Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

October 17th, 2002

In 1903, American novelist Nathanael West (Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933) is born in New York City.

Nathanael West, b. October 17, 1903, d. 1940

Nathanael West’s premature death in an automobile accident cut short a career that might have given us more novels as strong as The Day of the Locust, his last one, and might not. West’s vision was a dark one, and it had undoubtedly been darkened further by his work in Hollywood, grinding out scripts for B-movies. His two good books — and Miss Lonelyhearts and Day are extremely good — end in apocalypse; it’s difficult to imagine how he would have gone on or what more he had to say. But we’ll never know.

Suggested Reading Novels The Dream Life of Balso Snell, 1931. Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933. A Cool Million, 1934. The Day of the Locust. 1939.

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A Week in Literary History

October 12th, 2002

COLUMBUS DAY

… Mr. Parkhill opened the class with these ringing words: “Tonight, let us set aside our routine tasks for a while to consider the man whose – er – historic achievement the world will commemorate tomorrow.”

Expectancy murmured its sibilant way across the room. “To this man,” Mr. Parkhill continued, “the United States – America – owes its very beginning. I’m sure you all know whom I mean, for he —”

“Jawdge Vashington!” Miss Fanny Gidwitz promptly guessed.

“No, no. Not George Washington — watch that ‘w,’ Miss Gidwitz. I refer to —”

“Paul Rewere!” cried Oscar Trabish impetuously….

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A Week in Literary History

October 3rd, 2002

In 1925, American novelist Gore Vidal (Burr, 1973) is born in West Point, N.Y.

Gore Vidal, b. October 3, 1925

In his twenty-nine novels, six plays, many screenplays, and innumerable essays and non-fiction works, Vidal has made himself witness not only to his own times, but to the whole of American history. Immensely learned, witty, and trenchant, he emerges as the widest ranging American writer of the second half of the twentieth century, and perhaps the most important.

Suggested Reading Novels Willilaw, 1946. The City and the Pillar, 1948. The Judgment of Paris, 1952. Messiah, 1954. Julian, 1964. Myra Breckinridge, 1968. Myron, 1975. Kalki, 1978. Creation, 1981. Duluth, 1983. Live from Golgotha, 1992. The Chronicles of Empire novels Washington, D.C., 1967. Burr, 1973. 1876, 1976. Lincoln, 1984. Empire, 1987. Hollywood, 1990. The Golden Age, 2000. Essays Rocking the Boat, 1962. Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship, 1969. Sex, Death and Money, 1969. Matters of Fact and of Fiction, 1977. Vidal in Venice, 1985. A View from the Diners Club, 1991. Screening History, 1992. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992. The American Presidency, 1998. Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings, 1999. The Last Empire, 2001. Memoir Palimpsest: A Memoir, 1995. Drama Visit to a Small Planet, 1957. The Best Man, 1960.

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A Week in Literary History

September 25th, 2002

American novelist William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying, 1930) is born William Falkner in New Albany, Miss., 1897.

William Faulkner, b. September 25, 1897, d. 1962

In one short burst during his early thirties Faulkner wrote the beginnings of six superb novels; then he finished them and went on to a thirty-year career of uniformly high quality. By the end of his life, as the most original and substantial American novelist of the twentieth century, winner of the Nobel and every other honor, he finally had the satisfaction of seeing his works widely published and praised.

Suggested Reading Novels Soldier’s Pay, 1926. Mosquitoes, 1927. Sartoris, 1929. The Sound and the Fury, 1929. As I Lay Dying, 1930. Sanctuary, 1931. Light in August, 1932. Pylon, 1935. Absalom, Absalom! 1936. The Wild Palms, 1939. The Hamlet, 1940. Go Down, Moses, 1942. Intruder in the Dust, 1948. Requiem for a Nun, 1951. A Fable, 1954. The Town, 1957. Short stories These Thirteen, 1931. Doctor Marino and Other Stories, 1934. The Unvanquished: Sartoris Stories, 1938. Knight’s Gambit, 1949. Collected Short Stories of William Faulkner, 1950.

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A Week in Literary History

September 12th, 2002

American writer H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (The American Language, 1919-48) is born in Baltimore in 1880.

H.L. Mencken, b. September 12, 1880, d. 1956

Perhaps no other writer has influenced the tone and style of American prose more than the Sage of Baltimore, the incomparable stylist and thinker who ruled literary America for twenty or thirty years early in the twentieth century. Decades later, his writing remains a model of vigorous, memorable, and original expression.

Suggested Reading Essays & studies George Bernard Shaw—His Plays, 1905. The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1908. A Book of Prefaces, 1917. In Defense of Women, 1918. Prejudices (in six series), 1919-1927. Notes on Democracy, 1926. Treatise on the Gods, 1930. Treatise on Right and Wrong, 1934. Generally Political, 1944. A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949. Philology The American Language, 1919. Supplements, 1945-1950. Autobiography Happy Days, 1940. Newspaper Days, 1941. Heathen Days, 1943. Diary The Diary of H.L. Mencken, 1989.

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A Week in Literary History

September 4th, 2002

On September 4, American novelist Richard Wright (Native Son, 1940) is born in 1908 near Natchez, Miss.

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A Week in Literary History

August 27th, 2002

American novelist Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie, 1900) is born in Terre Haute, Ind. in 1871.

Theodore Dreiser, b. August 27, 1871, d. 1945

Few major writers ever wrote worse than Dreiser, but as Mencken said, “one swiftly forgets his intolerable writing, his mirthless, sedulous, repellent manner, in the face of the Athenian tragedy he instils into his seduced and soul-sick servant girls, his barbaric pirates of finances, his conquered and hamstrung supermen, his wives who sit and wait.” The hugeness in Dreiser’s books — the unrelenting empathy, the implacable honesty — knock all the clumsiness into a corner, and we’re left with unique, unmediated greatness.

Suggested Reading Novels Sister Carrie, 1900. Jennie Gerhardt, 1911. The Financier, 1912. The Titan, 1914. The “Genius,” 1915. An American Tragedy, 1925.

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A Week in Literary History

August 22nd, 2002

American wit, poet, and short story writer Dorothy Parker (Here Lies, 1936) is born Dorothy Rothschild in West End, N.J., 1893.

Dorothy Parker, b. August 22, 1893, d. 1967

Dorothy Parker’s bittersweet reflections on the mating game took up a lot of her creative energy, but she also wrote some immortal book and drama criticism. Of Katherine Hepburn in a stage play: “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” Reviewing as Constant Reader, of A.A. Milne’s Pooh books: “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.” Contrary to popular belief, and her expectation, she did not die young.

Suggested Reading Verse Enough Rope, 1926. Death and Taxes and Other Poems, 1931. Not So Deep As a Well, 1936. Collected Poetry, 1944. Short stories Laments for the Living, 1930. Here Lies, 1939. Collected Stories, 1942. Other Constant Reader, 1970. The Portable Dorothy Parker, 1973.

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A Week in Literary History

August 19th, 2002

American versifier Ogden Nash (I’m a Stranger Here Myself, 1938) is born in Rye, N.Y., 1902.

Ogden Nash, b. August 19, 1902, d. 1971

Great light verse is impossible to define, but you know it when you see it, or, in the case of Ogden Nash, when you see and hear it. Nash has delighted generations of readers with his talent for gnarled rhymes, sometimes based on odd spellings (“awesome” and “blawssom”) but more often on bold, unashamed ingenuity, as in this representative sample from his collection The Private Dining Room:

The Caterpillar

I find among the poems of Schiller
No mention of the caterpillar,
Nor can I find one anywhere
In Petrarch or in Baudelaire,
So here I sit in extra session
To give my personal impression.
The caterpillar, as it’s called,
If often hairy, seldom bald;
It looks as if it never shaves;
When it walks, it walks in waves;
And from the cradle to the chrysalis
It’s utterly speechless, songless, whistleless.

Suggested Reading Verse collections Hard Lines, 1931. I’m a Stranger Here Myself, 1938. Good Intentions, 1942. Many Long Years Ago, 1945. Versus, 1949. The Private Dining Room, 1953. Marriage Lines, 1964.

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A Week in Literary History

August 8th, 2002

American novelist James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953) is born in Harlem in 1924.

James Baldwin, b. August 8, 1924, d. 1987

The adopted son of a preacher, Baldwin turned away from religion at seventeen and never looked back. His novels, reviews, and essays document the heyday of Greenwich Village, the turbulence of the Sixties, and the complications of being black and homosexual in America. But at their best, they go well beyond documentary value into the world of narrative art.

Suggested Reading Novels Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953. Giovanni's Room, 1956. Another Country, 1962. Plays The Amen Corner, 1954. Blues for Mister Charlie, 1964. Essays Notes of a Native Son, 1955. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, 1961. The Fire Next Time, 1963. The Price of the Ticket, 1985.

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