Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

December 8th, 2002

In 1894, American humorist James Thurber (The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1935), is born in Columbus, Ohio.

James Thurber, b. December 8, 1894, d. 1961

Thurber’s humor is not precisely like that of other talented North Americans. Like Robert Benchley, S.J. Perelman, or Stephen Leacock he can be goofy, satirical, sly, or hilarious, but an elusive quality, tinged with melancholy, is always present in his stories. T.S. Eliot said, “There is a criticism of life at the bottom of it.” The books listed below, with the exception of Is Sex Necessary? (a wacky and perversely wise “manual”), are collections of pieces he published over a long career, mostly in The New Yorker. They constitute a sumptuous compendium of timeless morsels.

Suggested Reading Essays, Stories, Sketches, & Drawngs Is Sex Necessary?, 1929 (with E.B. White). The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931. The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, 1932. My Life and Hard Times, 1933. The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1935. My World—And Welcome to It!, 1942. Men, Women and Dogs, 1943. The Thurber Carnival, 1945. The Beast in Me and Other Animals, 1948. The Thurber Album, 1952. Thurber Country, 1953. Fables & Fantasies Fables for Our Time, 1940. The Thirteen Clocks, 1950. Further Fables for Our Time, 1956.

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A Week in Literary History

December 8th, 2002

In 1868, English novelist Norman Douglas (South Wind, 1917), is born in Thüringen, Austria.

Norman Douglas, b. December 8, 1868, d. 1952

Douglas’s personal life, punctuated with sexual scandals and crimes, was considerably more colorful than even his best book, the charming and timeless South Wind, based on life on the isle of Capri, where he died. Despite brushes with the law in various countries, mostly involving underage boys, Douglas found time to write a great deal, and his travel books and volumes of autobiography are well worth reading.

Suggested Reading Novels South Wind, 1917. Travel Siren Land, 1911. Fountains in the Sand, 1912. Old Calabria, 1915. Alone, 1921. Together, 1923. Autobiography Looking Back, 1933. Late Harvest, 1946. More or less obscene poetry Some Limericks, 1928.

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A Week in Literary History

December 7th, 2002

In 1888, novelist Joyce Cary (The Horse’s Mouth, 1944) is born in Londonderry.

Joyce Cary, b. December 7, 1888, d. 1957

The Anglo-Irish novelist was a wonderfully wise and elegant writer. His Gully Jimson-Sara Monday trilogy — Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse’s Mouth — is a masterpiece, but all of his vivid novels reward rereading. Just work your way through in chronological order and discover one of the twentieth century’s best writers.

Suggested Reading Novels Alissa Saved, 1932. The American Visitor, 1933. The African Witch, 1936. Castle Corner, 1938. Mister Johnson, 1939. Charley is My Darling, 1940. The House of Children, 1941. Herself Surprised, 1941. To Be a Pilgrim, 1942. The Horse’s Mouth, 1944. The Moonlight, 1946. A Fearful Joy, 1949. Prisoner of Grace, 1952. Except the Lord, 1953. Not Honour More, 1955.

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A Week in Literary History

December 7th, 2002

In 1888, Anglo-Irish novelist Joyce Cary (The Horse’s Mouth, 1944) is born in Londonderry.

Joyce Cary, b. December 7, 1888, d. 1957

The Anglo-Irish novelist was a wonderfully wise and elegant writer. His Gully Jimson-Sara Monday trilogy — Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse’s Mouth — is a masterpiece, but all of his vivid novels reward rereading. Just work your way through in chronological order and discover one of the twentieth century’s best writers.

Suggested Reading Novels Alissa Saved, 1932. The American Visitor, 1933. The African Witch, 1936. Castle Corner, 1938. Mister Johnson, 1939. Charley is My Darling, 1940. The House of Children, 1941. Herself Surprised, 1941. To Be a Pilgrim, 1942. The Horse’s Mouth, 1944. The Moonlight, 1946. A Fearful Joy, 1949. Prisoner of Grace, 1952. Except the Lord, 1953. Not Honour More, 1955.

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A Week in Literary History

December 3rd, 2002

In 1857, novelist Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim, 1900) is born Josef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski in Berdichev, Polish Ukraine.

Joseph Conrad, b. December 3, 1857, d. 1924

Conrad, born in Poland, has often been praised for his mastery of his second language, but in fact he wrote in a strange un-Engish. After a couple of notable books he published his so-called masterpiece, Lord Jim, in 1900, then needed help on three subsequent novels from Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford Madox Ford), who later said, “Conrad spent a day finding the mot juste and then killed it.” We confess to a weakness for The Nigger of the Narcissus, but then we’re soft on sea stories, which is probably why we tolerate Lord Jim insofar as we do.

Suggested Reading Novels The Nigger of the Narcissus, 1897. Lord Jim, 1900. Nostromo, 1904. The Secret Agent, 1907. Short stories & tales Typhoon, 1902. Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories, 1902. The Complete Short Stories of Joseph Conrad, 1933.

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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.

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A Week in Literary History

November 28th, 2002

In 1757, English artist and poet William Blake (Songs of Innocence, 1789) is born in London.

William Blake, b. November 28, 1757, d. 1827

Almost all of his contemporaries thought Blake crazy, not just for his revolutionary political views and disdain for the Church of England, but for the singularity of his verse. Not since the madman Christopher Smart had anyone written in a more distinctive style. A brilliant graphic artist as well, Blake has become a champion of visionaries everywhere.

Suggested Reading Illuminated books Songs of Innocence and Experience, 1789. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-93. Continental Prophecies, 1793-95. Jerusalem, 1804-20.

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A Week in Literary History

November 24th, 2002

In 1713, Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, 1760-67) is born in Clonmel, County Tipperary.

Laurence Sterne, b. November 24, 1713, d. 1768

For pure wickedness, Sterne has long been considered more salacious, if not more savage, than Swift, but this is a bum rap. The priggish Samuel Johnson’s disapproved of his Yorkshire contemporary shouldn’t blind us to Sterne’s manifest humanity. The character of Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy — along with Tolstoy’s Andre, Wilkie Collins’ Gabriel Betteredge, and G.B. Edwards’ Ebenezer LePage — is one of the most memorable and loveable in all of literature. And Tristram Shandy made possible, for better or worse, a truly modern literary perspective, in which the narrative and narrator are always subject to authorial scrutiny and, above all, skepticism.

Suggested Reading Novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., 1759-67. Travel A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Sermons The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, 1760-1769.

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A Week in Literary History

November 22nd, 2002

English novelist George Eliot (Middlemarch, 1871-72) is born Mary Ann Evans in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, 1819.

George Eliot, b. November 22, 1819, d. 1880

A controversial woman in her time, Mary Ann Evans lived openly with a married man, George Lewes (she later married him), and married a second man, twenty years younger than her, when Lewes died. Although women at the time published under their own names, she chose a masculine name because she didn't want to be thought of as a writer of romances. Her novels are masterpieces of naturalistic Victorian fiction, and Middlemarch, in particular, is not be missed.

Suggested Reading Novels Adam Bede, 1859. The Mill on the Floss, 1860. Silas Marner, 1861. Romola, 1863. Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866. Middlemarch, 1871-2. Daniel Deronda, 1876.

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A Week in Literary History

November 21st, 2002

French writer François Marie Arouet, who will publish under the name Voltaire (Candide, 1759), is born in Paris in 1694.

Voltaire, b. November 21, 1694, d. 1778

While still in his early twenties, François-Marie Arouet was imprisoned in the Bastille for satirizing the French aristocracy, and he went on to write countless satires, plays, philosophical works, histories, and essays under 178 separate pen names. As Voltaire, he was known throughout the world, and his ideas on civil liberties, religion, and trade influenced all the thinkers of his age and after.

Suggested Reading Major works Letters on the English, 1733. Zadig, 1747. Micromégas, 1752. Candide, 1759. Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764. La Princesse de Babylone, 1768.

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