| April Chores
by Jane Kenyon
When I take the chilly tools
from the shed's darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.
The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.
Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
Jane Kenyon, “April Chores” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org. (buy now)
The first law regulating copyright in the world was issued in Great Britain on this day in 1710 making it possible for authors to truly own their own work. It read, in part: “[...] the Author of any Book or Books already Printed, who hath not Transferred to any other the Copy or Copies of such Book or Books, Share or Shares thereof, or the Bookseller or Booksellers, Printer or Printers, or other Person or Persons, who hath or have Purchased or Acquired the Copy or Copies of any Book or Books, in order to Print or Reprint the same, shall have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and Books for the Term of one and twenty years [...]”
The Great Gatsby was first published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on this day in 1925. Even though F. Scott Fitzgerald (books by this author) already had two successful novels under his belt — This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922) — Gatsby’s reception was, at best, mixed. The novel sold fewer than 20,000 copies its first year in print and Fitzgerald went to his grave in 1940, at the age of 44, believing he was a failure. Reviews were tepid and most readers saw it as little more than a nostalgic period piece. One reviewer said the book was “clever and brilliantly surfaced but not the work of a wise and mature novelist.” H.L. Mencken called it “a beautiful anecdote.” Fitzgerald believed the book flopped because it lacked a likeable female protagonist and at that time most readers of novels were women. Later critics speculated that it was the disconnect between the novel’s wealthy characters and the tough real-world economic times that left readers cold. Matthew Josephson wrote of Gatsby in 1933 that “there are ever so many Americans who can’t drink champagne from morning to night, or even go to Princeton or Montparnasse.” But during World War II a group of publishers created the Council on Books in Wartime. The council sent books to soldiers overseas and Gatsby was one of those books. In 1942, long past the Jazz Age, young Americans could appreciate the poignancy of the story. The Saturday Evening Post proclaimed the book “as popular as pin-up girls” among the boys abroad. One hundred fifty thousand copies were shipped out to soldiers and this was about 100,000 more than were sold in Fitzgerald’s lifetime. Literary critic Edmund Wilson helped promote Gatsby by including it in his edition of Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon in 1941 and this also led to readers’ renewed interest. It’s now considered one of the great American novels of the 20th century. In 2020 The Great Gatsby entered the public domain, and now belongs to the people of the world. The book’s final line is also Fitzgerald’s epitaph: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
It’s the birthday of writer Anne Lamott (books by this author), born in San Francisco (1954). Her parents were ardent supporters of social justice and civil rights and they raised her to be an activist. They were also atheists, but Lamott says, “I always secretly believed that there was a God — I always secretly prayed. I always found these religious kids.” She was a good student and a talented tennis player, but she had a lot of anxiety. “I was very shy and strange-looking, loved reading above everything else, weighed about forty pounds at the time, and was so tense that I walked around with my shoulders up to my ears, like Richard Nixon [...] I was very clearly the one who was going to grow up to be a serial killer, or keep dozens and dozens of cats. Instead, I got funny. I got funny because boys, older boys I didn’t even know, would ride by on their bicycles and taunt me about my weird looks. Each time felt like a drive-by shooting.” She says that the Madeleine L’Engle book A Wrinkle in Time (1962) saved her when she was a child because it captured the grief and isolation she felt. She also loved E.B. White, Louisa May Alcott, Rudyard Kipling, and Roald Dahl. She dropped out of college after two years and decided to become a writer, like her father. She gave tennis lessons, and cleaned houses, and sold some magazine articles. Her father died of brain cancer in 1979 when Lamott was 25. She dedicated her first novel, Hard Laughter (1980), to him. Two more novels, Rosie (1983) and Joe Jones (1985), followed. Even though she was productive and fairly successful, she was drinking a lot. It got so bad that every morning, she would have to call her friends to find out what had happened the night before because she couldn’t remember. One day, when she was really hung over, she heard some old spirituals coming out of a little Presbyterian church in Marin City, California, so she went inside to listen to the music. She went back the next week, and the next, but she never stayed for the sermon. Gradually, she says, she began to feel the presence of Jesus around her. “It would be like a little stray cat. You know, I would kind of nudge him with my feet and say, ‘No,’ because you can’t let him in, because once you let him in and give him milk, you have a little cat, and I didn’t want it. I lived on this tiny little houseboat at the time, and finally one day I just felt like: ‘Oh, whatever. You can come in.’” Lamott published her first nonfiction book in 1993. That was Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. She had been sober for a few years and was in a relationship when she found out she was pregnant. She decided to keep the baby and when she told her partner what she had decided, he left her. She writes candidly about her first year as a single mother to her son, Sam; she also writes about her history of substance abuse, her conversion to Christianity, and her best friend’s diagnosis with a terminal illness. When Sam was 19 he became a father himself, and together he and Lamott published a sequel, of sorts, called Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son (2012). Lamott also wrote a popular book on writing: Bird by Bird (1994). Her newest book is Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage (2021).
It’s the birthday of writer who once said, “A novel captures the soul of people.” That’s Paul Theroux (books by this author), born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). Theroux is best known for novels like The Mosquito Coast (1981) about 14-year-old Charlie Fox whose irreverent, inventor father suddenly moves the entire family from Massachusetts to the Mosquito Coast of Honduras. It was later made into a movie starring Harrison Ford as the father. Theroux’s first novel, Waldo (1967), was published in 1967. He followed up with The Consul’s File (1972) and then found himself out of ideas for fiction. He’d always been a traveler so he decided to get on a train in Great Britain and see what happened. Then he got on another train, and another, and found himself in Japan. That experience became his book The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) which is considered a classic in the travel writing genre. When he travels Theroux writes in small notebooks and then composes first drafts in longhand on Pocket Diamond pads of paper. At 74-years-old he spent two and half years driving more than 25,000 miles through Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina for his book Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads (2015), a portrait of poverty, culture, and hope. On the road people called him Mr. Thorax and he delighted in breakfasting on Froot Loops in Styrofoam bowls in cheap chain motels. He said, “I like being anonymous. I’d hate having a recognizable name or face.” He said: “The difference between travel and tourism is the difference between walking in the hot sun to meet an angry person who is going to insult me and then tell me his amazing story, and lying in the sun sipping a cool drink and reading, say, Death in Venice. The first is more profitable; the second more pleasant. Both are enlightening.” Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
