De Amerikaanse schrijver Thomas Pynchon werd op 8 mei 1937 geboren in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Thomas Pynchon op dit blog.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Uit: The Crying of Lot 49

„It took her till the middle of Huntley and Brinkley to remember that last year at three or so one morning there had come this long-distance call, from where she would never know (unless now he'd left a diary) by a voice beginning in heavy Slavic tones as second secretary at the Transylvanian Consulate, looking for an escaped bat; modulated to comic-Negro, then on into hostile Pachuco dialect, full of chingas and maricones; then a Gestapo officer asking her in shrieks did she have relatives in Germany and finally his Lamont Cranston voice, the one he'd talked in all the way down to Mazatlan. "Pierce, please," she'd managed to get in, "I thought we had --- "

"But Margo,"earnestly, "I've just come from Commissioner Weston, and that old man in the fun house was murdered by the same blowgun that killed Professor Quackenbush," or something.

"For God's sake," she said. Mucho had rolled over and was looking at her.

"Why don't you hang up on him," Mucho, suggested, sensibly.

"I heard that," Pierce said. "I think it's time Wendell Maas had a little visit from The Shadow." Silence, positive and thorough, fell. So it was the last of his voices she ever heard. Lamont Cranston. That phone line could have pointed any direction, been any length. Its quiet ambiguity shifted over, in the months after the call, to what had been revived: memories of his face, body, things he'd given her, things she had now and then pretended not to've heard him say. It took him over, and to the verge of being forgotten. The shadow waited a year before visiting. But now there was Metzger's letter. Had Pierce called last year then to tell her about this codicil? Or had he decided on it later, somehow because of her annoyance and Mucho's indifference? She felt exposed, finessed, put down. She had never executed a will in her life, didn't know where to begin, didn't know how to tell the law firm in L. A. that she didn't know where to begin.“

Thomas Pynchon (Glen Cove, 8 mei 1937)

De Ierse schrijver Roddy Doyle werd geboren in Dublin op 8 mei 1958. Zie ook alle tags voor Roddy Doyle op dit blog.

Uit: A Greyhound of a Girl

“Mary O'Hara was walking up her street, to the house she lived in with her parents and her brothers. The school bus had dropped her at the corner, at the bottom of the hill. The street was long, straight, and quite steep, and there were huge old chestnut trees growing all along both sides. It was raining, but Mary wasn't getting very wet, because the leaves and branches were like a roof above her. Anyway, rain and getting wet were things that worried adults, but not Mary - or anyone else under the age of twenty-one. Mary was twelve. She'd be twelve for another eight months. Then she'd be what she already felt she was - a teenager.
She came home at the same time most days, and she usually came home with her best friend, Ava. But today was different, because Ava wasn't with Mary. Ava had moved to another part of Dublin the day before, with her family. Today, some of the neighbors looked out their windows and saw Mary, alone. They knew all about it, of course. These were people who looked out windows. They'd seen the removals lorry outside Ava's house. They'd seen Mary and Ava hug each other, and they'd seen Ava get into their car and follow the removals lorry.
As the car moved slowly up the street, they'd seen Mary wave, and run into her house. They might have heard the front door slam. They might have heard Mary's feet charging up the stairs, and the springs under Mary's mattress groan when she fell facedown on the bed. They probably didn't hear her crying, and they definitely didn't hear the softer sound of the bedsprings a little later when Mary realized that, although she was heartbroken, she was also starving. So she got up and went downstairs to the kitchen and ate until her face was stiff.”

Roddy Doyle (Dublin, 8 mei 1958)

De Oostenrijkse schrijfster Gertrud Fussenegger werd geboren op 8 mei 1912 in Pilsen. Zie ook alle tags voor Gertrud Fussenegger op dit blog.

Uit: Goethe und wir Katholiken

„Die das ganze 18. Jahrhundert beherrschende Aufklärung übte - wie hätte es anders sein sollen? - auch auf den jungen Goethe ihren Einfluß aus. Dem Pubertierenden und Adoleszenten fehlte es nicht an Freude am Tabubruch, an Grobianismus und prometheischer Aufmüpfigkeit gegen den Himmel. In Leipzig hatte er den elegant und scharmutzierenden Rokoko-Kavalier, dazu den kokettkühnen Eisläufer und Verseschmied gespielt, der sich von einer modischen Gesellschaft sehr gern bewundern liess.

Aber bald war Goethes Leben auf einen anderen Ton gestimmt. Er wurde krank, mußte nach Frankfurt zurück, nach Hause in die bedenksame Stille einer engen Krankenstube und sehr zögerlichen Genesung. Nun hatte er Zeit, sich aus seinen Leipziger Oberflächlichkeiten herauszuwickeln. Bei einer Freundin seiner Mutter, einem Fräulein von Klettenberg lernte er den tiefen religiösen Ernst einer aufrichtigen Pietistin kennen. Dieser Ernst bliebt nicht ohne Echo bei ihm. Er verbrannte seine Leipziger Poetereien, doch noch wußte er nicht, wohinaus es mit ihm sollte.

Dann die Wende: Straßburg. Hier trifft er Herder, hier bestaunt er das Münster. Zum erstenmal weht ihm die Größe einer Gesinnung an, die einst, in gotischer Zeit, einen religiösen Weltentwurf zuwege gebracht hat. Er nennt das Münster ein Werk deutscher Baukunst, wo es doch tatsächlich in der Tradition französischer Kathedralenkunst steht. Was tut's? Er erlebt ein Gesamtkunstwerk deutlich metaphysischer Dimension.

Auch die Beziehung zu Herder wirkt auf Goethe wie eine Erweckung und eine neue Aufforderung, die Formalismen des Rokoko und den kahlen Rationalismus der Aufklärung zu durchstoßen. Herder, der Pastor, bekennt sich mit Leidenschaft und Begeisterung zur Vielgestaltigkeit der Völker und ihrer Poesien und verehrt in jeder ihr sozusagen geheiligte Urwüchsigkeit“.

Gertrud Fussenegger (8 mei 1912 – 19 maart 2009)

De Engelse schrijfster Pat Barker werd geboren in Thornaby-on-Tees op 8 mei 1943. Zie ook alle tags voor Pat Barker op dit blog.

Uit: Border Crossing

“One
They were walking along the river path, away from the city, and as far as they knew they were alone.
They'd woken that morning to a curious stillness. Clouds sagged over the river, and there was mist like a sweat over the mud flats. The river had shrunk to its central channel, and seagulls skimmed low over the water. The colour was bleached out of houses and gardens and the clothes of the few passers-by.
They'd spent the morning indoors, picking away at their intractable problems, but then, just before lunch, Lauren had announced that she had to get out. They might have done better to drive to the coast, but instead they donned raincoats and boots and set off to walk along the river path.
They lived on the edge of what had once been a thriving area of docks, quays, and warehouses, now derelict and awaiting demolition. Squatters had moved into some of the buildings. Others had suffered accidental or convenient fires, and were surrounded by barbed-wire fences, with pictures of Alsatians and notices saying DANGER. KEEP OUT.”

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




De Amerikaanse dichter Gary Snyder werd geboren op 8 mei 1930 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Gary Snyder op dit blog.

North Beach Alba

waking half-drunk in a strange pad

making it out to the cool gray

   san francisco dawn –

white gulls over white houses,

   fog down the bay,

tamalpais a fresh green hill in the new sun,

driving across the bridge in a beat old car

   to work.

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May

We walked under cherry blossoms

At night in an orchard in Oregon.

All that I wanted then

Is forgotten now, but you.

Here in the night

In a garden of the old capital

I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao

I remember your cool body

Naked under a summer cotton dress.

Gary Snyder (San Francisco, 8 mei 1930)