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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 27, 2023

Posted on November 27, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1786 that Scottish poet Robert Burns borrowed a pony and made his way from his home in Ayrshire to the city of Edinburgh. The fall of 1786 had been an eventful one for Burns. He wasn’t making any money farming, and after he got his girlfriend Jean Armour pregnant, he decided he needed to find a way to support his new family — not to mention his illegitimate one-year-old daughter, whose mother was a servant in the Burns household and wanted money. Burns accepted a friend’s offer to work as a clerk in Jamaica, and was set to leave in September.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 26, 2023

Posted on November 26, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, widely considered the most popular comic strip in the world. Schulz was born in 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was raised in neighboring St. Paul. Schulz’s father was a St. Paul barber who ran a three-chair shop that charged 35 cents for a haircut. His family often ate pancakes for dinner. As a child, Schulz thought his parents were just quirky; later, he understood pancakes were all they could afford. He was unpopular in school, and one of his cartoons was rejected from his high school yearbook.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 25, 2023

Posted on November 25, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of American composer Virgil Thomson (1896). He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, on a steady diet of church music, Civil War Songs, the blues, and barn-dance music. Starting when he was five, a cousin gave him piano lessons. Later, he frequently accompanied showings of silent films. Thomson is best known for collaborating on operas with avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, like Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), which featured an all-black cast and caused an immediate sensation at its premiere, and The Mother of Us All (1947).

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 24, 2023

Posted on November 24, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of author and political activist Arundhati Roy, born in Meghalaya, India (1961). She’s best known for her first novel, The God of Small Things (1997), which she wrote when she was 37 years old. She said, “When people used to ask me how long it took to write The God of Small Things, I would say 37 years, because to me, a novel is not a product.” It went on to sell more 8 million copies worldwide and she gives most of her royalty money away.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 23, 2023

Posted on November 23, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Guy Reginald Bolton, the Anglo-American playwright and librettist of musical comedies. He was born in England in 1884 to an American father and English mother. His family moved to New York, where Bolton began a career as an architect and worked for the government on designing the renovated West Point military academy. He then got into musicals, writing over 40 shows.

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.”

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