Notes For August 31st, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 31st, 1908, the legendary American writer William Saroyan was born in Fresno, California. His parents were Armenian immigrants who had been living in Turkey. When Saroyan was three years old, his father died suddenly.

Unable to care for her children, Saroyan's mother placed him and his brother and sister in an orphanage. The family would be reunited five years later when Saroyan's mother found steady work at a cannery.

As a boy, William Saroyan developed a passion for reading and learning, educating himself when he wasn't at school. He went to a technical school intending to become a professional typist.

When he was fifteen, his mother showed him some of his late father's writings and Saroyan was impressed. He determined to become a writer himself. He would support himself by doing odd jobs while mastering the craft of writing.

In 1934, at the age of 26, William Saroyan burst onto the literary scene when his classic short story, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, was published by Story magazine. It would later be published in book form as the title story of a collection.

Its protagonist being a starving writer trying to improve his lot in life, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze established the main theme of Saroyan's works - optimism amidst troubled times. It also introduced readers to his style of dazzling, zesty, and impressionistic prose:

Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was, astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of eternity; he prayed for strength to make the flight with grace.

In 1942, following the United States' entry into World War 2, William Saroyan enlisted in the Army. He was first stationed in Astoria, Queens. Preferring to avoid the company of his fellow soldiers, Saroyan spent his free time at Manhattan's Lombardy Hotel.

He was later transferred to London as part of a film unit; when his novel The Adventures of Wesley Jackson caught the Army's attention, Saroyan narrowly avoided a court martial for advocating pacifism.

After the war ended, Saroyan continued his writing career. He wrote prolifically, worked fast, and rarely revised his manuscripts. Unfortunately, he drank and gambled away most of his earnings. His body of works included not only short stories and novels, but plays and non-fiction works as well.

As a playwright, William Saroyan was most famous for his classic play, The Time of Your Life (1939). Set in a seedy waterfront bar in San Francisco, its main character is Joe, a wealthy man who gave up working in order to hold court at his favorite bar.

There, he helps out his fellow bar patrons and encourages their eccentricities. The play won Saroyan the Pulitzer Prize, but he refused it in protest over what he saw as the crass commercialization of the award. He later accepted the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

The Time of Your Life was adapted as a feature film in 1948, starring James Cagney as Joe. The film proved to be a critical and commercial failure, as the stifling Hollywood Production Code was still in effect.

Saroyan's play had to be sanitized as per Production Code requirements, and when preview audiences reacted negatively to the play's ending, producers filmed an alternate ending - common fates suffered by written works adapted for the screen during the Code era.

Believe it or not, Saroyan's classic novel The Human Comedy (1943) actually started out as an original screenplay for MGM, but studio head Louis B. Mayer balked at the length of Saroyan's script, which ran well over two hours.

The author refused to make significant cuts, so he was fired from the project, and another screenwriter was brought in to write the script. Meanwhile, Saroyan wrote a novelization of his original screenplay.

He wrote the novel, which was published before the film was released, to serve as a counterpoint to the drastically altered script for the movie, which he absolutely hated.

The Human Comedy was a morale boosting story centered on a then timely topic: the American home front during World War 2. Its main character, Homer Macauley, is a fatherless 14-year-old boy whose older brother is away fighting in the war.

Feeling that he must now be the man of the family, Homer takes an evening job as a telegram delivery boy, which often requires him to deliver news to families that their sons have died in the war.

During the day, he tries to live as normal a life as possible. He goes to school, to the movies, and to church on Sundays. He gets by with the help of his close-knit family (which includes his little brother and their harpist mother) and his own instinctive sense of right and wrong.

Homer remains honest and hopeful as he comes of age amidst the ominous specter of war and the uncertainty and hardships of the home front. His name and experiences are allegorical references to the poet Homer and his legendary epic work, The Odyssey.

After the war ended, William Saroyan resumed his prolific writing career. He continued producing quality short stories, novels, and plays, but then the Cold War began and anticommunist hysteria swept across the American landscape.

Saroyan's works and their themes of universal brotherhood and benevolence fell out of favor in this new climate of distrust, paranoia, and persecution. By 1958, he had left the country and settled in France, taking an apartment in Paris.

In the 1960s, Saroyan finally beat his addictions to alcohol and gambling, which had cost him not only his marriage, but most of his money as well.

Freed from these addictions, he was able to get his writing career back on track. By the 1970s, he had earned more than enough money to get himself out of debt.

William Saroyan died of prostate cancer in 1981. He was 72 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops." - William Saroyan

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features William Saroyan reading from his 1936 short story collection Inhale and Exhale. Saroyan based his classic poem The Armenian and the Armenian on this passage. Enjoy!

Notes For August 30th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 30th, 1944, the famous American writer, journalist, and humorist Molly Ivins was born. She was born Mary Tyler Ivins in Monterey, California, but grew up in Houston, Texas.

Molly's father, Jim Ivins, was an oil company executive, and the family lived in Houston's affluent River Oaks community. Growing up under the thumb of a father known as General Jim because of his ferocious strictness, she developed a strong rebellious nature.

While in high school, Molly cultivated her interest in journalism and became an editor of the student newspaper. In 1963, while studying at Smith College, a liberal arts college for women, she became involved with Hank Holland, a family friend and student at Yale.

In Hank, Molly found a soul mate. She referred to him as "the love of my life." Sadly, he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1964. Unable to find anyone who could replace Hank in her heart, she never married.

Molly would spend her junior year studying political science in Paris. After returning to the U.S. in 1967, she earned a Master's degree in journalism at Columbia University.

After earning her Master's degree, Molly moved to Minnesota, where she took a job as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. Her editor assigned her to cover "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers."

By 1970, Molly had quit her job and returned to Houston, where she became a co-editor and political reporter for the Texas Observer. She covered the Texas state legislature from a liberal, populist perspective, employing the sparkling, scathing wit that would make her famous.

Her snappy, witty style of writing caught the eye of national publications. Soon, she was writing op-ed pieces and feature stories for The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In 1976, fearing that its writing style was becoming too stale, The New York Times hired Molly Ivins away from the Texas Observer. During her five year tenure, Molly established herself as one of the paper's finest writers.

When legendary rock singer Elvis Presley died in 1977, it was Molly Ivins who wrote his obituary for The New York Times. Ultimately, her colorful writing style would prove to be too colorful for her editor.

In 1980, when she covered a "community chicken-killing festival" in New Mexico, she referred to the event as a "gang pluck." Her irate editor, Abe Rosenthal, accused her of using a double entendre to arouse "dirty thoughts" in her readers' minds. Molly quipped, "Damn if I could fool you, Mr. Rosenthal!"

The following year, she left the The New York Times after accepting an offer from the Dallas Times Herald to write a column which she would have full creative control of. She would remain with the paper for ten years.

While she wrote her column for the Dallas Times Herald, Molly Ivins' fame would grow, as she also wrote freelance pieces for national publications and became a popular speaker on the lecture circuit.

In 1991, Molly published her first book, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?. A compilation of some of her best pieces from the Dallas Times Herald in which she covered the redneck politics of Texas with her scathing wit and pointed criticism, the book spent 22 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

Rival newspaper The Fort Worth Star-Telegram made Molly an offer to write a column for them, and she accepted. Her column would be syndicated, appearing in nearly 400 newspapers across the country. She wrote for the The Fort Worth Star-Telegram from 1992-2001, after which, she became an independent journalist.

When George W. Bush became President in the controversial 2000 election, Molly went after him with a vengeance. She gave him the famous nickname Shrub and wrote three scathing books about him and the spectacular failure of his presidency.

Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (2000), The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President (2001) and Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America (2003) delighted liberals and outraged conservatives.

Molly's disdain for George W. Bush is best summed up in this classic quote: "Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."

Molly Ivins would write nearly a dozen books and win numerous awards for journalism. She died in 2007 at the age of 62, after a long battle with breast cancer.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful." - Molly Ivins

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Molly Ivins speaking at Tulane University in 2004. Enjoy!

Notes For August 29th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 29th, 1833, Britain's Parliament passed the Mills and Factory Act, the first of many reforms enacted to improve the "health and morals" of child laborers - the most exploited members of the working class.

The Mills and Factory Act made it illegal for children under nine years old to work, limited the work week of children aged 9-12 to a maximum of 48 hours and limited the work week for teenagers to a maximum of 68 hours.

The Act also included minimum provisions for facilitating the education of child laborers and for protecting their health and safety. Woefully inadequate by today's standards, the law was revolutionary for its time.

Why would Parliament, then notorious for its extreme reluctance to regulate British businesses in any way, pass the Mills and Factory Act, which for the first time ever granted national government inspectors unprecedented, unlimited access to factories?

And why, over the years, were more regulatory acts passed by Parliament - acts that were increasingly stricter, leading to the total outlawing of most forms of child labor?

It was all due to the efforts of England's greatest writers, whose works brought the horrific nature of unregulated child labor to national attention, sparking national outrage and demands for reform.

In 1789, the legendary poet William Blake published his classic poem The Chimney Sweeper, in which a child laborer tells of his unhappy plight:

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep...

Blake died in 1827 - six years before the Mills and Factory Act was passed. He spent his last years living in rooms off the Strand, near the alleyways where a child laborer named Charles Dickens walked en route to the job he detested.

Another great English writer who brought the horrors of child labor to national attention was Frances Trollope, whose classic novel, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy was published in 1840.

To ensure the accuracy of her novel, Trollope thoroughly researched child labor, combing through contemporary documents and reading the testimony of the victims of unregulated child labor. Most influential was a memoir written by a man named Robert Blincoe.

Blincoe became a workhouse orphan at the age of four. When he was seven, he and eighty other workhouse children, both boys and girls, were taken to work in a horrific textile mill in Nottingham. He would later testify before a Parliamentary committee investigating child labor abuses:

I have seen the time when two weights have each been screwed to my ears. Then three or four of us have been hung on a beam over the machinery, hanging by our hands. Mind, we were apprentices without a mother or father to take care of us. Then we used to stand up, in a skip, without our shirts, and be beat with straps. Then they used to tie up a 28-pound weight to hang down our backs.

Of course, the English writer who contributed the most to reforming child labor was the aforementioned Charles Dickens, who exposed the horrors of child labor in classic novels such as Oliver Twist (1837) and David Copperfield (1850).

As a child laborer himself, he saw these horrors firsthand. Dickens, a child prodigy, had lived a comfortable upper middle class life. Like many others in a similar position, he had felt a sense of superiority and entitlement.

Then, when he was twelve, his father went broke and was sent to debtor's prison. Charles was forced to work to pay off his father's debts. Angrily bemoaning his situation at first, he soon developed a deep compassion for the poor and oppressed of all ages.

The passage of the Mills and Factory Act in 1833 and subsequent reforms to end the suffering caused by unregulated child labor is proof that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The Mills and Factory Act was passed not because of a violent revolution at the workplace, but because England's greatest writers had the courage to speak out against the suffering of child laborers and use the power of their words to bring about change.

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Quote Of The Day

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"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice." - Charles Dickens

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of the first chapter of Charles Dickens' classic novel, David Copperfield. Enjoy!

Notes For August 28th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 28th, 1749, the legendary German novelist, poet, and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born. He was born in Frankfurt, where he lived with his family in a large house.

Goethe's siblings, except for his younger sister Cornelia, died at early ages. As a boy, Goethe received his education from tutors, as his father was determined to give his children all the educational advantages he never had.

The young Goethe quickly developed an interest in literature, with Homer and the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock among his earliest favorite authors. He was also devoted to the theater and particularly fond of the puppet shows staged in his home.

When he was sixteen, Goethe began studying law in Leipzig, but came to detest it. He fell in love with a girl named Käthchen Schönkopf and wrote her love poems, but failed to win her heart.

Three years later, in 1768, Goethe returned to Frankfurt, as his studies were going nowhere. In 1770, he published his first book anonymously. It was a poetry collection called Annette.

Goethe began writing prolifically, but soon fell seriously ill. His relationship with his father strained, he was nursed back to health by his mother and sister. Bored during his convalescence, he wrote in bed. After he recovered, his father sent him to Strasbourg to finish his studies.

In Strasbourg, Goethe met poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, and they became close friends. Herder got him interested in Shakespeare's plays and in volkspoesie - folk poetry.

After he finished his law studies, Goethe's thesis, based on his own ideas, was published. He was offered a job in the French government but rejected it and returned to Frankfurt, where he was certified to practice law.

Working for the local government, Goethe tried to make the law more humane and progressive. As a result, he was reprimanded and terminated from his position.

Disgusted with law, Goethe decided to pursue a literary career. This time, his father was supportive of his decision and even helped him out. Goethe became an editor for a literary magazine, but he couldn't support himself on his small salary.

So, in 1772, he went to Wetzlar to practice law again. Two years later, in 1774, he published his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The tragic tale was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) era of German literature.

Goethe's novel, which mostly takes the form of a collection of letters, tells the story of Werther, a young, sensitive aspiring artist.

While staying in the fictional village of Wahlheim, Werther meets a beautiful girl named Lotte, who has been caring for her siblings since their mother died. Werther falls in love with Lotte, even though she's already engaged to marry Albert, a man eleven years her senior.

Werther becomes close friends with both Lotte and Albert, but his love for Lotte causes him too much pain, so he goes to Wiemar, where he suffers more embarrassment. Returning to Wahlheim, Werther finds that Lotte and Albert have married.

Lotte, feeling both sorrow for her friend and respect for her husband, decides that Werther shouldn't visit them so often. He makes one final visit, where he delivers a memorable recitation of a portion of Ossian.

Werther ultimately realizes that this painful love triangle can only be dissolved by the death of himself, Albert, or Lotte, but he is unable to harm Albert or Lotte.

Seeing no other choice, Werther has Lotte send him two pistols. He commits suicide, dying twelve hours after shooting himself. Neither Lotte nor Albert nor a clergyman attends his funeral.

The Sorrows of Young Werther was considered controversial and accused of romanticizing suicide, which was considered sinful by Christian doctrine. Suicides were denied Christian burial.

From a young age, Goethe loathed the Church, whose history he described as "a hotchpotch of mistakes and violence." He had no use for its doctrines.

The Sorrows of Young Werther became a huge success for Goethe and made him world famous, but it didn't make him rich. Copyright law was virtually nonexistent at the time and pirated editions of literary works were common.

Goethe thwarted the pirates by periodically authorizing "new" and "revised" editions of his works. His new found fame won him an invitation to the court of Carl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

So, Goethe went to Weimar, where he lived the rest of his life and held several offices, eventually becoming the Duke's chief adviser.

As a writer, Goethe remained prolific and authored a large body of works, mostly poetry and plays, along with the occasional novel.

Some of his classic poems include Prometheus (1773), Hermann and Dorothea (1798), and Roman Elegies (1790). Roman Elegies, also known as Erotica Romana, was a collection of poems written during Goethe's two year visit to Italy.

During his lifetime (and afterward) some of these poems were suppressed due to their sexual imagery. Goethe's poetry has inspired the works of legendary composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.

As a playwright, Goethe was best known for his masterpiece, Faust. It was written in two parts. The first, Faust Part One, was published in 1808, and the second, Faust Part Two, which Goethe completed shortly before his death in 1832, was published posthumously.

In the play, God bets Mephisto (the Devil) that he can't tempt His favorite scholar, Dr. Faust. So, Mephisto offers Faust a bargain - he'll do Faust's bidding on Earth if Faust will do his bidding in Hell when he dies.

Unsatisfied by his scientific studies, Faust has a clause added to the contract: Mephisto must provide him something that will satisfy him - a moment that Faust would want to last forever. Mephisto agrees, so Faust signs the contract in blood.

God allows Faust to be led astray so He can lead him to the right path, teaching the scholar that "man must still err while he doth strive." Faust's attempts to satisfy his desires have disastrous consequences for those he cares about.

Faust became Goethe's best known work, one that still influences popular culture today. Goethe's play has been adapted for the opera and for the screen.

The most famous movie adaptation was the 1926 German silent feature film classic directed by F.W. Murnau, starring Emil Jannings as Mephisto.

In addition to his writing and practice of law, Goethe was also involved in scientific work. He had a keen interest in natural science and wrote scientific books on subjects such as insect morphology, homology, and color theory.

But he was best known for his fiction, poetry, and plays, with which he established himself as one of Germany's greatest writers. He died in 1832, at the age of 82.

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Quote Of The Day

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"None are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the complete 1926 silent film adaptation of Goethe's classic play, Faust! Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

Please join me in offering congratulations to these IWW members for their latest publishing successes.

Judith

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Jack Shakely

Here's a little yahoo for my most recent book review in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
(http://lareviewofbooks.org/print.php?id=841)  

Mel Jacob
www.Nellduvall.com

A guest blog on characters is up at:  (http://ffnp.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-makes-good-character-by-nell-duvall.html) 

Selvage by Nell DuVall, a murder mystery is out today. Copies are available from Melange Books (http://www.melange-books.com/authors/nellduvall/selvage.html) and Lulu. PDF is also available and e-book will be shortly: A bank scam, a series of accidents that end as murders, and police too  ready to accept simple explanations for deaths push freelance writer Brooke  Beldon and systems programmer Paul Counts ever deeper into a tangled  conspiracy. The only clue they have to the first death is the name of a  sleazy strip club. 

Holly Michael

www.writingstraight.com

I discovered I’d been granted a Seven Things About Me award from Yvonne at Misifusa’s blog. She’s a breast cancer survivor, who blogs about life being about the now, not the past, not the future. Thank you so much for the award! Please visit Yvonne’s inspiring blog at the Presents of Presence.

Ellen Lindquist

 http://www.ellenlindquist.blogspot.com

My prose poem, “The Fallen Flower,” was accepted by The Prose Poem Project, edited by Ellen Clay. This is a visually beautiful, well-edited e-mag that appears first online and then is collected in print format. Not only does it feature new prose poems, but also has reviews and a Recent Examples page that serves as an excellent introduction to the form. http://www.prose-poems.com For anyone who wants to submit: The next reading period will occur October 1 through December 31, 2012.

Ramona Forrest

Black Opal has just accepted the sixth book from me and is interested in 2 more.  A big Yahoo to the group (Novels-L). I joined it at the request of Black Opal’s Lauri Wellington (Acquisitions Editor) who has great respect for the results of this group of writers. I agree as I have learned a lot.

Joanna M. Weston

http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com

I've been interviewed! It's up at http://poetsinterviews.blogspot.ca/p/canadian-poet-joanna-m-weston.html

Norman Cooper

www.normancooper.wordpress.com

After languishing in obscurity since 2009, mainly due to inconsistent activity, one of my recent blog posts was selected by the editors of Wordpress.com to be "Freshly Pressed". My blog post, along with 18 other posts, will be showcased on the blog's home page today. The tagline on the Freshly Pressed page states: The best of *383,946* bloggers, *1,028,638* new posts, *1,234,639*comments, & *267,406,199* words posted today on WordPress.com.

You can read the post at this Wordpress short link http://wp.me/pnPf7-57

Wayne Scheer

An old story of mine, critiqued in Fiction, "Call Me Marty," is up at Fiction365.  This site publishes a story a day and pays $10.
http://www.fiction365.com.
Five short poems about autumn, "Five for Autumn," and a slightly longer one, "Almost Autumn," will be in the autumn edition of Mused: Bella Literary Review
http://www.bellaonline.com/review.

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Notes For August 24th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 24th, 1847, the legendary English writer Charlotte Bronte submitted the manuscript for her classic novel Jane Eyre to Smith, Elder, and Co. - the publisher who would finally accept it. The novel had been rejected by five previous publishers.

Jane Eyre would become an instant hit - a huge critical and commercial success during its time - and later be rightfully recognized as one of the all-time greatest works of English literature. But why was it rejected so many times before finally being published?

In Victorian England, female writers were looked down on. In fact, Charlotte Bronte had been advised by famous poets (and staunch conservatives) William Wordsworth and Robert Southey that writing was no profession for a woman.

Undaunted, Bronte submitted Jane Eyre under the pseudonym Currer Bell, as it was common for female writers to use male sounding pseudonyms.

The publishers who rejected Jane Eyre knew that it had been written by a woman, but that didn't bother them. What they found infuriating were the feminist themes in the novel.

Narrated by its title character, the story follows Jane from the age of ten through womanhood. As a young orphan girl, following her kind uncle's death, Jane escapes from her cruel aunt and cousins when she is enrolled at Lockwood School.

Unfortunately, the school is run by Mr. Brocklehurst, a nasty, hypocritical Christian clergyman who is both self-righteous and dishonest. Life at Lockwood is grim for Jane and the other students.

When a typhus epidemic exposes Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty, new people are brought in to supervise him and share his duties as inspector and treasurer.

Although the cruel Brocklehurst is not removed from his position due to his family's wealth and prominence, the conditions at Lockwood School improve considerably.

The novel then jumps ahead eight years, and we find Jane Eyre, having taught at Lockwood for a couple of years, taking a better job as governess to Adele, the spoiled little daughter of Edward Rochester, owner of Thornfield Manor.

Though Jane is twenty years younger, Rochester finds himself taken with her. Happy at first with her new job, Jane is soon troubled by mysterious occurrences, including strange laughter echoing through the hallways, a fire, and an attack on a guest.

When Jane, who had been keeping her feelings a secret for months, finally proclaims her love for Rochester, he proposes to her. Later, after a month of courtship, Jane finds herself stalked by a strange and savage-looking woman.

Rochester blames a drunken servant for the strange happenings, but at their wedding, Jane learns the truth. A man named Mason and a lawyer interrupt the ceremony and reveal that Edward Rochester is already married.

Rochester's wife, Bertha, is a violently insane madwoman whom he keeps confined in the attic. He hadn't known that madness ran rampant in Bertha's family when he married her. The wedding is canceled and Jane is heartbroken.

Rochester asks her to move with him to the South of France where they will live as husband and wife, but she cannot bring herself to live with him in sin. So she leaves him, fleeing Thornfield Manor in the middle of the night.

When her money runs out, Jane reluctantly turns to begging. One night, freezing and starving, she goes to a house to beg for help. The clergyman who lives there, St. John Eyre Rivers, turns out to be a cousin of Jane's.

Rivers is a fanatical Calvinist clergyman. While he is charitable, honest, and forgiving, he's also proud, cold, and controlling. When he asks her to marry him and go with him to India, where he plans to do missionary work, Jane refuses, knowing that they really don't love each other.

Rivers continues to pressure her and she finally agrees to marry him, but then she thinks she hears the voice of Edward Rochester calling her name. The next morning, she decides to go to Thornfield Manor to check on Rochester before she leaves with Rivers for India.

On her way to Thornfield, Jane learns from an innkeeper that Rochester's mad wife Bertha set the whole manor on fire, then committed suicide. Rochester saved the lives of all his servants, but lost a hand and was blinded in the process.

When Jane is reunited with him, he fears that she won't want a blind cripple and she fears that he won't want to marry again. But after they reveal their feelings to each other, Rochester proposes and Jane accepts without hesitation.

After Jane gives birth to their first child, Rochester eventually regains sight in one eye and is finally able to see his son.

Charlotte Bronte's intelligent, determined heroine left a bad taste in the mouths of prospective publishers. They found the strong feminist themes objectionable.

The fact that most of the male characters are depicted as self-righteous, dishonest, cold, and controlling yet weak at heart, didn't help either. Even Jane's true love Edward Rochester is weak until he commits his act of heroism near the end of the novel.

After Jane Eyre was published under the androgynous pseudonym Currer Bell, early reviews of the novel were scathing.

Some critics blasted the author for daring "to trample upon customs established by our forefathers, and long destined to shed glory upon our domestic circles." Still, the novel became an overnight sensation with readers.

In her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, (which the author dedicated to legendary English novelist and satirist William Makepeace Thackeray, who wept openly while reading it) Charlotte Bronte reminds "the timorous or carping few" of "certain simple truths":

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns...

The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it inconvenient to make external show pass for sterling worth - to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines.

It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose - to raise the gilding, and show base metal under it - to penetrate the sepulcher, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm just going to write because I cannot help it." - Charlotte Bronte

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a clip from the famous 1944 feature film adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Joan Fontaine as Jane and Orson Welles as Edward Rochester. Enjoy!

Notes For August 23rd, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 23rd, 1305, the legendary Scottish knight Sir William Wallace was executed by order of England's King Edward I. This important historical event would inspire the writing of two classic poems and the making of an acclaimed feature film.

The story of Sir William Wallace's execution actually begins nearly twenty years earlier in 1286, with the death of Scotland's monarch, King Alexander III. For years, he had ruled over a peaceful and prosperous Scotland.

Then, in 1286, Alexander was killed when his horse threw him off. His successor to the throne was his little granddaughter Margaret, Maid of Norway. Sadly, the young girl died on her voyage home, leaving Scotland without a ruler.

The Scottish lords set up an interim government of "Guardians" to rule until a new king could be crowned. This new government was sharply divided; some of the guardians wanted independence from England, while others remained loyal to the British crown.

The conflict threatened to plunge Scotland into civil war. England's King Edward I intervened to prevent that, acting as an arbiter to settle disputes between the feuding Guardians.

As the search for a new King of Scotland continued, King Edward demanded that all contenders to the throne recognize him as Lord Paramount of Scotland. This left a bad taste in many Scots' mouths.

In 1292, a great feudal court in Berwick-upon-Tweed chose John Balliol to be the new King of Scotland, as he was a descendant of the former king, David I.

Meanwhile, King Edward continued to antagonize the Guardians of Scotland by continually reversing the rulings of their court.

The new King John Balliol was then summoned to appear at the English court as a common plaintiff, which most Scots considered the height of disrespect. Balliol was a weakling and his people referred to him as Toom Tabard - Empty Coat.

He pledged his loyalty to King Edward, sparking off a revolution. King Edward had his armies storm Berwick-upon-Tweed. They sacked the town, leaving a path of wanton destruction in their wake.

In July of 1296, three months after the Scots were defeated in the Battle of Dunbar, temporarily squelching the flames of revolution, King John Balliol was forced to abdicate, even though he had pledged loyalty to the British crown.

Nearly a year later, Sir William Wallace, a Scottish nobleman, assassinated William De Heselrig, England's brutal High Sheriff of Lanark.

Legend has it that De Heselrig sought to arrest Wallace at his home, but finding only Wallace's wife there, he arrested her and had her put to death.

After killing De Heselrig, Sir William Wallace teamed up with fellow Scottish noble William the Hardy, Lord of Douglas. Together, they led many armed insurrections against British soldiers on Scottish soil.

In September of 1297, along with fellow revolutionary Andrew Moray, Wallace led their army to victory in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, where they routed a much larger British force.

After the battle, Wallace and Moray were made Guardians of Scotland. Two months later, Wallace led a successful large scale raid on Northern England. For this, he was knighted.

On April 1st, 1298, a horde of English soldiers invaded Edinburgh, looting and pillaging the land as they searched for William Wallace and his men. Wallace found them and attacked, and the Battle of Falkirk was on.

Unfortunately for Wallace, this battle proved to be a disaster - an embarrassing, catastrophic defeat that cost the Scots a lot of men.

Wallace escaped from the battlefield, but his reputation as a military leader would be irreparably tarnished. By September, he resigned as a Guardian of Scotland.

William Wallace continued to do his part for Scottish independence, mostly in a non-military capacity. He visited France's King Philip IV to ask for assistance in fighting the British.

For several years, Wallace avoided capture by the English, but then in August of 1305, he was caught by John De Menteith, a Scottish knight loyal to the British crown.

Wallace was turned over to a regiment of English soldiers near Glasgow, then transported to London, where he would stand trial for treason at Westminster Hall.

Sir William Wallace, defiant to the last, defended his actions by saying, "I could not be a traitor to [King] Edward, for I was never his subject." Nevertheless, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death.

It was a gruesome execution. After Wallace's conviction, he was taken away, stripped naked, dragged through London by a horse, and hanged to the point of near death. Then, still alive, he was castrated, disemboweled, and beheaded.

Finally, his body was quartered - ripped apart into four pieces. In a final act of humiliation, his severed head was dipped in tar and mounted on a pike atop London Bridge.

Wallace's horrific fate and his earlier heroics made him one of Scotland's greatest folk heroes. The story of his life would inspire two classic poems written by two legendary Scottish poets.

In 1477, the poet Blind Harry, aka Henry the Minstrel, wrote The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace - The Acts and Deeds of the Illustrious and Valiant Champion Sir William Wallace.

In this classic nine volume epic poem in tribute to the Scottish hero, Blind Harry tells of Wallace's assassination of William De Heselrig in retribution for the alleged murder of his wife:

"And thought'st thou, traitor," fierce the hero cried,
"When by thy murd'ring steel she cruel died;
When thy fell hand her precious blood did spill,
Wallace though absent, would be absent still?"
Furious he spoke, and rising on the foe,
Full on his head discharg'd the pond'rous blow;
Down sinks the felon headlong to the ground,
The guilty soul flew trembling through the wound...

In 1793, Robert Burns, considered Scotland's greatest poet, wrote Scots Wha Hae, (Scots, Who Have) his classic patriotic ode to his country's heroes:

Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed
Or to victorie!

Now's the day, and now's the hour:
See the front o battle lour, [look menacingly],
See approach proud Edward's power --
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave? --
Let him turn, and flee!

Wha for Scotland's King and Law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or Freeman fa',
Let him follow me!

By Oppression's woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow! --
Let us do or die!

Burns originally published the poem anonymously, as publicly advocating for Scottish independence was an imprisonable offense at the time.

In 1995, the highly acclaimed feature film Braveheart was released, starring Mel Gibson (who also directed) as Sir William Wallace. The screenplay was based on Blind Harry's classic epic poem, and the movie won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director (Gibson).

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Quote Of The Day

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“Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects.” - Robert Burns

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for Braveheart, the classic 1995 feature film about Sir William Wallace. Enjoy!

Notes For August 22nd, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 22nd, 1893, the legendary American writer Dorothy Parker was born. She was born Dorothy Rothschild in Long Branch, New Jersey.

Her mother, Eliza Marston, was Scottish; her German Jewish father, Jacob Henry Rothschild, was not related to the wealthy Rothschild banking family.

Dorothy would famously quip, "My God, no, dear! We'd never even heard of those Rothschilds." Born two months premature, she would quip that her birth was the first time she was early for anything.

A month before Dorothy's fifth birthday, her mother died. She hated her father because he was physically abusive, and when he later married a woman named Eleanor Lewis, Dorothy referred to her as "the housekeeper."

As a little girl, Dorothy attended the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic elementary school along with her sister Helen - despite the fact that both girls were the daughters of a Jewish father and Protestant mother.

Dorothy would be expelled from the school for referring to the Immaculate Conception as "spontaneous combustion." She later attended a finishing school for young ladies in Morristown, New Jersey.

In 1913, when Dorothy was twenty years old, her father died. She supported herself by playing piano at a dancing school and took up writing poetry in her spare time.

Best known as a poet, Dorothy began her career as a magazine writer in 1914 when Vogue hired her as an editorial assistant after one of her poems appeared in its sister magazine, Vanity Fair.

In 1917, Dorothy married her first husband, Edwin Pond Parker, and she would use her first married name, Dorothy Parker, as her professional name. She divorced Edwin in 1928.

After working at Vogue for two years, Dorothy was transferred to Vanity Fair to work as a staff writer. By 1918, she had become the magazine's guest drama critic, filling in for the vacationing P.G. Wodehouse.

It was in this capacity that Dorothy Parker began developing the rapacious wit that would make her famous. Her reviews were often brutal. She offered this advice to potential audiences of one particular musical comedy: "If you don't knit, bring a book."

She reviewed a production of Leo Tolstoy's Redemption by saying, "I went into the Plymouth Theater a comparatively young woman, and I staggered out of it three hours later, twenty years older."

Infuriated by Dorothy's scathing reviews of their plays, the wealthy, powerful producers flexed their considerable muscle to get her fired. Her friends and fellow Vanity Fair writers, Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood, resigned in protest.

Together, they formed the Algonquin Round Table, a famous group of New York City writers, actors, critics, and wits. Another founding member of the group was Harold Ross, who would found the New Yorker magazine in 1925.

Ross named Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley as members of the magazine's board of editors, which made his investors happy. Over the next fifteen years, Dorothy would reach her peak of productivity and success.

Her first poetry collection, Enough Rope, was published in 1926. It sold nearly 50,000 copies and received great reviews. The Nation newsmagazine described her poetry as "caked with a salty humor, rough with splinters of disillusion, and tarred with a bright black authenticity."

Within the next four years, she would publish over 300 poems in the New Yorker and many other national magazines. In addition to her poetry, she also wrote humorous pieces, essays, columns, and book reviews for the New Yorker. She also served as the magazine's drama critic for over five years.

Then she tired of drama - and of the drama her reviews created - and resigned as drama critic. She continued writing book reviews - under the byline Constant Reader - until 1933.

Dorothy Parker's writing talent and sparkling wit was noticed by Hollywood, and she became a screenwriter. Her husband at the time, Alan Campbell, was an actor and aspiring screenwriter.

In 1937, she co-wrote the hit film, A Star Is Born and earned an Academy Award nomination. Her political activism would eventually derail her Hollywood career.

She served as a correspondent for the communist magazine New Masses, reporting on the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, before her success with A Star Is Born, she founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League.

During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, Dorothy protested the government's relentless and mostly illegal persecution of suspected communists and communist sympathizers.

She never joined the Communist Party, but she did declare herself a sympathizer. The FBI deemed her a subversive and compiled a dossier on her that would reach 1,000 pages in length.

Dorothy Parker was never charged with a crime, but her former Hollywood studio bosses blacklisted her for years. In 1957, she moved back to New York City and served as a book reviewer for Esquire magazine for the next five years.

Dorothy died of a heart attack in June of 1967 at the age of 73. She left her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr. After his assassination, it was passed on to the NAACP.

In 1988, the NAACP interred Dorothy's ashes in a memorial garden outside its Baltimore headquarters. The plaque in the garden reads as follows:

Here lies the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988

Four years later, to celebrate Dorothy's 99th birthday, the United States Postal Service honored her with a commemorative postage stamp.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat." - Dorothy Parker

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Dorothy Parker reading her classic poem, One Perfect Rose. Enjoy!

Notes For August 21st, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 21st, 1920, Christopher Robin Milne was born. His father was the famous English writer A.A. Milne, who began his career as a playwright, writing over 25 plays. When his son was a year old, he received a teddy bear as a present.

Christopher Robin would name his teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, after two real-life animals he encountered: Winnie, a Canadian black bear he saw at the London Zoo, and Pooh, a swan he saw while on vacation.

Christopher Robin's growing collection of stuffed animals, which included a piglet, a tiger, a donkey, and a kangaroo, inspired his father to try his hand at writing children's stories.

His son's teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, would be the main character, and the animals' human friend, a young boy, would be named after Christopher Robin.

In 1925, A.A. Milne bought a country estate, Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, East Sussex, which would serve as the inspiration for Pooh's home, the Hundred Acre Wood.

Winnie-the-Pooh would first appear in a series of short stories published in magazines and newspapers, including Vanity Fair and the London Times.

In 1926, A.A. Milne published a short story collection in book form, called Winnie-the-Pooh, portions of which were adapted from the earlier stories.

It would be followed by a second story collection, The House At Pooh Corner (1928). Both books were illustrated by Ernest Shepard, who used the real Christopher Robin and his stuffed animals as models for the illustrations.

In 1966, Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends made their film debut in an animated Disney featurette, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.

The short proved to be so popular that Disney made two more featurettes, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! (1974).

Three years later, Disney cast Pooh in his first feature-length animated film, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), which would become an all-time classic.

More movies followed, and the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise would include a TV series, animated TV specials, numerous toys, and even video games.

The enduring, beloved character and his forest friends continue to win new generations of fans, both young and old alike.

And it all began over eighty years ago, with a little boy named Christopher Robin and his stuffed animals.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief — call it what you will — than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course." - A.A. Milne

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of chapter one of A.A. Milne's first Winnie the Pooh book. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

Another week passes with another batch of publication successes. Please join me in congratulating the following IWW members.

Judith

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Wayne Scheer

“Serving the Man,” has been accepted at Bartleby Snopes for their October issue.  I wrote this story with the Practice group, so I have them to thank for their critiques. http://www.bartlebysnopes.com

My story, “Fantasy Woman,” is in Luscious, an anthology of stories about sex and relationships, published by Fiction Brigade.  The book is available at the Fiction Brigade website.http://www.fictionbrigade.com/shop/luscious-a-flash-fiction-collection-of-sex-and-relationships  The writers share half the profits, so I expect to be Romneyrich in no time.

Karen Lenfestey
www.karensnovels.com

Thanks to those at IWW who critiqued my latest novel, “On the Verge,” a story about a newlywed whose husband injures his head and experiences a total personality change, now available as an e-book or paperback at Amazon:  www.tinyurl.com/verge-novel

Or at http://www.barnesandnoble.com I credit IWW in the acknowledgements at the beginning of the book. 

Also, my novel, What Happiness Looks Like, was named “a strong pick,” by the Midwest Book Review this month.

Virginia Winters

http://www.virginiawinters.ca

My new book, No Motive for Murder is out! Thanks to all who critiqued the first chapter for me.
Review copies, if anyone is interested, are available by emailing Arline Chase, publisher, at arline@mail.com

Joanna M. Weston

Another e-book up at Smashwords, Berry Cleans House, a great read-aloud for 3-6 year-olds. http://www.smashwords.com/b/215197

Jennifer Killby

http://jenniferdonohoe.com

The Legend of the Travelers: Willow's Journey was featured in J. A. Beard's Unnecessary Musings at:  http://riftwatcher.blogspot.com/2012/08/treachery-trust-and-myth-interview-with.html

Notes For August 17th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 17th, 1926, the famous French playwright and actor Jean Poiret was born. He was born Jean Poiré in Paris, France.

Poiret first became famous in 1951, when he starred in the radio series Malheir aux Barbus, created by Pierre Dac and Francis Blanche.

A year later, while working in a stage show at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, Poiret met legendary French actor Michel Serrault. They co-starred in a sketch called Jerry Scott, Vedette International. They would later co-star in a production of Poiret's legendary play.

By 1961, Poiret had become a member of the French cinematic society Pathé and wrote and recorded La Vache à Mille Francs, a parody of the song La Valse à Mille Temps by Jacques Brel.

Twelve years later, in 1973, Poiret married actress Caroline Cellier. She bore him one child. That same year, Jean Poiret wrote the play that made him world famous - a comedy called La Cages Aux Folles. (The Birdcage)

In the stage production, Poiret played the lead role of Renato Baldi, a middle-aged gay man who manages the Saint-Tropez nightclub where his partner, Albin Mougeotte, (Michel Serrault) performs in drag as Zaza Napoli.

Renato has a son, Laurent, from an early heterosexual relationship. He and Albin raised him. When Laurent returns from college, he announces his wedding plans and brings his fiance's arch conservative, homophobic parents home to meet his father.

He never told them that Dad was gay, and now he fears that they won't let him marry their daughter when they find out. So, Renato and Albin redecorate their garishly adorned apartment and try to pass themselves off as husband and wife, with Albin in drag as Laurent's mother!

La Cage Aux Folles became a huge hit. In 1978, a feature film adaptation was made. In the role of Renato, Jean Poiret was replaced by Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi, but Michel Serrault resumed his co-lead role as Albin.

For its U.S. release, the movie was retitled Birds Of A Feather and dubbed into English by the original cast - a rarity for foreign films released in the United States.

The highly acclaimed feature film was followed by two mediocre sequels, La Cage Aux Folles II (1980), and La Cage Aux Folles 3: The Wedding (1985).

The original La Cage Aux Folles would later be adapted as a Tony Award winning Broadway musical and remade as a film in 1996 - The Birdcage - which starred Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in the lead roles.

In his amazing career, Jean Poiret acted in dozens of movies over a 40-year period. In 1992, he directed his first film - Le Zèbre (The Zebra).

Le Zèbre was an adaptation of a novel by Alexandre Jardin that starred Poiret's wife, Caroline Cellier. Unfortunately, three months before the film's premiere, Poiret died of a heart attack. He was 65 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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“To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.” - Jean Genet

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a clip from a 2008 London performance of the La Cage Aux Folles musical. Enjoy!

Notes For August 16th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 16th, 1920, the legendary American writer Charles Bukowski was born. He was born in Andernach, Germany. His parents, an American serviceman and a German woman, married a month before he was born. His birth name was Heinrich Karl Bukowski.

In 1923, before his third birthday, the economic collapse in Germany compelled the family to emigrate to America. They settled in Los Angeles, where his mother changed his name to Henry Charles Bukowski.

As a young boy, Charles Bukowski grew up with an abusive father who would beat him savagely for the smallest offense. Due to the Great Depression, the elder Bukowski was frequently unemployed, a source of great shame that fueled his psychotic rage.

Charles' mother, who was not only beaten by her husband but cheated on as well, did nothing to stop her husband's abuse of their son - or herself. So it continued.

When he was a young teenager, Charles' shy and introverted nature grew worse, thanks to a case of severe acne that left his face covered with boils. Around this time, his two greatest passions were awakened - his passion for literature and his passion for alcohol.

Bukowski preferred to be alone. He read avidly. He also began writing short stories. His best friend, William "Baldy" Mullinax, introduced him to booze. Of his first experience with intoxication, he wrote, "This [alcohol] is going to help me for a long time."

After high school, Bukowski enrolled in Los Angeles City College, where he studied art, journalism and literature. He dropped out two years later, deciding to move to New York City and become a writer.

In July of 1944, the nearly 24-year-old Bukowski, who had been living in Philadelphia, found himself arrested by FBI agents and charged with suspicion of draft evasion.

Held for over two weeks in Moyamensing Prison, he was then released and taken to be inducted into the military. He failed the psychological exam, was classified 4F, (unfit for military service) and let go.

That same year, Bukowski's first published short story, Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip, appeared in Story magazine. Soon, more of his stories appeared in other literary magazines.

Unfortunately, he racked up far more rejection slips than sales. Discouraged, he quit writing for nearly a decade. He would refer to this period of time as his "ten year drunk."

He took up the life of a drifter and moved from place to place, doing odd jobs and staying at cheap rooming houses. He drank and brawled from bar to bar. He loved to go to the track and bet on the ponies.

In the early 1950s, Bukowski took a job as a letter carrier for the Postal Service, which would last almost three years. By 1955, he found himself hospitalized, suffering from a severe, nearly fatal bleeding ulcer.

After he was released, while he recovered at home, he decided to give writing another try. He began writing poetry, and within his verse, he found the muse. He continued to write poetry prolifically, and throughout his career, he would author over 1,000 poems.

As he made his rounds drinking from bar to bar, Bukowski would read his poetry to his fellow patrons, dazzling both barflies and bartenders who couldn't believe that a disheveled, boisterous drunk could write such incredible verse.

He became the poet laureate of the lower class, "the Bard of Booze and Broads" who found sublimity on skid row. Soon, his poems began appearing in literary magazines. This time, his rejection slips were few and far between.

By 1960, Bukowski's first poetry collection, Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail, was published. At the time, he had taken another position with the Postal Service, working as a letter filing clerk. The job would last for nine years.

In 1962, he found out that Jane Cooney Baker, (a widowed alcoholic eleven years his senior) the first woman he ever loved - perhaps the greatest love of his life - had died. So, he immortalized her in a series of poems and short stories. He met poet Frances Smith, who became his live-in girlfriend. In 1964, they had a daughter, Marina.

Three years later, in 1967, Charles Bukowski began writing a column for Open City, an underground newspaper based in Los Angeles. Titled Notes of a Dirty Old Man, the column was so popular that it got picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press and the NOLA Express (an underground newspaper based on New Orleans) after Open City folded in 1969.

That year, publisher John Martin of the Black Sparrow Press, now known as Black Sparrow Books, impressed with his poetry collections, offered to provide the financial support for Bukowski to write full time, in exchange for which he would become the author's exclusive publisher.

A lifelong supporter of the independent small press, Bukowski accepted the offer and quit his job at the Postal Service. He began work on his first novel, which would be published two years later. Post Office (1971), an autobiographical novel based on his later years, was the first to feature his alter ego, alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski.

Although Bukowski's publisher, John Martin, worried that he wouldn't be able to make the transition from poetry to prose, the novel proved to be a breakout work that made its author's name as a writer.

Bukowski would write more memorable novels, including Factotum (1975), which found Henry Chinaski drifting through the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, circa 1944. His most famous novel, Ham on Rye (1982), told the story of Henry Chinaski's unhappy childhood and adolescence as he grows up to become a misanthropic antihero.

Some scholars believe the title is a play on The Catcher in the Rye, the title of J.D. Salinger's classic novel. Others believe that Ham on Rye refers to some literary critics' negative appraisal of Bukowski, whom they derided as the literary equivalent of a ham actor. Thus, Ham On Rye refers to a ham writer fueled by rye whiskey.

Bukowski earned extra money by performing live readings of his poetry and prose. His first was a poetry reading performed in 1962 on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles.

When he performed at coffee houses and clubs, he always engaged in banter with his audience, which could be quite combative at times, as he usually performed in various states of intoxication.

In 1970, Bukowski gave a reading at Bellevue Community College in Washington State, which was taped by two students using the college's primitive black and white video cameras. Eighteen years later, the recording, thought long lost, was found.

It would be released on video as Bukowski at Bellevue in 1995, and later on DVD. The rough, grainy, stark black and white video perfectly captured the writer in all his gritty glory.

A 1979 reading given by Bukowski in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, would be released on DVD in 2010 as There's Gonna be a God Damn Riot in Here!

Bukowski's last public reading was given in 1980 at the Sweetwater, a punk rock club in Redondo Beach, California. It would be released on audio CD as Hostage and on DVD as The Last Straw.

In 1987, Charles Bukowski wrote the screenplay for a feature film based on his Henry Chinaski novels. Directed by the great French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, Barfly starred Mickey Rourke as writer and skid row alcoholic Henry Chinaski.

Chinaski spends his days writing poetry and prose and his nights drinking and brawling at the local bar. He loathes the bartender, Eddie (Frank Stallone), especially after he finds out that Eddie slept with his girlfriend, Wanda (Faye Dunaway).

When Henry's writings begin appearing in literary magazines, they catch the eye of publisher Tully Sorenson (Alice Krige) who seeks Henry out, hoping to become his exclusive publisher.

She pays him $500 and takes him to her home, where they have an affair. He rejoices in his literary success, but ultimately grows disenchanted with Tully's high society lifestyle.

Henry returns to his sleazy neighborhood, his blue collar bar, his bar buddies, and his ex-girlfriend, Wanda. Tully won't give him up without a fight, and actually gets into a fight with Wanda.

The film ends with Tully recognizing that Henry needs to be who he really is and wishing him luck. In the last scene, Henry, who has earned Eddie's respect, fights the bartender in the parking lot one last time, to win Wanda from him once and for all.

Bukowski would base his 1989 novel Hollywood on his experiences making the movie Barfly. In addition to the film he wrote, Bukowski would be the subject of several acclaimed documentaries, including The Charles Bukowski Tapes (1983), directed by Barbet Schroeder, and Bukowski: Born Into This (2003), directed by John Dullaghan.

Charles Bukowski died of leukemia in 1994 at the age of 73. He left behind an impressive body of work that included over 30 poetry collections, six novels, nearly a dozen short story collections including his classic Tales of Ordinary Madness (1983), and several works of non-fiction.

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Quote Of The Day

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"My beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead Christmas trees of the world." - Charles Bukowski

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Charles Bukowski reading his classic poem, The Genius of the Crowd. Enjoy!

Notes For August 15th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On August 15th, 1885, the famous American writer Edna Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Wisconsin. When she was twelve years old, her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. She graduated from high school there, then briefly attended Lawrence University.

After leaving university, Edna began a career in journalism, working as a reporter for the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal. In 1911, her first novel, Dawn O'Hara, was published.

Edna's novels featured strong female protagonists. One of her most popular characters, who appeared in several novels, was Emma McChesney, an intelligent, stylish divorced single mother who becomes a hugely successful businesswoman.

She was quite a controversial character for the time - the early 1900s. Her author's novels also dealt with racial or sexual discrimination, which were very controversial issues back then.

In 1924, Edna Ferber published the novel that won her a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. So Big told the story of Selina Peake De Jong, a schoolteacher in farm country, and her son Dirk, nicknamed So Big.

While teaching school, Selina lives on the Pool family farm. She forms a bond with the family's young son, Roelf, who wants to be an artist, not a farmer. She encourages him to pursue his dream, and he runs off to France.

Meanwhile, Selina marries a Dutch farmer named Purvus, and they have a son, Dirk. After Purvus dies of illness, Selina takes over their farm and makes it successful to provide for Dirk's future.

Dirk grows up to become a talented architect, but finds that he's more interested in making money than in his artistic talent. So, he switches gears and becomes a stockbroker. He makes a lot of money.

Dirk's fiancee, a famous artist named Dallas O'Mara, tries in vain to convince him that there are more important things in life than money. Meanwhile, Roelf Pool, now a famous sculptor, returns to town and visits Selina, who had encouraged him to pursue his dream.

Dallas falls in love with Roelf, who, like her, values art more than money. When Dirk finds out, he decides not to stand in the way of Dallas' happiness. She and Roelf run off together, and a heartbroken Dirk is left alone in his luxury apartment to contemplate all that his pursuit of money has brought him.

So Big was adapted as a feature film in 1932 and again in 1953. The 1953 version featured a different ending, as the original ending, with Dirk allowing his fiancee to run off with another man, was considered immoral under the stifling Production Code.

In 1926, Edna Furber published another classic novel, Show Boat. The story takes place on a "show boat" - one of many floating live theaters that traveled the Mississippi River in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The novel opens in the Reconstruction era South, moves on to New York City in the Roaring Twenties, and comes full circle, returning to the mighty Mississippi River. Show Boat would be adapted as a popular Broadway musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

Edna's 1941 novel Saratoga Trunk and her 1958 novel Giant would also be adapted as Broadway musicals. Other novels would be adapted as acclaimed feature films. Her 1958 novel Ice Palace would be adapted as a feature film in 1960.

The film adaptation of Edna's tale set around the fish cannery business in postwar Alaska featured Japanese American actor George Takei in a small role several years before he became famous as Lieutenant Sulu on the classic 1966-69 American TV series Star Trek.

Throughout her remarkable literary career, Edna Ferber wrote over two dozen novels. She died in 1968 at the age of 82.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death." - Edna Ferber

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a clip from the acclaimed 1936 feature film adaptation of the Broadway musical based on Edna Ferber's classic novel, Show Boat. This clip features the classic song Ol' Man River performed by the legendary Paul Robeson. Enjoy!