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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Posted on June 5, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of one of the great men of letters of the 20th century, Alfred Kazin, born in Brooklyn (1915). He grew up in the Brownsville section, the poor Jewish immigrant sector of Brooklyn. He said, “We were the children of the immigrants who had camped at the city’s back door … a place that measured all success by our skill in getting away from it.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Posted on June 4, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

On this date in 1896, a young electrical engineer named Henry Ford completed, and successfully tested, his first experimental automobile. He called it the “Quadricycle” because it rolled around on four bicycle tires. He worked on it for two years, out in the shed behind his house on Bagley Avenue in Detroit. It was finally ready to test when he hit an unexpected snag: It was too wide to fit through the workshop’s door. Ford took an ax to the doorframe, and he was soon rolling down Grand River Avenue.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 3, 2024

Posted on June 3, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet Allen Ginsberg, born in Newark, New Jersey (1926). He was raised by a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants; his father was a high school teacher and a poet, and his mother struggled with mental illness her entire life. At Columbia University, he fell in with a group of poets and artists that included Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. They read poetry to each other and took drugs and had all-night conversations, and sometime in the late ’40s, they started calling themselves “Beats.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 2, 2024

Posted on June 2, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the man who said, “The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was born on this day in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, in 1840. He often helped his father with various building projects, and when he was 16, he took a job as an architect’s apprentice.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 1, 2024

Posted on June 1, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of actress Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles, California (1926). As a child, she was passed around between her mother and a series of foster parents. Eventually, she wound up with her mother’s friend Grace McKee, who worked in the movie industry. Grace worshiped movie stars, and she told Monroe that she would be a movie star herself one day.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, May 31, 2024

Posted on May 31, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, New York (1819). Whitman worked as a printing press typesetter, teacher, journalist, and newspaper editor. He was working as a carpenter, his father’s trade, and living with his mother in Brooklyn, when he read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The Poet,” which claimed the new United States needed a poet to properly capture its spirit. Whitman decided he was that poet. “I was simmering, simmering, simmering,” Whitman later said. “Emerson brought me to a boil.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, May 30, 2024

Posted on May 30, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France. In the centuries that have passed, she’s become a national icon in France. She is to the national identity of France, novelist Julian Barnes notes, what Robin Hood is to England.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Posted on May 29, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of English author G.K. Chesterton (1903), born Gilbert Keith Chesterton in London (1874). He was a large man, well over six feet, and rotund. He disagreed sharply with many people, most notably H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, but he was so agreeable and full of good humor that he kept them as close friends. He was also remarkably prolific, writing fast and scarcely editing what he wrote.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Posted on May 28, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of author Ian Fleming, born in London in 1908. His family enjoyed wealth and social standing; his father, Valentine, was a Member of Parliament, and when he died in World War I, Winston Churchill wrote his obituary. All doors were open to young Ian, and he worked as a foreign journalist, a banker, a stockbroker, a high-ranking officer and assistant to the director of British naval intelligence, and foreign manager of London’s Sunday Times before he took up the career, and the character, that would make him famous. Casino Royale (1953) was the first of his many “James Bond” novels, which featured the playboy spy — code name “007” — and a host of fast cars, nifty gadgets, and hot women.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, May 27, 2024

Posted on May 27, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of novelist Dashiell Hammett (1894), born Samuel Dashiell Hammett in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. In 1915, he got a job as a detective for the famous Pinkerton Agency, and this experience provided fodder for his later novels. He enlisted in World War I, but contracted tuberculosis, and that — combined with his distaste over the increasing Pinkerton involvement with strike-breaking — effectively ended his gumshoe career.

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