IWW Members' Publishing Successes

Internet Writing Workshop members had some super announcements this past week with lots to celebrate. Michael Baird saw his first publishing success; Lynne Hinkey's much anticipated novel, "Marina Melee," hits bookstore shelves tomorrow; and Pat St. Pierre had her first flash fiction published.

It's never been a better time to be part of the Internet Writing Workshop!

Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody
------------------

Michael Baird

Over the weekend, Fiction365 accepted "Firebug." This is my first publication. Special thanks to the Fiction list.

---

Barry Basden

Short, Fast & Deadly has published "The Divorcée Confronts Her Social Network."

---

Mira Desai

Reading Hour is a crisp magazine from Bangalore.

Reading Hour Vol 3 features my speculative story based on an Indian epic, "Flight from the Bastions."

Reading Hour Vol 2 contained my spin on family fortunes, "7, Chinar woods."

Reading Hour Vol 1 featured a translation, "Shefali Kamdar," based on the original story by Shri Pravinsinh Chavda.

Print feels good. And I got paid.

Thanks, Practice group.

---

Diane Diekman

My review of Little Girl Blue has been posted to the Internet Review of Books.

Thanks to those on Nfiction who critted it for me.

---

Alice Folkart

Follow the link to see my three-line poem (right above Joanna Weston's - and maybe some other IWW writers) in Three Line Poetry. I can't give you a title, because they ask that the poems be submitted without titles.

The poems are listed by author (but not alphabetical) - so just scroll down, looking for my name on the right-hand margin.

---

Lynne Hinkey

Marina Melee's official release is on Wednesday, June 1 (although friends who ordered through Amazon have already received theirs). The local paper (very local, as in covering one section of Charleston - West Ashley) has a story about it!

---

Mel Jacob

I got the contact for my short story, "The Corpulent Chiropteran," today to be in an anthology called Curious Hearts and an offer for two other short stories to appear in an ebook. Don't yet know if it will go into a print anthology or not. Anyway, it's nice to have got these acceptances since I hadn't ever sent out two of these stories before.

Right know I don't know when they'll be out. The Curious Hearts was originally scheduled for July so we'll see and I've no idea about the ebook. What a day!

---

Pauline Micciche

My flash fiction "Initiation" is up on Stories Space as part of their Celebration Contest. Readers' votes count toward selection for prizes. I use the name Monet on their site.

---

P. F. Palm

My story, "Communion," is the feature story on Fiction365.

---

Dennis Rizzo

As I understand it, my historical novel, A Christmas Conspiracy (ASIN: B0051VS7VW), is available for Kindle download at Amazon.com for $3.88 - go figure.

---

Wayne Scheer

Thanks to Alice Folkart, I've been trying to write poetry lately. I wrote one yesterday in honor of the end of the world and sent it to The New Verse News. They put it up today.

My story, "Doing Penance," will be reprinted in the July issue of Front Porch Review. Thanks to the Fiction group for their help with this one.

My flash, "Renewal," is published in the current Best of Everyday Fiction, a print anthology.

Just found out that my story, "Butterfly," was published in Everyday Fiction a couple of days ago. The story was critiqued in Practice and Fiction a while back, so thanks to all.

---

Jack Shakely

My review of The Chinese Dream is up today on Internet Review of Books. With 1.4 billion people, if China realizes its version of the American Dream with new cars, homes and appliances, the Chinese Dream will inevitably become the Global Nightmare. Take a look.

The May/June issue of ForeWord Reviews magazine has my latest book review, Let There Be Pebble.

My novel, POWs at Chigger Lake, is being offered by Red Room as a prize for best WWII memory blog. The blog topic is "Memories or Impressions of World War II."

Write on. If you win, I'll sign and send you a copy. If you don't win, I may come visit for three days and eat everything in your refrigerator, drink the milk directly out of the carton and leave potato chip crumbs all over everything.

My review of the well-researched and -written novel of the dawning of Texas in the 1830s is up today on The Internet Review of Books.

---

Pat St. Pierre

My short poem "Battle Warriors is up at Pond Ripples magazine.

My flash fiction "The Promise" is up on Dew on the Kudzu. Scroll down a little.

As I mentioned before, this is my first flash fiction.

---

Joanna M. Weston

Me too, with Alice Folkart! A three-line poem is up at Three Line Poetry. Scroll down and I'm below Alice.

Notes For May 31st, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 31st, 1819, the legendary American poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman was born. He was born Walter Whitman Jr. on Long Island, New York. The second of nine children, Walt's childhood was restless and unhappy; the Whitmans moved frequently to dodge creditors, thanks to Walter Sr.'s bad investments.

Walt Whitman completed his primary education at the age of eleven and went off to learn a trade. He became a printer's devil (apprentice) for the Patriot, a weekly Long Island newspaper. He also worked for other newspapers and printers. In doing so, he became an expert at printing and typesetting.

While working for the Long Island Star newspaper, the teenage Walt Whitman determined to further his education and make a cultured gentleman of himself. He educated himself by becoming an active patron of the local public library, he joined a town debating society, and regularly attended the theater. He also began writing poetry, and his earliest works were published anonymously in newspapers.

By 1838, the nineteen year old Whitman, then living in New York City, was unable to find work in his trade because a massive fire had consumed most of the city's printing and publishing district, and the economy had tanked in the Panic of 1837, a depression that would last five years. Whitman returned to his native Long Island and found work as a teacher. He taught at several schools, but found teaching to be an unsatisfying career.

He took jobs in the printing and newspaper business when he could find them. He also founded his own newspaper, the Long Islander, but ended up selling it ten months later. No copies of the Long Islander survived. In 1840, Whitman was teaching again, at the Locust Grove School on Long Island, when a Presbyterian minister publicly accused him of homosexuality, which at the time was considered both disgraceful and illegal. Whitman, who was most likely bisexual, was not charged with a crime. However, he was reportedly tarred, feathered, and run out of town.

Walt Whitman moved back to New York City and spent the next ten years working for various newspapers. He added to his income by becoming a freelance writer of fiction and poetry. By 1846, he had become the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. He lost the position two years later due to political differences with the newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden. Whitman had used his position to publicly support his fellow Barnburners, angering Van Anden, who was a Hunker.

At the time, as a result of the recent economic crisis, the Democratic Party had become sharply divided between two rival factions, the Barnburners and the Hunkers. The Barnburners were the left wing reformers of the party. They were called Barnburners because they believed that the best way to deal with crooked banks and corporations was to shut them down - like a farmer burning down his barn to deal with an infestation of rats. The Barnburners were also fierce abolitionists who demanded an immediate end to slavery.

The Hunkers, so called because instead of favoring strong solutions to domestic crises, they favored the moderate "don't rock the boat" approach. They were the establishment, the professional politicians who "hunkered" (hankered) for office. On the campaign trail, they promised everything. After being elected, they did practically nothing. The Hunkers were conservative Democrats. They favored state bailouts of private banks with no regulatory strings attached and were moderate on the slavery issue. They found slavery distasteful, but were willing to maintain it for economic reasons. To abolish slavery, they believed, was too radical a step to take - too much of a risk to the economy.

After losing his editor's position, Walt Whitman continued to work in the newspaper business, but he was determined to make his mark as a poet. By 1850, he was working on the poems that would appear in his famous poetry collection, which would be rightfully considered one of the greatest American poetry collections of all time. It was called Leaves of Grass. The title was a pun; in the publishing business, leaves meant pages and grass was a slang term for a literary work of little artistic or commercial value.

The first edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in 1855. It was a collection of twelve untitled free verse poems contained in 95 pages. Whitman paid for the book to be published at a Brooklyn print shop owned by two Scottish immigrants who had been friends of his for years. Using his printing experience, Whitman designed the layout and did most of the typesetting himself. The initial press run was just under 800 copies. Instead of the poet's name, an engraved drawing of Whitman in his work clothes and jaunty hat appeared on the cover.

Leaves of Grass didn't sell a lot of copies at first, but it made a huge impact, especially on legendary American poet, essayist, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, Whitman's friend, who had inspired him to write the book, which contained meditations on transcendentalism. Emerson said of it, "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed... I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy." Not everyone agreed with Emerson's appraisal.

At the time he published his book, Whitman had been working for the United States Department of the Interior. His boss, Secretary of the Interior James Harlan, read Leaves of Grass, found its sexual content extremely offensive, and fired him. Literary critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold blasted it as "a mass of stupid filth," and in his review, made reference to the public accusation of homosexuality made against Whitman some fifteen years earlier, believing him to be guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians." Whitman included Griswold's entire review, which nearly resulted in the publication of the second edition being cancelled, in a later edition of Leaves of Grass.

Over the years, rather than write additional collections of poetry published under different titles, Whitman issued new, revised and expanded editions of Leaves of Grass that contained additional poems, revisions or deletions of previously published poems, and layout changes. When the last edition, known as the Deathbed Edition because it was completed just before Whitman's death in 1892, was published, Leaves of Grass had been expanded from its original 12 poems to nearly 400.

In March of 1882, Whitman's then publisher, James R. Osgood of Boston, received a letter from the city's district attorney, Oliver Stevens, who had been contacted by the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice regarding Leaves of Grass. Stevens agreed with the Society that the book constituted "obscene literature" as defined by law. He called for the deletion of two poems, A Woman Waits for Me and To a Common Prostitute, and for the revision of ten other poems. If the publisher did not agree to these terms, he could face prosecution for obscenity.

Osgood wrote to Whitman, who dismissed Stevens' threat and refused to censor his book. When Osgood refused to republish his book, Whitman found himself a new publisher, Rees Welsh & Company, who published a new, unexpurgated version of Leaves of Grass later that year. Whitman believed that the controversy would boost sales, and he was right. Though some retailers refused to sell it, the book went through five reprint runs of 1,000 copies each. The first printing sold out in one day.

The censorship hoopla brought Leaves of Grass to the attention of more liberal critics, and Walt Whitman was finally - and rightfully - recognized as one of the greatest poets of all time, the master of free verse. One critic, William Michael Rossetti, believed that with Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman had earned himself a place alongside William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri. Critic, editor, and fellow transcendentalist George Ripley believed that the book radiated "vigor and quaint beauty." Susan Garnet Smith, a fan from Connecticut, wrote to Whitman, professing her love for him and offering to donate her womb if he wanted a child.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Whitman published his classic patriotic poem Beat! Beat! Drums! and his brother George joined the Union army. George sent Walt many detailed letters chronicling his experiences on and off the battlefield. In December of 1862, the New York Times published a listing of the names of Union soldiers who had been wounded or killed in action. Concerned that one of the names, "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore," was a misspelling of his brother's name - George W. Whitman - Walt set out to find him.

While traveling through the South mostly on foot, Whitman had his wallet stolen and was unable to find any information about Union soldiers in general or his brother George in particular. Eventually, he found George alive, with just a minor wound on his cheek. Other soldiers weren't as lucky, and Walt was profoundly moved by the sight of all the severely wounded soldiers and the piles of their amputated limbs. Whitman found work in the army paymaster's office and was granted leave to serve as a volunteer nurse. He would write of his wartime experiences in a newspaper article, The Great Army of the Sick. His brother George would later be captured in Virginia and interned at one of the Confederates' horrific POW camps.

In 1873, Walt Whitman suffered a stroke that left him mostly bedridden, but it didn't stop him from working on new editions of Leaves of Grass. Cared for by relatives, he lived in various places before buying himself a house on Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey, now known as the famous Walt Whitman House. He struck up a friendship with Mary Oakes Davis, a sea captain's widow who was boarding with a nearby family. She later moved in with Whitman (bringing her menagerie of pets with her) and became his housekeeper and caregiver in exchange for free room and board.

As the years passed, Walt Whitman's fragile health deteriorated. He died of bronchial pneumonia in March of 1892, at the age of 72.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book." - Walt Whitman

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a reading from Walt Whitman's classic poetry collection, Leaves of Grass. Enjoy!

Notes For May 27th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 27th, 1894, the legendary American writer Dashiell Hammett was born. He was born Samuel Dashiell Hammett in St. Mary's County, Maryland, on a farm called Hopewell and Aim. Hammett's mother, Anne Bond Dashiell, was a descendant of one of Maryland's oldest families. When he turned 13, Hammett left school to work.

In 1915, at the age of 21, Hammett landed a job at the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency, where he worked for six years as an operative. This experience would plant the seeds of his writing career. Disillusioned by Pinkerton's role in strike breaking and other anti-union activities, Hammett quit the agency in disgust. During World War 1, Hammett served in the Army in the Motor Ambulance Corps, but illness cut his tour of duty short; first he'd contracted Spanish flu, then tuberculosis. He spent most of the war in a hospital in Tacoma, Washington.

While in the hospital, Hammett met a nurse, Josephine Dolan, whom he would later marry. She bore him two daughters, Mary Jane in 1921 and Josephine in 1926. Shortly after his second child's birth, due to Hammett's tuberculosis, Health Services nurses told his wife that she and the children should not live with him. So, they took an apartment in San Francisco. Hammett visited them on the weekends. Unfortunately, the separation took too great a toll on the marriage, and it fell apart.

Hammett started drinking and tried his hand at several jobs before beginning a writing career. His early work was comprised of a series of short stories featuring a detective with no name, referred to as The Continental Op. The short stories led to two novels, Red Harvest (February 1929) and The Dain Curse (July 1929). In Red Harvest, the Continental Op arrives in a coal mining town called Personville to meet with a new client, but finds that the man has been murdered. The client's father, a local industrialist, tells the Op that warring criminal gangs are fighting for control of Personville.

The Op solves his client's murder. With the Chief of Police totally corrupt, the Op cleans up the town himself by extracting and distributing the information he needs to set up a final showdown between the criminal gangs, manipulating them into wiping each other out. It has been suggested that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's 1961 masterwork, Yojimbo. Kurosawa often expressed his admiration for hardboiled American detective novels, citing them as an inspiration for several of his movies.

In 1929, Hammett became romantically involved with mystery writer Nell Martin, dedicating his novel The Glass Key to her. By 1931, their relationship ended and Hammett embarked on a lifelong affair with legendary playwright Lillian Hellman. They would never marry.

Hammett's writing matured after the publication and success of his Continental Op novels, his prose becoming more realistic and hardboiled. In 1930, Hammett published his classic novel, The Maltese Falcon, featuring one of the great detective characters of all time, Sam Spade. A bitter, sardonic character, Spade lets the police and other criminals think that he's a criminal while he works to nail the bad guys. The novel opens with Spade and his partner Miles Archer being hired by a woman, Miss Wonderly, to tail Floyd Thursby, a man who allegedly ran off with her underage sister. When Archer and Thursby suddenly end up murdered, Sam becomes the prime suspect.

Later, a man named Joel Cairo offers Sam $5000 to retrieve a valuable figurine of a black bird known as the Maltese Falcon. Suddenly, Cairo pulls a gun on Sam and decides to search Spade's office for the bird. The case leads Sam on a collision course with Cairo, rotund crime boss Kasper Gutman, and Gutman's bodyguard, Wilmer Cook. The Maltese Falcon was filmed three times, in 1931, 1936, (as Satan Met A Lady) and 1941.

While the 1931 version wonderfully captures the grittier elements of the novel, the other two were sanitized as per Production Code requirements. (In the novel, Sam Spade is having an affair with both his partner's wife and his female client, Gutman and Cook are obviously homosexual lovers, and the effeminate Cairo is also gay.) However, the 1941 version, featuring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, is still the best of the three and rightfully considered an all-time classic film.

Hammett's 1934 novel, The Thin Man, also turned out to be a classic. Set in New York City during Prohibition, ex-private detective Nick Charles and his clever, witty wife Nora - a wealthy socialite - spend most of their time cheerfully drunk in speakeasies and hotel rooms. Though he retired from the detective business, Nick finds himself investigating yet another crime, with Nora's help. As they try to solve a murder, Nick and Nora engage in snappy banter and imbibe vast quantities of alcohol. The case leads them into the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and the grotesque Wynant family.

The Thin Man would inspire a series of movies featuring the characters of Nick and Nora Charles, as well as a Thin Man TV series. It has been suggested that Dashiell Hammett modeled Nick and Nora after the personalities (and drinking habits) of himself and his longtime lover, Lillian Hellman. The Thin Man would prove to be Hammett's last novel.

Hammett devoted the rest of his life to political activism. In the 1930s, Hammett, a ferocious and outspoken anti-fascist, joined the Communist Party and the League of American Writers, a group of left-leaning activist writers. In 1942, Hammett, a disabled veteran of the first world war and ex-tuberculosis patient, pulled strings to get himself readmitted to the service. He spent most of World War 2 as a Sergeant stationed in the Aleutian Islands, where he edited an Army newspaper. He returned from the war with more lung trouble, this time emphysema.

Returning to political activism, Hammett was elected President of the Civil Rights Congress of New York in June of 1946 and devoted most of his time to working for the CRC. In 1951, he would be brought to testify before a U.S. District Court judge about his CRC activities. He refused to testify to anything, pleading the Fifth Amendment to every question. Congress began a full investigation of Hammett, and two years later in 1953, he was brought to testify before the HUAC - the House Un-American activities Committee. Hammett openly testified to his own activities, but refused to cooperate with the committee and inform on others. As a result, he was blacklisted.

Both trials took a toll on Hammett's already declining health. He died of lung cancer a few years later in 1961, at the age of 66. As he was a veteran of two world wars, Hammett was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Dashiell Hammett was one of America's greatest writers, a former detective turned author of hardboiled detective stories and novels whose iconic characters - and the classic films they inspired - will live on forever.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of." - Dashiell Hammett

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the acclaimed 1941 feature film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's classic novel, The Maltese Falcon. Enjoy!

Notes For May 26th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 26th, 1897, Dracula, the classic horror novel by legendary Irish writer Bram Stoker, was published in London. Stoker's tale of handsome, seductive Romanian nobleman and bloodthirsty vampire Count Dracula's move from Transylvania to London in search of new victims to feed on and add to his army of the undead wasn't a huge commercial success, but it was very popular with Victorian readers and critics alike.

Readers described the book as "the most blood-curdling novel of the paralyzed century." In a review in the Daily Mail published on June 1st, 1897, Dracula was proclaimed a classic of Gothic horror, the critic stating that "In seeking a parallel to this weird, powerful, and horrorful story, our mind reverts to such tales as The Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankenstein, The Fall of the House of Usher ... but Dracula is even more appalling in its gloomy fascination than any one of these."

Bram Stoker's epic epistolary horror novel is told in the form of letters and journal entries, as different characters, both male and female, narrate the story. The novel opens with entries from Jonathan Harker's journal, as the young solicitor travels to the border of Romania's Transylvania region in the Carpathian Mountains, where he has an appointment at the ominous Castle Dracula to help the Count complete his purchase of a new estate in London. Harker soon finds himself a prisoner in the castle and uncovers the Count's monstrous secret.

Dracula is a novel very much the product of its time, that being the late 19th century - the waning years of the Victorian era, as a new century approached. The book speaks both metaphorically and directly of the conflicts between science and religion and traditional versus modern life. The character of Mina Harker represents the conflict between traditional and modern womanhood. Some have suggested that in Dracula, vampirism is a metaphor for uncontrolled sexual desire, the ungodly lust for blood equated with lust for the flesh.

Sexuality in the Victorian era was a strange and sharp paradox; rigid morality and fear of the body and one's natural biological impulses ruled on the outside, with unwed motherhood a scandal worthy of suicide. Yet, behind closed doors, Victorians rarely practiced what they preached.

There was a thriving, seamy sexual underground in England at the time that included both female and male brothels catering to any and all desires. Some of the best literary erotica ever written was penned during the Victorian era and published in underground literary magazines and anthologies, all of which were distributed on the sly - usually under cover of darkness.

Though the suave and seductive Count Dracula's name was taken from that of the infamous Romanian prince Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad Dracul - dracul meaning devil in the Romanian language - the novel was partly inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's classic 1871 novella Carmilla.

Carmilla told the story of a lesbian vampire preying on lonely, vulnerable young women. Stoker added new aspects to the vampire mythos; in Dracula, for the first time, a vampire cast no reflection in a mirror, could be driven away with garlic, and could be destroyed by driving a wooden stake through its heart - through Dracula himself meets a different, nastier fate.

Dracula would be adapted as a stage play by Bram Stoker himself. While Dracula's name may have come from the Romanian prince, his charisma, elegance, and gentlemanly manner were inspired by an actor named Henry Irving, who also managed the Lyceum Theatre, where Bram Stoker had worked for twenty years. Stoker admired Irving greatly and hoped he would play the vampire count in his stage play adaptation of Dracula, but Irving wasn't interested. Years later in 1931, a Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi, famous for his stage portrayal of the vampire, would play the part again in the first sound film adaptation of Stoker's novel.

The first film adaptation of Dracula was the classic silent feature film Nosferatu, made in 1922 by legendary German director F.W. Murnau. It was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. Though basically faithful to the plot of the book, in order to avoid a lawsuit, Murnau changed the ending and the names of all the characters. Florence Stoker, Bram's widow, still sued for copyright infringement.

The judge ruled in her favor. Prana Film, the production company that made the movie, went bankrupt. Nosferatu would be its first and only film. The judge's decision against Prana ordered all the studio's copies of the movie destroyed. By then, the film had been distributed around the world, and the owners of those foreign release prints could not be forced to destroy them. As a result, the movie survived and fell into the public domain, where it could be distributed without payment to Prana or the Bram Stoker estate. Many distributors altered the title cards and restored the characters' original names to cash in on the Dracula name.

Nosferatu would become a classic film, famous not for its sordid legal history, but for F.W. Murnau's brilliant direction and the surreal expressionist sets. The most striking difference between Nosferatu and Tod Browning's Dracula is in the depiction of the main character. In Nosferatu, Count Dracula - renamed Count Orlock - is no suave, seductive aristocrat. With his skeletal frame, long, claw-like fingers, bat ears, bald head, and mouth full of jagged, fangy teeth, Count Orlock, played by legendary German character actor Max Schreck, looks like a human plague rat. There's nothing remotely alluring about him.

Though it wasn't the first classic novel to feature a vampire, over a hundred years since its initial publication, Dracula has inspired countless works of vampire fiction. Bela Lugosi's legendary performance as the Count in the first sound film adaptation of Dracula in 1931 set the stage for the vampire on film. But it was Stoker's novel that established the vampire as one of the most popular and intriguing characters in Western culture.

But Dracula is more than just a horror novel. It's also a classic work of 19th century English literature.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part." - Bram Stoker

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features the classic 1922 silent feature film Nosferatu - the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel, Dracula, directed by the great F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as the Count! This film is complete and uncut. Enjoy!

Notes For May 25th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 25th, 1803, the legendary American poet, essayist, philosopher, and orator Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Emerson's father, Rev. William Emerson, was a Unitarian minister who died two weeks before his son's eighth birthday, leaving the boy to be raised by his mother and other female family members, all of whom were both intellectual and devoutly religious. Emerson was especially close to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, and they would write to each other frequently until her death in 1863.

At the age of 9, Emerson attended Boston Latin School, then at 14, he went to Harvard College, where he was appointed freshman messenger for the president. During his junior year, he began compiling a list of books he'd read and started keeping a journal in a series of notebooks, which he called the Wide World. In his senior year, he served as Class Poet and recited an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, though by all accounts, he was an average student.

After graduating Harvard, Emerson helped his brother run a school for young women originally run out of their mother's house. Emerson took over the school when his brother went off study divinity. Emerson hated running the school, as he was very awkward around women. But it gave him the experience that enabled him to work as a schoolmaster for a few years before going to divinity school himself.

Emerson was most likely bisexual. During his Harvard years, he wrote in his journal of being "strangely attracted" to a male classmate by the ironic name of Martin Gay, about whom he wrote sexually charged poems. Emerson also wrote of his other male infatuations, including the legendary writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. However, in 1829, not long after being ordained as a junior pastor at Boston's Second Church, Emerson met a young girl named Ellen Louisa Tucker and fell love with her. He married her when she turned 18 - even though she was stricken with tuberculosis.

When Ellen died two years later, Emerson was devastated and visited her grave frequently. His wife's death forced him to come to terms with his simmering discontent with religion, writing in his journal that "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." He resigned as pastor.

Emerson then toured Europe, writing of his travels in English Traits (1856). During his trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle was a strong influence, and Emerson would serve as his unofficial literary agent in the U.S., maintaining a lifelong friendship with him. In 1835, he bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts, which is now a historical landmark. He married his second wife Lydia Jackson in September, 1835, and she bore him four children: Waldo, Edith, Ellen, and Edward. Ellen was named after Emerson's first wife at Lydia's suggestion.

The following year, Emerson and some like-minded intellectuals formed the Transcendental Club, which held its first meeting on September 19, 1836. Shortly thereafter, he published his first essay, Nature. In this essay, Emerson puts forth the foundation of transcendentalism, defining nature - the very universe - as an all-encompassing divine entity that is part of us, rather than a kingdom ruled by a separate divine entity. In pursuing his new philosophy, Emerson delved into the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedic Texts - all of which are the ancient, sacred writings of the Hindu religion.

A year later, Emerson delivered his famous Phi Beta Kappa Address at Cambridge, where he issued a declaration of literary independence from Europe, urging his fellow American writers to create a literary style all their own, free from European influence. Around this time, Emerson struck up a friendship with writer Henry David Thoreau and asked him if he kept a journal. Thoreau's fascination with Emerson's journal practice strongly influenced his own writing. He became Emerson's protege.

On July 15, 1838, Emerson was invited to Harvard Divinity School to deliver the graduation address at Divinity Hall. In what came to be known as his famous Divinity School Address, Emerson disputed biblical miracles and proclaimed Jesus to be neither God himself nor the son of God, but a great man and spiritual teacher whom organized Christianity had turned into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo." Emerson's address caused considerable outrage. He was denounced as an atheist and a corrupter of young people's minds.

Nevertheless, Emerson remained a popular lecturer in New England and throughout the country. He also toured England, Ireland, and Scotland. By the 1850s, he was giving up to 80 lectures a year. His earnings from the lectures enabled him to buy eleven acres of land near Walden Pond.

In 1845, Emerson published his essay The Over-soul, which is clearly influenced by the Vedic Texts and has a distinct tone of non-dualism:

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

In 1847, Emerson published his first book of poetry, simply titled Poems. Among these is Threnody, a heart wrenching, dazzlingly lyrical ode to grief written after Emerson lost his firstborn son Waldo to scarlet fever in 1842. His second book of poetry, May-Day and Other Poems, was published in 1867.

In 1860, Emerson, an ferocious abolitionist, voted for Abraham Lincoln for President, but was greatly disappointed by Lincoln's initial inclination to allow the Southern states to maintain the institution of slavery in order to preserve the Union. On January 31st, 1862, Emerson gave a public lecture in Washington DC, declaring "The South calls slavery an institution... I call it destitution... emancipation is the demand of civilization." The next day, his friend Charles Sumner took him to meet Lincoln. He came away with a more favorable opinion of the President.

The decade of the 1870s marked the beginning of the end of Emerson's career. His Concord home burned down in July of 1872, and though his friends collected over $15,000 in donations to help him and his family rebuild, it added to the stress caused by the fact that Emerson's memory was failing. In 1874, he edited and published a poetry anthology called Parnassus. By the end of the decade, his memory had failed considerably, and in 1879, at the age of 76, he finally retired from lecturing. When asked by friends how he felt, Emerson would reply in classic form "Quite well. I have lost all my mental faculties, but am perfectly well."

On April 19th, 1882, despite having a cold, Emerson went out for a walk and got caught in the rain. His cold turned into pneumonia, and he died eight days later at the age of 79. Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the all-time great American intellectuals - a poet, essayist, philosopher, and orator years, if not decades, ahead of his time. He will always have a place in the annals of literary history.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's Video features a reading of five poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Enjoy!

Notes For May 24th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 24th, 1951, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Works, the classic short story collection by the famous American writer Carson McCullers, was published. It included the title novella and five other stories.

Carson McCullers, born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, exploded onto the literary scene in 1940, with the publication of her classic debut novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Critics were floored by her sad and surreal tale of an intelligent, compassionate deaf-mute man who touches the lives of several unhappy people at the expense of his own happiness. McCullers was only 23 years old when she wrote the profound and moving novel.

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Works, her classic short story collection, was most famous for the title novella, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Set in a small Southern town, it told the story of Miss Amelia, a shopkeeper whom the townspeople believe to be a cold and calculating woman who never acts without reason. She is also known for being masculine, intimidating, confrontational, and greedy, and for wanting nothing to do with love, thanks to a rotten marriage that lasted only ten days.

One day, a hunchbacked man called Lymon arrives in town, carrying all of his belongings in one suitcase. He claims to be Miss Amelia's cousin, and has an old photograph that he says proves his claim. When Miss Amelia takes him in, the townspeople are shocked and assume that she has ulterior motives. After not seeing Lymon in town for a while, they suspect that Miss Amelia murdered him for his meager belongings. Then they find him safe and sound in her store.

What the townspeople don't realize is that the lonely Miss Amelia's relationship with her long lost cousin has changed her for the better. Caring for him has opened her heart. She becomes more hospitable to her customers and even serves them food and liquor, turning her store into a cafe. Lymon the hunchback is kind and grateful for the hospitality shown by Miss Amelia, but he also has faults. He has a dependent personality, he craves attention, he's a gossip, and he enjoys baiting people against each other and then watching them fight.

When Miss Amelia's ex-husband Marvin Macy suddenly shows up, Lymon comes to admire him greatly, not realizing that the handsome, charismatic Marvin is a cruel sociopath out for revenge against Miss Amelia, whom he blames for breaking his heart and unleashing the rage inside him that led to his crime spree and subsequent incarceration.

Marvin manipulates Lymon into helping him carry out his revenge against Miss Amelia, which culminates in the sacking of her store and the theft of her curios and money. Then in a final, crushing blow, Marvin invites Lymon to leave town with him, taking away the only one who ever really loved Miss Amelia.

Carson McCullers got the idea to write The Ballad of the Sad Cafe while out drinking with her friends George Davis (editor of Harper's Bazaar magazine) and British poet W.H. Auden. They were at a bar one night when Carson noticed two particular customers walk in - a very tall, masculine woman accompanied by a small, hunchbacked man.

Around this time, McCullers had been living in a famous boarding house in Brooklyn run by George Davis. In addition to McCullers and Auden, the boarding house had been home to some of the era's greatest bohemian writers, artists, and actors. Some of Davis' other tenants included Paul and Jane Bowles, Richard Wright, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee. When McCullers lived there, they held evening gatherings where George Davis played piano - in the nude - while a gallon jug of wine was passed around. W.H. Auden loved to play housemother to what he called "our menagerie."

With the publication of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Works, Carson McCullers once again established herself as one of the greatest writers of her generation. The title novella would be adapted as a stage play by the legendary playwright, Edward Albee. Albee had intended for Carson to play the role of the narrator, but by the time the play opened in the fall of 1963, her chronically poor health had deteriorated severely. She did attend the play's opening night, but had to do so in a wheelchair. She died four years later at the age of 50.

In 1991, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film by producer Ismail Merchant of the Merchant-Ivory film production company. It starred Vanessa Redgrave as Miss Amelia, Cork Hubbert as Lymon, and Keith Carradine as Marvin Macy.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing." - Carson McCullers

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a clip from the acclaimed 1991 feature film adaptation of Carson McCullers' classic novella, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Enjoy!

Notes For May 20th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 20th, 1937, the legendary British writer George Orwell (the pseudonym of Eric Blair) was wounded in action while fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He was shot in the throat by a sniper.

Orwell fought alongside the POUM, (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista - the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) which was allied with Britain's Labour Party, of which he was a member. The POUM was one of several leftist factions which had formed a loose coalition to fight General Franco's fascists. Another member of this coalition was the Spanish Communist Party, which was controlled by the Soviet Union.

At the Soviets' insistence, the Spanish Communist Party denounced the POUM as a Trotskyist organization and falsely claimed that they were in cahoots with the fascists. Near the end of the war, the POUM was outlawed, and the Spanish Communist Party began attacking its members.

Tragically, this infighting would break apart the coalition and give the fascists the opportunity to win the war. While George Orwell recovered from his injuries in a POUM hospital, he had a lot of time to think, and he came to hate Soviet communism.

Orwell would later become famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), both of which were brilliant allegorical satires of Stalinism. Animal Farm was a modern cautionary fable, while Nineteen Eighty-Four was a work of dystopic science fiction.

In the years since their publication, 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 Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four 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

---

"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." - George Orwell

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features the acclaimed 1954 British animated feature film adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel, Animal Farm - complete and uncut! Enjoy!

Notes For May 19th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 19th, 1930, the famous African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Carl Hansberry, was a prominent real estate broker. In 1938, when Lorraine was eight years old, her father moved the family to an all-white neighborhood where a majority of homeowners had formed a covenant that banned blacks from buying homes in the neighborhood. So, he had a white friend buy the house for him.

After the Hansberrys moved into their new home, they were attacked by an angry mob. A brick was thrown through Lorraine's bedroom window, and she just barely avoided being struck by it. Her father later sued the white homeowners for discrimination, and in the case of Hansberry v. Lee, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision banning such neighborhood homeowners' associations from discriminating against home buyers and renters on the basis of their race.

Although Lorraine's father had prevailed in court, the family was still subjected to harassment from their racist white neighbors. She later quipped that she had lived in an average "warm and cuddly white neighborhood." Ironically, after her death, her family home would be designated by the city of Chicago as a historical landmark. The climate of racism she grew up with would inspire her to write her first and most famous play, A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The title comes from a line in the poem Harlem by legendary African-American poet Langston Hughes.

Set in the 1940s, A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of the Youngers, a poor black family living in a small apartment in Chicago's South Side. The family patriarch has died, and his survivors will soon receive an insurance check for ten thousand dollars. His widow, Mama, wants to fulfill the dream she shared with her husband and buy a house. Her grown son, Walter, wants to use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends - an investment he believes will provide the whole family with long term financial security.

Beneatha, Walter's sister, wants to use the money to pay for her medical school tuition. Walter's wife, Ruth, agrees with Mama, believing that a new house would provide more living space for themselves and their son, Travis. As the play progresses, the Youngers fight over their conflicting dreams. When Ruth becomes pregnant, she considers having an abortion, as she and Walter really can't afford another child. Walter doesn't object, which drives Mama to put a down payment on a nice house in a white neighborhood. Beneatha is not happy about her family mixing with whites. She's not the only one.

When the Youngers' soon-to-be new neighbors find out that the black family is moving in, they send Mr. Lindner from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association to bribe them to stay out of the neighborhood. They refuse the deal, even after Walter loses the rest of the insurance money when his friend Willy runs off with it instead of investing it in the liquor store. In the play's third act, Beneatha's Nigerian boyfriend wants her to move to Africa with him after she gets her medical degree, and the rest of the family prepares to move out of their apartment and into their new house, fulfilling their dream but also exposing them to a dangerously racist environment.

When A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959, it became the first play written by an African-American to be produced for the Broadway stage. The original cast featured Sidney Poitier as Walter, Ruby Dee as Ruth, and Claudia McNeil as Mama. It would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1961, with the entire original Broadway cast reprising their roles - including a young Louis Gossett, Jr. as George Murchison.

The play would also be adapted as a hit Broadway musical called Raisin in 1973. The musical would be nominated for nine Tony awards and run for 847 performances. Original cast members included Joe Morton as Walter, Debbie Allen as Beneatha, Ernestine Jackson as Ruth, Ralph Carter as Travis, and Virginia Capers as Mama.

Lorraine Hansberry wrote several other plays, including her second most famous play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. After 110 performances, the play closed on the day she died, January 12th, 1965. She was 34 years old and had lost a long battle with cancer. Despite her illness, she continued to work as an activist for civil rights, women's rights, and other causes. Her other writings were turned into an acclaimed play called To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. It would be the longest running off Broadway play of the 1968-69 season.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely." - Lorraine Hansberry

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the acclaimed 1961 feature film version of Lorraine Hansberry's classic play, A Raisin in the Sun. Enjoy!

Notes For May 18th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 18th, 1593, a warrant was issued by the Queen's Privy Council for the arrest of the legendary English playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe. The warrant accused Marlowe of spreading "blasphemous and damnable opinions."

Five days earlier, Marlowe's friend, roommate, and fellow playwright Thomas Kyd had been arrested and charged with the same crime. During an interrogation in which Kyd was horribly tortured, he claimed that offending documents found in his possession really belonged to Marlowe.

Marlowe was subsequently arrested. He was released on bail while the prosecutors prepared their case. The day before Marlowe was scheduled to appear in court, he was killed in a drunken brawl when a dagger was driven through his eye. He was 29 years old. Although in life, he had been a controversial personality - he was known to be a hot-tempered alcoholic frequently in trouble with the law - he proved to be far more controversial in death.

The same Privy Council that had charged Marlowe with blasphemy had intervened on his behalf six years earlier to explain to Cambridge University why Marlowe frequently cut classes, pleading that he not be expelled. They claimed that Marlowe had cut classes to be of service to the Queen in "matters touching the benefit of his country."

That was actually true. Christopher Marlowe had been recruited as a secret agent while at university, and it now appears that he died not at a pub, but at a government safe house, while in the company of other spies and spy-runners. His housemates undoubtedly had motive to kill him, especially in a drunken rage, given Marlowe's volatile personality and libertine philosophy.

Conspiracy theories continue to follow the death of Christopher Marlowe. Some believe that Marlowe's death was faked to protect him from enemy agents. What became of him afterward? Well, some believe that while the rest of Britain thought that he was dead, Marlowe continued to write plays - and had an actor named William Shakespeare pretend to be the author. Another theory claims that William Shakespeare was Marlowe's pseudonym and that an actor with the same name took credit for Marlowe's work. These theories, while intriguing, have yet to be proven. Most scholars regard them as nonsense.

One thing is definitely true; as a playwright, Christopher Marlowe's talent was on a par with Shakespeare. For centuries, scholars have agreed that Marlowe's plays, such as Tamburlaine, Edward II, The Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus were in the same league as Shakespeare's classic tragedies.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance." - Christopher Marlowe

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a reading of Christopher Marlowe's classic poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Enjoy!

Notes For May 17th, 2011

---

The Internet's Public (Domain) Libraries

---

Everybody knows that the Internet is an incredible repository of information. It's like the world's largest public library, and just like any public library, one can obtain books and even audiobooks on the Internet, free of charge. And yes, it's completely legal. Why? Because it's all in the public domain, which means that the material is not protected by copyright law. Therefore, distributing and downloading it is perfectly legal. And there's a tremendous amount of material in the public domain - more than you'd ever imagine.

E-Texts

In 1996, not long after I first became an active user of the Internet, I came across the Project Gutenberg web site. Named after Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the mechanical printing press, the site hosted an impressive archive of public domain books in plain-text format. While it was nice to be able to read some classic novels that I didn't have in my bookcase, slogging through incredibly long plain text files on a computer screen was far from easy on my eyes - or my nerves, for that matter.

Imagine what it must have been like back in the 1970s, when college student Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg at the University of Illinois, typing up texts and storing them as ASCII files on the university's Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer. Hart's first e-text? The Declaration of Independence. His original goal was to digitize 10,000 commonly referenced public domain texts - novels, short stories, plays, non-fiction works, and other texts - and turn them into searchable ASCII files that could be stored on a computer. Today, the collection has grown to well over 30,000 texts in various languages.

The University of Illinois' Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer was one of fifteen nodes on a network that would serve as the precursor to the Internet. In the 1980s, the age of telecommunication would find Project Gutenberg e-texts spread through bulletin board systems. For those of you too young to remember, a bulletin board system was simply a personal computer running software that enabled others to access information stored on it via a dial-up modem. The bulletin board system was a kind of mini-Internet, its software providing familiar features such as electronic messaging and the ability to download and upload information.

By the late 1980's, the invention of optical scanning technology and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software enabled Project Gutenberg's volunteers to digitize texts must faster and easier than manually typing them in. When recordable CD and DVD media came about, Project Gutenberg made its collection available on disc.

In the early to mid 1990s, when the Internet evolved from newsgroups to the World Wide Web, the e-book was an intriguing, virgin concept. Now, some fifteen years later, e-books have become a popular alternative to print editions. The technology for reading e-texts - both software and hardware - has evolved and gotten much better. Gone are the days when reading an e-book meant loading large plain text files into your word processor or Notepad and scrolling down, down, down to infinity while you read.

Today, you don't need a computer at all to read e-text. There are hand-held electronic devices with viewing screens for reading e-text, like the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle. The new model, the Kindle DX, offers a much larger viewing screen and wireless Internet access capabilities for downloading e-books. I'm waiting for the price to go down, and it will as the popularity of the device increases.

While I'm waiting, I still read e-books on my PC. I've found a great repository for e-texts. It's a site called Munseys.com and it takes Project Gutenberg's concept in a new and exciting direction. Hosting thousands of free, public domain e-texts in various languages, Munseys has lots of obscure titles that you'd never find anywhere else - not even at Project Gutenberg. You want to read a seedy 1940s pulp fiction novel? They've got lots of them. Are you looking for a copy of Atlantic Monthly magazine, circa 1861? It's here. How about a children's health class primer from 1885? They've got it.

Munseys is packed with tons of rare public domain texts in a variety of subjects: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, it's all here. And if you're looking for more familiar classics like L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Leo Tolstoy's War And Peace, Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, or the text of your favorite Shakespeare play, they've got all that, too. Some of the books, like the 1940s pulp fiction novels, include scans of the original covers.

Where Munseys really shines is the way that the e-books are presented. Just select the format you want from the drop-down box and click Download. That's all there is to it. But what a format selection: HTML, Acrobat PDF, eBookwise EB1150, Rocket Ebook, Plucker, Sony Reader, Mobipocket / Kindle, Isilo, Microsoft Reader, Adobe Mobile / EPUB. Whether you read your e-text on your computer or on a handheld device, it's all here. No more are you confined to those endlessly long, ugly plain-text files. Whatever format you chose, the text is presented attractively and is easy to navigate through.

Munseys also includes a means of reviewing or commenting on e-books, plus a message board forum and a blog. If you're into e-books, you must see Munseys.com - the best e-book site on the web!

Audiobooks

With the popularity of public domain e-texts on the Internet, it was just a matter of time before somebody came up with the idea of public domain audiobooks. In August of 2005, Hugh McGuire, a Canadian writer and web developer, founded LibriVox, an organization dedicated to producing free audiobook recordings of public domain texts.

LibriVox provides a large catalog of audiobooks that are free to download and keep. The subjects include novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and non-fiction. You can download all the files directly, subscribe to LibriVox's podcast, or get the files free from iTunes. The sound files are divided by chapter and provided in three different formats: 64kb MP3, 128kb MP3, and variable bit rate OGG. Even at 64kb, the sound quality is great.

All of LibriVox's audiobook titles are unabridged. Though the primary language is English, they have many titles in a wide variety of other languages, which can be useful for those who are studying foreign languages. All of LibriVox's titles are in the public domain and are recorded by the readers. LibriVox readers are volunteers from around the world.

If you would like to become a LibriVox volunteer reader, all you need is a computer, a microphone, recording software, and your voice. If you don't have sound recording software, there's a great freeware sound recording and editing software package called Audacity that you can download. Complete information is provided on the LibriVox site, which includes a message board forum for readers and non-readers alike.

How good are the LibriVox volunteer readers? Surprisingly good - much better than you'd expect, considering that they aren't actors or professional readers. They're book lovers, and you can tell that they put their hearts into it. Some of them are downright fantastic; I'm currently listening to LibriVox's unabridged recording of Mark Twain's classic memoir Life on the Mississippi, and the reader, John Greenman, has the perfect voice for it. He makes it sound like Twain himself is reading the book!

You can browse LibriVox's catalog of titles on their web site, but their audiobook files are hosted by the Internet Archive, which is the Internet's largest repository of public domain material - everything from e-texts and music to audiobooks, old time radio, software, and even movies!

Go to the Internet Archive's Librivox collection, and in addition to downloading the audiobook files, you can also listen to them via the Archive's streaming audio feed. If you want to burn the audiobooks to CD, you can also download printable cover art for each title at the Archive.

Founded by a book lover for book lovers, LibriVox is a great way to enjoy audiobooks at no cost. Classics fans take note: their catalog will make you salivate!

I encourage you all to explore the incredible wealth of information available in the public domain.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket." - Chinese Proverb

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video is a two-part presentation about the LibriVox public domain audiobook project. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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

Jody
------------------

Barry Basden

"Day Shift" is up at 6 Sentences, without semicolons.

For a lot of reasons, it makes me think of Paul.

"Why My Grandfather Had All Those Bessie Smith Records" is the shortest piece in the May issue of Pank magazine.

Thanks to all who helped me pare it down.

---

Mark Budman

"The King Died," which was critiqued here, is now up at Bound Off.

It's a 3.5 min from the start. Bound Off pays $20.

---

Loretta Carrico-Russell

My review of "Beating Melanoma" for the Internet Review of Books is up. Please check it out, especially if you use a tanning booth.

---

Alice Folkart

One of the editors of Loch Raven Review saw some of my work on Perfect Day 4 Poetry (also known as the House of 30 - a poem a day forum) and requested these three for the Review.

Hope you enjoy them.

---

Rhonda Gill

My short story, "Half Full Circle," was selected for the current edition of Amarillo Bay. It's live on their site.

---

Sherry Gloag

Details for my "Trip Around the World: Mega Author Blog Hop: Ticket to Paradise!" contest is now up at Sherry Gloag: The Heart of Romance. It's all about the background scenery in my latest novel, Duty Calls, as seen through my heroine's eyes.

---

Ann Hite

Here’s the first of two book trailers Ghost On Black Mountain will have. Enjoy.

---

Charles Hobbs

A few weeks ago, I posted a comment on Metrolink's (Southern California commuter train service) Facebook page regarding their new express train service.

What a surprise I got when Metrolink put my comment on the front page of their Metrolink Matters on-board newsletter. This publication is distributed on all the trains, and is also available online.

My comment (under Charles P. H.) is on the front page, upper right hand corner.

---

Pepper O'Neal

My new book, Blood Fest: Chasing Destiny, was published by Black Opal Books the first of May, and I've signed a contract with them for the second book in the series, which I still have to write.

---

Roger Poppen

My story, "Waffle House," was published May 7 by Fiction 365.

You can see a picture of the bike that inspired the story here.

Based on my 1996 biography of Joseph Wolpe, I've been asked to participate in the BBC radio series, Mind Changers, which tells "the stories of the people and experiments that have changed our understanding of the human mind." (Wolpe being the 'mind changer,' not I.) It will be several months before this segment is aired.

If you are writing about psychological issues (and who isn't?), the BBC series is an excellent resource.

---

Jacquelynn Rasmenia Massoud

My story, "Mirror" has been accepted at Metazen and is now online.

Thanks to everyone in practice and also in fiction who gave me feedback on this piece!

---

Catherine Robinson

I've been announced as a finalist in the Society of Professional Journalists awards in the Humorous Commentary category.

As always, wouldn't have had the nerve to pursue commentary gigs without the support of critters and posters here. So thank you!

---

Adrienne Ross Scanlan

My creative nonfiction essay, "One Jew's Confession at Notre Dame," appears in Drash: Northwest Mosaic, volume 5. Drash is an annual literary journal which publishes prose, poetry and photographs on Jewish or northwest themes (print publication only).

---

Wayne Scheer

My story, "Prairie Flower," is up at Fiction365.

My creative nonfiction piece, "Hope Springs Eternal," will be published in the June issue of Flashquake.  I have a recent Practice exercise to thank for this one.

---

Pat St. Pierre

Three of my "tiny" poems were accepted by Three Line Poetry and are now online in Issue 3.

My poetry book "Theater of Life" is now listed on The Camel Saloon's Bookstore.

---

Paul Stenquist

Since my first work for the New York Times almost two years ago, I've become a regular contributor on the web and in the paper. Most of my assignments have been relatively easy, but the one I just completed was very taxing, so I think a yahoo is in order. It's the story of a one-off prototype automobile built sixty years ago. Very little was written about it, and only one person who was on hand is still alive, so deep research was necessary.  But the car is notable, because it was designed by Brooks Stevens, so the pursuit of the story was worthwhile. It will be on the lead page of the Automotive section in Sunday's paper, and it's on the web now.

I was also asked to add a brief sidebar about Brooks Stevens.

---

Jason Warden

A flash story of mine, "Words Unsaid," has been accepted by Fiction365 and will run sometime next month. For it I will be paid $10. Woot!!

Notes For May 13th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 13th, 1907, the famous British writer Daphne du Maurier was born in London, England. Her father, Sir Gerald du Maurier, and her mother, Muriel Beaumont, were both prominent actors. Her grandfather was the famous writer and cartoonist, George du Maurier. The Llewelyn-Davies boys, who would be befriended by writer J.M. Barrie and used as the inspiration for the Lost Boys in his classic play, Peter Pan (1904) were her cousins.

Daphne du Maurier's first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, but it would be her fourth novel, Jamaica Inn (1936) that made her name as a writer. Set in Cornwall in 1820, the novel told the story of Mary Yellan, a young woman forced to live with her Aunt Patience after her mother dies. Her aunt's husband Joss is the keeper of the Jamaica Inn. When Mary arrives, she finds her aunt under the thumb of her vicious, domineering husband. Mary senses that something is definitely wrong at the gloomy, ominous Jamaica Inn, which has no guests and is never open to the public.

Mary soon falls in love with Joss' younger brother Jem, who, although a thief, is not evil like Joss. As she tries to solve the mystery of the Jamaica Inn, Mary discovers that her uncle Joss is really the leader of a murderous criminal gang. She turns to the town vicar for help. After her aunt and uncle both turn up murdered, Mary finds a shocking clue that reveals the killer's true identity, placing her life in danger...

Jamaica Inn would be adapted as a feature film by legendary British director Alfred Hitchcock in 1939, starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara. The screenplay took great liberties with the novel, and du Maurier hated the film. Alfred Hitchcock would adapt more of her writings as feature films, including her next novel, which is considered her masterpiece.

Part suspense thriller, part Gothic romance, Rebecca (1938) is narrated by an unnamed woman who tells the story of her marriage to wealthy Englishman Maxim de Winter. She met him while working as a companion to a rich American woman on vacation in the French Riviera. They fall in love, and after a courtship of two weeks, the narrator accepts de Winter's marriage proposal. After their wedding, they return to live at de Winter's beautiful West Country estate, Manderley.

The narrator soon realizes that her husband is haunted by the death of his first wife, Rebecca. Their sinister, controlling housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, was deeply devoted to Rebecca, and is determined to undermine her employer's new marriage by any means necessary - including manipulating the narrator into wearing a replica of one of Rebecca's dresses. After Mrs. Danvers' attempt at manipulating the narrator into committing suicide fails, the narrator's husband makes a shocking confession.

Rebecca was a cruel woman who tortured Maxim with her affairs and illegitimate pregnancy. Finally, Maxim could stand no more. He shot Rebecca and disposed of her body on her boat, deliberately sinking the vessel. After Rebecca's boat is raised, an inquest is held and Maxim is cleared of suspicion due to lack of evidence. Unfortunately, Rebecca's cousin (and lover) Jack tries to blackmail Maxim with evidence of his guilt...

Rebecca was adapted several times, first as a feature film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. The film, which starred Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The novel was also adapted as a play by its author. The play opened in London in 1940 and ran for over 350 performances.

In addition to her novels, Daphne du Maurier was famous for her short story collections. Her second short story collection, The Apple Tree (1952) contained six stories, including one of her most famous - The Birds. Told from the viewpoint of Nat Hocken (a farm worker in coastal Cornwall) and his family, the story chronicles the inexplicable attacks on humans by birds in the area. The Birds would be adapted by Alfred Hitchcock as a classic horror film in 1963, starring Tippi Hedren. In the title story, The Apple Tree, a widower believes that the old apple tree in his garden is possessed by the spirit of his neglected wife.

du Maurier's 1971 short story collection Not After Midnight, features her second most famous story, Don't Look Now. In it, married couple John and Laura Baxter are vacationing in Venice, trying to recover from the devastating, sudden death of their five-year-old daughter, Christine, which has strained their marriage. In a restaurant, Laura meets two odd looking women - elderly identical twin sisters who have psychic knowledge of Christine. Meanwhile, John encounters a little girl who bears a striking resemblance to his dead daughter. Don't Look Now would be adapted as an acclaimed horror film in 1973 by the great British director, Nicolas Roeg.

du Maurier also wrote several works of non-fiction, including memoirs both of herself and her family members. She married Sir Frederick "Boy" Browning, a Lieutenant General in the British Army, and bore him a son and two daughters. Biographers have noted that as a wife and mother, she was sometimes warm and loving, and sometimes cold and distant.

Writer Margaret Forster, who worked with the approval and assistance of the du Maurier family, revealed in her biography that Daphne had a few affairs with women, (including a passionate affair with actress Gertrude Lawrence) but vigorously denied being bisexual. Personal letters released after the author's death revealed, according to Forster, that Daphne was terrified that she might be a lesbian. She had been raised to hate homosexuals with a passion by her father, who was a virulent homophobic bigot.

Daphne du Maurier died in April 1989 at the age of 81.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person." - Daphne du Maurier

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1963 film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic short story, The Birds. Enjoy!

Notes For May 12th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 12th, 1883, Life on the Mississippi, the famous memoir by the legendary American writer Mark Twain, (the pseudonym of Samuel Clemens) was published. It was published simultaneously in Boston and London. In this classic book, Twain combines autobiography with history. He begins with the discovery of the Mississippi River by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.

Twain's personal history with the Mississippi began in childhood. As a young man, while traveling by steamboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, he befriended the pilot, Horace E. Bixby, who inspired him to become a steamboat pilot himself. At the time, steamboat piloting was a very prominent and respected position. It paid handsomely - around $3000 per year, which is equivalent to about $72,000 in today's money.

As he chronicles his own personal history with that of the river, Twain tells of his training and career as a steamboat pilot before the Civil War, discussing the science of navigating the Mississippi. To become a steamboat pilot in those days was an incredible achievement - you had to memorize the geography of the entire river, from St. Louis to New Orleans. That was no easy task, as the river changed its course frequently.

Later in his life, Twain and some of his friends traveled the same path by steamboat, and the author discusses how the river boating industry had changed since he was a pilot. Interspersed through the straightforward documentary are numerous anecdotes and commentaries, as Twain offers his perspective on the people who live on the Mississippi and their culture - everything from the architecture of homes to local customs and folklore.

The narrative is classic Mark Twain, often tongue-in-cheek and filled with self-deprecating humor. A good example of the narrative can be found in the following passage:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Life on the Mississippi is a fascinating read filled with detailed insight into 19th century life in the American South. To write the book, Twain used a then newfangled instrument called a typewriter. Life on the Mississippi is believed to be the first book submitted to a publisher in the form of a typewritten manuscript.

In 1980, Life on the Mississippi was adapted as a movie for American public television. Starring David Knell as Samuel Clemens, the film weaves folklore from the book into a fictional narrative of the author's life.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"Words are only painted fire; a book is the fire itself." - Mark Twain

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features an excerpt from the one-man show, Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, starring Ken Teutsch as Twain. Enjoy!

Notes For May 11th, 2011

---

This Day In Writing History

---

On May 11th, 1916, the famous Spanish novelist Camilo José Cela was born in Iria Flavia, Padrón, in Galicia, Spain. Half Spanish and half English, he was born Don Camilo José Cela Trulock. Raised with strong religious and anti-communist convictions, after briefly studying law at the University of Madrid, Cela fought on the side of the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He was discharged after being wounded in action.

After recovering from his injuries, Cela took up journalism and dedicated himself to newspaper work. He would later work in civil service. One of his civil service positions was that of a government censor - an ironic position, as he would reject fascism and become an outlaw writer, battling the censors to get his novels published in his native Spain.

In 1942, at the age of 26, Camilo José Cela published his first novel, La Familia de Pascual Duarte (The Family of Pascual Duarte). Taking place in Spain from 1888-1937, the novel opens with its main character and narrator, Pascual Duarte, awaiting execution on death row. He tells the story of his life and how he became a murderer, a homicidal path culminating in the murder of his mother - a sadistic, perverted alcoholic.

Strongly rooted in the Spanish realist school of writing, (and often grotesquely realistic) La Familia de Pascual Duarte is also a classic of existential fiction. Unable to feel remorse, Pascual Duarte believes that Fate is controlling his life, (which has always been full of pain and bad luck) and no matter what he does, it will never change. The novel caused an uproar and was banned in Spain less than a year after its first edition was published. The ban would be lifted in four years.

In 1951, Cela published a novel that is considered by most to be his masterpiece. La Colmena (The Beehive) was set in Madrid in 1942, after the end of the Spanish Civil War. The 350-page novel contained six chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter contained a number of fragments called sequences, where various characters described their unhappy lives in their newly fascist homeland. The novel's 300+ characters and the events in their lives work together to form the conclusion, much like bees work together in a hive.

Although La Colmena was the most important novel written in post civil war Spain, Cela was unable to get it published there. General Franco's Catholic Church-affiliated fascist government decried the novel as immoral. Banned in Spain, it was published in Argentina instead. Six years later, in 1957, Cela was appointed to the Real Academia Española and made the Marquis of Iria Flavia by King Juan Carlos I.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Camilo José Cela's writings grew more experimental in nature and more subversive. In 1969, he scandalized Spanish society with his Diccionario Secreto, (Secret Dictionary) a dictionary of obscene words and phrases. He followed that with his Enciclopedia del Eroticismo, (Encyclopedia of Eroticism) a four-volume survey of sexual practices in Spain. His best known (and boldest) experimental novel was Cristo versus Arizona (Christ versus Arizona). Published in 1988, it was a retelling of the shootout at the OK Corral - in one single sentence that's more than a hundred pages long.

After General Franco died in 1975, Spain made the transition from fascist dictatorship to democratic republic. Camilo José Cela was made a Royal Senator in the Constituent Cortes (Spanish Parliament) where he helped write and draft the Spanish Constitution of 1978. In 1989, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. As he entered his golden years, old age failed to temper his outrageous personality. During one TV interview, he claimed he could drink an entire liter of water in one sitting - through his anus. In 1995, he was awarded Spain's Cervantes Prize for Literature, despite the fact that he had described the award as being "covered with shit."

Camilo José Cela died of chronic heart disease in January 2002. He was 85 years old. He remains one of Spain's most important and influential writers.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives." - Camilo José Cela

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features rare interview footage of Camilo José Cela. Unfortunately, it's in Spanish with no English translation. It's the only footage I could find of this amazing writer.