Notes For April 19th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 19th, 1824, the legendary English poet Lord Byron died in Aetolia-Acarnania, Greece, at the age of 36. Born George Gordon Byron in January of 1788 in Dover, England, he established himself as one of the greatest English Romantic poets of all time.

He was also a master of dramatic verse, and his epic poems, such as The Corsair (1813), The Siege of Corinth (1816), and the unfinished Don Juan (1819-1824), are among his most memorable works.

In life, Byron proved to be as romantic and flamboyant as his poetry. He was brilliant, most likely bipolar, and a militant agnostic. Although a nobleman himself, he had little use for the British aristocracy and even less use for the monarchy.

He once gave a stirring speech before Parliament condemning the Church of England (the official clerical body of the British Empire) for its intolerance of other faiths.

An outspoken liberal and libertine, Byron's intellect, literary talent, charisma, flamboyance, excesses, and scandals made him a huge celebrity - a rock star of his time. Openly bisexual though he preferred women, Byron criticized the persecution of homosexuals by British law.

He also condemned the pro-Christian legal system's discrimination against atheists. His best friend, the legendary poet Percy Shelley, was denied custody of his children because he didn't believe in God.

Of his many female lovers, Lord Byron's most notorious relationship was with the married Lady Caroline Lamb, who had famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" - yet it was she who went mad after Byron ended their relationship.

Refusing to take no for an answer, she began stalking him, both privately and publicly, resulting in a huge scandal. It wouldn't be the only scandal to plague him.

He was also accused of homosexuality (considered both a disgrace and a crime in 19th century England) and having an incestuous affair with his older half-sister Augusta Leigh, resulting in her pregnancy.

While Byron was openly bisexual, the idea that he had an affair with his half-sister, to whom he was very close, is highly debatable. When he wasn't writing poetry, Lord Byron dedicated himself to political causes.

In 1809, he took a seat in Parliament's House of Lords, which he used to strongly advocate for social reform. He opposed capital punishment and laws that compromised one's civil liberties and / or encroached on the private lives of British subjects.

An animal lover, Byron kept many exotic pets, including a fox, an eagle, a crocodile, and an Egyptian crane. While studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, he kept a bear as a pet in response to the college's prohibition of keeping dogs as pets. He publicly suggested that the bear should apply for a fellowship at Trinity.

Byron's favorite pet was his dog - a Newfoundland called Boatswain. When the dog contracted rabies, Byron nursed him until he died, unafraid of contracting the disease himself. He eulogized Boatswain in a poem called Epitaph to a Dog (1808).

By 1816, embittered and plagued with scandal, (thanks to Lady Caroline Lamb's public smear campaign) Byron left England and lived throughout Europe, mostly in Italy and Greece, until his death in 1824.

A year earlier, he'd left his home in Genoa to join the famous Greek statesman Alexandros Mavrokordatos in his fight for Greece's independence from the Ottoman Empire. It would not be Byron's first voyage to Greece or his first conflict with the Ottoman Empire.

Byron had visited Athens several years earlier, interested in both Greek culture and the country's acceptance of homosexuality. While staying there, he met a handsome French boy named Nicolo Giraud who became his friend, traveling companion, and lover.

While living in Venice in 1816, Byron became acquainted with a Mechitarist (Armenian Catholic) priest who introduced him to Armenian culture. Fascinated, Byron attended lectures on Armenian history and learned the Armenian language.

He would help introduce Armenian culture to Western Europe and publicly support Armenia's struggle for independence against the Ottoman Empire. Since the Armenians were largely Christian, the Muslim Ottomans oppressed them ruthlessly.

So, in August of 1823, when Byron learned of Greece's struggle against the Ottomans, he set sail for Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands. His first mission was to help rebuild the Greek naval fleet, and he spent £4000 of his own money (the equivalent of nearly £400,000 in today's money) to prepare the fleet for war.

By December, he joined Alexandros Mavrokordatos, to whom the Greek military was loyal, in Messolonghi. After he and Mavrokordatos supervised the training of the troops, Byron was given command of a regiment. The plan was to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto, located at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth.

Before the fleet could set sail for Lepanto, Byron fell ill. Although the bloodletting treatment (it was thought that draining a patient of small quantities of blood would speed up the healing process) weakened him further, he began to recover. By April, he caught a nasty cold which was aggravated by more bloodletting.

Lord Byron lapsed into a violent fever and died on April 19th. He was 36 years old. It is believed that Byron contracted sepsis (blood poisoning) as the result of bloodletting treatments performed with unsterilized medical instruments.

After he died, Greece's national poet, Dionysios Solomos, wrote a poem in his honor called To the Death of Lord Byron. He was embalmed, his heart and lungs were removed, and the rest of his remains sent to England.

The fate of Byron's heart and lungs is unclear. An urn containing the ashes of both organs was supposedly lost when the Ottomans sacked Messolonghi in 1825. Some believe that the urn only contained the ashes of Byron's lungs, and that his heart is still in Messolonghi.

To this day, he is considered a national hero in Greece. It has been said that had he lived and led his men to victory against the Ottomans, he might have become the King of Greece, but that's highly unlikely.

When news of Lord Byron's death reached England, people were shocked and saddened despite the scandals that had plagued him in life. Huge crowds came to pay their respects as he lay in state in London. Byron was denied a Christian burial at Westminster Abbey for reason of "questionable morality."

He would later be buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham. At her request, Ada Lovelace, the love child he never knew, was buried next to him. She became famous in her own right for her collaboration with Charles Babbage on the analytical engine, a precursor to the computer.

After Byron's burial, his friends raised a thousand pounds for a statue of him to be made by legendary Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, an admirer of Byron's.

The statue would languish in storage for ten years, as most British institutions refused to host it on their premises. Finally, his alma mater, Trinity College, Cambridge, agreed to place the statue in its library.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools, and those who dare not are slaves."

- Lord Byron

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Lord Byron's classic poem, Darkness. Enjoy!

Notes For April 18th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 18th, 1958, a federal court ruled that the famous American poet Ezra Pound be released from a hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, DC. It would mark the third act in a life drama of genius tempered by insanity - and ignorance.

Pound had been committed to the psychiatric hospital in 1946 after doctors found him not competent to stand trial for treason. During the war, Pound, who had lived in Italy for twenty years, had recorded propaganda radio broadcasts for the Mussolini regime.

After his arrest, Pound was sent to a brutal military prison where he was put in one of its "death cells" - a 6x6 foot cage perpetually lit by floodlights.

There, he spent three weeks in isolation, denied a bed, reading material, physical exercise, and communication with everyone but the chaplain. To prevent him from killing himself, his belt and shoelaces were confiscated.

Pound lost what little sanity he had left. Diagnosed as a schizophrenic with narcissistic personality disorder, he was sent back to the United States and committed to the St. Elizabeth hospital for the criminally insane, where he would languish for over a decade.

Ezra Pound was born in Idaho in 1885, but grew up in Pennsylvania. He came from a fiercely conservative Protestant family whose religion was steeped deep in anti-Semitism. His grandfather was a powerful Republican congressman.

As a boy, Pound attended military school, where he learned the importance of discipline and submission to authority for the greater good, and the erratic, self-destructive pattern of behavior that ruled his life took root.

And yet, he was also an intelligent, conceited, and independent young man who believed that discipline and submission were tools with which to shape the unwashed, barely literate masses into a decent orderly society - not for superior people like him. He wanted to be a poet.

When it came to his own liberty, the young fascist in training took great pleasure in challenging authority. In 1907, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he taught Romance languages at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Although fiercely conservative himself and teaching at a conservative college, Pound described the conservative town of Crawfordsville as "the sixth circle of Hell" - he loathed conservative small towns.

Pound's landladies caught him in flagrante delicto with a stranded chorus girl he'd invited to stay in his apartment and kicked him out. When word of this scandalous act got back to the college, he was fired.

Finding his own country hopelessly provincial, Pound went to Europe, which he loved. When he was thirteen, he'd gone on a European tour with his mother and aunt. On his return, he settled in London, where he struck up friendships with the great poets of the day.

Pound also burst onto the literary scene himself. Along with his old girlfriend, the famous poet Hilda Dolittle, he founded the Imagism movement, the opposite of Romantic poetry. He aimed for verse with clear imagery and devoid of unnecessary wordiness.

During the first world war, Pound championed the works of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and other authors whose works were considered too experimental for publication. He helped get Joyce's classic debut novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published.

Pound also began writing his most famous work - an unfinished epic poem called The Cantos, the first volume of which was published in 1924. It's rightfully considered one of the most important works of 20th century modernist poetry - and one of the most controversial.

The horrors of the Great War led Pound, who was already an anti-Semite, to believe in the anti-Semitic mythology spawned by the conflict. He believed that the war had been engineered and manipulated - on both sides - by Jewish bankers for their own profit.

Regarding the English as the willing slaves of the Jews, he moved to Paris in 1921. There, he connected with the great writers of the Lost Generation, including Tristan Tzara and Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway and Pound became good friends.

Like most of Ezra Pound's literary friends, Hemingway admired his talent and liked him as a friend, but had no use for his politics. Another of Pound's friends, the famous poet Marianne Moore - who was herself conservative - also deplored his fascism.

After living in Paris for three years, Pound's physical health was deteriorating, and he had suffered what Hemingway called "a small nervous breakdown." He moved to the warmer climate of Italy, where he became enamored with dictator Benito Mussolini.

In 1927, Pound launched his own literary magazine, which would feature the works of his friends, including Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and William Butler Yeats. Yet, the magazine ultimately flopped because of Pound's own writings.

As his mental state worsened, so did his writing. His editorials were often rambling, incoherent, and just plain bizarre. The man who championed fascism also praised Lenin and Confucius in his editorials!

When war came to Europe again, Ezra Pound, now totally demented and paranoid, believed that if the Allies won, the world would be enslaved by the Jews. So, he wrote and recorded propaganda radio broadcasts for which he was paid well.

These ten-minute broadcasts, filled with anti-Semitism and paranoid rants, aired on English language radio stations in Italy and Germany. After Mussolini was overthrown and executed, Pound and his mistress were seized by armed partisans, but later released.

Fearing for their lives, they turned themselves in at a nearby U.S. military post. While Pound awaited trial in a military prison, a reporter for the Philadelphia Record managed to get an interview with him.

He described Mussolini as an "imperfect character who lost his head" and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who had just committed suicide following Germany's defeat, as a modern day male Joan of Arc - "a saint."

Ezra Pound would spend more than ten years in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. His release in 1958 came about mostly due to letter writing campaigns launched by his friends, including Ernest Hemingway, who used his clout as a Nobel Prize winner.

Pound's friends all agreed that he was just a poor, sick, nasty yet harmless old man who should be pitied. The psychiatrists agreed that he was no longer a danger to himself or others. After his release, he moved to Naples. When he arrived, he gave the press the fascist salute.

Prior to his release, Pound publicly claimed to have renounced his anti-Semitism, but privately, he had corresponded with John Kasper, a prominent Ku Klux Klan leader who was later jailed for bombing a school because it allowed a black girl to attend.

In his later years, Pound tried to finish his magnum opus, The Cantos, but found that his talent had dried up. He couldn't write anymore. One of the finest poets of his time, and his talent was gone, his legacy forever tarnished.

Ezra Pound finally found clarity of thought and genuine repentance in his old age. In 1967, at the age of 82, he met legendary poet Allen Ginsberg in Venice. During their talk, Pound summed up his personal and artistic failings:

My own work does not make sense. A mess... my writing, stupidity and ignorance all the way through... the intention was bad, anything I've done has been an accident, in spite of my spoiled intentions the preoccupation with stupid and irrelevant matters... but my worst mistake was the stupid suburban anti-Semitic prejudice, all along that spoiled everything... I found after 70 years that I was not a lunatic but a moron. I should have been able to do better... it’s all doubletalk... it’s all tags and patches... a mess.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."

- Ezra Pound

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of Ezra Pound reading from his classic epic poem, The Cantos. Enjoy!

Notes For April 17th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 17th, 1981, the original, unexpurgated version of Sister Carrie, the classic, controversial novel by the famous American writer Theodore Dreiser, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Dreiser, then 28 years old, wrote the original manuscript of Sister Carrie in eight months, between 1899 and 1900. The first publisher he approached found his writing "[Not] sufficiently delicate to depict without offense to the reader the continued illicit relations of the heroine."

Fearing the novel would never be published in its original version, Dreiser began work on a major rewrite. With help from his wife and his friend and fellow writer Arthur Henry, he cut 40,000 words and made other changes, including an alternate ending.

When Dreiser approached publisher Doubleday, Page and Company with his new manuscript, junior partner Walter Page loved the novel and accepted it for publication, offering the author a verbal contract. Unfortunately, senior partner Frank Doubleday had a different reaction.

Doubleday found Sister Carrie extremely distasteful and unsuitable for publication, but Page's contract with Dreiser was binding, so he couldn't cancel it. So, he decided to sabotage the novel instead. He refused to promote the book in any way.

Not only that, Doubleday gave it a bland, red cover, with only the names of the novel and the author on it. Less than 500 copies were sold. When Doubleday's wife complained that the novel was too sordid, he withdrew it from circulation completely.

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.

Sister Carrie was later republished when Frank Norris, a reader for Doubleday, sent a few copies to reviewers who raved about it. All future editions of the novel would come from the edited version of the manuscript.

Still controversial even in its edited version, the 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, and 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. Sister Carrie would be rightfully considered a classic American novel, and its author would finally be recognized as one of America's greatest novelists.

Dreiser would go on to write more classic novels, including his Trilogy of Desire - The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947) - and his masterpiece, An American Tragedy (1925).

For the rest of his life, Theodore Dreiser was haunted by the ordeal he suffered in getting Sister Carrie published. He felt that, just like his anti-heroine, he had prostituted himself to survive and thrive. He died in 1945 at the age of 74.

Though he wouldn't live to see it, his original manuscript for Sister Carrie would finally be published - over eighty years after the edited version was released. In 1930, during his Nobel Prize Lecture, legendary writer Sinclair Lewis said this about the novel and its author:

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.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes."

- 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 Sister Carrie. Enjoy!

Notes For April 16th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 16th, 1962, The Golden Notebook, the classic novel by the Nobel Prize winning English writer Doris Lessing, was published. The novel is rightfully considered a seminal early work of feminist literature.

That wasn't what the author intended, though the book does have feminist themes. The Oxford Companion to English Literature described it as "inner space fiction." A more accurate description would be experimental existentialist fiction.

The Golden Notebook uses a fragmented, stream-of-consciousness narrative to tell the story of Anna Wulf, a middle aged writer and single mother who has come apart - literally and metaphorically. She keeps four notebooks, each one representing a part of her personality.

In her black notebook, Anna records her experiences in Africa, where she helped fight the colonial oppression of black Africans. In her red notebook, she records her idealism, specifically her political idealism, as she first becomes a passionate young communist.

Over time, however, she changes into a sober realist, disillusioned by the crimes of the Stalin regime and the realization that communism can't create the better world she had hoped for.

Anna's yellow notebook contains her novel, which is a fictionalized version of her life. Her blue notebook is her personal diary, a record of her day to day life.

The narrative is comprised of alternating fragments from each of her four notebooks, which reflects her chaotic state of mind. Fearing that she might go insane, Anna tries to weave together the threads of her four notebooks and create one complete Golden Notebook.

In doing so, she embarks on a harrowing journey in search of her true self, confronting her anxieties and the painful truths at the heart of her personal crises.

The Golden Notebook is a classic existentialist novel written in a post-modernist style. In 2005, Time magazine listed it as among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

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Quote Of The Day

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"With a library, you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how."

- Doris Lessing

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a BBC documentary on Doris Lessing. Enjoy!

Notes For April 12th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 12th, 1916, the legendary American children's book writer Beverly Cleary was born. She was born Beverly Atlee Bunn in McMinnville, Oregon. Her parents were farmers. She had no brothers or sisters. When she was six years old, her parents gave up farming and moved to Portland, Oregon.

As a little girl, Beverly loved books and reading, but when she entered first grade in Portland, she hated both her nasty teacher and the dreadful primers she was required to read in class.

After spending the first six years of her life on a farm, city living took a toll on her health, which also affected her reading skills and classwork.

In the second grade, Beverly's new teacher and the school librarian, both of whom she loved, helped her get her schoolwork up to par and rekindled her love of reading. The librarian encouraged her love of learning and natural curiosity, helping her to find good books on subjects that interested her.

At the age of eighteen, Beverly began her college education at Chaffey College in Ontario, California. She would later attend the University of California at Berkley and the University of Washington in Seattle, earning degrees in English and library science. While studying at Chaffey, she worked as a substitute librarian.

It wasn't easy paying for a college education during the Great Depression; while studying at the University of Washington, she worked through the university's cooperative education program. While doing so, she met her future husband, Clarence Cleary.

They had to elope because Clarence's Presbyterian parents were fiercely opposed to their son marrying a Catholic girl. They married anyway, and she bore him a twin son and daughter, Malcolm and Marrienne. Clarence's parents would always disapprove of his marriage to Beverly.

After graduating from the University of Washington, Beverly Cleary became a full time librarian in Yakima, Washington. Her favorite part of the job was interacting with the many children who came to borrow books.

The children often complained that there were few books written about modern children like them. Knowing that many children's books at that time were either old-fashioned, dated, or unrealistic, Beverly sympathized with the kids. She decided to try her own hand at writing children's books.

Beverly Cleary's first children's book, Henry Huggins, was published in 1950. The classic novella introduced the protagonist, Henry Huggins, and his friends, who live on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon.

In his first book, Henry meets and adopts a skinny stray dog whom he calls Ribsy. Boy and dog become the best of friends and get involved in adventures and mischief. Henry's best human friend is (gasp) a girl.

Henry Huggins became a huge hit with children, and critics loved the book as well, calling Henry a "modern Tom Sawyer." Beverly Cleary would write a series of Henry Huggins books, which would introduce other popular characters.

In the second book, Henry and Beezus, we get to know Henry's best friend, Beatrice "Beezus" Quimby. She hates her nickname, Beezus, which was given to her by her little sister, who as a toddler couldn't say Beatrice.

Beezus's spunky, impish little sister Ramona, originally a minor but memorable character in the Henry Huggins series, would become Beverly Cleary's most popular character and the star of her own series of books.

The first book, Beezus and Ramona, was published in 1955. In this classic, the precocious, irrepressible 4-year-old Ramona Quimby displays her talent for mischief, annoying her sister, throwing a party for her friends without permission, and ruining two birthday cakes.

Other memorable Ramona books include Ramona the Pest (1968), Ramona the Brave (1975), Ramona and Her Father (1977), Ramona and Her Mother (1979), Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1981), and Ramona Forever (1984).

Fifteen years later, in 1999, Beverly Cleary came out of retirement at the age of 83 and published her last entry in the series, Ramona's World. It would also be her last published book.

Ramona's World finds the now preteen Ramona awaiting her tenth birthday. Her older sister Beezus, now 15, has started high school and is becoming a mature young woman, which irks Ramona. Meanwhile, Ramona finds herself playing a more active role in looking after her baby sister, Roberta.

As the novella progresses, Ramona deals with her own increasing maturity, as her longtime feud with her nemesis, the snobbish Susan, comes to an end, and her relationship with her old pal Danny, whom she famously nicknamed Yard Ape, is off to a new beginning - they have an obvious crush on each other.

In 1988, the Ramona books were adapted as a ten-episode TV series for Canadian public television. The brief yet memorable series featured an outstanding performance by a then unknown child actress named Sarah Polley as Ramona. The series would be picked up by American public television and released on video.

Over twenty years later, in July of 2010, Disney's Walden Media division released Ramona and Beezus, a feature film adaptation of Beezus and Ramona, but it wasn't exactly a straightforward adaptation of that book. It included plot elements from all the Ramona books.

Some complained about the film's patchwork quilt of plot elements and criticized the casting of teen pop singer Selena Gomez as Beezus, but the movie received mostly good reviews from critics and fans. The script did capture the spirit of the Ramona books and the film featured a winning performance by young Joey King as Ramona.

In addition to her series novels, Beverly Cleary wrote many fine standalone children's novels, including Mitch and Amy (1967), Socks (1973), and Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983).

Mitch and Amy, inspired by the author's own twin children, told the story of 10-year-old twin brother and sister Mitch and Amy Huff. The Huff twins are polar opposites and bicker endlessly, each wishing to be an only child. But deep down, they really love each other - and stand up for each other when they're both victimized by the neighborhood bully.

Socks, part comedy and part drama, is the endearing tale of a spunky cat who is adopted by a young married couple. Then his loving, doting humans have a baby, and his whole world turns upside down. Socks doesn't like playing second fiddle to the annoying infant.

The Newbery Award winning Dear Mr. Henshaw told the heart wrenching story of second grader Leigh Botts, who struggles to deal with his parents' divorce, his strained relationship with his father, his loneliness, and the mysterious thief at school who keeps stealing his lunch.

As part of a class assignment, Leigh writes a letter to his favorite author, Boyd Henshaw. They become pen pals and close friends. Henshaw encourages Leigh to keep a diary of his thoughts and feelings. The narrative switches from letters to diary entries as Leigh chronicles his life.

Dear Mr. Henshaw was followed by a sequel, Strider (1991), in which Leigh and his friend Barry find a stray dog on the beach whom they name Strider. They decide to adopt Strider and share custody of him the way that most divorced couples share custody of their children.

Beverly Cleary died in March of 2021 at the age of 104. Her work continues to win new generations of fans and influence new generations of children's writers.

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Quote Of The Day

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“As a child, I very much objected to books that tried to teach me something. I just wanted to read for pleasure, and I did. But if a book tried to teach me, I returned it to the library.”

- Beverly Cleary

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features an Oregon Public Television documentary on Beverly Cleary. Enjoy!

Notes For April 11th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 11th, 1931, the legendary American writer Dorothy Parker resigned as drama critic for the New Yorker magazine.

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.

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 founded the New Yorker magazine in 1925.

He 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, Dorothy 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 scathing 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. 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 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. She 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.

Dorothy died of a heart attack in June of 1967 at the age of 73. She left her estate to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. After his assassination the following year, 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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“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”

- Dorothy Parker

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of Dorothy Parker reading her poem, Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom. Enjoy!

Notes For April 10th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On April 10th, 1906, The Four Million, the classic short story collection by the legendary American writer O. Henry, was published. It contained two of the author's most popular stories - The Cop and the Anthem and The Gift of the Magi.

The Cop and the Anthem is set in New York City. It's late autumn, and with winter coming, a homeless hobo called Soapy isn't looking forward to sleeping out in the cold.

Soapy decides to get himself arrested so he can spend the night in a warm jail cell. He tries swindling, petty thievery, vandalism, and pretending to be publicly intoxicated, but he just can't get arrested.

When Soapy tries sexually harassing a young woman, she turns out to be a prostitute. Heartbroken, he moves on. As the sun begins to set on a cold night, he finds himself standing outside a small church.

Inside the church, the organist is practicing. Soapy listens to him play. Moved by the music, he contemplates his life and decides to clean up his act and get himself a job and a home. Lost in reverie over the prospect of a brighter future, Soapy is approached by a cop - who arrests him for loitering.

The Gift of the Magi, considered O. Henry's most beloved story, is a heartwarming Christmas tale. Jim and Della are a poor young married couple living in a modest little apartment.

Although poor, they each have a valuable possession that they take pride in. Della has her beautiful, long flowing hair, while Jim's prize possession is his grandfather's pocket watch.

It's Christmas Eve, and Della has just under two dollars to spend on Jim's Christmas present. Desperate, she decides to sell the only thing of value she has - her hair. She sells it for $20 and buys a shiny platinum fob chain for Jim's treasured pocket watch.

When Jim comes home, she gives him his present and tells him she sold her hair to pay for it. He fixes her with an expression “that she could not read, and it terrified her.” Then he gives Della her Christmas present - a set of expensive, fancy combs for her hair. He sold his grandfather's pocket watch to pay for them.

The couple is left with two Christmas presents they can't use and one invaluable gift they take great pleasure in - their deep love for each other. The story ends with the author comparing their sacrificial gifts to each other with the biblical gifts of the Magi given to the baby Jesus:

The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the new-born King of the Jews in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Magi.

O. Henry was the pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, born in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1862. A voracious reader as a child, he took up writing in his twenties. While living in Austin, Texas, in the late 1880s, he wrote short stories and founded a humorous weekly literary magazine called The Rolling Stone.

Porter supported himself by working at a bank, which would lead to his downfall. He would be accused of embezzlement and fired, but not indicted. He moved to Houston, where he worked on his magazine and also wrote for the Houston Post.

During this time, the bank where Porter had worked was audited by the feds, who arrested him on embezzlement charges. He fled, and while on the lam, went to Honduras, where he coined the term "banana republic" to describe that third world Latin American country and others like it.

When Porter learned that his wife was dying of tuberculosis, he returned to Texas and surrendered. He was granted bail so he could remain with his wife pending an appeal. After she died, Porter lost his appeal and was sentenced to five years in a federal prison in Ohio.

While serving his time, Porter continued to write. He used several pseudonyms, settling on O. Henry - the name he was becoming famous under. He had a friend in New Orleans forward his stories so that publishers wouldn't realize that he was in prison.

After serving three years of his five year sentence, he was paroled for good behavior. The year after his release from prison, O. Henry moved to New York City, which was the mecca of the publishing world.

He would become one of the great masters of the short story, writing nearly four hundred of them. The critics of the day were rarely kind to O. Henry, but his readers loved him and couldn't get enough of his stories.

Sadly, O. Henry's life would be cut short by chronic health problems such as diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, and an enlarged heart. These problems were caused or worsened by his heavy drinking. He died in 1910 at the age of 47.

Stories from his classic collection would be adapted as a classic anthology feature film, O. Henry's Full House, in 1952. The movie, directed by multiple filmmakers, featured an all-star cast, with each story introduced and narrated by legendary writer John Steinbeck.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves."

- O. Henry

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of O. Henry's classic short story collection, The Four Million. Enjoy!