This Day In Writing History On September 30th, 1868, Little Women, the legendary, classic novel by Louisa May Alcott, was published. The novel was published in two parts. The second part, Good Wives, was published in 1869. In 1880, both parts would be combined and republished as a single volume, which is how the novel appears to this day.
Little Women, which tells the story of the four March sisters, (Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy) growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, was based on Alcott's experiences growing up with her own three sisters in Concord and Boston. Louisa modeled the character of Jo after herself. Fifteen-year-old Jo March is the second oldest of the sisters. Intelligent, outspoken, and tomboyish, Jo longs to be a writer. An early feminist, Jo finds herself at odds with the restrictions placed on women in the late 19th century, including not being able to go to college and being pressured to marry.
Through the course of the novel, the March sisters become friends with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, the handsome, charming, affluent boy next door. An orphan, Laurie lives with his grandfather. He becomes especially close to Jo. They get into various scrapes as Laurie joins in the March sisters' adventures. The sisters also struggle to overcome their particular character flaws (Jo has a temper, Meg is vain, Beth is shy, and Amy selfish) in order to live up to their parents' expectations and become, well, little women.
The first part of Little Women became a huge hit with both critics and readers, and an overnight success, selling over 2,000 copies in 1868. Louisa May Alcott received many letters from fans (and visits from them at her home) clamoring for a sequel. So, in 1869, Alcott published the second part, Good Wives. Although her fans were begging for Jo to get married - especially to Laurie - Alcott resisted the idea at first, believing that Jo should remain a "literary spinster."
Alcott changed her mind, and in Good Wives, married off not only Jo, but Meg and Amy as well. However, in a surprising twist, Jo marries Friedrich "Fritz" Bhaer, the poor German immigrant and professor who encouraged her to be a serious writer, while Amy eventually marries Laurie. Alcott would later write "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her."
In reviews that proved to be prescient, the critics of the day proclaimed Little Women to be a classic. And to this day, it remains one of the most popular works of 19th century literature. It would be followed by two sequels: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).
Little Women would later be adapted for the radio, stage, screen, and television.
Quote Of The Day "Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable." - Louisa May Alcott
Vanguard Video Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the 1933 feature film version of Little Women, starring Katharine Hepburn as Jo. Enjoy!
It's Banned Books Week! This week is Banned Books Week. The annual event, which takes place during the last week of September, was first established in 1982 by the American Library Association. (ALA) The brainchild of the late, great librarian and activist Judith Krug, Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read by encouraging people to read books that have been banned or challenged - targeted for banning. The event also promotes the freedom of libraries, schools, and bookstores to provide such materials.
To celebrate Banned Books Week, the ALA offers kits, posters, buttons, bookmarks, and guidelines for schools and public libraries who participate in the event by erecting special displays of banned or challenged books to raise awareness of these issues. Booksellers also create displays. Some go even further and invite authors of banned or challenged books to speak at their stores. They also sponsor annual essay contests dealing with freedom of expression.
Every year, the ALA compiles a list of the top 100 (or so) books that have been banned or challenged in the United States. What sort of publications make the list? Most of them are children's books that have been challenged or banned outright from schools and libraries across the country. The challenges and bans are largely the work of disgruntled parents and / or conservative or religious activist groups complaining about allegedly inappropriate content in the literary works.
A good example of this can be found the case of And Tango Makes Three. (2005). This charming picture book for young readers, written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, has earned the distinction of being the #1 most banned or challenged book for the past three years. The book is based on the true story of Roy and Silo, two captive male penguins living at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. Zookeepers noticed that for six years, Roy and Silo lived together as mates - as though one of them were female - and engaged in mating rituals. When the penguins were observed trying to hatch an egg-shaped rock, the zookeepers gave them a real penguin egg to see if they could hatch it. Roy and Silo cared for the egg and successfully hatched it. The healthy female chick, named Tango by the zookeepers, was then adopted by Roy and Silo, who raised her as their own. All three penguins lived together as a family.
And Tango Makes Three caused a furor with conservative and religious groups. Across the country, efforts were made to remove the book from schools and public libraries. Some of these challenges reached the courts, where they all failed. In one case, a Federal Court rejected as unconstitutional a local resolution passed in Wichita Falls, Texas, that ordered the public library to remove And Tango Makes Three, along with another similarly themed controversial book (Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman) from the children's section and place them in the restricted adult section of the library.
Here's my own list of the top five books, both modern classics and those from the past, which have been banned or challenged over the years, and still face attempts at censorship:
1. Bridge To Terabithia (1977) by Katherine Paterson. This beloved and acclaimed children's novel, a favorite of both young and old readers alike, (and one of my all time favorites) is still popular over thirty years since it was first published, and still appears on teachers' assigned reading lists. It's also the most banned or challenged children's book of all time. Set in rural Virginia, the heart wrenching tale of two lonely, outcast children (poor, artistically gifted farm boy Jess Aarons and imaginative, tomboyish city girl Leslie Burke) who, despite their differences, become soul mates and create an imaginary world of their own, only to be separated forever by tragedy, has been attacked for various reasons. Allegedly objectionable elements include its themes of death and grief, its bleakness and stark realism, the author's dialectic use of profane language, the ridiculing of authority figures (parents and teachers) and the negative depictions of Christians and Christianity.
2. The Catcher In The Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger. Salinger's brilliant, celebrated coming-of-age novel about rebellious, angst-ridden teen Holden Caulfield and his journey of self-discovery has been attacked since it was first published. A staple of study for high school English classes, this novel has been attacked for its frank language, sexual content, and undermining family values by promoting smoking, drinking, lying, and sexual promiscuity, and for other reasons. When teachers assign their students to read The Catcher In The Rye, they are often challenged by disgruntled parents and conservative groups, who also try to have the novel removed from school libraries.
3. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. This classic novel, a sequel to Twain's previous classic The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, features Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn on an adventure of his own. This book has been attacked by African-American activists for its frequent use of the racial epithet nigger and for its allegedly racist stereotyping of blacks. Twain scholars point out that when Huckleberry Finn meets runaway slave Jim, while initially opposed to the idea of Jim becoming a free man, Huck changes his mind after befriending the slave and traveling with him. Huck sees Jim as a good man who deserves to be free and helps him escape, even though doing so is illegal - it's considered a form of theft. Twain himself despised slavery and used his book to assail it, along with the Southern view that blacks were sub-human. Twain also assailed the Southern practice of lynching. In using the word nigger, Twain criticizes his fellow Southerners' racism by letting them speak their own ugly language. Ironically, when the novel was first published in 1884, it was attacked for its anti-racist stance.
4. The Harry Potter Series (1997-2007) by J.K. Rowling. Scottish author J.K. Rowling created a pop culture phenomenon with her series of seven fantasy novels about a young British orphan boy named Harry Potter who learns that he is a wizard. Rescued from his nasty muggle (non-magical) relatives by the giant Hagrid, Harry is whisked away into the hidden world of wizards and witches. Enrolled at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry will learn to master his magic (with the guidance of his mentor, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore) and meet his ultimate destiny - to face and destroy Lord Voldemort, the evil dark wizard who murdered his parents - as the forces of good and evil in the magical world prepare for a coming war.
Rowling's epic novels have inspired millions of children to put down their video game controllers and discover the joys of reading. She has also earned millions of adult fans as well - and the wrath of religious conservatives who claim that the Harry Potter novels encourage children to dabble in witchcraft and Satanism - despite the fact that magic is depicted as a gift one is born with and not related to a religion. Nevertheless, the books have been challenged frequently, especially in the conservative Southern states, where attempts have been made to remove the books from teachers' assigned reading lists and school libraries.
5. The His Dark Materials Trilogy (1995-2000) by Philip Pullman. British author Philip Pullman's brilliant epic fantasy trilogy is set in an alternate universe, on a world similar to Earth, in a country similar to England, where everyone has a daemon - an externalization of the soul that takes the form of a shape-shifting creature (and dear friend) that always remains by their side. The heroine is a bright, brash, imaginative, and mischievous 12-year-old girl named Lyra Belacqua. Her daemon is called Pantalaimon. Lyra is an orphan who lives with her uncle, Lord Asriel, at Oxford University.
When Lord Asriel makes an important discovery - the nature of Dust, the fabric of the universe - that threatens to invalidate the cruel, repressive, Catholic-esque monotheistic religion whose clerical body (the Magisterium) rules the world - his life is endangered. Lyra finds herself at the center of a prophecy. She is the chosen one who will not only bring down the Magisterium on her world, but bring about a revolution in Heaven as well. The being worshiped as God is actually not a benevolent god but an evil, dictatorial angel called Metatron who seized power over Heaven and the universe from The Authority - the first angel to emerge from the Dust - who is now aged and dying.
In The Subtle Knife, the second book in the trilogy, Lyra meets Will Parry, a boy her age from another universe and world (ours) who becomes her first love and partner in the prophecy, which is a reversal of John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy got its name. Lyra and Will become the new Adam and Eve, but instead of causing the fall of Man with their sin of fornication, they cause the fall of Metatron (God) and save Man. Where the Harry Potter novels invoked the wrath of religious conservatives over the issue of witchcraft, the His Dark Materials trilogy made them go ballistic, accusing author Philip Pullman of blasphemy, anti-Catholicism, and promoting atheism to children. Others complained about the books' violence, gore, sexual content, and the promotion of a heroine who is disobedient by nature and an accomplished liar.
The most (allegedly) objectionable elements of the story occur near the end. Lyra and Will free the Authority from confinement so he can die and become part of the Dust. Although an act of mercy, critics see this as the symbolic killing of God. In order to fulfill the prophecy, Will and Lyra make love. The sex scene is tastefully handled, as is the previous awakening of sexual feelings within Lyra. While Pullman's American publisher, Scholastic, Inc. (who also published the Harry Potter novels) censored some passages in the U.S. version of the third book, The Amber Spyglass, the entire trilogy of novels still faces challenges and bans in the United States.
Thanks to the ALA's Banned Books Week, more and more people have become aware of these attempts at censoring books in the United States and around the world, and the threat they pose to the individual's freedom to read what he wants and the freedom of libraries and bookstores to provide him and others with the material. The human rights organization Amnesty International joins the ALA in celebrating Banned Books Week by bringing attention to the plight of those around the world who are persecuted for what they write, publish, distribute, and read.
Quote Of The Day "All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship." - George Bernard Shaw
Vanguard Video Today's video is a series of videos featuring the staff of Kimberly-Little Chute Public Library in Wisconsin discussing their favorite banned books for Banned Books Week 2009. Enjoy!
From poetry to plays, our Internet Writing Workshop members have had yet another great week with publishing success across all venues.
Congratulations to this week's crew on all your accomplishments!
Jody
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Barry Basden
"Saved," my micro-story of a Fundamentalist upbringing, is now online in the U.K. ezine, The Recusant.
My flash, "All-American Boy," has been published by Calliope Nerve.
Jeannette Cezanne
My short play, "Mama's Boy," has been selected as part of the Fall Playwrights' Festival at the Provincetown Theater in Provincetown, MA. There was a lot of competition and I'm thrilled to have been chosen. The festival takes place over the first two weekends in November.
Karna Converse
I just received my copy of A Cup of Comfort Book of Christmas Prayer. The book is a collection of scripture, stories and devotions that mark each day from Advent to Epiphany (December 1 to January 6) and will be on the shelves (in hardcover) in October. I submitted four devotions for consideration and am thrilled about the one that was chosen -- it was definitely my favorite!
Cup of Comfort is a paying market. They typically receive 1000 or more submissions for their books.
I wanted to thank everyone in Poetry who helped me with it.
There is also a really fun bio section listed under 'Contributors' on the right hand side of the TOC. Be sure to check it out!
Thanks for all your support!
Sue Ellis
My book review about Lydia Lopokova, Bloomsbury Ballernina, is up at Internet Review of Books. The editors are a pleasure to work with and I am continually surprised at how much I enjoy the selections they send, which are not necessarily books I'd have chosen off the library shelf. Check it out if you think you might be interested in this biography. It was fascinating.
Week before last at Practice, the assignment called for writing about the road to hell--how an action can lead to unexpected consequences. I tinkered with my submission and sent it off to Calliope Nerve (thanks Barry, for yahooing your wonderful story, which is where I learned of the website). I sent the story in last night and this moring had an acceptance for sometime in October.
Rebecca Gaffron
My short-fiction piece, "Origami," will be included in the October issue of Flash Fiction Magazine.
I'm in good company with Tom at Boston Literary Magazine where my short fiction "The Fencer" is also posted.
Dawn Goldsmith
Glenn Cooper, author of Secret of the Seventh Son, was a guest blogger this week on my Observations blog, and he's posted an original, rousing success story with some great advice. I hope you'll check it out.
Also, Ann Hite turned me on to the blog site A Good Blog is Hard to Find, where my guest blog was just posted.
I am also still in seventh heaven about the popularity of my writing blog, Observations. Today I have a link to a nifty research center that all writers could find fascinating. And Gary Presley, bless his heart, has been hard at work behind the scenes posting a few IWW book covers! Let me know if we missed yours.
Ann Hite
I have two book reviews up at Feminist Review: Man From Kinvara by Tess Gallagher and Kiss the Sky by Farai Chideya.
I loved getting to read Ms. Gallagher's new work before it hit the press; I'm a huge fan of her work. Farai Chideya's book allowed me to step out of my box a little. Enjoy.
My one and only attempt at dark fiction, "Quell The Voices" -- this is a Black Mountain story -- was accepted at Shadowcast for both online publication and their first audio anthology. I'm so excited because this is a new genre for me.
Also, my story "Mister Snake Gets Religion" was accepted by Dew On The Kudzu ezine. They are looking for more southern stories, fiction or nonfiction, and also poems. Check them out.
Carter Jefferson
Camroc Press Review has published a little story of mine, "Don't Write to Me."
If there's one thing I appreciate, it's a good editor. In this case, Barry [Basden] caught an error that would have been quite embarrassing. He also knows how to make whatever he gets better.
Tom Mahony
My short story, "Swell," has just been reprinted in Burst.
Exercise: In 300 words or less, write a dialogue involving two or three characters,each with a separate voice. Use a minimum of dialogue tags. The voices should tell us something about each character and help us tell the characters apart. Use narrative, but keep it to a minimum.
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Character voice is one of the tools the writer can use to define character and set the mood. Voice consists of many things: diction, pronunciation, rhythm,sentence structure, word choice, idioms used, level of grammar, recurrent topics or speaking habits, and so on.
Think of the voices in Tom Sawyer--they help us know the characters and the setting. The voices change to reflect the characters' moods. In a more recent example, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a great example of the use of voice. The narration in this novel alternates between five characters: the mother, and her four daughters. Each of those characters has her own voice, so that if I open the book at random, I can quickly tell which character is narrating.
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Exercise: In 300 words or less, write a dialogue involving two or three characters, each with a separate voice. Use a minimum of dialogue tags. The voices should tell us something about each character and help us tell the characters apart. Use narrative, but keep it to a minimum.
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When critiquing a submission, point out your impression of each character, based on the dialogue clues.
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 September 25th, 1897, the legendary American novelist William Faulkner was born. He was born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi. He was named after his great-grandfather, who had been a colonel in the Confederate Army and an important figure in Northern Mississippi. A town in nearby Tippah County had also been named after him. When Faulkner was four years old, the family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he would live on and off for the rest of his life. Oxford became the model for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner's writings. It was located in Lafayette County, which served as the model for Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County.
As a teenager, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham and planned to marry her, but another suitor, Cornell Franklin, proposed first, and Estelle's parents demanded that she marry him because he came from a respectable family and his parents were old friends of theirs. Ten years later, Estelle's marriage fell apart and she was divorced in April of 1929. Two months after her divorce was finalized, William Faulkner married Estelle.
During the last year of World War 1, Faulkner tried to enlist in the Army but was deemed unfit for service due to his height, or rather, his lack of it: he only stood about 5'5" tall. Undaunted, Faulkner joined first the Canadian then the British Royal Air Force, but saw no action. When he joined the Royal Air Force, he changed the spelling of his last name from Falkner to Faulkner, but legend has it that the change had been made by a careless typesetter during the printing of his first novel. When asked about the misspelling of his name, Faulkner allegedly replied, "Either way suits me."
Although he would always be associated with Mississippi, Faulkner wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay (1925) while living in New Orleans. He had been encouraged to write by his friend, writer Sherwood Anderson. The small house in New Orleans where Faulkner lived and wrote, located at 645 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral, now serves as the premises of Faulkner House Books and the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society. Soldiers' Pay told the story of a World War 1 pilot who returns to his home town in Georgia after suffering a severe head injury in combat, from which he is dying.
Throughout the late 1920s, Faulkner honed his craft and published more novels. His fourth novel, The Sound And The Fury, (1929) while not a commercial success at the time of its publication, (though it would become a bestseller after Faulkner's shocking sixth novel was published in 1931) has since been regarded as his first masterpiece. Making bold and brilliant use of experimental techniques in narration and non-linear plotting, the novel told the story of the once great Compson family, formerly respected Old Southern aristocrats. Now the family teeters on dissolution and its reputation is tarnished.
The novel is divided into four sections. The first three sections feature first person narration, each section narrated by one of the grown Compson sons. The fourth section is told in third-person narration and follows Dilsey Gibson, the matriarch of the servant family that works for the Compsons, as she observes the slow destruction of the Compson family. All four sections are not in chronological order. The first section is narrated by 33-year-old Benjy Compson, the youngest son, who is an embarrassment to the family because he is retarded. The only ones who care for him are his beloved older sister, Candace "Caddy" Compson and the matriarchal servant woman, Dilsey Gibson. In Benjy's narration, Faulkner makes dazzling use of impressionistic language to convey his retardation.
As the novel progresses, the reader is drawn into the self-destructive web that has ensnared the Compsons, which includes nihilism, racism, sexual frustration, sexual promiscuity, suicide, mental illness, and financial crisis. The Sound And The Fury is rightfully considered one of the greatest American novels ever written. Today, it still appears frequently on required reading lists for high school and college English classes.
Faulkner's next novel, As I Lay Dying, (1930) is also considered a classic and expands on the techniques Faulkner used in The Sound And The Fury. The narration is still in the stream-of-consciouness style, but this time, the story is narrated by 15 different people - including the late family matriarch who provides narration while she lies dead in her coffin. Her name is Addie Bundren, and the novel deals with her family's quest to honor her last wish, which is to be buried in Jefferson Mississippi. As the story unfolds, we learn all about the Bundren family, including how one of Addie's children is illegitimate, conceived as the result of her affair with a preacher.
In 1931, William Faulkner would publish the novel that first made him famous - or some would say, infamous. Sanctuary not only proved to be a shocker for 1930s readers, it also made Faulkner's name as a writer and awakened interest in his brilliant earlier works. Ironically, Sanctuary, a Southern Gothic potboiler, was deliberately written to be shocking; Faulkner was in serious financial straits and needed to write something that would make him some fast money. There were no artistic intentions behind it.
Set in 1929 Mississippi, Sanctuary told the story of Temple Drake, an attractive young woman from a wealthy, respected Southern family - her father is a well-known and powerful judge. Although a college student at the University of Mississippi, Temple Drake is shallow and vapid. A wild, promiscuous party girl, Temple loves to go drinking and carousing with boys, and they love to drink and carouse with her.
During one night of partying, Temple becomes involved in a drunk driving accident. She and her bootlegger boyfriend Gowan Stevens are hidden from the police by his bootlegging crew members, Tommy and Popeye. Tommy is good-natured, but Popeye is an impotent, degenerate psychopathic criminal. After Popeye catches Temple and Tommy making love, he kills Tommy and rapes Temple with a corncob. He eventually kidnaps her and forces her to live and work at a brothel he owns. The story climaxes with a sensational murder trial where Temple, who enjoyed her degradation at Popeye's hands, falsely accuses Lee Godwin, another bootlegger, of raping her and killing Tommy - crimes for which Godwin is wrongly convicted and lynched.
Believe it or not, Sanctuary was adapted as a feature film in 1933. Although the novel was heavily sanitized for the screen (with no references to corncobs and the character of Popeye renamed Trigger to avoid confusion with the popular comic strip character) and retitled The Story Of Temple Drake, the resulting film still caused a furor and helped bring about the Production Code crackdown the following year. Twenty years after the publication of Sanctuary, Faulkner would publish a sequel called Requiem For A Nun, which follows Temple Drake, now a wife and mother, as she struggles to deal with her violent, turbulent past. The sequel is no simple potboiler - it's written in Faulkner's experimental literary style. In fact, the book is part novel and part play. The entire book would be adapted as a stage play by French novelist and playwright Albert Camus in 1956.
William Faulkner would continue to write more great novels, including Light In August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Hamlet (1940), and Intruder In The Dust (1948). He was also a prolific short story writer; A Rose For Emily, Red Leaves, That Evening Sun, and Dry September were among his most acclaimed and popular stories, and often published in anthologies. In 1949, Faulkner received a Nobel Prize for Literature. He donated a portion of his prize money "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers," which would eventually result in the establishment of the PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction. Faulkner donated another portion of his prize money to set up a scholarship fund for black students at Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
In the early 1940s, legendary film director Howard Hawks invited Faulkner to come to Hollywood to become a screenwriter for his movies. Faulkner gladly accepted the offer, as he needed the money and the pay was good. He would contribute to the scripts of Hawks' film classics such as his adaptations of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Ernest Hemingway's To Have And Have Not. Faulkner's work as a screenwriter led him to become friends with Hawks, actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and other Hollywood illuminati.
Faulkner suffered from a lifelong drinking problem. Though he would often tell friends, family, and the press that he drank while he wrote because he believed that alcohol helped fuel the creative process, many believe that he drank to escape the pressures of his life, including his frequent financial difficulties. In 1959, Faulkner was seriously injured in a horse-riding accident. His injuries and the ravages of alcoholism led to the deterioration of his health. He died of a heart attack in 1962 at the age of 64.
Before he died, Faulkner completed his last novel, The Reivers, which was supposedly the book he intended to end his writing career with. The brilliant coming-of-age story, set in early 20th century Memphis, won Faulkner the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was awarded to him posthumously in 1963. The novel would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1969 directed by Mark Rydell and starring Steve McQueen, Mitch Vogel, and Burgess Meredith.
Quote Of The Day "Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him." - William Faulkner
Vanguard Video Today's video features a rare recording of William Faulkner giving his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Faulkner claimed that he was so drunk, he didn't remember giving the speech. Is that a humorous exaggeration or the truth? Listen and decide for yourself! Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On September 24th, 1896, the legendary writer F. Scott Fitzgerald was born. He was born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fitzgerald was named after his famous distant relative, poet Francis Scott Key, but family and friends called him Scott. He spent most of his childhood in upstate New York, but returned to Minnesota in 1908 after his father was fired from his job at Procter & Gamble.
Fitzgerald was twelve years old when his first short story was published in a school newspaper; it was a detective story. After returning to Minnesota, Fitzgerald spent three years at St. Paul Academy, but was expelled at the age of 16 for neglecting his studies. However, not long afterward, when he attended Newman School in Hackensack, he excelled at academics. In 1913, at the age of 17, Fitzgerald entered Princeton University, where he met and became friends with future writers and literary critics Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop.
Also at Princeton, Fitzgerald became involved with and wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club, a student theater troupe that puts on an original, student-written musical comedy every year, then takes the show on tour over the winter holiday season. Fitzgerald's experience writing for the Club inspired him to write his first novel, The Great Egoist. He submitted it for publication to Charles Scribner's Sons. The editor praised Fitzgerald's writing, but ultimately rejected his novel.
During World War 1, Fitzgerald left Princeton to join the Navy, but the war ended shortly after he enlisted. He was stationed at Camp Sheridan, where he met a girl named Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama State Supreme Court judge. They fell in love and became engaged. In 1919, Fitzgerald moved into an apartment in New York City, where he took a job at an advertising firm and wrote short stories on the side, but he was unable to convince Zelda that he could support her. The engagement was called off.
Fitzgerald moved back in with his parents in St. Paul and began revising his previously rejected novel. Rewritten and retitled This Side Of Paradise, the novel was accepted by Scribner's for publication. It was published on March 26th, 1920, and became one of the most popular novels of the year. A classic of the flapper generation, the novel told the story of Amory Blaine, a handsome young Princeton University student and aspiring writer who learns a bitter lesson about status seeking and greed via two doomed romances with wealthy debutantes.
The success of Fitzgerald's novel, which also helped raise the prices for his short stories, enabled him to make a decent living, so he and Zelda were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral. They would have only one child, a daughter, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, born on October 26th, 1921. The 1920s proved to be an influential decade in F. Scott Fitzgerald's development as a writer. His second novel, The Beautiful And Damned (1922) was a semi-autobiographical story of a wealthy heir, Anthony Patch, his relationship with his wife, Gloria, and his struggle with alcoholism. It was a brilliantly written character study, but Fitzgerald's third novel would prove to be his masterpiece.
The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is a masterful chronicle of the era that Fitzgerald dubbed the "Jazz Age." - the post World War 1 era of Prohibition, organized crime, uncontrolled drinking, flappers, and other rowdy, disaffected youth. Set during the summer of 1922, the novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner and World War 1 veteran who moves to New York City to seek his fortune. At a lavish party, he meets the host - a mysterious wealthy man named Jay Gatsby, who claims to recognize Nick from his Army days during the Great War.
Nick and Gatsby strike up an odd, yet close friendship. Nick is bemused when Gatsby introduces him to Meyer Wolfsheim, a Jewish underworld figure. Gatsby is also a former suitor of Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, now the selfish, spoiled wife of millionaire Tom Buchanan. Nick arranges a meeting between Gatsby and Daisy. The two begin an affair which angers Tom, even though he has a mistress on the side. Nick stands by his friend Gatsby and soon finds himself caught in a web of adultery, decadence, and ultimately, murder.
Within a year of its initial publication, The Great Gatsby was adapted as a Broadway play and a feature film, but the novel was not popular and sold less than 25,000 copies during Fitzgerald's lifetime. However, when it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly gained a huge readership and a reputation as one of the greatest American novels of all time. It would be adapted again as a feature film, the most acclaimed version released in 1974 and starring Robert Redford as Gatsby.
During the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald made several visits to Europe, most notably Paris, where he became friends with many of the American expatriate writers living there, including Ernest Hemingway, who became his closest friend. They would spend lots of time drinking, talking, and exchanging manuscripts. Fitzgerald helped boost Hemingway's career. Unfortunately, Hemingway and Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, couldn't stand each other.
Hemingway accused Zelda of being insane (which she was) and encouraging Fitzgerald to drink heavily in order to distract him from writing novels. That way, he could devote his attention to cranking out short stories strictly for money to keep Zelda in the life of luxury to which she was accustomed. Zelda accused Hemingway of using Fitzgerald to further his own career. She also accused him of having a homosexual affair with her husband. There is no evidence to support this accusation, which was obviously the product of Zelda's paranoia. To punish his wife for questioning his masculinity, Fitzgerald slept with a female prostitute and flaunted it. The conflict between Hemingway and Zelda resulted in the ending of Fitzgerald's friendship with him and a lifelong animosity between the two men.
At first, the Fitzgeralds' marriage had been productive. Zelda's diaries and large collection of correspondence would inspire Scott's writings; sometimes he even quoted passages from her writings. But the alcoholism and Zelda's worsening schizophrenia began to take its toll. In 1934, Fitzgerald finally published his long awaited fourth novel, Tender Is The Night. Fitzgerald had started writing the novel in 1932, while Zelda was hospitalized for her schizophrenia.
Tender Is The Night received glowing reviews and briefly made the bestseller list, but its reception was nowhere near as big as that of The Great Gatsby. In serious financial trouble, Fitzgerald spent the remainder of his life writing commercial short stories for money and working for Hollywood movie studio MGM as a screenwriter for hire - work he found degrading. He worked on many scripts and even wrote some unfilmed scenes for Gone With The Wind.
Fitzgerald would mock himself in a series of 17 short stories known as the Pat Hobby Stories, which would later be republished as a collection. Pat Hobby, a once great screenwriter of the silent film era, is now an alcoholic hack haunting studio lots looking to write for a few dollars, or better yet, an on-screen credit. His antics usually backfire and result in more humiliation.
By the late 1930s, many years of extremely heavy drinking had taken a toll on F. Scott Fitzgerald's health. In late 1940, Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks. On December 21st, 1940, the day after he suffered his second heart attack, he suffered a third, massive heart attack and died at the age of 44. Among the attendants at his wake was writer Dorothy Parker, who reportedly wept and murmured, "the poor son of a bitch" - a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in The Great Gatsby.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's last novel, The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously in 1942.
Quote Of The Day "An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vanguard Video Today's video features a clip from the acclaimed 1974 feature film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Enjoy!
Lit Drift - A New Online Writing Resource Lit Drift is a new online resource, community, and blog dedicated to the art and craft of writing in the 21st century. In addition to editorial content, Lit Drift also features daily creative prompts, daily short stories, and a weekly free book giveaway called Free Book Friday. Visit Lit Drift today at the following link:
This Day In Writing History On September 23rd, 480 BCE, the legendary ancient Greek poet and playwright Euripides was born. He was born on the Greek island of Salamis. Evidence suggests that he was born into a wealthy family. It has been recorded that Euripides served as a cup-bearer (a royal court officer whose duty was to serve drinks at the royal table) for Apollo's dancers, but he soon came to question his religion after being influenced by the great thinkers of the day, including Sophocles, Protagoras, and Anaxagoras.
Euripides was married twice; his wives were Choerile and Melito, though it's not clear which was his first wife. He had three sons. Supposedly, he also had a daughter who was killed by a rabid dog, though this may have been a joke attributed to the comic playwright Aristophanes, who often poked fun at Euripides.
Not much else is known about Euripides' private and public life. In addition to his literary talents, he was an accomplished painter and athlete. He once traveled to Syracuse, Sicily, and was involved in various public and political activities. At the invitation of King Archelaus 1 of Macedon, Euripides left Athens and moved to Macedonia, where he took up permanent residence.
It has been said that Euripides wrote his plays in a cave on the Island of Salamis; the ten-chambered cave, now known as the Cave of Euripides, was the subject of an archaeological dig in the 1990s. While the complete manuscripts of many of his plays (including his very best ones) survived, many more plays were lost, with only fragments or a handful of lines left to prove their existence.
In 455 BCE, Euripides competed for the first time in the City Dionysia, the famous Athenian dramatic festival. He entered his second play, Medea, which was written in 431 BCE. The play was Euripides' take on the Medea myth. After completing his quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason leaves his wife Medea so he can marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon. Driven to great anger and despair by this betrayal, Medea poisons Glauce and Creon, then takes an even crueler revenge on Jason by murdering her own sons - Jason's children.
Euripides' Medea is a sympathetic character who suffers from the disadvantage of being a woman in a stifling patriarchal society that regards her as property to be acquired and discarded at will. This and her identity as a barbarian woman would raise the ire of ancient Greek audiences. Euripides' proto-feminist treatment of women, his sympathetic depiction of intelligent slaves, and his meditations on the irrationality of religion would establish him as a progressive thinker and a modernist playwright way ahead of his time. His fellow playwright Sophocles said that while he portrayed men as they ought to be, Euripides portrayed them as they were.
Medea placed third in the City Dionysia, reportedly because Euripides refused to brown nose the judges. Another of his classic plays, The Trojan Women (415 BCE), would win second prize. The play, produced during the Peloponnesian War, is considered a biting commentary on the capture of the Island of Melos by the Athenians earlier that year, and the Athenians' subsequent slaughter and enslavement of their fellow Greeks.
Euripides' last and greatest play, The Bacchae, completed before his death in 406 BCE, would finally win him first prize at the City Dionysia competition when it was performed a year later. The prize would be awarded posthumously. The Bacchae is a gruesome tragedy based on the myth of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agave, who were punished by the god Dionysus (King Pentheus' cousin) for refusing to worship him.
Euripides would also write Cyclops, the only complete satyr play (the ancient Greek equivalent of bawdy burlesque comedy) to survive. He died of illness at the age of 74, most likely the result of his exposure to the harsh Macedon winter. His works would influence the New Comedy, Roman drama, and the French classicists. His influence as a dramatist continues to this day.
Quote Of The Day "Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing." - Euripides
Vanguard Video Today's video features a clip of a rare 1959 performance of Euripides' Medea, with Dame Judith Anderson in the title role. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On September 21st, 1947, the legendary horror novelist Stephen King was born. He was born in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father left the house, claiming that he was going to buy cigarettes. Instead, he walked out on the family, leaving King's mother Ruth to raise Stephen and his older brother David alone. She moved the family around several times, to several different states, before returning to live in Durham, Maine, where Ruth also cared for her ailing parents until they died.
As a young boy, Stephen King apparently witnessed the death of one of his friends, who had been struck and killed by a train. King has no memory of the incident, but that day, after he went out to play with his friend, he came home seemingly in shock and unable to speak. The King family then learned of his friend's death. Some have speculated that the roots of the dark and disturbing images in King's horror novels may lie within his repressed memory of witnessing the gruesome death of his childhood friend. King has rejected this idea.
King's interest in writing was awakened, when, as a boy, while exploring the attic with his brother, King found a collection of paperback books that had belonged to his father. The books included an anthology of stories published by Weird Tales magazine and a collection of short stories by horror master H.P. Lovecraft, whom King has credited as a major influence. By the time he started high school, King had become enamored with EC's popular line of horror comics, including Tales From The Crypt, which King later would pay tribute to in his screenplay for the original horror film Creepshow.
As a high school student, King began writing stories and contributed articles for Dave's Rag, a newspaper his brother published and printed with a mimeograph machine. He also sold copies of his stories to his classmates. King's first commercially published story, I Was A Teenage Grave Robber, was published in 1965, in a serialized format, by a fanzine called Comics Review. A revised version of the story would be published in 1966 by another fanzine, Stories Of Suspense, as In A Half-World Of Terror.
In 1966, Stephen King attended the University of Maine, where he studied English. He wrote a column for the student newspaper called Steve King's Garbage Truck and took part in a writing workshop. In order to pay for his tuition, King took odd jobs, including one at an industrial laundry that would inspire him to write his short story, The Mangler. King's first published story as a professional writer, The Glass Floor, was published in 1967 by Startling Mystery Stories.
After he graduated college in 1970, Stephen King obtained a teaching certificate, but was unable to find work as a teacher, so he continued doing odd jobs and supplemented his income by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier and Swank. (At the time, it was common for men's magazines, from high-paying markets like Playboy and Penthouse to smaller ones like Cavalier and Swank, to publish short stories as well as articles and pictorials.) Many of these early stories would appear in King's 1978 short story collection, Night Shift. In 1971, King married his college sweetheart, Tabitha Spruce, (who would go on to become a best selling novelist herself) who would bear him three children - Naomi, Joe, and Owen.
Joe Hillstrom King would become a best selling and award winning novelist, writing under the pseudonym Joe Hill - the name of the famous labor leader for whom he was named. Owen King would become a writer as well, and Naomi would become an ordained minister for the Unitarian Universalist Church.
While teaching at the Hampden Academy, Stephen King began working on his first novel while battling a drinking problem that would last a decade. After accruing numerous rejection slips for other writings, King became so discouraged that he threw an early draft of his novel in the trash. His wife rescued the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. To his surprise, Carrie was published. It told the story of Carrie White, a lonely, awkward, and unattractive teenage girl who is tormented by both her cruel classmates and her fanatically religious mother. Carrie discovers that she possesses telekinetic powers - the ability to move objects with her mind. When her classmates play a cruel joke and humiliate her at the prom, Carrie uses her powers to unleash horrific vengeance. Then she takes equally horrific revenge on her mother.
King received a $2,500 advance on the first edition hardcover publication of Carrie, which wasn't much, even then. Later, when King's agent called to tell him that the paperback rights to Carrie had been sold for $400,000 he couldn't believe it. Stunned and in shock, King later said that "The only thing I could think to do was go out and buy my wife a hair dryer." King moved his family to Southern Maine so he could be near his ailing mother, who was dying of uterine cancer. He began writing his second novel, Salem's Lot. Still in the grip of a severe drinking problem, King was drunk the day before he gave the eulogy at his mother's funeral.
Salem's Lot was published in 1975. It told the story of a small New England town infested with vampires. It would be adapted as an acclaimed TV miniseries in 1979 and remade in 2004. In 1976, the first feature film adaptation of Stephen King's works was released. Carrie, directed by Brian De Palma, starred Sissy Spacek as the telekinetic teen, Piper Laurie as her demented mother, and, in early roles, William Katt as Carrie's prom date and John Travolta as the boyfriend of Carrie's archenemy. Amy Irving played Sue Snell, the remorseful classmate who befriends Carrie. The acclaim and success of the Carrie movie would make King's early career. A sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, would be released in 1999. It really had nothing to do with King's novel. It was about another teenage girl with telekinetic powers who had been sired by Carrie White's adulterous father. King's novel would be adapted as a Broadway musical in 1988 and a TV movie in 2o02.
In 1977, Stephen King would publish his third novel. This book, and the 1980 feature film adaptation of it (which King hated) would make him a household name and establish him as the master of horror. The Shining was set in Colorado, (where the King family was living while Stephen worked on the novel) and was inspired by King's visit to the Stanley Hotel, a resort hotel located near Estes Park, Colorado. The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as winter caretaker at the huge and world famous Overlook Hotel in Colorado.
Torrance was a prep school teacher, but his alcoholism cost him his job and nearly ended his marriage. In the same year, Jack accidentally broke his son's arm and deliberately assaulted an obnoxious student while in a drunken rage. He sees his caretaker's job as a means of providing for his family and rebuilding his life. Now sober, he plans to write during his downtime. Excited to begin his new life, Jack packs up his wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny and moves them to the Overlook. The fact that the hotel's previous caretaker went insane and murdered his family before killing himself doesn't dissuade Jack from the taking the job.
Little Danny, however, is terrified. He possesses formidable psychic powers and senses that something bad is going to happen at the Overlook. When they arrive at the hotel, Danny meets head chef Dick Hallorann. Dick possesses the same psychic powers as Danny, which he calls "shining." He tells Danny that the horrifying images he sees can't hurt him, but warns him to stay out of room 217. (Room 217 was the room that the Kings stayed in at the Stanley Hotel) Jack Torrance uncovers information about the Overlook's past. Many murders and suicides took place in the hotel, which seems to have been haunted from the day it was built - on an Indian burial ground. Nevertheless, Jack intends to stay and do his job. As Danny struggles to deal with his horrific psychic visions, an evil presence begins to erode Jack's sanity until it possesses him completely.
In 1980, legendary film maker Stanley Kubrick directed a feature film adaptation of The Shining. The movie starred Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, Shelly Duvall as Wendy, Danny Lloyd as Danny, and Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann. The combination of Kubrick's tight direction, the claustrophobic cinematography, the foreboding soundtrack, and Jack Nicholson's bravura performance made it a cult classic horror film that remains hugely popular to this day. However, Stephen King hated the movie, as Kubrick's screenplay was markedly different than King's novel and changed the ending.
In 1997, The Shining was adapted as a TV miniseries. It featured a teleplay written by Stephen King himself, and solid performances by Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay as Jack and Wendy Torrance, Courtland Mead as Danny, and a wonderful Melvin Van Peebles as Dick Hallorann. The miniseries also a had great technical hook - it was filmed on location at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado - the hotel where King and his family stayed, which inspired him to write the novel. While competently directed by Mick Garris, the miniseries suffers from its low budget, bland cinematography, and the stifling censorship restrictions of the commercial TV medium. Although faithful to the novel, the miniseries lacks the atmosphere and intensity of Kubrick's movie, which is far more frightening.
Not content to rest on his laurels, Stephen King continued to write prolifically, authoring dozens of horror novels, most of which were adapted for the screen. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, King published a series of novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. He did this as an experiment to answer a nagging question: Was his success an accident of fate? The Bachman novels included Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979) Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982), which were early, unpublished novels written before Carrie.
After the last Bachman novel, Thinner, was published in 1984, Steve Brown, a bookstore clerk from Washington D.C., noticed many similarities between Bachman's writing style and Stephen King's. Determined to uncover the truth, Brown looked up the publisher's records in the Library of Congress and confirmed that Richard Bachman was in fact Stephen King. After his pseudonym was exposed, King issued a press release announcing the death of Richard Bachman from "cancer of the pseudonym." He would later resurrect Bachman in 1996, publishing The Regulators under Bachman's name. The novel was a companion piece to King's novel, Desperation, which was released at the same time. In 2006, King published Blaze, a rewrite of an unpublished Bachman novel that had been written in 1973. He had found the original manuscript in a trunk.
After King's pseudonym was outed, the first four Richard Bachman novels were republished in one large volume, The Bachman Books. They were also published separately. After three school shooting incidents (in 1989, 1996, and 1997) occurred, where the shooters were later found to have copies of Rage in their lockers, Stephen King pulled his first Bachman novel out of circulation. Rage, which had been first published in 1977, told the story of Charlie Decker, a mentally disturbed high school student who finally snaps.
After returning to school following a suspension for assaulting a teacher with a heavy wrench, Charlie brings a gun to class and holds his teacher and classmates hostage, forcing them to play a version of "truth or dare" where they must expose their deepest secrets and fears. The hostage situation turns into a kind of group therapy session that proves beneficial for some of the hostages. As the police surround the school, they find that they are dealing with an intelligent, cunning, and dangerous psychotic. And they are about to make a bad situation even worse.
King pulled Rage out of print because he feared that it might inspire more troubled teens to try and recreate his main character's rampage. In 2007, after troubled Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui went on a shooting rampage, it was revealed that Cho's professors, as well as the university's administrators and mental health staff, were aware of Cho's disturbing writings, but did nothing about them. In an article about this, written by King for Entertainment Weekly magazine, King said that "Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing - including a short story called Cain Rose Up and the novel Rage - would have raised red flags, and I'm certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them..."
Although he is affectionately known as the "master of horror," King has occasionally ventured into other genres. In 1982, he published an anthology of novellas called Different Seasons which featured a coming of age story called The Body, later adapted as a popular movie called Stand By Me, and a moving prison drama, Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption, which was filmed as the acclaimed movie, The Shawshank Redemption. Another novella, Apt Pupil, a psychological thriller, would also be filmed, but the movie omits the novella's shocking ending. King's most popular non-horror venture would prove to be his magnum opus. The Dark Tower series of novels, which began with The Gunslinger (1982), was an epic fantasy set in an alternate reality, on a parallel world similar to Earth, that is dying.
The Gunslinger opens with gunfighter Roland of Gilead chasing "the man in black," an evil sorcerer, across the desert. The land is a nightmarish, surreal wasteland reminiscent of the 19th century American Old West. Through the series of seven novels, Roland pursues his quarry while on a quest to reach the Dark Tower. The Dark Tower series is Stephen King at his best, displaying his formidable skill as a storyteller. Meticulously detailed and masterfully plotted, the Dark Tower novels are immensely popular with King fans, many of whom claim the series as their favorites of King's novels.
On June 19th, 1999, Stephen King's incredible and prolific literary career - and his life - nearly came to a sudden end. While out for his daily walk in Center Lovell, Maine, King was struck from behind by a minivan. The force of impact threw King's body some 14 feet off the road. When a Deputy Sheriff arrived on the scene, King was conscious enough to give out his emergency contact information, though he had suffered a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, a lacerated scalp, and a broken hip. After enduring five operations in five days, and beginning the agonies of physical therapy, King started to write again. He needed to write, if only to distract him from the pain. He resumed work on a non-fiction book, On Writing, and also during his recovery, he wrote Dreamcatcher, (2001) which would prove to be one of his most viscerally graphic horror novels. At first, he was in too much pain and discomfort to write with a computer, so he wrote longhand, with a fountain pen.
Bryan Smith, the driver who had struck Stephen King, claimed to have been distracted by his dog, but he had nearly a dozen drunk driving offenses on his record. King was outraged when the local prosecutor allowed Smith to cop a plea. In exchange for his guilty plea, Smith's driver's license was suspended for a year and he received a six-month jail sentence - which was also suspended. In a strange and scary coincidence, on September 21st, 2000 - Stephen King's 53rd birthday - Bryan Smith was found dead in his trailer at the age of 42. Although the official cause of death was listed as an accidental overdose of the prescription painkiller fentanyl, rumors began to fly that either King had Smith killed or one of the horror master's fans took revenge, and made Smith's death look like an accident.
After Smith died, King's lawyer and two others bought his minivan for $1,500 to prevent it from being auctioned off on eBay. After King smashed up the minivan with a baseball bat, he had it crushed in a junkyard.
In 2002, King announced his retirement from writing, frustrated by his injuries, which made sitting for long periods of time uncomfortable. His retirement would prove to be short-lived, as he continued to recover. However, he no longer writes at the same pace that had made him so prolific in the past. He still produces great novels. His latest, Under The Dome, is due for release on November 10th, 2009. At 1,088 pages, it's his longest novel since his 1,142 page horror epic It was published in 1986. King's 1978 classic, The Stand, originally published in an edited 823-page format, would be republished in 1990 in its original uncut version at 1,168 pages.
While literary critics haven't always been kind to Stephen King, he has proven himself as one of our greatest modern novelists, and he remains a huge and powerful influence for aspiring writers everywhere.
Quote Of The Day "People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk." - Stephen King
Vanguard Video Today's video features a rare Stephen King TV interview from 2001. In this appearance on CBS' The Early Show to promote his novel Dreamcatcher, King discusses the horrific car accident that almost ended his life. Enjoy!
Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues.
Congratulations to this week's crew!
Jody
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Barry Basden
My microfiction, "Johnny Came By," is live on Dogzplot.
Thanks to all on the fiction list who took a look at it.
Mira Desai
I’m delighted to announce the publication of a translated story, "Trimurti," in Calquezine. The original story by Shri Pravinsinh Chavda is in Gujarati.
The title, literally "Three facets/statues" derives from the Hindu triumvirate of Gods, Lord Brahma (the creator), Lord Vishnu, (the nurturer), and Lord Shiv (the destroyer).
This tale of dawning awareness of a relationship and consequent measured grief at its close clearly ranks amongst the author’s finest works. Taking the boundaries of this story to another language, conveying this distinct measured sense without going overboard on the despair was the most difficult part of this translation.
Thanks, IWW!
Ruth Douillette
Camroc Press Review published a short piece of mine called "Coffee Break" -- a vignette about a mother and son. Lots of good things to read in editor Barry Basden's publication.
Tim Elhajj
My story, "What Kind of Father Am I," is up at Sweet.
Dawn Goldsmith
I've switched my blog Observations to a little different format focused more on writing and growing as a writer. I plan to do much like I have with the Subversive Stitcher blog and look for good information to help us grow as writers as I focus on my own writing and growth.
I welcome all comments and suggestions as I venture into this new focus.
Thanks very much to Ruth Douillette and Julie McGuire for the opportunity.
Deanna Hershiser
A piece that began long, was critted on NFiction, and is now shorter is up at Camroc Press Review. "A Discovered Legacy" recalls my grandma and dad's long-ago relationship with Richard Brautigan. Thanks for the help, everyone, and thanks, Barry Basden, for all your work with this journal.
Ann Hite
Here's another book I reviewed for Feminist Review, Kiss The Sky.
An article I wrote about a new fashion designer, entitled "Le Duel et Jewel," is to be published in Kismet Magazine on October 1st.
Judith Quaempts
50-1 accepted a small piece of mine that's up now. Thanks to Barry Basden for seeing it and emailing me about it.
Randy Radic
My review of The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe is up at Basil & Spice. Thanks to Kelly for the book and the opportunity.
My review of Street Legends is up on Alvah's Books. Thanks to Seth for the book and Rebeca for the opportunity.
My review of Carole Sutton's new book, And the Devil Laughed, is up at Alvah's Books. Thanks to Carole for the book and Rebeca for the opportunity.
Also, I am "pleased as punch" to announce that Alvah's Books has very kindly promoted me to the position of Senior Editor. Thank you, Rebeca!
Catherine Robinson
My first column in a real, albeit smaller circulation magazine is out. Hybrid Mom (page 44!) is available at Barnes & Noble, Gymboree, and through subscription.
Thanks for all the support. I feel like I've come a long way since the days when I just wrote letters to editors. And a long way to go!
Also, Tampa Bay readers voted me Best Female Contributor to Creative Loafing (the alternative weekly paper).
Bob Sanchez
iUniverse just told me that Barnes & Noble placed a small stocking order for When Pigs Fly. iU has no idea which B&N stores will get them. This is progress for a self-pubbed author!
And my favourite direct mail piece for Seagram's Passport Scotch -- Copywriting Ideas From Brand Names. Please read. It is funny and had the client in splits.
Wayne Scheer
Scribblers on the Roof, a new publication for stories and poems with Jewish themes or content, has reprinted my story, "Blind Date, 1960."
This piece was critiqued in both Practice and Fiction, so a big thanks to all.
Rebeca Schiller
I'm tooting my own horn before the piece is written, but I wanted to share how FaceBook or Twitter can actually come through on a writing assignment.
About a week ago, I had on my status that I was looking for more freelance writing gigs, and one of my friends (and I only know this person via FB, we've never met in person) asked if I was interested in writing for his art magazine, HandEye. He gave me the URL, I looked at it and saw that one of my artist friends would be a good fit. I pitched the idea--nothing fancy, just a simple email with my artist friend's website--and said if you like his stuff let me know and I'll do a profile piece about him and his work.
Well, he liked what he saw. I got the assignment and tomorrow afternoon I have an interview scheduled. It's a 500 word piece that will appear online. The best part of this is that this is the type of publication I always wanted to write for and it pays very nicely.
Carole Sutton
For those who remember the working title of Draper's Wharf, now renamed And the Devil Laughed, check out Randall Radic's Review on Alvah's Books.
Thanks to Randy for the review and Rebeca for the opportunity to display it.
Clive Warner
My piece on life in Mexico finally appeared in the Daily Telegraph (UK daily newspaper).
Virginia Winters
My short story, "A Superior Crime," has been accepted and is online at Pine Tree Mysteries.
Thanks to everyone who critiqued it.
My story, "Coming Home," critiqued by several of you, is up at Camroc Press Review.
Prepared by: Bob Sanchez Posted on: September 20, 2009
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Exercise: In 400 words or fewer, show us a person beset by fear.
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"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," FDR famously said.
We humans are hardwired to feel a range of emotions to fit the circumstances we face: love, hatred, anger, and joy, to name a few. They can be intertwined and confused, as fear and cowardice often are. Some succumb to their fears, while others don't. The soldier in combat knows he may die at any moment, yet he does his duty. Firefighters and police officers face their fears, yet do their jobs.
But we don't have to face death to feel fear. What about that final exam? That job interview? The speech you have to give? The teenager you're still waiting up for, and it's one a.m.? The sources of fear are endless; it can be the only reasonable emotion, or it can be irrational.
Get inside the poor bloke's head, letting us know how the person feels and why. The fear can be of pain or death, but feel free to inflict the worry of shame, imprisonment, divorce, dishonor, hell, public speaking, or even success.
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Exercise: In 400 words or fewer, show us a person beset by fear.
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In your critiques, consider whether the submission evokes a strong emotion in you--and never fear, because these Practice subs are always about the writing and never about the writer. 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 September 18th, 1987, Hellraiser, a feature film adaptation of Clive Barker's acclaimed horror novella The Hellbound Heart, was released to theaters. The movie was written and directed by Clive Barker himself - the first time that the popular British horror novelist ventured into film making.
It was not, however, the first time that Barker's writings were adapted for the screen. His short stories Transmutations and Rawhead Rex were adapted as feature films in 1985 and 1986, respectively. Barker hated both movies, which is why he decided to write and direct the next film adaptation himself.
Hellraiser opens with Frank (Sean Chapman), a hedonistic adventurer always in search of new sexual thrills, buying a mysterious antique Chinese puzzle box in an unnamed Third World country. Back home in England, Frank solves the puzzle and opens the box. Chains with small hooks on them fly out of the box and tear into Frank's flesh, then tear him apart. Three demonic beings called Cenobites appear and examine Frank's remains, after which, the leader, Pinhead, (Doug Bradley) picks up the puzzle box and closes it. The room returns to normal.
Later, Frank's brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) moves into Frank's house, along with his wife Julia. (Clare Higgins) They don't know what happened to Frank - they think he's off on another one of his adventures. When Larry goes up to the room where Frank was killed, he cuts his hand and some of his blood drips onto the floor - and mysteriously disappears into the floorboards. This allows Frank's soul to partially regenerate his body. He appears to Julia, with whom he once had an affair, and convinces her to help him complete the regeneration of his body so he can escape from the Cenobites, breaking the deal he made with them.
Soon, Julia is luring men up to the attic, where Frank drains them of their blood, which he uses to regenerate his body. He tells Julia about the Chinese puzzle box, which allows the Cenobites to cross over from their hellish dimension into ours. Soon, Frank, Julia, and Frank's teenage niece Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) all run afoul of the demonic Cenobites, who believe that the extremes of pleasure and pain are inseparable - and are more than happy to introduce the trio to the pleasures of pain.
When Hellraiser was completed, in order to avoid an X-rating, the MPAA required Clive Barker to trim some of the gore and tone down the overall sadomasochistic theme of the movie. Some of the cuts would later be restored without resulting in the loss of the film's R rating. Ironically, the movie's first working title was Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave.
Hellraiser became a huge box office hit, grossing twenty times its budget. Rightfully considered one of the great cult classic horror films, it would inspire numerous sequels and make British actor Doug Bradley, who plays Pinhead, a cult film icon. Clive Barker would write and direct more film adaptations of his works, including Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illusions (1995). He is currently working on a remake of Hellraiser, which is due for release in 2011.
Quote Of The Day "My imagination is my polestar; I steer by that." - Clive Barker
Vanguard Video Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for Hellraiser. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On September 17th, 1935, the legendary writer Ken Kesey was born. He was born in La Junta, Colorado, but when he was eleven years old, his parents, who were dairy farmers, moved the family to Springfield, Oregon. Kesey attended Springfield High School, where he excelled in academics and became a champion wrestler.
In 1956, while attending the University of Oregon in Eugene, (where he also won wrestling championships) Ken Kesey married his high school sweetheart, Norma "Faye" Haxby, whom he had first met in seventh grade. She would bear him three children. A year after they married, Kesey received a degree in speech and communication from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism. In 1958, he was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship grant to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University, which he did.
During his time at Stanford, Kesey volunteered to participate in Project MKULTRA at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hopital. Funded by the CIA, the project was a study of the effects of psychoactive drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline on people. Kesey would later write many accounts of his experiences with psychoactive drugs, both during Project MKULTRA and in private experimentation. His role as a guinea pig for the government project and his interaction with the patients at the veterans' hospital would serve as the inspiration for his first novel, which brought him international fame.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, published in 1962, was narrated by a mental patient - a docile half-Indian giant known as "Chief" Bromden, who pretends to be a deaf-mute. Chief tells the story of Randle Patrick McMurphy, an amiable transferee from a prison work farm. Convicted on a battery charge, McMurphy feigns insanity in order to serve out the remainder of his sentence in a mental hospital. With no real medical authority in charge, the ward is run by "the Big Nurse," Nurse Ratched, a cruel tyrant who rules her patients with an iron fist - and three strong young orderlies.
McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched with his rebellious attitude and disruptive behavior, which includes running poker games, making comments about her figure, and inciting his fellow patients to exercise their rights by voting to watch the World Series on TV. McMurphy inspires Chief to open up to him and the big Indian reveals that he can hear and talk. The two men team up to challenge Nurse Ratched's authority and are later forced to endure electroshock therapy.
The horrific treatments do nothing to temper McMurphy's rebellious nature, as he smuggles in liquor and prostitutes for his fellow patients. After Nurse Ratched's mental cruelty provokes a young patient to commit suicide, McMurphy attacks her and tries to strangle her. He is sent to the Disturbed Ward. Nurse Ratched recovers from her injuries but loses her voice - her most effective weapon for keeping the patients in line. McMurphy is lobotomized and left in a vegetative state. Realizing that the sight of him will demoralize the patients, serving as an example of what happens when you challenge authority, Chief smothers McMurphy with a pillow so he can die with dignity, thus robbing Nurse Ratched of her victory. Then he escapes from the hospital and returns to his tribe's land.
Time Magazine would later include One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in its list of the 100 Best English Language Novels From 1925 To 2005. It was adapted as a Broadway play by Dale Wasserman in 1963 and as an acclaimed feature film in 1975 directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy, Will Sampson as Chief, and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched. The movie swept the Oscars, winning Academy Awards for Best Actor, (Nicholson) Best Actress, (Fletcher) Best Director (Forman), Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Ken Kesey's second novel, Sometimes A Great Notion, published in 1964, has been compared to William Faulkner's novel, Absalom, Absalom! Set in the fictional Pacific Northwest logging town of Wakonda, Oregon, the novel tells the story of the Stampers, a family that owns and operates a logging company. After the invention and introduction of the chainsaw to the logging industry, the union loggers in Wakonda go on strike, demanding the same pay for shorter working hours due to a decreasing need for labor.
Since the Stamper family's logging company is non-union, they decide to keep working and supply the local mill with all the lumber that the union workers would have supplied, had they not gone out on strike. The novel explores the details and ramifications of this decision, no doubt the result of half-crazed old patriarch Henry Stamper's philosophy of "never give a inch," which has defined the Stamper family and its relationship with the town. While more rooted in realism than Kesey's first novel, Sometimes A Great Notion is also more experimental, with alternating first-person narratives. It is considered a masterpiece of Northwestern American literature. It was adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1970, directed by Paul Newman, who also starred as Henry Stamper.
Following the publication of Sometimes A Great Notion in 1964, Kesey had to go to New York City for a promotional appearance. So, he planned a cross country road trip with some friends, including Beat Generation icons Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, counterculture icon Wavy Gravy, and others. Calling themselves the Merry Pranksters, they drove to New York in an old school bus painted with psychedelic colors that they nicknamed Furthur. When he returned to California, Kesey held a series of famous, psychedelic parties called Acid Tests. Held in venues decorated with fluorescent paint, the Acid Tests featured light shows, music, and plenty of LSD. The main house band for these events was a then little known jam band called The Grateful Dead. Tom Wolfe would write about the Acid Tests in his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, so named because the LSD would be dispensed in sugar cubes added to cups of Kool-Aid.
In 1965, after being arrested for possession of marijuana, Ken Kesey faked his own death to trick police, then fled to Mexico. When the came back to the United States eight months later, he was caught and sentenced to five months at the San Mateo County Jail. After serving his time, Kesey moved back to his family farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, where he stayed for the rest of his life and continued to write. He published three more novels, Caverns (1989), Sailor Song (1992), and Last Go Round (1994). He also published a short story collection, Demon Box (1986), and two collections of essays.
Ken Kesey's last major work was an essay published in Rolling Stone magazine, where he called for peace following the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. He died of complications from liver cancer surgery on November 10th, 2001. He was 66 years old. He is rightfully considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Quote Of The Day "To hell with facts! We need stories!" - Ken Kesey
Vanguard Video Today's video features a TV segment on Ken Kesey that aired in 2001. Enjoy!
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