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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.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 12, 2023

Posted on November 12, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of American nonfiction writer Tracy Kidder (1945). He’s written about public education, a nursing home, an American doctor in Haiti, and a young medical student in Burundi. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Soul of a New Machine (1981), about his experiences watching engineers at the Data General Corporation build a new microcomputer. Kidder started out as a fiction writer, but figured out early on that he preferred to write about real people. He once said: “In fiction, believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. It has everything to do with those things in nonfiction. I think that the nonfiction writer’s fundamental job is to make what is true believable.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 11, 2023

Posted on November 11, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922). He’s best known for his book Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), which he based on his experiences during the famous bombing of Dresden during World War II. Vonnegut’s novels often blended satire, science fiction, realism, and politics. During the 1960s, he became a counter-culture icon on college campuses whose speeches to students inspired the wrath of conservatives. He scoffed: “The beliefs I have to defend are so soft and complicated, actually, and, when vivisected, turn into bowls of undifferentiated mush. I am a pacifist, I am an anarchist, I am a planetary citizen, and so on.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 10, 2023

Posted on November 10, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Martin Luther (1483), the German theologian who set in motion the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Europe and forever changed Christianity. In response to what he saw as the excesses of Pope Leo X and the Church, such as forgiving penance for sins in exchange for monetary donations, he wrote a screed he called “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” On October 31, 1517, after Luther nailed what was now called “95 Theses” to the doors of the University of Wittenberg’s chapel, people began to vocally question the actions of the pope. Aided by the printing press, copies of the ”95 Theses” spread throughout Germany within two weeks and throughout Europe within two months. Out of the upheaval, the Lutheran Church was eventually born.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 9, 2023

Posted on November 9, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Anne Sexton (1928). Sexton was best known for poems that explored mental illness, female sexuality, and death. She once wrote: “Live or die. Make up your mind. If you’re going to hang around don’t ruin everything. Don’t poison the world.” Her first book, To Bedlam and Partway Back (1960), was a sensation. Sexton wrote about menstruation, madness, and sexual politics at a time when women weren’t supposed to be writing about those things. Sometimes her raw honesty cost her friends. The poet Louis Simpson said, “‘Menstruation at Forty’ was the straw that broke this camel’s back,” referring to one of her more personal poems.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Posted on November 8, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of American activist Dorothy Day (1897). Day spent her life fighting for women’s rights, civil rights, and the poor. She was a lively and curious young woman when she landed in Greenwich Village after two years of college in Illinois. She quickly became part of the bohemian lifestyle, making friends with playwright Eugene O’Neill and writer John Reed, and working as a journalist for several socialist and progressive publications. She even interviewed Leon Trotsky. The New Yorker once referred to Dorothy Day as, “perhaps the most famous radical in the history of the American Catholic Church.”

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