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. The first edition hardcover sold for three dollars - a virtually unprecedented price for a hardcover book in 1936. Yet, within its first six months of publication, the novel sold about a million copies.
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 nearly four hour epic film, 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. He employed a clever trick to outwit the censors, deliberately peppering the script with content he knew the censors would never pass. That way, he could offer to cut some things in exchange for other material he wanted to keep in the picture.
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 a collection of 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 "teaser" 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 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 B612, a small asteroid out in space. 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. One day, the Prince leaves home to see what the rest of the universe is like. He visits other asteroids, each one the home of an eccentric character.
The King tells his subjects that he can control the stars - but only by telling them to do what they already do anyway. He believes that a citizen's duty is to obey the King - but only if 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 he's met. 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!
Patchwork Prepared by: Alice Folkart Posted on: Sunday, June 27, 2010
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Write a scene in 400 words or less that incorporates one item from each of four categories supplied with this exercise. Often, a good tale begins with a collection of story elements that seemingly have no relationship to one another. This is your opportunity to select a few, mix hem together, and show your readers the scene that emerges.
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Setting: A Park, a Zoo, a bedroom, a mountain trail, the interior of an airplane, a jail cell
Character: A teenager, male or female; a 70-year-old woman; a Buddhist priest; a coal miner; a celebrity, a Boy Scout Leader
Historical Period: The present; the future; sometime in the 19th Century (or any Century you find interesting); the year you were born
Situation: A robbery; a plague; a political rally; a rock concert; an execution; a revelation.
What kind of story could you make of a scene in which it is the year 2056--a Rock concert is in progress a few blocks away, and a Buddhist priest is waiting for someone at the entrance to a zoo?
Or, a 70-year old woman sits in a jail cell. It is 1898, and she is waiting to be executed.
Or, tt is the present day. The 70-year-old woman enters a bedroom and discovers that she's been robbed.
There are many possible permutations with these different bits of data. See how you can work some of these pieces into an interesting scene. -----------------------
Write a scene in 400 words or less that incorporates one item from each of four categories supplied with this exercise. Often, a good tale begins with a collection of story elements that seemingly have no relationship to one another. This is your opportunity to select a few, mix them together, and show your readers the scene that emerges.
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In your critique consider how creatively the author has used the bits of data to build a framework on which to hang a story. And then discuss how the author has or has not fleshed out the character and situation. Comment on any special characteristics of the story. Does it feel factual or fantastic? What makes it feel that way? Would you want to read more? Why or why not?
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 Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History On June 25th, 1903, the legendary British 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. The two children became inseparable.
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 had 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 renounce 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 life. 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 bleak 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 a nagging question; 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 lower 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 conservatism. 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) an ally of Britain's Labour Party, which he was a member of.
At the time, the POUM was one of a number of leftist factions that had formed a loose coalition to defend the Spanish Republic from the fascists. Another faction, the Spanish Communist Party, which was controlled by the Soviet Union, denounced 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 he recovered in a POUM hospital, Orwell and his wife barely managed to escape Spain following the fall of Barcelona.Tragically, the infighting between the Spanish Communist Party and the other leftist factions would give the fascists the opportunity to win the war.
Orwell's experience with 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 fable 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 then, 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 state's 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 only 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.
In the years since the publication of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the right in the United States and Europe embraced these novels as the bibles of anti-communism. George Orwell became their hero, and this led to a popular misconception that he had been a staunch conservative - perhaps even a fascist - although he was really a socialist.
The lesson Orwell teaches us in his classic novels is that even an ideal as noble as socialism can become corrupted and twisted into something far worse than the ills it seeks to cure. And yet, he remained a lifelong socialist and always hoped for a better world free of poverty, inequality, and social injustice.
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 features the original UK theatrical trailer for the classic feature film adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was released in - 1984! It starred John Hurt and Sir Richard Burton. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 24th, 1842, the legendary 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 reading.
When he was fifteen, 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 areas that would likely become 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.
Ambrose 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 editorial writers 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 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 the tales of 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 complete reading of Ambrose Bierce's classic horror story, The Damned Thing. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 23rd, 1398 (c), the legendary inventor and printer 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 to read, he became an avid reader and spent 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. Gutenberg became a skilled metalworker, and his skills 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 movable 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 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. The e-book continued to evolve, and electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle and the Sony Reader have made e-books more popular than ever.
But it was Johannes Gutenberg who first gave the world the means of mass-producing books.
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, the famous suspense 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, 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. 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, such as government agencies hacking into citizens' private data (i.e. 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 still exists and is planning to blow up 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 bestseller - a huge critical and commercial success for Dan Brown. 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 and 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 contained 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. Is the Delta Force unit in on the hoax or have they been ordered to 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 eventually 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 proved to be 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 famous 1982 non-fiction book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Dan Brown won both lawsuits, as the plagiarism claims were ruled to be baseless.
A feature film version of Angels & Demons was released in May of 2009. A few months later, The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's third book in his Robert Langdon series, was released. In it, Langdon agrees to give a lecture in Washington, D.C., at the request of his mentor, Peter Solomon. When he arrives in Washington, Langdon finds Solomon's severed head mounted on a wooden base, his fingers pointing up at a fresco on the ceiling. The painting depicts George Washington dressed in celestial robes and ascending to heaven.
As he investigates his friend's murder, Langdon uncovers clues that lead him toward a fabled source of wisdom known as the Ancient Mysteries - and on a collision course with Mal'akh, a tattooed, musclebound madman who believes that the secrets of the Ancient Mysteries will enable him to rule the world...
Dan Brown is one of our finest modern suspense novelists.
Quote Of The Day "Writing an informative yet compact thriller is a lot like making maple sugar candy. You have to tap hundreds of trees, boil vats and vats of raw sap, evaporate the water, and keep boiling until you've distilled a tiny nugget that encapsulates the essence. " - Dan Brown
Vanguard Video Today's video features a 2009 interview with Dan Brown talking about his latest novel, The Lost Symbol. Enjoy!
Idiom Insight Prepared by: Charles Hightower Reposted on: Sunday, June 20, 2010
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, create a story that might explain the origin of an idiom.
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An idiom is a phrase that does not make literal sense. Idioms may be among the most difficult concepts in English for foreigners to understand...For example, the phrase "kick the bucket" is interpreted as the act of dying. Taken literally, though, neither the kick nor the bucket has any apparent relationship to the meaning of the phrase.
Select an idiom. Then make up a story that could explain the idiom's origin, or show how it came to be. Use your imagination--the tale need not be true. Show, don't tell. Be sure to identify the idiom at start or finish.
If you need ideas, you might refer to http://www.eslcafe.com/idioms/id-list.html
or http://www.learn-english-today.com/idioms/idioms_proverbs.html
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, create a story that might explain the origin of an idiom.
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Critique: Does the explanation seem plausible? Does the story do a good job of showing how the idiom came to be coined? Was the writing imaginative and interesting?
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 Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History On June 18th, 1903, the legendary French writer Raymond Radiguet was born. He was born in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, just eight miles away from Paris. Not much is known of Radiguet's early childhood; his father was a cartoonist, he grew up during World War 1, and the climate of the French home front during the Great War influenced his writing. He started drawing and writing poetry at an early age.
At the age of 16, Raymond Radiguet abandoned his studies at a technical school to pursue his interest in literature. He went to Paris and became associated with the Dadaist and Cubist movements in literature and art, and contributed to the magazine Sic, his works appearing alongside those of writers such as Louis Aragon, Andre Breton, and Philippe Soupalt.
The young Radiguet's talent attracted the attention of legendary writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, who took him on as a protege. Radiguet wrote a book of poetry, Cheeks On Fire, and a play, Pelicans, but it was his first novel - written at the age of 17 - that made him a huge success and an object of controversy. It was called Devil In The Flesh. The narrator is a 15-year-old boy who tells the tale of his passionate, tragic affair with a young married woman.
Set during World War 1, the novel opens with the boy striking up a friendship with Marthe Lancombe, a 19-year-old woman about to be married. They both share an admiration for the poet Baudelaire. Soon, the boy skips school to help Marthe shop for furniture. Not long after her wedding, Marthe's soldier husband is sent to the front. The boy, smitten with her, sees his opportunity, and soon, the two embark on a passionate, but doomed affair. Marthe becomes pregnant, causing a scandal.
The novel created quite a scandal itself. Critics expressed outrage at the novel's glorification of adultery and depiction of adolescent sexuality, but were soon won over by the author's skillfully crafted narrative, written in a sober and objective style. Raymond Radiguet's prose effectively captures the teenage boy's conflicting emotions - his pride at becoming a man and the pain caused by his lack of maturity and being thrust into a love affair he's really too young to handle.
With the success of Devil In The Flesh, Raymond Radiguet became the talk of Paris. How could this novel have been penned by an author barely older than his teenage protagonist? Radiguet was proclaimed a genius. Although he denied it, Devil In The Flesh was later revealed to be a semi-autobiographical novel based on Radiguet's real-life affair with an older woman.
A feature film adaptation of Devil In The Flesh would prove to be even more controversial than the novel. Italian director Marco Bellocchio's 1986 film was neither the first nor the last adaptation of Raymond Radiguet's novel, but it was definitely the most famous. It was the first mainstream feature film where a well-known, mainstream actress (Maruschka Detmers) engaged in uncensored, unsimulated sexual acts on screen.
While reveling in the success of his debut novel, Radiguet began writing his next book. Count d'Orgel's Ball told the story of a handsome, charming, carefree aristocrat, his wife (the Countess), and his protege, François de Séryeuse. All three characters become ensnared in a web of adultery, deception, and self-deception, culminating in Count d'Orgel's masquerade ball, where the guests wear masks and later reveal their true selves - in more ways than one.
Count d'Orgel's Ball was also acclaimed by critics and readers alike, but Raymond Radiguet never lived to see it. Shortly after completing the novel, he contracted typhoid fever. He died in December of 1923 at the age of twenty. Count d'Orgel's Ball was published posthumously, as well as other writings by Radiguet, including a second book of poetry.
Raymond Radiguet was a genius whose young life was tragically cut short. One can only imagine what he may have written, had he lived.
Quote Of The Day "Listen to me. I have something terrible to tell you. In three days, I am going to be shot by the soldiers of God." - Raymond Radiguet, spoken to Jean Cocteau shortly before his death.
Vanguard Video Today's video features a couple of clips from Le Sange d'un Poete (The Blood of a Poet), the 1930 surrealist masterpiece by Raymond Radiguet's mentor - the legendary writer / filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 17th, 1972, five men were caught burglarizing the Watergate building, a complex of offices, hotel rooms, and apartments in Washington, D.C. The burglars had been caught breaking into the part of the Watergate that housed the offices of the Democratic National Committee - the national headquarters of the Democratic Party.
Ben Bradlee, Editor-In-Chief of the prominent Washington Post newspaper, assigned two young investigative reporters to cover the seemingly innocuous story of the Watergate burglary. Their names were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and they soon realized that there was nothing innocuous about the burglary at Watergate. In fact, the same offices had been burglarized before.
Using their investigative skills, confidential sources, and a secret informant known only as Deep Throat, (In 2005, Deep Throat revealed himself to be W. Mark Felt, a White House insider and former associate director of the FBI.) Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate burglary story wide open. The five burglars were really White House operatives whose mission was to spy on President Richard M. Nixon's opposition in the upcoming election. After breaking into the DNC offices, they stole information and bugged the telephones.
Nixon denied involvement and won re-election in November, but Woodward and Bernstein continued their investigations and were able to prove that Nixon not only knew about the Watergate burglary, but was also attempting to block the investigation. In 1974, in order to avoid impeachment, Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace. He was later pardoned by acting President Gerald Ford.
Woodward and Bernstein's work in exposing the Watergate conspiracy earned the Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. They later wrote a famous book about it, All The President's Men, published in 1974. They had been toying with idea of writing a book, but didn't commit to it until actor Robert Redford contacted them with an offer to buy the movie rights to their story.
The acclaimed feature film adaptation of All The President's Men, which starred Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, was released in 1976. That same year, Woodward and Bernstein published The Final Days, a sequel to their famous book that chronicled the last months of the Nixon presidency. In 1989, it was adapted as an acclaimed TV movie starring Lane Smith as Richard Nixon. It was nominated for five Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were real heroes, the kind of journalists that, sadly, no longer exist and are sorely needed.
Quote Of The Day "The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture." - Carl Bernstein
Vanguard Video Today's video features a recent, 25-minute interview with Carl Bernstein, who discusses not only his and Bob Woodward's investigation of the Watergate conspiracy, but also his book about Hillary Rodham Clinton and the 2008 election. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 16th, 1938, the brilliant and prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. She was very close to her paternal grandmother, Blanche Oates, who lived with the family and planted the seeds of her future writing career. When Joyce was a little girl, her grandmother gave her a copy of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which she credited as "the great treasure of my childhood and the most profound literary influence in my life." When Joyce turned 14, her grandmother gave her a typewriter, and she began writing.
Joyce Carol Oates described her family as average, happy, and close-knit. Many years later, after her grandmother died, Joyce learned some surprising secrets about her life. Blanche Oates' father had committed suicide, after which, Blanche decided to conceal the fact that she was Jewish. Joyce used these and other details of her grandmother's life as the basis for her 2007 novel, The Gravedigger's Daughter.
As a young teenager, Joyce Carol Oates became an avid reader, devouring the works of William Faulkner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Hemingway, and the Bronte sisters, whom she claimed were a strong influence on her writing. After attending the same one-room school that her mother had gone to, Joyce transferred to bigger suburban schools. At Williamsville South High School, where she graduated in 1956, Joyce worked for the student newspaper. She was the first member of her family to graduate high school.
Joyce Carol Oates won a scholarship to Syracuse University, where she joined the Phi Mu sorority, a decision she came to regret. In college, Joyce read the works of D.H. Lawrence, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka, all of which she claimed were still strong and pervasive influences in her own writing. When she was nineteen years old, she won a college short story contest sponsored by Mademoiselle magazine. She graduated Syracuse as valedictorian in 1960 and received an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison a year later.
During her college years, Joyce taught herself to be a writer by "writing novel after novel and always throwing them out when I completed them." In 1964, when she was 26 years old, she published her first novel, With Shuddering Fall. Two years later, she published a short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, loosely based on the life of serial killer Charles Schmid, the "Pied Piper of Tucson." The story was frequently republished in anthologies and was adapted in 1985 as a feature film called Smooth Talk.
Joyce Carol Oates would later use real life crimes and criminals as the basis of her novels, changing names, dates, places, and details, and adding fictionalized elements. Her 1995 novel Zombie, which won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel, was based on the life of cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
The novel presents the diary of Quentin P., a psychotic sex offender on parole who becomes a serial killer as he searches for the perfect "zombie" - a mindless, obedient, handsome young man to be his companion and lover. The brilliant, cunning, and strangely child-like Quentin lures young men into his clutches and lobotomizes them with various weapons as he conducts experiments in creating a zombie. In addition to Quentin's diary entries, the book contains his bizarre sketches of objects such as weapons and staring eyes.
In her 2008 novel My Sister, My Love, Joyce Carol Oates presents a dark and scathing parody of the famous JonBenet Ramsey murder case. It's told in the form of a memoir written by 19-year-old Skyler Rampike. When he was ten, his beloved six-year-old sister Bliss - a child ice-skating star - was found raped and murdered.
In his memoir, Skyler paints a grotesque picture of his family before and after the tragedy. His father, Bix, is a ruthlessly ambitious, money-hungry philanderer; his pathetic, neurotic mother Betsey is determined to impress the snooty neighbors in their affluent community. She's also obsessed with living out her childhood dream by turning her daughter into a figure-skating star, dressing her in provocative costumes and forcing her to practice and perform. After Bliss's murder, the already dysfunctional Rampike family is plunged into tabloid hell, as suspicion falls on both Bix and Betsey - and even 10-year-old Skyler.
Joyce Carol Oates' powerful writing - and her fascination with violence and the dark side of the human condition - has earned her the respect of fellow writers such as Norman Mailer. Her 1996 novel, We Were The Mulvaneys, was selected by Oprah Winfrey's book club in 2001. The Mulvaneys are a happy, close-knit, affluent model family living in upstate New York.
Then, on Valentine's Day, 1976, after attending her high school prom, teenage daughter Marianne Mulvaney goes to a party, gets drunk, and is raped by a fellow student whose father is a respected businessman and close friend of Marianne's father. Her refusal to press charges against her attacker leads to the slow and painful disintegration of the once perfect Mulvaney family. Years later, at a family reunion, the Mulvaneys finally come to terms with the past and receive the closure that had eluded them.
An extremely prolific writer, Oates has written over 35 novels, (plus 11 more under pseudonyms) with three more due out soon. She has also written over 35 short story collections, seven books for young adults and children, ten books of poetry, eight plays, and numerous non-fiction works. She will no doubt be remembered as one of the most gifted writers of her generation.
Joyce Carol Oates' most recent novel, A Fair Maiden, was released in January of 2010.
Quote Of The Day "If you are a writer, you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework, you can still be writing, because you have that space." - Joyce Carol Oates
Vanguard Video Today's video features Joyce Carol Oates lecturing on the creation of realistic characters. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On June 15th, 1763, the legendary haiku poet Kobayashi Issa was born. He was born Nobuyuki Yataro in Kashiwabara, Japan. When Issa was three years old, his mother died, and he was cared for by his doting grandmother. He began studying haiku with a local poet, Shinpo. Five years later, Issa's father remarried. His stepmother turned out to be a hard and cruel woman, and after she gave birth to a son, she mistreated Issa terribly. He complained to his father that she beat him a hundred times a day.
When he was fourteen, Issa's beloved grandmother died. Lonely, moody, withdrawn, and estranged from his family, Issa preferred to stay away from them, wandering the fields and communing with nature, which further infuriated his cruel stepmother. Sensing Issa's unhappiness, his father sent him to Edo, (now known as Tokyo) where he lived in poverty, did odd jobs, and continued his haiku studies, this time at the Kastushika Haiku School with poets Mizoguchi Sogan and Norokuan Chikua. After Chikua's death, Issa was elected to succeed him as a teacher. He later resigned and took to wandering again, until his father's death in 1801.
In his father's will, Issa was listed as sole beneficiary, but his stepmother and half-brother conspired to steal his inheritance from him. After thirteen years of legal wrangling, Issa finally received his rightful inheritance. In the meantime, he had traveled around Japan, visiting and living in many places, including Kyoto, Osaka, Nagasaki, Matsuyama, and other cities. He worked hard to support himself and made a name for himself as a haiku poet, taking the pseudonym Kobayashi Issa. He wrote prolifically, both poetry and prose. At the age of 51, after finally receiving his inheritance, Issa returned to his hometown, Kashiwabari, and married a young village woman named Kiku.
Sadly, the four children Issa's wife bore him died in infancy, and his wife died in childbirth. Later, his house burned down. A devout Buddhist for many years, Issa's spirit could not be crushed by tragedy. He married again, and his second wife bore him his only surviving child, a baby girl. She was born in 1827 - shortly after Issa's death at the age of 65.
Throughout his prolific literary career, Issa wrote over 20,000 haiku poems and over 250 prose works, including memoirs, his most famous being The Year Of My Life, published in 1820. As a haiku poet, Issa wrote the simple, unadorned poetry of the common man, using local dialects and the words of daily conversation. And yet, in their simplicity, Issa's poems were extremely deep and profound. Sometimes humorous, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, Issa's haiku are best known for their remarkably poignant and compassionate insight. And of course, they are steeped deep in Buddhism - but without the slightest hint of religious dogmatism.
After the death of one of his children, Issa wrote the following poem. It's a perfect example of his simplicity, his profoundness, and his compassion:
This world of dew is a world of dew - and yet, and yet...
Here are some other memorable Issa haiku:
Flitting butterfly - thus is Buddha's law in this world
A light snow over fields, over woods... pilgrims
The beggar child prays with trembling voice... for a doll
Old frog dewdrops are tumbling Look! There!
Issa's haiku inspired me to become a poet when I was eight years old. I came across Issa: Haiku Poet - a selection of his poems - in my school reading textbook and was moved and impressed by how much he packed into his little three-line, seventeen-syllable poems. I immediately started writing my own haiku. Issa is rightfully considered one of Japan's greatest haiku masters.
Quote Of The Day "A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing, like the greatest haiku of them all probably is the one that goes 'The sparrow hops along the veranda, with wet feet,' by Shiki. You see the wet footprints like a vision in your mind and yet in those few words you also see all the rain that's been falling that day and almost smell the wet pine needles." - Jack Kerouac
Vanguard Video Today's video features Jack Kerouac reading from his famous collection of poems, American Haiku, accompanied by a jazz saxophonist. In the 1950s, Kerouac rekindled interest in the haiku format with his English language haiku poems. They didn't follow the seventeen-syllable format. They were shorter than that, as more words can be formed in seventeen English syllables than in seventeen Japanese syllables, and Kerouac wanted his English haiku to be as authentic as possible. Enjoy!
Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. Congratulations to this week's crew!
Jody
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Joanna M. Weston
My review of Liam Guilar's poetry book is up at Poetry Reviews. Cheers!
Pat St. Pierre
My poem "Journey" and my photo "Tranquility in New Hampshire" are up on The Camel Saloon.
Wayne Scheer
"A Fool Proof Plan," written originally for Practice, is up at Fiction at Work.
I just got a "special" acceptance. My flash, "Do Me," has been accepted for a print publication called Pocket Smut. They promise to mail my free copy in "discreet packaging." Hey, a publication is a publication.
My story, "What the Moon Sees," has been accepted at Joyful! for their September issue.
Anita Saran
I'm a featured writer on 6 Sentences. And to think I used to pooh pooh the very idea of flash!
The article I wrote about Divorce Quilts for HandEye Magazine has been posted. Thanks to Rebeca Shiller for introducing me to this market and working with me to get this published!
Jody Ewing
The Mount Vernon-Lisbon (IA) Sun has published a piece "Passion for justice drives Cold Case volunteers," about the Iowa Cold Cases website I founded in 2005. It contains an interview with my co-admin, Dr. Nancy Bowers.
Florence Cardinal
My article, "Sleep Apnea, Men and Denial," is up at Health Central.
Music to My Ears Prepared by: Alice Folkart Posted on: Sunday, June 13, 2010
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a scene in which a musical instrument is important.
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Your scene could be written from the point of view of someone hearing an instrument being played, wanting to be able to play an instrument, listening to someone practice (happily or unhappily), or even, if you dare, from the point of view of the instrument itself.
You could write about an unusual instrument, something from another culture; or about a musical instrument associated with an historical person or event, e.g., the little drummer boy, or bagpipers rousing men for battle, or a bugle playing Taps.
You could write about a concert experience, or about someone whose "life" is his instrument, the virtuoso, the wannabe, or the has-been. How do you feel about accordions? Did your mother make you practice piano/violin/kettle drums every day when you were a kid?
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a scene in which a musical instrument is important.
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In your critique tell the author whether or not the work fits the exercise and why. Let the author know what you think worked or didn't work, and why.
And, in this particular exercise, you might also want to consider the author's handling of the sense of sound, not only the physical sound, but its emotional effect. Does he write about the sound of an instrument in such a way that the reader will share the experience? Is the piece wildly creative, or reassuringly factual? What did you learn from it that will affect your own 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 Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History On June 11th, 1925, the celebrated American novelist William Styron was born in Newport News, Virginia. His paternal grandparents had been slave owners, but his father and mother gave him a liberal perspective on race and politics. His father was a shipyard engineer who suffered from depression, an illness Styron would later struggle with himself. Styron's mother died when he was a boy, after a long battle with breast cancer.
When he was in third grade, Styron's father took him out of public school and enrolled him in an Episcopal prep school, which he enjoyed immensely. He later enrolled in Davidson College, but dropped out to join the Marines near the end of World War 2. He was promoted to lieutenant, but Japan surrendered before his ship was to depart from San Francisco. The war over, Styron enrolled at Duke University, where he earned a degree in English and published his first short story in a student anthology. The story was heavily influenced by the writings of William Faulkner.
In 1947, after graduating from Duke, Styron took a job for the McGraw-Hill publishing house in New York City - a position he came to hate. Styron got himself fired and began writing his first novel, Lie Down In Darkness, which was published in 1951 and received great critical acclaim. The novel told the story (partly in a stream-of-consciousness narrative) of a troubled young woman named Peyton Loftis, whose emotionally distant, oppressive, and dysfunctional Virginia family ultimately drives her to suicide.
Lie Down In Darkness won William Styron the prestigious Rome Prize, which was awarded by the American Academy In Rome and the American Academy Of Arts And Letters. Unfortunately, he couldn't go to Rome to accept the award because he was recalled to active duty in the Korean War. He was discharged a year later due to eye problems. Styron used his experience at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina as the basis for his novella The Long March, which was published in serial format in 1953. The novella would be adapted as a play for an episode of the famous Playhouse 90 TV series in 1958.
After his discharge from the Marines in 1952, Styron embarked on an extended trip to Europe. In Paris, he met and became friends with a group of writers including James Baldwin, Romain Gary, George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, James Jones, Irving Shaw, and others. The group founded the famous literary magazine The Paris Review in 1953. That same year, Styron went to Italy and finally accepted his Rome Prize for Lie Down In Darkness. At the American Academy, he was reunited with a young poet from Baltimore whom he had met before. Her name was Rose Burgunder, and he married her that same year.
Styron used his experiences in Europe as the basis for his novel Set This House On Fire, which was published in 1960. It told the story of a group of American expatriate intellectuals living on the Riviera. In the U.S., the novel received mixed reviews at best, but it was successful in Europe. The French translation of the novel was a bestseller.
Several years later, in 1967, Styron published his most controversial novel, The Confessions Of Nat Turner. It was a fictional memoir of Nat Turner, a real life historical figure who led his fellow slaves in a violent revolt against their evil white masters. James Baldwin accurately predicted that the book would be controversial with both black and white readers, saying that "Bill's going to catch it from both sides."
Even though Baldwin and Ralph Ellison - both of them prominent and respected black writers - defended Styron's novel publicly, several black critics assailed The Confessions Of Nat Turner for its allegedly racist stereotyping. They also objected to a scene where Turner fantasizes about raping a white woman. Southern white readers weren't thrilled with the book, either. Nevertheless, it became a huge critical and commercial success, and won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In 1979, Styron published Sophie's Choice, another acclaimed novel that sparked controversy, though it wasn't nearly as controversial as The Confessions Of Nat Turner. Narrated by Stingo, a Southern writer Styron modeled after himself, the novel told the story of Stingo's love triangle with Sophie, a Polish Catholic who survived Auschwitz, and her Jewish lover, Nathan, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
Though he medicates himself with drugs (including cocaine) that he obtains from his employer, Pfizer, Nathan sometimes becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, and delusional. Haunted by her experiences during the Holocaust, Sophie finally reveals the secret that continues to torment her: in Auschwitz, Sophie was forced to choose which of her two children would live. She sacrificed her daughter Eva so that her blond, blue-eyed, German-speaking son Jan could leave the death camp and be raised as a German.
Three years after its publication, Sophie's Choice was adapted as an acclaimed feature film that was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Meryl Streep winning the Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Sophie. In 1998, Styron's short story Shadrach was also adapted as a feature film.
In 1985, William Styron won the Prix Mondial Cino Del Luca, a major international literary award. That same year, he suffered from severe depression. He wrote a memoir of his struggle with the mental illness called Darkness Visible: A Memoir Of Madness. It was first published in Vanity Fair magazine in December, 1989. Styron died in of pneumonia in 2006, at the age of 81.
Quote Of The Day "The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis." - William Styron
Vanguard Video Today's video features an interview with William Styron. Enjoy!
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