Tuesday

Oct. 17, 2000

Beyond Equinox

by Philip Booth

Broadcast date: TUESDAY, 17 October 2000

Poem: "Beyond Equinox," by Philip Booth, from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 (Penguin).

It's the birthday of columnist Jimmy Breslin, born in Queens, New York (1930), the son of a high school teacher and a social worker. As a columnist for various New York newspapers, he's been a voice for the Irish-American working class; in 1986 he won Pulitzer for his collected columns. His novels include The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1969), Table Money (1986), and He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners (1987).

"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers."

It's the birthday of playwright Arthur Miller, born in Harlem, New York (1915). He's best known for his play Death of a Salesman (1949), the story of Willy Loman, the down-and-out salesman trying to do one right thing. His other plays include The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge (1955), After the Fall (1964), and The Price (1968).

"I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime."

It's the birthday poet Jesse (Hilton) Stuart, born in W-Hollow, Kentucky (1906). He published a volume of more than 700 sonnets, called Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow (1934), about his native Greenup County, peopled with farmers, moonshiners and horse traders.

It's the birthday of novelist Nathanael West (Nathan Weinstein), born in New York City (1903). He wrote Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), and The Day of the Locust (1939), published a year before his death in a car crash at age 37.

It's the birthday of movie star Jean Arthur, born in Plattsburg, New York (1900). She sparkled as a hard-boiled career woman with a heart of gold in such films as You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Foreign Affair (1948).

It's the birthday of pathologist E(rnest) W(illiam) Goodpasture, born in Montgomery County, Tennessee (1886) - who devised a way of cultivating viruses and rickettsia in fertile chicken eggs. As a result, vaccines were produced for smallpox, influenza, yellow fever, typhus, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

«

»

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show