It’s the birthday of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), whose works such as “The Waste Land” and Four Quartets established him as the greatest poet of the 20th century, though emphatically not, it must be admitted, the most cheerful. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the sixth child of parents who were actually transplanted [...]
It's the birthday of the great William Faulkner, which is just as well, because I can't write a new post today and Faulkner is important enough to bear repeating. Here's last year's post if you're interested, and have a beautiful Wednesday insofar as Hump Day can be beautiful.
It’s the birthday of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), whose novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) ushered in an age of gothic romance that extends down through the likes of Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Daphne du Maurier—all of whom were better writers of fiction than Walpole—and on into contemporary goth subculture. Walpole was born [...]
It’s the day on which the birthday of Euripides (480ish-406 B.C.), the great Athenian tragic dramatist, is traditionally celebrated, which means no one really knows, which dovetails with the dearth of information on Euripides’ life, which leaves things nicely open for wild speculation. We do know that Euripides was born in Athens and that his [...]
It’s the birthday of George R. R. Martin (b. 1948), best known as the author of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (1996- ), which books have sold more than 90 million copies and been adapted into the HBO series Game of Thrones. Martin was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, where [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the most celebrated intellectuals of the 18th century, Samuel Johnson, who authored A Dictionary of the English Language and about whom I posted last year. But there is a remarkable dearth of other interesting authors born on this day. It’s as if Johnson in all his brilliance has just [...]
It’s the birthday of Ken Kesey (1935-2001), professional hippie and author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), the film version of which (1976) won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing (Screenplay Adapted from Other Material). NB: Kesey himself started out working on the film but left [...]
It’s the birthday of James Alan McPherson (1943-2016), the first black author to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and a member of the first cohort to receive a MacArthur “genius grant.” McPherson was born in Savannah, Georgia. His mother was a maid, and his father became the first black master electrician in the state, [...]
It’s the birthday of British author Roald Dahl, whose beloved children’s books such as James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The BFG (1982), and Matilda (1988) tend to feature children pitted against hostile and malevolent adults. Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales, to Norwegian parents; Dahl grew up bilingual. [...]
(I am reposting last year's post, partly because I am especially fond of it and partly because I don't have time to write about Michael Ondaatje today, the important Canadian author whose birthday it also is.) It’s the birthday of one of science fiction’s most prominent authors, Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), whose first name required me [...]
It’s the birthday of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930, #diedtooyoung), one of the major English authors of the 20th century, and I know what you’re all thinking so just get your minds out of the gutter right now. This is a family show. David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, the son of a coal [...]
It’s the birthday of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), known for his many popular science essays published in Natural History magazine and collected in volumes such as Ever Since Darwin (1977), The Panda’s Thumb (1980), and Bully for Brontosaurus (1991). Gould was also known for his “punctuated equilibrium” theory, which posited that evolutionary change occurs [...]