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The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, December 21, 2000
“When My Dead Father Called,” by Robert Bly, from Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems (Harper Collins).
It’s the birthday of novelist Heinrich Böll, born in Cologne, Germany (1917). He was drafted into the German army when he was 22, and suffered "the frightful fate of being a soldier and having to wish that the war might be lost." His most popular book was The Clown (1963). In 1971, he won the Nobel Prize for what the Nobel committee called "his most grandly conceived work," Group Portrait With Lady, a survey of German life over five decades.
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On this day in 1913, Arthur Wynne published a tee-shaped word puzzle or 'word-cross' in the newspaper The New York World; twenty years later, crossword puzzles were in nearly every newspaper in the country.
It's the birthday of Anthony Powell, in Westminster, London (1905), sometimes called "the English Proust" because of his enormous 12 volume novel, A Dance To The Music of Time, a million words long. The series was published in two-year intervals from 1951 to 1975. Powell also wrote four volumes of memoirs and The Fisher King.
It's the birthday of novelist and journalist Dame Rebecca West, born Cecily Fairfield in County Kerry, Ireland (1892).
On this day in 1879, Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen with a different ending than Ibsen had intended. In Ibsen's original version, Nora leaves her husband and children at the end, but in this production, the leading lady wanted Nora to stay. She got her way.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
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