De Duitse schrijver Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch werd geboren op 27 januari 1836 in Lemberg. Zie ook alle tags voor Leopold von Sacher-Masoch op dit blog.

Uit: The Letawitza (Vertaald door Sarah Dean)

“It was an unlucky day for the chase: two hazel-hens and a big vulture comprised the whole booty. “It is the fault of that confounded sorceress!” exclaimed the gamekeeper, taking off his hat, and wiping the large drops of perspiration on his forehead on the puffed sleeves of his shirt; then he handed me some brandy in a gourd, yellow and chubby as a Barbary ape.

At dawn we had, it is true, in starting out on our expedition, met a little old woman, all withered up, who was searching for mushrooms in the brushwood; and now evening was falling, and there was nothing left for us but to return to the house. The sun was setting, red and angry, behind the huge blocks of granite that like great crumbling towers overhang the grey, jagged sides of the Carpathian Mountains. Nothing else was to be seen, unless it were an old stunted trunk, which, stretching out from the rubbish over the slippery declivity, seemed to reach towards us its long, gnarled arms. It stood projected against the sky, with its bent back, its hanging chevelure and mossy beard, absolutely like our Jew; but it clings, firm and immovable, to the rock, as he also knows how to hold on energetically to whatever his thin bony hands have once seized[1].

We descended rapidly by a path draped with bilberries and rhododendrons, our dog panting painfully behind us, and passed under the green canopy of pines. The subdued noise of a distant waterfall accompanied us. The tall, green, feathery tree-tops, which shot up toward heaven with solemn majesty, began to mingle with the golden, rosy horizon, while from their slender trunks escaped their amber-coloured resinous juice. Red and purple berries, with the large forest flowers, made designs like a many-coloured embroidery upon the velvety moss which spread among the interlacing roots; and deep shadows fell from above upon the branches, like black drops between the motionless needles..”

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (27 januari 1836 – 9 maart 1895)

Standbeeld in Lviv, Oekraïne

De Duitse schrijver Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre werd op 27 januari 1975 in Bremen geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre op dit blog.

Uit: Eine Liebeserklärung an die Zeitung (Welt-On-Line, 2009)

„Den schmissigen Einstiegssatz zu diesem Text finden Sie im Internet. Dort, wo Sie alles finden, lieber Leser. Besuchen Sie doch mal unsere Seite, diskutieren Sie mit, klicken Sie einfach mal - nein, ich möchte Sie keineswegs loswerden. Klingt aber so, nicht wahr?

Dauernd wird man ins Internet geschickt, auf beinahe jeder Zeitungsseite, in so ziemlich jeder Fernsehsendung, in jedem CD-Booklet. Den Zeitungen geht es schlecht, dem herkömmlichen Fernsehen geht es schlecht; die Musikindustrie: im akuten Opel-Stadium.

Schuld, das ist bekannt, ist das Internet. Da gehen alle immerzu "rein" - und was unternehmen die klassischen, sich selbst darob als überkommen fühlenden Medien dagegen?

Nichts, sie tun, im Gegenteil, alles dafür: Auf unserer Internetseite finden Sie dies und das, tolle Extra-Inhalte, chatten Sie mit unserem Experten, laden Sie sich Schnickschnack herunter, schicken Sie uns Ihre Meinung, Ihre Fotos, schicken Sie uns irgendwas, ach, bitte, bitte, besuchen Sie uns doch einfach mal!

Es gibt natürlich auch wertvolle Preise zu gewinnen, stündlich. Und verweilen Sie lang auf unserer Seite, wir haben da alle möglichen Vertiefungen, und auch für Ihre Unterhaltung ist gesorgt. Sie erfahren dort mehr – oder sogar: "alles".

Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre (Bremen, 27 januari 1975)

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Grippando werd geboren op 27 januari 1958 in Waukegan, Illinois. Zie ook alle tags voor James Grippando op dit blog.

Uit: Last To Die

„The rainstorm was blinding, and Sally was way behind schedule. She hadn't intended to be late, fashionably or otherwise. She just wasn't good with directions, and this wasn't exactly her neck of the woods.

Sheets of water pelted the windshield, sounding like marbles bouncing off glass. She adjusted the wipers, but they were already working at full speed. She couldn't remember rain like this in years, not since she and her first husband lost their restaurant to that no-name tropical storm.

Orange taillights flashed ahead. A stream of cars was inching down the highway at the speed of cooling lava. She slowed to somewhere below the school-zone limit, then checked her watch. Eleven twenty-five.

Damn. He'd just have to wait. She'd get there, eventually.

Their meeting had been arranged by telephone. They'd spoken only once, and his instructions were simple enough. Thursday, 11 P.M. Don't be late. She didn't dare reschedule, not even in this weather. This was her man. She was sure of it.

Just ahead, a neon sign blinked erratically, as if shaken by the storm. It was like trying to read an eye chart at the bottom of a lake, and she could only make out part of it: S-P-something-something-K-Y-apostrophe-S.

"Sparky's," she read aloud. This was the place. She steered off the highway and pulled into the flooded parking lot. Under all this water, she could only guess as to the exact location of the parking spot. She killed the engine and checked her face in the rearview mirror. Lightning flashed -- a close one. It lit up the inside of her car and unleashed a crack of thunder that sent shivers down her spine. It frightened her, then triggered a bemused smile. How ironic would that have been? After all this planning, to get hit by lightning.“

James Grippando (Waukegan, 27 januari 1958)   

De Engelse dichter en schrijver Lewis Carroll werd op 27 januari 1832 in Daresbury. Zie ook alle tags voor Lewis Caroll op dit blog.

Uit: Alice in Wonderland

“Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead: before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a comer, "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" She was close behind it when she turned the comer, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.

There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass: there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice's first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; "and even if my head would go through," thought poor Alice, "it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin." For, you see, so many out-of-the- way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”

Lewis Carroll (27 januari 1832 – 14 januari 1898)

27-01-2012 om 15:21 geschreven door Romenu  

De Brits-Amerikaanse schrijver Alexander Stuart werd geboren op 27 januari 1955 in Brighton. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2010 en ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2011.

Uit: The War Zone

"There is a moment which is so beautiful it makes everything else worthwhile. You stand on the cliff above the village, early in the morning or late in the evening, and you gaze out at the sea – a huge, changing wash of light and movement, bigger than any of us, a joker with a patience longer than any one life and an inconceivable strength that can snap your back against the rocks as easily as you

might flick a fly off your nose.

I can feel how cold it is, even when it’s warm. Even when the water’s not skimmed with a purple film of oil, and the pebbles and seaweed are stewed in the sun, I can sense the ocean’s cold heart further out, out by the skyline. Jessie’s tried to paint it, but she can’t get close. Either the beauty is there or the darkness, but not both...

It’s not just the color, it’s the color of light, it’s the mood of the sky and your own cross-wired soul. Down on the beach, it’s the druggy thunder-hiss of the surf dragging at thousands of pebbles, as if the sea’s in training for the greatest glue-sniffing contest on earth. Up here, with a view of the sheep and the cottages and the coastline, there’s just the image, no sound, and a faint tang of brine in the air, like a taunt or a memory."

It’s more than a moment. It’s repeatable, though it’s never the same twice. It’s where I go to stay sane down here, it’s where I go when I miss London, when I want to work out what the fuck I’m doing with
my life."

Alexander Stuart (Brighton, 27 januari 1955)

De Franse schrijfster Eliette Abécassis werd geboren op 27 januari 1969 in Straatsburg. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2010 en ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2011.

Uit: Une affaire conjugale

„Le bureau était dans un désordre indescriptible. Il y  régnai t une odeur de cendre f roi de, d' al cool , de  haschisch, et un air de fin du monde. Un bric-à-brac  encombrait la pièce : ordinateurs de plusieurs générations, scanner, imprimante, chaussettes, caleçons, livres,  photos, séries de câbles et de fils, vieux emballages. Partout, des cadavres de bouteilles de bière, des mégots de  ci garet t es. Je consul t ai à nouveau ma mont re : di x  minutes avaient passé. Avec mon Iphone, je pris une
photographie de l'ensemble de la pièce, puis d'une série  de détails. J'avais préparé un sac en plastique pour collecter les pièces à conviction. À l'aide d'une spatule, j'y  fis tomber les miettes de haschisch qui parsemaient son  bureau. Puis je m'installai sur son siège, devant l'ordinateur. L'écran affichait la page d'accueil de son profil sur  Facebook. Je me mis au travail. Tandis que je cliquais
sur la fenêtre des messages reçus, je branchai un disque  dur externe pour faire une copie de ses fichiers. L'ordinateur i ndi qua que l ' opérati on prendrai t une heure  quarante-sept minutes. Je sentis mes pupilles se dilater  et de nouveau la sueur sur mes paumes : j'avais à peine  le temps. Je me hâtai. J'ouvris ses tiroirs les uns après les  autres, photographiai les papiers administratifs, les rele-
vés bancaires, les feuilles de salaire et les factures. Puis je  revins devant l'écran de l'ordinateur pour consulter ses  messages.
C'est à cet instant, je crois, que ma vie bascula.“

Eliette Abécassis (Straatsburg, 27 januari 1969)


 

De Canadese Schrijver Mordecai Richler werd geboren op 27 januari 1931 in Montreal. Zie ook alle tags voor Mordecai Richler op dit blog.

Uit: Barney’s Version

“I understand why our most perspicacious men of letters object to the current trend in biography, its mean practitioners revelling in the carve-up of genius. But the truth is, nothing delights me more than a biography of one of the truly great that proves he or she was an absolute shit. I’m a sucker for studies of those who, in the words of that friend of Auden’s (not MacNeice, not Isherwood, the other guy) “…travelled a short while toward the sun/And left vivid air signed with honour.” But took no prisoners en route, now the facts are known. Say, the story of T.S. Eliot having his first wife locked up in the bin, possibly because she had written some of his best lines. Or a book that delivers the dirt on Thomas Jefferson, who kept slaves and provided the prettiest one with an unacknowledged child. (“How is it,” asked Dr. Johnson, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty amongst the drivers of the negroes?”) Or reveals that Martin Luther King was a plagiarist and a compulsive fucker of white women. Or that Admiral Byrd, one of my boyhood heroes, was actually a smooth-talking liar, a terrible navigator, an air traveller so frightened of flying that he was frequently drunk while others did the piloting, and a man who never hesitated to take unearned credit. Or tells how F.D.R. cheated on Eleanor. Or that J.F.K. didn’t really write Profiles in Courage. Or how Bobby Clarke slashed Kharlamov across the ankles, taking out the better player in that first thriller of a hockey series against the incredible Russians. Or that Dylan Thomas was a shnorrer born. Or that Sigmund Freud faked some of his case notes. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.”

Mordecai Richler (27 januari 1931 – 3 juli 2001)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Ethan Mordden werd geboren op 27 januari 1947 in Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Ethan Mordden op dit blog.

Uit: The Guest List

„The whole thing got started by accident, in late 1919 or early 1920,* at a celebratory lunch more or less devoted to Alexander Woollcott. There were speeches, toasts, and insults both teasing and cutting, and everyone had a wonderful time. Someone said, “Why don't we do this every day?,” and they began to, meeting in the Algonquin's main dining hall at a long table, with side tables attending as needed. Then, sensing an angle for publicity, manager Case moved the gang to the smaller Rose Room, seating them at a round table right in the center of every other diner's view. Some of the Round Table came often and some now and again, with wives, friends, or new talent ready to be Introduced and take the town. The also theres included actress beauties Margalo Gillmore, Peggy Wood, and Ina Claire; playwrights Robert E. Sherwood, Laurence Stallings, and Marc Connelly; novelist Edna Ferber; and comic Harpo Marx. But the Round Table proper counted a sextet:
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT, overbearing merrymaker. Best assault on Wooll cott, by Gertrude Stein, who keeps interrupting: Woollcott: “People don't dispute Woollcott.” Stein: “I'm not people. I'm Gertrude Stein.”
ROBERT BENCHLEY, spokesman for the Little Fellow Eternally Puzzled By Life. Characteristic observation: “I seem to be behind on my parades …”
DOROTHY PARKER, wit, lover, and occasional failed suicide. Essential first line of a Parker short story: “Please, God, let him telephone me now.”
*The date of the first lunch is unknown; writers treating the Round Table blithely skate around it.
GEORGE S. KAUFMAN, the fastest draw in the east in sarcasm. Typical un- Algonquinlike gallantry, in a curtain speech at the first night of Once in a Lifetime, a collaboration: “I would like the audience to know that eighty percent of this play is Moss Hart.”
FRANKLIN P. ADAMS, the mentor, already famous in his late thirties when the others were more or less starting out. Another assault on Woollcott, who toys with one of his own books and sighs, “Ah, what is so rare as a Woollcott first edition?” Adams: “A Woollcott second edition.”
and HEYWOOD BROUN, the one no one remembers anything about.Typical Broun line: “      .

Ethan Mordden (Pennsylvania, 27 januari 1947)

Boekcover

27-01-2012 om 15:17 geschreven door Romenu