De Amerikaanse schrijver Thomas Pynchon werd op 8 mei 1937 geboren in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York.

Uit: V

“Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street. He got there by way of the Arcade, at the East Main end of which sat an old street singer with a guitar and an empty Sterno can for donations. Out in the street a chief yeoman was trying to urinate in the gas tank of a '54 Packard Patrician and five or six seamen apprentice were standing around giving encouragement. The old man was singing, in a fine, firm baritone:

Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main,
Sailors and their sweethearts all agree.
Neon signs of red and green
Shine upon the friendly scene,
Welcoming you in from off the sea.
Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:
Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne,
Barmaids who all love to screw,
All of them reminding you
It's Christmas Eve on old East Main.

"Yay chief," yelled a seaman deuce. Profane rounded the corner. With its usual lack of warning, East Main was on him.

Since his discharge from the Navy Profane had been roadlaboring and when there wasn't work just traveling, up and down the east coast like a yo-yo; and this had been going on for maybe a year and a half. After that long of more named pavements than he'd care to count, Profane had grown a little leery of streets, especially streets likethis. They had in fact all fused into a single abstracted Street, which come the full moon he would have nightmares about. East Main, a ghetto for Drunken Sailors nobody knew what to Do With, sprang on your nerves with all the abruptness of a normal night's dream turning to nightmare. “

Thomas Pynchon (Glen Cove, 8 mei 1937)

Boekomslag "V"

De Ierse schrijver Roddy Doyle werd geboren in Dublin op 8 mei 1958.

Uit: A Star Called Henry

“My mother looked up at the stars. There were plenty of them up there. She lifted her hand. It swayed as she chose one. Her finger pointed.
-- There''s my little Henry up there. Look it.
I looked, her other little Henry sitting beside her on the step. I looked up and hated him. She held me but she looked up at her twinkling boy. Poor me beside her, pale and red-eyed, held together by rashes and sores. A stomach crying to be filled, bare feet aching like an old, old man''s. Me, a shocking substitute for the little Henry who''d been too good for this world, the Henry God had wanted for himself. Poor me.
And poor Mother. She sat on that step and other crumbling steps and watched her other babies joining Henry. Little Gracie, Lil, Victor, another little Victor. The ones I remember. There were others, and early others sent to Limbo; they came and went before they could be named. God took them all. He needed them all up there to light the night. He left her plenty, though. The ugly ones, the noisy ones, the ones He didn''t want -- the ones that would never stay fed.
Poor Mother. She wasn''t much more than twenty when she gazed up at little twinkling Henry but she was already old, already decomposing, ruined beyond repair, good for some more babies, then finished.
Poor Mammy. Her own mother was a leathery old witch, but was probably less than forty. She poked me, as if to prove that I was there.
-- You''re big, she said.
She was accusing me, weighing me, planning to take some of me back. Always wrapped in her black shawl, she always smelt of rotten meat and herrings -- it was a sweat on her. Always with a book under the shawl, the complete works of Shakespeare or something by Tolstoy. Nash was her name but I don''t know what she called herself before she married her dead husband.“

Roddy Doyle (Dublin, 8 mei 1958)

De Amerikaanse dichter Gary Snyder werd geboren op 8 mei 1930 in San Francisco.

How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light

For All

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

Gary Snyder (San Francisco, 8 mei 1930)

De Oostenrijkse schrijfster Gertrud Fussenegger werd geboren op 8 mei 1912 in Pilsen. Gertrud Fussenegger overleed op 19 maart van dit jaar op 96-jarige leeftijd.

Uit: Die Brüder von Lasawa

„Mit Zdenko sprach er, obwohl sie fast den ganzen Tag miteinander verbrachten, sehr wenig. Er hatte es in jener ersten Stunde, da er ihn beim Ballspiel getroffen, nicht über sich gebracht, dem Endlich-Gefundenen zu gestehen, wie lange er ihn gesucht, wie viele Wege er um seinetwillen gemacht hatte, ja, daß er nur seinetwegen, um den Bruder zu gewinnen, den Perwög-Namen ausgeschlagen, das Muttererbe fortgeworfen, die Heimat verlassen habe. Er gab auf Zdenkos Frage, wieso er hieher nach Wien gekommen sei, eine beiläufige Antwort, als hätte ihn Abenteuerei und Laune und vielleicht noch ein Auftrutzen gegen die großväterliche Herrschaft zu dieser Wanderung verführt. Auch hatte er nicht gesagt, daß er in Lasawa gewesen, und schließlich auch die Fahrt mit dem wahnsinnigen Mädchen verschwiegen. Zdenko drang auch nicht mit Fragen in ihn. Nur sein Blick ruhte oft, verstohlen forschend, auf dem jüngeren Bruder. Hie und da erkundigte er sich nach dem Handel, nach den Bräuchen der Landleute und Bürger in Tirol. Er war auf einer Fahrt einmal durch das Inntal gekommen, hatte sogar in Hall gerastet und daran gedacht, daß sein Vater hier eine zweite Frau genommen habe. "Und du bist nicht zu uns gekommen?" fragte Christof.“

Gertrud Fussenegger (8 mei 1912 – 19 maart 2009)

08-05-2010 om 19:02 geschreven door Romenu  

De Engelse schrijfster Pat Barker werd geboren in Thornaby-on-Tees op 8 mei 1943.

Uit: Another World

„Cars queue bumper to bumper, edge forward, stop, edge forward again. Resting his bare arm along the open window, Nick drums his fingers. The Bigg Market on a Friday night. Litter of chip cartons, crushed lager cans, a gang of lads with stubble heads and tattooed arms looking for trouble — and this is early, it hasn't got going yet. Two girls stroll past, one wearing a thin, almost transparent white cotton dress. At every stride her nipples show, dark circles beneath the cloth, fish rising. One of the lads calls her name: `Julie!' She turns, and the two of them fall into each other's arms.

    Nick watches, pretending not to.

What is love's highest aim?
Four buttocks on a stem.

Can't remember who said that — some poor sod made cynical by thwarted lust. Nothing wrong with the aim, as far as Nick can see — just doesn't seem much hope of achieving it any more. And neither will these two, or not yet. The boy's mates crowd round, grab him by the belt, haul him off her. `Jackie-no-balls,' the other girl jeers. The boy thrusts his pelvis forward, makes wanking movements with his fist.

    Lights still red. Oh, come on. He's going to be late, and he doesn't want to leave Miranda waiting at the station. This is the first visit to the new house. Fran wanted to put it off, but then Barbara went into hospital and that settled it. Miranda had to come, and probably for the whole summer. Well, he was pleased, anyway.

Pat Barker (Thornaby-on-Tees, op 8 mei 1943)

De Franse schrijver, vertaler regisseur en diplomaat Romain Gary werd geboren op 8 mei 1914 in Vilnius, Litouwen.

Uit: Romain Gary, le caméléon (Biografie door Myriam Anissimov)

„Une partie de la famille Owczynski était établie dans la capitale polonaise et y vivait plutôt bourgeoisement. Mina avait à Varsovie son frère, Abraham Borukh, celui qui s'appelait Boleslaw, et exerçait la profession d'avocat malgré le numerus clausus. Il avait fait ses études à la faculté de Varsovie, où les étudiants juifs se faisaient rosser par leurs condisciples chrétiens et étaient parqués sur des bancs réservés. C'est lui que Gary désigne sous le prénom de Boris, au dos de la photo datée de 1949 prise quelques mois avant sa mort.

Borukh-Abraham avait épousé à vingt-deux ans sa cousine Myriam (Maria) Owczynska, la fille de solomon Owczynski, agée de dix-sept ans, originaire de Sweciany. Les jeunes gens s'étaient unis sous la khoupa le 22 avril 1912 à Wilno devant le rabbin Rubinstein qui avait déjà marié Mina et Arieh-Leïb.

(...)

L'avocat de Jean Seberg avait réussi à la convaincre qu'un procès aux Etats-Unis n'avait aucune chance d'aboutir car, selon le droit anglo-saxon, elle devait apporter la preuve au juge que la mort de sa fille avait été causée par deux lignes mensongères de l'article paru dans . Au contraire, en France, Me Cournot et le bâtonnier Paul Arrighi, les conseils de Gary et Seberg, pouvaient l'emporter en invoquant l'atteinte à la vie privée. Le 25 octobre, la XVIIe chambre correctionnelle, présidée par M. Bracquemond, rejeta leur demande d'affirmer que la mort de Nina était imputable à l'article de Newsweek, mais leur donna raison sur le second motif, 'le viol de la vie privée'. Le magazine américain avait accusé Romain Gary de diffamation pour son article publié dans France-Soir. Il fut acquitté eu égard aux circonstances.“

Romain Gary (9 mei 1914 – 2 december 1980)

De Amerikaanse schrijver en criticus Edmund Wilson werd geboren op 8 mei 1895 in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Uit: Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (Biografie door Lewis M. Dabney)

„On a brisk afternoon in September 1922, a conservatively dressed young man with red hair sat on the upper deck of a Fifth Avenue bus in Manhattan, engrossed in a manuscript. A friend at the literary magazine The Dial had put a long poem into his hands. The Dial was interested in publishing it, and the editors hoped that the young man—Edmund Wilson—would write an essay to elucidate the poem. By the time he reached Greenwich Village, Wilson had completed a first reading of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Decades later he would recall being “bowled over,” and his essay called the poem “simply one triumph after another.” This recognition of Eliot followed Wilson’s account, in The New Republic, of Joyce’s Ulysses as a masterpiece fusing naturalism and symbolism, re-creating the mind “straining always to perpetuate and perfect itself” and the body “always laboring and throbbing to throw up some beauty from its darkness.” He believed the general reader could absorb these works that challenged existing literary forms and commandeered in new ways the powers of language. Both Eliot and Joyce, he thought, occasionally tried one’s patience, but he was committed to making them more accessible.
Edmund Wilson was twenty-seven. He was fortunate to come on the scene as a critic when he did, but he had trained for this moment. At fifteen he had been sure of hisliterary vocation, and he absorbed all that liberal education had to offer both at the Hill School and at Princeton, where extraordinary teachers encouraged his curiosity and enthusiasm for books and about ideas. He emerged from his parents’ uncongenial marriage with emotional scars, but his confidence in his abilities was strong, and he was seasoned by a year as a hospital orderly in France during World War I. Though he hated the suffering he saw, he liked being on a footing of relative equality with Americans of diverse backgrounds, and returned to his country skeptical of institutions and of rank and social privilege. He joined Vanity Fair as an editorial assistant, immediately became its managing editor, and began publishing criticism there as well as in other magazines.“

Edmund Wilson (8 mei 1895 – 14 juni 1972)

Zie voor alle bovenstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2008 en ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

De Amerikaanse schrijver Peter Benchley werd geboren in New York City op 8 mei 1940.  Benchley studeerde in 1961 af aan de Harvard-universiteit, met als hoofdvak Engels. Hij is met name bekend geworden door zijn roman Jaws over een zeer gevaarlijke witte haai waar ook een eveneens bekende, gelijknamige speelfilm over is gemaakt. Later in zijn leven betreurde Benchley het dat hij witte haaien in zijn boeken als moorddadige beesten had afgeschilderd en zette hij zich in voor natuurbehoud.

Uit: Jaws

‘The boat was sinking. The stern was completely submerged, and the bow was rising.
The fish rolled off the stern and slid beneath the waves. The rope, attached to the dart Quint had stuck into the fish, followed.
Suddenly, Quint lost his footing and fell backward into the water. “The knife!” he cried, lifting his left leg above the surface, and Brody saw the rope coiled around Quint’s foot.
(….)
The fish came closer. It was only a few feet away, and Brody could see the conical snout. He screamed, an ejaculation of hopelessness, and closed his eyes, waiting for an agony he could not imagine.
Nothing happened. He opened his eyes. The fish was nearly touching him, only a foot or two away, but it had stopped. And then, as Brody watched, the steelgray body began to recede downward into the gloom. It seemed to fall away, an apparition evanescing into darkness.
Brody put his face into the water and opened his eyes. Through the stinging saltwater mist he saw the fish sink in a slow and peaceful spiral, trailing behind it the body of Quint – arms out to the sides, head thrown back, mouth open in a mute protest’

Peter Benchley (8 mei 1940  - 11 februari 2006)

08-05-2010 om 18:58 geschreven door Romenu  

De Amerikaanse schrijver Sloan Wilson werd geboren op 8 mei 1920 in Norwalk, Connecticut. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

Uit: A Summer Place

“The most junior officer was usually given the graveyard watch, as it was called, lasting from midnight to four in the morning. In March of 1943, on only the third night that he had stood his own watch, a heavy gale was blowing. The convoy consisted of a dozen naval tankers taking gasoline to bases in Britain. Heavy-laden, they were smothered in foam by the Arctic combers, and the convoy speed had to be reduced to four knots. There were no moon and stars that night, and Bart’s ship had not yet been given radar. Depending on eyesight and echo sounding devices alone, Bart’s destroyer and three others tried to keep close to the unlighted vessels without running into them. It was bitter cold, with the spray freezing on deck and on the portholes of the pilothouse…It was eighteen minutes after two in the morning when a star shell suddenly burst over the convoy, turning the raging sea white. A wolf pack of five black submarines, almost invisible in the night, came charging arrogantly in on the surface with their deck guns stabbing the fat-bellied tankers. It hadn’t been necessary for the submarines to send up another star shell, for in the few seconds that the first one hung blazing in the sky, a gas tanker exploded, sending a column of fire a thousand feet into the air.”

Sloan Wilson (8 mei 1920 – 25 mei 2003)

De Engelse dichter en schrijver John Meade Falkner werd geboren op 8 mei 1858 in Manningford Bruce, Wiltshire. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

Uit: The Nebuly Coat

„The Hand of God stood on the highest point in all the borough, and Mr. Westray's apartments were in the third story. From the window of his sitting-room he could look out over the houses on to Cullerne Flat, the great tract of salt-meadows that separated the town from the sea. In the foreground was a broad expanse of red-tiled roofs; in the middle distance St. Sepulchre's Church, with its tower and soaring ridges, stood out so enormous that it seemed as if every house in the place could have been packed within its walls ; in the background was the blue sea. In summer the purple haze hangs over the mouth of the estuary, and through the shimmer of the heat off the marsh, can be seen the silver windings of the Cull as it makes its way out to sea, and snow-white flocks of geese, and here and there the gleaming sail of a pleasure-boat. But in autumn, as Westray saw it for the first time, the rank grass is of a deeper green, and the face of the salt-meadows is seamed with irregular clay-brown channels, which at high- tide show out like crows'-feet on an ancient countenance, but at the ebb dwindle to little gullies with greasy-looking banks and a dribble of iridescent water in the bottom. It is in the autumn that the moles heap up meanders of miniature barrows, built of the softest brown loam ; and in the turbaries the turf-cutters pile larger and darker stacks of peat. Once upon a time there was another feature in the view, for there could have been seen the masts and yards of many stately ships, of timber vessels in the Baltic trade, of tea- clippers, and Indiamen, and emigrant ships, and now and then the raking spars of a privateer owned by Cullerae adventurers.“

Falkner in 1883

De Franse schrijver Alain-René Lesage werd geboren op 8 mei 1668 in Sarzeau. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

Uit: Le diable boiteux

„Le dramaturge prétentieux : « Tous mes ouvrages, a-t-il continué sans façon, sont marqués au bon coin : aussi, quand je les lis, il faut voir comme on les applaudit ; je marrête à chaque vers pour recevoir des louanges. »
Le barbaresque esclavagiste : « Aby Ali me dit en langue castillane : Modérez votre affliction : consolez-vous dêtre tombée dans lesclavage ; ce malheur était inévitable pour vous ; mais que dis-je, ce malheur ? cest un avantage dont vous devez vous applaudir. Vous êtes trop belle pour vous borner aux hommages des chrétiens. Le ciel ne vous a point fait naître pour ces misérables mortels ; vous méritez les tous premiers hommes du monde : les seuls musulmans sont dignes de vous posséder. »

(...)

« Les femmes ne saiment point. Jen suppose deux parfaitement unies ; je veux même quelles ne disent pas le moindre mal lune de lautre en leur absence, tant elles sont amies ; vous les voyez toutes deux ; vous penchez dun côté, la rage se met de lautre ; ce nest pas que lenragée vous aime ; mais elle voulait la préférence. Tel est le caractère des femmes : elles sont trop jalouses les unes des autres pour être capables damitié. »

Alain-René Lesage (8 mei 1668 – 17 november 1747)

De Duitse dichter Johann von Besser werd geboren op 8 mei 1654 in Frauenburg (tegenwoordig Saldus in Letland). Zie en ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

An die auff Doris brust verwelckte rose.

Wie hastu rose / voller pracht /
Auff Doris brust zu sterben wissen?
Hat dich ihr schnee beschämt gemacht /
Daß du davor erbleichen müssen?
Ja freylich blumen-königin /
Dein purpur weichet dem jeßmin /
Den dieser schöne kreiß läst spüren.
Doch sorge nicht ob dem verlust /
Du stirbst auff meiner Doris brust /
Du solst dadurch gar nichts verlieren,
Ich werde nun dein welckes blat /
In meynung Doris brust zu küssen /
An meinen mund zu drücken wissen /
Und wünschen / daß an deiner statt
Ich für dich hätte sterben müssen.

Johann von Besser (8 mei 1654 – 10 februari 1729)

De Deense schrijver Sophus Schandorph werd geboren op 8 mei 1836 in Ringstedt. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

Uit: Stina Becomes a Farmer's Wife  (vertaald door Sally Ryan)

„She never stopped or quickened her steps, but kept an even pace with unchanging calmness, walking along with her feet apart, like a sturdy, broadgaged wagon, while the thick, heavy soles of her leather shoes made goodly tracks on the ground. Drops of perspiration trickled from her white forehead down her ruddy, freckled nose, but this was the only movement in her big, sun-burned face. She did not even blink in the sun. Her mouth was slightly open, displaying a remarkably strong and beautiful row of upper teeth. From time~ to time she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, without, however, changing their position.

Stina had need to arm herself with patience; she had already walked two miles from the town where she was in service, and had fully four miles more to go before reaching the village of her destination. Her mistress, the widow of the late dean, had given her a whole day's leave. This occurred twice a year, once at Shrovetide, and once after the summer holidays, when the two sons of the house had returned to their studies at the University in Copenhagen.

Stina always took advantage of these two free days to visit her eight-year-old daughter. With some help from the parish, this child–unfortunately born out of wedlock–had been placed in the care of a cottager and his wife in Stina's native village. The father had worked on the same farm with Stina when she was twenty-two years old, but, upon learning that she was "in trouble," he had hastily left for America.

Stina's progress along the dusty road was very slow, just barely noticeable. One or two vehicles passed her. The first was a light cabriolet, on the back seat of which a fat country gentleman was sprawling, pulling at his cigar. On the front seat the coachman cracked his whip as the carriage whizzed by. Stina came near being struck by the tip of the lash. She even blinked a little at the threatening possibility. The dust stirred up by the wheels whirled around her like the steam from an engine and made her sneeze. Although there was plenty of room in the carriage, it would never occur to a "gentleman farmer" to give a peasant girl a lift, nor would she ever ask him to do so.“

Sophus Schandorph (8 mei 1836 - 1 januari 1901)

Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 8 mei 2009.

De Duitse schrijver Otto Zierer werd geboren op 8 mei 1909 in Bamberg.

08-05-2010 om 18:55 geschreven door Romenu