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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Posted on November 22, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, born Hoagland Howard Carmichael in 1899 in Bloomington, Indiana. Hoagy got his nickname from a circus performer who once lived with his family. Carmichael’s parents were a horse-and-buggy driver and a piano player for silent film, and his mother got him started playing the piano when he was six years old.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Posted on November 21, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of French writer, historian, and philosopher François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire, born in Paris (1694). Voltaire’s works regularly skewered politics and religion, and he was prolific in nearly every literary way, writing plays, essays, novels, and poetry. He’s best known for his satire Candide (1759), a breezy, trenchant treatise on humanity and philosophy, which blended fiction with real historical events like the Lisbon earthquake and the Seven Years War.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 20, 2023

Posted on November 20, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, born in Marshfield, Missouri (1889). He was a gifted athlete, and for a while, it looked as if he might make a name for himself that way. He ran track and played baseball, football, and basketball. And — with the exception of spelling — he was a bright student as well. At his high school graduation in 1906, the principal said, “Edwin Hubble, I have watched you for four years and I have never seen you study for 10 minutes.” He paused, and then said, “Here is a scholarship for the University of Chicago.” In 1907, he led his college basketball team to their first conference title. Three years later, he earned his degree in mathematics and astronomy.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 19, 2023

Posted on November 19, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1956, Ernest Hemingway recovered a trunk from the Hôtel Ritz Paris. The trunk contained, among other things, the notebooks that would become Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast (1964). Hemingway was having lunch at the Ritz with his friend A.E. Hotchner. Charles Ritz, the chairman of the hotel, joined them. In the course of conversation, Ritz mentioned that there was a trunk in the hotel storage room that the author had left there in 1930. Hemingway didn’t remember leaving it there, but he did remember having a custom-made Louis Vuitton trunk at one time.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 18, 2023

Posted on November 18, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood (1939), best known for her searing explorations of feminism, sexuality, and politics in books like The Handmaid’s Tale (1986), a dystopian novel that takes place in a United States, which has become a fundamentalist theocracy where women are forced to have children. She started writing the book on a battered, rented typewriter while on a fellowship in West Berlin. The book became an international best-seller. Atwood’s daughter was nine when it was published; by the time she was in high school, The Handmaid’s Tale was required reading. Atwood once said, “Men often ask me, ‘Why are your female characters so paranoid?’ It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 17, 2023

Posted on November 17, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this date in 1973, President Richard Nixon told 400 Associated Press managing editors: “I am not a crook.” It was during an hourlong, televised question-and-answer session. Nixon was under fire on a number of fronts: He faced accusations that he had raised dairy price supports in exchange for hefty campaign contributions from the dairy producers’ lobby. He blamed the Democrats in the House and Senate, who would have raised the price supports even higher than he did.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 16, 2023

Posted on November 16, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of columnist, playwright, and director George S[imon] Kaufman (1889), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He held a variety of sales jobs before he became a writer; then Franklin Pierce Adams featured Kaufman’s work in his column, and on F.P.A.’s recommendation, Kaufman was given a column of his own in 1912, for the Washington Times. He was the drama critic for the New York Times from 1917 to 1930, and found his niche as a playwright during that period. Nearly all of his plays were collaborations.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Posted on November 15, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (1887). She had her first exhibition in 1916, at photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery, without her knowledge. She had sent some of her charcoal drawings to a friend, who in turn showed them to Stieglitz, who hung them in his gallery. Within two years, he had convinced her to move to New York from Texas, where she’d been living and teaching. He encouraged her to devote herself to painting, promising to support her for a year if she did so, and he promoted her work enthusiastically, mounting one-woman shows at least once a year. By 1918, they were in love, and in 1924, they were married. She painted lush flowers, dramatic cityscapes, and bleached bones; he photographed her, more than 500 times over the years, his intimate portraits of her graceful, angular face telling a pictorial love story. “He photographed me until I was crazy,” she later said.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Posted on November 14, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (1907), who unleashed a nine-year-old fictional free spirit named Pippi Longstocking on the world. Pippi had sagging leggings, messy carrot-colored hair, and a pet monkey named Mr. Nilsson. She claimed that her father was a South Sea cannibal king, lived by herself, threw wild parties, and generally shocked and annoyed grown-ups, which endeared her to children worldwide. Her full name was Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim’s Daughter Longstocking. One grumpy adult reader sent Lindgren a letter saying, “No normal child sleeps with her feet on the pillow or eats up a whole cake at a coffee party.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 13, 2023

Posted on November 13, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1850). He was a sickly, moderately successful essayist and travel writer, living in France, when one evening he walked to a friend’s house, looked in through the window, and fell instantly in love with a woman sitting there at the table. To make a grand entrance, he opened the window, leapt inside, and took a bow. The woman was Fanny Osbourne and she was both American and unhappily married. She had come to Europe to get away from her husband, but after spending months getting to know Stevenson, she decided to go back to California.

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