This Week in Reading October 4 - 10

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature was announced this week, going to a Romanian-born novelist who lives in exile in Germany, Herta Muller. She writes, according to the Nobel committee, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, [to] depict ... the landscape of the dispossessed." Her novels, few of which have been translated into English yet, are about people constrained by a dictatorial Communist regime. Ms. Muller was forbidden from publication in her home country until she moved to Germany.

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Story writer Ivo Andric (1961), novelist Claude Simon (1985), playwright Harold Pinter (2005)

Novelists and story writers
Alexis Kivi, Damon Runyon, Mario de Andrade, Caroline Jordan, R.K. Narayan, Jose Donoso, James Clavell, Rona Barrett, Marie-Claire Blais, Frederick Barthelme, Benjamin Cheever, Edward P. Jones, Jonathan Littell

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Marina Tsvetaeva, Clive James, John Lennon, Diane Ackerman Playwrights: Joshua Logan, Amiri Baraka, Vaclaw Havel

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Richard Rorty Believers: Jonathan Edwards, Phillip Berrigan, Jesse Jackson Scientists: R. D. Laing Historians: Walter Lord, Bill James Biographers: Jill Kerr Conway

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Roy Blount, Joy Behar Essayists: William Zinsser Editors: Denis Diderot Journalists: Brendan Gill, Shana Alexander, Steve Coll, Dan Savage Officials: Media and Others: Giuseppi Verdi, Thor Heyerdahl, Oliver North

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Suspense: Joseph Finder

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Horror: Anne Rice Science Fiction: Frank Herbert, David Brin

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Romance: Jackie Collins, Nora Roberts Historical Fiction: Thomas Keneally

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Harvey Pekar Manga: Kazuki Takashashi Cartoonists: Bill Keane

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: James Whitcomb Riley, Louise Fitzhugh, R. L. Stine Teens: Sherman Alexie

Events to read about this week:
Tyndale prints the first Bible in English; the Gregorian Calendar gets rid of several days just to catch up; Sputnik, the world's first satellite is launched; the Naval Academy, Monty Python, PBS, the first talking movie, and Homeland security are also launched, along with the life of an Armenian film director. On the bad side, Chicago nearly burned down, a baseball team's players are banned from baseball whether they threw the World Series or not, and the US began its invasion of Afghanistan.

This Week’s Questions:

It's autumn now, and "the frost is on the punkin, and the fodder's in the shock." What? Who, born this week, wrote that and what does it mean? What other well known characters and other works came out of that writer's pen?

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
Novelist, humanitarian Elie Wiesel and President, humanitarian Jimmy Carter, who were born last week, both won the Nobel Peace Prize. (President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace prize this week.)

Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin appointed Kay Ryan as U.S. Poet Laureate, and the Bancroft Library at UC, Berkeley, home of the Mark Twain papers and numerous rare books and manuscripts, is named after California historian George Bancroft.

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood,banned in many places, made the

American Library Association’s list of Banned American Classics.

This Week in Reading September 21 - 27

Ancient Greek playwright Euripides, fantasists H. G. Wells and Stephen King, literary lights F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, and poet T. S. Eliot, (the last two Nobel prizewinners) make this week a strong one for well known authors. It is also the week of the birth of the American Bill of Rights that were put into the first ten amendments to our country's constitution.

As always there are notable writers of literary fiction and other genres, among them Louis Auchincloss, Fay Weldon, and Jane Smiley along with fantasy writer Will Self and romance novelist Rosamunde Pilcher. The current United States Poet Laureate, California's Kay Ryan was also born this week.

This Week's Question: There are many parallels to the economic thoughtlessness of the Roaring Twenties that Fitzgerald described in his most well known work, The Great Gatsby, and the financial market crisis that the country is facing this week. At about the same time H.G. Wells was continuing to work on the economics of his book A Modern Utopia in which he somewhat naively assumed "whether indeed usury, that is to say the lending of money, at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at all in Utopia, one may venture to doubt." If we are to face a new and greater Great Depression are we also likely to face a new and greater New Deal of a sustainable kind later on in the process? What political cartoon would Thomas Nast draw about all this?

Which author, alive at that same time, would not seek perfect happiness of either kind, and said this? "People need trouble— a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy."

Answer to Last Week's Question: Humorist Robert Benchley said, "The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands. " We may disagree, however. Try him on Wikiquote. Benchley has said a lot worth repeating. For example, the reason this post never appears on Monday anymore: "Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. " We should call this the librarian's lament. What was that other question again?

Charles Simic named new US Poet Laureate

The Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, announced today that Charles Simic has been appointed the new Poet Laureate of the United States to replace Donald Hall who held the honor for one year.

Simic, born in Yugoslavia, immigrated to the United States when he was fifteen in 1954 and attended high school and college in Chicago. He is the author of eighteen books of poetry, some of which will now be reprinted. Pasadena has most of the books in their collection. He won the Pulitizer Prize in 1990. His next book of poems will be published in February 2008.

On making the appointment, Billington said, "The range of Charles Simic’s imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor."

His entry on Wikipedia includes this quote from Simic about his mimimalist, puzzling, sometimes surrealist style: "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator."

Scroll down the Library of Congress announcement to learn more about the Poet Laureate program and to see what Poet Laureates have done and are expected to do.