Week #4: January 22 – January 28
As we enter the last week of January, we will celebrate the birthdays of several authors, including Joseph Wambaugh (1/22), Virginia Woolf (1/25), Philip Jose Farmer (1/26), and Lewis Carroll (1/27). Based on their lives and the content of their writing, I have categorized these authors as “the good, the bad, the downright weird, and the ugly.” Before you read about each one, can you make a guess as to which author fits each category? Let’s begin with the good… after all, we all need a little good in our lives, and it is always better to hear the good first before the bad comes along and alters our mood. This author – born on January 22, 1937 - exemplifies the patriotic American: born the son of a police office and having served in the military before calling the Los Angeles Police Department home away from home for fourteen years. This author is none other than Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh Jr. While rising through the department ranks, Wambaugh loosely incorporated what he witnessed every day while patrolling the streets of Los Angeles (drug addicts, rubbernecking tourists, wealthy and poverty-stricken immigrants, and street hoodlums) into stories, eventually writing two successful fiction novels, The New Centurions (1970) and The Blue Knight (1972). Readers enjoyed this type of police fiction that differed from the fantastic gotta-catch-a serial-killer type novels. Much to the dismay of his superiors, readers also enjoyed the refreshing honesty of his writing which portrayed officers as humans with flaws, feelings, and who also play antics – most of which we’d considered politically incorrect nowadays. With the success of these novels and inspired by a true 1963 crime case in which drug dealers kidnapped two LAPD officers and then killed one of them, Wambaugh decided to document the case as a non-fiction book, The Onion Field (1973). It was a hit, such a hit that fans started to infiltrate the department, eventually causing Wambaugh to make a choice: continue serving the Los Angeles area as a detective sergeant or serve the literary world as a writer. Fortunately for us, he chose writing. Since then he has written fourteen more novels, which includes his most recent addition to the “Hollywood Station” series with Harbor Nocturne (2012) and four more non-fiction books covering true crimes. While conducting this research, I asked my husband, who grew up in a police service family, if he had heard of Joseph Wambaugh. He immediately remembered the titles of a few of Wambaugh’s earliest books sitting on his parents’ bedside dressers. He also remembered reading The Choirboys (1975) as a young teenager; and it must have made an impression because he recalled several plot points and even quotes from the book. This connection made me smile. It’s always nice when a book allows us to share memories with loved ones. Then later that same evening as we watched the second episode of Netflix’s Mindhunter, the FBI agent and the serial killer he is interviewing start talking about Wambaugh! What a coincidence! Obviously something in the universe wants me to read at least one of Wambaugh’s books. But it looks like I’ll have to choose from what he’s already written, because according to his Facebook page, when asked if any new books are on the horizon, he stated that he “might be getting to old” to write another one. Understood. Celebrating his 81st birthday this year, he is definitely one of the good guys and has earned his retirement. I look forward to picking up one of his books and diving right into the world of the Los Angeles Police Department during the 1970s. Now onto the bad… but let me begin by saying that this next author’s writing is not bad… sadly “just” her life. With only one female author celebrating a birthday this week on January 25, it’s easy to guess that I’ve placed Virginia Woolf in the “bad” category. Much like Edgar Allan Poe, who also celebrated a birthday in January, Virginia Woolf was surrounded by tragedy and death. Looking at her strong beginning in a privileged home in Kensington, London, with two successful parents and eight siblings, one wouldn’t imagine the tragedy that would unfold in her life. But unfold it did – and rather quickly. During her early childhood, the sexual abuse by two of her step-brothers fractured her early mental stability, so much so that when she lost her mother unexpectedly to rheumatic fever just a few years later, Virginia endured her first mental breakdown at the age of thirteen. And she did not have long to recover when her older sister also died. Seeing how her mother was her teacher and her sister was her study-mate, and they were both gone, she entered college to continue her education. But even in college, which is typically a time for self-awareness, tragedy found her with the death of her father from stomach cancer. This blow was too much for her already fragile mental state and she spent a brief time in an institution. During this time of reflection, she must have found her voice – her writing voice because within a year she started writing professionally. I’m sure she thought she had finally thrown off the darkness, but only a year later her brother died of typhoid fever, and the darkness threatened to pull her back under. In order to process her grief, she started writing a novel she called Melymbrosia, which was about a daughter’s self-discovery as she travels for South America on her father’s ship. Although not autobiographical, you can definitely see the similarities between the protagonist experiencing a journey which ends in self-awareness and Virginia’s own journey with depression. Unfortunately, four years into writing the book, she continued to struggle and once again found herself in an institution. Even once she entered her thirties she continued on this seesaw of depression and contentment. She married Leonard Woolf – hopefully a time of at least contentment - but then the darkness of depression dragged her back into the institution a couple of times within a short time span. It wasn’t until 1915, at the age of thirty-three, that she finally published her book, but with a new title, The Voyage Out. It seems that with the success of this publication, she had finally learned to keep the depression at bay. She and her husband even bought a printing press, establishing the publishing house Hogarth Press, which allowed her more freedom with publishing her own writing, as well as that of her husband’s and friends’ writing. Life once again seemed to settle into a routine of contentment, which lasted over two decades. During this time she wrote over 500 essays and ten novels. When reading most of her works you get this sense that she wrote down what she (or the character) was thinking at the moment, often changing subjects multiple times within a page or two, which makes her writing challenging. But what’s fascinating is reading them now – almost a hundred years after she wrote them – and understanding how quickly the world she lived in was changing around her: the rising popularity of automobiles, airplanes, movie theatres, and the quickly advancing roles of women. Her writing inadvertently documents how society constantly changed. No wonder she had a fragile mental stability. But through all these changes in society, she used her writing to cope and she remained successful at working through the depression. But then World War II hit. Because Leonard was Jewish, the couple grew justifiably more concerned about their safety. They even had serious talks about a double-suicide if Hitler’s troops invaded England. With this stress, coupled with the destruction of their home during the Blitz, Virginia’s delicate mental stability collapsed. On a chilly March day, she wrote a letter to her husband, donned an overcoat to go outside, filled the pockets with stones, and calmly walked into the river, allowing the current to sweep her away. She died on March 28, 1941 at the age of fifty-nine, leaving her husband to grieve over the loss of the love of his life. He published her last novel, Between the Acts, posthumously. In this novel, which is about the production of a performance, all the characters’ lives return to normal at the conclusion of the final act; unfortunately, although he continued to live at their home, Leonard’s life would never return to normal without his Virginia. He even had her remains buried under the elm tree in their yard to be close to her. He died in 1969 and now their house is open for tours (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/monks-house). You can see how they lived and then walk through her gardens to the little lodge that Virginia used as her escape to write many of her novels. But before you leave, stop in the shade of the elm tree and pay your respects to the woman who fought the darkness of depression for as long as she could, but in the end, the darkness won. Now onto the next category – the downright weird. With only two authors remaining and one of them being the mastermind of Alice in Wonderland, you’re probably guessing that it’s him. After all, that story line of going down the infamous rabbit hole is full of weirdness, to say the least. But the other author, Philip Jose Farmer actually wins this category’s placement. In conversation starters, a popular question asks who you’d like to invite over to dinner. After researching this author, I’d have to answer with Philip Jose Farmer, born January 26, 1918! Let me explain. The first thirty-four years of Farmer’s life were fairly unremarkable. In high school he liked science and sports. He went to college but then dropped out when his father’s business went belly-up, and he took a menial job to help make ends meet. He must have had a writing talent at that time because within a few years Bradley University offered him a scholarship to return to school. But did he take it? No… he made a typical impetuous young adult decision and instead eloped with his girlfriend. Needing work, he joined the army air corps with visions of flying, but he failed the test. So instead he took another menial job at a steel mill back in his hometown of Peoria, Illinois and waited for the government to call his draft number. His number was never called and he worked at the mill for over a decade. All of this seems like your dime-a-dozen typical American. Nothing extraordinary. But in the background, ideas must have been twirling around in his mind. In 1952, he shocked the literary world with the publication of his short story titled, “The Lovers.” With the story line about provocative sexual encounters between a male human and a female alien that looked like an insect, it even shocked his editors and publishing house. Up to this point, the science-fiction genre for the most part lacked sexual relationships and sensuality, but Farmer wanted to change that… and he did. He entered a writing contest and submitted another novel that he wrote within a month’s timespan. And he certainly used his imagination to write it. It takes place on a really long river where every human ever born, including characters such as the world-renowned geographer Richard Francis Burton to the satirist Samuel Clemens, come back to life at the same time to experience the adventures of their afterlife. He won the contest and eventually, although not without any mishaps, revised the one novel into a series consisting of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), The Fabulous Riverboat (1971), The Dark Design (1977), The Magic Labyrinth (1980) and Gods of Riverworld (1983). If he had stopped writing at this point, our conversation at that imaginary dinner I had invited him to would be interesting to say the least. Just listening to him explain how he created each person’s afterlife anecdote would fascinate me and lead to hours of entertainment. But he didn’t stop writing. If fact he kept multiple series going at the same time, including the “World of Tiers” book series which consists of The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977) and More Than Fire (1993). In this series, it follows the adventures and interactions between humans that have a godlike power and immortality and their lesser counterparts – the ordinary humans through a number of parallel universes with tiered planets. How did he create such a story line? And as if creating those two series at the same time wasn’t enough, he also created the Wold Newton series which follows genetically mutated versions of fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan after a radioactive meteor strikes their town. WOW! All-in-all he wrote over fifty novels and over one hundred short stories. I can only imagine that our dinner date would last well into the wee-morning hours as he tried to enlighten me on how he created these stories mixed with science and sensuality while integrating fictional and real-life people and heroes. And I’d certainly have to ask him who created his artwork for his novels. Have you seen them? Almost every book jacket looks like some exotic version of sexy-haired Fabio! Now that is just down-right weird. This leaves only our last category – the ugly. And we only have one author remaining: Lewis Carroll who also celebrated his birthday this week. Now you may be wondering, “Why would she consider Lewis Carroll ugly?” This one is a little more complicated. Usually we use the term ugly to describe someone’s looks. But Lewis Carroll by the Victorian era standards was not ugly. And much like I categorized Virginia Woolf’s life and battle with depression ‘bad’ – not her writing, I am categorizing Lewis Carroll’s life – not his writing – as potentially ugly. Again, let me explain, but in order to do so, I should start at the beginning. As a child I experienced the thrill of Alice in Wonderland. I watched the animated version of it too. I even watched Tim Burton’s version starring Johnny Depp. As a child, I enjoyed it for its entertainment value. As an adult, and as an English teacher, I tried analyzing the themes within it – you know… self-awareness, consequences of curiosity, how a child struggles to survive and come of age in a confusing adult-like world with society’s many rules and expectations.These themes I understood, appreciated, and even respected. When I explored New York’s Central Park, I stopped in front of the “Alice in Wonderland” bronze statue which displays a few of the characters, including Alice, the mad hatter and of course – the elusive rabbit and paid my respects as I stood reminiscing about the book. All of these memories brought happiness. So when I noticed that his birthday was this week, I was excited about the upcoming research. But then the research began and I discovered the controversy surrounding him. I wish I could unlearn these allegations and I contemplated omitting his birthday celebration from my article, but I can’t unlearn it and so and I won’t omit him. Here is what I learned. I learned that Lewis Carroll was his pen name. His real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born the oldest son of eleven children in Daresbury, England. As the oldest, he often had the responsibility of caring for his younger siblings. And he was quite good at it too – oftentimes telling stories to keep them entertained. As he matured, he found a talent for mathematics and photography. He eventually taught math at Oxford University. While teaching at the university, he met the dean, Henry Liddell and his family which included three little girls – one of them Alice Liddell, age four. With time on his hands – since he remained unmarried - he often watched over and played with the girls while their parents were busy. Henry and his wife loved Charles. The girls loved Charles. One summer day, July 4th to be exact, Charles and a friend took the girls for a boat ride on the river Thames. Bored with the monotony of the river and frustrated with the sun’s heat, young Alice pleaded for Charles to tell them a story. And so he did… he told them an off-the-cuff story of a little girl named Alice and the adventures she experienced when she followed a rabbit down a rabbit hole. The real Alice loved the story so much, she pleaded with him (again) to write down this wonderful adventure of the girl named Alice. And so he did. It took him months to handwrite and illustrate the story himself, but he did it, naming the story Alice in Wonderland. So far so good. During this part of my research, I was delighted to learn that the character Alice was inspired by a real-life Alice. But then I kept researching. Sometime after that boat ride, Alice’s parents refused to allow Charles to visit their girls again. What happened? This is the catalyst for the controversy that surrounds him. Remember I mentioned that Charles had a talent for photography? People oftentimes asked him to take a portrait of them. Upon reviewing his collection of thousands of photographs that he took, researchers noticed that over half of them portrayed very young little girls. Most people in society want to believe that all people are fundamentally good, and so they rationalized that it would not be abnormal for prominent households to want Charles to photograph their little darlings all dressed up. The problem is that the little girls were not “all dressed up” – they were nude. Now I realize I am researching this one hundred and fifty years after he took these pictures and that during that time society has changed. I know that in today’s society if someone took nude pictures of little girls, we’d call that person a pedophile and he would spend a lifetime in jail. There are however extended family members of Charles, fans, and researchers that claim that nude pictures of children in the Victorian age were not a sign of perversion, but a sign of respecting and capturing the beauty of innocence - even though in Charles’ photographs, he positioned these little girls in very provocative positions. I have a hard time understanding this logic, but I don’t want to believe the worst in someone like the famous Lewis Carroll, so I kept researching. Although Victorian society may have accepted nude photographs of young children, nude photographs of young adolescents – from the age of ten or older – were not acceptable and considered a sign of deviant behavior. Unfortunately for Charles, at least one nude photograph of a young adolescent was discovered with his initials written on the back of it. Scientists conducted extensive laboratory tests on the photograph and concluded that the picture is most likely Ina (Alice’s older sister), taken from the same camera that Charles used, and developed using the same unique technique that Charles used to develop his photographs.Could this be the reason why Alice’s parents suddenly demanded that he stop spending time with their girls? If so, personally it changes the underlying meaning of his works, Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). Did he initially come up with the story because he had more than a paternal love for Alice? Did he continue to write the second book to keep Alice close to him – at least the fictional character, since he couldn’t see the real-life girl any longer? If I ever travel to Daresbury, England, I will visit the Lewis Carroll Center (http://lewiscarrollcentre.org.uk/) to learn more about this controversy that has scarred the innocent image I used to have of Alice in Wonderland. But until then I will try to separate the mastermind Lewis Carroll from the controversial Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Now aren’t you glad I started with the good, before this ugly category altered your mood!? In addition to the websites I’ve mentioned above, I also used the following cites when conducting research on these authors: Carlson, Michael. Philip José Farmer: An award-winning sci-fi writer who mixed sex, pulp and literature. February 2009. The Guardian. Retrieved 18 January 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/27/philip-jose-farmer-obituary Clute, John. “Philip Jose Farmer: Prolific and influential science-fiction writer.” March 2009. Independent. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/philip-jose-farmer-prolific-and-influential-science-fiction-writer-1636868.html Croteau, Michael and Beaulieu, Rick. “The Official Philip José Farmer Web Page.” 2017. PJFarmer.com Website. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from http://www.pjfarmer.com/ABOUT-ten-things-about-PJF.html Del Barco, Mandalit. “Joe Wambaugh: The Writer Who Redefined LAPD.” July 2008. National Public Radio. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from https://www.npr.org/2008/07/18/92649123/joe-wambaugh-the-writer-who-redefined-lapd Ek, Karen. “BBC The Secret World of Lewis Carroll.” Online video. Youtube, May 17, 2016. Web. 17 January 2018. https://youtu.be/_KQ9kDbduTo Presented by Martha Kearney. 59:18. “Hollywood Station Novels, The.” 2012. Hachette Book Group. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from http://www.thehollywoodnovels.com/bio.html Virginia Woolf. September 2017. The Biography.com Website. A&E Television Network. Retrieved January 19, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/virginia-woolf-9536773 Woolf, Jenny. “Lewis Carroll’s Shifting Reputation: Why has popular opinion of the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland undergone such a dramatic reversal?” Smithsonian Magaine, April 2010. Web. 17 January 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lewis-carrolls-shifting-reputation-9432378/
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Week #3: January 15 – January 21
We are moving right along as we honor authors born during the third week of the New Year. This week we have two special authors – both persevered through their own challenges but died way too young. Let’s say happy birthday to Anne Bronte and Edgar Allan Poe! Although Anne Bronte was just one of several talented siblings, including brother Branwell known for his paintings, and sisters Charlotte and Emily known for their own novel masterpieces, Anne earned her own place in history as an outstanding writer. Anne Bronte was born on January 17, 1820 in Thornton, England, and met tragedy early in her life when her mother died before Anne even celebrated her second birthday. Without a mother at home, her mother’s sister, who originally came to help her ailing sister, continued to live at their home to care for the children. Within her care, all three sisters’ imaginations flourished as they used toy soldiers to create their own fantasy world replenished with characters filling a complete village. But playtime couldn’t last forever and Anne needed to find a job to help contribute to the family finances. As an educated but poverty-stricken female in the Victorian era, she didn’t have many options, so she became a governess – a job that would fuel her inspiration for writing her first novel, Agnes Grey. The children under her care lacked discipline, and in order to release her frustration with them and her own inability to control them, she’d slyly pull out pen and paper and write in her journal about their devious behavior. Her employer, dissatisfied with Anne’s tutoring ability after five years, fired her. While licking her wounds at home, she also nurtured the imagination she had used all those years ago with her sisters and all three of them began writing poetry together, which they combined in a collection titled “Poems” and published in 1846 under the male pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell – because of course writing was not a respectable occupation for women! Not only did their success as poets ignite the writing bug in all three, but it also ignited a spirit of competition between the sisters. So while Charlotte and Emily began writing their own novels, Anne brushed off her journal and prepped Agnes Grey for publication. After receiving several letters of rejection, Anne and Emily found a publisher for their novels and Charlotte found one for her novel. Unfortunately, Anne and Emily’s publisher procrastinated publishing Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights for two months after Charlotte’s Jane Eyre became a bestseller in October 1847. Upon publication, Anne realized that both the female protagonists in both her novel and Jane Eyre had similar characteristics. And she knew that she could write a story more compelling than Wuthering Heights. Wanting to desperately win the unofficial competition between the sisters, she sat down and penned her best novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. And then tragedy struck. In September of 1848, her brother Branwell, suffering from drug and alcohol addiction as well as tuberculosis, died. Then three months later in December, Emily also died of tuberculosis. In February, Anne felt the pains of tuberculosis as well and suffered with the illness until she succumbed to it on May 28, 1848 at the age of twenty-nine. Within ten months, the curse of tuberculosis had claimed three of the four siblings, leaving only Charlotte (who also died of tuberculosis seven year later). Supposedly Charlotte was concerned about the controversial press Anne’s second novel received and decided to cancel the novel’s publication. And with this cancellation, the fanfare for Anne’s novel died and Charlotte’s success continued. But just imagine if Charlotte hadn’t cancelled The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’s publication or Anne hadn’t died at such a young age while still climbing the ladder of literary success; she very well may have surpassed the talents of even Jane Austen! But even as only her second novel, The Tenant at Wildfell Hall definitely deserves a place on the literary classics’ bookshelf with its title as the first feminist novel and overarching theme of women doing whatever it takes to escape physical and mental cruelty at the hands of mean-spirited, inebriated men. Awhile back, I facilitated Bronte themed literary circles. One group read Jane Eyre, another group read Wuthering Heights, and the final group read The Tenant at Wildfell Hall. At the time, I had not read any of the Bronte novels, so I read them concurrently. Although each has its enduring qualities and all led to interesting and spirited conversations within and between the groups, the perseverance of Helen Graham, the protagonist and subject of the novel’s title, certainly caught my attention, especially given the time period in which Anne Bronte wrote the novel. Surely if someone can overcome the cruelty Helen Graham experienced while shackled with society’s male-dominated expectations, then it gives me hope that anyone feeling oppressed in society can also find the keys to their own happiness and release their shackles. Now if you too enjoy Anne Bronte’s writing, and you’re passionate about visiting places with literary significance, then the next time you visit England, travel to the Bronte’s hometown and visit The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Sponsored by The Bronte Society, the museum offers a unique tour of the family’s home and gardens. But if you want to pay your respects specifically to Anne by visiting her grave, you’ll have to also visit Scarborough, England because she’s the only Bronte buried outside of Haworth since she died away from home. By visiting http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/brontes/scarborough/scarborough.asp, you can find a self-guided map of Scarborough that highlights places Anne visited during the last months of her life and culminate at her grave. Let’s jump across the big pond again and honor another famous author that experienced far beyond his fair share of death and then also died too young: Edgar Allan Poe. He was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, and although he experienced death for the first time before he could even remember, the death of both of his parents obviously lodged in his psyche, helping to mold him into the macabre writer he would eventually become. Orphaned, he went to live with John Allan, a successful businessman, and his wife in Richmond, Virginia. During his childhood John Allan groomed him for the tobacco industry, discouraging him from creative writing even though he exhibited his poetic talent at a young age. And John Allan must have wanted young Edgar to learn that one appreciates what they have when they personally earn it, so when it came time for a higher education at the University of Virginia, instead of funding all of it, he funded only a third of it.Unfortunately, Edgar had only learned how to gamble away his money instead of saving it, so he quickly accumulated debt. Unable to pay his full tuition bill, he dropped out of school, only to return home to find out that the woman he considered his mom had died the day before! And that was not the end of his misfortune. Grieving, he went to find solace in the arms of his fiancée, only to find that she had become engaged to another man! But instead of allowing these tragedies to overwhelm him, he started writing poetry which he eventually published as a collection titled “Tamerlane and Other Poems.” Coincidentally, one of the poems is about giving up the love a girl for power. Hmmmm, did Poe decide to choose power at this time in his life after losing his fiancée’s favor? Regardless, with a darkness building in him, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. But the strict routine didn’t leave him the time he wanted to write, so he simply stopped attending, which eventually led to his expulsion. Disowned by John Allan, the only remaining place for Edgar to go was to his aunt Maria Clemm’s in Baltimore. She quickly became Edgar’s substitute mom; but her young daughter, Virginia became more than a substitute sister. Once he moved Maria and Virginia back to Richmond, Edgar and thirteen-year-old Virginia married. It is not surprising that Virginia’s youth brought happiness back into Edgar’s life.And for a short time, Edgar tried to forget about the darkness within him and frolic with Virginia, but he continually struggled to make ends meet. While writing for different magazines, both as a critic and submitting his own stories, he moved the family around to New York and then to Philadelphia. But another blow for Edgar appeared on the horizon. The deadly tuberculosis beast came for his beautiful young wife. It seems that at the first sign of her illness and its inevitability Poe’s inspiration for writing gruesome tales spiked with stories such as “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The Gold Bug” (1843), “The Black Cat” (1843), “The Raven” (1845), and culminating with “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) right before Virginia took her last painful breath at the age of twenty-four. Understandably, Edgar allowed his grief to consume him this time. He was unable to cope, unable to write. He moved back to Richmond and half-heartedly tried to reconnect with his old fiancée, but ultimately, within two years of Virginia’s death, Poe too mysteriously died. He had disappeared for five days and although his editor found him in a bar disheveled, incomprehensible, and barely conscious and rushed him to the hospital, he died soon after arriving. Like many of Poe’s stories, his own death also remains a mystery. His famous poem, “Annabelle Lee” was published only days after his death. As an American poet and short-story writer, Poe’s writing often comes up in school curriculum. And justifiably, kids can’t seem to get enough of it. They, like many of us, love reading about betrayal, insanity, death, and deception… all subjects Poe knew intimately. And although I haven’t visited all the places that commemorate Poe’s life, I did visit his home in Philadelphia, and as I walked up to it I could only imagine too well the raven that stands guard on a post outside screeching his eerie “nevermore” as I prepared myself to enter Poe’s domain. Let me just say that after reading one of his famous short stories, “A Cask of Amontillado” (1846), there is nothing like slowly descending the creaky steps into his darkened basement with concrete and brick walls wondering if this was the exact place that inspired him to write the story about entombing someone alive! Was there in fact bones inside these walls? Every creak of the old house makes you jump! And then to tour upstairs and walk across the wooden floorboards, it is also easy to fantasize that you too can hear the BEAT, beat, BEAT of a heart or see the eye of someone you just murdered looking at you from in between the boards, just like in his short story, “A Tell-Tale Heart” (1843). With this must excitement at just this one home of his, I can only imagine what it is like at his other homes, and I look forward to visiting them as I use the recommendations of https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/take-trip-through-edgar-allan-poes-america-180953067/ to travel through Richmond, Boston, Philadelphia, and finally to his gravesite in Baltimore to pay my respects to one of the greatest American writers whom critics still call the modern “Father of the Detective Story” and continues to inspire generation after generation to use their own challenges and tragedies as inspiration for becoming great. In addition to websites specifically mentioned above I also utilized the following websites while researching these authors. Anne Bronte. (2018). Biography. A&E Television Networks, LLC. Web. Retrieved January 11, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/anne-bront%C3%AB-11919986 Bondurant, Agnes M. (1942). Poe’s Richmond. Poe Museum. Retrieved January 11, 2018 from https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography Edgar Allan Poe. (2018). Biography. A&E Television Networks, LLC. Web. Retrieved January 12, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/edgar-allan-poe-9443160 Ellis, Samantha. (January 2017). Anne Bronte: The Sister Who Got There First. The Guardian. Retrieved January 12, 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/06/anne-bronte-agnes-grey-jane-eyre-charlotte Wright, Kitty. (2017). The Bronte Society: The Bronte Parsonage Museum. Retrieved January 11, 2018 from https://www.bronte.org.uk/the-brontes-and-haworth Week #2: January 08 – January 14
So it’s the second week of the New Year and although reality is kicking in with some of my New Year’s resolutions, my goal of researching authors every week and encouraging a conversation about them remains high on my goal list. Are your New Year’s resolutions still going strong? You can still make a resolution to contribute to our conversation… that’s an easy one to keep! Week one may have set the bar high with some outstanding renowned authors – I mean how do you top Salinger, Tolkien, and Hurston? – but the authors born during the second week of the year can also certainly hold their own. Let’s say hello to Wilkie Collins and Jack London. Happy Birthday gentlemen! Admittedly, I personally had not heard of Wilkie Collins, who was born William Wilkie Collins on January 8, 1824 in London, but after researching him and his novels, I look forward to adding a couple of his novels to my reading bucket list. Maybe you can help me decide which novel of his to read first. Typically when I think of authors born during the Victorian era, I think of stuffy, proper men adhering to strict etiquette guidelines of the times. But Wilkie Collins does not fit that mold and that’s why he piques my interest; after learning a little about him, he might pique your interest too! From early childhood, Collins experienced a difficult life. Because of his distinctive appearance - small in stature but with a large head that had a noticeable bulge on the side of his forehead - fellow classmates brutally teased Collins. Without the “anti-bullying” campaigns that schools have in place today, Collins decided to take his survival into his own hands. But he didn’t use his small fists; he used his mind by captivating the bullies with stories – and not only did it work at holding the bullies at bay, but it initiated his writing career too. The other ironic stimulant to his writing career was boredom; to pass the time while trying to learn the ropes of tea merchants he picked up pen and paper which led to his short story, “Volpruno – The Student,” which he published in New York’s Albion in the July 8, 1843 issue. Wilkie suppressed this small writing success and continued his education, eventually passing the bar exam. But he must have felt conflicted. Should he begin a career as a respectable lawyer or should he buck the system and write? Thankfully, he bucked the system and instead of practicing law, he started earning an income writing several stories beginning with “A Terribly Strange Bed” for Charles Dicken’s publication Household Words in 1852. Yep, you read that correctly. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were friends, good friends actually even eventually leading to Dickens’ daughter marrying Collins’ son. The beginning of his serious writing career also marked the beginning of his personal health problems and a love life that mimicked a modern-day soap opera. To relieve symptoms of rheumatic gout, Collins began to take opium – and lots of it! Maybe this helped contribute to his unconventional love life. In 1856, Wilkie met Caroline Graves, a widowed mother with one daughter, and they began living together in 1858. Their meeting became the inspiration for his first major novel The Woman in White which Dickens published for him in 1860. In a cloud of opium, life continued to go well for Wilkie and Caroline, but then in 1864 he met nineteen-year-old Martha Rudd. Not wanting to break off his relationship with Caroline, he bought another house a few blocks away for Martha where the couple went by the name Mr. & Mrs. William Dawson – but they weren’t married. Around this same time he began work on his last major novel The Moonstone; maybe meeting a new love interest inspired Collins? Sometime around 1868, Caroline must have caught wind of Wilkie’s other woman because she suddenly married someone else. But her marriage only lasted a few years and by 1871 she was again living with Wilkie Collins even though Martha lived just a few blocks away with the couples’ three children. Wow! I’m not sure how he managed both identities, but he did for almost two decades. And at the age of eighty-two when his health declined rapidly after an automobile accident which eventually led to a stroke and then his death on September 23, 1889, he continued to hold onto both women; all three are buried in the same grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, even though he died first! So, other than the obvious reasons, why would you want to read anything by a man who routinely consumed opium and lived with two women in different households? Because authors write what they know and Collins obviously knew how to circumnavigate the challenges associated with living in Victorian London and, drawing on his experience from his days of winning over the bullies by storytelling, wasn’t afraid to write what at the time was on most people’s minds but were unable to express because of that strict social etiquette. And surprisingly, the challenges of the mid 1860s in London also apply to our society today. So now I find myself in a conundrum, do I add his first novel The Woman in White which literary focuses on issues of personal identity (not only are we as readers supposed to wonder who she is, but the woman herself must answer the same question), as well as topics such as the messy consequences of power, the unpredictable cosmic interference of justice, the façade of the traditional stable family, the tricks of memory, and the potential danger of marriage, especially to women – all messily tied into the pages of this soap opera type reading? Or do I read the book that set the foundation for all future detective stories, The Moonstone which while trying to solve the mystery of what happened to a particularly legendary diamond focuses on the illusion of marriage, the unjust stereotyping of gender and ethnic groups, the inequality of social classes, and the controversy of religion? Maybe like Collins himself, I won’t have to decide between my two wants: I can read them both. And once I’ve finished, wouldn’t it be great to play detective and go London and follow the guide provided at http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/wilkie/Homes/85O.htm and walk the same streets and view the same points of interest Collins mentions in these novels before heading to pay my respects to him at his grave? That sounds like an awesome plan! Now let’s jump across the big pond and fast forward about ten years after Wilkie Collin’s death to the beginning of Jack London’s hard-earned literary success. Born John Griffith London on January 12, 1876, Jack was a reader at an early age. Using the texts of what he read as an example, in the beginning he unsuccessfully tried to mimic their writing to earn enough money to evade the manual labor of factory work. But it wasn’t until the turn of the century that he finally found his own voice and honed his writing talent. As many of you know from reading my July post titled “Discover Your Call of the Wild,” I am a Jack London fan. I grew up reading White Fang and Call of the Wild – both of which I highly recommend if you haven’t already read them (and especially if you’re an animal lover) for their themes focusing on survival and the power of relationships. And then as an adult I read the tumultuous but romantic novel Sea Wolf - again another one of his novels I’d highly recommend. And even though it’s titled after and follows a person instead of a dog like his other two novels, it also covers similar themes – just within the confines of a boat on the open ocean. Fortunately though, the old adage that we ‘learn something new every day’ holds true – while researching Jack London again, I discovered a non-fiction that I’d like to also add to my ever-growing bucket list: John Barleycorn. Knowing that most of London’s work derives from his own personal experience, such as Jack taking inspiration from his time in the Yukon during the winter of 1897 to write Call of the Wild and White Fang, or taking inspiration from his two-year voyage across the Pacific in a small boat to write Sea Wolf, I can only imagine how insightful his musings about the two-sided effects of alcohol would be: on one hand enjoying every ‘John Barleycorn’ (a personification of alcoholic drink) that slides down the gullet to the other hand that holds your mouth shut while the drink tries to crawl its way back out of your stomach. As an adult well past the legal drinking age, I can honestly and humbly admit that I too have seen both of John Barleycorn’s hands, and so I’m interested in London’s take on it as well, especially since he died of kidney disease. Did his drinking contribute to it? The other aspect of Jack London that of course interests me are the points of interest fans can still physically visit like Jack London Square located on the East Bay waterfront of Oakland, California. Although small, it does honor London with a replica of his Yukon cabin as well as London’s long-time visited drinking establishment, Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon. So while you’re there, go inside and lift your own John Barleycorn in London’s honor too. After adequate time has passed from your last drink, head north towards Santa Rosa to the Jack London State Historic Park. Within its boundaries you’ll find London’s working ranch and home. It is one of the few homes/museums of literary significance that fans can still tour. Although the original home that he named ‘The Wolf House’ burned to the ground and only a few foundation walls remain, other buildings on his large working ranch remain, including the House of Happy Walls and his cottage, both of which display London’s personal items and touch. London enjoyed the property so much he also chose to be buried there, so while you’re there hike one of the numerous trails or better yet, grab a picnic lunch, your favorite Jack London book that you can purchase in the bookstore, and sit under the large shady oaks and ponder a time when Jack London too worked this very land as you lose yourself in the talent of his writing. Week #1: January 01-January 07
Happy New Year! This year my resolution is to celebrate 48 weeks (four weeks of each month) of world-renowned authors by engaging in literary conversations about who they are, what they wrote, how they relate to our society and how we can get physically one step closer to them. Through this project, I hope to encourage everyone to talk about which novels you’ve read and to also read at least one novel throughout the year that you haven’t previously read. Maybe it’ll turn into a type of online literary circle where we’re all reading and discussing our different novels that we’ve selected! So let’s get this celebration started! The first week of the New Year kicks off with some significant famous authors’ birthdays which include J.D. Salinger on January 1 (1919), J.R.R Tolkien on January 3 (1892), and Zora Neale Hurston (1891) on January 7. Although within this group of authors I have a particular favorite, to keep this project more logical I’ll share information about them by date, and so let’s begin with our New Year’s baby, J.D. Salinger. Born Jerome David Salinger in New York, New York, his parents had their hands full from an early age. J.D. (as we would ultimately know him) struggles in school lead to him flunking out of his school near his home. Knowing the importance of education, his parents enrolled him in a Military Academy. After finally earning his degree, his father sent him to Vienna to learn how to run the family import business, but once again J.D. struggled; he found himself nurturing his newfound love of language and writing, so operating the family business fell to the wayside. After his Vienna stint, Salinger returned home and attended several colleges which eventually led him Columbia University where he met Whit Burnett, professor and editor of Story magazine, who recognized J.D.’s talent and his magazine first published J.D.’s short story “The Young Folks.” Salinger must have felt he’d finally found his path, but this tragedy struck: World War II. In between fighting during the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, Salinger carried along his typewriter and continued to write. Can you just imagine a young Salinger hunched in a trench trying to type with gunfire exploding all around him? During this time, while he watched friend after friend die, the infamous unhappy character Holden Caulfield began to take shape. Although by the time Salinger returned home from war he had suffered a nervous breakdown, the story he had penned during that time was already a success and Salinger quickly earned the popularity he had initially sought for his writing… but now he didn’t want it and spent an increasingly amount of time away from the public, eventually living the life of a recluse – which only added to his mystery and thereby his popularity. For those of you unfamiliar with Salinger’s story that rose from the battlefield, Cather in the Rye has sold more than 65 million copies and continues to be a part of just about every high school student’s English course curriculum. Now I too have read and taught Catcher in the Rye to juniors in an American Literature class as well as an AP Language class. Even though some readers may not particularly care for Holden because of the foul language he uses and his moody temperament, his quest to escape the phoniness of society attracts all of us. Don’t we all want to be more genuine? And if that doesn’t pique your interest, then his drive to protect children, specifically Phoebe his younger sister, from losing their innocent interpretation of the world to the harshness of reality, will encourage anyone to also want to look out for the innocent. But I personally think it is Holden’s distrust of authority figures that strikes a special interest in high school students. After all, they too often distrust everyone so Holden’s thoughts often mirror their own thoughts and concerns. But Catcher is not only for teenagers; adults find solace in Holden’s quest to find “Where do the ducks in Central Park go in the winter.” As an adult reader of the novel without a strong religious foundation, Holden’s symbolic inquisitiveness into the aftermath of death strikes a chord, as I too have lost people close to me and wonder where they are now. Just as I wonder what J.D. Salinger thinks about the resurgence of his writing after his death on January 27, 2010 from natural causes? With his death, his son – who controls his father’s literary interests - released Catcher in the Rye for online access, but has not released the rumored five completed novels that Salinger had continued to write as a recluse but never published before his death. So while we wait with bated breath for a new Salinger fix, we can still read any of his other thirty-nine short stories that he published, nine of which are collected in the book Nine Stories which you can find on Amazon or any remaining bricks and mortar bookstore. But the short story I particularly want to read is Salinger’s last publication titled “Hapworth 16, 1924” which Salinger published in The New Yorker in the June 15, 1965 issue. Its 25,000 word count famously filled most of the magazine’s pages! Unfortunately, reading his stories is the closest we can get to J.D. Salinger, the person. His reclusiveness and his relatively recent death prevents us from touring any residence or museum, BUT we can figuratively walk in Holden Caulfield’s shoes! The New York Times published an article (https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/taking-a-walk-through-jd-salingers-new-york/) that takes you step-by-step and page-by-page right along with Holden as he walks around New York on his personal quest. So the next time you’re in New York and feel like taking a stroll, don a red hunting hat similar to Holden’s and people will understand. As a New Year baby, Salinger has certainly set the bar! Now let’s see who’s next! Do you have any interest in fantasy fiction filled with beautifully mysterious landscapes, wizards, and diminutive-sized people? You’re probably thinking our next author is J.K. Rowling, but it’s not – she’s a summer baby! Long before Harry Potter captured our minds and hearts, J.R.R. Tolkien claimed the title of father of modern fantasy literature with his epic novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Although born in a province of South Africa on January 3, 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, England from the young age of three. “Ronny,” as his mom called him, spent his childhood days roaming the nearby villages, hills, bogs and mills, memories of which he would tuck away as an inspiration in his writing. He also tucked away memories from a summer hiking trip in Switzerland, which eventually inspired Bilbo’s famous journey. But life was not always idyllic. War, WWI instead of Salinger’s WWII experience, also changed the life of Tolkien. As one can imagine, proper hygiene in the close quarters of battle often times take a back seat to survival, but as a soldier in WWI, this poor hygiene, specifically lice – which carries trench fever - may have saved Tolkien’s life. Tolkien lay bedridden with trench fever while his battalion fought and many of his friends died. This fever was just the beginning of his health issues, and because he spent so much time in the hospital, the military eventually discharged him. Once back at home, he leaned on the education and love of language he learned from his mom and landed a position at the Oxford English Dictionary researching the etymology of words beginning with the letter W. Now every time I see a word that begins with W, I will think of Tolkien! But Tolkien had talent, and researching W words was just a stepping stone to a fellowship at Pembroke College. During his time there he wrote The Hobbit and began work on The Lord of the Rings, but WWII interrupted his writing. Only after his stint as a codebreaker during the war had ended and after he moved to Oxford to become an English professor did he finally put pen to paper and finish the remaining volumes of The Lord of the Rings, which he published in 1954/1955. Now for the past several decades, millions of people have placed reality of the sidelines and gotten lost in Bilbo’s quest, taking inspiration from the challenges he overcomes even though he’s drastically outnumbered and considered the underdog, the friendships and relationships he makes, and the power of forgiveness it suggests. The combination of these themes which still reflect in our society today, lured Hollywood producers too. And so, like millions of other people, I watched enthralled in the Hollywood adaptation of these famous books following Bilbo Baggin’s quest, but I haven’t actually read the books. Knowing that the original works of art are always better than the movies, I’m placing Tolkien’s masterpieces on my reading bucket list, and even though I could read them online at https://www.8novels.net/authors/J_R_R_Tolkien.html, I’d much rather hold volumes in my hand and smell the pages as I flip them one-by-one while on the journey right along with his characters. And if I want to turn that journey into a realization, I have a few choices. I can visit New Zealand (the films’ shooting location) and follow the free “Middle Earth” map that the government’s website provides for free – but because most of the locations are a part of public lands, the film’s producers had to remove their props – although I’m sure just seeing the awe inspiring landscapes must also be a breathtaking memorable experience. But personally, I enjoy feeling closer to the authors versus the settings they used, so I’d rather tour parts of England by following the stops suggested on the website http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1053-fifteen-places-tolkien-fans-should-visit-before-they-die.php which includes his childhood home, his inspiration for the towers and middle-earth, his Oxford home, his favorite drinking spot (because of course I’d want to raise a toast in his honor!), and his gravesite. So are you ready to go? But when we do this, we have to travel there during the third week of September (September 22 to be exact – Bilbo’s birthday) for the “Oxonmoot” which celebrates Tolkien’s contribution to society with exhibitions, talks and culminates in a Tolkien-character themed masquerade ball! How fun would that be?! So while we wait for the warmer weather of September to roll around, let’s take a look at our next author that celebrated a birthday during the first week of the New Year: Zora Neale Hurston. Remember when I said I had a particular favorite within this group of authors? Yep, Zora Neale Hurston wins that unofficial award. Although she never received national acclaim for her book Their Eyes were Watching God during her lifetime – and actually died penniless and was buried in an unmarked grave – Alice Walker, another American novelist, prompted a resurgence in Hurston’s writing taking her from obscurity to topping the list of American’s greatest authors. Although Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Alabama, that state did not hold any particular special place in her heart. That place was reserved for Eatonville, Florida the town her family moved to when she was just a toddler. As America’s first incorporated all-black town, Eatonville’s background is probably just as remarkable as Hurston’s own background. With its own city government, post office, and churches, she grew up observing blacks in position of influence and power and didn’t feel the racial tensions that had a chokehold on the rest of the nation. At least not until her after her mother’s death when her father remarried a woman whom clashed with Zora’s fiery personality. After a particularly heated confrontations that ended in Zora almost killing her stepmom, she dropped out of school and left home surviving only by working menial jobs. Finally at the “old” age of twenty-six, she decided to turn her life around and enroll in school – but without a high school education or any money, she couldn’t attend a college and so she devised a plan… she lied about her age, saying she was only sixteen years old, in order to qualify for free public schooling. Once she lost those ten years on paper, she never found them again! That free public education paved her way to eventually continue on in college with the help of a scholarship. During her time at Howard University, she published her first story in the school’s newspaper. With a little success under her belt, she moved to Harlem and befriended some of the up-and-coming greats such as Langston Hughes. Although she found her first literary success in New York, Florida lured her back with its rich culture history, so she returned to collect and eventually publish African-American folktales. Maybe these folktales ignited a desire in her to capture her own memories of her beloved Eatonville, but regardless of the reason, in the mid-1930s she wrote and published Their Eyes were Watching God, which primarily takes places in that city. Although her writing included more than just this novel (Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays), Their Eyes were Watching God holds a special place in my heart – but it didn’t always. A friend touted how much she enjoyed reading this novel, so I picked up a copy as a pleasure read. Honestly, I really struggled with the phonically-spelled Southern dialogue and didn’t appreciate the plot and character development because of that challenge. As I finally read the last page, I swore I’d never pick it up again. But then fate intervened: our school district decided to adopt this novel as part of our new American Literature curriculum, which left me wondering how these reluctant readers in my class would overcome the same writing style challenge I had endured? So with this question in mind, I re-read the book and meticulously documented words she used in the dialogue that did not look like the words we associated with them (e.g.: fiah = fire, skeer = scare, kivah = cover) and created an activity that helped students match the phonically spelled words with an accent. With this as our guide, we were able to overcome the language challenge and experienced Hurston’s enchanting story-telling and character development. And now, not only has it has become one of my all-time favorite novels because of the personal satisfaction of reading her writing style, but more importantly because of the determination the main character, Janie Crawford, musters to overcome family and societal expectations in order to define her own identity and her own version of the American Dream, which result in gut-wrenching decisions. Now if you too would like to embark on her journey, I’d highly recommend reading her award-winning novel which you can find online for free at http://www.cnusd.k12.ca.us/cms/lib/CA01001152/Centricity/domain/5532/language%20 arts%203a/Their%20Eyes.pdf or of course for purchase at Amazon or your local brick and mortar bookstore. But before you tackle the novel, I’d also recommend beginning with one of her many short stories, such as “Sweat” to help ease you into her writing style. And if you’re tired of the cold temps at home, you can head down to Fort Pierce, Florida, where Zora Neale Hurston spent the last years of her life, to celebrate her life and legacy at the ZORA! Festival the city holds every year in January which includes guest speakers, Eatonville exhibits, and culminates -if you visit the town’s website (http://www.cityoffortpierce.com/386/Zora-Neale-Hurston-Dust-Tracks-Heritage) to download the self-guided map - in a Zora Neale Hurston “Dust Tracks Heritage Trail” which points out Zora themed attractions in the city including her gravesite which thanks to Alice Walker includes a headstone that reads "Zora Neale Hurston – A Genius of the South – 1901-1960 – Novelist – Folklorist – Anthropologist." Did you notice that even if death, she never claimed those ten lost years of her real birth date? This wraps up our first week of celebrating authors born during the first week of the New Year. Have you already read one or more of them? Please share your experiences with these authors. And if you like these authors, you may also like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic, and/or Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Unfamiliar with all of this week’s authors? Did one pique your interest? Maybe you’ll add one of these authors to your reading bucket list too. I look forward to hearing from you! In addition to the sites embedded in the article, I also used the following sites for background information of these authors: www.biography.com www.zoranealehurston.com www.tolkiensociety.org |
AuthorLet me introduce myself. I am Julie Blasofsel. While teaching high school English for the past dozen years, my appreciation for works of literature increased after visiting several locations associated with the authors and their texts. You can't help but feel the presence of Ralph Waldo Emerson as you stand on the shores of Walden pond, the despair of Henry Longfellow as you stand in his house, the loneliness of Edgar A. Poe as you descend into his walled basement, the candor of Samuel Clemons as you reach his men-only study. My goal is to gather information and relate my experiences about these places of literary significance in this literary hive. Please add your literary travel experiences and recommendations. Together we can bring these authors to life and light the flame of passion for reading in others. Enjoy! Archives
October 2018
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