Notes For July 29th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 29th, 1965, the famous Korean-American writer Chang-Rae Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. When he was three years old, Lee's father moved the family to the United States so he could finish his training and become a psychiatrist. The family moved first to Pittsburgh, then to New York.

As a young Korean-American boy, Chang-Rae Lee struggled to learn English. His parents only spoke to him and his older sister Eunei in Korean, so they could learn to speak English without a Korean accent. In his mind, Chang-Rae found himself trapped between two very different languages. He didn't speak at all when he entered kindergarten, but by the time he was ten years old, he had become fluent in both languages and served as a translator for his mother, who had even more difficulty learning English.

Chang-Rae Lee's experiences as the son of Korean immigrants would shape his future writing career. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive East Coast prep school, then went to Yale. Instead of following the path of most children of Korean immigrants and study medicine or law, Lee majored in English. During college, he began writing fiction.

After graduating, he became an equities analyst for Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, a Wall Street investment bank, while writing part-time. He found his job unfulfilling, so, taking a cue from his old friend and prep school roommate, novelist Brooks Hansen, he quit to become a writer.

Lee's unpublished early novel, Agnew Belittlehead, won him a scholarship and entrance to the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. After graduating in 1993, he was hired as an assistant writing professor by the University. That same year, he married his wife, Michelle Branca. She bore him two daughters.

In 1995, Chang-Rae Lee's first novel, Native Speaker, was published. In Lee's offbeat tale, Henry Park is a young Korean-American man who suffers from identity issues, alienation, and an inability to grieve for his seven-year-old son, who was accidentally killed by his white playmates in a freak mishap. The novel opens with Park's wife, who is also white, leaving him.

In an intriguing twist, Henry Park works as an operative for a shadowy detective agency whose clients hire it to dig up dirt on people. His psychological problems begin to affect his job, so he seeks therapy. Henry suffers from alienation because he was unable to fit in with either his parents' Korean culture or mainstream American culture.

As he struggles to find himself, he asks his employers for a second chance and is assigned to infiltrate the campaign of John Kwang, a popular Korean-American politician and candidate for mayor of New York City - a task made difficult by the fact that Kwang reminds Henry of his father.

Native Speaker earned Chang-Rae Lee both the prestigious PEN / Hemingway Award and the distinction of being the first Korean-American novelist ever published by a major American press. His second novel, A Gesture Life, also dealt with identity and immigrant issues.

The novel, which won Lee the Asian American Literary Award, told the story of Doc Hata, a Korean who served in the Japanese Army during World War 2. As a child, he had been adopted by a wealthy Japanese couple. While serving as a soldier, Hata meets and falls in love with a Korean woman, who, like over 200,000 others, was forced to become a "comfort woman" for Japanese soldiers.

After the war, Hata moves to America. A successful businessman, he fits in with his neighbors, but he is unable to connect emotionally with anyone. He suffers from a crisis of identity and is always at odds with his rebellious, mixed-race adopted daughter, Sunny. He adopted her when she was seven. Now a pregnant teenager, Hata forces her to have an abortion, hoping to save her from the failure that his life has become.

Lee's third novel, Aloft, was published in 2004. His most recent novel, The Surrendered, was released in March of 2010. The gut wrenching antiwar novel follows three war ravaged characters: June Han, a young girl who loses her family during the Korean War, Hector Brennan, the psychologically damaged American soldier who brought June to an orphanage, and Sylvie Tanner, the wife of the orphanage's minster, who, as a young girl, witnessed the murder of her parents at the hands of Japanese soldiers in Manchuria.

Chang-Rae Lee still teaches creative writing.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The truth, finally, is who can tell it." - Chang-Rae Lee

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features an interview with Chang-Rae Lee, who discusses his latest novel, The Surrendered. Enjoy!

Notes For July 28th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 28th, 1932, the famous American children's novelist Natalie Babbitt was born. She was born Natalie Zane in Dayton, Ohio, but the family moved around frequently. Growing up during the Great Depression, Natalie enjoyed reading fairy tales, folklore, and books about mythology.

When she discovered an illustrated copy of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Natalie determined to become a children's book illustrator when she grew up. Her mother, an amateur landscape and portrait painter, encouraged her. She gave Natalie art lessons and made sure she always had enough paper, colored pencils, and paints.

Natalie Babbitt studied art at the Laurel School for Girls in Cleveland and at Smith College. After graduation, she married Samuel Babbitt and bore him three children. She spent the next ten years as a stay-at-home mom, though when her husband became the president of Kirkland College in New York, she performed all the duties of a college president's wife, including attending various functions.

In the late 1960s, Natalie and her husband collaborated on a children's book called The Forty-Ninth Magician. Samuel wrote the story and Natalie drew the illustrations. The book, published in 1966, was successful. Unfortunately, Samuel's work left him little time to write, so further books were out of the question. Natalie's sister asked her to draw the illustrations for a comic novel she'd written, but that panned out due to her constant rewrites, which required Natalie to keep drawing new pictures.

Frustrated, Natalie Babbitt decided to write her own books. Her first solo effort, Dick Foote and the Shark, was published in 1967. With her enchanting fairy tales, she made a name for herself as one of the best children's writers of all time. She also has a gift for humor and satire. In 1974, Natalie published The Devil's Storybook, a collection of humorous Saki-esque short stories featuring the Devil as the main character.

The Devil's Storybook has nothing to do with religion. Instead, it presents the Devil as a comic character. As Jean Stafford, book critic for the New Yorker magazine, noted: "This Devil is not dire; he is a scheming practical joker and comes to earth often when he is restless, to play tricks on clergymen, goodwives, poets, and pretty girls." Natalie Babbitt's ferocious wit, combined with her hilarious illustrations, made The Devil's Storybook a favorite of both children and adults. In 1987, Babbitt published a sequel, The Devil's Other Storybook.

Natalie Babbitt is, of course, best known for her fairy tales and fantasy stories. In 1975, she published Tuck Everlasting, a novel that most of her fans (including me) consider to be her best work. Set in 1881, the novel tells the story of Winnie Foster, a bored and lonely 10-year-old girl stifled by her wealthy, overprotective parents. She escapes from them by exploring the forest near her home. One day, she finds a mysterious family, the Tucks, (mother Mae Tuck, her husband, and their two sons) living in the middle of the woods.

The Tucks have a secret, which Winnie discovers: they are immortal - the result of drinking water from a hidden, magical spring. Winnie befriends the Tuck family and promises to keep their secret. She grows close to their younger son, 17-year-old Jesse Tuck, and thinks that it must be wonderful to live forever. But she soon realizes that immortality is more of a curse than a gift. The Tucks live a lonely, isolated existence, trying to prevent their secret from being revealed, for then everyone would want to be immortal, and the world would become a terrible place.

When Mae Tuck kills a man to save Winnie, she's sent to prison, but Winnie helps her escape. The Tucks flee, taking their secret with them - except for some magic spring water which Jesse Tuck gave to Winnie. Will she drink it when she turns seventeen so she can marry him and live forever?

Tuck Everlasting was adapted twice as a feature film, first in 1981 - a rarely seen, independently made gem that really captured the essence of Natalie Babbitt's novel - then again in 2002. The 2002 version was a Disney film - a horrible adaptation that turned Babbitt's great novel into a sappy teen romance - despite the fact that Winnie Foster is only ten years old in the book. The movie was panned by critics and film goers alike.

In 1977, Natalie Babbitt published The Eyes of the Amaryllis, a haunting tale of the supernatural. It's summertime, and 11-year-old Geneva "Jenny" Reade has been sent to stay with her grandmother for a while and help the old woman, who has broken her leg. Jenny's grandmother believes that her husband, who went missing at sea thirty years ago, will soon send her a sign of his love.

Jenny doesn't believe her - until she meets the ghost of a drowned man named Seward. Seward is tasked with returning to the sea anything of value that may wash up on shore. When Jenny finds an object of value that washed up, her grandmother believes that it's a sign from her husband. But Seward warns them that the sea wants it back - and will take it back by force if necessary.

The Eyes of the Amaryllis was adapted as a feature film in 1982 - an excellent, independently made film that wonderfully adapts Natalie Babbitt's novel to the screen. It features a memorable performance by 11-year-old Martha Byrne as Jenny Reade. A year later, she would star in the science fiction classic, Anna to the Infinite Power - another indie gem.

Natalie Babbitt has written seventeen children's books. Her latest, Jack Plank Tells Tales, was published in 2007. In addition to writing, she also serves as a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live." - Natalie Babbitt

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the 2002 feature film adaptation of Natalie Babbitt's classic novel, Tuck Everlasting. It's a poor adaptation, but this trailer was all I could find, and it does give you some idea of what the book is about. Enjoy!

Notes For July 27th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 27th, 1916, the famous American writer and literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She was eighth in a family of eleven children. Her father ran a plumbing and heating business. Although he and his wife brought up their children in a strict Protestant household, they also held leftist views, and Elizabeth inherited their deep compassion for the poor.

In 1939, Elizabeth moved to New York City to do graduate work at Columbia university. Two years later, she dropped out to become a freelance writer. As a literary critic, she reviewed books for highbrow publications such as the Partisan Review, whose editor, Philip Rahv, became her lover for a brief time. She would later describe her life in Manhattan as being comprised of "love and alcohol and clothes on the floor." She embraced the bohemian lifestyle of writing, free love, and jazz nightclubs.

Elizabeth Hardwick's first novel, The Ghostly Lover, was published in 1945. A year later, she attended a party given by poet Robert Lowell and his wife at their Greenwich Village apartment. Elizabeth and Robert would meet again at Yaddo, a famous retreat for writers in upstate New York. By this time, Robert had completed his messy divorce from his wife Jean Stafford, a hardened alcoholic who had given up writing to spend more time with the bottle.

Elizabeth and Robert dated for a couple of years, then married in 1949. The marriage would prove to be both long and tempestuous. Robert was mentally ill; during their honeymoon, he had to be committed following a severe manic-depressive episode. At the hospital, he received shock treatment. After he recovered and was released, he and Elizabeth traveled to Europe, where Robert took a job as a teacher in Salzburg.

Robert Lowell's struggle with mental illness continued. In addition to manic depression, he suffered from psychotic episodes. While teaching in Salzburg, he engaged in an affair with one of his students - an affair that existed only in his mind. He had another breakdown, received treatment, and was released. It would be a recurring pattern for him. Elizabeth Hardwick struggled to keep her marriage together. When her husband engaged in real life affairs with other women, she forgave the casual flings.

Meanwhile, in 1956, (at the age of 40) Elizabeth gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Harriet. She continued with her writing career. In 1955, her second novel, The Simple Truth, was published. Four years later, in 1959, she published her famous essay, The Decline of Book Reviewing, in Harper's Magazine. It was a scathing critique of the book reviews currently being published in American periodicals - including The New York Times Book Review. Though she and her husband had parted and reunited several times, by 1961, the marriage finally seemed solid and stable.

In 1963, Elizabeth Hardwick, along with her friends Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers, founded the legendary literary magazine, The New York Review of Books. For many years, she served as editorial adviser and creative consultant, and also published numerous essays in the magazine. Her last, published in 2oo3, was about Nathanael West, the legendary author of the classic novels Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939) whose brilliant writing career and young life were cut short by a car accident.

Elizabeth Hartwick's 21-year marriage finally came to an end in 1970, when instead of a casual fling, her husband fell in love with another woman - novelist Lady Caroline Blackwood. By 1972, Elizabeth and Robert Lowell divorced, and he married Caroline. Elizabeth returned to her writing career. When she wasn't working or writing for The New York Review of Books, she worked on her third novel, Sleepless Nights, which would be published in 1979.

In addition to her novels and short fiction, Elizabeth published several non-fiction books, including a biography of Herman Melville and a true crime book about the Caryl Chessman case, which was one of several cases that led the Supreme Court to ban capital punishment as unconstitutional in 1972. Chessman, a career criminal, had been convicted of being the "Red Light Bandit," a serial robber who sometimes raped his female victims after robbing them.

Chessman was sentenced to death because a law on California's books (passed as a result of the Lindbergh baby case) made kidnapping with bodily harm a capital offense. Acting as his own attorney, Chessman appealed his conviction vigorously, claiming that it was due to mistaken identity. He won eight stays of execution. On his ninth date of execution, the governor's office called the prison with another order to stay it, but the call came in too late - Chessman was already in the gas chamber, choking to death.

Elizabeth Hardwick's account of the Chessman case was included in the Library of America's 200-year retrospective of American true crime writing. She died in 2007 at the age of 91.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination." - Elizabeth Hardwick

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a panel discussion of how three great writers - Elizabeth Hardwick, Henry James, and Edith Wharton - chronicled life in New York City in their short fiction. Enjoy!

Notes For July 26th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 26th, 1894, the legendary English novelist Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England. His father, Leonard Huxley, was a writer, a scientist, and a schoolmaster. His grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, was a brilliant scientist famous for his vigorous defense of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, which earned him the nickname "Darwin's Bulldog." He also became famous for coining the term agnostic to describe his spiritual beliefs. An agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a god, because there is no scientific evidence to either prove or disprove that a higher power exists.

Aldous Huxley began his education at home, assisted by both his mother and his father's well-equipped laboratory. His mother died of illness when he was 14. At 17, after writing his first novel, (which would go unpublished) Huxley suffered from keratitis, an inflammation of the corneas that left him practically blind for nearly three years. When he regained some of his eyesight, he enrolled at Balliol College, Oxford, to study English literature.

After he graduated with honors, Huxley taught French at Eton College. One of his students was a young man named Eric Blair, who would become famous for the classic novels he wrote under his legendary pseudonym, George Orwell. Although Blair and his other students were impressed with his intellect, Huxley found that he had no aptitude for teaching and trouble maintaining discipline in the classroom.

Disqualified from military service during World War 1 due to his eyesight, Huxley would work briefly for the Air Ministry in 1918, near the end of the war. During the war, he spent most of his time working as a farm laborer at Garsington Manor, the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Lady Ottoline was a society hostess and patron of the arts. She would host the gatherings of a group of writers, artists, intellectuals, and philosophers that came to be known as the Bloomsbury Set.

Through Lady Ottoline, Aldous Huxley was introduced to this influential group and became friends with many of its members, including D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Clive Bell. He determined to become a serious writer. His first published novel, Crome Yellow, was published in 1921. Huxley began his literary career satirizing England's class system, specifically, the manners and mores of the upper class. Then, in 1932, he published the novel that made him world famous.

Brave New World, (the title comes from a line in Shakespeare's classic play, The Tempest) a masterpiece of dystopic science fiction, was far removed from anything Huxley had written before, though it did showcase the talent for satire that marked his previous novels. It was inspired by H.G. Wells' novel Men Like Gods (1923), which was work of utopic science fiction. Huxley had intended to write a scathing parody of the utopic visions of the future depicted in Wells' novel and in the works of other writers of the time.

Unlike his former student George Orwell's satire of Stalinism in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), Huxley's anti-capitalist dystopic vision depicted a twisted, surreal society of the future dedicated to mindless, materialistic pleasure. It's "the Year of our Ford" 632, (car magnate Henry Ford has become a messianic figure to this capitalist, materialist dystopia) aka 2540 A.D., and the vast majority of the world's people live in a single, unified state called The World State, where the form of government is an eerily benevolent fascist dictatorship. A strict caste system is in effect, and children are conceived in hatcheries and conditioned to fit into a predetermined class.

The caste system of highest (Alpha) to lowest (Epsilon) is designed to assure universal employment in all areas - the backbone of the World State's capitalist economy and materialistic society. Mass consumption is the government's philosophy, with catch phrases like "spending is better than mending" its mantras. There is no such thing as parents or family; children are raised by everyone. To keep the people happy, (and happy to work and spend money) the state uses recreational sex, which it encourages people to have often, with no emotional connections. Birth control is mandatory. To condition children to become sexually active adults, they are encouraged at a very young age to engage in erotic play with each other.

The World State also keeps its people happy by encouraging them to drug themselves with Soma, a mood enhancing narcotic. Instead of practicing a religion, people attend Solidarity Services, during which they drug themselves into oblivion with large amounts of Soma, sing hymns, and then partake in "communion" by having an orgy. Almost all the people of the World State engage in these and other state-approved customs and activities, as those who don't face ostracism and potential exile.

Bernard Marx works as a psychologist for the World State, but he has become discontented with this so-called utopia. Although an Alpha, his petite frame has made him a misfit among those of his caste. He takes issue with the State's use of sleep programming to shape the people's most deeply held beliefs. He hates taking Soma and would "rather be himself." Worst of all, he finds himself drawn to a woman named Lenina Crowne, not because he wants to engage in emotionless sex with her, but because he - gasp - has fallen in love with her. Lenina is torn between her loyalty to the World State and the passions that are growing within her.

18-year-old John the Savage lives outside the World State on an Indian reservation. He is the illegitimate son of Thomas, a World State official, and a woman called Linda. Thomas, who is Director of the London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, lives in fear of this dark secret; conceiving a child naturally - and in an act of love - are considered scandalous and obscene acts in the World State. Linda, who was a Beta in the state, has lived on an Indian reservation because she's too ashamed to return to the World State. The Indian women hate her because she had sex with all their men, which she was conditioned to do by her former state.

Linda taught her son John how to read, an ability he considers a gift. The only books he had access to were his mother's manual from her old job in the World State, which he hated, and a collection of Shakespeare's plays, which he loved and memorized verbatim. Shakespeare's works are banned by the World State, but John still wants to see the "brave new world" his mother spoke of.

Bernard Marx takes John into the World State, where he becomes the toast of London. To Bernard's delight, when John meets Thomas and calls him father, Thomas is humiliated and resigns. Unfortunately, John's presence in the World State leads to tragedy. After his mother dies of a Soma overdose, he incites a riot by throwing workers' Soma rations out a window. Caught by police, he is exiled and becomes a hermit. His solitude ends when he is caught on film whipping himself in a ritual of atonement, setting the stage for a tragic ending.

When Brave New World was first published in 1932, it was met with both acclaim and outrage. During the 1960s, it became a classic of the American counterculture. It remains remarkably relevant to this day. Often appearing on high school English teachers' required reading lists, the novel continues to face bans and challenges from disgruntled parents. The American Library Association ranked the novel #52 on its list of the most banned and challenged books of all time.

Brave New World would be adapted for the radio, stage, screen, radio, and television. In 1937, a few years after it was published, Aldous Huxley and his family moved to Hollywood, California. There, his friend, American writer and philosopher Gerald Heard, introduced him to Vedanta (Veda-Centric Hinduism), meditation, vegetarianism, and enlightenment through ahimsa, the Hindu principle of nonviolence.

Huxley soon became part of Swami Prabhavananda's (the founder of the Ramakrishna Order) circle of followers. He would introduce his friend and fellow writer Christopher Isherwood to the group. When he wasn't involved his Vedantic studies, Huxley continued to write. His 1939 novel After Many A Summer, a satire of American culture, (specifically, its narcissism, superficiality, and obsession with youth) won him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

In 1938, Huxley's friend, the legendary novelist and screenwriter Anita Loos, introduced him to the MGM film studio, which hired him to write the screenplay for the movie Madame Curie, which starred Greer Garson as the famous scientist. MGM rejected Huxley's original screenplay as "too literary." His original script synopsis for Walt Disney's animated adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic novel Alice In Wonderland was also rejected. He did achieve some success as a screenwriter; he co-wrote the screenplays for the 1940 feature film adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and the 1944 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Huxley was known for his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. Legend has it that the legendary English occultist Aleister Crowley introduced him to peyote after they dined together in Berlin one night in 1930. Another friend, the famous British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, (who first coined the term psychedelic) introduced him to mescaline in 1953. Through Osmond, Huxley met Alfred Matthew Hubbard, the "Johnny Appleseed of LSD," who introduced him to that famous drug in 1955. Intrigued by the potential of psychedelic drugs to assist humans in achieving enlightenment, he wrote of his experiments in his classic non-fiction works, The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956).

In 1960, Huxley was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. Over the next couple of years, his health began to deteriorate. On the morning of November 22nd, 1963, as he lay on his deathbed unable to speak, he gave his wife a written request to inject him with 100 micrograms of LSD. She granted the request. He spent the last few hours of his life under the influence of LSD, then died at the age of 60 - not long after President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

Aldous Huxley's last novel, Island, published in 1962, was conceived as a utopic counterpoint to his classic novel, Brave New World. It told the story of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who finds himself shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. He discovers that the Palanese people, who are Mahayana Buddhists, live in a utopic society that combines modern science with the use of psychedelic substances to gain mystical insight.

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Quote Of The Day

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"It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels." - Aldous Huxley

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare 1958 TV interview with Aldous Huxley, conducted by Mike Wallace. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

It's been a sizzling summer at the Internet Writing Workshop, where members continually find publishing success in all venues.

Congratulations to all on these recent triumphs!

Jody
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Michael Baird

My story "The People Who Sell Free Things" was accepted at Eric's Hysterics.

Should be up in a couple of weeks.

Thanks to God, the academy, and the fiction list.

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Barry Basden

The summer issue of Full of Crow Quarterly Fiction has published "Rainier."

Thanks to all who helped with it.

PANK is good to its contributors--often blogs their other successes and interviews each. Here's mine.

I never thought such goofy questions could be a sort of Rorschach test.

The Summer 2011 Issue of LITnIMAGE contains "Ray's People Have Always Been Soldiers."

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Guilie Castillo

As a newbie at this, I can only hope you can imagine how great it is to send out a Yahoo. I'm hoping sending this will help me believe. It's no 15-book series with a seven-figure advance; it's just a short story, product of the Practice List, to be published sometime in August on Fiction365. But to me... what can I say? I'm over the top.

"Come Back To Me, Elsie" will be published in around 1.5 months at Fiction 365. To all of you that helped with crits and improvements, details, suggestions, feedback... I cannot thank you enough.

If whoever does the blog thinks this is worth publishing in it, by all means go ahead. I'm thinking about renting a billboard on this, my rocky island of Curacao, and putting it up there. Why not on the blog, too? :)

Thanks again. You gave me faith.

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Peg Frey

Our own Jeanette de Beauvoir notified me today that my short essay/rant/response to a Salon piece and the question of 'Why Read Fiction' is now live on her blog, Beyond the Elements of Style.

In addition, Muscadine Lines has published my flash fiction "Graduation" in their latest edition. This is an older story with a southern tilt that's been bouncing around. A thank you to members of the Practice board [where it started] and the Prose-p group who read and commented on a later version. Thanks also to Barry Basden for mentioning Muscadine in one of his past yahoos. The venue was a new one for me.

Wayne Scheer notified me that my story "Sliding into Twelve" is featured as the 'Story of the Week' at Sniplits. The Story of the Week selections are free to listeners.

There's a small sample/promo you can listen to as well beside the 'add to cart' click. The reader has a pleasant voice, far better than my gravelly N. J. twang.

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June Gallant

My first blog ever is up at Miramichi Online.

I studied every wonderful suggestion you made in your crits and this is what came out of it. If you care to take a look, there is also a space for comments at the very bottom of my page, and I would love to hear from you all.

Thanks IWW friends.

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Dawn Goldsmith

It isn't often that I write multiple articles about the same subject, but Susan Lenz is such an interesting artist that writing about her could fill several magazines. Today I received my comp copies of Quilter Magazine with my article about Susan and her 'window' art quilts (she stitches and MELTS the fabric to create stained glass windows).

In addition, the article I wrote about her and her grave rubbings art quilts was posted today at HandEye Magazine.

You may recognize the editor, our own Rebeca Schiller!

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Nicole Green

My third romance novel with Genesis Press, Holding Her Breath, has been released!

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Kristen Howe

My Erica Spindler article has been published at Yahoo Contributor Network (formerly Associated Content). I didn't get paid for it, since it's prose. But the only way I get paid is my Page per view (PPV)--mainly the number of traffic sent to my article, like Twitter, Facebook, and here.

My thanks goes to Gary, Hayden, Paul and Sarah at Nonfiction for their critiques.

I've gotten two new offers for my S.O.S. articles from Yahoo Contributor Network (Associated Content). Since I've edited it, split it into halves, and reorganized it, I've gotten $2.09 per article. That's $4.18 in total. Now both are published.

Thanks to Charles and Jeri for your comments! I'm working on an update for the S.O.S. battle this week and will send to Nonfiction this weekend, along with my Favorite Novel prose for YCN, and hopefully, I'll be submitting my old article on multiple births by the end of next week. Stay tuned.

S.O.S., Part One
S.O.S., Part Two

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Ann Hite

I have been invited to be part of a panel at DragonCon this Labor Day. Now mind you, I know what DragonCon is, but I’ve never thought of my work being a good fit. I was informed that ghost stories were always a good fit. And writers are writers no matter the genre, so my panel discussion in Writers Track will go well. If anyone out there is coming to DragonCon be sure and look me up.

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Mel Jacob

For any interested in seeing my short contribution to Melange Books' Curious Hearts Anthology (Corpulent Chiropteran), the book will be available on July 25 at Melange Books in ebook and print and also at Lulu.com in print and ebook.

In the next few weeks it will be available at All Romance Ebooks and Bookstrand. It will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders, but this process takes about eight weeks so don’t expect to see it at any of those places for a while. Distribution through Bowkers and Ingrams will also happen after eight weeks.

This is almost a triple. My two sort of Halloween shorts will be out around Halloween and the publisher has accepted another short and plans to produce an anthology of the three stories. No publishing details yet.

I have the following books reviews up at SFRevu.com:

• Dark War: A Matt Richter Novel by Tim Waggoner
• Grave Dance: An Alex Craft Novel by Kalayna Price
• Ghosts of War by George Mann

More books reviews are up at Gumshoereview.com:

• Bedlam of Bones: A Reverend Oughterard Mystery by Suzette A. Hill
• A Slepyng Hound to Wake: a novel by Vincent McCaffrey
• A Visible Darkness: A Mystery by Michael Gregorio
• The Illusion of Murder by Carol McCleary
• Scones & Bones (A Tea Shop Mystery) by Laura Childs

After roughly 20 years and plenty of rejects, Beyond the Rim of Light has a publisher. Besides that: she loved 'the voice' and said 'it’s a good solid story and you are an editor’s dream as far as writing technique!'

Can't ask for more than that. It's a spec fic novel, sort of Alice through the worm hole becomes the Count of Monte Christo. Once I have release date, etc., I'll post the info.

This is a prime example of persistence paying off.

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Jacquelynn Rasmenia Massoud

My story, "Shit Water," was accepted at The Legendary and is now online in their fiction section.

Thanks again to everyone on the fiction list who critiqued this one - this is the second time I've had this one accepted, so I'm pretty happy about that.

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Pauline Micciche

My flash story "The Black Jay" was published in the print edition of Calliope. It is not yet online.

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Elaine Moore

Apollo's Lyre has published my flash fiction piece, "Acceptance."

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Eric Petersen

My latest book review, Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher, has been published by the Internet Review of Books.

Flashes In The Dark has published another one of my stories, "Gargoyle." Thanks to everyone on Prose-P who critiqued the original version - you helped me make it even better!

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Adrienne Ross

I'm pleased to say that "Orcas in Passing" is up at Adventum Magazine's inaugural issue. You may also find it at: http://issuu.com/adventum.

"Things that Go Beep in the Night" is up at LabLit.

A fun piece to write, and LabLit accepted it 3 hours after I submitted it. It should always be that easy...

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Bob Sanchez

Today a royalty check arrived from Amazon, the first one for sales of my ebooks. It's not a huge check, but with luck it's not the last either.

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Wayne Scheer

Sugar Mule will publish my story, "The Staring Contest," in their November issue.

Sugar Mule was one of the first ezines to publish a story of mine back in 2002. I just recently discovered they were still in business.

I have three flashes under 250 words up at Apollo's Lyre. They've headed the threesome as a Bouquet of Shorts. All three began in Practice and at least one was then reviewed in Fiction. So I owe a big thanks.

My story, "Where Are You Now, Charming Billy?," has been accepted by Dew on the Kudzu for their July issue.

I just got word that Everyday Fiction likes my story, "The Good Citizen," and wants to publish it July 13. This one began in Practice and was developed further with critiques from the Fiction group, so I owe thanks to a lot of people.

Fiction365 has bought my story, "A Change of Heart," and has scheduled it for publication at a later date.

My story, "Doing Penance," has been reprinted in Front Porch Review.

My story, "A Good Citizen," went up at Everyday Fiction yesterday. I almost missed it. This one received some strong, mixed comments from readers.

This story began in Practice, so I owe the group an extra thanks.

Sorry to keep interrupting you with these Yahoos, but this one is unique.

I just got an email from an editor with Black Lawrence Press, saying she'd like to publish my story, "Two Friends," in an anthology of creative works dealing with AIDS. What's amazing to me is I published the story in Arts and Understanding, a print magazine, in 2005!

Scissors and Spackle has accepted my story, "A Life of Jive," for their September issue. They pay $30 for one story an issue, so here's hoping....

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Pat St. Pierre

I have been selected to be one of the readers for the "Glass Woman Prize" fiction contest which ends in September.

I will read 10 of more fiction pieces and select the top three to go on to the editor.

I am thrilled because my fiction publication has not been extensive.

It's a great learning experience for me.

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Notes For July 22nd, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 22nd, 1936, the famous American novelist Tom Robbins was born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Both his grandfathers were Southern Baptist preachers. The family moved to Virginia in 1947. At the age of 16, Robbins studied journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, but he dropped out of college when his fraternity expelled him for disciplinary problems.

In 1954, Robbins was drafted into the military. He enlisted in the Air Force and served a two year tour of duty in Korea as a meteorologist. After his discharge, he returned to civilian life, settling in Richmond, Virginia. He became part of the local art scene and hung out with his fellow painters.

In 1957, Robbins enrolled in art school at Richmond Professional Institute, now known as Virginia Commonwealth University. While there, he became the editor of the campus newspaper and worked as a copy editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper.

After art school, Tom Robbins spent a year hitchhiking his way around the country. He settled in New York City and became a poet. In 1961, he moved to San Francisco, then a year later, he moved to Seattle to get a Master's degree at the University Of Washington's School of Far Eastern Studies. Over the next five years, Robbins worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, first as a sports reporter, then as an arts reviewer.

In 1966, he wrote a column for Seattle Magazine and hosted a radio show on KRAB-FM, a non-commercial station in Seattle. The following year, Robbins went to a concert by legendary rock band The Doors, which was a life-changing experience for him. It was a major factor in his decision to move to La Conner, Washington, and write his first book.

Tom Robbins' first novel, Another Roadside Attraction, was published in 1971. It introduced his trademark writing style - a non-linear narrative filled with offbeat humor and scathing satire. It told the story of John Paul Ziller and his wife Amanda - a hippie guru - who open a combination hot dog stand and zoo called Captain Kendrick's Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve.

Other weird characters in the novel are a baboon named Mon Cul, a well educated fellow called Marx Marvelous, and L. Westminster "Plucky" Purcell, a football great and part time drug dealer who accidentally uncovers a secret order of monks who work as assassins for the Vatican. Plucky also uncovers a shocking secret dating back to the beginning of Christianity.

Robbins' next novel, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1976) featured a main character, Sissy Henshaw, who was born with an unusual birth defect - enormously large thumbs, which she uses to hitchhike around the country. In her travels, Sissy meets and becomes a model for the Countess, a lesbian feminine hygiene product tycoon.

The Countess introduces Sissy to her future husband, a Mohawk Indian named Julian Gitche. Sissy also meets sexually open cowgirl Bonanza Jellybean, and an escapee from a U.S. government Japanese internment camp with the erroneous nickname "The Chink."

In 1993, director Gus Van Sant - a friend of Tom Robbins - adapted Even Cowgirls Get The Blues as a feature film starring Uma Thurman as Sissy Henshaw, John Hurt as the Countess, Rain Phoenix as Bonanza Jellybean, Keanu Reeves as Julian Gitche, and Pat Morita as The Chink.

Tom Robbins has written ten novels so far, including memorable works such as Still Life with Woodpecker (1980) and Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994). His latest novel, B is for Beer, was published in April of 2009.

B is for Beer is classic Robbins. Dubbed "a children's book for grown-ups" and "a grown-up book for children," it's presented in the form of a children's novel. It tells the story of six-year-old Gracie Perkel, who is fascinated by beer, her father's favorite beverage, which she describes as "the stuff that's yellow and looks like pee-pee."

Gracie turns to her favorite uncle, beer-guzzling hippie Uncle Moe, for help. He leads her on a quest to find out all there is to know about beer, then leaves her in the lurch, running off with a woman - a podiatrist he's fallen in love with. Undaunted, Gracie drinks her first beer, throws up, passes out, and is visited by the Beer Fairy, who teaches her all about the history and production of beer.

In a recent interview, Tom Robbins claimed that he wrote B is for Beer as a satirical ode to the brewed beverage. "Kids are constantly exposed to beer," he said. "it's everywhere; yet, aside from wagging a warning finger and growling - true enough as it goes - 'beer is for grownups,' how many parents actually engage their youngsters on the subject? As a topic for detailed family discussion, it's generally as taboo as sex."

As for his next novel, Robbins said, "I've decided to take advantage of outsourcing. My next novel will be written by a couple of guys in Bangalore."

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Quote Of The Day

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"There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act." - Tom Robbins

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Tom Robbins discussing his most recent novel, B is for Beer, at a book signing at Barnes & Noble. Enjoy!

Notes For July 21st, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 21st, 1899, the legendary American writer Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois - a suburb of Chicago. His father, Clarence Edmonds "Doc Ed" Hemingway, was a country doctor. His mother Grace was an aspiring opera singer who earned money giving voice and music lessons. She was a domineering and fiercely religious woman who shared the beliefs of the strict, fundamentalist Protestant population of Oak Park, which Ernest Hemingway described as having "wide lawns and narrow minds."

As a boy, Hemingway adopted his father's hobbies of hunting, fishing, and camping in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan, where his family owned a summer home. They often vacationed there, and the young Hemingway's experiences instilled in him a passion for both outdoor adventure and living in remote areas.

In high school, Hemingway excelled in both sports (he boxed and played football) and academics, displaying exceptional talent in his English classes. His first literary experience was writing for both the school newspaper and yearbook. In his senior year, he became the editor of the newspaper. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Ring Lardner, Jr. as a tribute to his literary hero, Ring Lardner.

After graduating high school, Hemingway decided not to go to college. Instead, he began his writing career as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. Six months later, against his father's wishes, he left the job to join the Army and fight in World War 1. He failed his physical due to vision problems, so he joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps instead. On his way to the Italian front, he stopped in Paris, which was being bombarded by German artillery. He tried to get as close to the combat zone as possible.

When he arrived in Italy, Hemingway witnessed first hand the horrors of war. After an ammunition factory near Milan exploded, he had to pick up the human remains. He wrote about the experience in his first short story, A Natural History Of The Dead. It left him badly shaken. In July of 1918, Hemingway's career as an ambulance driver ended when he was badly wounded while delivering supplies to soldiers. Shrapnel from an Austrian trench mortar shell lodged in his legs, and machine gun fire badly injured his knee.

While recovering in a Milan hospital, he fell in love with Agnes von Kurowski, an American nurse six years his senior. They planned to return to America together, but when the time came, Agnes jilted Hemingway and ran off with an Italian officer. This painful betrayal left a mark on his psyche, and was reflected in his classic novel A Farewell To Arms (1929). After the war, he returned briefly to Oak Park before leaving for Toronto, Ontario, where he lived in an apartment on Bathurst Street, now known as The Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway resumed his journalism career, landing a job as a reporter for the Toronto Star newspaper. He met and married his first wife, Hadley Richardson. She hated their cramped apartment, so they moved to Paris, where Hemingway covered the Greco-Turkish War for the Toronto Star. In this obscure yet important war, he witnessed the horrific burning of Smyrna, which he mentioned in a few of his short stories. While living in Paris, he met Gertrude Stein, who became his mentor and introduced him to the American expatriate community of writers and artists who lived around the Montparnasse Quarter. This community came to be known as the Lost Generation, a term Stein coined from a comment made by her mechanic.

In 1923, after enjoying great success as a foreign correspondent, Hemingway returned to Toronto, where he began writing fiction under the pseudonym Peter Jackson. His first child was born - a son named John but known as Jack. Hemingway asked Gertrude Stein to be his son's godmother. Around this time, Hemingway had a falling out with his editor, who believed he had been spoiled by his overseas assignments. He deliberately gave Hemingway mundane assignments. A bitter Hemingway angrily resigned from the Toronto Star in December of 1923. His resignation must have been either ignored or rescinded, as Hemingway continued to write for the newspaper - albeit sporadically.

In 1925, Ernest Hemingway's first book was published. It was a short story collection called In Our Time. It featured four Nick Adams stories. The book's title, which came from the English Book of Common Prayer, was suggested to Hemingway by Ezra Pound. The 1930 reprint of the book included the piece On The Quai At Smyrna as an introduction. It was based on Hemingway's experiences covering the Greco-Turkish War. The same year his book was published, Hemingway met writer F. Scott Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in Paris. Just two weeks before, Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby was published.

Hemingway and Fiztgerald became close friends. They spent a lot of time together talking, drinking, and exchanging manuscripts. Impressed with Hemingway's writing talent, Fitzgerald did a lot to advance his career. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald's wife Zelda took an immediate dislike to Hemingway. The feeling was mutual.

Zelda and her husband were having marital problems at the time. She blamed the decline of their sex life on Hemingway, whom she called a "fairy" and accused of having a homosexual affair with Fitzgerald. There is no evidence that the two men had an affair or that they were gay or bisexual. Zelda was both a heavy drinker and a schizophrenic, and would later be institutionalized. To get back at her for attacking his masculinity, Fitzgerald slept with a female prostitute and flaunted the affair. The conflict between Hemingway and Zelda ended his friendship with Fitzgerald and created lifelong animosity between the two writers.

Hemingway and his wife Hadley divorced in 1927. He later married Pauline Pfeiffer, a devout Catholic from Arkansas who was an occasional fashion reporter, writing for Vanity Fair and Vogue. Hemingway converted to Catholicism and continued to write. Tragedy struck the following year when his father, in poor health and with financial troubles, committed suicide by shooting himself with an old Civil War pistol. Hemingway returned to Oak Park to arrange the funeral, and angered the Protestant community by voicing the Catholic view that all suicides go to Hell. Not long afterward, Harry Crosby - an old friend of Hemingway's from his Paris days and the founder of Black Sun Press - also committed suicide.

A year later in 1929, Hemingway published his classic novel, A Farewell To Arms. It was an autobiographical novel based on Hemingway's experiences in World War 1. In it, Frederic Henry, an American soldier, is wounded in Italy and recovers in a Milan hospital. There, he meets a British nurse, Catherine Barkley, and falls in love with her. By the time he has recovered, she is three months pregnant. They are separated by the war, then reunited later. They flee to Switzerland by rowboat where, after a long and painful labor, Catherine gives birth to a stillborn baby, then bleeds to death. The novel would later be adapted for the stage and screen.

Ernest Hemingway wrote ten novels, most of them all-time classics. He also wrote ten short story collections, several non-fiction books, and two plays. His famous 1952 novella The Old Man And The Sea -written while Hemingway was living in Cuba - was his favorite, and with good reason. His previous novel, Across The River And Into The Trees (1950) was savaged by the critics. They said that Hemingway was washed up as writer - he had become a parody of himself. The Old Man And The Sea proved his brilliance.

Hemingway's thrilling tale of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman far out in the Gulf Stream who struggles to reel in a giant marlin, won him tremendous praise from the critics, who compared his novella with Melville's Moby Dick and Faulkner's The Bear. The Old Man And The Sea also won Hemingway the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1983, when I was thirteen, my eighth grade English teacher assigned the class to read this amazing novella. I loved it and became a big Hemingway fan. I still am.

In July of 1961, just three weeks before his 62nd birthday, after suffering from health problems and mental illness, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide with his hunting rifle. Ironically, even though he had previously voiced the Catholic belief that all suicides go to Hell, the Catholic Church ruled that Hemingway was not responsible for his suicide due to mental illness. He was therefore allowed to be buried in a Catholic cemetery.

Hemingway's father and two of his siblings had also committed suicide, and years later, his granddaughter, actress Margaux Hemingway, would take her life. Some believe that the disease haemochromatosis ran in Hemingway's father's family. It's a genetic disease that causes an excessive level of iron in the blood - which not only results in damage to the pancreas, but also causes instability in the cerebrum, resulting in depression and mental illness.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer's radar, and all great writers have had it." - Ernest Hemingway

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video is a biographical presentation about Ernest Hemingway. Enjoy!

Notes For July 20th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 20th, 1304, the legendary Italian poet, philosopher, and scholar Petrarch was born. He was born Francesco Petrarca in Arezzo, Italy. Petrarch's father was in the legal profession, so he demanded that his sons study law as well. Petrarch spent seven years in law school, but he considered it a waste of time - his main interests were writing and Latin literature and he hated the legal system, which he considered to be the art of selling justice.

After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon, where they spent most of their early years. To support himself, Petrarch worked in clerical offices. This gave him time to write. He became friends with the legendary writer Boccaccio and corresponded with him frequently. Petrarch also completed his first major work, Africa - an epic poem written in Latin that told the story of the great Roman general, Scipio Africanus.

Petrarch's epic poem made him a celebrity throughout Europe. He became a priest and continued his work as a scholar and writer. He wrote mostly in Latin, but his most famous collection of poems, Il Canzoniere, (The Songbook) was written in Italian. This work contained over 300 sonnets, a form his name would always be associated with. Though he is sometimes mistakenly credited as being the inventor of the sonnet, he was not. He did, however, invent the particular rhyme scheme for the form that came to be known as the Petrarchan sonnet.

The sonnets in Petrarch's book were inspired by a mysterious young woman known only as Laura. When Petrarch was 24 years old, after he had left the priesthood, he first saw Laura in church on Good Friday. It was love at first sight for Petrarch, but alas, Laura was a married noblewoman who could not return his affection. Despite her nobility, Laura was a sweet-natured and humble girl, which endeared her to Petrarch.

Unable to realize his love for Laura, Petrarch wrote over 300 sonnets secretly professing his unrequited love for her. They are among the greatest love poems ever written. Not much is known to history about Laura. Some scholars believe that she may have been Laura de Noves, wife of Count Hugues de Sade - an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade. When she died in 1348, Petrarch was wracked with grief. The legendary composer Franz Liszt would set three of Petrarch's sonnets to music for voice in his work Tre Sonnetti Di Petrarca, and later transcribe them for solo piano in his suite Annees De Pelerinage.

In 1341, Petrarch was crowned the first poet laureate of Rome since antiquity. He traveled all over Europe as an ambassador. During his travels, he collected old, crumbling Latin manuscripts and became a leader in the movement to recover and restore the manuscripts of ancient Roman and Greek writers. He advised Leontius Pilatus in his translation of a Homer manuscript acquired from Boccaccio, but was greatly displeased with the result. In 1345, Petrarch himself discovered a previously unknown collection of Cicero's letters, the Ad Atticum.

During the Italian Renaissance, Petrarch was a highly regarded philosopher. He is credited with founding the Humanist movement and describing the ignorant times that preceded the Renaissance as the "Dark Ages." But he will always be known as one of the greatest writers and poets of all time. During his lifetime, he wrote poetry collections, essays, numerous scholarly works, and a large volume of correspondence. He brought the sonnet to prominence long before the birth of Shakespeare, and his love poems were magnificent. One of his most beloved sonnets is Sonnet #140:

She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,
A noble lady in a humble home,
And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,
'Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.
The soul that all its blessings must resign,
And love whose light no more on earth finds room,
Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,
Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;
They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf
Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,
And naught remains to me save mournful breath.
Assuredly but dust and shade we are,
Assuredly desire is blind and brief,
Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

Petrarch died in July of 1374, just before his 70th birthday.

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Quote Of The Day

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"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us or wound, us while they charm, but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master, but many others as well, even though they be far away- sometimes, indeed, though they be not born for thousands of years to come. I believe I speak but the strict truth when I claim that as there is none among earthly delights more noble than literature, so there is none so lasting, none gentler, or more faithful; there is none which accompanies its possessor through the vicissitudes of life at so small a cost of effort or anxiety." - Petrarch

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a performance of Franz Liszt's Pace Non Trovo, an adaptation of Petrarch's Sonnet #104, sung by baritone Thomas Quasthoff. Enjoy!

Notes For July 19th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 19th, 1898, the legendary French novelist Emile Zola was forced to flee France to escape imprisonment after being convicted of libel. Zola's conviction resulted from the publication of his most famous non-fiction work, J'Accuse, an open letter to France's president, Felix Faure. The letter would expose one of history's most famous - and shameful - political scandals. It was called the Dreyfus Affair.

Emile Zola was born in Paris in 1840. He rose from humble working class roots to become one of France's greatest writers. Though he became wealthy, he never forgot his roots. He was a lifelong socialist. He was also a leading figure in the intellectual movement of his time. As young man, before he made his name as a writer, he openly denounced Napoleon III, the nephew of ex-emperor Napoleon I. In 1848, three years after he was elected President of the French Second Republic, Napoleon III staged a coup and overthrew the republic, establishing himself as the new emperor.

After Napoleon III was deposed in 1870, (following France's disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian War) the French Third Republic was established. It would remain in power for 70 years, until the Nazis invaded in 1940. In its early days, the French Third Republic was a right wing nationalist government, heavily influenced by the Catholic Church and the French Army. It gave new meaning to Oscar Wilde's definition of patriotism as a virtue of the vicious.

Of course, not everyone in France agreed with their government. A great split was brewing. Intellectuals such as Emile Zola were concerned by not only the political atmosphere, but also the growing plague of anti-Semitism that was spreading throughout France - a plague being spread by the Church, the army, and the right wing press. It was this climate of right wing nationalism and anti-Semitism that led to the Dreyfus Affair.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was an artillery officer in the French Army who had been accused of turning military secrets over to a contact at the German Embassy. Although there was no evidence to prove his guilt, he was nonetheless convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island, the notorious prison in French Guiana. Some people believed that Dreyfus had been railroaded because he was Jewish. Later, one Lt. Colonel Georges Picquart discovered evidence proving that another officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, had committed the crime for which Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted and imprisoned.

Rather than release Dreyfus, Picquart's superior, Hubert-Joseph Henry, forged documents to make it look like Dreyfus was guilty. Then he reassigned Picquart to a remote post in Africa. Before he left for his new post, Picquart told Dreyfus' supporters what he knew about the case. For this, he would be court-martialed and sentenced to 60 days in jail. The right wing government refused to allow new evidence to be introduced.

Emile Zola could stand no more. He wrote an open letter to President Felix Faure, which would be published in the January 13th, 1898 issue of L'Aurore, then France's most prominent and respected liberal newspaper. J'Accuse (I Accuse) described the plot to frame Alfred Dreyfus for espionage, accusing by name the Army officers responsible. This cabal of officers, led by one Lt. Colonel Du Paty de Clam, all of them devout Catholics and ferocious anti-Semites, framed Dreyfus for two reasons: to protect the real culprit and to rid the French Army of one more "dirty Jew."

Why would soldiers protect a comrade whom they knew had committed treason? Because they also knew that he was a double agent. Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy had been working for the French Secret Service, pretending to spy for Germany. The "secrets" he was passing to the Germans were carefully crafted pieces of disinformation. To prevent Esterhazy's cover from being blown, the conspiring officers were more than happy to sacrifice the life of an innocent Jew. They got away with it in the name of national security.

Since Emile Zola was one of the most prominent intellectuals in France, the publication of J'Accuse resulted in a huge uproar - an outrage that divided the French people in half and shocked other countries. The Catholic Church backed the government and the Army. La Croix, France's most prominent Catholic newspaper, ran daily anti-Semitic editorials and blasted Zola.

As Zola expected, he was stripped of the Legion of Honor and quickly arrested. Charged with libel, he was convicted just over two weeks later and sentenced to a year in jail. He fled to England, where he stayed for over ten years. He returned to France in June of 1899, just in time to see the right wing government fall. The new liberal government added to the republic's constitution a separation of Church and state.

The case of Alfred Dreyfus was taken up again. The government would not exonerate him, because that would have involved introducing classified Secret Service documents into the public record. So, they offered him a pardon instead, which he accepted. But the truth was on the march, as Zola said, and in 1906, the French Supreme Court finally exonerated Alfred Dreyfus. He was readmitted to the Army and promoted in rank. He would later serve in World War 1 and retire from the military with the rank of Lt. Colonel and the Legion of Honor award.

Emile Zola died of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1902 at the age of 62. Many years later, a Parisian roofer confessed on his deathbed to killing Zola by closing his chimney. He claimed it was a political assassination.

The complete text of Zola's classic letter, J'Accuse, can be found here.

In 1998, on the 100th anniversary of the publication of J'Accuse, the still prominent Catholic newspaper La Croix finally issued a public apology for its long history of anti-Semitism and the role it played in the Dreyfus Affair.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul." - Emile Zola

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading from Emile Zola's classic novel, Germinal (1855). Enjoy!

Notes For July 15th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 15th, 1779, the famous American poet Clement Moore was born in New York City. His father, Benjamin Moore, was a bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and also served as the president of Columbia College.

Clement Moore later graduated from Columbia College, earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees there. In 1821, he was made a professor of biblical studies at the General Theological Seminary in New York City - a position he would hold for almost 30 years. For 10 years, he served as a board member of the New York Institute for the Blind, now known as the New York Institute for Special Education. He was also a prominent abolitionist.

Moore's writing career was modest. He only published two books during his lifetime. One of them was a non-fiction work - a Hebrew and English lexicon published in 1809. The other was a poetry collection, published in 1844. One of Moore's poems would become a classic - a cherished holiday classic that continues to be read every year during the Christmas season.

Its original title was A Visit From St. Nicholas, but it's best known as Twas The Night Before Christmas, which is also the first line of the poem.

Twas The Night Before Christmas was first published anonymously in the Sentinel, a newspaper based in Troy, New York, on December 23rd, 1823. Moore originally took no credit for writing the poem because he wanted to be known for his serious and scholarly works, not for authoring a whimsical Christmas poem.

The poem tells the story of a man awakened by strange noises late one Christmas Eve. While his wife and children sleep, he investigates the noises and witnesses the arrival of St. Nicholas - Santa Claus - who has come to deliver presents, riding a sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer. The poem defined the character of Santa Claus as we know him today - his physical description, the names of his reindeer, his tradition of delivering presents on Christmas Eve, and other characteristics.

One thing I always found interesting was Moore's description of Santa Claus as "chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf" with a long white beard. This may have come from ancient Egyptian mythology, as the ancient Egyptian god Bes was a Santa-like character. It was believed that on December 25th, the mother goddess Isis gave birth to Horus, the savior of Egypt.

Bes, the Elf King, (depicted as a jolly, fat, naked little elf with a long white beard) was a favorite of Isis, much loved by the goddess. He was the guardian of children and women in childbirth. Every year on December 25th, Bes would honor the birth of Horus by bringing toys and trinkets to all good children.

Twas The Night Before Christmas continues to be read every year during the Christmas season. The poem has become a cultural icon, influencing music, movies, and television, where it has been both parodied and paid tribute.

In 1974, the legendary animators Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass, producers of many classic, beloved animated TV Christmas specials, including Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, produced an animated Christmas special loosely based on Clement Moore's classic poem. Featuring the voices of Joel Grey and George Gobel, Twas The Night Before Christmas is still shown on TV at Christmastime and is also available on DVD.

Clement Moore died in 1863 at the age of 83.

The complete text of Twas The Night Before Christmas can be found here.

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Quote Of The Day

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"True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable." - Aleister Crowley

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare performance of Twas The Night Before Christmas, read by Perry Como. Enjoy!

Notes For July 14th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 14th, 1902, the famous Polish-Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer was born. He was born in Leoncin, Poland. His older brother, Israel Joshua Singer, and his older sister, Esther Kreitman, also became writers. Their father was a Hasidic rabbi, and their mother's father and brothers were also rabbis.

When Isaac Bashevis Singer was ten years old, his brother Israel gave him a copy of Dostoevsky's classic novel, Crime and Punishment, despite the fact that their strict, orthodox father forbade them from reading non-religious books.

Isaac loved the novel. Later, as a teenager in Bilgoraj, he would study Yiddish translations of works by Leo Tolstoy, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, and other authors. He read all sorts of novels, plays, and poetry collections.

Singer later entered a rabbinical seminary, but came to hate the school and the prospect of becoming a rabbi. He returned to his parents for a time, then went back to Bilgoraj and tried to earn some money as a Hebrew tutor. In 1923, his brother Israel arranged for him to move to Warsaw and become a proofreader for the Literarische Bleter, for whom he would later become an editor.

In his twenties, taking a cue from his brother who had done the same, Isaac Bashevis Singer rejected his religion and broke ties with his parents. He became part of Warsaw's Bohemian scene, spending time with many of his fellow non-religious writers and artists. Singer's first published short story won a literary contest and established him as an up-and-coming talent.

Singer's primary language was Yiddish. He wrote in Yiddish, and Yiddish folktales were a major influence on his writing. His first novel, Satan In Goray, was published in a serialized format in Globus, a literary magazine co-founded in 1935 by Singer and his lifelong friend, Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin.

Singer's historical novel was set in 17th century Poland, in the village of Goraj. It was based on the true story of how one third of Poland's Jews were exterminated in a Cossack uprising. It also told of the effect of Shabbatai Zvi, a rabbi turned false prophet and cult leader, on the Jewish population.

A prominent vegetarian, Singer's dietary philosophy would be reflected in his writings. His short story The Slaughterer dealt with the anguish of a man trying to reconcile his compassion for animals with his job as a slaughterer. Singer often said that he became a vegetarian for reasons of health - the health of animals. "In relation to [animals]," he wrote in The Letter Writer, "all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."

Although he had rejected his religion as a young man, Isaac Bashevis Singer's writing is often steeped deep in Judaism. His novels and short stories often depicted Jewish characters struggling with their religion. Their struggles sometimes become quite violent, resulting in death or insanity.

Singer's most popular novel, Yentl The Yeshiva Boy, was adapted in 1975 as an equally popular movie (which Singer absolutely hated) starring Barbra Streisand in the lead role. Yentl is a young girl constantly at odds with her rabbi father over the traditions of their religion, always debating theology with him - something females aren't supposed to do.

After her father dies, Yentl cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy named Anshel so she can enter a yeshiva and study the Talmud. Her true identity is discovered by her study partner, Avigdor. In his novel, Singer modeled the character of Yentl after his older sister, Esther.

Though she was an intellectually gifted child, due to the misogynistic beliefs and traditions of her father's orthodox religion, as a young girl, Esther was confined to a life of drudgery, doing menial household chores while her brothers received an education.

Esther had dreamed of becoming a writer, but her status as a woman in a strict Hasidic Jewish family crushed that dream. She was even forced into an arranged marriage, a fate she accepted grudgingly. The marriage ended in divorce. Later in life, she finally did educate herself and make her dream come true, publishing one novel and a collection of short stories.

Her brother, Isaac Bashevis Singer, wrote over 18 novels and numerous short story collections. In 1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Singer died in 1991 at the age of 88, after suffering a series of strokes.

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Quote Of The Day

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"We must believe in free will - we have no choice." - Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video is a clip from the 1987 PBS TV documentary, Isaac In America: A Journey With Isaac Bashevis Singer. Enjoy!

Notes For July 13th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 13th, 1798, legendary British poet William Wordsworth wrote his classic poem Tintern Abbey. He had just returned from a visit to Wales, accompanied by his sister Dorothy. While on a four-day walking tour of the Welsh countryside, they visited Tintern Abbey, a ruined church that was the first Cistercian monastery in Wales, and only the second in the United Kingdom.

Wordsworth composed the poem in his head while on the four-day walking tour, using a singsong method he had developed called "booing and hawing." That was quite a feat, considering the length and quality of the poem. As soon as he got back home to Bristol, he wrote the poem down. The day after that, he brought it to the printers.

The poem Tintern Abbey first appeared in the book Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, which Wordsworth co-wrote with his friend, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Published later in 1798, it included Coleridge's classic poem, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. The first edition sold out within two years. The second edition of the book included a preface article on Romantic poetry.

Tintern Abbey, (its full title is Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey) a long blank verse poem that read more like prose, dealt with the fundamental themes of Romantic poetry, including communion with nature, which has a restorative power. The poem also deals with memory, specifically childhood memory and how it affects us as adults. These themes were hugely important in Wordsworth's work.

The complete text of the poem can be found here.

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Quote Of The Day

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"What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them." - William Wordsworth

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of William Wordsworth's classic poem, Tintern Abbey. Enjoy!

Notes For July 12th, 2011

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This Day In Writing History

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On July 12th, 1817, the legendary American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He was the third of four children. The Thoreau family had their own business - a pencil factory founded by Henry's grandfather.

Henry David Thoreau graduated from Harvard University in 1837. According to legend, his first act of rebellion was refusing to buy one of the honorary Master's degrees that Harvard would bestow on its graduates for a $5 (the equivalent of $95 in today's money) donation to the university. It was a long held tradition that graduates bought these worthless degrees.

At the time of Thoreau's graduation, the employment opportunities for college graduates were typically limited to business, medicine, and the church. None of these interested Thoreau, so he became a schoolteacher. His first teaching job lasted three weeks. He resigned in disgust rather than carry out his superiors' order to administer corporal punishment to his students.

Thoreau and his brother John then founded their own school. It was a progressive elementary school where they introduced a new, then revolutionary activity to their educational curriculum - the field trip, where students would be taken out of the classroom to observe the real world in action. Students would partake in everything from nature hikes to visits to local shops and businesses. Sadly, the school would close in four years, following the sudden death of John Thoreau from tetanus.

When he wasn't running the school with his brother, Henry David Thoreau spent time with legendary poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had become not only his close friend, but also his literary mentor and father figure. Like Emerson, Thoreau was a ferocious abolitionist and had no use for organized religion. He followed Emerson's Transcendentalist philosophy. When he became fascinated with his idol's practice of keeping a journal, Emerson encouraged him to keep his own journal.

After Thoreau lost his brother and closed their school, he tried to begin a literary career. With Emerson's encouragement and assistance, he began publishing essays, poems, and journal excerpts. For a time, he lived with Emerson, tutored his children, and served as his assistant, editor, gardener, and handyman. Later, he worked at his family's pencil factory, where he perfected the process of making good pencils from inferior graphite by using clay as a binder. He would later produce plumbago at the factory - a type of graphite used for typesetting machine ink.

By the spring of 1845, after a period of restlessness, Thoreau decided to write full time. To do this, he required solitude, a quiet place away from the rest of the world. He began an experiment in simple living, building a cabin on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson near Walden Pond, a beautiful wilderness that would inspire him to write his most famous book.

The following year, Thoreau ran afoul of the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who demanded that he pay six years of back poll taxes. The poll tax was a tax one paid for the privilege of voting in federal elections. Some state and local governments imposed additional poll taxes for their elections. The poll tax was hugely controversial; it took away the voting rights of poor people who couldn't afford to pay the tax. It was another way for the wealthy elite to maintain their power and position and oppress the working class. After the Civil War, the Southern states used steep poll taxes as a way to prevent freed blacks from voting. The poll tax wouldn't be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court until 1937.

Thoreau refused to pay his poll taxes for a different reason: he refused to pay any taxes to support a federal government that allowed slavery to remain legal. He also refused to pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War. That unpopular conflict, which took place from 1846-1848, was instigated by President James K. Polk and fought to allow Americans to expand into the West. We wanted land that belonged to Mexico, so we decided to take it by force, bolstered by a recent, successful armed insurrection by American settlers living in a Mexican territory that became the state of Texas.

During the Mexican-American War, heavy American casualties and the skyrocketing cost of the conflict drove the government to sign an armistice with Mexico whereby territories that would become the states of New Mexico and California were turned over to the United States in exchange for $18 million (the equivalent of $450 million in today's money) and the forgiveness of all Mexico's debts.

For Henry David Thoreau and other abolitionists, achieving the goal of the Mexican-American War meant that the new territories would be built on the backs of slaves. This is why Thoreau refused to pay his taxes. He was taken to jail, but released a day later when his aunt paid his taxes, which infuriated him. The entire ordeal would change Thoreau forever. He would develop an anarchist philosophy of which he would become a noted and popular lecturer.

In January of 1848, Thoreau gave a lecture at the Concord Lyceum that was attended by writer and philosopher Bronson Alcott, the father of writer Louisa May Alcott. Bronson wrote that he "took great pleasure" in Thoreau's lecture. Thoreau would become a close friend of the Alcott family. He would also rework his lecture material into a classic essay, Civil Disobedience.

Civil Disobedience (1849) was inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley's classic political poem The Masque of Anarchy (1819) and by Thoreau's anger at legislation like the Fugitive Slave Act, a Congressional compromise to appease the South which prohibited all people - even those in free states - from helping runaway slaves. He opined:

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.… where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,– the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.… Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

When he wasn't lecturing or doing odd jobs to pay his debts, Henry David Thoreau lived in his beloved wilderness, kept up his journal, and worked on the book that he would become most famous for. Walden, or Living in the Wilderness (1854) was a memoir of the two years that Thoreau spent living in his cabin in a wilderness located about two miles away from his family home. The purpose of his experiment was to see if he could live a simple life under minimal conditions and away from what he called "over-civilization." He did not, however, intend to become a hermit. He received many visitors and would leave his cabin from time to time to make visits of his own. He summed up his objectives this way:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

Steeped deep in philosophy, spirituality, and satire, and featuring some of the finest writings about nature, Walden became an all-time classic non-fiction book. The legendary poet Robert Frost said of it, "In one book ... [Thoreau] surpasses everything we have had in America." The experience would kindle within Thoreau lifelong interests in natural history and botany. He came to admire the work of naturalists William Bartram and Charles Darwin.

Henry David Thoreau contracted tuberculosis in 1835. Amazingly, the disease would come and go, and Thoreau suffered from it only sporadically. This enabled him to conduct his Walden experiment. Unfortunately, in 1859, after getting caught in a rainstorm one night, Thoreau contracted a bad case of bronchitis which brought his tuberculosis back with a vengeance. His health began to decline until he was bedridden. Realizing that he was dying, Thoreau spent his last years revising unpublished manuscripts, writing letters, and keeping up his journal until he was too weak to do so.

Thoreau died in May of 1862 at the age of 44. His old friend Bronson Alcott planned the funeral service. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the eulogy.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience." - Henry David Thoreau

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading from the first chapter of Henry David Thoreau's most famous book, Walden. Enjoy!