Notes For August 31st, 2021

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This Day In Literary 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 II, 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 nonfiction 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; 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 II. 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 poem, 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!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 8/29/21

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Mithran Somasundrum

My short story The Undefeated has been published by literally stories. Their max word count is 3,000. They don't pay, but are nice people to deal with and reply to submissions very quickly.

Eric Petersen

My review of Swimming With The Angels, a suspense thriller by Colin Kersey, has been published by the Internet Review of Books.

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Notes For August 27th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 27th, 1871, the famous American writer Theodore Dreiser was born. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the twelfth of thirteen children. The popular singer and songwriter Paul Dresser was Dreiser's older brother.

In 1889, Dreiser entered Indiana University, but he flunked out a year later. Several years after flunking out of university, Theodore Dreiser became a journalist, writing first for the Chicago Globe, then for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

He wrote articles about famous writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Burroughs and interviewed public figures such as Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison. On December 28th, 1898, he married his girlfriend, Sara White. The couple separated in 1909, but never divorced.

In 1900, Theodore Dreiser's acclaimed first novel, Sister Carrie, was published. The controversial novel told the story of 18-year-old Caroline "Carrie" Meeber, a young girl living an unhappy life in rural Wisconsin.

So, Carrie takes a train to Chicago, where she has made arrangements to move in with her older sister Minnie and her brother-in-law, Sven. On the train, Carrie meets a traveling salesman named Charles Drouet. He is attracted to her and they exchange information.

Carrie finds life at her sister's apartment not much happier than it was in Wisconsin. To earn her keep, Carrie takes a job at a shoe factory. She finds her co-workers (both male and female) vulgar and the working conditions squalid. The job takes a toll on her health.

After getting sick, Carrie loses her job. She is reunited with Charles Drouet, who is still attracted to her. He takes her to dinner, where he asks her to move in with him, lavishing her with money. Tired of living with her sister and brother-in-law, Carrie agrees to be Drouet's kept woman.

Later, Drouet introduces Carrie to George Hurstwood, the manager of his favorite bar. Hurstwood, an unhappily married man, falls in love with Carrie, and they have an affair. But she returns to Drouet because Hurstwood can't provide for her financially.

So, Hurstwood embezzles a large sum of money from the bar and persuades Carrie to run away with him to Canada. In Montreal, Hurstwood is trapped by both his guilty conscience and a private detective and returns most of the stolen money.

He agrees to marry Carrie and the couple move to New York City, where they live under the assumed names George and Carrie Wheeler. Carrie believes she may have finally found happiness, but then she and George grow apart.

After George loses his source of income and gambles away the couple's savings, Carrie, who has been trying to build a career in the theater, leaves him. She becomes a rich and famous actress, but finds that wealth and fame don't bring her happiness and that nothing will.

When it was first published, Sister Carrie sold poorly. Due to its controversial nature, even though Dreiser had cut some material himself and other parts had been altered by editors, the publisher initially reneged on his agreement to publish the novel. Fortunately, a new agreement was reached and the novel was published.

Unfortunately for Dreiser, the publisher refused to promote it and gave it a bland, red cover, with only the names of the novel and the author on it. When the publisher's wife complained that the novel was too sordid, he withdrew it from circulation.

Later, it was republished when Frank Norris, a reader for Doubleday & McClure, sent a few copies to reviewers. All the subsequent editions of the novel came from the first publisher's edited version of the manuscript.

Theodore Dreiser earned only $68.40 from the ill-fated first publication of Sister Carrie. The ordeal drove the writer to a nervous breakdown and turned him off writing for ten years. Ironically, it also ended up saving his life.

In 1912, Dreiser had originally planned to book passage home from England on the Titanic. Unable to afford tickets for the ill-fated luxury ocean liner, he sailed home earlier on a less expensive passenger ship.

In 1981, Dreiser's original, unexpurgated manuscript of Sister Carrie was finally published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Still, even in its edited version, Sister Carrie was regarded as a classic American novel. In his 1930 Nobel Prize Lecture, Sinclair Lewis said of it:

Dreiser's great first novel, Sister Carrie, which he dared to publish thirty long years ago and which I read twenty-five years ago, came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman.

Theodore Dreiser wrote more classic novels, including his Trilogy of Desire series, The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947). But his 1925 epic novel, An American Tragedy, became his first commercial success. It's also considered a classic novel.

Inspired by a real life criminal case and set in Kansas City, it tells the story of Clyde Griffiths, the son of poor, devoutly religious parents who force him to join in their street missionary work. Dreaming of better things, he takes a job as bellboy at a local hotel

There, the other boys introduce him to alcohol and prostitutes. He falls in love with a girl, Hortense Briggs, and does everything he can to impress her. While driving a stolen car, Clyde accidentally kills a child. He flees Kansas City.

After staying briefly in Chicago, Clyde reinvents himself as a foreman at a collar factory in Lycurgus, New York, owned by his long-lost uncle. Clyde promised himself that he wouldn't let his passions cause his downfall again, but then he falls for Roberta Alden.

Roberta is a poor farm girl who works under him at the factory. He enjoys their secret relationship (which is forbidden by company rules) and manipulates Roberta into having sex with him.

Clyde is not about to marry a poor farm girl; later, he falls for Sondra Finchley, an elegant rich girl whose father is a friend of his uncle's. Just as his relationship with Sondra shows promise, Clyde learns that Roberta is pregnant.

His attempt at arranging an illegal abortion proves unsuccessful, and Roberta threatens to reveal their relationship unless Clyde marries her. He decides to murder her instead. He takes her for a canoe ride and ends up hitting her with his camera.

The boat capsizes, and Roberta, who can't swim, drowns while Clyde swims back to shore, refusing to save her. The narrative is deliberately unclear as to whether Clyde really attempted to kill Roberta, or just struck her out of anger.

But the circumstantial evidence suggests murder, and the authorities are so determined to convict Clyde that they resort to manufacturing evidence to secure a conviction.

Despite a strong defense by lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is convicted and sentenced to death. The novel's greatest scenes of pathos take place in prison, where Clyde corresponds with his mother until the day of his execution.

In addition to his novels, Theodore Dreiser also wrote short story collections and nonfiction books about political issues. A devout socialist, Dreiser wrote of his 1927 trip to the Soviet Union in Dreiser Looks at Russia.

He criticized American capitalism in Tragic America (1931) and America is Worth Saving (1941). But he was best known for his fiction and is rightfully considered to be one of the all-time greatest American novelists.

Theodore Dreiser died 1945 at the age of 74.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail." - Theodore Dreiser

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Theodore Dreiser's classic novel, The Financier. Enjoy!

Notes For August 26th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 26th, 1904, the famous English writer Christopher Isherwood was born in High Lane, Cheshire, England. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, and moved the family often to wherever he was stationed.

Lt. Col. Isherwood was killed in action during World War I. Afterward, Christopher Isherwood and his mother lived in London and Wyberslegh. Isherwood attended St. Edmund's prep school in Surrey.

There, he met W.H. Auden, a soon to be famous writer who would become Isherwood's protege and close friend. After St. Edmund's, Isherwood attended Repton School, where he met writer Edward Upward, who would become a lifelong friend.

Isherwood and Upward collaborated on a short story collection, The Mortmere Stories. Although famous in literary circles, only one of the stories would be published during Isherwood's lifetime. The whole collection of stories was published posthumously in 1994.

Christopher Isherwood entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, but deliberately failed his exams and left the college without a degree in 1925. He took a job as secretary for violinist André Mangeot and his string quartet, living with Mangeot and his family for the next three years.

In his spare time, Isherwood studied medicine and wrote a book of nonsensical poetry called People One Ought To Know, which was illustrated by Mangeot's 11-year-old son, Sylvain.

Later in 1925, Isherwood was reunited with W.H. Auden. He became Auden's literary mentor and occasional lover. Auden introduced him to writer Sir Stephen Spender, whom he would later spend time with in Berlin.

Isherwood's first novel, All The Conspirators, was published in 1928. It was about a young man, Philip, who longs to escape the office where he works, but is torn between pleasing his oppressive, domineering mother and living out his dream of becoming an artist. Philip's only ally is his sister, Joan.

Around the time his first novel was published, Isherwood studied medicine at King's College, London, but dropped out in six months to join W.H. Auden in Berlin. He had rejected his upper class roots and was openly gay though homosexuality was still a crime in England.

Isherwood came to love Berlin, which, before the rise of Hitler and Nazism, was known as one of Europe's most cultured and liberal cities. He took advantage of the sexual freedom in Berlin and indulged in his passion for handsome young men. He met one, Heinz, who became his first great love.

Isherwood's second novel, The Memorial, was published in 1932. It was another tale of conflict between mother and son, based on Isherwood's family history. While writing his third novel, Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1935), Isherwood worked as a tutor.

When Hitler came to power in Germany, Isherwood left Berlin and traveled around Europe, living in cities such as Sintra, Portugal, and Copenhagen, Denmark. Around this time, he collaborated on three plays with W.H. Auden: The Dog Beneath The Skin (1935), The Ascent Of F6 (1936), and On The Frontier (1939).

In 1939, Isherwood published one of his masterpieces, a collection of short stories and novellas called The Berlin Stories. They were inspired by Isherwood's time living in Berlin and his experiences with its sexual underground.

The book's stories would be adapted as a play called I Am A Camera and as a popular, Tony Award winning Broadway musical, Cabaret, which would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1972 starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

The city of Berlin would erect a plaque in Isherwood's memory on the house in Schoneberg, Berlin, where he had lived. In 1939, after visiting New York City on their way back to England, Isherwood and Auden decided to emigrate to the United States.

This decision, made just months before England declared war on Germany, officially beginning World War II, was seen as a kind of betrayal by the patriotic crowd in England. Isherwood stayed in New York with Auden for a few months, then moved to Hollywood, California.

In Hollywood, he met mystic and historian Gerald Heard, who introduced him to Swami Prabhavananda and his Vedantic brand of Hindu spirituality and philosophy. Isherwood joined a group of mystic explorers that included writer Aldous Huxley and philosopher Bertrand Russell.

He embraced Vedanta and, working with the Swami, translated Hindu scriptures, wrote Vedanta essays, and the biography Ramakrishna and His Disciples. He also wrote Vedanta themed novels and plays.

In 1946, Isherwood became a naturalized American citizen. This made him eligible for the draft, however, he had already established himself as a conscientious objector. Throughout the late 40s and early 50s, Isherwood spent most of his time with his Vedanta writings.

On Valentine's Day, 1953, while spending time on the beach with friends, the 48-year-old Isherwood was introduced to an 18-year-old aspiring artist named Don Bachardy. Despite a 30-year age difference, affairs, and separations, Bachardy and Isherwood would remain partners until Isherwood's death.

During the early months of their relationship, (which would be chronicled in the acclaimed 2008 documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story) Isherwood finally completed The World In The Evening (1954), a novel he'd been working on for a few years. Bachardy typed up the manuscript.

When he wasn't writing, Isherwood taught creative writing at California State University, Los Angeles. In 1962, Isherwood's novel Down There On A Visit was published. A semi-sequel to The Berlin Stories, the novel is narrated by a hedonistic writer who proves himself to be a man of extremes.

He relentlessly pursues physical pleasures, but interrupts his binges of debauchery to engage in meditation and take up disciplines such as learning a foreign language. He meets a famous male prostitute and the two men decide to take up a spiritual life dedicated to self-denial and meditation.

Two years later, in 1964, Isherwood published his other masterpiece, A Single Man. Told in a stream of consciousness narrative, the novel takes place during one day in the life of George Falconer, a middle-aged gay Englishman and professor living in Los Angeles, as he struggles to cope with the sudden death of his partner Jim in a car accident.

The novel's frank and honest treatment of homosexuality and gay relationships proved to be a shocker in 1964, but it was Isherwood's dazzling prose that made the novel a masterpiece.

Isherwood's fellow English writer Anthony Burgess declared it "a testimony to Isherwood's undiminished brilliance as a novelist." An acclaimed feature film adaptation of A Single Man was released in December of 2009, starring Colin Firth as George Falconer.

Christopher Isherwood died of prostate cancer in 1986 at the age of 81. After his death, Don Bachardy's portraits (he had become a successful draughtsman and painter) of his dying partner became famous.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent." - Christopher Isherwood

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 1969 BBC TV documentary on Christopher Isherwood. Enjoy!

Notes For August 25th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 25th, 1949, the famous English writer Martin Amis was born. He was born in Oxford, England, the son of famous writer Sir Kingsley Amis.

As a boy, Martin Amis attended 14 different schools, as his father gave lectures at colleges and universities all over the United Kingdom and the United States, taking the family with him.

Martin Amis was twelve years old when his parents divorced. He only read comic books until his stepmother, novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to the novels of Jane Austen, whom he credited as his earliest influence.

As a teenager, Martin became a hippie and hung out at bars with the mod crowd. He later graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, with a Congratulatory First in English, which he described as "the sort where you are called in for a viva and the examiners tell you how much they enjoyed reading your papers."

In 1973, Martin Amis' first novel, The Rachel Papers, was published. The semi-autobiographical comic novel told the story of Charles Highway, a bright, bookish, 19-year-old wannabe intellectual making the transition from adolescence to manhood.

Nasty yet moral, calculating yet able to love, Charles falls for the lovely Rachel, executes a carefully planned seduction of her, then abandons her even though she may be pregnant with his child. The absurdly conceited Charles doesn't realize how much he has in common with his father, whom he detests.

The Rachel Papers, which was adapted as a feature film in 1989, won Martin Amis the Somerset Maugham Award - the same award his father had won for his 1954 novel, Lucky Jim. Unfortunately, Sir Kingsley Amis had no interest in his son's work and often derided it.

Martin's next novel, Dead Babies (1975), a black comedy, has been described as a cross between the works of P.G. Wodehouse and the Marquis de Sade.

It's set in a bleak future where excess has become the norm, as the characters engage in orgies of sex and drugs. Dead Babies was adapted as a feature film in 2000, released in the United States under the title Mood Swingers.

Some of Martin Amis' best known and most respected novels were written in the 1980s and 90s, including Money (1984), London Fields (1989), Time's Arrow (1991), and The Information (1995).

In Time's Arrow, which was nominated for a Booker Prize, the novel is the autobiography of its main character, an ex-Nazi doctor accused of torturing Jews during the Holocaust. Amis employs an unusual narrative technique: time runs backward during the entire novel, to the point that the characters even speak backward.

In addition to his novels, Martin Amis also wrote short story collections and nonfiction. Some of his most memorable nonfiction books include The Moronic Inferno And Other Visits To America (1986) - a collection of satirical essays about all things American, from fashion to the religious right.

Koba The Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002) is about the horrors of Stalinism. His most recent nonfiction book, The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom (2008) offers scathing attacks on both Islamic extremism and the Bush administration's response to it.

Amis' 2014 novel, The Zone Of Interest, is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp, circa 1942, as it tells the story of Angelus Thomsen, a Nazi officer who falls in love with Hannah Doll, the wife of the commandant, Paul Doll.

The affair awakens the humanity of Thomsen, who becomes appalled by the inhumanity of Auschwitz. His love for Hannah helps her find sanity in an insane existence as the wife of the deluded, psychopathic commandant.

When her husband discovers the affair, Hannah's hate for Paul escalates, and she uses the affair to taunt him in private and embarrass him in public. So he plots to have her killed by blackmailing Szmul Zacharias, a Jewish Sonderkommando.

The novel features alternating first-person narration by Thomsen, Paul Doll, and Szmul Zacharias. Critics called it the best novel Amis had written since London Fields (1989).

Martin Amis' most recent novel, Inside Story, which he said is his last, was published last year. It's an experimental mix of memoir, fiction, and nonfiction inspired by his friendship with the late, great writer and philosopher Christopher Hitchens.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone." - Martin Amis

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Martin Amis discussing most recent novel, Inside Story, on an episode of the Tata Literature livestream. Enjoy!

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Notes For August 24th, 2021

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This Day In Literary 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 lecture on Jane Eyre, Recorded at DLD College, London. Enjoy!

Notes For August 20th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 20th, 1890, the legendary American writer H.P. Lovecraft was born. He was born Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of a traveling salesman, Winfield Scott Lovecraft.

When H.P. was three, his father suffered a severe psychotic episode while on a business trip in Chicago. He had to be committed to an asylum, as his mental illness was diagnosed as a result of syphilis. He died five years later.

After his father's death, Lovecraft was raised by his mother, her two sisters, and their father, all of whom lived in the same house. A child prodigy, at the age of three, he could read poetry and recite it verbatim. By the age of six, he was writing his own poems.

His grandfather encouraged his voracious passion for reading, supplying him with classics such as The Arabian Nights, Bullfinch's Age Of Fable, and children's versions of Homer's classic epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Lovecraft's grandfather encouraged his passion for the weird by telling him his own original Gothic horror stories. His mother worried that the stories would upset him, but he loved them and couldn't get enough.

He was a sickly child, though at least some of his illnesses were psychosomatic. He also suffered from night terrors, a rare sleep disorder. There was speculation that he'd inherited his father's syphilis, but that was ruled out.

Because of his poor health, lack of discipline, and argumentative nature, he rarely attended school until he was eight years old. Even then, he only lasted a year before he was pulled out of school.

A voracious reader, Lovecraft educated himself. He developed a particular interest in chemistry and astronomy. When he was nine years old, Lovecraft printed his own hectographed publications, the first of which was called The Scientific Gazette. Age the age of 13, Lovecraft returned to high school.

In 1908, just before his high school graduation, Lovecraft suffered what he called a nervous breakdown. Lovecraft biographer J.T. Joshi suggested that the breakdown was caused by Lovecraft's difficulty in learning advanced mathematics.

Without learning advanced mathematics, he would never be able to become a professional astronomer. Lovecraft's failure to complete his education was a lifelong source of disappointment and shame for him.

Though he had written some fiction before, most of H.P. Lovecraft's early work was poetry, which he wrote prolifically. In 1914, he wrote a letter complaining about the insipidness of a series of popular love stories that had been published in a pulp magazine called The Argosy.

The resulting debate in the magazine's Letters section caught the attention of Edward F. Daas, president of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA), who invited Lovecraft to join the organization, which encouraged him to submit more poems and essays for publication.

Three years later, Lovecraft, an avid letter writer, returned to writing fiction after being prodded to do so by some of his correspondents. His first new horror story, Dagon, was published in W. Paul Cook's The Vagrant in 1919, then reprinted in Weird Tales in 1923.

The story is told by a tormented, suicidal morphine addict who recalls a horrific experience he had while in the Merchant Marines during World War I. After his cargo ship is captured by the Germans, he escapes in a lifeboat.

Drifting across the Pacific, he eventually lands on an island where he encounters a monster that was once worshiped as a sea god by an ancient race of fish-men. All that remains of them is the shrine that they built for their god.

In 1919, after suffering from mental illness for years, H.P. Lovecraft's mother was placed in the same institution as her husband. Lovecraft corresponded with her frequently, and remained close to her until her death in 1921 - the result of complications from gall bladder surgery. Lovecraft was devastated.

A few weeks later, he attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston, where he met Sonia Greene, a Ukrainian-Jewish shopkeeper (she owned a hat store) whom he married in 1924. Lovecraft's aunts were not happy that he married a woman of the merchant class; the fact that she was Jewish probably didn't thrill them, either.

The Lovecrafts moved to the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. At first, Lovecraft was thrilled to be living in New York, but he quickly came to hate the city. The couple faced financial difficulties, including the loss of Sonia's hat shop.

H.P. was unable to find work, as the city teemed with a large immigrant population willing to work for low wages. Lovecraft's frustration fueled the racism that would later be reflected in his writings, which sometimes contained bestial black and scheming Jewish characters.

Lovecraft's racism was atypical; he tended to regard people more in terms of class than race. For example, in his story Cool Air, Lovecraft's narrator makes disparaging remarks about the poor Hispanics in his neighborhood while admiring and praising the wealthy, cultured Dr. Munoz, who is also Hispanic.

These and other contradictory aspects of Lovecraft's racism have led scholars to believe that in both his writings and in life, Lovecraft was questioning the veracity of his racial views. Sonia Greene, Lovecraft's wife, had to remind him that she was Jewish when he made anti-Semitic remarks.

It made an impact on him; near the end of his life, when he learned of Hitler's persecution of Jews in Germany, he was horrified. He denounced Nazi ideology as irrational. A few years after they were married, Lovecraft and Sonia separated. They later divorced amicably. Sonia moved to Cleveland and H.P. returned to Providence to live with his aunts.

Lovecraft continued to write and publish short stories and essays. He wrote over sixty short stories, most of them horror, establishing himself as a master of the genre. His stories reflected his personal beliefs. He considered himself an agnostic in theory and an atheist in practical terms.

His stories presented gods not as loving creators, but as ancient, monstrous alien beings who have influenced the development of the human race over the ages. Often malicious, these gods inspire the formation of cults and demand sacrifice, as seen in Lovecraft's "Cthulu Mythos" of loosely connected stories.

In some of these stories, Lovecraft mentions a book called the Necronomicon - an ancient book of black magic whose rituals can summon evil deities, demons, and spirits. The book was supposedly written by the "Mad Arab," Abdul Alhazred, in 8th century Persia.

In the early 1970s, a book was published that claimed to be the real Necronomicon, translated by someone known only as Simon. It has no connection to Lovecraft and is apparently based on Sumerian mythology.

The book, which included a forward warning the reader not to attempt to perform the rituals contained in its pages, would become a cult favorite. Still in print, it has sold over 800,000 copies.

Another theme in Lovecraft's writing is the dangers of modern science and technology, which inspire humans to investigate things that should be left alone and tamper with the order of the universe. Such was the subject of his classic 1919 short story, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep.

In this story, an intern at a hospital for the criminally insane uses one of the inmates - a homicidal maniac - as his guinea pig to test a device he invented to facilitate telepathic communication. The experiment goes awry as the intern and his test subject channel an alien being made of light.

Although Lovecraft published dozens of short stories in Weird Tales and many other pulp magazines - and was sometimes paid very large sums of money for them - his finances soon dwindled and he was forced to move to smaller quarters with his surviving aunt.

In 1936, H.P. Lovecraft was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died a year later at the age of 46. His stories have been adapted as feature films and for TV series such as Showtime's Masters Of Horror.

Heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Mercyful Fate have based songs on Lovecraft's works. Black metal legend King Diamond paid tribute to Lovecraft with his classic song, The Lake, which appears as the B-side of the single Halloween:

On a Sunday morning
well just before dawn
a little girl is dancing
on the mansion lawn

She calls out a name:
"Dagon of the sea!
Appear from the darkest deep
and hear my need!"

Down by the lake
there's a shadow of grief
dancing hand in hand
with the devil...

H.P. Lovecraft continues to inspire generations of writers, including horror master Stephen King, who considers him a major influence, declaring him to be "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."

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Quote Of The Day

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"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of H.P. Lovecraft's classic short story, Dagon. Enjoy!

Notes For August 19th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 19th, 1902, the famous American poet Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York. His father owned an import-export company; due to the nature of the business, the Nash family moved frequently when Ogden was a boy.

After he graduated St. George's School in Middletown, Rhode Island, Ogden Nash entered Harvard University. He dropped out a year later and returned to St. George's School to teach.

A year after that, he quit teaching and worked a series of menial jobs, including writing advertisement cards for streetcars at an agency that once employed writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Eventually, Nash landed a job as an editor for the Doubleday publishing house and began to write poetry. He would say in a 1958 interview that he always had a fondness for rhyme: "I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old."

In 1931, Ogden Nash published his first book of poetry, Hard Lines. It became a huge success and earned Nash national recognition, establishing his talent for humorous verse with playful rhyming and anti-establishment themes.

That same year, he married his wife, Frances Leonard. Three years later, in 1934, the couple moved to Frances' hometown, Baltimore, Maryland, where Ogden Nash would live for the rest of his life.

When Nash wasn't writing poems, he made guest appearances on radio shows and toured the U.S. and England, where he gave lectures at colleges and universities.

He was respected by the literary establishment and his poems were published frequently in anthologies, even serious ones such as Selden Rodman's A New Anthology of Modern Poetry (1946).

As a poet, Nash was known for his pun-like rhymes and for deliberately misspelling words for comic effect, as in this riff on Dorothy Parker's famous lines "Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses:"

A girl who is bespectacled
She may not get her nectacled
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fassinets.

In one of Nash's most famous rhymes, he parodied Joyce Kilmer's famous lines "I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree:"

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

My favorite Nash lines are these classics from his poem Reflections On Ice-Breaking:

Candy
is dandy
but liquor
is quicker.

Nash also wrote a series of poems dedicated to his favorite football team, the Baltimore Colts, now known as the Indianapolis Colts.

In 1943, Ogden Nash collaborated on writing the Broadway musical One Touch Of Venus. Nash wrote all the song lyrics himself and co-wrote the libretto with S.J. Perelman.

The music was composed by the great Kurt Weill. The musical is a loose spoof of the Pygmalion myth that satirizes modern (1940s) suburban America and its values, artistic fads, and social and sexual mores.

The original Broadway production opened on October 7th, 1943, at the Imperial Theatre and closed on February 10th, 1945, after 567 performances. Directed by Elia Kazan, it starred Mary Martin, Kenny Baker, and Paula Laurence.

Marlene Dietrich was originally cast in the title role of Venus, but backed out during rehearsals, calling the musical "too sexy and profane." Mary Martin took over the role and used it to establish herself as a Broadway star.

In addition to his poetry collections, Odgen Nash also wrote children's books. His daughter Isabel was married to the celebrated photographer Fred Eberstadt.

Nash's granddaughter, Fernanda Eberstadt, became an acclaimed writer - a child prodigy who wrote her first novel at the age of eleven.

Ogden Nash died of Crohn's Disease in 1971 at the age of 68. On August 19th, 2002, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp featuring Ogden Nash and six of his poems to commemorate the centennial of his birthday.

It was the first stamp in the history of the Postal Service to contain the word sex.

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Quote Of The Day

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"People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it, and I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it." - Ogden Nash

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Ogden Nash reading his poem Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man. Enjoy!

Notes For August 18th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 18th, 1958, Lolita, the classic novel by the legendary Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, was published for the first time in the United States. It proved to be one of the most celebrated and controversial novels of all time.

It told the tale of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged European man who becomes obsessed with Lolita, a sexually precocious 12-year-old American girl, leading him down a path of degradation, depravity, despair, paranoia, and ultimately, murder.

Lolita is also a not so subtle, scathing satire of America as seen through the eyes of Europeans, with Humbert serving as a metaphor for intelligent, cultured, old world Europe's strange attraction to young, brash, vulgar, vapid, and not very bright America, personified by Lolita.

Nabokov had completed the novel in 1953, but was unable to find an American publisher. One publisher told Nabokov that he should burn every copy of the manuscript. Another suggested that the story wouldn't be so objectionable if Lolita were a boy.

Nabokov tried to get Lolita published in Europe, but one British publisher was so shocked by the novel that he tore up his copy of the manuscript. Finally, in 1955, Nabokov found a publisher - Olympia Press.

Based in Paris, Olympia was known as a publisher of both controversial, challenging works of literature (such as William Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer) and pornographic novels.

Olympia's first 5,000 copy press run of Lolita sold out across Europe. There were no real reviews of the book, but in late 1955, in an interview with the London Times, the famous English writer Graham Greene called Lolita one of the best novels of the year.

Greene's comments provoked the outraged editor of the conservative London Sunday Express to publicly condemn Lolita, calling it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography."

The newspaper kept stoking the flames of outrage, and Britain's Home Office panicked, ordering Customs officers to seize all copies of Lolita that came into the United Kingdom.

France followed suit; the French Minister of the Interior instituted a ban on the novel that would last for two years. In 1958, United States officials were nervous about Lolita, but the novel was published without incident by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

It became a bestseller - the first book since Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication. Today, it's rightfully considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

It was later named the fourth greatest English language novel of the 20th century by Modern Library. Vladimir Nabokov originally wrote it in English and later translated it himself into Russian.

Written in a dazzling, lyrical prose style, Lolita is a novel-within-a-novel. It begins with a lengthy forward explaining that the book you're about to read was written by Humbert Humbert while in his jail cell awaiting trial for murder.

Humbert, who died of coronary thrombosis upon completing the manuscript, begins his autobiography by relating the tale of his 1920s childhood romance with an angelic girl named Annabel Leigh, which was tragically cut short when she died of typhus.

Their love for each other and his loss of her would affect Humbert for the rest of his life. Later, just before the outbreak of World War II, Humbert leaves Paris for New York after his first relationship with a woman goes sour.

After the war, he moves to New England to begin a writing career. He rents a room from grotesque widow Charlotte Haze after meeting and becoming smitten with her precocious 12-year-old daughter Dolores, known by her nickname, Lolita.

The tragically deluded Humbert sees in her his beloved Annabel Leigh, despite the fact that the corrupt, nasty Lolita is really the polar opposite of Annabel. The obsessed Humbert will do anything to be near Lolita.

He even marries her mother, Charlotte, though he can't stand her. The marriage ends in dramatic fashion when Charlotte reads Humbert's secret diary, freaks out, flees the house, and is struck and killed by a car.

Later, when Humbert tries to have his way with Lolita, she ends up seducing him and reveals that she lost her virginity to a boy she met at summer camp. Then they hit the road in Charlotte's car.

Humbert and Lolita drive across the country, going from state to state and motel to motel, where the older man bribes the young girl for sexual favors. He's frustrated that Lolita doesn't return his affection or share his interests.

The deluded Humbert is blind to the fact that his beloved Lolita is really a manipulative sociopath who is exploiting him even more than he's exploiting her. Then she falls ill and is hospitalized.

After she recovers, while Humbert is away, Lolita checks out with a man claiming to be her uncle, who pays her hospital bill. Humbert begins a frantic (and funny) search for her, trying to make sense of humorous clues left behind by Lolita and her "uncle."

He finally gives up the search and has a chaotic, two-year affair with Rita, an alcoholic 30-year-old woman who reminds him of Lolita. Years later, Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, who is now married, pregnant, and in need of money.

Armed with a loaded gun, he tracks her down, intending to kill her husband. Lolita reveals that her husband is not the man she ran off with. That man was Clare Quilty, a demented playwright, pervert, and amateur pornographer.

She had acted in Quilty's play The Hunted Enchanters while a member of her school's drama club. He seduced her, and she became his lover for a time. Humbert gives Lolita the money she asked for, along with her rightful inheritance. Then he leaves to track down Clare Quilty and take his revenge.

Lolita was adapted an acclaimed feature film in 1962, directed by the legendary English filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and starring James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze, Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty, and 14-year-old newcomer Sue Lyon as Lolita.

The screenplay was written by Vladimir Nabokov himself. Although the novel had to be sanitized as per Production Code requirements, the movie remains a naughty delight that wonderfully captures both the comedy and tragedy of Nabokov's novel.

In 1997, director Adrian Lyne filmed Lolita. Despite the sincere performance of Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, the movie is a boring, depressing mess, with dreadful performances by 17-year-old Dominique Swain as Lolita and a horribly miscast Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze.

Frank Langella, also horribly miscast, plays Clare Quilty as a bestial psychopath instead of the delightfully perverse playwright portrayed with comic malice and verve by the great Peter Sellers in the 1962 original. The remake fails because it robs the novel of its comedy and satire.

Vladimir Nabokov would later name Lolita as his favorite novel. It still remains a classic work of literature.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure novelist with an unpronounceable name." - Vladimir Nabokov

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a documentary on Vladimir Nabokov and the writing of his classic novel, Lolita. Enjoy!

Notes For August 17th, 2021

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This Day In Literary 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 most famous 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 fiancée'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 garish 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 complete live performance of La Cage Aux Folles. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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Dave Gregory

My story "Vultures Are Everywhere" is now online at Reckon Review. Special thanks to Judith Quaempts, Bill Lafond, Wayne Scheer, Eric Petersen, Danielle Szabreath, and Al Ridgway for helping make this a better piece by providing feedback, suggestions, and encouragement.

Reckon Review is just a great little online journal. They don't pay but are easy to work with and publish some really high quality stories.

My flash fiction story, "Whirlpool Rebel," is now online in Pigeon Review. A huge note of thanks to Keith Walker, Frank Zielony, Bill LaFond, Mark Budman, Rob Yunich, Wayne Scheer, Chandrika Radhakrishnan, and Eric Petersen who critiqued an earlier version of this story.

Pigeon Review is a fairly new online journal. They don't pay but have a higher than average acceptance rate and are easy to work with.

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Notes For August 13th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 13th, 1961, the famous American writer Tom Perrotta was born in Garwood, New Jersey. His father was a postman, his mother a secretary. From an early age, Perrotta was a voracious reader. He devoured the works of authors such as O. Henry, J.R.R. Tolkein, and John Irving, and dreamed of becoming a writer himself.

Perrotta became involved with his high school's literary magazine, Pariah, in which he published several short stories. He earned a Bachelor's degree in English at Yale in 1983, and a Master's in English and Creative Writing at Syracuse University.

While at Syracuse, Perrotta was a student of writer Tobias Wolff, best known for his 1989 memoir This Boy's Life, which was made into a feature film. Perrotta praised Wolff for his "comic writing and moral seriousness."

During the time he taught creative writing at Yale, Tom Perrotta wrote three novels, all of which he had trouble getting published. In 1994, Perrotta finally published his first book, a short story collection titled Bad Haircut: Stories Of The Seventies.

It received good reviews; a Washington Post critic said that it was "more powerful than any other coming-of-age novel." That year, Perrotta left Yale and began teaching expository writing at Harvard.

In 1996, one of Perrotta's unpublished novels, a dark comedy called Election, was optioned for a film by director Alexander Payne. This attracted the attention of publishers, and the novel was released in March of 1998.

A year later, the film was released to theaters and critical acclaim. In Election, Tracy Flick, a popular, pretty, intelligent, and thoroughly amoral high school girl, is running for student body president. She will do anything to win.

Tracy projects the perfect image, but she has a dark side. She had an affair with a teacher, and after she told her mother, the teacher's career and marriage were ruined. Her current teacher, Jim McCallister - whose best friend was the teacher she ruined - decides that she doesn't deserve to win the election.

A caring teacher who believes in ethics, McAllister doesn't let his lofty ideals stand in the way of his determination to sabotage Tracy's campaign at all costs. He convinces Paul, a popular but dumb star athlete, to run against Tracy.

In an interesting twist, Paul's disgruntled younger sister Tammy also runs for president - in order to prove that the election is a farce and won't change anything at school. In a rousing speech, Tammy encourages the other students not to vote.

Perotta followed Election with another novel, Joe College (2000), but his next book, Little Children (2004) established him as one of America's best modern novelists. Little Children follows the lives of various people living in a middle class suburban neighborhood.

College-educated Sarah wonders how she became one of the vacuous, judgmental housewives who bring their children to the neighborhood park to play. She remembers a lesbian affair she had during college and wonders if she married her husband Jack just to escape a dead-end job and life.

After accepting a silly dare from one of her friends, Sarah is drawn into a passionate affair with Todd, a handsome married father whom the women have nicknamed Prom King. Sarah's predicament is nothing compared to that of Larry.

Larry is a 33-year-old ex-cop who left the force after shooting and killing a black kid who was holding a toy gun. Overcome with guilt, Larry sees his chance at atonement when paroled child molester Ronald moves into the neighborhood to live with his mother.

Furious that Ronald was allowed to live near children, Larry begins a one-man campaign of harassment and intimidation in order to drive the sex offender out of the neighborhood. Despite his good intentions, his actions once again result in tragedy for innocent people. Sarah must face the consequences of her actions as well.

Little Children received rave reviews. The New York Times critic declared Tom Perrotta to be "an American Chekhov whose characters even at their most ridiculous seem blessed and ennobled by a luminous human aura."

The novel appeared on numerous "best books of 2004" lists. It was adapted as an acclaimed 2006 feature film starring Kate Winslet as Sarah, Noah Emmerich as Larry, and in a bravura performance, Jackie Earle Haley as Ronald. Tom Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay with director Todd Field.

Also in 2006, Perotta sold an original screenplay to New Line Cinema that he had co-written with Frasier producer Rob Greenberg. The screenplay, titled Barry and Stan Gone Wild, has been described as "a shameless comedy [about] a 40-something dermatologist who goes on spring break."

Perrotta's next novel, The Abstinence Teacher, was published in October of 2007. Set in suburban New Jersey, it told the story of Ruth Ramsey, a feisty high school sex education teacher who finds herself drawn into a culture war against the local conservatives and evangelical Christians.

Warner Independent bought the film rights and Perrotta wrote the screenplay. The film, still in development, will tentatively be directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who directed the acclaimed 2010 film, The Kids Are All Right. She is replacing Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who were originally slated to co-direct The Abstinence Teacher.

Perrotta's 2011 novel, The Leftovers, a work of dystopic science fiction, is a compelling, satirical take on the biblical Rapture and the dreadful but popular Left Behind series of suspense novels by evangelical Christian writers Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

It opens several years after a Rapture-like event occurred, resulting in the sudden disappearance of 2% of the world's population. The town of Mapleton NY, like other places around the world, is still struggling to move on.

Not everyone who vanished in the Rapture-like event called the Sudden Departure were devoutly religious - some were far from righteous - while many good Christians were left behind.

The confused survivors still struggle to come to terms with the Sudden Departure - the loss of their loved ones and the fate of mankind. Thus, a new religious cult called the Guilty Remnant rises to power. Meanwhile, others openly rebel against religion.

In 2014, HBO adapted The Leftovers as a TV series starring Justin Theroux, Liv Tyler, Christopher Eccleston, and Ann Dowd. It ran for three seasons, from June 2014 through April of 2017, for a total of 28 episodes.

Tom Perrotta's most recent novel, Mrs. Fletcher, was published in 2017. In this zingy comedy, Eve Fletcher, a 46-year-old divorcee, is struggling to deal with empty nest syndrome after her only child leaves for college.

Then she receives a text from an anonymous number that says “U R my MILF!" Obsessed with the message, Eve soon discovers a porn website that specializes in the erotic adventures of ordinary middle-aged women like her - and her boring life changes forever.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I don't want to become one of those writers that develop a bottomless fascination with their own myth... nor do I see myself writing one great masterpiece. What I'd really love is to be like Graham Greene, and get to 75 and see a whole shelf full of consistently good books, all remarkably similar in length." - Tom Perrotta

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 2017 interview with Tom Perrotta. Enjoy!

Notes For August 12th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 12th, 1774, the famous English writer Robert Southey was born in Bristol, England. Southey was educated first at Westminster School, where he was expelled for publishing a magazine article where he condemned the practice of flogging students.

He later attended Balliol College, Oxford. Later, Southey would poke fun at the lax standards of the college, quipping that "All I learnt was a little swimming... and a little boating."

Southey became friends with writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge and they began a writing partnership. Their best known collaborative effort was a three-act play called The Fall Of Robespierre. In 1794, Southey published his first solo work, a collection of poems.

He remained friends with Coleridge, and they and a few others discussed going to America and setting up a utopic commune. They later decided to set up the commune in Wales. Southey became the first member of the group to reject the whole idea as unworkable.

In November 1795, Southey married his girlfriend Edith Fricker - the sister of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's wife, Sara. She and her children would later move in with Southey after Coleridge abandoned them.

Southey continued to write. In 1808, writing under the pseudonym Don Manuel Alvarez Espirella, Southey published Letters From England, a nonfiction account of a tour of the country.

In other words, England as seen through the eyes of (allegedly) a foreigner. It has been said that the book features the most accurate descriptions of early 19th century English life ever written.

Beginning in 1809, Southey became a regular contributor to the Quarterly Review literary magazine. By 1813, he had become so well known as a poet that he was appointed Poet Laureate of England after Sir Walter Scott declined the honor.

Although Southey had been a political radical most of his life, (he was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution) by the time he had become Poet Laureate, his political views had changed to that of a staunch conservative. The Tory establishment embraced him and gave him a small stipend.

Southey used his position as Poet Laureate to voice support of the repressive Liverpool government and argue against Parliamentary reform. He even sided with the government following the notorious Peterloo Massacre of August 16th, 1819.

What happened was this: approximately 60,000 people gathered at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, for a demonstration to demand Parliamentary reform. The demonstration featured a speech by radical orator Henry Hunt.

The local magistrates called in the military to arrest Hunt and disperse the crowd. The military's idea of crowd dispersal was to have the cavalry charge into the crowd with sabers drawn.

As a result, 15 people were killed and another 400 to 700 injured. The event was nicknamed the Peterloo Massacre in reference to the Battle of Waterloo.

Robert Southey's political views resulted in him falling out of favor with his fellow writers. He had gone from political radical to establishment tool who demanded the prosecution of his former fellow travelers.

He was seen as a sellout. In 1817, he was brought to task for hypocrisy when, after arguing against the publication of radical literature, Wat Tyler, a radical play Southey had written himself when he was young, was brought out to embarrass him.

One of Southey's most scathing critics, William Hazlitt, wrote that Southey "wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very reputable lady, called Legitimacy."

Southey's fellow poets mocked him and denounced his works as sycophantic odes to the King. Lord Byron's classic epic poem Don Juan opens with a scathingly funny, deliberately long-winded dedication to Robert Southey, whom Byron loathed.

Byron suspected him of spreading rumors about the relationship between himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's wife Mary, and her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, accusing them all of being involved in a "League of Incest" while they lived together on Lake Geneva in 1816. Southey denied spreading the rumors.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Robert Southey's conservative politics alienated him from his contemporaries. Today, most of his work remains obscure for the same reason, but he did make some important contributions to literature.

In addition to his poetry, he wrote biographies of John Wesley, Oliver Cromwell, Horatio Nelson, and other figures. He introduced new words to the English language, including the term autobiography.

A prolific writer, Southey's works also included children's stories and poems. He wrote The Story of the Three Bears - the classic fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

It first appeared in his 1834 novel, The Doctor. He also wrote the nursery rhyme What Are Little Boys Made Of? and to this day, British schoolchildren still read his poems in class.

Robert Southey served as Poet Laureate for thirty years until his death in 1843 at the age of 68. He was buried in the churchyard of Crosthwaite Church, Keswick, to which he belonged for forty years. Inside the church is a memorial to Southey written by his friend William Worsdworth, who succeeded him as Poet Laureate.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Write poetry for its own sake; not in the spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally obtain it." - Robert Southey

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Robert Southey's poem The Battle Of Blenheim. Enjoy!

Notes For August 11th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 11th, 1921, the legendary African-American writer Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York. The oldest of four children, his father was a professor of agriculture at Cornell University - a position he had to overcome formidable obstacles of racism to obtain.

At fifteen, Alex Haley enrolled at Alcorn State University, a college for black students in Mississippi. Two years later, he dropped out and returned home. Concerned by his lack of discipline and progress in life, his father encouraged him to join the military.

So, in 1939, a few months before his 18th birthday, Alex joined the Coast Guard. It would prove to be a 20-year enlistment. After the Pearl Harbor attack in December of 1941 brought the U.S. into World War II, Alex Haley saw action in the Pacific.

Actually, for sailors during the war, life consisted of sporadic bursts of action amidst long periods of downtime. Haley once quipped that the greatest enemy he and his shipmates ever battled was boredom, not the Japanese.

To alleviate his boredom, Haley taught himself to write short fiction. His writing skills caught the attention of his fellow sailors, who often paid him to write love letters to their girlfriends back home.

After the war ended, Haley petitioned the Coast Guard to transfer him to its journalism division. By the time he retired from active duty in 1959, he had become both a Chief Petty Officer and the first Chief Journalist in the Coast Guard - a position created exclusively for him.

After returning to civilian life, Alex Haley began his writing career, first as a journalist. He conducted the very first interview for Playboy magazine, which appeared in the September 1962 issue.

His subject was jazz legend Miles Davis. Throughout the 1960s, Haley conducted some of Playboy's most memorable interviews; among his subjects were Martin Luther King, Jr., Melvin Belli, (Jack Ruby's defense attorney) Jim Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Carson, and Muhammad Ali.

Haley's two most famous interviews were of controversial, radical figures on both sides of the civil rights issue: black militant civil rights activist Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party.

When Rockwell spoke to Haley on the phone, he refused the interview until Haley assured him that he wasn't Jewish. When the two men met in person, Rockwell was shocked to find that Haley was black.

Nevertheless, he agreed to do the interview. While Haley remained calm and professional during the interview, a nervous Rockwell kept a gun on the table within reach.

In February of 1965, six months after he'd been interviewed by Alex Haley, Malcolm X was assassinated. The two men had first met in 1960, when Haley had written an article on the Nation of Islam for Reader's Digest.

Over a period of nearly two years, Haley had conducted some 50 interviews with Malcolm X. Some of the material was published as a memoir in the July 1965 issue of Playboy. Later that year, Haley reworked all of the material and published it in book form as The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Alex Haley continued his career as a journalist and became a senior editor for Reader's Digest. Later, he began work on his first novel - a 700+ page historical epic based on the lives of his own ancestors.

Published in 1976, the year of America's bicentennial, Roots: The Saga of an American Family became a classic work of literature. The novel opens in 1767, with a young African man named Kunta Kinte being kidnapped from his home in Gambia by slave traders.

Kinte is brought to America and sold to a plantation owner, Master Lord Calvert, who renames him Toby. The novel provides a heartbreaking and gut wrenching expose of the horrors of slavery and shows how it shaped the lives of generations of African-Americans - and continues to do so.

Roots won Alex Haley a Pulitzer Prize. It would be adapted as a highly acclaimed TV miniseries in 1977 that would prove controversial, as it was the first network TV program to show uncensored nudity and graphic violence.

The network censors allowed these elements because they were included in the name of historical accuracy - not for exploitation or titillation. The novel would cause controversy as well.

In 1978, novelist and folklorist Harold Courlander sued Alex Haley for plagiarism. He claimed that a 100-word segment that appeared three times in Roots had been lifted verbatim from his novel, The African (1967).

As the case went to trial, Haley denied plagiarizing Courlander's novel, but he soon settled out-of-court with Courlander for $650,000 and issued an apology, stating that the plagiarism was not intentional.

He claimed that someone had given him the text without crediting it as an excerpt from Courlander's novel. The plagiarism case would be used as ammunition by conservative critics who had claimed that the novel was historically inaccurate.

Undeterred by controversy, Haley later began work on his second novel, Queen: The Story of an American Family. Queen was based on the life of Haley's grandmother - the illegitimate daughter of a plantation owner and one of his slaves.

The novel chronicled the plight of such children, who, rejected by their fathers who refused to recognize them, were doomed to lives of slavery and suffering. Before he could finish his novel, Alex Haley died of a heart attack in 1992 at the age of 70.

His novel was completed by writer David Stevens, based on Haley's 700-page outline and boxes of research notes. It was published in 1993. That same year, the novel would be adapted as a TV minseries called Alex Haley's Queen, featuring Halle Berry in the title role.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful ones any less." - Alex Haley

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of Alex Haley speaking at UCLA in 1968. Enjoy!