This Week in Reading April 5 - 11

Literary names of note this week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Poet Gabriela Mistral (1945)

Novelists and story writers
Sandor Marai, John Fante, Glendon Swarthout, Arthur Hailey, Hugo Claus, Donald Barthelme, Paul Theroux, Barry Levinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Joolz Denby

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Christopher Smart, William Wordsworth, Charles Baudelaire, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Johannes Bobrowski, Mark Strand Playwrights: Clare Boothe Luce

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Philosophers: Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Husserl Historians: David Halberstam

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, and Others
Humorists: Leo Rosten Essayists: William Hazlitt, Booker T. Washington, Montague Summers, Lev Kopelev Journalists: Lincoln Steffens, Lowell Thomas, Walter Winchell, Tony Brown, Vladimir Pozner, Seymour Hersh, David Frost, Ellen Goodman, David Helvarg Officials: Jerry Brown, Christopher Darden Others: Linda Goodman, Hugh Hefner, Robert Kiyosaki, Julia Phillips, Neil Boortz

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Suspense: David Westheimer

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Robert Bloch, Mike Ford Science Fiction: Henry Kuttner, James White, James Patrick Kelly

Visual Artists
Photographers: Eadweard Muybridge

Events to read about, as always.

This Week’s Questions:

There're more journalists than anything this week and LA novelist John Fante is getting his centennial, but April is Poetry Month, after all. Come in to see our display.

(1) Which author born this week said this about a poet born this week when they became friends?

"He is in this sense the most original poet now living,and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere ..."

(2) And what did that poet say about that author when they no longer were friends?

(3) Which poet born this week is credited with “discovering” and making famous the poems of which other poet this week?


Answers to Last Week’s Question:

(1) Maya Angelou said she aspired to be the first, black, American Proust, and was born in Saint Louis. Marge Piercy was born in Detroit and wanted to change the world by bringing people to consciousness. Both wrote poetry and are strong advocates of women's rights and civil rights.

(2) Probably most American-bred readers know from childhood that Washington Irving created the headless horseman who chased mild mannered schoolteacher Ichabod Crane around Sleepy Hollow in the early 1800s. But they don’t likely know about the other one. People whose families come from Russia or other countries know about Mayne Reid’s Headless Horseman , a novel based on a Texas folk tale about "el Muerto", the headless corpse of a defeated soldier placed on a steed set to run to scare the enemy.

The reason for this is, though Reid was one of America’s most prolific pulp fiction storytellers in the nineteenth century between Poe and Twain, his fame did not succeed him in this country, and he was largely forgotten. Very few libraries in America have any of his once cheap books. However, several of his novels were translated into Russian and advertised there as the work of “America’s favorite author.” If he was, it was only for a time.

Take a Walk on the Literary Side

Recently, a friend of mine was visiting New York City. While there, he wanted me to do some research for him. He wanted to know if there were any literary walking tours in NYC related to the works of Herman Melville. No matter that he is an English Literature professor--he is a HUGE Melville fan.

It then got me to thinking about whether there are any such tours in and around the LA area. And indeed, there are. I searched around Google and came up with two recent articles that discuss several tours that are available for the literary-minded. Esotouric will take you into the "secret heart of LA" as seen through the eyes of writers like Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, and Reyner Banham. Most of the tours are actually bus tours with a bit of walking thrown in on a few of them. But hey, this is LA--does anyone actually walk here?


The article from the LA Times is here. An article from the travel blog World Hum is here.

Want to read and discuss a book before you go on a tour? Check out the blog nobodyreadsinla. According to their blog, Nobody Reads in LA is a loose-knit group of individuals striving to create a stronger cultural, literary and historical sense of downtown Los Angeles.

Of course you can always stop in into the library as well. We have all the modern classics by the authors mentioned above plus much more. Put on your walking shoes and get going!