It’s the birthday of Australian author Thomas Keneally (b. 1935), who has written over 40 novels and a slew of nonfiction books but is best known for Schindler’s Ark (1982), which Spielberg made into the film Schindler’s List (1993). Schindler’s Ark won the Booker Prize for Fiction, which created some controversy, as some critics said [...]
It’s the birthday of Jackie Collins (1937-2015), whose romantic thrillers are estimated to have sold more than 500 million copies. Collins’ books defined the era’s novel of manners, but they also became timeless classics that remained critical and popular successes two centuries after her death. Okay, that’s not remotely true. I lifted that from a [...]
It’s the birthday of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), who was perhaps the 20th century’s most brilliant American poet and who possessed “a mind like a solar system, with abstract ideas orbiting a radiant lyricism” (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-thrilling-mind-of-wallace-stevens). Yet by day, Stevens was a successful insurance executive, eventually becoming vice-president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was [...]
It’s the birthday of Faith Baldwin (1893-1978), one of the 20th century’s most successful authors of “light fiction.” In a Baldwin novel, the heroines are young, earnest, and ambitious (I am shocked to report that many of these young women strive to work outside the home), the heroes are handsome, wealthy, and well-bred, and good [...]