Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

September 18th, 2002

Eighteenth-century literary colossus Samuel Johnson is born in Lichfield, 1709.

Samuel Johnson, b. September 18, 1709, d. 1784

The Great Cham is the only literary figure of importance, Oscar Wilde excepted, to be remembered as much for his conversation as for his literary work. Even his monumental dictionary (the first systematic, etymological one in the language) and his annotated edition of Shakespeare are less well known than his remarks and ripostes, as lovingly recorded by James Boswell, who eulogized Johnson as “a man whose talents, acquirements, and virtues were so extraordinary, that the more his character is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present age, and by posterity, with admiration and reverence.”

Suggested Reading Essays The Rambler, 1750-52. The Idler, 1758-60. Lexicography Dictionary of the English Language, 1755. Biography Life of Richard Savage, 1744. Lives of the Poets, 1779-81. Poems London, 1738. The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749. Novel The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, 1759.

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A Week in Literary History

September 15th, 2002

American humorist Robert Benchley (The American Roundup, 1954) is born in Worcester, Mass. in 1889.

Robert Benchley, b. September 15, 1889, d. 1945

Having gained fame as a writer of wacky humorous pieces for The New Yorker, Benchley increasingly turned his pen to writing for movies. He also appeared as a funny character actor in many films and even won an Oscar for the short subject How to Sleep. He is best read now in collections of his short, hilarious, and inimitable pieces.

Suggested Reading Collections Of All Things, 1921. Love Conquers All, 1922. Pluck and Luck, 1925. The Early Worm, 1927. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; or, David Copperfield, 1928. The Treasurer’s Report, and Other Aspects of Community Singing, 1930. From Bed to Worse; or, Comforting Thoughts About the Bison, 1934. My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew, 1936. After 1903 — What? 1938.

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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

Novelist William Cooper (Scenes from Married Life, 1961) is born in England in 1910.

William Cooper, b. September 4, 1910, d. 2002

Cooper, born Harry Summerfield Hoff almost a century ago and now almost forgotten, published prolifically in the Fifties after years as a schoolmaster and English civil servant. His series of four novels with Joe Lunn as the protagonist are well worth revisiting. They’re funny, wise, and gently satiric of life in England after the War and into the Eighties.

Suggested Reading Novels Scenes from Provincial Life, 1950. Scenes from Married Life, 1961. Scenes from Metropolitan Life, 1982. Scenes from Later Life, 1983. Scenes from Life and Death, 1999.

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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 28th, 2002

In 1913, Canadian playwright and novelist Robertson Davies (Fifth Business, 1970) is born William Robertson Davies in Thamesville, Ontario.

Robertson Davies, b. August 28, 1913, d. 1995

A Canadian treasure, Robertson Davies was a prolific playwright (he wrote eleven), critic (fifteen books, including an invaluable biography of fellow Canadian Stephen Leacock), and novelist (three trilogies plus one left incomplete at his death), as well as a professor and journalist. He received every honor Canada could bestow. Start with the Deptford Trilogy (the first book, Fifth Business, is a masterpiece) and discover an erudite, funny, and humane writer.

Suggested Reading Novels The Salterton Trilogy Tempest-Tost, 1951. Leaven of Malice, 1954. A Mixture of Frailties, 1958. The Deptford Trilogy Fifth Business, 1970. The Manticore, 1972. World of Wonders, 1975. The Cornish Trilogy The Rebel Angels, 1981. What’s Bred in the Bone, 1985. The Lyre of Orpheus, 1988.

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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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