Berichten van 19 oktober 2013

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver David Vann werd geboren op 19 oktober 1966 op Adak Island,  Alaska. Zie ook alle tags voor David Vann op dit blog.

Uit: Caribou Island

 

„My mother was not real. She was an early dream, a hope. She  was a place. Snowy, like here, and cold. A wooden house on a  hill above a river. An overcast day, the old white paint of the
buildings made brighter somehow by the trapped light, and I  was coming home from school. Ten years old, walking by myself,  walking through dirty patches of snow in the yard, walking up to  the narrow porch. I can't remember how my thoughts went then,  can't remember who I was or what I felt like. All of that is gone,  erased. I opened our front door and found my mother hanging  from the rafters. I'm sorry, I said, and I stepped back and closed  the door. I was outside on the porch again.
You said that? Rhoda asked. You said you were sorry?
Yes.
Oh, Mom.
It was long ago, Irene said. And it was something I couldn't  see even at the time, so I can't see it now. I don't know what she  looked like hanging there. I don't remember any of it, only that it was.
Rhoda scooted closer on the couch and put her arm around  her mother, pulled her close. They both looked at the fire. A  metal screen in front, small hexagons, and the longer Rhoda  looked, the more these hexagons seemed like the back wall of  the fireplace, made golden by flame. As if the back wall, black  with soot, could be revealed or transmuted by fire. Then her eyes  would shift and it would be only a screen again. I wish I had  known her, Rhoda said.
Me too, Irene said. She patted Rhoda's knee. I need to get to  sleep. Busy day tomorrow.
I'll miss this place.
It was a good home. But your father wants to leave me, and the  first step is to make us move out to that island. To make it seem  he gave it a try.
That's not true, Mom.
We all have rules, Rhoda. And your father's main rule is that  he can never seem like the bad guy.
He loves you, Mom.
Irene stood and hugged her daughter. Goodnight, Rhoda.”

 

 

David Vann (Adak Island, 19 oktober 1966)

 

 

 

 

 

De Britse schrijver Philip Pullman werd geboren op 19 oktober 1946 in Norwich als zoon van een luchtmachtofficier. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Philip Pullman op dit blog.

 

Uit: The Subtle Knife

 

“Will, still watching, saw the cat behave curiously.

She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will. Then she leapt backwards, back arched and fur on end, tail held out stiffly. Will knew cat-behaviour. He watched more alertly as the cat approached the spot again, just an empty patch of grass between the hornbeams and the bushes of a garden hedge, and patted the air once more.

Again she leapt back, but less far and with less alarm this time. After another few seconds of sniffing, touching, whisker-twitching, curiosity overcame wariness.

The cat stepped forward, and vanished.

Will blinked. Then he stood still, close to the trunk of the nearest tree, as a truck came round the circle and swept its lights over him. When it had gone past he crossed the road, keeping his eyes on the spot where the cat had been investigating. It wasn't easy, because there was nothing to fix on, but when he came to the place and cast about to look closely, he saw it.

At least, he saw it from some angles. It looked as if someone had cut a patch out of the air, about two metres from the edge of the road, a patch roughly square in shape and less than a metre across. If you were level with the patch so that it was edge-on, it was nearly invisible, and it was completely invisible from behind. You could only see it from the side nearest the road, and you couldn't see it easily even from there, because all you could see through it was exactly the same kind of thing that lay in front of it on this side: a patch of grass lit by a street light.“

 

 

 

Philip Pullman (Norwich, 19 oktober 1946)

 

 

 

 

 

De Guatemalteekse schrijver Miguel Ángel Asturias werd geboren op 19 oktober 1899 in Guatemala-Stad. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Miguel Ángel Asturias op dit blog.

 

Uit: The President (Vertaald door Frances Partridge)

 

“Nothing was visible ahead. Behind them crept the track like a long silent snake unrolling its fluid, smooth, frozen coils. The ribs of the earth could be counted in the meagre dried-up marshlands, untouched by winter. The trees raised themselves to the full height of their thick, sappy branches in order to breathe. The bonfires dazzled the eyes of the tired horses. A man turned his back to urinate. His legs were invisible. The time had come for his companions to take stock of their situation, but they were too busy cleaning their rifles with grease and bits of cotton that still smelt of woman. Death had been carrying them off one by one, withering them as they lay in their beds, with no advantage to their children  or anyone else. It was better to risk their lives and see what would come of that. Bullets feel nothing when they pierce a man’s body; to them flesh is like sweet warm air—air with a certain substance. And they whistle like birds. the time had come to take stock, but they were too busy sharpening the machetes the leaders of the revolution had brought from an ironmonger whose shop had been burned down. The sharpened edge was like the smile on a negro’s face.”

 

 

 

Miguel Ángel Asturias (19 oktober 1899 – 9 juni 1974)

Monument in Buenos Aires

 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Fannie Hurst werd geboren op 19 oktober 1889 in Hamilton, Ohio. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Fanny Hurst op dit blog.

 

Uit: Every Soul Hath Its Song

 

“In this age of prose, when men's hearts turn point-blank from blank verse to the business of chaining two worlds by cable and of daring to fly with birds; when scholars, ever busy with the dead, are suffering crick in the neck from looking backward to the good old days when Romance wore a tin helmet on his head or lace in his sleeves--in such an age Simon Binswanger first beheld the high-flung torch of Goddess Liberty from the fore of the steerage deck of a wooden ship, his small body huddled in the sag of calico skirt between his mother's knees, and the sky-line and clothes-lines of the lower East Side dawning upon his uncomprehending eyes.

Some decades later, and with an endurance stroke that far outclassed classic Leander's, Simon Binswanger had swum the great Hellespont that surged between the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side, and, trolling his family after, landed them in one of those stucco-fronted, elevator-service apartment-houses where home life is lived on the layer, and the sins of the extension sole and the self-playing piano are visited upon the neighbor below. Landed them four stories high and dry

in a strictly modern apartment of three dark, square bedrooms, a square dining-room ventilated by an airshaft, and a square pocket of a kitchen that looked out upon a zigzag of fire-escape. And last a square front-room-de-resistance, with a bay of four windows overlooking a distant segment of Hudson River, an imitation stucco mantelpiece, a crystal chandelier, and an air of complete detachment from its curtailed rear.

But even among the false creations of exterior architects and interior decorators, home can find a way. Despite the square dining-room with the stag-and-tree wall-paper design above the plate-rack and a gilded radiator that hissed loudest at mealtime, when Simon Binswanger and his family relaxed round their after-dinner table, the invisible cricket on the visible hearth fell to whirring.”

 

 

 

Fannie Hurst (19 oktober 1889 – 23 februari 1968)

 

 

 

 

De Engelse dichter, schrijver en essayist James Leigh Hunt werd geboren op 19 oktober 1784 in Southgate, Middlesex. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leigh Hunt op dit blog.

 

 

May and the Poets

 

There is May in books forever;
May will part from Spenser never;
May's in Milton, May's in Prior,
May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;
May's in all the Italian books:--
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,
And will rise and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.
Come, ye rains, then if ye will,
May's at home, and with me still;
But come rather, thou, good weather,
And find us in the fields together.

 

 

 

On Receiving a Crown of Ivy from John Keats

 

It is a lofty feeling, yet a kind,
Thus to be topped with leaves;--to have a sense
Of honour-shaded thought,--an influence
As from great nature's fingers, and be twined
With her old, sacred, verdurous ivy-bind,
As though she hallowed with that sylvan fence
A head that bows to her benevolence,
Midst pomp of fancied trumpets in the wind.

It is what's within us crowned. And kind and great
Are all the conquering wishes it inspires,
Love of things lasting, love of the tall woods,
Love of love's self, and ardour for a state
Of natural good befitting such desires,
Towns without gain, and hunted solitudes.

 

 

 

Leigh Hunt (19 oktober 1784 – 28 augustus 1859)

Cover biografie

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19^e oktober ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

De Surinaamse schrijver Nardo Aluman (eig. Ronald Renardo Aloema) werd geboren in Christiaankondre op 19 oktober 1946. Zie ook alle tags voor Nardo Aluman op dit blog en eveneens mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010

 

Uit: Epakano Jakonombo/Tijdens de opstanding

 

“Heel, heel lang voor de witte man kwam, bestond er een welvarend en vreugdevol dorpje aan de bovenloop van de Amana-rivier in het huidige Frans-Guyana. De naam Amana (Mana) is ontleend aan een soort klei. Het is een roodgele klei en komt veel voor aan de oevers van deze rivier. Van deze klei vervaardigen de Caraïbische vrouwen van de dorpen Awara en Galibi nog altijd hun aardewerk. Het dorp was gevestigd bij een grote Ulemari-boom en heette daarom Ulemari-undy (de stam van de Ulemari).

De rivier Amana leverde tal van middelen van bestaan. Aan vis en vlees had men in het dorp dan ook nooit gebrek. De bevolking van Ulemari-undy deed ook aan landbouw en het dorp was volbeplant met allerlei soorten vruchtbomen. De bewoners vormden een grote familie die onder leiding stond van een pyjai. Deze man was één van de grootste pyjai's in de Guyana's. Iedereen in de Guyana's kende hem en men had veel eerbied voor hem. Zijn onderdanen durfden hem niet bij zijn naam te noemen en daarom wist niemand hoe hij heette. Zijn aanspreektitel was ‘Byjai’, dat betekent leermeester. Zoals het overal in de wereld toegaat, had deze Byjai ook tegenstanders in de andere dorpen; mensen die niet van hem hielden, omdat zij jaloers op hem waren. Maar waarom was men eigenlijk jaloers op hem? Wel, deze man bezat een aantal bijzondere gaven. Zo kon hij zich op bepaalde momenten één maken met de natuur. De vogels en andere dieren, dus ook de wilde poema, gehoorzaamden hem. Hij kon met ze spelen en hun opdrachten geven. Hij alleen kon met de totale natuur communiceren, zelfs met het kleinste levende wezen, zoals de krekel. Soms, als hij zin had, ging hij met de vogels op pad. Geen wonder dat deze man nooit problemen had met het vergaren van voedsel voor zijn gezin. Natuurlijk waren er mannen in het dorp die erachter wilden komen hoe hij dat allemaal deed.”

 

 

 

Nardo Aluman (Christiaankondre, 19 oktober 1946)

 

 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Andrew Vachss werd geboren op 19 oktober 1942 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Andrew Vachss op dit  blog en eveneens mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010

 

Uit: Mask Market

 

“The night man sitting across from me calls himself Charlie Jones—the kind of motel-register name you hear a lot down where I live. A long time ago, I'd done a few jobs he'd brought to me. The way Charlie works it; he makes his living from finder' s fees. Kind of a felonious matchmaker—you tell him the problem you need solved, he finds you a pro that specializes in it.

Charlie pointedly looked down at my hands. I kept them flat on the chipped blue Formica tabletop, palms down. He placed his own hands in the same position, showing me his ID.

The backs of his frail-looking hands were incongruously cabled with thick veins. The skin around his fingernails was beta-carotene orange. The tip of the little finger on his right hand was missing. I nodded my confirmation. Yeah, he was the man I remembered.

Charlie looked at my own hands for a minute, then up at me. The Burke he knew never had a tattoo, but he nodded, just as I had. Charlie was a tightrope dancer—perfect balance was his survival tool. His nod told me not to worry about whether he believed the story that I was Burke's brother. By him, it was true enough. Where we live, that's the same as good enough.

"It's a nice story," I said, watching as he lit his third cigarette of the meet. Burke was a heavy smoker. Me, I don't smoke … except when I need to convince someone out of my past that I'm still me.

"It's not my story," Charlie reminded me. "Your brother, he was an ace at finding people. Best tracker in the city. I figure he must have taught you some things."

Charlie never invested himself emotionally in any matches he made. He was way past indifferent, as colorless as the ice storm that grayed the window of the no-name diner where we were meeting. But Charlie had something besides balance going for him. He was a pure specialist, a middleman who never got middled. What that means is, Charlie wouldn' t do anything except make his matches.”

 

 

 

Andrew Vachss (New York, 19 oktober 1942)

 

 

 

 

De Britse schrijver John le Carré werd geboren op 19 oktober 1931 in Poole, Dorset, Engeland. Zie ook alle tags voor John le Carré op dit blog en eveneens mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010

 

Uit : A Delicate Truth

 

« On a sunny Sunday early in that same spring, a 31-year-old British foreign servant earmarked for great things sat alone at the pavement table of a humble Italian cafe in London's Soho, steeling himself to perform an act of espionage so outrageous that, if detected, it would cost him his career and his freedom: namely, recovering a tape recording, illicitly made by himself, from the Private Office of a Minister of the Crown whom it was his duty to serve and advise to the best of his considerable ability.

His name was Toby Bell and he was entirely alone in his criminal contemplations. No evil genius controlled him, no paymaster, provocateur or sinister manipulator armed with an attache case stuffed with hundred-dollar bills was waiting round the corner, no activist in a ski mask. He was in that sense the most feared creature of our contemporary world: a solitary decider. Of a forthcoming clandestine operation on the Crown Colony of Gibraltar he knew nothing: rather, it was this tantalising ignorance that had brought him to his present pass.

Neither was he in appearance or by nature cut out to be a felon. Even now, premeditating his criminal design, he remained the decent, diligent, tousled, compulsively ambitious, intelligent-looking fellow that his colleagues and employers took him for. He was stocky in build, not particularly handsome, with a shock of unruly brown hair that went haywire as soon as it was brushed. That there was gravitas in him was undeniable. »

 

 

 

John le Carré (Poole, 19 oktober 1931)

 

 

 

 

De Australische dichter Adam Lindsay Gordon werd geboren op 19 oktober 1833 op de Azoren. Zie ook alle tags voor Adam Lindsay Gordon op dit blog en eveneens mijn blog van 19 oktober 2010

 

 

To A Proud Beauty ('A Valentine')

 

Though I have loved you well, I ween,
And you, too, fancied me,
Your heart hath too divided been
A constant heart to be.
And like the gay and youthful knight,
Who loved and rode away,
Your fleeting fancy takes a flight
With every fleeting day.

So let it be as you propose,
Tho' hard the struggle be ;
'Tis fitter far—that goodness knows !—
Since we cannot agree.
Let's quarrel once for all, my sweet,
Forget the past—and then
I'll kiss each pretty girl I meet,
While you'll flirt with the men.

 

 

 

 

Potters' Clay

 

Though the pitcher that goes to the sparkling rill
Too oft gets broken at last,
There are scores of others its place to fill
When its earth to the earth is cast ;
Keep that pitcher at home, let it never roam,
But lie like a useless clod,
Yet sooner or later the hour will come
When its chips are thrown to the sod.

Is it wise, then, say, in the waning day,
When the vessel is crack'd and old,
To cherish the battered potter's clay,
As though it were virgin gold ?
Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf,
Though prudent and safe you seem,
Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf,
And mine by the dazzling stream.

 

 

Adam Lindsay Gordon (19 oktober 1833 – 24 juni 1870)

Borstbeeld in Ballarat