"Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober"
December 9th
One would have thought that John Milton, born today in 1608, would have renounced such a lifestyle given his Puritan values. However, even he was not without his moments of shame. The Paradise Lost author once started a fistfight with his tutor at Christ's College, Cambridge, even though at this time he was known by the nickname "The Lady" due to his good looks and stern manner. Due to this unfortunate quarrel, Milton was expelled for a term and then publicly beaten with a paddle. This is not the image most people have of the poet, but it is a worthy one none the less.
December 10th
Today we celebrate the birth of Emily Dickinson in 1830. She seems not to have been the greatest fan of fame, as the following poem illustrates:
"How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell your name the lifelong day
To an admiring bog!" ("Life")
On a personal level, I have never found a bog that would admire me at all, so I can't say I sympathise. Besides, how public is the average frog? Kermit, without question, has shown an unnatural prominence, but there are so few other examples that I must question Ms. Dickinson's logic.
December 11th
December 11th saw the birth of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest living Russian writers and also one of the hardest to spell. Not a man blessed with a great deal of luck, Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945 for making comments critical towards Stalin (can you honestly say you wouldn't have?) and was sent to a labour camp. There he fell prey of stomach cancer and was in 1953 released into 'administrative exile' where he wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and, later, Cancer Ward. Continuing his life-long spell of bad luck, The Gulag Archipelago, his history of labour camps, got him deported to West Germany in 1974. A compelling and driven writer, Solzhenitsyn is worth a look. While we are on the subject of leaving one's homeland, today was that in which 103 pilgrims from the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
December 12th
Lots of exciting literary happenings of some vague importance happened on December 12th. It is the birthday of Gustave Flaubert (1821, author of Madame Bovary – coming soon on Bibliomania), John Osborne (1929, Look Back in Anger) and also the day when Robert Browning died in 1889. Robert Louis Stevenson said of Browning on December 11th 1865, "He floods acres of paper with brackets and inverted commas". Personally, I think that's more funny than it is fair. Funny and fair was the actress Tallulah Bankhead who died today in 1968 at the age of 66. She had all the trappings of a Bibliomaniac, saying: "I read Shakespeare and the Bible and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education".
December 13th
And finally, December 13th. Today in 1784, Dr Samuel Johnson died. A man of many talents and also many ailments (asthma, dropsy, scrofula, partial blindness, Boswell), he wrote a vast and the seminal Dictionary, the oriental tale Rasselas (coming soon on Bibliomania), poems, and hundreds of wise and amusing essays. Not bad, really, given the catalogue of disasters that was his life and his interminable and wholly undeserved poverty. Just as excitingly, December 13th is the birthday of Dick Van Dyke. Van Dyke was the idiotic chimney-sweep with the hilarious mockney accent in the film "Mary Poppins" and also starred in... nothing else of any value (and, no, "Diagnosis Murder" is not of any value just because Chachi from "Happy Days" was in it). Probably more interesting and more valuable than anything Van Dyke ever put his name to was the patenting of the ice cream cone today in 1903. If you hadn't guessed it, that is my cue to go and buy a big tub of mint choc chip and settle down to an evening with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's heart-ripping Of Love and Other Demons.
So, until next time, send your ideas, favourite quotations and deaths (but no cadavers, please, unless they are in html) to comments@bibliomania.com.
David Pinching, Editor
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