Notes For February 26th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 26th, 1802, the legendary French novelist Victor Hugo was born in Bensancon, France. Hugo's childhood took place during an important time in French history. When he was two years old, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor; by the time Hugo turned 18, the Bourbon Monarchy was restored. The opposing forces that shaped French history during this time were reflected in Hugo's parents. His father Joseph was an atheist and high-ranking officer in Napoleon's army, while his mother Sophie was an extremely devout Catholic and Royalist.

Although Victor Hugo was close to his controlling mother, against her wishes, he married his childhood sweetheart, Adele Foucher. They had five children. Their first, Leopold, died in infancy. Hugo's eldest daughter, Leopoldine, died suddenly at the age of nineteen - shortly after her wedding. She and her husband were on a boat that capsized. Leopoldine drowned, and her husband died trying to save her. Victor Hugo, traveling in the south of France with his mistress, was devastated when he read about Leopoldine's death in a newspaper. She had been his favorite daughter. He would write many poems about Leopoldine's life and death.

As a young writer, Victor Hugo's main influence was François-René de Chateaubriand, founder of the Romanticism movement in French literature. He vowed to be "Chateaubriand or nothing." Hugo's first book, a poetry collection titled Odes et Poésies Diverses, was published in 1822, when he was twenty years old. It was well received and earned him a royal pension from King Louis XVIII, but it was Hugo's 1826 poetry collection, Odes et Ballades, that established him as one of the greatest poets of his time.

Victor Hugo first made a name for himself as a novelist with his 1829 novella, Le Dernier jour d'un condamné. (The Last Day of a Condemned Man). The story is told by a man condemned to death as he describes his life in prison and bears his soul to the reader. He never identifies himself by name, nor does he reveal his crime, only hinting vaguely that he killed someone. On the day of his execution, he is reunited with his three-year-old daughter, but she doesn't recognize him. The novella would have a profound influence on writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Two years after his novella Le Dernier jour d'un condamné was published, Hugo released what would become his first classic full-length novel. Notre-Dame de Paris, best known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), was a huge critical and commercial success. The tragic love story dealt with social injustice - the recurring theme in Hugo's prose. Set in late 15th century Paris, the novel tells the tale of Quasimodo, a deformed hunchback who lives in the Notre Dame cathedral, where he serves as the bell ringer. The townspeople despise and shun him because of his deformities, and his adoptive father, a priest named Claude Frollo, mistreats him.

Quasimodo soon falls in love with Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy dancer, who has captured the hearts of most men in town, including Claude Frollo. Esmeralda's physical beauty is nothing compared to her inner beauty, as she is very kind and compassionate. When the lust-crazed priest sends Quasimodo to kidnap Esmeralda, he is caught, beaten, and ordered to remain out in the heat. Esmeralda brings him water.

When Esmeralda falls in love with Phoebus de Chateaupers, the captain of the King's Archers, the jealous Claude Frollo nearly murders him in a fit of rage, then frames Esmeralda for the crime. She is sentenced to be hanged, but Quasimodo saves her from the gallows and takes her to the cathedral where she would be safe under the law of sanctuary. The King then vetoes the law and commands his troops to take Esmeralda from the cathedral. Claude Frollo betrays her and hands her over to them, then watches her hang. Quasimodo kills the evil priest, then goes to the graveyard, where he climbs into Esmeralda's grave and dies with her. A year later, the skeletons of Esmeralda and Quasimodo are found locked in an embrace.

Victor Hugo's greatest novel was his legendary masterpiece, Les Miserables (1862), a dazzling 1,200+ page epic novel that took the author 17 years to write. Originally published in five volumes, Les Miserables opens in Digne in 1815, as poor peasant Jean Valjean is released from prison after serving nineteen years - five years for stealing bread to feed his starving sister, plus an additional fourteen years for his frequent escape attempts. Forced to carry a passport that identifies him as a convict, Valjean finds himself scorned by society. He becomes so angry and bitter that when the kindhearted Bishop Myriel takes him in, he steals the man's silverware, and later, a young boy's silver coin.

The Bishop saves Valjean from the police and inspires him to repent and make an honest man of himself. He decides to return the silver coin he stole, then finds that the theft has been reported. Another conviction would result in a life sentence, so Valjean goes on the lam. Using the alias Monsieur Madeleine, Valjean follows the Bishop's advice and reinvents himself as an honest and successful citizen. All the while, he is pursued relentlessly by police Inspector Javert. Later, Valjean reveals his true identity when Javert mistakenly believes that an innocent man named Champmathieu is really Jean Valjean and arrests him.

Ultimately, Javert lets Valjean go after Valjean refuses to kill him when he has the chance to do so. For the first time, Javert recognizes the immorality of the law to which he has dedicated his life. It drives him to suicide. In addition to the story of Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert, Les Miserables follows many other characters, who also face the specter of social injustice. The novel, rightfully considered to be one of the greatest ever written, has been adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, and television, the most famous adaptation being a celebrated Broadway musical.

Victor Hugo would become involved in politics, where he would fight the social injustices he wrote about. In 1841, King Louis-Philippe elevated him to the peerage, and he entered the Higher Chamber as a pair de France (nobleman), where he spoke out against the death penalty and other forms of social injustice. He advocated freedom of speech and a free press. Hugo soon tired of the monarchy and became a supporter of the Republican form of government. Thus, when the Second Republic was formed in France following the 1848 Revolution, Hugo was elected to the Constitutional Assembly and the Legislative Assembly.

When Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) seized total power in 1851 and established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly denounced him as a traitor to France. The writer went into exile, living in Brussels and Jersey before settling in with his family on the channel island of Guernsey, where he would live until 1870. While in exile, Hugo used his influence to help fight social injustice in other countries. He also wrote and published his famous anti-Napoleon III pamphlets, which, although banned in France, made a huge impact there. When Hugo returned to France in 1870, he was elected to the National Assembly and the Senate and hailed as a national hero.

Victor Hugo's writings were also influenced by his religious views, which changed radically over the years. At first, he was a devout Catholic like his mother, but then he grew disenchanted with the Church, which he perceived as being indifferent to the plight of the poor and the oppression of the monarchy. The fact that Hugo's novels made the Pope's official banned books list didn't help; he also noted over 700 attacks on Les Miserables by the Catholic press. He developed a seething hatred of the Catholic Church that lasted the rest of his life. When his sons died, they were buried without a crucifix or priest, and Hugo's will stipulated the same for his own death. Despite his deep hatred of the Church, Hugo was known to be a very spiritual man who believed in the necessity and power of prayer.

His last great novel, Quatre-vignt-Treize (Ninety-Three) was published in 1874. He died in 1885 at the age of 83.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm religiously opposed to religion." - Victor Hugo

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the 1998 feature film adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Miserables, directed by the great Danish filmmaker Bille August and starring Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean, Geoffrey Rush as Inspector Javert, Uma Thurman as Fantine, and Claire Danes as Cosette. Enjoy!

Notes For February 25th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 25th, 1917, the legendary British novelist, playwright, poet, and composer Anthony Burgess was born. He was born John Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England. His confirmation name Anthony would be added to his legal name. The next year, in November of 1918, Burgess' eight-year-old sister Muriel died of Spanish Flu, which had become a pandemic. Four days after his sister's death, his mother died of the disease. His aunt Ann (his mother's sister) raised him while his father worked as a bookkeeper and part-time musician. He would later say that he believed his father resented him for surviving the pandemic that killed his sister and mother. When his father remarried, he was raised by his stepmother.

As a young boy, Anthony Burgess was a loner, despised by other children because he liked to dress well and could read before he started elementary school. Although his father was a musician, Burgess didn't care about music until he heard a dazzling flute solo while listening to classical music on the radio. When the piece was over, a voice announced that he had been listening to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un Faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) by legendary French composer Claude Debussy. Awestruck, Burgess told his family that he wanted to be a composer.

Burgess' family refused to let him study music because there was no money in it. Music wasn't taught at his school, so when he was around fourteen, he taught himself to play the piano. Later, he enrolled at the Victoria University of Manchester as a music major, but the music department turned him down because of his poor grades in physics. So, he switched his major to English. While at university, Burgess met Llewela "Lynne" Isherwood Jones, whom he would marry after they graduated.

During World War 2, Anthony Burgess served as a nursing orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was disliked for his practical joking and anti-authoritarian nature. Once, he knocked off a corporal's cap; another time, he rebelled by deliberately overpolishing a floor to make the other men slip and fall. In 1942, he asked for a transfer to the Army Education Corps. He excelled as an instructor, and though he loathed authority, he was promoted to sergeant. He was stationed in Gibraltar, where his talent for languages came in handy, as he debriefed Dutch expatriates and Free French for army intelligence. His anti-authoritarianism got him into trouble while on leave in a nearby Spanish town: he was arrested for insulting the fascist leader General Franco. He was soon released.

While Burgess was serving in the Army, his pregnant wife Lynne was attacked during the blackout by four GI soldiers who had deserted. She lost the baby, and the Army denied Burgess' request for leave to see her. When Burgess left the Army in 1946, he had attained the rank of sergeant-major. He spent the next four years as a lecturer in speech and drama, then took a job as a secondary school teacher. In 1954, Burgess joined the British Colonial Service as a teacher and education officer. He was first stationed in Malaya, an experience that would serve as the inspiration for his first three novels.

The first book in the trilogy, Time For A Tiger, was published in 1956. The novel is set at the Mansor School in Kuala Hantu, where British resident teacher Victor Crabbe determines to neutralize the threat posed by a young communist student who has been influencing his classmates and indoctrinating them to join in his cause. The second book in the trilogy, The Enemy In The Blanket (1958), proved to be controversial for, of all things, its cover art. Burgess was shocked and appalled to find that for the cover art, his publishers had chosen an illustration of a Sikh rickshaw driver pulling a white man and woman in his rickshaw. This was unheard of in Malaya, and considered extremely insulting. Burgess found himself falsely accused of racism.

Though he published several more novels before it, in 1962, Anthony Burgess published what is considered his greatest novel - a bold, brilliant, experimental work of dystopic science fiction. A Clockwork Orange (the title comes from the British slang expression, "queer as a clockwork orange.") is set in a dystopic England of the future. The novel is narrated by its main character, Alex, a brilliant but psychopathic teenager who leads a gang of "droogs" that includes his friends Pete, Georgie, and Dim.

Alex and his gang meet at a milkbar, where they drink drugged milk to get them ready "for a bit of the old ultra-violence," which includes random acts of violence. One night, while joyriding in a stolen car, the gang breaks into an isolated cottage, where they terrorize the couple that lives there, beating the husband and raping his wife. When he's not out with his gang, Alex passes the time in his dreary home, escaping his poor excuse for parents by blasting the works of his favorite composer, "Ludwig Van," (Beethoven) and masturbating to violent sexual fantasies.

When Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, he puts down the rebellion by beating Georgie in a fight and slashing open Dim's hand. Then he takes them out for drinks at the milkbar. Georgie and Dim have had enough, but Alex demands that the gang follow through with Georgie's plan for a "man-sized" job and rob a rich old woman who lives alone. The robbery is botched when the old woman calls the police - but not before she is assaulted and knocked unconscious. The gang turns on Alex, attacking him and leaving him to take the fall when the police arrive. The old woman later dies of her injuries and Alex is accused of murder.

After spending a couple years in prison, Alex becomes an involuntary participant in an experimental rehabilitation procedure called the Ludovico Technique, which, in two weeks, is supposed to remove all violent and criminal impulses from the human psyche. The prison chaplain is opposed to the Ludovico Technique, arguing that conscious, willing moral choice is a necessary component of humanity. Nevertheless, Alex undergoes the procedure.

For two weeks, Alex's eyes are wired open and he is forced to watch violent images on a screen while being given a drug that induces extreme nausea. It's a horrific form of aversion therapy. Unfortunately, the soundtrack to the violent film presentation includes the works of Beethoven, and Alex begs the doctors to turn off the sound, telling them that's a sin to take away his love of music, and Beethoven never did anything wrong. They refuse.

After the procedure is completed, Alex is brought before an audience of prison and government officials and declared successfully rehabilitated. To demonstrate this, they show how Alex is unable to react with violence even in self defense, and is crippled by nausea when he becomes sexually aroused. The outraged prison chaplain again protests the Ludovico Technique, accusing the state of taking away Alex's God-given ability to choose good over evil. "Padre," a government official replies, "There are subtleties. The point is that it works."

Alex is released from prison, but his life plunges into a downward spiral. He finds that the Ludovico Technique has rendered him physically unable to listen to his Beethoven and he cannot defend himself from attack. First, he is beaten by a former victim, then when the police are called, they turn out to be Alex's old gang members Dim and Billyboy, and they beat him, too. Later, Alex is befriended by a political activist who turns out to be the man whose wife Alex had raped during the home invasion. When he finally recognizes Alex as the gang leader, he tortures him with the classical music he once loved.

When Alex attempts suicide, the government agrees to reverse the Ludovico Technique in order to quell all the bad publicity. They also offer Alex a cushy job at a high salary. He looks forward to returning to his life of ultra-violence. He forms a new gang, but after watching them beat a stranger, he finds that he has tired of violence. Alex contemplates giving up gang life, becoming a productive citizen, and doing what he secretly always wanted to do - start a family of his own. He wonders if his children would inherit the violent tendencies he once had.

In the U.S. edition of the novel, the last chapter was omitted by the publisher, who wanted the story to end on a dark note (with Alex looking forward to resuming his life of violence) because he believed that the original UK edition ending (with Alex realizing the errors of his ways) was unrealistic. When legendary British filmmaker Stanley Kubrick adapted the novel as an acclaimed feature film in 1971, he felt the same way, and based his screenplay on the U.S. edition of the novel. I myself prefer the U.S. edition because its ending really brings home the main theme of the novel - that fascism is an evil far worse than the societal ills it seeks to cure.

Today, both editions of A Clockwork Orange are available in the U.S., and it remains a classic work of literature, famous for its dazzling experimental narrative, wherein Alex speaks a lyrical dialect that combines English with modified Slavic and Russian slang expressions and words specifically invented by the author.

Burgess would go on to write more great novels, including The Wanting Seed (1962), Tremor of Intent: An Eschatological Spy Novel (1966), M/F (1971), and The End of the World News: An Entertainment (1982). As a playwright, he would adapt A Clockwork Orange as a stage play; as a screenwriter, he wrote the screenplays for the popular TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and A.D. (1985) and contribute to the screenplays of feature films. As a composer, his classical pieces were broadcast on BBC Radio. He translated Bizet's Carmen into English, wrote an operetta based on James Joyce's Ulysses called Blooms of Dublin, and a new libretto for Weber's opera, Oberon. He also wrote the book for the 1973 Broadway musical, Cyrano, basing it on his own adaptation of the Rostand play.

Anthony Burgess' other literary works included poetry collections, children's books, and non-fiction works. He died of lung cancer in 1993 at the age of 76.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively, so they do the opposite and destroy." - Anthony Burgess

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Anthony Burgess being interviewed on Canadian TV in 1985. Enjoy!

Notes For February 24th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 24th, 1786, the famous German writer and folklorist Wilhelm Grimm was born in Hanau, Germany. As a boy, Wilhelm was strong and healthy, but over the years, he would suffer from an increasingly severe illness that left him weak. He and his older brother Jacob were inseparable.

In 1803, Wilhelm enrolled at the University of Marburg to study law, one year after Jacob began his studies there. Around 1807, Wilhelm and Jacob began collecting folklore, inspired by the publication of The Youth's Magic Horn, the first volume of which came out in 1805. It was a collection of folk songs edited by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano.

The Grimm brothers would invite storytellers to tell their tales, which they then transcribed and edited, adding their own distinctive touches to the stories. By 1812, their first collection of folk tales was published as Children's and Household Tales. It contained 86 stories. A second volume, containing 70 tales, was published in 1814. During the Grimm brothers' lifetime, five more editions of their story collections would be released, some containing new stories. Since then, all 211 stories would be published in one volume as Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Some scholars believe that the Grimm brothers removed salacious elements from the stories they collected, as they were both devout Christians. They did not, however, tone down the dark and violent elements of the stories, which led to complaints that the stories were inappropriate for children. Thus, over the years, since their initial publication, the Grimms' Fairy Tales have been softened and changed considerably by publishers.

The original, unaltered Grimms' Fairy Tales are still published, and parents who buy the book for their children are quite shocked by the content, as are other readers who remember the Disneyfied versions of such famous stories as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As in all the Grimms' original stories, the endings are different, and the villains are often tortured horribly and / or put to death.

Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are saved when a huntsman cuts open the wolf's stomach. He later skins the dead wolf and keeps the skin as a souvenir. In Cinderella, (Cinderella was her nickname; her real name was Ashputtel) the nasty stepsisters mutilate their feet to try and fit into the glass slipper. Later, they get their eyes pecked out by doves as punishment for their cruelty and vanity. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, after Snow White is saved by her Prince, she marries him, and the Wicked Queen is lured to their wedding - where she is forced to wear hot iron shoes and dance until she dies.

Despite their dark and sometimes gruesome nature, the Grimms' Fairy Tales remain an all-time classic work of literature, inspiring generations of writers.

Though his brother remained a lifelong bachelor, Wilhelm Grimm was married in 1825 to his girlfriend, Henriette "Dortchen" Wild. They had four children, their firstborn son named after his uncle Jacob.

In addition to the fairy tales he compiled with his brother, Wilhelm published three books under his own name, a collection of old Danish folk songs, a study of German runes, and a study of German folk legends. (The Grimms' Fairy Tales were also criticized as being "not German enough.")

Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm later became professors at the University of Gottingen. They joined five of their colleagues to form the "Gottingen Seven," an activist group that protested against Ernst August, the King of Hanover, for his violations of the constitution. The King fired them all from the university.

Wilhelm Grimm died of an infection in 1859. He was 73 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." - Wilhelm Grimm

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a two-part reading of the classic Brothers Grim fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Enjoy!

Notes For February 23rd, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 23rd, 1633, the famous British writer Samuel Pepys was born in London, England. His father, John Pepys, was a tailor. His father's cousin, Richard Pepys, was an elected Member of Parliament who would later become the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

Samuel Pepys was the fifth of eleven children, but because of the high child mortality rate of the time, several of his siblings died, making him the eldest. He was sent to live with a nurse in Kingsland, north of London. Around the age of eleven, he began his formal education at Huntingdon Grammar School. He attended St. Paul's school in London from 1646-50. In 1649, at the age of sixteen, he witnessed the execution of Charles I, following the end of the English Civil War. This paved the way for the rule of Oliver Cromwell.

Pepys enrolled at Cambridge University in 1650. A year later, he transferred to Magdalene College, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1654. In 1655, he came to live with another of his father's cousins, Sir Edward Montagu, who would become the first Earl of Sandwich. That same year, Pepys married Elisabeth de St Michel, first in a religious ceremony, then in a civil ceremony. She was fourteen years old at the time.

From a very young age, Samuel Pepys suffered from painful kidney stones and hematuria. By 1657, his condition was so severe that he decided to undergo a risky procedure to surgically remove a very large kidney stone. The operation took place at the home of Pepys' cousin, Jane Turner, and was a success. However, he did suffer from complications late in life. After he recovered from the operation, Pepys took a job working as a teller in the exchequer under George Downing.

On January 1st, 1660, Samuel Pepys embarked on an endeavor that would make him famous to this day: he began keeping a diary. Like most diaries, he used it to record the personal details of his daily life; his business dealings, meetings with friends, his trivial concerns, jealousies, insecurities, his troubled marriage, and his extramarital affairs. These personal details would be intertwined with detailed commentary on the politics and national events of the time.

Within the first few months of entries, Samuel Pepys' diary chronicled General George Monck's march on London and Pepys' trip (he was a clerk for the Navy Board) with Sir Edward Montagu to the Netherlands to bring Charles II back from exile. Over the next ten years, Pepys' diary would provide the most detailed account of the history of late 17th century England, including the Restoration, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The diary also painted a revealing portrait of Pepys the man. He loved the theater. He was a connoisseur of good wine, literature, and music. He enjoyed the company of friends. He would often evaluate his life and finances, promising to work harder and abstain from wine and the theater, then later, he'd record his lapses. He was a talented singer and musician. He played the lute, violin, viola, flageolet, recorder, and harpsichord, with varying levels of proficiency. As a singer, he performed at home, at coffee houses, and at Westminster Abbey.

Pepys also chronicled, sometimes in surprisingly graphic detail, his extramarital affairs. In one entry, he describes how his wife Elisabeth caught him in a compromising position with her friend, Deborah Willet, writing that Elisabeth "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...." When he wrote about his affairs, Pepys was always filled with remorse - but that didn't stop his philandering.

Samuel Pepys kept his diary for nearly ten years. By 1669, his health began to suffer from all the work he put into it. He eyesight deteriorated, and he feared he might go blind, so for a while, he dictated his diary to his clerks before ending it altogether. After he ended it, he would become an elected Member of Parliament and Secretary to the Admiralty. He also helped found the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital and was made its Governor. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1665 and served as its president from 1684-86.

Pepys was attacked off and on by his political enemies and arrested twice on unsubstantiated charges of being a Jacobite - a radical plotting to restore the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was released both times, as no charges could be successfully brought against him in court. After his second release in 1690, he retired from public life at the age of 57. He died in 1703 at the age of 70. Having no children, he willed his estate to his nephew, John Jackson.

Samuel Pepys' diaries would remain unpublished until 1825. To write his diary entries, Pepys used tachygraphy, one of many forms of shorthand employed at the time. This required translation into standard English. The first to translate Pepys' diaries was Reverend John Smith. He didn't know that a key to Pepys' tachygraphy system was stored in Pepys' library a few shelves above the diaries. So it took Smith several years, from 1819-1822, to finish his translation. It was an incomplete translation, as the clergyman refused to translate the salacious sections of Pepys' diaries - especially the entries about his extramarital affairs.

A complete and definitive edition of Samuel Pepys' diaries was translated by Robert Latham and William Matthews and published in nine volumes, along with companion and index volumes, between 1970 and 1983.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Saw a wedding in the church. It was strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.” - Samuel Pepys

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features an animation of Samuel Pepys reading excerpts from his diaries recalling the Great Plague outbreak in England. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody

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Carol Aronoff

My poem, "The Others" will be included in the anthology, Before God Closes His Hand; Poets Respond to the Holy Land 'Situation'.

Vrinda Baliga

My story, "Sound Bytes," has been accepted for the Fall 2009 issue of Temenos.

Thanks to the Practice group for their valuable critiques.

Barry Basden

My poem, "Tiramisu," is in the February issue of Apollo's Lyre.

Doug Bushong

Thanks to everyone that helped with the review of Braid. The video for the review is now available on YouTube.

I'm three videos into the show's return, and it feels good to have a steady rhythm again.

Florence Cardinal

I'm now writing for three Web sites: Health Central, Suite 101 and Helium.

The following articles are now up.

"New Canadian Wilderness Park" at Suite 101.

"Heart Healthy February" at Health Central.

"The Power of the Paranormal" at Helium.

At Sleep Central, "Stress and Sleep Deprivation Contributed to Clinton's Clogged Artery."

And at Suite 101: "Animal Attacks."

Rebecca Gaffron

I have new pieces up at Blink Ink and 50 to 1.

Alan Girling

Two recent yahoos from me: a poem up at Ink, Sweat and Tears called "Solstice '09" and a six-sentence piece in The Love Book published by Six Sentences, available only in print.

Ann Hite

Shadowcast Anthology has produced a fantastic recording of my story, "Ghost On Black Mountain." This is the story that evolved into the novel now under serious consideration. Please check it out and download it into iTunes. I really love the actress Amy Tapia who performs the story.

My hat is off to you, Jason. This is a fine job!

Tom Mahony

My essay, "Heat Exhaustion" is up at LabLit.

My flash, "Capitalism" is up at The Legendary.

Gary Presley

One thing I've learned since getting into print is that your publisher may love you, but your publisher also assigns you most of the PR

duties. And the party never ends ... I have an interview up with Selling Books.

Judith Quaempts

My poem, "Sacrifice," is up at Pemmican Press. This is my first acceptance by Pemmican and the editors there were great about responding in a timely fashion and keeping to the schedule they projected after acceptance.

Randy Radic

My blog/interview with Dr. David Anderson is up at Basil and Spice. Thanks to the good doctor, and to Kelly for publishing it.

My piece "How To Become a Real Person" is up at Basil and Spice.

My review of three new fragrances is up at Basil and Spice. Thanks to Adrienne for the samples and Kelly for the opportunity.

My review of shaving products is up at Basil and Spice.

Sarah Savage

My piece, "What I've Always Wanted" is up at Camroc Press Review.

Thank you Barry!

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This Week's Practice Exercise

Graffiti
Prepared by: Ruth Douillette
Reposted on: Sun, 21 Feb 2010

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Exercise: In fewer than 400 words write a story in which the conflict revolves around graffiti. Use first person POV. The person speaking need not be the one who wrote the graffiti, but could be.

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Coming up with story ideas can be the hardest part of writing, yet imaginative writers often build stories around seemingly inconsequential objects or common place images that others might overlook. Creating a story from the smallest detail is a skill worth developing. This exercise provides practice in developing a story around such a simple detail: a few words of graffiti.

Words are everywhere, even places they don't belong: spray painted on bridges,lipsticked on public restroom walls, scratched into an old school desk,carved on the trunk of a tree, smudged in the grease on the back of a truck.

You might write about a sixteen year-old girl who writes a note using her finger on the fogged rear window of her dad's Chevy. The message emerges again on a rainy day when Dad is driving the family to church. Or perhaps a man calls the number scratched on the wall of a gas station restroom, and recognizes his neighbor's voice. Does she recognize his?

Have fun with this, but remember the point is to spin a story from a simple detail. Push your imagination, and enjoy.

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Exercise: In fewer than 400 words write a story in which the conflict revolves around graffiti. Use first person POV. The person speaking need not be the one who wrote the graffiti, but could be.

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Critique by commenting on how well the story uses the graffiti as the point of conflict in the story. How does the writer's choice of the protagonist make the story more effective than if told through the eyes of a different character?


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.

Notes For February 19th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 19th, 1917, the famous American novelist and playwright Carson McCullers was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her mother was the granddaughter of a Confederate war hero. Her father was a watchmaker and jeweler.

As a child, Carson McCullers was a musical prodigy. She began taking piano lessons at the age of ten. When she was fifteen, her father gave her a typewriter. Nevertheless, she aspired to become a concert pianist. In September of 1934, when she was seventeen years old, McCullers left home on a steamship bound for New York City, where she planned to study piano at Julliard. Unfortunately, she lost her tuition money and was unable to attend the school.

McCullers then worked menial jobs while she took creative writing classes at both Columbia University and New York University. By 1936, at the age of nineteen, her first short story, Wunderkind, was published in Story magazine. She decided to become a writer. A year later, in 1937, she married her husband, Reeves McCullers, an ex-soldier turned aspiring writer. They would separate in 1940.

That year, Carson McCullers published her breakthrough debut novel, which established her as one of the greatest writers of her generation. Set in the Depression-era American South, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter told the story of four ragtag misfits whose varied lives have several things in common - loneliness, isolation, and seemingly unattainable dreams.

The four people are Mick Kelly, a restless 14-year-old tomboy with androgynous looks and musical talent forced to be a mother to her siblings and go to work to support her family; Jake Blount, an itinerant, alcoholic laborer whose socialist convictions get him into trouble; Dr. Benedict Copeland, a black physician who suffers from both tuberculosis and his desire to help free his people from racist oppression; and Biff Brannon, a married cafe owner whose masculine appearance masks his inner struggle to come to terms with his bisexuality.

All four characters are connected by a mutual friend, John Singer, an intelligent deaf-mute who can write, sign, and read lips. They all find peace in Singer's kindness, wisdom, and willingness to listen to and understand them. What they don't know is that Singer is just like them and is suffering in silence. His companion of ten years - a big Greek man and fellow deaf-mute named Spiros Antonapoulos - became mentally ill and was institutionalized by a relative. While Singer was there to listen to other people's problems and comfort them, there is no one to listen to Singer and comfort him, which ultimately leads to tragedy.

All the characters in the novel are sad and intriguing, though there is nothing sentimental about their sadness. In fact, one of the novel's main themes is the selfish nature of loneliness and emotional detachment. The most intriguing characters are Mick Kelly and Biff Brannon, with their sexual ambiguity. At first, Mick dresses like a boy and acts like one, too. But after experiencing her first relationship with a boyfriend, (Harry, a Jewish neighbor boy) which results in her first sexual experience, Mick changes her appearance, dressing and acting more like a woman.

Biff Brannon, impotent and emotionally distant from his wife, finds himself sexually attracted to the boyish-looking Mick, but rather than act on it, he keeps his emotional distance. After Mick starts dressing and acting like a woman, Biff loses sexual interest in her, but warms up to her emotionally. After his wife Alice dies, Biff feels little grief - their marriage was loveless - but he starts wearing her clothes and perfume.

There is also a strong homoerotic tone to the relationship between John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos - in the beginning, the two deaf-mute men walk together arm in arm, and later, Singer longs for his institutionalized companion - but they are not specifically described as a gay couple.

Carson McCullers was only 23 years old when The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter was published. For such a young novelist to have crafted such a profoundly deep novel is amazing. The book became an overnight success, with rave reviews from critics who admired McCullers' handling of racial issues (Dr. Copeland is angry with his fellow blacks who refuse to stand up for their rights and choose to accept their unequal status in society with aplomb) and the evils of anti-communist hysteria. Her novel would foreshadow the coming of both the civil rights movement and the anti-communist witch hunts that would take place a decade after its publication.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter would be adapted as a feature film in 1968, (starring Alan Arkin as John Singer) and as a stage play in 2005.

In 1946, McCullers published another classic novel, The Member of the Wedding. It told the story of Frankie Addams, a lonely and alienated 12-year-old tomboy who dreams of running away to join her brother and his new wife on their honeymoon in Alaska. The semi-autobiographical novel was based on McCullers' childhood. It explores the nature of racial and sexual identity, as Frankie is close to her family's black maid and wishes that people could "change back and forth from boys to girls." She would later adapt her novel as a Broadway play.

The issues of sexual identity raised in The Member of the Wedding came from the fact that McCullers was bisexual and had struggled with her own identity. Her volatile marriage didn't help matters. After her separation, she moved in with George Davis, the editor of Harper's Bazaar, but ended up remarrying Reeves McCullers in 1945. Three years later, while suffering from depression, she attempted suicide.

Five years after that, in 1953, Reeves tried to convince Carson to commit suicide with him. She left him and he killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills. Her 1957 play, The Square Root of Wonderful, was an attempt to come to terms with these painful experiences.

Carson McCullers was sickly throughout her life; she suffered strokes since childhood and contracted rheumatic fever when she was fifteen. By the time she was 31, strokes had paralyzed her left side completely. She died of a brain hemorrhage in 1967 at the age of fifty. Her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare, which she dictated during the last few months of her life, was published posthumously in 1999.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect. " - Carson McCullers

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the trailer for the rare 1996 TV movie adaptation of Carson McCullers' classic novel, The Member of the Wedding - starring Anna Paquin as Frankie Addams! Enjoy!

Notes For February 18th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 18th, 1885, the legendary writer Mark Twain (the pseudonym of Samuel Clemens) published his classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The novel was a sequel to his previous classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with Tom's friend Huck on an adventure of his own.

Set in the pre-Civil War South, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn finds Huck under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, along with her sister Miss Watson, are attempting to "sivilize" him. While Huck appreciates their efforts, he feels stifled by civilized life. Tom Sawyer makes a brief appearance and helps Huck sneak out one night.

When Huck's shiftless father Pap, an abusive drunkard, suddenly appears, Huck wants no part of him. Unfortunately, Pap regains custody of Huck and they move to the backwoods, where Pap keeps Huck locked in his cabin. Huck escapes and runs away down the Mississippi River. He soon meets up with Miss Watson's slave, Jim.

Jim has also run away, after Miss Watson threatened to sell him downriver, where life for slaves is harsh. Although he is heading for Cairo, Illinois, Jim ultimately plans to get to Ohio, a free state where he hopes to buy his family's freedom. At first, Huck is unsure about whether or not he should report Jim for running away.

Throughout the novel, as Huck travels with Jim and talks with him, he begins to change his mind about slavery, people, and life in general. He comes to believe that Jim the runaway slave is an intelligent, compassionate man who deserves his freedom. One day, Huck and Jim find an entire house floating down the river. They enter it, hoping to find food and valuables. Instead, in one room, Jim finds the body of Huck's father, Pap, who was apparently shot in the back while robbing the house. Jim won't let Huck see the dead man's face and doesn't tell him that it's Pap.

Later, to find out what's going on in the area, Huck dresses up in drag and passes himself off as a girl named Sarah Williams. He meets a woman and enters her house, hoping that she won't recognize him as a boy. She tells him that there's a $300 bounty on Jim's head, as he is accused of killing Huckleberry Finn! The woman becomes suspicious of Huck's disguise. When she tricks him into revealing that he's a boy, Huck runs off. He warns Jim of the manhunt, then they pack up their raft and flee.

As Huck and Jim continue their journey, they encounter more people and more trouble. First, they get caught in the middle of a blood feud between two families, the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Then, they rescue two clever con artists and get caught up in their schemes. Huck is outraged when one of the grifters turns Jim in for the reward. Even though it's against the law, Huck helps Jim escape after rejecting the advice of his conscience, telling himself, "All right, then, I'll go to Hell!"

Around this time, Huck witnesses the attempted lynching of a Southern gentleman, Colonel Sherburn. The Colonel turns back the lynch mob with his rifle - and a long speech about the cowardly nature of "Southern justice."

Although Huck had helped Jim escape from custody, he is soon recaptured. Later, Huck learns that Miss Watson died, and in her will, she freed Jim. When Jim tells Huck that the dead man they found in the floating house was his father, he realizes that he can finally go home.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rightfully considered an all-time classic work of American literature. Although geared toward young readers, the novel has become a favorite of readers of all ages. It has been adapted numerous times for the radio, stage, screen, and television.

A month after it was first published, a public library in Concord, Massachusetts, banned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its shelves, calling the novel tawdry, coarse, and ignorant. It was the beginning of a controversy that continues to this day. From its first publication through the early 1950s, bans and challenges to the novel were the result of its condemnations of slavery and lynching, and its depiction of an intelligent, compassionate black slave.

Since the late 1950s, (when the Civil Rights movement began to gain momentum) the novel has faced bans and challenges in classrooms and school libraries from black activists for its frequent use of the racial epithet nigger and for its allegedly racist stereotyping of blacks. Twain scholars point out that in using the word nigger, the author criticizes his fellow Southerners' racism by letting them speak their own ugly language.

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Quote Of The Day

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"God made the idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board." - Mark Twain

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Vanguard Video>

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Today's video features a reading of the first chapter of Mark Twain's classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Enjoy!

Notes For February 17th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 17th, 1986, The Accidental Tourist, the acclaimed and bestselling novel by Anne Tyler, won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The Accidental Tourist told the story of Macon Leary, a travel writer obsessed with neatness whose well-ordered life suddenly turns to chaos. First, his 12-year-old son Ethan, away from home for the first time, is murdered in cold blood by a gunman during a robbery at a restaurant. Before he can come to terms with his grief, Macon's threadbare marriage collapses and his wife Sarah leaves him.

Left alone with Edward, his son's undisciplined and aggressive dog, Macon ends up breaking his leg in an accident. He moves back into his family's home with his sister and brothers while he recuperates from both his physical and emotional wounds. Into Macon's life comes more chaos, in the form of Muriel Pritchett, a dog trainer willing to try and civilize the unruly Edward.

Muriel is a flaky, eccentric divorcee and single mother whose son is overprotected, oversensitive, and allergic to dogs. As he works on the next volume of his popular "Accidental Tourist" travel guide series, Macon finds himself falling in love with Muriel.

In 1988, a acclaimed feature film adaptation of The Accidental Tourist was released. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, working from a screenplay by Frank Galati, the movie starred William Hurt as Macon Leary and Geena Davis as Muriel Pritchett, in a performance that won her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

The title of Anne Tyler's novel would later be attributed to a man appearing in an eerie photograph that spread through the Internet. The photograph, allegedly developed from a camera found in the debris at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, depicted a young male tourist dressed in a wool cap, heavy coat, and backpack standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center. Below him, a jet plane is seen flying toward the building.

As the photograph circulated through the Internet, the man in it was dubbed the Accidental Tourist. The picture was proven to be a fake. A Brazilian businessman named Jose Roberto Penteado claimed to be the prankster behind the photograph. When he started to get media attention - including an offer to appear in a Volkswagen commercial - a 25-year-old Hungarian named Peter Guzli came forward and claimed to be the real Accidental Tourist, and provided the evidence to prove it.

Since then, other pranksters have created Accidental Tourist spoof photographs and posted them on the Internet. The spoofs featured Peter Guzli's image superimposed over such events as the sinking of the Titanic, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the destruction of Air France Flight 4590. One picture found the Tourist at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

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Quote Of The Day

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"It's true that [writing is] a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them." - Anne Tyler

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the trailer for the acclaimed 1988 feature film adaptation of The Accidental Tourist. Enjoy!

Notes For February 16th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 16th, 1944, the famous writer Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi. His father, Parker Ford, was a traveling salesman for a starch company. When Richard was eight years old, his father had a serious heart attack. While Parker recovered and afterward, Richard spent a lot of time with his grandfather, an ex-boxer turned hotel owner, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He would lose his father to a second heart attack when he was sixteen.

As a boy, Richard Ford suffered from partial dyslexia. To cope with his learning disability, he learned to read slowly, but thoroughly. This led him to develop a passion for literature. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Michigan to study hotel management. He soon switched his major to English. At university, he met Kristina Hensley, whom he would marry in 1968.

After graduating from university, Richard became a middle school teacher in Flint, Michigan. He enlisted in the Marines, but was discharged after contracting hepatitis. He then enrolled in law school, but dropped out to enroll in the creative writing program at the University of California, Irvine, where he earned a Master's degree in Fine Arts.

In 1976, Richard Ford's first novel, A Piece of My Heart, was published. His second novel, The Ultimate Good Luck, was published five years later. Neither novel was successful, so he gave up writing and became a journalist. He took a job as sportswriter for Inside Sports magazine. A year later, the magazine folded. When Sports Illustrated wouldn't hire him, Richard Ford returned to writing. He based his next novel on his experiences as a sportswriter.

The Sportswriter (1986) proved to be a breakthrough novel that made Richard Ford's name as a writer. In it, Frank Bascombe, a 38-year-old failed novelist turned sportswriter, suffers an emotional crisis when first his son dies, then his marriage crumbles after his wife (whom he refers to only as X) finds proof of his infidelity. The novel made Ford a finalist for the PEN / Faulkner Award for fiction. It was named one of the five best books of 1986 by Time magazine.

Nine years later, Richard Ford published Independence Day, a sequel to The Sportswriter. It won both the 1996 PEN / Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize, becoming the first novel to win both awards in the same year. Independence Day finds Frank Bascombe, now a real estate agent, evaluating his life over a long July 4th weekend as he visits his ex-wife and troubled teenage son, as well as some clients and renters of one of his properties. Frank wrestles with the question of whether he should rekindle his relationship with his ex, or stay with his current girlfriend.

In 2006, Ford published the third novel in his Frank Bascombe trilogy. The Lay of the Land finds Frank preparing for Thanksgiving dinner at his home in Sea Clift, New Jersey. Attending the dinner will be his bisexual daughter Clarissa, his son Paul, now a greeting card designer, and Paul's girlfriend. Frank's second wife, Sally, has left him and reunited with her ex-husband, who went AWOL and was presumed dead. Meanwhile, Frank has started his own real estate company and is fighting a tough battle with prostate cancer.

Richard Ford's next novel, Canada, is due for release soon, as is his fifth short story collection. He lives with his wife in East Boothbay, Maine. Since 2008, he has been Adjunct Professor at the Oscar Wilde Centre with the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin, where he teaches on the Masters Programme in creative writing.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Writing is the only thing I've ever done with persistence, except for being married." - Richard Ford

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading from Richard Ford's novel The Lay of the Land, performed live by David Strathairn. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

Internet Writing Workshop members have proven again this week that publishing success may be found in many venues.

Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody

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Amanda Borenstadt

My "1st line" is up at 50 to 1.

The great and fabulous Jason Warden over at ShadowCast just let me know that my story, "Letty" will be up on Feb. 26th. It'll be read by T.C. Parmelee. I'm so honored. She's an actual voice-over actress.

Ann Hite

Yesterday, a major--as in the big boys--publishing company spent a long time on the phone with my agent. This is the same publishing company who asked for the complete manuscript of Ghost On Black Mountain a week ago. Two editors have read my book and they wanted to know if I had more work to go along with it. They wanted to see my novel in-progress. They are 'getting their ducks in a row' to go before the board. They want badly to publish Ghost On Black Mountain.

This is far from a done deal, but it validates my dream. The saga continues. I will keep everyone up to date.

Catherine Robinson

My column for the Tampa Tribune, "Essentially, getting older isn't for wimps," is now online.

My latest at Creative Loafing, "Colorado Springs: What happens to a city when religion trumps government" is also up.

Celestine Stoltenberg

My "Miss Communication" is up at 50-to-1. I love this rag.

Gary Presley

My short article, "Critiquing Coffee And Donuts - Online Critique Groups" is up at Selling Books: Your guide to writing, publishing and marketing books and ebooks.

Harriet Wilcox

My poem "Dirt Sandwich" is up at Camroc Press Review.

Jason Warden

My short story "Once Seen," which came through the fiction list around the middle of last year, has been accepted by Triskaideka Books for their Masters of Horror Anthology. Thanks to all who gave suggestions. This is my first personal publishing achievement in which I'm on the writing side. It will be available later in the year on Amazon, B&N, and as an E-book, and Kindle.

Jeannette Cezanne

On Friday night at a very elegant awards ceremony I became the "best original playwright" in the professional category for the NH Theatre Awards for my play "The Pact." Yahoo indeed.

Jody Ewing

My interview with the Muscatine Journal, titled "Iowa woman casts a wide net to catch criminals: Web site helps keep Iowa cold cases alive," is now posted on the Journal's website.

Kathleen Jordan

My very short flash, "No Way Home," subbed on NFICTION and yahooed previously, is now up at The Shine Journal.

The story is about an abandoned, sightless and paint-defiled Walker Hound dog my husband and I rescued from an empty tobacco field.

Randy Radic

My review of Insides She Swallowed is up at Basil and Spice.

Thanks to Amanda for the book and Kelly for publishing the review.

Rebeca Schiller

For the crafters/knitters among us you might be interested in my latest Hand/Eye Magazine article on "Wool and the Gang."

Sue Ellis

Thanks to fine critiques in Practice, "Blue Blood" has been accepted at Whortleberry Press.

It's a strange little mystery about a new bride who begins to suspect her husband is an alien. Thanks also to Wayne Scheer for the link to their submission guidelines. The editor pays ten dollars for short stories between 2000 and 4000 words. I was able to squeak by with a little under 1400.

Wayne Scheer

My story, "Doing Penance," made the top ten cut from 186 submissions to the On the Premises writing contest. However, I just got word that it didn't make the cut for cash prizes (I think they went to the top 5), but it will get a thorough critique, which is something.

Sniplits lists my story, "Not Ready," as a Feature Story. This means you can download an audio file of it for only 48 cents. (Which is the regular price.) They've already paid me for the story, so I make nothing more, but I hope Sniplits stays alive. They pay well, and it's a kick hearing your story read by a professional. They plan on opening for submissions again soon and they promise a new, increased pay scale.

"A New Song," written with the Practice group, has been accepted at Eclectic Flash for their April issue.

My story, "The Return of Jack Monday," versions of which I've written and rewritten hundreds of times, has been accepted at Birmingham Arts Journal. It's a creative nonfiction piece about my father-in-law, a fiction writer's dream.

"Is Love Enough," a flash written with the Practice group, is up at Tomlit.

In the editor's newsletter announcing the publication's new edition, the editor wrote the following about my flash:

Yes, it is true. It has been about a month since the last issue came out so we thought you might need some more great fiction to keep you going until the next one. We have just published a short story by Wayne Scheer called 'Is Love Enough?' over at tomlit.webs.com. I've been a fan of Wayne's work since reading his great short story collection 'Revealing Moments,' and when he sent us in a submission I was very excited. Wayne sent in a story called 'Doing Right,' which will be featured in the next issue of the quarterly [as well as] the flash piece mentioned above. So if you head over to the site now you can read Is Love Enough? and if you like it, come back here and follow the link to his e-book Revealing Moments and read that too. Enjoy.

This Week's Practice Exercise

Lights Out! (Version 3)

Prepared by: Rhéal Nadeau
Revised, reposted on: Sun, 14 Feb 2010
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a scene in which the character(s) can't see, and show the experiences via the other senses. Whether by blindness, darkness, or some other cause, the character(s) cannot utilize the sense of sight.
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Involving all the senses is a powerful tool to liven up our writing and draw in the reader. Too often, however, writers limit themselves to visual descriptions and dialogue. This yields a world with no taste, no smell, no texture.

One way to explore the senses is to imagine what things would be like without them. How would your character(s) perceive the world without the ability to see? Use the other senses: smell, taste, touch, hearing. Show the
experience, don't just narrate it.
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a scene in which the character(s) can't see, and show the experiences via the other senses. Whether by blindness, darkness, or some other cause, the character(s) cannot utilize the sense of sight.
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When critiquing, mention specifics about how the story addressed the absence of vision. Was the story's approach unique and believable? Were the absence
of vision and the presence of the other senses successful within the story or not. 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.

Notes For February 12th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 12th, 1567, the famous English physician, poet, songwriter, and playwright Thomas Campion was born in London, England. He enrolled at Peterhouse, Cambridge, but left to study law in 1586. He graduated, but by 1595, he hadn't been called to the bar to practice law, so he enrolled at the University of Caen to study medicine. He received his medical degree and became a physician.

Campion's poetry was first published in 1591, when several of his verses appeared in Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella. He continued to write and publish poetry, and in 1602, he wrote a book on the subject called Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602) where he criticized the use of rhyming in poetry.

Despite his dislike of rhyme in poetry, Campion had no problem using rhymes in his song lyrics. He wrote over a hundred lute songs - lyrics sung by a singer accompanying himself on the lute. Some of Campion's songs were quite bawdy, such as Beauty, Since You So Much Desire. In November of 1612, Britain was rocked by the sudden death of Prince Henry. So, Campion wrote a collection of songs in tribute to the fallen monarch. The Songs of Mourning: Bewailing the Untimely Death of Prince Henry appeared in 1613, set to music by composer John Cooper.

Campion also wrote masques, which were not operas, but plays with music and dancing. His popular masques included Lord Hay's Masque (1607) and The Lord's Masque, which premiered in 1613. That year, Campion found himself accused of being a conspirator in the plot to murder poet and essayist Sir Thomas Overbury, but was eventually exonerated of the charge.

Thomas Campion died on March 1st, 1620, at the age of 53, most likely from the bubonic plague that was ravaging Europe at the time.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Time's fatal wings do ever forward fly; to every day we live, a day we die." - Thomas Campion

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a performance of Thomas Campion's lute song What If A Day, performed by tenor Mario Ivan Martinez. Enjoy!

Notes For February 11th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 11th, 1778, the legendary French writer and philosopher Voltaire returned to Paris after a 28-year exile. Voltaire (the pseudonym of Francois-Marie Arouet) was born to a middle class family. As a young man, he entered law school, but quit to become a writer. He began his writing career as a playwright, but he also wrote poetry.

Voltaire's poetry and prose works were of a polemic nature, and he possessed a rapacious wit. In 1717, the publication of his epic poem La Henriade, a satirical attack on the French monarchy and the Catholic Church, resulted in his arrest. He served almost a year in the Bastille. Imprisonment failed to temper his poison pen, and by 1726, he found himself in trouble again.

Outraged by Voltaire's retort to his insult, Chevalier de Rohan, a young aristocrat, obtained a royal lettre de cachet from King Louis XV - a warrant for Voltaire's arrest and imprisonment without trial. To avoid serving more time at the Bastille, Voltaire fled to England. He returned to Paris almost three years later.

Voltaire continued to write and publish polemical essays, poetry, and prose. His essay collection Philosophical Letters on the English, which praised the constitutional monarchy of England for its respect for human rights and condemned the French monarchy for its violations of them, marked the beginning of an escalating outrage over his writings. He would flee arrest again, then return. Eventually, King Louis XV banned Voltaire entirely from France.

He moved first to Berlin, then settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his famous novel Candide and lived for 28 years. When Voltaire finally returned to Paris in February of 1778, he was met with a hero's welcome. Around three hundred people came to visit him. He died three months later at the age of 83.

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Quote Of The Day

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"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination." - Voltaire

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading from Voltaire's classic novella, Candide. Enjoy!

Notes For February 10th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 10th, 1890, the legendary Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow, Russia. He was born into a wealthy Russian-Jewish family. His father, Leonid Pasternak, was a famous artist; his mother, Rosa Kaufman, was a concert pianist. The Pasternaks were a liberal, intellectual family.

Boris Pasternak originally aspired to become a composer. He entered the Moscow Conservatory, but left abruptly in 1910, traveling to Germany and enrolling at the University of Marburg, where he studied philosophy. After graduating, instead of a career in philosophy, he decided to become a writer. He returned to Moscow in 1914. Later that year, his first book - a poetry collection - was published.

During World War 1, Pasternak taught and worked at a chemical factory in Vsevolodovo-Vilve near Perm. He spent the summer of 1917 living in the steppe country near Seratov, where he fell in love for the first time in his life. Filled with a new passion, he began writing what would become his seminal poetry collection, My Sister Life. When it was published, its innovative style would revolutionize Russian poetry, influencing the works of young poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva.

After the Russian Revolution in October of 1917, Pasternak decided to remain in Russia, fascinated with the new ideas and possibilities that the Revolution brought to life. He was filled with hope for the future He continued to write. My Sister Life was published in 1921; later that year, he published Rupture, another seminal and influential poetry collection. He soon found that his innovative, modernist style of poetry was at odds with the Communist Party's doctrine of Socialist Realism. So, he changed his style to make it more acceptable to the Soviet public.

Pasternak's next poetry collection, The Second Birth, was published in 1932. Though the poems proved to be just as brilliant as his earlier works, Pasternak's new style alienated his refined readers abroad. Throughout the decade, he would become disenchanted with Soviet communism and the totalitarian rule of Stalin. Ironically, during the purges, Stalin himself supposedly crossed Pasternak's name off an arrest list, saying to his secret police, "Don't touch this cloud dweller."

A few years before the start of World War 2, Boris Pasternak and his wife settled in Peredelkino, a village several miles away from Moscow that served as a writers' colony. In 1943, he published a collection of patriotic verse titled Early Trains, which prompted his fellow writer Vladimir Nabokov to describe him as a "weeping Bolshevik" and "Emily Dickinson in trousers." After the war ended, Pasternak resumed work on a novel that he had started writing some 30 years earlier. The 600-page epic novel would prove to be an all-time classic work of literature that made its author world famous.

Dr. Zhivago, completed in 1956, reflected Pasternak's disenchantment with Soviet communism and the totalitarian rule of Stalin. The semi-autobiographical novel takes place during three major events in Russian history: World War 1, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Russian Civil War of 1917-23. The sensitive Dr. Yuri Zhivago is a physician, poet, and idealist - a borderline mystic who finds himself living in a senseless world that is both modern and barbaric.

Dr. Zhivago embarks on a dreamlike, surreal journey through Russia. World War 1 is raging, and he treats wounded men at the front. He soon meets a woman, Larissa "Lara" Guishar, who becomes his great love. Lara is engaged to Pavel "Pasha" Antipov, an idealistic young student, but she has an affair with Viktor Komarovsky, a powerful lawyer who both attracts and repels her.

The first time Zhivago meets Lara, it's a brief encounter where he assists his mentor in treating Lara's mother, who attempted suicide after learning of her affair with Komarovsky. He sees Lara again at a Christmas party where she attempts to shoot Komarovsky. When Zhivago is later reunited with Lara at the front, where she is serving as a nurse, they fall in love while working together at a makeshift field hospital. They don't consummate their love until after the war, when they meet again in the town of Yuriatin.

Meanwhile, Lara's fiance Pasha is presumed killed in action, but he's really a prisoner of war. He escapes from the Germans and joins the Bolsheviks, becoming a ferocious Red Army general known for his executions of prisoners. He is nicknamed Strelnikov, which means "the shooter." He's really not much of a Bolshevik; he just likes to shoot prisoners and hopes that the war will end soon so he can return home to Lara.

After falling from grace and losing his position in the Red Army, Pasha returns home and hopes to find Lara waiting for him. By this time, however, she has taken off with Komarovsky. Pasha has a long talk with Dr. Zhivago, then commits suicide. The loss of Lara causes Zhivago's life to go downhill as well. He has two children with another woman, but is haunted by his memories of Lara. He tries to write, but fails to complete any of his writing projects. He becomes absent-minded, erratic, and physically ill. Lara finally returns to Russia - on the day of Zhivago's funeral.

Dr. Zhivago raised the ire of Soviet authorities with its negative depictions of Soviet communism and the Red Army. As a result, it could not be published in the Soviet Union. So, Pasternak had a friend smuggle the manuscript out of the country. It was first published in Italy in 1957. The novel became an overnight sensation and was quickly translated into various languages and published throughout the non-communist world. In 1958 and 1959, the American edition of Dr. Zhivago spent 26 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Soviet literary critics, who never read his novel, called for Pasternak to be expelled from the Soviet Union, demanding that the authorities "kick the pig out of our kitchen-garden." A Russian edition of Dr. Zhivago was published secretly in 1958 and circulated underground. The costs of printing and distribution were paid for in part by the American CIA. That year, despite pressure from Soviet authorities, the Nobel committee awarded Pasternak a Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel. He thanked them, but refused to accept the award, for fear of losing his Soviet citizenship and being exiled. Over 30 years later, Pasternak's son Yevgeny accepted the award for his father.

In 1965, a feature film adaptation of Dr. Zhivago was released. The big-budget Hollywood epic starred Omar Sharif in the title role and Julie Christie as Lara. Featuring an all-star supporting cast and masterfully directed by David Lean, the film became a huge hit with critics and audiences, despite the fact that Robert Bolt's screenplay condensed and sanitized the novel. The movie grossed more than ten times its (then) huge budget. The score, composed by Maurice Jarre, remains one of the most popular and best selling film soundtracks, with Lara's Theme being the best loved piece. Today, Dr. Zhivago is rightfully considered an all-time classic film. Boris Pasternak never lived to see it. He died of lung cancer in 1960 at the age of 70.

In 2006, another adaptation of Dr. Zhivago premiered on Russian TV. It is considered more faithful to Pasternak's novel than the Hollywood movie.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades." - Boris Pasternak

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the 1965 feature film adaptation of Boris Pasternak's classic novel, Dr. Zhivago. Enjoy!

Notes For February 9th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On February 9th, 1944, the famous novelist Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia. She was the youngest of eight children. Her father, Willie Lee Walker, whom she described as "wonderful at math, but a terrible farmer," was a sharecropper and dairy farmer. He only made $300 a year, so Alice's mother Minnie Lou earned extra money by working as a maid.

The Walker family, like most black Americans living in the South at the time, suffered under the Jim Crow Laws, which segregated black people and denied them their civil rights. This planted the seeds of Alice's future careers as both a writer and an activist. She was an intellectually gifted child and entered the first grade at the age of four. She began writing short stories at the age of eight, influenced by her grandfather, who practiced the old tradition of oral storytelling.

The year she began writing, Alice was injured when one of her brothers accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. Since the family had no car, it would be a week before she could see a doctor. By then, she had become permanently blind in her injured eye. A disfiguring scar tissue formed on it, making the formerly outgoing Alice self-conscious and painfully shy. Stared at and taunted, she turned to reading and writing poetry for solace. The scar tissue would be removed when she was 14, and when Alice graduated high school as valedictorian, she had also been voted the most popular girl and queen of her senior class.

In the early 1960s, while she was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta, Alice Walker met civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. He inspired her to become a civil rights activist herself. She joined in King's famous 1963 March on Washington and volunteered to register voters in Georgia and Mississippi. She also worked on campaigns for welfare rights and children's programs.

In 1965, Walker met Mel Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married two years later. When they relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, they became the first legally married interracial couple in the state. As a result, they faced a steady stream of harassment, including death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. By 1969, they had a daughter, Rebecca, to whom Alice would become estranged. Rebecca would later publish a memoir, Black White and Jewish, chronicling her childhood as the daughter of mixed-race parents. Alice and her husband divorced amicably in 1976.

Alice Walker's first book was published while she was in college. It was a poetry collection. She later published two novels and a short story collection, but it would be her third novel that made Alice Walker's name as a writer - and made it famous. The Color Purple (1982) is an epistolary novel that tells the story of Celie, a poor, uneducated black woman in 1930s Georgia. Celie struggles with not only Jim Crow racism, but sexism and abuse as well. At the age of fourteen, she is raped and impregnated twice by a man she calls Pa.

Later, Celie's children disappear, and she assumes that Pa killed them - until she meets a little girl she thinks might be her daughter. Celie is forced into an arranged marriage to Mr. Johnson, a man who originally wanted to marry her younger sister, Nettie. Celie refers to her husband only as "Mister" and it isn't until much later in the novel that his first name is revealed to be Albert. Albert has a mistress, Shug, who joins him in mistreating Celie.

As the novel progresses, Celie evolves from a timid, helpless victim to a determined, empowered woman. The Color Purple won Alice Walker the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. That same year, the novel was adapted as a highly acclaimed feature film directed by Steven Spielberg. Comedienne Whoopi Goldberg delivered a memorable performance in the starring role as Celie. C0-starring as Sofia was a then virtually unknown actress named Oprah Winfrey, who would later become a talk show hostess and the most powerful and influential black woman in popular culture. Winfrey would later produce a Broadway musical adaptation of A Color Purple in 2005.

Although the 1983 feature film adaptation was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, it failed to win any. This angered film critics, especially Roger Ebert, who considered it the best film of the year. Some complained about the negative depiction of black male characters as abusive, uncaring, and unfaithful, while others complained that the screenplay watered down or eliminated the novel's positive depiction of lesbian relationships. Still others complained about Steven Spielberg being chosen to direct. Film historians believe that these controversies were responsible for the movie not winning any Oscars.

Alice Walker would continue to write memorable novels, including The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992). Her latest book, Devil's My Enemy, was published in 2008. In 2003, Walker would return to activism, participating in a protest march against the war in Iraq. The march of over 5,000 activists began in Malcolm X park in Washington, DC, and ended at the White House, where Walker and 24 others were arrested for crossing a police line.

In March of 2009, Alice Walker, along with 60 other members of Code Pink - a women's activist group - traveled to Gaza in response to the controversial Israeli offensive that resulted in the extermination of over 1,400 Palestinians and the complete or nearly complete destruction of over 4,000 homes that left tens of thousands of people homeless. Over 400,000 Gazans were left without running water.

The purpose of Code Pink's trip was to deliver aid, meet with NGOs and residents, and persuade Egypt and Israel to open their borders into Gaza. Alice Walker later planned to participate in the Gaza Freedom March.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." - Alice Walker

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Alice Walker talking about her classic novel, The Color Purple. Enjoy!