Frank Beacham's Journal

William Faulkner was born 124 years ago today

William Faulkner was born 124 years ago today.

A writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career.

He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his life, and Holly Springs in Marshall County.

Faulkner is one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams.

Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Two of his works, A Fable (1954), and his last novel, The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel, The Sound and the Fury, as sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century. Also on the list were, As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932).

Faulkner was known for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. In contrast to the minimalist understatement of his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made frequent use of "stream of consciousness" in his writing. He wrote often highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex and sometimes Gothic or grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters.

His characters included former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian or working-class Southerners and Southern aristocrats.

Faulkner suffered serious injuries in a horse-riding accident in 1959, and died from a myocardial infarction, at age 64, on July 6, 1962.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born 125 years ago today

F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born 125 years ago today.

An author of novels and short stories, Fitzgerald’s works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously.

Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

The Great Gatsby has been the basis for numerous films of the same name, spanning nearly 90 years; 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. In 1958, his life from 1937–1940 was dramatized in Beloved Infidel.

While at a country club, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900–1948), the "golden girl," in Fitzgerald's terms, of Montgomery, Alabama youth society. Fitzgerald attempted to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Despite working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement.

Scott returned to his parents' house at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill, in St. Paul, to revise The Romantic Egoist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, about the post-WWI flapper generation, it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919 and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. The novel was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year.

Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921 and died on June 16, 1986.

Paris in the 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. The Great Gatsby, considered his masterpiece, was published in 1925.

Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, mostly Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald’s friendship with Hemingway was quite vigorous, as many of Fitzgerald’s relationships would prove to be.

Hemingway, however, did not get on well with Zelda. In addition to describing her as "insane," he claimed that she “encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract Scott from his work on his novel."

As did most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly and Esquire.

Fitzgerald also sold his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. This “whoring,” as Fitzgerald and, subsequently, Hemingway called these sales, was a sore point in the authors’ friendship. Fitzgerald claimed that he would first write his stories in an authentic manner but then put in “twists that made them into salable magazine stories.”

Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. He suffered two heart attacks in late 1930. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion.

He moved in with Sheilah Graham, who lived in Hollywood on North Hayworth Ave., one block east of Fitzgerald's apartment on North Laurel Ave. Fitzgerald had two flights of stairs to climb to his apartment. Graham's was on the ground floor.

On the night of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love starring Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas. As the two were leaving the Pantages Theater, Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had trouble leaving the theater. He said to Graham: "They think I am drunk, don't they?"

The following day, as Fitzgerald ate a candy bar and made notes in his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly, Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, gasp and fall to the floor.

She ran to the manager of the building, Harry Culver, founder of Culver City. Upon entering the apartment to assist Fitzgerald, Culver said, "I'm afraid he's dead."

Fitzgerald had died of a massive heart attack. He was 44.

Stephen King is 74 years old today

Stephen King is 74 years old today.

King is an author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many of them have been adapted into feature films, television movies and comic books.

King has published fifty novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards and British Fantasy Society Awards. His novella, The Way Station, was a Nebula Award novelette nominee. His short story, The Man in the Black Suit, received the O. Henry Award.

In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

King has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire oeuvre, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).

King is a fan of the Ramones, to the extent that he wrote the liner notes for the 2003 Ramones tribute album, We're a Happy Family. He is also a fan of hard rock such as AC/DC; he arranged for their album, Who Made Who, to feature as the score for the film he directed in 1986, Maximum Overdrive.

King has also stated that he likes heavy metal and has named bands like Anthrax, Judas Priest and Metallica as amongst his favorites to write to. King collaborated with Michael Jackson to create Ghosts (1996), a 40-minute musical video, and collaborated with Shooter Jennings and his band Hierophant, providing the narration for their album, Black Ribbons. King also wrote a musical play Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (2012) with John Mellencamp.

King played guitar for the rock band Rock Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members have included Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry and Greg Iles.

King and the other band members collaborated to release an e-book called Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (June 2013).

Stephen King performs with the Rock Bottom Remainders

Upton Sinclair, author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres, was born 143 years ago today

Upton Sinclair, author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres, was born 143 years ago today.

Sinclair achieved popularity in the first half of the 20th Century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle, in 1906. It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

In 1919, he published, The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States.

Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.

Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence."

In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.

Stanisław Lem was born 100 years ago today

Stanisław Lem was born 100 years ago today.

Lem was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 45 million copies.

From the 1950s to 2000s, he published many books, both science fiction and philosophical/futurological.

He is best known as the author of the 1961 novel, Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. Lem was one of the most widely read science-fiction writers in the world.

His works explore philosophical themes through speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humanity's place in the universe.

They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books.

Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry and puns.

Lem died in 2006 at age 84.

Sixty-nine years ago this week, The New York Times reviewed “The Old Man and the Sea,” the last Ernest Hemingway book published in his lifetime

Sixty-nine years ago this week, The New York Times reviewed “The Old Man and the Sea,” the last Ernest Hemingway book published in his lifetime.

The work, published in 1952, tells the story of a Cuban fisherman and the greatest catch of his life, was a huge success and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

A year later, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.”

The Times’ critic, the Smith College professor Robert Gorham Davis, wrote that it was “a tale superbly told, and in the telling Ernest Hemingway uses all the craft his hard, disciplined trying over so many years has given him.”

Hemingway’s literary rival, William Faulkner, was asked to write the review but declined. He did applaud the work in a later magazine blurb.

Hemingway dismissed the notion that the work portrayed real people. But some said the novel had been inspired by Gregorio Fuentes, a Cuban who captained his fishing boat, the Pilar — and who spent his later years reminiscing for tourists eager to learn more about Hemingway’s Cuba.

Thanks New York Times!

In the photo, Hemingway is at a bullfight in Madrid, 1960

Photo from Associated Press

Robert Pirsig, author of 1974’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was born 93 years ago today

Robert Pirsig, author of 1974’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was born 93 years ago today.

Born in Minneapolis, Pirsig, the son of a Minnesota law professor, rose rapidly to fame with his novel, which was based partly on his own experiences. The book chronicled the cross-country motorcycle journey of the narrator, a former philosophy professor who underwent involuntary electric shock treatment for alleged insanity, with his 11-year-old son.

Along the way, the narrator ruminates on philosophical approaches to life, arguing that motorcycle maintenance is a metaphor for life. He also succeeds in healing a deep emotional rift with his son.

The book was rejected by more than 120 publishing houses before it was published by William Morrow and Company in 1974. Pirsig received only a $3,000 advance and was warned that the book would probably bomb. It became a cult classic, selling more than four million copies in the next 25 years. Tragically, Pirsig’s son was stabbed to death in a mugging 10 years after the book came out.

After the book’s publication, Pirsig spent several years living on a boat and traveling the world.

In 1991, he published Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, another deeply philosophical novel.

Pirsig died at his home in South Berwick, Maine, on April 24, 2017, after a period of failing health.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac was published on this day in 1957 — 64 years ago

Neal Cassady (left) and Jack Kerouac, 1952

Photo by Carolyn Cassady

One of the first novels of the Beat movement of the 1950s, On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, was published on this day in 1957 — 64 years ago.

The novel chronicles the cross-country wanderings of a Kerouac-like hero, Sal Paradise, and his pal, Dean Moriarty, based on Neal Cassady, and their free-ranging encounters with drugs, free love and the budding counterculture.

The book, which Kerouac wrote in just three weeks, became an instant classic.

This was helped when New York Times writer Gilbert Millstein gave the book a rave review on the day it was published. Millstein wrote "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is."

"Jack went to bed obscure," Kerouac's girlfriend told a reporter, "and woke up famous."

Although a credo of the Beat-inspired movement of the 1960s was "Never trust anyone over 30," Kerouac was 35 when the book came out. He had long been associated with the Beat movement, and the novel is filled with characters based on Beat figures like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

Kerouac was born in March, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The son of French-Canadian parents, he learned English as a second language. In high school, Kerouac was a football star and won a scholarship to Columbia University. In World War II, he served in the Navy, but was expelled for severe personality problems. He became a merchant seaman.

In the late 1940s, he wandered the United States and Mexico and wrote his first novel, The Town and the City. His later novels included The Dharma Bums (1958), The Subterraneans (1958), and Lonesome Traveler (1960).

Kerouac was a heavy drinker when he died in Florida from an internal hemorrhage, at the age of 47, on October 21, 1969.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked, On the Road, 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

Thanks History.com

Jack Kerouac reads from “On the Road”

Molly Ivins was born 77 years ago today

Molly Ivins was born 77 years ago today.

A Texas newspaper columnist, populist, political commentator, humorist and author, Ivins’ writings often employed irony and satirical humor to make a very serious points. She enjoyed telling stories about the Texas Legislature, which she simply called "The Lege,” calling it one of the most corrupt, incompetent and funniest governing bodies in the nation.

In 2003, she coined the term, "Great Liberal Backlash of 2003," and was a passionate critic of the 2003 Iraq War. She is also credited with applying the nicknames "Shrub" and "Dubdub" to George W. Bush.

An example of her writing, from her 1993 essay, "Taking a Stab at Our Infatuation with Guns," she begins by saying:

“Let me start this discussion by pointing out that I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

“As a civil libertarian, I of course support the Second Amendment. And I believe it means exactly what it says: ‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’

“Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state. I am intrigued by the arguments of those who claim to follow the judicial doctrine of original intent. How do they know it was the dearest wish of Thomas Jefferson's heart that teen-age drug dealers should cruise the cities of this nation perforating their fellow citizens with assault rifles?”

In 1999, Ivins was diagnosed with stage III inflammatory breast cancer. The cancer recurred in 2003 and again in late 2005. In January, 2006, she reported that she was again undergoing chemotherapy.

Ivins died at her Austin home in hospice care on January 31, 2007 at age 62.

On her illness, she wrote: “Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."

On this day in 1955 — 66 years ago — the Guinness World Records was first published

On this day in 1955 — 66 years ago — the Guinness World Records was first published.

It’s the biggest-selling annual book ever, with more than 132 million sold. The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. It is one of the most frequently stolen books from public libraries in the United States.

That’s in a different league from the longest eyelashes on a dog (6.69 inches), the largest bubble-gum bubble blown (20 inches) or the longest human fingernails (32 feet, 3.8 inches).        

On November 10, 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob near the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he became involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe, the golden plover or the red grouse (it is the plover).

That evening at Castlebridge House, he realized that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europe's fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland and abroad, but there was no book in the world with which to settle arguments about records.

He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beaver's idea became reality when Guinness employee, Christopher Chataway, recommended University friends, Norris and Ross McWhirter, who had been running a fact-finding agency in London.

The brothers were commissioned to compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August, 1954. A thousand copies were printed and given away. After founding The Guinness Book of Records at 107 Fleet Street, the first 198-page edition was bound on August 27, 1955 and went to the top of the British best seller lists by Christmas.

"It was a marketing give away – it wasn't supposed to be a money maker,” Beaver said. The following year, it launched in the U.S,, and sold 70,000 copies. Since then, Guinness World Records has become a household name and the global leader in world records.

The book has gone on to become a record breaker in its own right, with sales of more than 100 million copies in 100 different countries and 37 languages.

Today, Guinness World Records, now owned by the same company as the Ripley’s Believe It or Not chain, gets 50,000 records applications a year and it approves 6,000 of them.

Thanks New York Times!

Hugh Beaver