The Dead Writers Round-Up: 20th-24th December

Posted on by
  • James Hilton died on 12/20/1954. “The right mixture of caring and not caring-I suppose that’s what love is.” (Knight Without Armour; Lost Horizon; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Random Harvest)
  • John Steinbeck died on 12/20/1968. “Maybe ever’body  in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” (The Red Pony; Tortilla Flat; Of Mice and Men; The Grapes of Wrath; The Moon is Down; Cannery Row; The Pearl; East of Eden)
  • Denise Levertov died on 12/20/1997. “You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.” (The Double Image; Life in the Forest; Candles in Babylon)
  • Dame Rebecca West was born on 12/21/1892. “It’s the souls duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.” (The Return of the Soldier; The Fountain Overflows; Black Lamb and Grey Falcon; 1900)
  • Anthony Powell was born on 12/21/1905. “Books do furnish a room.” (A Dance to the Music of Time; Afternoon Men)
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald died on 12/21/1940. “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.” (This Side of Paradise; The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night; Tales of the Jazz Age; Taps at Reveille)
  • Jean Racine was born on 12/22/1639. “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” (Andromaque; Britannicus; Esther; Athalie)
  • Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on 12/22/1869. “Life is the game that must be played.” (Merlin; Modred; King Jasper)
  • George Eliot died on 12/22/1880. “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” (Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch; Daniel Deronda)
  • Beatrix Potter died on 12/22/1943. “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” (The Tale of Peter Rabbit; The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher; The Tale of Tom Kitten; The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies)
  • Samuel Beckett died on 12/22/1989. “You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.” (Happy Days; Come and Go; Breath; That Time)
  • William Makepeace Thackeray died on 12/24/1863. “Bravery never goes out of fashion.” (The Luck of Barry Lyndon; The Book of Snobs; Vanity Fair; The History of Henry Esmond; The Rose and the Ring)
John Steinbeck
Denise Levertov by Elsa Dorfman, Flagg St., Cambridge, MA
Rebecca West
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1921
Jean Racine
Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1888
George Eliot
Beatrix Potter, circa 1881
Samuel Beckett by Reginald Gray, 1961
William Makepeace Thackeray

4 thoughts on “The Dead Writers Round-Up: 20th-24th December”

  2. Ha! The quote from Beatrix Potter is terrific.

    There is a 12 year-old kid in the writers’ group I facilitate who, I hope, can take Ms Potter’s words to heart. This girl is a free spirit in every sense of the term; she doesn’t believe in matching socks; she draws on her arm if she feels she needs to; she wears sunglasses indoors if she decides that’s what the day calls for. I’m sure her parents and teachers are thoroughly exasperated with her, but she inspires me. She isn’t a rebellious, angry child; she cheerfully writes her own rules about what is or is not acceptable.

    Like

    Reply ↓

Leave a comment