Black Lamb

Last Week in Literary History

November 30th, 2002

In 1667, Irish satirist Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels, 1726) is born in Dublin.

American novelist Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884) is born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Mo., 1835.

Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, b. November 30, 1667 and 1835, d. 1745 and 1910

It is our contention that Twain was the reincarnation of Swift, shorn of Swift’s neuroses and religious allegiances. If you doubt, read the last section of Gulliver’s Travels and then compare it to Twain’s later writings, especially Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Swift’s beautiful and moving, if ironic, evocation of the superiority of brute animals over human beings finds its fruition in young Huck’s repeated disillusionings in the face of mankind’s mendacity, in the cruel truths of the American slaveholding days, and in modern man’s dismantling of medieval England in the name of progress. And both Swift and Twain were great masters of clear, provocative English prose, the progenitors of the later wizards Bernard Shaw and H.L. Mencken.

SWIFT
Suggested Reading Fiction A Tale of a Tub, 1704. Gulliver’s Travels, 1726. The Battle of the Books, 1704. Essays An Argument against Abolishing Christianity, 1708. A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents, 1729. Poetry Cadenus and Vanessa, 1713. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, Written by Himself, 1739.

TWAIN
Suggested Reading Novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876. The Prince and the Pauper, 1882. The Adventures of Huckeberry Finn, 1884. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, 1896. Stories The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, 1867. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, 1900. Memoirs Roughing It, 1872. Life on the Mississippi, 1883. Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1924. Travel & Sketches The Innocents Abroad, 1869. A Tramp Abroad, 1880. Following the Equator, 1897.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, A Week in Literary History | Link to this Entry

A Week in Literary History

November 11th, 2002

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, 1886) is born in Moscow in 1821.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, b. November 11, 1821 d. 1881

Dostoevsky has his detractors, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, who had no taste for his countryman’s religious enthusiasms and thought his novels sentimental. But Dostoevsky wrote on a huge scale; his excesses are part of the deal and his preoccupation with psychology is unparalleled. His characters — quarreling, agonizing, rushing about, philosophizing, and always talking talking talking — are fascinating. Their craziness — even their author’s — is the stuff of humanity, presented by a giant of literature.

Suggested Reading Novels Notes from the House of the Dead, 1861-62. Notes from Underground, 1864. The Gambler, 1866. Crime and Punishment, 1866. The Idiot, 1868. The Possessed, 1871-72. The Brothers Karamazov, 1879-80.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, A Week in Literary History | Link to this Entry

A Week in Literary History

November 9th, 2002

Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons, 1862) is born in Orel in 1818.

Ivan Turgenev, b. November 9, 1818, d. 1883

Turgenev was the first of the great Russian novelists to be widely read in Europe. In Fathers and Sons he introduced the vexing question of nihilism, borrowed from the West, into the Russian consciousness. His elegant style became a model not so much for other Russian writers but for generations of foreigners. By the end of his life, he had become a famous figure in his homeland: his funeral was attended by delegations from 180 organizations and was an occasion of national mourning.

Suggested Reading Novels Fathers and Sons, 1862. Smoke, 1867. Spring Torrents, 1871. Virgin Soil, 1877. Stories A Sportsman’s Sketches, 1852.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, A Week in Literary History | Link to this Entry