Notes For April 3rd, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 3rd, 1957, Endgame, the classic play by the legendary Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, premiered in London. Although Beckett was an Irishman, he originally wrote Endgame and other works in French.

Beckett had become hugely famous for his classic avant garde play Waiting For Godot, which had been written four years earlier, in 1953. Endgame would prove to be just as avant garde, if not more so.

Endgame is a four-character play. The cast includes Hamm, a blind man who is unable to stand. His servant, Clov, is unable to sit. Nagg and Nell are Hamm's parents. They have no legs and live in adjacent garbage cans.

All four characters live by the sea, but the dialogue implies that there is actually no sea at all - or clouds or sun, for that matter. Hamm and Clov, trapped in a mutually dependent relationship, bicker endlessly.

Clov always wants to leave, but for some reason, is unable to. Meanwhile, Hamm's legless parents Nagg and Nell spend their time asking for food and getting into inane arguments. The dialogue suggests that the characters had a past, but have no future.

A major theme is the hell of repetition - how humans keep repeating their mistakes and bad habits, never learning from the past to create a better future, and instead becoming devoted to pointless traditions and rituals.

When Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot premiered in Paris, it created an international sensation. But Endgame was so avant garde that no company in France was willing to take a chance on producing it.

The Royal Court Theatre in London contacted Beckett with an offer to produce Endgame, and he agreed to travel to England. However, he was very skeptical about the Theatre company's abilities after they'd botched the English language premiere of Waiting For Godot.

To insure that Endgame would be produced properly, Beckett made sure to include precise stage and acting directions in his script:

HAMM     What's happening?

CLOV      Something is taking its course. (Pause)

HAMM     Clov!

CLOV      (Impatiently) What is it?

HAMM     We're not beginning to... to... mean something?

CLOV      Mean something! You and I, mean something! 

(Brief laugh)
Ah, that's a good one!

HAMM      I wonder.
(Pause)
Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn't he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough.
(Voice of rational being)
Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they're at!
(Clov starts, drops the telescope and begins to scratch his belly with both hands)
(Normal voice)
And without going so far as that, we ourselves...
(with emotion)
... we ourselves... at certain moments...
(Vehemently.)
To think perhaps it won't all have been for nothing!

CLOV     (anguished, scratching himself) I have a flea!...

Working with the Theatre's producer and director was once again agony for Beckett. The reviews for the French language production of Endgame weren't good. Still, the playwright agreed to come to London again in eighteen months for the English language premiere of Endgame.

The English premiere's reviews weren't any better. Critic Kenneth Tynan's famous bad review of Endgame took the form of a parody of the play:

Foreground figure a blind and lordly cripple with superficial mannerisms... Sawn-off parents in bins, stage right, and shuffling servant all over the stage...

Slamm      Is that all the review he's getting?

Seck      That's all the play he's written.

Slamm      But a genius. Could you do as much?

Seck      Not as much. But as little.

Despite the inability of critics to understand Endgame, it would go on to become one of Samuel Beckett's most celebrated plays and is still staged to this day.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear, and does not make clear."

- Samuel Beckett

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete performance of Samuel Beckett's classic play Endgame, starring Michael Gambon and David Thewlis. Enjoy!

Notes For April 2nd, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 2nd, 1805, the legendary Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark. The Andersens were a working class family, but speculation (which persists to this day) suggests that Hans's father was of a different lineage.

The senior Andersen may have been an illegitimate son of the Danish royal family. When he was a boy, King Frederick VI took a special interest in him and paid for part of his education. His son wasn't so fortunate.

Hans Christian Andersen had to leave school at 13 and work to support himself. He first found employment as an apprentice weaver, then as a tailor's apprentice. A year later, at the age of 14, he moved to Copenhagen, hoping to become an actor.

However, it was Andersen's excellent soprano singing voice, not his acting, that gained him entrance into the Royal Danish Theatre. When his voice changed, his theatrical career faltered. When one of his theater colleagues pointed out his talent for poetry, he decided to become a writer.

In a chance meeting, Andersen encountered Jonas Collin, a director for the Royal Danish Theatre, who became very fond of him. Collin decided to help Hans become a writer. He sent him to school and paid for his education.

Hans attended schools in Slagelse and Elsinore, but because of his dyslexia, he was a fair student at best. Older than his classmates, he felt alienated from them. At one school, he lived with the headmaster, who beat him frequently "to improve his character."

His teachers discouraged him from becoming a writer, driving him to depression. For these reasons, he would describe his school years as the darkest and most bitter years of his life. Despite his teachers' discouragement, Hans Christian Andersen did become a writer.

He burst onto the literary scene in 1824 with his short story A Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of Amager. He also published a poetry collection and a comic play. In 1833, he received a traveling grant from the King and embarked on the first of many travels throughout Europe.

During his traveling years, Andersen wrote his first novel, The Improvisatore, which would be published in early 1835. It became an overnight sensation. That same year, he also published a short story collection, Eventyr, the first of several volumes, known in English as Fairy Tales.

The book sold poorly, as the brilliance and beauty of the stories had yet to be recognized. Andersen returned to novel writing, and his next two novels, O.T. (1836) and Only A Fiddler (1837), were just as successful as his first.

The year his third novel was published, Andersen made his first visit to Sweden. Inspired by Scandinavism, he decided to write about the Scandinavian brotherhood shared by the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians.

The result was his classic poem Jeg er en Skandinav (I am a Scandinavian), which would be set to music by Swedish composer Otto Lindblad. Andersen continued his travels throughout Europe. He would write travelogues about his experiences in countries such as Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal.

In 1847, he made his first visit to England. His writing career was then at its peak, and his volumes of fairy tales were celebrated throughout Europe - except in his native Denmark, where at the time, they still received a lukewarm reception.

In England, Andersen became a noted guest at the famous parties of Marguerite Gardiner, the Countess of Blessington, who was a writer herself. Her parties were known as gathering places for writers, intellectuals, and other illuminati.

Andersen was a hit at the parties - a big social success. At one party, he got to meet his literary idol, the legendary Enlgish novelist Charles Dickens. He was thrilled.

During one of his later visits to England, Andersen stayed with Dickens for five weeks, oblivious to his host's blatant hints that he had worn out his welcome.

The friendship between the two men soured, and Dickens was said to have modeled the character of Uriah Heep, from his classic novel David Copperfield (1849), after Hans Christian Andersen.

As for Andersen's personal life, he was openly bisexual. He preferred women, but was very shy and awkward around them. He would fall in love with unattainable women, and their inevitable rejection of him would result in great heartbreak.

His most famous paramour was the legendary Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind. He fell madly in love with her, and his fairy tale The Nightingale was a tribute to her singing. Her famous nickname, "the Swedish Nightingale," was inspired by Andersen's story.

Hans proposed to Jenny, but she turned him down. She had come to love him like a brother, and referred to him as her brother in a dear john letter. Andersen's failures with women would be repeated in his gay relationships; he would become attracted to unattainable men who failed to reciprocate his love.

Ultimately, he never married or had any children. He gave up on love and most likely patronized brothels; shortly before his death, in the throes of severe illness, he dictated journal entries recalling memories of his many relationships with "loose women."

In 1872, Hans Christian Andersen fell out of bed and injured himself severely. He never recovered and his health began to deteriorate. Three years later, he died of liver cancer. At that time, he had finally been recognized in his native Denmark for his legendary fairy tales.

Over 150 years later, his classic stories, such as The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, The Little Match Girl, The Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling, The Red Shoes, Thumbelina, and The Emperor's New Clothes, continue to enchant readers of all ages. They would be adapted as plays, ballets, and feature films.

Readers are quite surprised that, like the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales, Andersen's stories are quite different from the retellings and adaptations they spawned. The Little Mermaid, for example, ends on a tragic note.

The little mermaid makes a deal with the Sea Witch to become human so she can marry the Prince, but he marries another girl whom he discovers is his true love - the girl who had saved him from drowning.

Heartbroken, the little mermaid can only return to mermaid form if she kills him with a dagger given to her by the Sea Witch. She sneaks up on the Prince, asleep with his new wife, but can't bring herself to kill him, and commits suicide instead, throwing herself into the sea.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale."

- Hans Christian Andersen

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of a collection of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tales. Enjoy!

Notes For April 1st, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 1st, 1841, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the classic short story by the legendary American writer Edgar Allan Poe, was published. Appearing in Graham's Magazine, it's considered to be the first detective story.

It also incorporates elements of horror, as its author was famous for his horror fiction, which made up the bulk of his writings. Horror elements also appeared in his poems, such as the classics Annabel Lee and The Raven.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue opens with a bizarre and brutal double murder that took place in the Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. The victims, Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter, were found dead in an inaccessible room that had been locked from the inside.

Madame L'Espanaye's throat was slashed so deeply that her head was nearly severed. Her daughter was strangled and stuffed in the chimney. Parisian detective C. Auguste Dupin and his unnamed friend, who narrates the story, read an account of the murders in the newspaper.

Dupin's interest in the case is piqued, especially when a man named Adolphe Le Bon is arrested for the horrible crime and imprisoned, despite the fact that there is no evidence to prove his guilt. Dupin offers his services to the prefect (chief) of police.

The plot thickens as Madame L'Espanaye's neighbors, who heard the murders take place, give contradictory statements, each claiming to have heard the killer speak a different foreign language - a language that none of them could recognize.

This leads Dupin to conclude that the witnesses weren't hearing a human voice. His theory is proven correct when he finds a hair at the crime scene that is not human. It belongs to an orangutan.

Dupin places an ad in the newspaper asking if anyone has lost an orangutan. A sailor shows up at his home to answer the ad. He had been keeping a pet orangutan he'd acquired in Borneo, but the animal escaped. Dupin interrogates the sailor and solves the crime.

When the orangutan escaped, it made off with the sailor's straight razor. When it got into Madame L'Espanaye's apartment, it attempted to shave her, mimicking its owner. The resulting bloodbath incited the orangutan to a frenzy.

It strangled Madame L'Espanaye's daughter, and, fearing its owner's whip, stuffed her body in the chimney to hide it. When the sailor learned of the "murders," he panicked and fled, allowing the orangutan to escape again.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue was a huge hit with both readers and critics. A review in the Pennsylvania Inquirer proclaimed that "it proves Mr. Poe to be a man of genius... with an inventive power and skill, of which we know no parallel."

Poe's detective, C. Auguste Dupin, would return in The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842), and The Purloined Letter (1844). The Murders in the Rue Morgue would be adapted several times for the radio, screen, and television.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue would also start a new subgenre - the locked room mystery. A locked room mystery involves a logically impossible crime, a crime where no evidence exists to prove that a crime was committed, or a crime where a person is convicted by evidence proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but the sleuth doubts it and proves his innocence.

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Quote Of The Day

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"It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic."

- Edgar Allan Poe, from The Murders in the Rue Morgue

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Edgar Allan Poe's classic short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 3/30/25

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Pamelyn Casto

My flash fiction piece, SOS, Somebody Said, will be published in the next issue of Dog Throat Journal, which should go live April 1st. Thanks to the Practice-W Group for the prompt and to the members for their comments.

Mark Budman

My new story, Frankenstein's Mirrors, has been published by Antipodean SF. My mom taught me that every man has to leave a mark on this world, something that posterity would remember him by. I listened. Her wisdom and my obedience brought me nothing but trouble.

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Notes For March 28th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On March 28th, 1909, the famous American writer Nelson Algren was born. He was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, to a German Jewish mother and a Swedish father. When Nelson was three, his family moved to Chicago.

The Abrahams first settled in the South Side. When Nelson was eight, they moved to an apartment in the North Side. Nelson was a lifelong White Sox fan.

Growing up in Cubs country, the other kids teased him frequently for being a White Sox fan. The teasing would increase exponentially during the Black Sox Scandal of 1920, when it was revealed that eight White Sox players had been bribed to throw the World Series.

In 1931, Neslon Algren graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor's degree in journalism. With the Great Depression in full effect, all he could do to make ends meet was drift around the country looking for work like so many other people did.

Two years later, Algren wrote his first short story, So Help Me. At the time, he was working at a gas station in Texas. Before his planned return home to Chicago, he found a typewriter in an abandoned classroom and took it, as very few publications accepted handwritten manuscripts.

Algren was caught, arrested, convicted of theft, and sentenced to prison. He was released after serving five months of a possible three and a half year term. While in prison, he was moved by the scores of other men jailed for taking desperate measures in desperate times.

He found kindred spirits among the outsiders, misfits, failures, and other tragic characters spawned by the Depression. They strongly influenced his writing. In 1935, his short story The Brother's House, published by Story magazine, won him his first of three O. Henry Awards.

That same year, Algren published his first novel, Somebody in Boots. It sold only 750 copies before going out of print, which didn't bother the author because he considered it primitive - his worst work.

His second novel, Never Come Morning (1942), courted many good reviews. Ernest Hemingway wrote of it, "I think it very, very good. It is as fine and good stuff to come out of Chicago..." It also courted controversy.

Never Come Morning told the haunting, tragic, and lyrical story of Bruno "Lefty" Bicek, a small time hoodlum and aspiring boxer from the "Polish Triangle" - the Polish section of Chicago's North Side. Algren tells the story without making any moral judgement on his characters.

Growing up desperately poor, Bruno dreams of escaping the slums by becoming a boxing champion, but ultimately realizes that he was born a thug and will be a thug until the day he dies - a revelation that comes when he fails to save his girlfriend Steffi Rostenkowski from being gang raped by his thug buddies.

Algren's grim and frank depictions of the Polish Triangle as a hopeless cesspool of crime, corruption, and misery outraged Polish-American groups in Chicago, who accused him of being a Nordic Nazi sympathizer.

They didn't realize hat he was actually Jewish and a leftist. Nevertheless, the pressure groups succeeded in getting Never Come Morning banned by the Chicago Public Library.

In 1949, Nelson Algren published his most famous novel, The Man With the Golden Arm. It would win him the National Book Award. The Polish-American protagonist, Francis Majcinek, known as Frankie Machine, is a professional card sharp.

Also an aspiring jazz drummer, Frankie longs to escape the seedy world of professional gambling by becoming a professional musician, but his personal problems threaten both his dream and his life.

When he served in World War II, Frankie took shrapnel in his liver and was treated with morphine. He recovered but became a morphine addict - a habit he refers to as the "thirty-five-pound monkey on his back." He keeps his friends and wife in the dark about his habit, which is a source of great shame for him.

Speaking of his wife, Frankie is trapped in a miserable marriage to wheelchair-bound Sophie, whom he thinks he crippled in a drunk driving accident. Her paralysis is actually psychological, and she takes her frustration out on Frankie, using guilt to keep him from leaving her. The stress adds to his drug habit.

After Frankie ends up accidentally killing his drug dealer "Nifty Louie" Fomorowski, he and his friend, petty crook Sparrow Saltskin, cover up Frankie's involvement in the crime. Then, Frankie's life takes a turn for the better when he has an affair with his childhood sweetheart, Molly "Molly-O" Novotny.

Molly was also trapped in a rotten marriage until her abusive husband got arrested. Reunited with Frankie, she uses her love to help him beat his drug addiction. Unfortunately, Frankie screws up again, but in a different way - he gets busted for shoplifting.

While Frankie serves his time, Molly moves away and they lose contact. After his release, without Molly to lean on, Frankie goes back on the needle. When his friend Sparrow breaks down during an intense police interrogation over the death of Nifty Louie, Frankie must go on the lam.

While on the run, Frankie finds Molly working at a strip joint. He hides out at her apartment and, with her help, kicks his drug addiction once and for all. The cops learn where he's hiding and he's forced to flee again. He barely escapes from them.

Hiding out in a sleazy flophouse, Frankie realizes that he'll never be free or have his Molly again, so he commits suicide, hanging himself in his room. The novel ends with a poem for Frankie called Epitaph.

Several years after The Man With the Golden Arm was published, the legendary director Otto Preminger decided to adapt it as a feature film. Unfortunately, the stifling Production Code was still in effect, and the Code forbade any stories dealing with drugs.

In 1953, Preminger successfully defied the Production Code to adapt the risque romantic comedy The Moon is Blue, which had been a hit Broadway play. When the PCA (Production Code Administration) once again denied him a Code Seal for The Man With the Golden Arm, Preminger released it without one, like he'd done for The Moon is Blue.

He had several key factors working in his favor; the Legion of Decency didn't condemn the film. Theater owners, granted independence from the studios in a landmark Supreme Court antitrust decision in 1948, didn't care about the Code Seal anymore. Last, but certainly not least, Preminger had cast legendary singer Frank Sinatra in the lead role.

The film adaptation of The Man With the Golden Arm was a cinematic milestone in that it finally cajoled Hollywood to amend the Production Code, which hadn't changed in over 25 years. It was also the first Hollywood feature film in over two decades to deal with drug addiction as its main theme.

Even anti-drug propaganda films like Reefer Madness (1936), Marihuana (1936), and The Cocaine Fiends (1935) could only be made by low budget exploitation filmmakers and booked into small, local theaters. The Code forbade studios from making drug movies.

Despite Frank Sinatra's excellent performance as Frankie Machine, Nelson Algren hated Otto Preminger's adaptation of his novel. He had been brought in as a screenwriter, then quickly replaced by Walter Newman.

Although an acclaimed film and a big hit at the box office, the screenplay took extensive liberties with the novel and changed the ending. To make matters worse, Algren, believing he had been duped into selling the adaptation rights for far less than they were worth, sued producer-director Otto Preminger for his fair share. He lost.

During the 1950s, Nelson Algren ran afoul of McCarthyism - the government's relentless and mostly illegal persecution of suspected communists and communist sympathizers.

Algren never joined the Communist Party because of negative experiences he and his friend, legendary African-American novelist Richard Wright, had at the hands of party members. However, he had belonged to the John Reed Club, a social club for left-leaning artists, writers, and intellectuals.

He had also belonged to a committee that protested the persecution of alleged spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were both executed. So, the FBI began surveillance of Algren, deeming him a subversive.

The FBI's dossier on Nelson Algren would clock in at over 500 pages long, but never contain any concrete evidence against him. Still, the government denied him a passport until 1960.

He had wanted to visit his girlfriend, legendary French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in Paris. By the time he finally got his passport, their relationship had begun to wane.

In 1956, Algren finally followed up The Man With the Golden Arm with another classic novel. A Walk on the Wild Side opens in South Texas during the early years of the Great Depression, telling the story of Dove Linkhorn, another casualty of the Depression and his own upbringing.

At sixteen, Dove is illiterate. His father refused to allow him to go to school because the principal was Catholic. So, he learned about life from the movies and from the hobos, pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, and bootleggers who lived and worked nearby.

Another denizen of the town is Terasina Vidavarri, the owner of a bleak little cafe who teaches Dove how to read. Terasina was once raped by a soldier. She and Dove become lovers, though he rapes her as well.

Dove begins hopping trains to look for work. His surreal, poetic, tragicomic adventures find him working everywhere from a steamship to a brothel to a condom factory. He also gets caught up in petty crime and has many affairs but ultimately returns to Terasina's cafe.

This novel contained Algren's famous "three rules of life," which were "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

A Walk on the Wild Side was adapted as a feature film in 1962, but because the Production Code was still in effect, the novel was bowdlerized and changed considerably for the screen.

Despite the efforts of the great director Edward Dmytryk behind the camera and Laurence Harvey in the lead role, the film was a bomb at the box office. Bosley Crowther, the celebrated film critic for The New York Times, panned the movie, describing it in his review as a "lurid, tawdry, and sleazy melodrama."

In 1975, Nelson Algren was commissioned to write a magazine article on the trial of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who had been convicted again for a double murder he didn't commit.

Carter wouldn't be acquitted until 1985, when his convictions were overturned after a Federal Appeals Court determined that he'd been the victim of racism and malicious prosecution.

While researching his article, Algren visited Carter's hometown of Paterson, New Jersey, and liked it so much that he decided to live there. He spent five years in Paterson before moving to Long Island, where he died at home of a heart attack. He was 72 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery."

- Nelson Algren

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a Chicago Humanities Festival 40-minute panel discussion of a recent documentary on Nelson Algren. Enjoy!

Notes For March 27th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On March 27th, 1923, the famous poet Louis Simpson was born. He was born in Jamaica to a Scottish father and a Russian mother. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 17, settling in New York City.

Louis soon enrolled at Columbia University, where he majored in English. One of his professors was the famous writer and critic, Mark Van Doren. In 1943, Simpson cut his education short to enlist in the U.S. Army, as World War II was raging.

He became a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He served as a courier for the company captain, which required him to deliver orders from company headquarters to officers at the front. Thus, he saw action in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

While stationed in France, Simpson's company fought a fierce and bloody battle against Nazi forces which had ambushed them on the west bank of the Carentan France Marina. The battle would inspire Simpson to write his classic poem Carentan O Carentan, which included these memorable verses:

There is a whistling in the leaves,
And it is not the wind,
The twigs are falling from the knives
That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,
The way to turn and shoot.
But the Sergeant's silent
That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly
Our place upon the map.
But the Captain's sickly
And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,
My place in the platoon?
He too's a sleeping beauty,
Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan
Before we met with you
We never yet had lost a man
Or known what death could do.

After the war ended, Louis Simpson enrolled at the University of Paris and continued his studies. He then returned to New York City, where he worked as a book editor while doing his graduate studies. He earned a PhD from Columbia University.

He would become a respected professor of English and poetry, teaching at not only Columbia University, but also at the University of California - Berkeley and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Simpson's first poetry collection, The Arrivistes, was published in 1949. In the beginning, he was strongly devoted to traditional verse and was acclaimed for this work. However, as the years passed, he moved away from traditional styles and embraced free verse.

Whether he worked in formal or free verse, as a poet, Simpson was always known for both his strong sense of narrative and for his lyricism, which was never compromised by his narrative voice.

Louis Simpson's 1963 poetry collection, At the End of the Open Road, won him a Pulitzer Prize. Edward Hirsch, critic for the Washington Post, described it this way:

A sustained meditation on the American character... the moral genius of this book is that it traverses the open road of American mythology and brings us back to ourselves; it sees us not as we wish to be but as we are.

In this poem from At the End of the Open Road, titled In California, Simpson tips his hat to one of his favorite writers of free verse, the great Walt Whitman:

Here I am, troubling the dream coast
With my New York face,
Bearing among the realtors
And tennis-players my dark preoccupation.

There once was an epical clatter --
Voices and banjos, Tennessee, Ohio,
Rising like incense in the sight of heaven.
Today, there is an angel in the gate.

Lie back, Walt Whitman,
There, on the fabulous raft with the King and the
Duke!
For the white row of the Marina
Faces the Rock. Turn round the wagons here.

Lie back! We cannot bear
The stars any more, those infinite spaces.
Let the realtors divide the mountain,
For they have already subdivided the valley.

Rectangular city blocks astonished
Herodotus in Babylon,
Cortez in Tenochtitlan,
And here's the same old city-planner, death.

We cannot turn or stay.
For though we sleep, and let the reins fall slack,
The great cloud-wagons move
Outward still, dreaming of a Pacific.

In addition to his poetry collections, Louis Simpson also wrote nearly a dozen works of nonfiction including studies of famous poets from T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams to Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath.

He lived on Long Island until his death in September of 2012 at the age of 89.

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Quote Of The Day

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“The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it.”

- Louis Simpson

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Louis Simpson reading one of his poems. Enjoy!

Notes For March 26th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On March 26th, 1920, This Side of Paradise, the classic first novel by the legendary American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, was published. In the summer of 1919, Fitzgerald, then 22 years old, had broken up with his girlfriend, Zelda Sayre.

Depressed, he spent most of the summer drunk before returning to his family's home in St. Paul, Minnesota. There, he began writing again, resuming work on his first novel, which had been rejected by publishers.

The original draft of the novel was titled The Romantic Egotist. Fitzgerald's rewrite was practically a brand new novel; only 80 pages of his original manuscript made it into the 300+ page final draft, which was retitled This Side of Paradise.

He hoped that if he became a successful novelist, he could win Zelda back. She had dumped him because she thought he would never be able to provide her with a comfortable living.

On September 4th, 1919, Fitzgerald had a friend deliver his completed manuscript to Max Perkins, an editor at Scribner's in New York. The novel was nearly rejected by the other editors, but on Perkins' insistence, they accepted it.

(Max Perkins, one of the greatest book editors and publishers of all time, not only discovered and edited F. Scott Fitzgerald's work, he also discovered and edited the novels of other great writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, and helped them get published.)

He believed that Fitzgerald was a major talent, and that This Side of Paradise would be a bestseller. The author pleaded for an immediate release, but was told that his novel wouldn't be published until the spring.

So, on March 26th, 1920, This Side of Paradise was published by Scribner's in a first edition press run of 3,000 copies. It sold out in three days, confirming Fitzgerald's prediction that he would become an overnight sensation.

Between 1920 and 1921, nearly 50,000 copies of the novel were printed. The author didn't earn a huge income from his first novel, but it sold well. He made just over $6,200 in 1920 - almost $100,000 in today's money - and the novel's success helped him earn more from his short stories, which made up the bulk of his income.

This Side of Paradise was a dark and lyrical tale of love warped by greed and status-seeking. It told the story of Amory Blaine, a poor but handsome young Midwesterner, from his early years and his education at Princeton through his service in World War I and his return home.

Blaine learns a hard lesson when his attempts at romance with wealthy debutantes fail miserably and leave him heartbroken. The novel ends with his famous summation, "I know myself, but that is all."

The style Fitzgerald employed for his first novel was a mishmash of straightforward narrative and narrative drama intertwined with letters and poems by the protagonist, Amory Blaine.

This is not a surprise, considering that Fitzgerald cobbled together different writings to form the novel. And yet, the end product turned out to be brilliant and gave readers and critics a preview of the genius that would produce The Great Gatsby five years later.

The success of his first novel wouldn't be the only prediction of Fitzgerald's to come true. After the book was accepted by Scribner's, he returned to Zelda and they became a couple again.

A week after the novel was published, they were married. Unfortunately, their alcoholism and Zelda's worsening mental illness would doom their relationship. His health ravaged by his heavy drinking, F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 at the age of 44 after suffering his third and final heart attack.

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Quote Of The Day

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"All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel,This Side of Paradise. Enjoy!