Black Lamb

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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A Week in Literary History

August 8th, 2002

Queen Elizabeth reviews her troops in anticipation of the approach of the Spanish Armada, 8 August 1588:

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdoms, and of my people.

Elizabeth R.

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A Week in Literary History

August 1st, 2002

American novelist Herman Melville (Moby-Dick, 1851) is born in New York City in 1819. Exactly 100 years later, Melville’s granddaughter discovers the 340-page manuscript of Billy Budd, Foretopman in a trunk, 26 years after the author’s death in obscurity.

Herman Melville, b. August 1, 1819, d. 1891

Although often thought of these days as old-fashioned (like his neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne), Herman Melville is in fact a very modern-seeming writer. After Moby-Dick, go back to the South Sea yarns Omoo and Typee, then the coming-of-age-at-sea novels Redburn and White Jacket, and then move on to the amazing mastery of Piazza Tales (The Encantadas, Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno) and, finally, Billy Budd, not published until almost forty years after Melville had died, completely forgotten, at the age of 72. With Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, one of the unassailable titans of American literature.

Suggested Reading Novels Typee, 1846. Omoo, 1847. Mardi, 1849. Redburn, 1849. White Jacket, 1850. Moby Dick, 1851. Pierre, 1852. Israel Potter, 1855. The Confidence Man, 1857. Billy Budd, Foretopman, 1924. Stories Piazza Tales, 1856.

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A Week in Literary History

July 29th, 2002

Immortal American journalist and novelist Don Marquis (archy and mehitabel, 1927) is born in 1878 in Walnut, Ill.

Don Marquis, b. July 29, 1878, d. 1937

An indefatigable writer of stories, poems, and plays, Marquis made his name early in the twentieth century with humorous newspaper columns in first The New York Sun and then the Herald Tribune. His place in history, however, was insured with the publication of archy and mehitabel in 1930 and its companion books in the years to follow. The stories of the cockroach author archy and his pal mehitabel, a down-at-the-heels lady cat, are as fresh today as when they were written. Be sure to get copies with the original illustrations by George Herriman.

Suggested Reading archy and mehitabel, 1930. archy s life of mehitabel, 1933. archy does his part, 1935. the lives and times of archy and mehitabel, 1943.

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A Week in Literary History

July 26th, 2002

Irish genius and playwright George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman, 1903) is born in Dublin, 1856. In 1925 he will win the Nobel Prize for literature.

George Bernard Shaw, b. July 26, 1856, d. 1950

Shaw singlehandedly dragged English drama out of its Victorian doldrums and restored its tattered Shakespearean reputation. His plays shine with humor and subtlety, and in his prefaces to them, he shows himself a master of persuasive prose. For almost eighty years, this brilliant, combative Irishman bestrode the world of English letters without peer, a continual advertisement for intelligence and wit.

Suggested Reading Plays Arms and the Man, 1894. Candida, 1897. The Devil’s Disciple, 1897. Captain Brassbound’s Confession, 1900. Caesar and Cleopatra, 1901. Mrs Warren’s Profession, 1902. Man and Superman, 1903. John Bull’s Other Island, 1904. Major Barbara, 1905. The Doctor’s Dilemma, 1906. Misalliance, 1910. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, 1910. Androcles and the Lion, 1913. Pygmalion, 1913. Heartbreak House, 1919. Back to Methuselah, 1921. Saint Joan, 1923. The Apple Cart, 1929. Too True to Be Good, 1932. Essays & Studies The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891. The Impossibilities of Anarchism, 1893. The Sanity of Art, 1895. The Perfect Wagnerite, 1898. Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 1906. Common Sense about the War, 1914. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928. Major Critical Essays, 1930. Music in London 1890-1894, 1930. Essays in Fabian Socialism, 1932. Pen Portraits and Reviews, 1932. London Music in 1888-1889, 1937. Autobiography Shaw Gives Himself Away, 1939. Sixteen Self Sketches, 1949. Letters Bernard Shaw and Mrs Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence, 1952.

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