This Week in Reading February 22 - 28

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: John Steinbeck (1962)

Novelists and story writers: Victor Hugo, Frank G. Slaughter, James T. Farrell, Marcel Pagnol, Irwin Shaw, Lawrence Durrell, Anthony Burgess, Peter De Vries, N. Scott Momaday, Dee Brown Sean O’Faolain

Poets and Playwrights: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stephen Spender, Howard Nemerov, Ishmael Reed, Carlo Goldoni, Ben Hecht, Larry Gelbart

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Arthur Schoepenhaur, Karl Jaspers, Bendetto Croce, Rudolf Steiner.W. E. B. Du Bois, William L. Shirer, Paul Krugman

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Michel de Montaigne, Samuel Pepys

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Elizabeth George, John Sandford, Tim Powers

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Willhelm Grimm, August Derleth, Theodore Sturgeon

Historical Fiction Writers: Bernard Cornwell

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Edward Gorey, Milton Caniff

Children’s / Teen Authors: Lemony Snicket

Events to read about: Fascists, Nazis, Communists, Republicans, witches, clones, six shooters, Grand Canyon and Guantanamo Bay, along with the Supreme Court twice, a president, an artist, an architect and two very important printers, Gutenberg, who brought printed books to the Western world, and typographer Daniel Berkeley Updike.

This Week’s Questions: “I quote others only the better to express myself.” “And because I found I had nothing else to write about, I presented myself as a subject.” Was this said by a blogger or one of this week’s authors?

Who are the three authors born this week who gave the following advice to would-be authors?

“Write freely and rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.”

“Keep going. Writing is finally play and there is no reason you should get paid for playing. If you’re a real writer, you’ll write no matter what.”

"It comes down to what I call "suit up and show up." ... A lot of writing is simply showing up and doing the work day after day."

Answer to Last Week’s Question: One of the writers above said “Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one single person – a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.”

Along the same lines, Toni Morrison, who is also the author of last week's quotes, said this: “Whenever I feel uneasy about my writing, I think: What would be the response of the people in the book if they read the book? That’s my way for staying on track. Those are the people for whom I write.”