Dave Eggers, Jack Kerouac, Naomi Shihab Nye, Carl Hiaasen, Edward Albee
De Amerikaanse schrijver Dave Eggers werd geboren op 12 maart 1970 in Chicago. Zie ook alle tags voor Dave Eggers op dit blog.
Uit: Zeitoun
“And when Abdulrahman first witnessed the
sardines circling in the black he could not believe the sight, the beauty of
the undulating silver orb below the white and gold lantern light. He said
nothing, and the other fishermen were careful to be quiet, too, paddling
without motors, lest they scare away the catch. They would whisper over the
sea, telling jokes and talking about women and girls as they watched the fish
rise and spin beneath them. A few hours later, once the sardines were ready,
tens of thousands of them glistening in the refracted light, the fishermen
would cinch the net and haul them in.
They would motor back to the shore and bring the sardines to the fish broker in
the market before dawn. He would pay the men and boys, and would then sell the
fish all over western Syria - Lattakia, Baniyas, Damascus. The fishermen would
split the money, with Abdulrahman and Ahmad bringing their share home. Their
father had passed away the year before and their mother was of fragile health
and mind, so all funds they earned fishing went toward the welfare of the house
they shared with ten siblings.
Abdulrahman and Ahmad didn't care much about the money, though. They would have
done it for free.
Thirty-four years later and thousands of miles west, Abdulrahman Zeitoun was in
bed on a Friday morning, slowly leaving the moonless Jableh night, a tattered
memory of it caught in a morning dream. He was in his home in New Orleans and
beside him he could hear his wife Kathy breathing, her exhalations not unlike
the shushing of water against the hull of a wooden boat. Otherwise the house
was silent. He knew it was near six o'clock, and the peace would not last. The
morning light usually woke the kids once it reached their second-story windows.
One of the four would open his or her eyes, and from there the movements were
brisk, the house quickly growing loud. With one child awake, it was impossible
to keep the other three in bed.”
Dave Eggers (Chicago, 12 maart 1970)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Jack Kerouac werd geboren op 12 maart 1922 in Lowell, in de Amerikaanse staat Massachusetts. Zie ook alle tags voor Jack Karouac op dit blog.
Uit: On The Road
“I first met Dean not long after my wife and
I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother
to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary
split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean
Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before
that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely
planning and never taking off. Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he
actually was born on the road, when his parents were passing through Salt Lake
City in 1926, in a jalopy, on their way to Los Angeles. First reports of him
came to me through Chad King, who'd shown me a few letters from him written in
a New Mexico reform school. I was tremendously interested in the letters
because they so naively and sweetly asked Chad to teach him all about Nietzsche
and all the wonderful intellectual things that Chad knew. At one point Carlo
and I talked about the letters and wondered if we would ever meet the strange
Dean Moriarty. This is all far back, when Dean was not the way he is today,
when he was a young jailkid shrouded in mystery. Then news came that Dean was
out of reform school and was coming to New York for the first time; also there
was talk that he had just married a girl called Marylou.
One day I was hanging around the campus and Chad and Tim Gray told me Dean was
staying in a cold-water pad in East Harlem, the Spanish Harlem. Dean had
arrived the night before, the first time in New York, with his beautiful little
sharp chick Marylou; they got off the Greyhound bus at 50th Street and cut
around the corner looking for a place to eat and went right in Hector's, and
since then Hector's cafeteria has always been a big symbol of New York for
Dean. They spent money on beautiful big glazed cakes and creampuffs.
All this time Dean was telling Marylou things like this: "Now, darling,
here we are in New York and although I haven't quite told you everything that I
was thinking about when we crossed Missouri and especially at the point when we
passed the Booneville reformatory which reminded me of my jail problem, it is
absolutely necessary now to postpone all those leftover things concerning our
personal lovethings and at once begin thinking of specific worklife
plans..." and so on in the way that he had in those early days.”
Jack Kerouac (12 maart 1922 – 21 oktober 1969)
Neal Cassidy, zijn dochter Cathy en Jack Kerouac
De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Naomi Shihab Nye werd geboren op 12 maart 1952 in St. Louis, Missouri. Zie ook alle tags voor Naomi Shihab Nye op dit blog.
Uit: Habibi
“Pals
Are dreams thinner at thirty-three thousand feet?
When their plane landed at Tel Aviv, Poppy was talking so fast, Liyana couldn't pay close attention to details. Normally she liked to notice trees first -- their leaves and shapes -- when she arrived in a new place. Then she'd focus on plants, signs, and, gradually, people. Liyana believed in working up to people. But Poppy leaned across the aisle jabbering so fast, she could barely notice the color of the sky.
"When we go through the checkpoint for passports, let me do the talking, okay? We don't let them stamp our passports here. They stamp a little piece of paper instead. And don't leave anything on the plane. Look around! Did you check under the seats? We'll go to the hotel first and rest awhile, then we'll call the village. My family will come in to see us. They won't expect us to travel all the way out to visit them today. Make sure you have everything. Did you get those pistachios? What about that book Rafik was reading?"
"Poppy's nervous," her mother whispered to Liyana. "He hasn't been here in five years."
He was making Liyana nervous, too. Jitterbug bazooka. He didn't like it when she said foolish words lined up, like mousetrap taffy-puller. That's what she did inside her head when she got nervous. Poppy hadn't told his family their exact arrival time on purpose. "They don't need to come to the airport and make a big scene," he said.
Powder-puff peanut. She'd be good. She wouldn't talk at Customs. She wouldn't say, Yes I'm carrying my worst American habits in the zipper pouch of my suitcase and I plan to let them loose in your streets. There's a kiss in there, too! I'll never tell.
Right away, the Israeli agents singled Liyana's family out and made them stand off to the side in a troublemaker line with two men who looked like international zombies. Other travelers -- sleek Spaniards, Irish nuns -- zoomed right through. The women soldiers at the gate seemed meaner than the men. They all wore dull khaki uniforms. Big guns swung on straps across their backs.”
Naomi Shihab Nye (St. Louis,12 maart 1952)
De Amerikaanse schrijver, journalist en columnist Carl Hiaasen werd geboren op 12 maart 1953 in
Plantation, Florida. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 maart 2011.
Uit: Chomp
„Mickey Cray had been out of work ever
since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.
The iguana, which had died during a hard freeze, was stiff as a board and
weighed seven and a half pounds. Mickey’s son had measured the lifeless lizard
on a fishing scale, then packed it on ice with the turtle veggies, in the
cooler behind the garage. This was after the ambulance had hauled Mickey off to
the hospital, where the doctors said he had a serious concussion and ordered
him to take it easy.
And to everyone’s surprise, Mickey did take it easy. That’s because the injury
left him with double vision and terrible headaches. He lost his appetite and
dropped nineteen pounds and lay around on the couch all day, watching nature
programs on television.
“I’ll never be the same,” he told his son.
“Knock it off, Pop,” said Wahoo, Mickey’s boy.
Mickey had named him after Wahoo McDaniel, a professional wrestler who’d once
played linebacker for the Dolphins. Mickey’s son often wished he’d been called
Mickey Jr. or Joe or even Rupert—anything but Wahoo, which was also a species
of saltwater fish.
It was a name that was hard to live up to. People naturally expected somebody
called Wahoo to act loud and crazy, but that wasn’t Wahoo’s style. Apparently
nothing could be done about the name until he was all grown up, at which point
he intended to go to the Cutler Ridge courthouse and tell a judge he wanted to
be called something normal.”
Carl Hiaasen (Plantation, 12 maart 1953)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Edward Albee werd geboren op 12 maart 1928 in Washington DC. Zie ook alle tags voor Edward Albee op dit blog.
Uit: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“Act One,
MARTHA: That I am. So, I actually fell for him. And the match seemed...practical too.
You know, Daddy was looking for someone to...
GEORGE: Just a minute, Martha...
MARTHA: ...take over, some time, when he was ready to...
GEORGE [stony]: Just a minute, Martha...
MARTHA: ...retire, and so I thought...
GEORGE: STOP IT, MARTHA!
MARTHA [irritated]: Whadda you want?
GEORGE [too patiently]: I’d thought you were telling the story of our courtship, Martha...
I didn’t know you were going to start in on the other business.
MARTHA [so-thereish]: Well, I am!
GEORGE: I wouldn't, if I were you.
MARTHA: Oh...you wouldn’t? Well, you're not!
GEORGE: Now, you've already sprung a leak about you-know-what...
MARTHA [a duck]: What? What?
GEORGE: ...about the apple of our eye...the sprout...the little bugger... [Spits it out] ...
our son... and if you start on this other business, I warn you, Martha, it’s going to make me
angry.
Scene uit de film
van Mike Nichols met Richard Burton en Elizabeth Taylor (1966)
MARTHA [laughing at him]: Oh, it is, is it?
GEORGE: I warn you.
MARTHA [incredulous]: You what?
GEORGE [very quietly]: I warn you.
NICK: Do you really think we have to go through...?
MARTHA: I stand warned! [Pause...then, to HONEY and NICK] So, anyway, I married
the S.O.B., and I had it all planned out...He was the groom...he was going to be groomed.
He'd take over some day...first he’d take over the History
Department, and then, when Daddy retired, he’d take over the college... you know? That’s
the way it was supposed to be.
[To GEORGE, who is at the portable bar with his back to her]
You getting angry, baby? Hunh? [Now back] That’s the way it was supposed to be. Very
simple. And Daddy seemed to think it was a pretty good idea, too. For a while. Until he
watched for a couple of years! [To GEORGE again] You getting angrier? [Now back] Until
he watched for a couple of years and started thinking maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after
all...that maybe Georgie-boy didn’t have the stuff...that he didn’t have it in him!
Edward Albee (Washington DC, 12 maart 1928)
In de jaren 1970
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 12e maart mijn
blog van 12 maart 2012 deel 2.