Notes For August 5th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 5th, 1850, the legendary French writer Guy de Maupassant was born in Dieppe, France. He grew up in Normandy, where he collected in his photographic memory a lot of information he would use in his short stories, which often dealt with the Norman people.

Maupassant's parents separated when he was eleven years old. He lived with his mother, to whom he was very close. They lived in the Villa de Verguies, which was located between the sea and the countryside.

In these surroundings, the young Maupassant developed a passion for outdoor adventure. He would fish with the local fishermen off the coast. In 1868, when he was eighteen years old, Maupassant saved poet Algernon Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Eterat.

That wasn't the first writer he met; when he started junior high school, Maupassant met the legendary novelist Gustave Flaubert, a childhood friend of his mother. Her father was Flaubert's godfather.

After receiving his primary education, Guy de Maupassant entered a seminary, but he got himself expelled, as he came to hate religion and the prospect of joining the clergy. He went to university instead.

Shortly after he graduated in 1870, the Franco-Prussian War broke out. Only twenty years old, he volunteered for military service and fought bravely. After the war ended, he returned home and moved to Paris.

Maupassant joined Gustave Flaubert's literary circle. He became Flaubert's protege and was introduced to famous writers such as Emile Zola, Henry James, and Ivan Turgenev. From Flaubert, he learned the craft of writing.

He set out to start his own writing career, supporting himself by working as a civil servant in two different positions. He hated the jobs. For recreation, he canoed on the Seine and pursued women.

In 1880, Maupassant established himself as a short story writer when he published Boule de Suif (Ball of Fat) in the anthology Les Soirees de Medan (Evenings at Medan) along with works by Zola and other writers.

Set during the Franco-Prussian War, "Boule de Suif" is the nickname of a well-known prostitute traveling in a coach with some bourgeois passengers. The coach is detained by a Prussian officer who demands that Boule de Suif sleep with him. She refuses, and he continues to detain the coach.

The other passengers grow restless and demand that she sleep with the Prussian. She swallows her pride and agrees. Afterward, he allows the coach to leave. The other passengers treat her like she had the plague.

Remembering how these hypocrites had devoured the food and drink in the basket she brought with her, all Boule de Suif can do is weep. Although Guy de Maupassant had written six novels, he was best known as the master of the short story.

He wrote over 300 stories, one-tenth of which were horror stories. His most famous horror story was Le Horla (1887). In this disturbing tale, a wealthy young Norman believes that he has unwittingly summoned a horla.

Horlas are invisible monsters, cousins to vampires, and they are said to eventually bring about the downfall of Man. As the young Norman grows more fearful of the horla he has summoned, he tries to destroy it.

He eventually burns his house down, killing all of his servants. Believing that the horla is still alive, he decides to commit suicide. Was the horla real or just in his mind?

Madness is a recurring theme in Maupassant's stories; in A Night In Paris, the paranoid narrator suffers from a compulsion to walk the streets. In A Madman, a judge commits murder just to see what it feels like to kill, then sentences an innocent man to death for the crime.

And in The Inn - which may have inspired Stephen King to write his classic novel The Shining - two caretakers are living at a remote inn in the French Alps that becomes snowed in and unreachable. When one of them goes missing, the other starts to go mad. Or is the inn haunted by an evil presence?

Ironically, Guy de Maupassant's fascination with madness in his writings would soon cross over into real life, as an undiagnosed case of syphilis, contracted in his 20's, progressed over the years and eroded his sanity.

In middle age, Maupassant developed a desire for solitude, a fear of death, and growing paranoia. In January 1892, he attempted suicide by cutting his throat. He was committed to the famous celebrity asylum of Dr. Esprit Blanche, where he died in July 1893, a month before his 43rd birthday.

One of the great masters of the short story, Maupassant's work has inspired the writings of W. Somerset Maugham, O. Henry, and other great writers. H.P. Lovecraft credited Maupassant's horror tales - especially Le Horla - as the inspiration for his classic The Call Of Cthulhu.

All writers of short stories owe it to themselves to read Guy de Maupassant.

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Quote Of The Day

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“You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.”

- Guy de Maupassant

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Guy de Maupassant's classic short story, The Horla. Enjoy!

Notes For August 4th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 4th, 1792, the legendary English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Horsham, England. His father was Sir Timothy Shelley, a Whig Member of Parliament.

His mother was a landowner in Sussex. As a young boy, Percy Bysshe Shelley received his education at home from a tutor. At the age of 10, Shelley entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford.

Two years later, in 1804, Shelley entered Eton College. He did poorly as a student due to daily harassment by a gang of sadistic bullies. Their torments, called "Shelley-baits," included tearing the books out of his hands and literally ripping the clothes off his back.

In 1810, at the age of eighteen, Shelley matriculated at University College, Oxford. Legend has it that Shelley only attended one lecture during his time at Oxford and chose to educate himself by reading for as long as 16 hours a day.

By all accounts, Shelley was unpopular with both the students and the faculty. He did make one friend, however - a fellow student named William Jefferson Hogg, who would later write a memoir of their friendship.

During his first year of college, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote and published his first book, a Gothic novel called Zastrozzi. (1810) In this book, Shelley vented his anti-religious convictions through his villain Zastrozzi, who abducts his enemy Conte Verezzi, and chains him to a wall in a cavern.

There, Zastrozzi extracts his revenge by tormenting Verezzi and ultimately manipulating him into committing suicide, a sin resulting in eternal damnation, according to Verezzi's Christian faith. Why? In retribution for Verezzi's father (also a devout Christian) abandoning a young woman he had impregnated - Zastrozzi's mother.

The same year he published Zastrozzi, Shelley collaborated on a book of poetry with his sister Elizabeth, which they published as Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire. In 1811, Shelley published his second Gothic novel, St. Irvine, or The Rosicrucian.

He collaborated again on a poetry book, this time with his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, called Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson - a ribald and subversive collection of verse.

Shelley also published a pamphlet called The Necessity Of Atheism. When it caught the attention of the faculty, including the Dean, he was ordered to appear before them at a hearing. The faculty offered Shelley a deal.

If he agreed to recant the views he expressed in the pamphlet, he could remain at college. Shelley refused, and they expelled him. His father intervened to try and get him reinstated. The faculty offered him the same deal, and again he refused, angering his father.

Four months after he was expelled from college, Percy Bysshe Shelley, then nineteen years old, went to Scotland to marry his 16-year-old girlfriend, Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a pub owner.

They were married on August 28th, 1811, and Shelley's father disinherited him as a result. When Shelley offered to let his old college friend William Jefferson Hogg live with them, Harriet objected. So, he took her to Keswick in Northern England, intending to begin a writing career.

Shelley was distracted by the political events of the time, and went to Ireland, where he wrote and performed his Address to the Irish People at Nationalist rallies, (he was stridently anti-war and anti-monarchy) earning him the wrath of the British government.

Three years later, Shelley's marriage to Harriet had become unhappy. He often left her alone with their daughter, Ianthe. When he went to visit the writer, philosopher, and journalist William Godwin at his home and bookshop in London, Shelley also met his daughter, Mary Godwin.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin had been named after her mother, a writer, philosopher, and feminist who wrote the 1792 feminist philosophy classic, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. She would later be known as Mary Shelley, author of the horror classic Frankenstein.

On July 28th, 1814, Shelley left his pregnant wife and ran off with Mary, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, along for company. They sailed to Europe, wandered through France, and settled in Switzerland. Six weeks later, broke and homesick, they returned to England.

In the fall of 1815, while living near London with Mary, Shelley wrote his epic poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude. It attracted little attention when it was published, but has since been recognized as his first major work.

In the summer of 1816, Shelley and Mary made another trip to Switzerland, at the behest of Claire Clairmont, who wanted them to meet the legendary poet Lord Byron - her ex-lover, whose affections she hoped to recapture.

The Shelleys and Byron rented neighboring houses on Lake Geneva. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron became good friends, and their conversations got Shelley's creative juices flowing again; he began writing prolifically.

When he and Byron took a tour of Chamonix in the French Alps, it inspired Shelley to write the poem Mont Blanc. In December of 1815, not long after the Shelleys returned to England, Percy's estranged wife Harriet committed suicide, drowning herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London.

A few weeks after Harriet's body was recovered, Percy and Mary Shelley were properly married, partly so Percy could regain custody of his children. Unfortunately, the court refused to grant him custody of his children because he was an atheist. They went to Christian foster parents.

The Shelleys then moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where Percy became part of Leigh Hunt's literary circle and soon met poet John Keats. During this time, Shelley wrote his second major work, Laon and Cythna; or The Revolution of the Golden City.

It was a long narrative poem that attacked religion and featured a pair of incestuous lovers. It was withdrawn after only a few copies were published. It would later be edited and republished as The Revolt of Islam in 1818.

That same year, the Shelleys and Claire Clairmont left England for Italy to take Claire's daughter Allegra to her father, Lord Byron, who was living in Venice. When Percy reconnected with his old friend, Byron again inspired him to write.

He began work on Prometheus Unbound, a play in verse, which he would complete in Rome, as the Shelleys moved around Italy during the next couple of years. Tragedy struck when first their son William, then their infant daughter Clara died.

On December 27th, 1818, a third child was born - a daughter named Elena, but the identity of her mother is a mystery. Some scholars believed that Percy Shelley fathered her with either Claire Clairmont or the family nursemaid, Elise Foggi.

Other scholars believe that Percy adopted Elena in the hopes of distracting Mary from her grief. He would refer to Elena as his "Neapolitan ward" and place her with foster parents not long after her birth when he and Mary moved again. Elena would die when she was just 18 months old.

In 1820, when he heard of John Keats' illness, Percy Shelley wrote to him, inviting him to join him at his home in Pisa. Keats replied that he hoped to see Shelley, but his plans changed, and he instead went to Rome with artist Joseph Severn.

When Keats died the following year, Shelley wrote a poem for him called Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats. In 1822, Shelley invited his old friend and supporter Leigh Hunt to come to Italy with his family.

Shelley intended for himself, Hunt, and Lord Byron to create a literary magazine called The Liberal. Hunt would be the editor, Shelley and Byron would have an outlet for their controversial writings, and the magazine would serve as a counterpoint to conservative periodicals such as Blackwood's Magazine and The Quarterly Review.

Sadly, on July 8th, 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley died at sea while sailing from Livorno to Lirici on his schooner, the Don Juan, which got caught in a violent storm. He was 29 years old. At the time, he was returning after having set up The Liberal with Leigh Hunt.

The boat, which was custom made for Shelley in Genoa, sank after being pounded by the sudden storm. Shelley claimed to have had a premonition of his death. Mary Shelley would later claim that her husband's boat wasn't seaworthy.

Most believe that the boat was seaworthy and sank as the result of both the storm and the poor seamanship of Percy Shelley and his two mates. Some claimed that Shelley had been depressed and committed suicide at sea.

Others believe that Shelley's boat was attacked by pirates who mistook it for Lord Byron's ship. There is also evidence, albeit scattered and contradictory, that Shelley may have been murdered for political reasons by an agent of the British government.

When Shelley's body washed ashore, he was cremated on the beach as per the requirements of the quarantine laws of the time. His heart was rescued from the pyre by his friend, writer / adventurer Edward Trelawny, and given to Mary Shelley, who kept it with her until the day she died, after which, it was interred next to her grave.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley's classic poem, Ode To The West Wind. Enjoy!

Notes For July 31st, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On July 31st, 1919, the famous Italian writer Primo Levi was born in Turin, Italy. He was born to a liberal, intellectual Jewish family. His father worked for a manufacturing firm in Hungary, his mother played piano and spoke fluent French.

He had a younger sister, Anna Maria, to whom he was always close. As a young boy, Primo Levi was thin, shy, and sickly. When he entered the Massimo d'Azeglio Royal Gymnasium at the age of eleven, he was a year ahead of his schoolmates.

He was shorter than his peers, smarter than them, and the only Jew in school, which resulted in bullying. Despite his chronic illness, he passed his high school entrance exams at 14. Like all Italian schoolboys, he was required to join the Opera Nazionale Balilla.

The Opera Nazionale Balilla was the Italian Fascist equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Unlike the Nazis, Italian fascism did not include racist ideology. The National Fascist Party even had Jewish members. But this would change in a few years.

The teenage Primo Levi attended the Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio, a high school known for its antifascist teachers, including philosopher Norberto Bobbio and novelist Cesare Pavese. Then, while he was studying chemistry in university, everything changed.

In 1938, a group of prominent Italian fascist scientists and intellectuals published the Manifesto of Race, a collection of theories in line with Nazi ideology. It declared Italians part of the Aryan race and Jews the enemy.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini personally had no anti Semitic convictions and was criticized by Hitler for not ridding Italy of its Jews. After the publication of the Manifesto of Race, the criticism intensified.

Believing it was necessary to strengthen the alliance between Italy and Germany, he passed the infamous Racial Laws, which stripped Italian Jews of their civil rights, public positions, and assets. Books by Jewish authors were banned.

This was a huge mistake on Mussolini's part, as many non-Jewish Italians - including his own supporters - hated the Racial Laws, which would be the catalyst that led to Mussolini's overthrow and public execution after the war.

As Primo Levi had matriculated a year earlier, he was allowed to remain in university, but had difficulty finding a supervisor for his graduation thesis. Still, he obtained his degree, though the Racial Laws blacklisted him.

So he took clandestine jobs, often using a fake name and fake papers. In 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III deposed and imprisoned Mussolini, prompting the Nazis to invade Italy and liberate him. By then, Levi was fighting for the Italian Resistance.

After he and his comrades were arrested by the fascist militia, Levi was sent to the Fossoli internment camp. When the Nazis took it over, he was sent to the Auschwitz death camp. Fortunately, as a professional chemist, he was useful to the Nazis.

This kept Levi alive - barely, as he subsisted on starvation rations. Then he met a man named Lorenzo Perrone. Neither a Jew nor a prisoner, Perrone was an Italian civilian laborer who had been forced by his employers to work at Auschwitz.

A master bricklayer, Perrone was horrified by what he witnessed in the camp. He struck up a friendship with Primo Levi and smuggled him a soup ration every day, which kept him from starving to death. He would never forget this act of kindness.

During his time in Auschwitz, Levi worked in a laboratory on a project to produce synthetic rubber. He saw his fellow Jews brutalized and exterminated en masse while he survived. It haunted him for the rest of his life.

Primo Levi had spent nearly a year in Auschwitz when the death camp was liberated by the Red Army in January of 1945. Malnourished and suffering from scarlet fever, he returned home a living corpse with a bloated face and traumatic memories.

Unable to find work in his hometown of Turin, he took long train trips to work in Milan. He would tell people he met on the train stories about Auschwitz. He decided to write about these experiences. His first book, a memoir, was published in 1947.

If This Is a Man opens with Levi's arrest by the Italian fascist militia and ends with the liberation of Auschwitz. He wrote the book in calm, sober prose, which made the horrors he described even more vivid and haunting.

At the time If This Is a Man was published, Levi had quit his job and started an independent laboratory with his old friend Alberto Salmoni. He had just married his wife Lucia. She gave birth to their daughter Lisa the following year.

That year, Primo Levi was reunited with Lorenzo Perrone, the bricklayer who saved his life. Unable to cope with what he'd seen inside Auschwitz, Perrone became a homeless alcoholic wreck and was suffering from tuberculosis when Levi rescued him from the streets.

Levi would close his laboratory, which had been located in Alberto Salmoni's parents' house, after it became too dangerous to produce chemicals there. He worked as a chemist for various companies while he wrote. He also became a Holocaust education activist.

Over the years, he visited over 130 public schools to talk about his experiences in Auschwitz and was stunned by the historical revisionism being employed by the conservative government's schools, which downplayed the scope of the Holocaust and Italy's role in it.

Levi also took Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to task for falsely claiming that the number of Russians killed in the Soviet gulags was the same as the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The numbers were not even close.

Approximately 30% of prisoners in the gulag died, while the Nazis exterminated between 90 and 98% of their prisoners. Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize, was later exposed as a lifelong virulent anti Semite, a fact that he deliberately hid from the Nobel committee.

Primo Levi's writings would include a second memoir, The Truce (1963), two novels, a poetry collection, several short story collections, and several essay collections, with the Holocaust and his work as a chemical engineer being major themes.

In April of 1987, a few months before his 68th birthday, Levi was killed in a fall from his third story apartment. His death was ruled a suicide. His biographers agreed with this, as he was suffering from depression and the stress of caring for his elderly mother and mother-in-law.

Other factors included his traumatic memories of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, his fellow writer and fellow Holocaust survivor, said that "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later," but Levi's friends disputed the suicide ruling as he left no note and there were no warning signs.

They believe that Levi's death was an accident. He had plans for the short and long term future, and a few days before his death, he had complained to his doctor that he was suffering from dizzy spells.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

- Primo Levi

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features an 89-minute tribute to Primo Levi, recorded live at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Enjoy!

Notes For July 30th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On July 30th, 1818, the legendary English writer Emily Brontë was born in West Yorkshire, England. Her sisters Charlotte (author of the classic novel Jane Eyre) and Anne were also poets and novelists. Her brother Patrick Branwell Brontë was a poet and painter.

Their father was a poor Irish clergyman, but he did have an impressive collection of classic literature. Emily and her siblings educated themselves by reading all of his books. As children, they created imaginary worlds and filled notebooks with stories about them.

Emily attended Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School near Halifax, then later, a private school in Brussels. When her sister Charlotte discovered her own talent as a poet, they decided to collaborate on a book of poetry, along with sister Anne.

Due to the prejudice against women writers in the Victorian era, the Brontë sisters, like other female authors, published their poetry undaer male pseudonyms. Emily took the name Ellis Bell, Charlotte became Currer Bell, and Anne's nom de guerre was Acton Bell.

Their first book, published in 1846, was titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The following year, Emily Brontë published her classic novel, Wuthering Heights, as Ellis Bell.

Originally published in two volumes, (Anne Brontë later wrote a third volume called Agnes Grey) Wuthering Heights is rightfully considered one of the greatest Gothic novels of all time.

It told the unforgettable story of the intensely passionate, yet ultimately doomed love affair between childhood sweethearts Heathcliff and Catherine, soul mates who are ultimately separated by cruelty and snobbery, their unresolved emotions threatening to destroy them.

When it was first published, Wuthering Heights received mixed reviews due to its stark and brutal depictions of mental and physical cruelty. It has since been recognized as one of the all-time classics of English literature.

Unfortunately, Emily Brontë would never write another novel. After her brother died of tuberculosis, Emily contracted the disease herself, a result of a cold she caught during his funeral. She died in December of 1848, at the age of thirty. Her sister Anne died of tuberculosis the following year.

After Emily Brontë's death, her sister Charlotte edited her two volumes of Wuthering Heights into a standalone novel, and republished it under Emily's real name. Charlotte also died young of tuberculosis, or so her death certificate stated.

Some biographers have claimed that she actually died from either typhus or dehydration, as well as malnutrition from excessive vomiting brought on by severe morning sickness.

Although Emily Brontë's life was tragically cut short, her literary legacy lives on. Wuthering Heights continues to inspire readers to this day, and has been adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves."

- Emily Brontë

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Vanguard Vide

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Today's video features a complete reading of Emily Brontë's classic novel, Wuthering Heights. Enjoy!

Notes For July 29th, 2026

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This Day In Literary 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, Lee's father moved the family to the United States so he could finish his psychiatric training. 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 studying 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, which he found unfulfilling, so, taking a cue from his old friend and prep school roommate, novelist Brooks Hansen, he quit to write full time.

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 (1999), 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 II. 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 an identity crisis 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 fourth novel, The Surrendered, published in 2010, was nominated as finalist for the 2011 Pultizer Prize. A gut wrenching antiwar novel, it followed three war ravaged characters.

June Han is a young girl who loses her family during the Korean War. Hector Brennan is the psychologically damaged American soldier who brought June to an orphanage, and Sylvie Tanner, wife of the orphanage's minister, witnessed the murder of her parents at the hands of Japanese soldiers in Manchuria as a little girl.

Lee's 2014 novel, On Such a Full Sea, is a work of dystopic, post apocalyptic science fiction set in a future America where there are only two classes of people: the extremely rich ruling class and the extremely poor working class.

With China so polluted that it's become uninhabitable, a large population of Chinese refugees now lives in America, where, like other working class people, they reside in formerly abandoned cities which have been turned into self-contained labor colonies.

The main character is Fan, a petite young Chinese woman who, like other other members of her class, works to produce food for the elite. She's a fish tank diver. When her boyfriend disappears, Fan embarks on a surreal, philosophical, and poetic quest to find him.

Chang-Rae Lee's most recent novel, My Year Abroad, was published in February of 2021. It tells the story of Tiller, an ordinary college student with heart but little ambition who meets Pong Lou, a brilliant and colorful Chinese-American entrepreneur.

Pong Lou sees something in the bored student and takes him on as a protege. He brings Tiller along on a wild trip across Asia in this novel that combines satire, caper comedy, romance, and bildungsroman.

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Quote Of The Day

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"People still vote for what they think they want; they're calling on a bright memory of a time that has gone, rather than voting for and demanding what they need for their children."

- Chang-Rae Lee

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Chang-Rae Lee discussing his most recent novel, My Year Abroad, on a New York Public Library livestream. Enjoy!

Notes For July 28th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On July 28th, 1932, the famous American children's book writer Natalie Babbitt was born. She was born Natalie Zane Moore in Dayton, Ohio. Her family moved 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.

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 illustrate 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 had 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 ten-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 Angus, and their two sons) living in the middle of the woods. The Tucks have a secret, which Winnie discovers: they're immortal - the result of drinking water from a magical spring.

The Tuck family doesn't age, they are immune to illness, and they cannot be injured or killed. Winnie befriends them 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.

She ultimately 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.

Unfortunately, someone other than Winnie knows the Tucks' secret: a mysterious, sinister businessman only referred to as "the man in the yellow suit." He demands that the Tucks reveal the location of the magical spring - so he can sell its water.

When Mae Tuck kills the man in the yellow suit to save Winnie, she's arrested and jailed, but Winnie helps her escape, for fear that the family's secret will be revealed when the hangman's noose fails to break Mae's neck.

The Tucks flee, taking their secret with them - except for a jar of 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, film goers, and fans of the book.

In 1977, Natalie Babbitt published The Eyes of the Amaryllis, another 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.

The old woman has broken her leg, and needs help while she recovers. 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 the 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 for the screen.

It featured 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 wrote seventeen children's books. Her last book, The Moon Over High Street, was published in 2011. In addition to writing, she served as a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance. She died in October of 2016 at the age of 84.

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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 complete, rare 1981 independent feature film adaptation of Natalie Babbitt's classic novel, Tuck Everlasting. Enjoy!

Notes For July 24th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On July 24th, 1802, the legendary French writer Alexandre Dumas was born in the village of Villers-Cotterets, Aisne, France. He was half-black like his father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a top general in Napoleon's army.

When he publicly criticized Napoleon's military leadership, the emperor accused him of sedition. Thomas-Alexandre resigned from the army in disgust, and the ensuing scandal ruined the Dumas family.

Alexandre Dumas' father died of stomach cancer when he was three years old. His mother, Marie-Louise, couldn't provide him with much of an education, but Dumas loved books and read every one he could get his hands on.

That and his mother's stories of his brave father's adventures as a soldier planted the seeds of his future writing career. He dreamed of heroes and high adventure.

When Dumas was 20 years old, he moved to Paris, where he was employed at the Palais Royal in the office of Louis-Phillipe, the Duc D'Orleans and the future and last king of France.

While working in Paris, Dumas began his literary career, writing articles for magazines and co-writing plays for the theater. In 1829, King Henry III and His Court - his first solo play - was produced and became a great success, as did his second play, Christine.

After writing more successful plays, Dumas turned his attention to novels, as the newspapers and literary magazines of the day offered a lucrative market for serialized novels.

In 1838, Dumas' first novel La Capitaine Paul - a novelization of one of his plays - was published. The success of the book led Dumas to create a studio of sorts dedicated to producing short stories and serial novels, where he worked with assistants and other collaborators.

Dumas continued writing nonfiction, and from 1839 to 1841, he compiled an eight-volume collection of essays about famous crimes and criminals in European history called Celebrated Crimes.

During this time, Dumas married actress Marguerite-Josephine Ferrand, known by her stage name, Ida Ferrier. Though he loved Ida, Dumas was a notorious womanizer.

He would father at least four illegitimate children, one of whom, Alexandre Dumas Jr., would become a fine novelist and playwright himself.

In 1844, Dumas published The Three Musketeers - the first in a three-book trilogy, The D'Artagnan Romances. A fourth book, The Son Of Porthos, aka The Death Of Aramis, was published 13 years after Dumas' death; though it bore his name, it was written by Paul Mahalin.

In Dumas' classic swashbuckler, a young man named D'Artagnan sets out to join the King's Musketeers. He meets three of them - Athos, Porthos, and Aramis - and ends up being challenged to a duel by each man.

Just as D'Artagnan's duel with Athos is about to begin, the guards of the evil Cardinal Richelieu arrive and threaten to arrest all the men for dueling. Using his skill as a swordsman, D'Artagnan helps the three Musketeers defeat the guards.

The impressed Musketeers befriend D'Artagnan and offer to take him under their wing. Soon, D'Artagnan runs afoul of the vengeful Cardinal and his beautiful but deadly spy, Milady de Winter.

The Three Musketeers was followed by two more novels - Twenty Years After (1845) and The Vicomte de Bragelonne, aka Ten Years Later (1847). It would be adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television.

From 1845-46, Alexandre Dumas published, in serial format, what is considered to be his greatest novel, The Count Of Monte Cristo, an epic novel of adventure, betrayal, hope, vengeance, and forgiveness.

It told the story of Edmond Dantes, an honest and loyal man framed for treason by group of conspirators including a romantic rival and a corrupt prosecutor.

Sentenced to life imprisonment, Dantes is befriended by fellow prisoner Abbe Feria - a priest and sage. He becomes Edmond's friend, father figure, and teacher. They work on a plan to tunnel out of prison.

Fourteen years later, Dantes finally escapes from prison. Before he died, the ailing Abbe gave Dantes a map to a treasure he buried on Monte Cristo, an island off the coast of Milan. Dantes finds the treasure.

Now a wealthy man, Dantes buys the island and re-invents himself as a mysterious aristocrat known as the Count of Monte Cristo. He returns to France, where he finds that his former fiancee Mercedes married one of the men who framed him.

Dantes conceives and executes an elaborate plan of vengeance against the conspirators responsible for his imprisonment, then questions the value of revenge when it threatens to destroy the son of the woman he still loves.

Even though the success of Alexandre Dumas' plays and novels brought him wealth, he spent money lavishly, and his mansion, the Chateau de Monte Cristo, was always filled with friends and hangers-on looking to take advantage of his generosity.

Often broke and in debt, he continued to write more great novels, including another classic swashbuckler, Robin Hood (1863), Dumas' retelling of the story of the legendary outlaw Earl of Huntingdon, his Merry Men, and his love, Maid Marian.

Alexandre Dumas died in 1870 at the age of 68.

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Quote Of The Day

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"How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it."

- Alexandre Dumas

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel, The Three Musketeers. Enjoy!