Friday, March 29, 2024

Notes For March 29th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 29th, 1936, the famous American writer Judith Guest was born in Detroit, Michigan. The famous poet Edgar Guest was her great-uncle. Judith Guest studied English and psychology at the University of Michigan, where she belonged to the Sigma Kappa sorority.

In 1975, while working as a schoolteacher, Guest wrote her first novel. Having no agent, she decided to sell it herself. Her first two submissions were rejected. The first publisher rejected the novel without comment.

The second publisher enclosed a note with her rejection slip, telling her that "While the book has some satiric bite, overall the level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it."

The third submission proved to be the charm. An editor at Viking Press immediately bought Guest's novel. It was the first time in over 25 years that Viking had bought and published an unsolicited manuscript.

The release of the novel was far from immediate; the editor held it back for eight months, so that it would hit bookstores in July of 1976 - the time of the bicentennial celebration in the United States.

To release this particular novel around the time of the country's 200th birthday was clever, as it told the story of an all-American family that falls apart after its mask of perfection is suddenly ripped off. Ordinary People would become a classic novel and make Judith Guest's name as a writer.

Ordinary People opens with the Jarretts, a wealthy upper class family who live in a big house in an exclusive neighborhood in Lake Forest, Illinois, appearing to have come to terms with the sudden death of oldest son Buck in a sailing accident six months earlier.

Then, younger son Conrad, 17, attempts suicide by slashing his wrists. He had been suffering from severe depression, as he was on the boat with Buck when a sudden storm hit, and his brother was killed.

Conrad's parents, Cal and Beth, commit him to a psychiatric hospital. After eight months of treatment, he returns home and goes back to school, but his unresolved issues threaten his sanity.

His father, Cal, encourages him to see a therapist. Resistant at first, Conrad agrees to therapy and begins seeing Dr. Tyrone Berger, an eccentric psychiatrist. He starts to open up and Dr. Berger helps him work through his issues.

Conrad's issues include survivor's guilt and an apathetic mother. Beth Jarrett has an anal-retentive "type A" personality and is maniacally devoted to perfection. Determined to be the perfect wife and mother, she keeps a perfect house and had built a perfect family.

But that perfection was shattered when Buck died, and now, deep in denial, she is incapable of grieving for him, feeling for her troubled surviving son, or dealing with the fact that her perfect life has fallen to pieces.

Beth's husband Cal, a tax attorney, grew up in an orphanage after losing his mother at the age of 11. He never knew his father. Becoming successful and wealthy after enduring a poor and unhappy childhood is a source of great pride to Cal.

He always believed himself lucky, but now that his family is falling apart, he begins to wonder who and what he really is and where his life is headed. To add to his mid life crisis, his wife Beth has become cold, distant, and frigid. His marriage is crumbling.

The experimental narrative switches between Cal and Conrad's points of view and includes interior monologues and stream-of-consciousness narration. Ordinary People won Judith Guest the Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize for best first novel.

Before the novel hit the bookstores, legendary actor-filmmaker Robert Redford got hold of a preview edition. He loved the book, bought the movie rights, and directed the feature film adaptation, which was released in 1980.

The highly acclaimed film, which starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, and Timothy Hutton, won several Academy Awards. Redford took home the Best Director Oscar for his directorial debut.

With the success of the film, the novel became a subject of study for middle and high school English classes. This led to challenges from some disgruntled parents due to the dark subject matter and a brief sex scene between the troubled, teenage Conrad and his girlfriend, Jeannine.

Ordinary People would be the first of several novels by Judith Guest that dealt with adolescents in crisis. Her most recent novel, A Tarnished Eye (2004), was loosely based on a real life crime that took place in her native Michigan.

In this novel, the rural community of Blessed, Michigan, is shattered when an entire family - a couple and their four children - are found savagely murdered in their summer home. The Sheriff, Hugh DeWitt, still reeling from the death of his infant son, must deal with his grief as he tries to solve the murders.

There had been a history of conflict between the locals and the rich city folk who come to Blessed to buy up the land for their vacation estates. Could that have been the motivation for such a monstrous crime?


Quote Of The Day

"I wanted to explore the anatomy of depression — how it works and why it happens to people; how you can go from being down but able to handle it, to being so down that you don’t even want to handle it, and then taking a radical step with your life — trying to commit suicide — and failing at that, coming back to the world and having to 'act normal' when, in fact, you have been forever changed."

- Judith Guest on her novel Ordinary People.


Vanguard Video

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the highly acclaimed 1980 feature film adaptation of Judith Guest's classic debut novel, Ordinary People. Enjoy!

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Notes For March 28th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 28th, 1909, the famous American writer Nelson Algren was born. He was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, to a German Jewish mother and a Swedish father. When Nelson was three, his family moved to Chicago.

The Abrahams first settled in the South Side. When Nelson was eight, they moved to an apartment in the North Side. Nelson was a lifelong White Sox fan.

Growing up in Cubs country, the other kids teased him frequently for being a White Sox fan. The teasing would increase exponentially during the Black Sox Scandal of 1920, when it was revealed that eight White Sox players had been bribed to throw the World Series.

In 1931, Neslon Algren graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor's degree in journalism. With the Great Depression in full effect, all he could do to make ends meet was drift around the country looking for work like so many other people did.

Two years later, Algren wrote his first short story, So Help Me. At the time, he was working at a gas station in Texas. Before his planned return home to Chicago, he found a typewriter in an abandoned classroom and took it, as very few publications accepted handwritten manuscripts.

Algren was caught, arrested, convicted of theft, and sentenced to prison. He was released after serving five months of a possible three and a half year term. While in prison, he was moved by the scores of other men jailed for taking desperate measures in desperate times.

He found kindred spirits among the outsiders, misfits, failures, and other tragic characters spawned by the Depression. They strongly influenced his writing. In 1935, his short story The Brother's House, published by Story magazine, won him his first of three O. Henry Awards.

That same year, Algren published his first novel, Somebody in Boots. It sold only 750 copies before going out of print, which didn't bother the author because he considered it primitive - his worst work.

His second novel, Never Come Morning (1942), courted many good reviews. Ernest Hemingway wrote of it, "I think it very, very good. It is as fine and good stuff to come out of Chicago..." It also courted controversy.

Never Come Morning told the haunting, tragic, and lyrical story of Bruno "Lefty" Bicek, a small time hoodlum and aspiring boxer from the "Polish Triangle" - the Polish section of Chicago's North Side. Algren tells the story without making any moral judgement on his characters.

Growing up desperately poor, Bruno dreams of escaping the slums by becoming a boxing champion, but ultimately realizes that he was born a thug and will be a thug until the day he dies - a revelation that comes when he fails to save his girlfriend Steffi Rostenkowski from being gang raped by his thug buddies.

Algren's grim and frank depictions of the Polish Triangle as a hopeless cesspool of crime, corruption, and misery outraged Polish-American groups in Chicago, who accused him of being a Nordic Nazi sympathizer.

They didn't realize hat he was actually Jewish and a leftist. Nevertheless, the pressure groups succeeded in getting Never Come Morning banned by the Chicago Public Library.

In 1949, Nelson Algren published his most famous novel, The Man With the Golden Arm. It would win him the National Book Award. The Polish-American protagonist, Francis Majcinek, known as Frankie Machine, is a professional card sharp.

Also an aspiring jazz drummer, Frankie longs to escape the seedy world of professional gambling by becoming a professional musician, but his personal problems threaten both his dream and his life.

When he served in World War II, Frankie took shrapnel in his liver and was treated with morphine. He recovered but became a morphine addict - a habit he refers to as the "thirty-five-pound monkey on his back." He keeps his friends and wife in the dark about his habit, which is a source of great shame for him.

Speaking of his wife, Frankie is trapped in a miserable marriage to wheelchair-bound Sophie, whom he thinks he crippled in a drunk driving accident. Her paralysis is actually psychological, and she takes her frustration out on Frankie, using guilt to keep him from leaving her. The stress adds to his drug habit.

After Frankie ends up accidentally killing his drug supplier "Nifty Louie" Fomorowski, he and his friend, petty crook Sparrow Saltskin, cover up Frankie's involvement in the crime. Then, Frankie's life takes a turn for the better when he has an affair with his childhood sweetheart, Molly "Molly-O" Novotny.

Molly was also trapped in a rotten marriage until her abusive husband got arrested. Reunited with Frankie, she uses her love to help him beat his drug addiction. Unfortunately, Frankie screws up again, but in a different way - he gets busted for shoplifting.

While Frankie serves his time, Molly moves away and they lose contact. After his release, without Molly to lean on, Frankie goes back on the needle. When his friend Sparrow breaks down during an intense police interrogation over the death of Nifty Louie, Frankie must go on the lam.

While on the run, Frankie finds Molly working at a strip joint. He hides out at her apartment and, with her help, kicks his drug addiction once and for all. The cops learn where he's hiding and he's forced to flee again. He barely escapes from them.

Hiding out in a sleazy flophouse, Frankie realizes that he'll never be free or have his Molly again, so he commits suicide, hanging himself in his room. The novel ends with a poem for Frankie called Epitaph.

Several years after The Man With the Golden Arm was published, the legendary director Otto Preminger decided to adapt it as a feature film. Unfortunately, the stifling Production Code was still in effect, and the Code forbade any stories dealing with drugs.

In 1953, Preminger successfully defied the Production Code to adapt the risque romantic comedy The Moon is Blue, which had been a hit Broadway play. When the PCA (Production Code Administration) once again denied him a Code Seal for The Man With the Golden Arm, Preminger released it without one, like he'd done for The Moon is Blue.

He had several key factors working in his favor. The Legion of Decency didn't condemn the film. Theater owners, granted independence from the studios in a landmark Supreme Court antitrust decision in 1948, didn't care about the Code Seal anymore. Last, but certainly not least, Preminger had cast legendary singer Frank Sinatra in the lead role.

The film adaptation of The Man With the Golden Arm was a cinematic milestone in that it finally cajoled Hollywood to amend the Production Code, which hadn't changed in over 25 years. It was also the first Hollywood feature film in over two decades to deal with drug addiction as its main theme.

Even anti-drug propaganda films like Reefer Madness (1936), Marihuana (1936), and The Cocaine Fiends (1935) could only be made by low budget exploitation filmmakers and booked into small, local theaters. The Code forbade studios from making drug movies.

Despite Frank Sinatra's excellent performance as Frankie Machine, Nelson Algren hated Otto Preminger's adaptation of his novel. He had been brought in as a screenwriter, then quickly replaced by Walter Newman.

Although an acclaimed film and a big hit at the box office, the screenplay took extensive liberties with the novel and changed the ending. To make matters worse, Algren, believing he had been duped into selling the adaptation rights for far less than they were worth, sued producer-director Otto Preminger for his fair share. He lost.

During the 1950s, Nelson Algren ran afoul of McCarthyism - the government's relentless and mostly illegal persecution of suspected communists and communist sympathizers.

Algren never joined the Communist Party because of negative experiences he and his friend, legendary African-American novelist Richard Wright, had at the hands of party members. However, he had belonged to the John Reed Club, a social club for left-leaning artists, writers, and intellectuals.

He had also belonged to a committee that protested the persecution of alleged spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were both executed. So, the FBI began surveillance of Algren, deeming him a subversive.

The FBI's dossier on Nelson Algren would clock in at over 500 pages long, but never contain any concrete evidence against him. Still, the government denied him a passport until 1960.

He had wanted to visit his girlfriend, legendary French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in Paris. By the time he finally got his passport, their relationship had begun to wane.

In 1956, Algren finally followed up The Man With the Golden Arm with another classic novel. A Walk on the Wild Side opens in South Texas during the early years of the Great Depression, telling the story of Dove Linkhorn, another casualty of the Depression and of his own upbringing.

At sixteen, Dove is illiterate. His father refused to allow him to go to school because the principal was Catholic. So, he learned about life from the movies and from the hobos, pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, and bootleggers who lived and worked nearby.

Another denizen of the town is Terasina Vidavarri, the owner of a bleak little cafe who teaches Dove how to read. Terasina was once raped by a soldier. She and Dove become lovers, though he rapes her as well.

Dove begins hopping trains to look for work. His surreal, poetic, tragicomic adventures find him working everywhere from a steamship to a brothel to a condom factory. He also gets caught up in petty crime and has many affairs but ultimately returns to Terasina's cafe.

This novel contained Algren's famous "three rules of life," which were "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

A Walk on the Wild Side was adapted as a feature film in 1962, but because the Production Code was still in effect, the novel was bowdlerized and changed considerably for the screen.

Despite the efforts of the great director Edward Dmytryk behind the camera and Laurence Harvey in the lead role, the film was a bomb at the box office. Bosley Crowther, the celebrated film critic for The New York Times, panned the movie, describing it in his review as a "lurid, tawdry, and sleazy melodrama."

In 1975, Nelson Algren was commissioned to write a magazine article on the trial of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who had been convicted again for a double murder he didn't commit.

Carter wouldn't be acquitted until 1985, when his convictions were overturned after a Federal Appeals Court determined that he'd been the victim of racism and malicious prosecution.

While researching his article, Algren visited Carter's hometown of Paterson, New Jersey, and liked it so much that he decided to live there. He spent five years in Paterson before moving to Long Island, where he died at home of a heart attack. He was 72 years old.


Quote Of The Day

"A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery."

- Nelson Algren


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a Chicago Humanities Festival 40-minute panel discussion of a recent documentary on Nelson Algren. Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Notes For March 27th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 27th, 1923, the famous poet Louis Simpson was born. He was born in Jamaica to a Scottish father and a Russian mother. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 17, settling in New York City.

Louis soon enrolled at Columbia University, where he majored in English. One of his professors was the famous writer and critic, Mark Van Doren. In 1943, Simpson cut his education short to enlist in the U.S. Army, as World War II was raging.

He became a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He served as a courier for the company captain, which required him to deliver orders from company headquarters to officers at the front. Thus, he saw action in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

While stationed in France, Simpson's company fought a fierce and bloody battle against Nazi forces which had ambushed them on the west bank of the Carentan France Marina. The battle would inspire Simpson to write his classic poem Carentan O Carentan, which included these memorable verses:

There is a whistling in the leaves,
And it is not the wind,
The twigs are falling from the knives
That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,
The way to turn and shoot.
But the Sergeant's silent
That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly
Our place upon the map.
But the Captain's sickly
And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,
My place in the platoon?
He too's a sleeping beauty,
Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan
Before we met with you
We never yet had lost a man
Or known what death could do.


After the war ended, Louis Simpson enrolled at the University of Paris and continued his studies. He then returned to New York City, where he worked as a book editor while doing his graduate studies. He earned a PhD from Columbia University.

He would become a respected professor of English and poetry, teaching at not only Columbia University, but also at the University of California - Berkeley and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Simpson's first poetry collection, The Arrivistes, was published in 1949. In the beginning, he was strongly devoted to traditional verse and was acclaimed for this work. However, as the years passed, he moved away from traditional styles and embraced free verse.

Whether he worked in formal or free verse, as a poet, Simpson was always known for both his strong sense of narrative and for his lyricism, which was never compromised by his narrative voice.

Louis Simpson's 1963 poetry collection, At the End of the Open Road, won him a Pulitzer Prize. Edward Hirsch, critic for the Washington Post, described it this way:

A sustained meditation on the American character... the moral genius of this book is that it traverses the open road of American mythology and brings us back to ourselves; it sees us not as we wish to be but as we are.

In this poem from At the End of the Open Road, titled In California, Simpson tips his hat to one of his favorite writers of free verse, the great Walt Whitman:

Here I am, troubling the dream coast
With my New York face,
Bearing among the realtors
And tennis-players my dark preoccupation.

There once was an epical clatter --
Voices and banjos, Tennessee, Ohio,
Rising like incense in the sight of heaven.
Today, there is an angel in the gate.

Lie back, Walt Whitman,
There, on the fabulous raft with the King and the
Duke!
For the white row of the Marina
Faces the Rock. Turn round the wagons here.

Lie back! We cannot bear
The stars any more, those infinite spaces.
Let the realtors divide the mountain,
For they have already subdivided the valley.

Rectangular city blocks astonished
Herodotus in Babylon,
Cortez in Tenochtitlan,
And here's the same old city-planner, death.

We cannot turn or stay.
For though we sleep, and let the reins fall slack,
The great cloud-wagons move
Outward still, dreaming of a Pacific.


In addition to his poetry collections, Louis Simpson also wrote nearly a dozen works of nonfiction including studies of famous poets from T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams to Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath. He lived on Long Island until his death in September of 2012 at the age of 89.


Quote Of The Day

“The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it.”

- Louis Simpson


Vanguard Video

Today's video features Louis Simpson reading one of his poems. Enjoy!

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Notes For March 26th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 26th, 1920, This Side of Paradise, the classic first novel by the legendary American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, was published. In the summer of 1919, Fitzgerald, then 22 years old, had broken up with his girlfriend, Zelda Sayre.

Depressed, he spent most of the summer drunk before returning to his family's home in St. Paul, Minnesota. There, he began writing again, resuming work on his first novel, which had been rejected by publishers.

The original draft of the novel was titled The Romantic Egotist. Fitzgerald's rewrite was practically a brand new novel; only 80 pages of his original manuscript made it into the 300+ page final draft, which was retitled This Side of Paradise.

He hoped that if he became a successful novelist, he could win Zelda back. She had dumped him because she thought he would never be able to provide her with a comfortable living.

On September 4th, 1919, Fitzgerald had a friend deliver his completed manuscript to Max Perkins, an editor at Scribner's in New York. The novel was nearly rejected by the other editors, but on Perkins' insistence, they accepted it.

(Max Perkins, one of the greatest book editors and publishers of all time, not only discovered and edited F. Scott Fitzgerald's work, he also discovered and edited the novels of other great writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, and helped them get published.)

He believed that Fitzgerald was a major talent, and that This Side of Paradise would be a bestseller. The author pleaded for an immediate release, but was told that his novel wouldn't be published until the spring.

So, on March 26th, 1920, This Side of Paradise was published by Scribner's in a first edition press run of 3,000 copies. It sold out in three days, confirming Fitzgerald's prediction that he would become an overnight sensation.

Between 1920 and 1921, nearly 50,000 copies of the novel were printed. The author didn't earn a huge income from his first novel, but it sold well. He made just over $6,200 in 1920 - almost $96,000 in today's money - and the novel's success helped him earn more from his short stories, which made up the bulk of his income.

This Side of Paradise was a dark and lyrical tale of love warped by greed and status-seeking. It told the story of Amory Blaine, a poor but handsome young Midwesterner, from his early years and his education at Princeton through his service in World War I and his return home.

Blaine learns a hard lesson when his attempts at romance with wealthy debutantes fail miserably and leave him heartbroken. The novel ends with his famous summation, "I know myself, but that is all."

The style Fitzgerald employed for his first novel was a mishmash of straightforward narrative and narrative drama intertwined with letters and poems by the protagonist, Amory Blaine.

This is not a surprise, considering that Fitzgerald cobbled together different writings to form the novel. And yet, the end product turned out to be brilliant and gave readers and critics a preview of the genius that would produce The Great Gatsby five years later.

The success of his first novel wouldn't be the only prediction of Fitzgerald's to come true. After the book was accepted by Scribner's, he returned to Zelda and they became a couple again.

A week after the novel was published, they were married. Unfortunately, their alcoholism and Zelda's worsening mental illness would doom their relationship. His health ravaged by his heavy drinking, F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 at the age of 44 after suffering his third and final heart attack.


Quote Of The Day

"All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel,This Side of Paradise. Enjoy!


Friday, March 22, 2024

Notes For March 22nd, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 22nd, 1947, the legendary American writer James Patterson was born in Newburgh, New York. He earned his Master's Degree from Vanderbilt University. In 1985, at the age of 38, Patterson retired from his successful advertising career to write full time.

Before he retired from advertising, Patterson had written three novels. His first, a mystery novel called The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), won him an Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

His fifth novel, the first in a classic series of suspense thrillers, was a huge bestseller and established him as one of the greatest suspense novelists of all time.

Along Came a Spider (1993) introduced Patterson's most famous character, Alex Cross, an African-American homicide detective for the Washington, D.C. police. He's also a brilliant forensic psychologist.

The novel opens with Cross suddenly pulled off the case he's been working on - the bizarre and savage murder of two black prostitutes - and reassigned to investigate the kidnapping of two students from an exclusive private school.

Cross is angered at being pulled off his double murder case, and feels that the department cares more about rich white children that poor black women. What he doesn't know is that both cases are linked.

They are the work of Gary Soneji, a math teacher at the private school the children attended. After a standoff at a McDonald's restaurant, Soneji is captured, and Cross must figure out what he did with the children.

Using his skills as a psychologist, Cross hypnotizes Soneji several times and pieces together the horrifying truth. Soneji is a split personality. He is both Gary Murphy, a gentle teacher and loving family man, and Gary Soneji, a bloodthirsty psychopathic serial killer.

The kidnapping of the children was part of a ransom plot. In order to save the children, Cross must track down Soneji's partners in crime - a task that is complicated when Soneji escapes from prison. He wants to get to his partners - and the ransom money - before Cross does.

Along Came a Spider was adapted as a feature film in 2001, starring Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross. Widely panned by critics, (and fans) it scored only 32% on the Tomatometer. Another film, Alex Cross (2012), was even more reviled by critics and fans, scoring just 12% on the Tomatometer.

There are thirty-one novels in the Alex Cross series so far; the 31st, Cross Down, was released last year. Another of James Patterson's popular suspense novel series is the Women's Murder Club series.

The first Women's Murder Club novel, 1st To Die, was published in 2001. In it, San Francisco police detective Lindsay Boxer is called to the scene of a horrific crime - a young newlywed couple has been viciously murdered in their hotel room on their wedding night, the bride still wearing her wedding gown.

Lindsay's investigation is complicated by her personal problems - she suffers from severe depression and a life threatening blood disease. She could use a little help, and she's about to get some.

Covering the story of the crime is Cindy Thomas, a rookie investigative reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Lindsay and Cindy form an unlikely friendship as Lindsay begins tracking down a brutal, twisted serial killer.

Soon, two new friends join in - city medical examiner Claire Washburn and Assistant District Attorney Jill Bernhardt. The four ladies decide to pool their talents and resources to catch the serial killer, and The Women's Murder Club is born. There are 24 Women's Murder Club novels. The 24th, 23 1/2 Lies, was published last year.

In 2005, James Patterson began a new series of novels in a new genre - young adult fantasy. The series was called Maximum Ride and the first book, The Angel Experiment, introduced the heroine, Maximum "Max" Ride.

14-year-old Max is the leader of The Flock, a group of children ages 6-14 who are winged human-bird hybrids (98% human, 2% bird) created by genetic engineering. They have other powers in addition to being able to fly.

The Flock, which also includes Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel, are on the run from the scientists who created them. To protect their secret, the scientists have dispatched superhuman assassins called Erasers to kill off The Flock.

A feature film adaptation of The Angel Experiment, titled Maximum Ride, was released in 2016. The film is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and streaming services.

In addition to his series novels, James Patterson has written many stand-alone novels. In recent years, he has outsold Stephen King, John Grisham, and Dan Brown - combined. Most of his novels are huge bestsellers. One in 17 hardcover novels sold in the United States is by James Patterson.

Most of his numerous novels are co-authored with other writers. He's often been criticized as being a brand rather than a novelist, more interested in cranking out a product and making money than in his craft. Horror master Stephen King, who's taken many pot shots at Patterson, said that he's "a terrible writer, but he's very successful."

Patterson's philanthropic endeavors are geared toward promoting literacy. In 2005, he established the James Patterson Page Turner Awards, which awarded nearly $1,000,000 a year to schools, institutions, companies, and individuals who encourage people to read.

In 2008, Patterson put the Page Turner Awards on hold and began a new initiative, ReadKiddoRead.com, which is for parents, teachers, librarians, and others who want to encourage children to read. The site helps them find the best books for kids and provides information such as lesson plans for teachers and social networking.


Quote Of The Day

"When I write I pretend I'm telling a story to someone in the room and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished."

- James Patterson


Vanguard Video

Today's video features an interview of James Patterson at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Enjoy!

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Notes For March 21st, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 21st, 1556, the famous English writer and cleric Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake. Cranmer, a leader of the English Reformation and the Archbishop of Canterbury, was part of the Oxford Martyrs - three men who were executed by order of Queen Mary I.

The other two Oxford Martyrs were Hugh Latimer, the Bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley, the Bishop of Rochester. They had all been charged with heresy.

Mary I, England's notorious Catholic queen, would be known as "Bloody Mary" for having over 300 Protestant clerics and reformers executed during her five-year reign.

Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was Queen Mary's most prized target, for he had championed William Tyndale's English language Bible, deemed heretical by the Vatican, which had declared the Latin Bible to be the true Bible, though the Old Testament was originally written in Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament in Ancient Greek.

Cranmer had also been partly responsible for the Church of England's break with the Holy See by building a case for the divorce of Mary's father, King Henry VIII, from her mother, Catherine of Aragon.

Worst of all, Cranmer had written and compiled the first two editions of The Book of Common Prayer which contained not just prayers but also the complete liturgy of the Anglican Church. This was the ultimate violation of Queen Mary's heresy laws.

The Queen had not originally intended to execute Cranmer; she had a different plan for him which she hoped would result in a huge propaganda coup against the Anglican Church.

First, Cranmer was forced to watch his friends Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley be tried, convicted, and executed by burning right after the verdicts were delivered.

Then, Cranmer himself was tried for heresy and treason. He appealed to Rome to be tried by a papal court instead of the Queen's secular court. His appeal was denied.

After his conviction, he was sent to prison to await execution. He was offered a commutation of his death sentence if he would recant his Protestant faith in writing.

Thomas Cranmer would write not one, not two, but four recantations during the two years he spent in prison. The authorities believed that his fourth recantation was most likely genuine.

He was released to the custody of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. While living at the Dean's house, Cranmer was counselled by a Dominican friar, Juan de Villagarcia.

Although Cranmer had in writing pledged his loyalty to the English monarchy and recognized the Pope's authority as head of the Church, he had conceded little in the matter of Protestant versus Catholic doctrine, so he was returned to prison.

Two days after a writ for Cranmer's execution was issued, he wrote a fifth recantation which was deemed genuine. He was a broken old man so desperate to save his life that he wrote a sweeping confession.

In his detailed catalog of his sins against the Catholic Church, Cranmer begged for mercy, but Queen Mary would have none. She ordered his execution to take place, though he was told that he could make one final, public recantation to plead for his life. So he wrote one.

Then, the day before his execution, while on the pulpit at University Church to make his final recantation, Thomas Cranmer changed his mind and decided to go out in a blaze of glory - literally.

Instead of delivering a final, ultimate recantation of his Protestant faith, he renounced all of his previous recantations, blasted the Catholic Church, and denounced the Pope.

Cranmer was seized, removed from the pulpit, taken to the place where Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake before him, and executed. He put his right hand, which had written his recantations, into the fire before it consumed the rest of his body.

Two years later, Queen Mary I died of influenza at the age of 42. Her successor and half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I, restored the Anglican Church to power, repealed the heresy laws, and brokered a settlement between the Anglican and Catholic Churches.

An adapted version of Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer would be designated the new Anglican Church's official liturgy.

The burning of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley would inspire the legendary American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury to write his classic novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953).

The hero, Guy Montag, resists the government's attempts to force him to recant his belief that books shouldn't be burned. Bradbury quotes Latimer's last words to Ridley before their execution:

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.


Quote Of The Day

"I have sinned, in that I signed with my hand what I did not believe with my heart. When the flames are lit, this hand shall be the first to burn."

- Thomas Cranmer, his last words


Vanguard Video

Today's video features the final speech given by Thomas Cranmer before his execution. Note: you'll want to expand this video to full screen. Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Notes For March 20th, 2024


This Day In Literary History

On March 20th, 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the classic novel by the legendary American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published. Like most novels of the time, it first appeared in a serialized version. It was published by The National Era, an abolitionist magazine.

The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and her husband, Calvin Stowe, were both ferocious abolitionists and dedicated their home to the Underground Railroad - the famous secret network of safe houses for fugitive slaves traveling en route to free states.

In 1850, Congress, bowing to pressure from the South, tried to tighten the screws on the Underground Railroad by passing the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it illegal for people - even those in free states - to help fugitive slaves.

The law also compelled local law enforcement to arrest fugitive slaves and provide assistance to the vicious bounty hunters privately hired to track runaway slaves.

The free states reacted with outrage to the Fugitive Slave Act, which resulted in gross abuses. Many openly defied it. Several free states passed laws granting personal liberties, including the right to a fair trial, to fugitive slaves.

Wisconsin's state Supreme Court declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional. The law failed to disrupt the Underground Railroad; by the time it was passed, the network had become far more efficient. Afterward, it grew as the unjust law inspired scores of moderate abolitionists to become passionate activists.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was written as a response to the Fugitive Slave Act - to educate people about the horrors of slavery. The novel told the unforgettable story of a kind and noble slave whose faith and spirit cannot be broken by the evils of slavery.

The novel opens on a Kentucky farm owned by Arthur and Emily Shelby, who like to think that they're kind to their slaves. However, when he needs money, Arthur has no problem selling two of his slaves without regard to where they might end up.

The slaves are Uncle Tom, a wise and compassionate middle-aged man, and Harry, the son of Emily's maid, Eliza. The Shelbys' son George, who looked upon Uncle Tom as a friend and mentor, hates to see him go.

Uncle Tom and Harry are sold to a slave trader and shipped by riverboat down the Mississippi. While on the boat, Uncle Tom strikes up a friendship with Eva, a little white girl. When she falls into the river, he saves her life.

Her grateful father, Augustine St. Clare, buys Uncle Tom from the slave trader and takes him to his home in New Orleans. There, the friendship between Uncle Tom and Eva deepens. Sadly, Eva becomes severely ill and dies - but not before sharing her vision of heaven.

Moved by how much Uncle Tom meant to Eva, her father vows to help him become a free man. His racist cousin Ophelia is moved to reject her prejudice against blacks. Unfortunately, Augustine St. Clare is killed at a tavern, and his wife reneges on his promise to help Uncle Tom.

She sells him at auction to Simon Legree, who owns a plantation in Louisiana. Legree is an evil, perverse, sadistic racist who tortures his male slaves and sexually abuses the women. When Uncle Tom refuses to follow an order to whip another slave, Legree beats him savagely.

The beating fails to break Uncle Tom's spirit or his faith in God. The sight of Uncle Tom reading his bible and comforting other slaves makes Legree's blood boil. He determines to break Uncle Tom and nearly succeeds, as the daily horrors of life on the plantation erode the slave's faith and hope.

Just when it seems that Uncle Tom will succumb to hopelessness, he has two visions - one of little Eva and one of Jesus himself. Moved by these visions, Uncle Tom vows to remain a faithful Christian until the day he dies.

He encourages two fellow slaves, Cassy and Emmeline, to run away. When Simon Legree demands that Uncle Tom reveal their whereabouts, he refuses. A furious Legree orders his overseers to beat Uncle Tom to death.

As he lay dying, Uncle Tom forgives the overseers, which inspires them to repent. George Shelby arrives with money to buy Uncle Tom's freedom. Sadly, it's too late. Uncle Tom dies before he can become a free man.

George returns to his parents' farm in Kentucky and frees their slaves, telling them to always remember Uncle Tom's sacrifice and unshakable faith. That's actually just a bare outline of this classic epic novel.

The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin caused a national uproar. In the North, it was regarded as the bible of abolitionism and inspired many closet abolitionists to come out and join in the fight against slavery.

In the South, the book was regarded as an outrage. It was called utterly false and slanderous - a criminal defamation of the South. Many Southern writers who supported slavery wrote literature dedicated to debunking Harriet Beecher Stowe's expose of the horrors of slavery.

Their writings, called "anti-Tom" literature, portrayed white Southerners as benevolent supervisors of blacks - a helpless, child-like people unable to survive without the direct supervision of their white masters.

To defend herself against the South's accusations of slander and defamation, Stowe wrote and published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), a nonfiction book documenting the horrors of slavery that she both witnessed herself and researched, which inspired her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The book included surprisingly graphic descriptions of the sexual abuse of female slaves, who, in addition to being molested or raped by their white masters and overseers, were also prostituted and forced to "mate" with male slaves to produce offspring that would fetch a good price on the auction block.

When Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared in book form in 1852, it was published in an initial press run of 5,000 copies. That year, it sold 300,000 copies. Its London edition sold 200,000 copies throughout the United Kingdom. It became a hit throughout Europe as well.

Ironically, by the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, the book was out of print in the United States, as Stowe's original publisher had gone out of business. She found another publisher, and when the book was republished in 1862, the demand for copies soared.

That same year, Harriet Beecher Stowe was invited to Washington D.C. to meet with President Abraham Lincoln, who supposedly said to her, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

The novel would be adapted many times for the stage, screen, radio, and television. In the 20th century, Uncle Tom's Cabin courted a new controversy that continues to this day. African-American activists have accused the abolitionist novel of being racist itself, with racial stereotypes and epithets.

These accusations, like the accusations of racism leveled against Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), come from a failure to place the novel in its proper historical context and consider its overall message.


Quote Of The Day

"I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe, on her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Enjoy!