This Week in Reading November 8 - 14, 2009

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Imre Kertesz

Novelists and story writers
Oliver Goldsmith, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Winston Churchill, Arnold Zweig, Margaret Mitchell, John Moore, Eric Malpass, Howard Fast, Kurt Vonnegut, Carlos Fuentes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Gaitskill, Katherine Weber

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Frederic Schiller, Jose Hernandez, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Vachel Lindsay, Anne Sexton Playwrights: Martha Gellhorn, Ronald Harwood, Garry Marshall, Wallace Shawn

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Believers: Martin Luther, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Scientists: Carl Sagan, Amory Lovins, Michael Fitzgerald Historians: Frederick Jackson Turner, C. Vann Woodward, Alistair Horne, Biographers: David Bret

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Marc Favreau, P. J. O’Rourke Essayists: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Naomi Wolf, Ayaan Hirsi, Ali Editors and Critics: Roland Barthes Journalists: Dorothy Day, Harrison Salisbury, Morley Safer, Peter Arnett, Tracy Kidder Officials: Louis Brandeis, Barbara Boxer Media and Others: Whoopi Goldberg, Gordon Ramsay

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: John P. Marquand

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Michael Ende, Neil Gaiman Science Fiction: Stephen Baxter

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Fiction: F. van Wyck Mason

Visual Artists
Illustrators: William Hogarth Graphic Novelists: Rivkah Cartoonists: Bill Mantlo Manga: Mashashi Kishimoto

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Jacob Abbott, Astrid Lindgren, William Steig Teens: Neal Shusterman

Events to read about this week:
The Bodelian Library, the Marine Corps, Teddy Bears, and Sesame Street get started; the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and Moby Dick get published; Germany undergoes the Nazi Kristalnacht and the Berlin Wall falling down; the Mayflower Compact is made and Veterans are honored; Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, and George Patton are born; Tim Berners-Lee explains the World Wide Web.

This Week’s Questions:

This week gives us some major authors of classic gothic fiction. Today's sexually tinged vampires are currently the entertainment and publishing world's big thing. They are obviously drawn from Bram Stoker's classic Dracula, but Stoker himself was actually almost prudish and he would be surprised at what psychological traits could be seen to be lying underneath his character's surfaces.

In that vein, which other writer born this week, far beyond standard, had one character say the following to his inner double? "Either you or I, but both together is out of the question!" It may not be the one you think.

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously." - Albert Camus

"A man said to the universe:

'Sir, I exist!'

'However,' replied the universe,

'The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation." - Stephen Crane

"All art is a revolt against man's fate." - Andre Malraux

This Week in Reading November 1 - 7

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature

Philosopher, novelist Albert Camus, poet Odysseus Elytis

Novelists and story writers
Stephen Crane, Sholem Asch, Robert Musil, Martin Flavin, Herman Broch, Moa Martinson, James Jones, Christopher Wood, Geoffrey Wolff, Charles Frazier, Thomas Mallon, Michael Cunningham

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: William Cullen Bryant, C. K. Williams Playwrights: Thomas Kyd, Charles MacArthur, A. R. Gurney, Sam Shepard

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Edward Said Believers: Billy Graham Historians: Will Durant, Henry Troyat, Paul Johnson

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Will Rogers Essayists: Eugene Debs, Andre Malraux, Diana E. H. Russell, Shere Hite, Stephen Greenblatt, Bernard-Henri Levy, Joe Queenan Editors: Karl Baedecker Journalists: Ida M. Tarbell, Grantland Rice, Walter Cronkite, James Reston, James Kilpatrick, Pat Buchanan, Maria Shriver Officials: Joseph C. Wilson Media and Others: Mike Nichols, Larry Flynt, Dennis Miller, Morgan Spurlock, Jenny McCarthy

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Gordon Dickson

Visual Artists
Manga: Goseki Kojimba

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Samuel Marshak Teens: Joyce Maynard

Events to read about this week:
Standard Time, Election Day, Weather Bureau, Stamp Act, Hydrogen Bomb, George Boole, first woman voter, TS Eliot naturalizes, Spruce Goose, GB Shaw theatre lights, Quiz Show scandal, federal income tax, PBS, King Tut, Guy Fawkes, Meet the Press, MOMA.

Obituaries
Spanish novelist Francisco Ayala (103)
Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (100)
Suspense novelist Lionel Davidson (87)
Illustrator Don Punchatz (73)

This Week’s Questions:
Who, born this week, said:

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. "

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

"All art is a revolt against man's fate."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave." - Dylan Thomas

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

"Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity." - John Betjeman (Who was not born last week. Misread Berryman for Betjeman. Was on vacation, sorry. Small fonts on a borrowed laptop.)

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