rejections over the past couple of weeks, I finally got some good news.
Fiction at Work will publish my flash, "A Noble Profession," in their September 2 issue.
Mona Leeson Vanek
Because of the 14 excellent crits I received so quickly on my workshop submission, "Rockford's Opening statement," I won't need more. This afternoon I submitted my revised draft to the FBLA webmasters engaged by the town's officials to create the web site.
Sharing my two-fold joy! My efforts (as a Horizons Poverty Project Communications and Education team member) to persuade Rockford's Mayor and Town Council to provide Rockford (WA) with a website met with success. And, thanks to your excellent crits, the webmasters liked my rewritten opening statement, and (too wordy, they said) they'll use a tightened version on the "About Us" page, rather than the front page.
Right on! I'm delighted. Now, I should only be consulted if/when they encounter information they're unsure of how to word. I look forward to adding the website's URL to my sig when it's published.
Joanna M. Weston
My poem, "Centre Line," is in v.28 #2, p.82 of Existere, the print journal of York University, Toronto.
Prepared by: Pam Hauck Revised and posted on: 21 June 2009 __________________
Exercise: In 400 words or less, create a scene in which nature plays an important part. Use descriptive detail and sensory imagery to show us how it affects you or your character. _______________________
Writing about nature's influence on human experience requires sensitive observation of the world around us. We will need to put all of our senses into play to describe that world and to express its influence on us and the characters that we create.
A walk in the woods might lead to a profound insight; watching pigeons pecking on a city windowsill may illuminate an idea; or a starry night with storm clouds gathering can open your character to a new understanding of life or his place in it.
To see more details about nature writing, and some examples to prime your pen, click here. This site demands an "upbeat" ending for the work it publishes, but in this exercise nature's impact may turn out to be negative as well as positive. _______________________
Exercise: In 400 words or less, create a scene in which nature plays an important part. Use descriptive detail and sensory imagery to show us how it affects you or your character. _______________________
Critiques: Has the writer used description of nature and natural phenomena to expand our understanding of his or his protagonist's life, soul, situation? How has he done this? Has contact with our observation of nature changed the author or his character in any way? Can you "see" what the writer describes? Could this piece, this character, this situation have been written without using nature as a reference? What, if anything, would you have done differently?
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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/).
This Day In Writing History On June 19th, 1947, writer Sir Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India. The only child of Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a lawyer turned businessman, and Negin Butt, a teacher, Salman Rushdie graduated King's College, Cambridge with a degree in history. He worked in advertising - for two different agencies - before trying his hand at writing.
In 1975, Rushdie published his first book, Grimus, a science fiction / fantasy novel that told the story of Flapping Eagle, a young Indian who receives the gift of immortality after drinking a magic potion. He then wanders the Earth for 777 years, searching for his sister, who is also immortal. He ends up falling through a hole in the Mediterranean Sea, where he crosses over into a parallel dimension and arrives at a place called Calf Island, where fellow immortals, tired of the mortal world, live in their own community and sacrifice their freedom to maintain their immortality.
Grimus was pretty much ignored by critics and readers alike, but Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children, published in 1981, was a huge success and made him world famous. It won the Booker Prize that year, as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Midnight's Children displayed the magical realism style of writing that Rushdie's future works would become famous for. The main character, Saleem Sinai, is born on August 15th, 1947, at the exact time that India becomes independent. He later discovers that all children born on that date, between 12 and 1AM, are gifted with telepathic powers.
Saleem embarks on a quest to gather together all his fellow telepaths and discover the meaning of their gifts. He then becomes swept up in the famous state of emergency declared by Indira Ghandhi in June of 1975, which would last for almost two years. During this time, Ghandi suspended elections and civil liberties and granted herself the power to rule by decree. It was one of the most controversial periods in Indian history, where many innocent people were arrested and held without charge as political prisoners. These people were abused and tortured. The government used public and private media outlets for the purposes of propaganda. A notorious family planning initiative forced thousands of men to have vasectomies against their will. During this period, Saleem Sinai becomes a political prisoner for a time, and Salman Rushdie uses Saleem's ordeal to level scathing criticisms of Indira Ghandhi.
Rushdie's next novel, Shame (1983), dealt with political turmoil in Pakistan. It was followed by The Jaguar Smile (1987), a non-fiction book about Rushdie's experiences with the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the seventh anniversary of their rise to power. The Sandinistas were supported by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, but his successor, Ronald Reagan, secretly financed right-wing Contra guerillas in their attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government. Nicaragua later won a historic case against the United States at the International Court of Justice, where the U.S. was ordered to pay $12 billion dollars in reparations for undermining Nicaragua's sovereignty.
In 1988, Salman Rushdie published his most famous and most controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. In Rushdie's dazzling, surreal narrative, two actors, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are trapped on a hijacked plane during a flight from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two actors are magically saved. Farishta is transformed into the Archangel Gabriel and Chamcha is changed into a devil, both men possibly suffering from multiple personality disorder as the result of their ordeal.
The novel features numerous dream vision narratives. One of these tells the story of how the prophet Muhammad - the founder of Islam - had originally included in the Quran verses of prayer to three Persian pagan goddesses - Allat, Uzza, and Manat. Muhammad later renounces these verses as the work of Satan and removes them, hence the title The Satanic Verses. Later, one of Muhammad's companions, doubting the prophet's divinity, claims to have altered parts of the Quran as Muhammad dictated them to him. Another narrative tells the story of a fanatical imam who returns from exile to incite the people of his country to revolt, without any regard to their safety.
These narratives provoked great outrage in the Muslim world. The Satanic Verses was banned in most Muslim countries. In the West, Muslim extremists firebombed bookshops selling the novel and held rallies where copies of the book were burned. Some people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked and seriously injured or killed. In February 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - the spiritual leader of Iran - issued a fatwa calling The Satanic Verses "blasphemous against Islam" and calling for Salman Rushdie's execution. A bounty was placed on the writer's head, and he was forced to live in hiding for years, under police protection. There were two failed attempts on Rushdie's life, one of them carried out by Hezbollah.
The UK government broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in protest of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In 1998, nearly ten years later, Iran, in an attempt to restore diplomatic relations, made a public statement claiming that it would neither support nor hinder assassination attempts on Rushdie. In 2005, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed the fatwa and the death sentence of Salman Rushdie. Two years later, the Queen knighted Rushdie for services in literature, angering Muslims around the world. In Pakistan and Malaysia, mass demonstrations took place in protest of Rushdie's knighthood.
In the 20+ years that have passed, Salman Rushdie has written many more great novels. His latest, The Enchantress Of Florence, was published in 2008. In 2oo6, following the outrage of Muslim extremists over the publication of a series of editorial cartoons satirizing Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, Rushdie signed the manifesto Together Facing The New Totalitarianism, which was published in the French leftist newspaper, Charlie Hebdo. Rushdie often appears as a discussion panelist on the HBO TV series Real Time With Bill Maher.
Salman Rushdie is without a doubt one of the world's great writers, as well as a crusader for freedom of expression.
Quote Of The Day "The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes." - Salman Rushdie
Vanguard Video Today's video is the second in a three part series about the evolution of the word processor, taken from the 1980s TV series, The Secret Life Of Machines. Enjoy!
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