This Week in Reading October 25 - 31

Authors born this week -

Novelists and story writers
Andrei Bely, Vincent Starrett, Enid Bagnold, Evelyn Waugh, Dominick Dunne, Nawal el-Saadawi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Tyler, Kinky Friedman, Pat Conroy, Joseph Boyden, Zadie Smith, Irina Denezhkina

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: John Keats, Paul Valery, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Ezra Pound, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, John Hollander, Sylvia Plath, Andrew Motion Playwrights: Richard Sheridan, Jean Giraudoux, Zoe Atkins, Ruth Gordon, Louis Malle

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Erasmus, A. J. Ayer Scientists: Paul Farmer Historians: Thomas Babington Macaulay, Henry Steele Commager, Martin Gilbert Biographers: James Boswell, Robert A. Caro, Daniel Mark Epstein

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: John Cleese, Fran Lebowitz Essayists: Emily Post Editors: David Remnick Journalists: Dan Rather, Jane Pauley Officials: Theodore Roosevelt, Warren Christopher, Hillary Rodham Clinton Media and Others: Napoleon Hill, Fred Friendly, James Carville, Bill Gates, Matt Drudge

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Dick Francis, Anne Perry

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Science Fiction: Frederic Brown, Neal Stephenson

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Jan Duursema, June Brigman Cartoonists: Bill Maudlin

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Henry Winkler

Events to read about this week:

Chaucer is buried in Westminster Abbey, Henry Fielding becomes a justice of the peace and starts British detective work. The painter Picasso and costumer Edith Head are born, and the Erie Canal, the Patriot Act, the Federalist Papers, Harvard, and the Internet are created, while the Statue of Liberty is dedicated, much of it during Halloween week.

This Week’s Questions:

Who, born this week, said these about writing?

"I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave."

"If poetry comes not as easily as leaves from a tree, it had better not come at all."

"Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity."

"Words should be an intense pleasure to a writer, just as leather should be to a shoemaker."

Answers to Last Week's Questions:

Winning it in 1967, Miguel Angel Asturias is so far the only Nobel literature prizewinner from Guatemala, while all the others last week were from countries that had other winners. Like some other Nobel prizewinning authors he also wrote in exile about the struggles of social cultures under totalitarianism. Asturias said, according to Contemporary Authors in Biography Resource Center, "Latin American literature is still a literature of combat ... The novel is the only means I have of making the needs and aspirations of my people known to the world."