| Who’s Who
by W.H. Auden
A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day:
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:
Some of the last researchers even write
Love made him weep his pints like you and me.
With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still
Or potter round the garden; answered some
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.
"Who's Who" by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems. © Random House, 2007. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
It's the birthday of writer H.G. Wells (books by this author), born Herbert George Wells in Bromley, England (1866). Although popularly known as one of the fathers of modern science fiction, having published classics such as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The War of the Worlds within the first few years of his writing career, Wells went on to publish dozens of novels, story collections, and books of nonfiction, most of which were not explicitly sci-fi. Most, however, dealt in some way with Wells' interest in biology, his strong belief in socialism, or his vision for the future of mankind. Indeed, much of what was fantastic and fictional when he conceived it came to pass, like his predictions that airplanes would someday be used to wage war and advanced transportation would lead to an explosion of suburbs.
It's the birthday of Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist Leonard Cohen, born in Montreal (1934) (books by this author). He started out as a poet, publishing a few well-received volumes in the 1950s and '60s, including Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) and The Spice-Box of Earth (1961). He also wrote a couple of novels: The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). But he was disappointed that writing didn't pay better, so he moved to the United States to become a folk singer and songwriter. He wasn't happy with the arrangements on his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), but it became a cult favorite. His 1984 album, Various Positions, included one of his most popular songs, "Hallelujah." It's been covered by nearly 200 other singers in a variety of languages.
It's the birthday of fiction writer Stephen King (books by this author), born on this day in Portland, Maine (1947). He started in early on the business of writing, when he was six or seven years old, writing stories based on movies he had seen and then selling them to friends. One day, when he was 12 years old, he was exploring the attic above his aunt and uncle's garage, and he found a box full of paperback books, including a book of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. He spent the next two days reading the book cover to cover, and he said that was "where that interior dowsing rod suddenly turned over, where the compass needle swung emphatically toward some mental true north." From that time on, horror fiction was his calling.
Stephen King has said he writes 2,000 words — about 10 pages — every single day. “On some days, those 10 pages come easily; I'm up and out and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning, perky as a rat in liverwurst. More frequently, as I grow older, I find myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the day's work around one-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the words come hard, I'm still fiddling around at teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.”
It isn't just his productivity that has made King one of the top-earning authors in the world. He has been years ahead of other writers on technology — in 2000, he started publishing some of his work online only, at a time when e-books were virtually unknown. He routinely turns down big advances, but instead of royalties, he splits the profits from his books 50-50 with the publishers. And while most publishers purchase book rights for 70 years after the author's death, King allows them just 15 years after publication, which guarantees that the publishers work hard to sell his books, since he can find someone else if the deal isn't working.
King's novels include Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining (1977), Cujo (1981), Pet Sematary (1993), It (1986), The Green Mile (2000), and the Dark Tower series (1982-2012). His latest novel out this month is The Institute (2019).
King said, "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."
And he said: "I just write about what scares me. When I was a kid, my mother used to say, 'Think of the worst thing that you can, and if you say it out loud then it won't come true.' And that's probably been the basis of my career."
On this day in 1970, The New York Times premiered a new section called the "Op. Ed. Page," a section opposite the traditional editorial page that was to be devoted to the columns of outside writers and to illustrations and political cartoons. As the Timeswrote on that day, "The purpose of the Op. Ed. Page is neither to reinforce nor to counterbalance The Times's own editorial position, which will continue to be presented as usual in these columns. The objective is rather to afford greater opportunity for exploration of issues and presentation of new insights and new ideas by writers and thinkers who have no institutional connection with The Times and whose views will very frequently be completely divergent from out own."
The invention of the "op-ed," or, to put it another way, the willingness of a newspaper to include the perspective of non-newspaper writers, as well as its endorsement of visual art, shifted the way newspapers did business — and the way readers interacted with them. No longer a faceless arbiter of fact and opinion, truth and lies, worthy and unworthy, newspapers acknowledged, in this small way, the existence of their own subjectivity and the possibility that their coverage might be enhanced by allowing for more complexity. Including an op-ed page was the first step, perhaps, in the modern dynamism of journalism; for the 40th anniversary celebrating the op-ed, The Times commissioned a documentary video about op-ed artwork, premiered a new Web page design for the section, published selections from online commentary in the newsprint edition, and, yes, printed some op-eds.
It's the birthday of the creator of Penguin Books, Sir Allen Lane, born Allen Williams Lane in Bristol, England (1902). Apprenticed to his publisher uncle when he was 17, Allen became the managing editor of the London publishing house The Bodley Head just six years later.
In 1935, waiting for a train after a visit to one of his writers, Agatha Christie, Lane was irritated to realize that the only reading available for sale on the platform was magazines or Victorian novel reprints. How would he occupy himself on the trip back to the city, he wondered ... and then, the question broadened: Might not the average train rider wish to read something else too? Might the public buy quality literature if it were only available to them in a form and price more palatable than a hardbound in a bookstore?
Lane was determined that paperbacks, then mostly low-quality products of low-quality writing, could be the vehicles of great, contemporary fiction. At the suggestion of his secretary, he said, he took the penguin as his new company's "dignified but flippant" name and symbol. Of course, the German publisher Albatross, which had already begun producing similar paperbacks a few years earlier, might have been an additional inspiration. Whatever the origin of Lane's idea or company name, he was right: Within a year the house had sold 3 million paperbacks, each at the price of a pack of cigarettes.
Like most innovations, Lane's idea — and his success — was initially regarded as a cause for concern by many other publishers and writers. It lowered the aesthetic value of great works of literature — a book like The Grapes of Wrath, for example, needn't be a beautifully bound hardcover to last a lifetime, but could instead exist as a nearly disposable pocket-sized tome in bright orange, adorned with a funny little bird in mid-waddle. But Lane claimed paperbacks would effectively democratize literature, converting frequent library users to book buyers and readers of crummy pap into readers of classic prose.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® |
