Literary Giant - Ayn Rand

Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, was born on February 2, 1905, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She was the oldest of 3 daughters born to Zinovy Zacharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum who were non-practicing Jews. Zinovy was a chemist and a successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

Rand taught herself to read at age 6. At the tender age of 9, she decided that writing fiction would be her career. Alisa, while still in Russia, decided on Rand as her professional writing surname and she chose the Finnish name Ayn as her first name. The family fled to the Crimea to escape the rise of the Bolshevik party when she was 12and it was there that she finished high school. They returned to Saint Petersburg when she was 16 and she entered the University of Petrograd, studying philosophy and history. She graduated in 1924 and was oppressed by the restrictions and standards of the communist party. Rand had long enjoyed the cinema so she studied Screenwriting at the State Institute for Cinema Arts. Her first publication was a booklet on Pola Negri, an actress (1925), and another titled “Hollywood: American Movie City” (1926).

In 1925 she obtained a visa to visit relatives in the U.S. The visit was supposed to be a short one but Rand was determined to make it a permanent move. After 6 months with her relatives, she renewed her visa and moved to Hollywood to begin a career as a screen writer. She met Frank Connor whom she married in 1929 and they spent the next 50 years together until he died. The next few years she worked at non-writing jobs. In 1932 she sold her first screenplay, "Red Prawn", to Universal Pictures. Her first stage play, Night of January 16, was produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. We the Living was her first novel. It was based on her years under Soviet tyranny and was the most autobiographical of her novels.

In 1935 she began writing The Fountainhead. She completed the book but it was turned down by twelve publishers before Bobbs-Merrill Company published it in 1943. It became a word of mouth best seller over the next 2 years in spite of the negative remarks by some critics. It gave Rand lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.

Returning to Hollywood she started the screenplay for "The Fountainhead" but because of the war restrictions it would not be produced until 1948. Rand began writing "Atlas Shrugged" in 1946 while working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions. She moved back to New York in 1951 working full time on the novel. It was published in 1957 and is considered Rands magnum opus. It was also her last work of fiction. "Atlas Shrugged" dramatized her own philosophy in an intellectual mystery that covered ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex.

From then on, Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy, "Objectivism". She explained that it was a philosophy for living on earth. She published her own periodicals until 1976 and her essays provided much of the material for 6 books on "Objectivism" and its application to the culture.

Every book by Rand that was published during her life time is still in print. Several new volumes were published after her death. Her expectation of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of countless readers and started a philosophic movement on American culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982 in her New York apartment.

Literary Giants - Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author who was raised in rural New York. Her novels numbering over 50 have won many awards and prizes in the literary world. These include “Black Water”, “Them” and “What I Lived For.” Since the 1960’s Oates has been one of the leading American novelists, with a reputation for being a very prolific novelist.

Joyce Carol Oates was the first in her family to complete high school and went on to attend Syracuse University. While at college she won a college short story contest that was sponsored by “Mademoiselle” magazine, and states that she trained herself as a writer by writing novel after novel, and throwing them out when she finished them.
Joyce graduated Syracuse as valedictorian and went onto obtain her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin.

Oates’ first novel “With Shuddering Fall was published when she was 26 years old, since then she has published an average of 2 books per year. Joyce Carol Oates often writes about rural poverty, class tensions, power, sexual abuse, female adolescence and sometimes the supernatural. Violence is a constant in all of her work, which led to Oates writing an essay to respond to the question "Why is Your Writing So Violent”. Her novel “We Were the Mulvaneys” was chosen by Oprah’s Book Club in 2001 and also turned into a Lifetime Movie. Oates has also written several mystery novels under the pen names of Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Besides being a novelist Joyce Carol Oates has also been a wife, a widow, and a professor at Princeton University. Joyce is a devoted runner who uses the time that she is running to envision scenes for her novels. Oates actually writes all of her novels in longhand, she works from 8a.m. until 1p.m. each day, then for a few hours in the evening. The prolific work of Joyce Carol Oates has become one of her best known attributes; critics have criticized her for producing so many novels. Yet, she states that she works hard, the hours roll by and she seems to create more than she anticipates, but she has more stories to tell and more novels to write.

Literary Giants - Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski was born in Germany in 1920. He became a famous German American novelist, poet, and writer of short stories. Charles’ father was an American serviceman and his mother a German native. After the economy collapsed in Germany after World War I, the family moved to the U.S. Originally settling in Baltimore then moving to South Los Angeles in California. Growing up in L.A., Charles was bullied and mocked for his accent and the clothing he wore. As quiet and socially inept child, Charles was introduced to alcohol in his early teens. After High School, Bukowski attended a city college for 2 years, his subjects? Art, journalism and literature of course. While in college Charles found himself becoming involved in the political world that prevailed on Campus, even briefly associating with a group of Nazis.

At age 24, Bukowski’s short story entitled “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip” was published in a magazine, a few years later another of his short stories was published in a collection. Growing disillusioned with his failure to set the literary world on fire, Bukowski quit writing and began what he referred to as a “ten year drunk”. He roamed across the United States and worked sporadically. He was married and divorced, and began writing poetry.

Charles returned to Los Angeles in the 60’s working as a post office filing clerk. As time passed, Bukowski wrote a column for a newspaper in L.A. called “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”. The column was picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press and the Nola Express of New Orleans. He also launched his own literary magazine with his friend Neeli Cherkovski, this magazine had no impact on either mans literary career.

As the 70’s moved in, Charles was signed with Black Sparrow Press and quit his post office job to write full time. Less than a month late, his first novel was finished. “Post Office” was just the beginning for Bukowski’s career as a novelist.

Charles Bukowski died in 1994 of leukemia shortly after finishing his final novel “Pulp”. Charles listed several authors as influences including D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He also spoke of Los Angeles as always being his favorite subject due to the fact that he was raised in L.A. and knew the city.

Literary Giants - Alice Walker

American author Alice Walker is best known for her novel “The Color Purple”. That novel not only wont the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction but was also adapted into an award winning screenplay as well. However “The Color Purple” was published in 1982 and Ms. Walker had not only been writing but had been contributing to the feminist and civil rights movements for several years before that happened.

Born in Georgia in 1944, Alice Walker is youngest of the 8 Walker children. Her mother a maid and her father a sharecropper knew that children, even black children, needed an education. Alice was enrolled at age 4 in the first grade. Alice took to education and was a wonderful student; she was valedictorian of her graduating class as well as most popular girl and the Queen of the Senior Class.

After high school Alice attended Spellman College in Atlanta, and then transferred to Sarah Lawrence College near NYC. Walker became interested and involved in the civil rights movement. She returned to the south after college and was involved with welfare rights, children’s programs, and voter registration drives in Mississippi.

Alice and her husband, a Jewish civil rights lawyer named Mel Leventhal, moved to Jackson Mississippi in 1967 and were the first legally married inter-racial couple in the state. This brought a great deal of harassment and threats from the KKK.

In the midst of all this strife and fighting for civil rights, Alice continued to write. From her first book of poetry that was published while she was at Sarah Lawrence to being an editor for Ms. Magazine, and several published articles and collections of short stories and poetry, Alice Walker was a name that was well known in the literary world.

Her novels include “Meridian”, “The Temple of My Familiar” and of course “The Color Purple”. The typical focus of Alice Walker’s works is the struggle of blacks and particularly women, in the war against a racist, sexist, and violent society. Alice Walker is a respected figure in the political community for her support of the liberal ideals of unconventional and unpopular views.

Literary Giants - Alice Munro

Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer who was born in 1931. She is well known for her collections of short stories that began when she was just a teenager. Alice’s first story was published in 1950 while she was a student at the University of Western Ontario. Alice left the University in 1951 to get married and become a mother. She gave birth to 4 daughters, one of which died 15 hours after birth.

The first collection of Alice Munro’s stories called “Dance of the Happy Shades” was published in 1968 and received high acclaim including winning Canada’s highest literary prize the Governor General’s Award. The collections have continued over the years and some of her stories have been adapted to film.

Ms. Munro has maintained a general setting for her stories; most of them are placed in Huron County, Ontario. This regional focus and all knowing narrator are features of her fiction works. Many people have compared Munro’s small town settings to the American writers from the rural South such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. But the characters of Alice Munro’s work have less intense reactions, which makes her well known as an author who captures the personality and essence of the “every” man.

Frequent themes in Alice Munro’s work are the dilemmas of coming of age and dealing with family in a small town. This of course relates to her own beginnings as a writer at a young age. Over time, Ms. Munro has moved on to focus on middle age, single women and the elderly. Alice Munro is a writer who writes what she knows, what she has experienced or witnessed and helps the reader make sense of the same issues in their own lives. Critics have claimed that while they are short stories, the works of Alice Munro have the emotional and literary depth of full length novels.

There is a new collection of Alice Munro’s short stories tentatively scheduled to be released in 2009. Over the years her work has been published not only in her collections but in many newspapers, periodicals and magazines.

Literary Giants - Jack Kerouac

Born March 12, 1922 Jack Kerouac was an artistic renaissance man, as an American author, poet and painter. Along with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac is considered one f the pioneers of the Beat Generation.

Today, many years after his 1969 death Kerouac is thought of as an important and influential writer, however, while his work was very popular with a certain culture during his lifetime, he received very little critical acclaim.

Amazingly this great American writer didn’t even learn the English language until he was 6 years old. It has been discovered that Jack Kerouac actually began writing his novel “On the Road” in French, as well as much of his poetry.

Jack Kerouac lived an adventure filled life, from cross country road trips to disposing of murder evidence he always stood by his convictions and made the choices that appealed to his sense of fairness. After his arrest as a material witness in the murder case, Jack married Edie Parker in return for her paying his bail. One year later that marriage was annulled. So while convictions and fairness came into play in his life, Jack Kerouac was also willing to do whatever needed to be done in order to get where he wanted to be.

Jack Kerouac had many careers. He spent time as a sports reporter, construction worker, US Merchant Marine, and joined the US Navy two times. One thing that never changed, no matter what job he was working at, Jack always wrote. He carried a notebook with him everywhere he went. One can only conclude that the great American novels that he produced were due to this habitual jotting of thoughts, for while Kerouac wrote spontaneous prose and mainly lacking edits, his novels were primarily based upon events from his life and people that he encountered.

After many revisions and edits his work was deemed publishable, but in the original free thought flowing style Jack Kerouac created “The Subterraneans” and “Visions of Cody” which remain in the free flowing spontaneous style that Kerouac was known for.

Like so many great artists Jack Kerouac died at the early age of 47 due to complications of alcohol abuse.

Literary Giants ~ Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was born on August 22, 1893 in West End, New York while her parents were there on vacation. The prosperous Jewish family lived in Manhattan where her father, Jacob, was a garment manufacturer. Her mother, Annie Eliza Rothschild was from the Rothschild Banking Clan. Dorothy was the youngest of 4 children. Her mother died when she was 4 and Jacob married Eleanor Francis Lewis who died just 3 years later. It was not a loss Dorothy mourned.

Dorothy’s early education was at Blessed Sacrament Convent School which was Roman Catholic. She finished her education at Miss Dana’s School in Morristown, New Jersey. She claimed the only thing she learned was that ‘if you spit on a pencil eraser it will erase in’.

When her father died in 1913 she was twenty and already knew she wanted to be a writer. Earning a living had to come first so she found a job as a dance class pianist at night and honed her writing skills during the day.

In 1914 Dorothy sold “Any Porch”, a poem, to Vanity Fair for $12.00. In 1916 she sold more of her poetry to Vogue and was given an editorial position at the magazine and her career took off from there. In 1917 she married Edwin Pond Parker II, a stockbroker, but the marriage didn’t last long as he was an alcoholic and during WWI became addicted to morphine. After the divorce in 1920 she kept his name. During the time of her marriage she worked at Vanity Fair where her managing editor, Frank Crowinshield, said she had “the quickest tongue imaginable, and I need not to say the keenest sense of mockery.” For a time she filled in for P.G. Wodehouse as a Theater Critic. It was said that she was very entertaining at it, scathing and mocking, while sparing no one. Here is where she met and became close friends with writers Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood. The 3 formed the famous Algonquin Round Table which consisted of luncheons at the Algonquin Motel in New York. The intellectual set included writers and journalists like Franklin Pierce Adams, James Thurber, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber and other well known personalities. Conversation at these gatherings was always lively but seldom kind. The 1994 movie ‘Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle’ was based on the life and times of this famous group.

Vanity Fair fired Dorothy in 1920 and several of her friends resigned in protest. Dorothy and Robert Benchley formed a free lance writing firm called ‘Park-Bench’. In 1925 the pair joined Harold Ross’s new magazine ‘The New Yorker’ and Dorothy began writing book reviews. Her acid wit was not always popular with the writers. She stayed there until 1933 but would continue writing for the magazine off and on until 1955.

In 1934 she married Alan Campbell who was an actor and script writer. It was a rocky marriage with several separations but it was the beginning of a flourishing career with him writing such successful film scripts as ‘A Star is Born’. She worked on Hitchcock’s film ‘Sagoteur’. With the help of Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, and others Dorothy founded ‘The Screen Writers Guild”. While in Hollywood she dabbled in politics as one of the founders of the Anti-Nazi League and later veered towards Communism. She was actually investigated by the FBI. She was blacklisted and out of work in Hollywood effectively ending her script writing career. She moved back to New York as a Literary Critic for the Esquire until 1962.

In 1963 Alan died suddenly of a heart attack and she was alone and riddled with grief. Already an alcoholic, it got worse. On June 7, 1967, shortly before her 74th birthday, she too died from of a heart attack. According to her will, she left her estate to the civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Literary Giants ~ Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on August 24, 1890 in Roseau, Dominica. Her father, William Rees Williams was a Welsh doctor. Her mother, Minna Lockhart Williams was a 3rd generation Dominican Creole of Scottish descent. Rhys attended the Convent School until she turned 16 and then moved to England where she would live with her Aunt Clarice. She studied at the Perse School for girls, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She had a hard time with the English language and that fact kept her an outsider. She tried working as a chorus girl in 1909 and 1910 but was unsuccessful. When her father died she was forced to leave her studies.

Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a canteen during WWI. She also worked briefly in a pension office. In 1919 she married journalist and song writer Jean Lenglet. They had a son who died at 3 weeks and a daughter. Rhys wrote short stories under the patronage of Ford Madox Ford, an English writer and had an affair with him. During this time in Paris she familiarized herself with modern art and literature. She became an alcoholic and the condition would be life long. Resentment of a patriarchal society and feeling of displacement that she felt would eventually form some of the most important themes in her work. Her first collection of stories was published in 1927. Her first novel, “Postures”, appeared in 1928. During the 1930’s she wrote “After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie”, “Voyage in the Dark” and “Good Morning, Midnight”. These 3 novels would bring her a degree of literary reputation and financial security that carried her through the next 15 years.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s Rhys went into a secluded retirement and was out of the public eye. In 1966 her masterpiece, “Wide Sargasso Sea”, was published and she emerged as a significant literary figure. The novel was written as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. For this novel she won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967. Her writing often echoed her own tragic life experiences. She once declared, “I have only ever written about myself”.

Jean Rhys died on May 14, 1979, in Exeter, England. She was in the process of writing her autobiography. In 1979, after her death, the incomplete text appeared under the title “Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography”.

Literary Giant - Amy Tan

Amy Tan was born February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California to parents who were Chinese immigrants. John Tan, her father, was a Baptist minister and electrical engineer who moved to America to escape the civil war in China. Her mother, Daisy, had survived more than one tragedy before she escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before the communist takeover in 1949. She had divorced her abusive husband and been forced to leave her three daughters behind. These events in her mother’s life inspired Amy’s novel “The Kitchen God’s Wife”.

John and Daisy also had two boys. They lived in the San Francisco Bay area of California. Amy’s father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors within a year of each other. Daisy moved Amy and her remaining brother to Switzerland where Amy finished high school and started at a Baptist college her mother had picked out. She wanted Amy to be a doctor and a concert pianist. Amy defied her mother by following her boyfriend, Louis DeMattei, to San Jose City College where she studied English and linguistics and eventually received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in these fields.

In 1974 Amy and Louis, an attorney, were married and eventually settled in San Francisco. Amy attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley studying for a doctorate in linguistics. She left her studies in 1976 and took a job as a language development consultant with the Alameda county Association for Retarded Citizens. She and a partner had a business writing speeches for salesmen and executives of large corporations. After a dispute she left and became a full time freelance writer. She prospered but found little satisfaction with her work. She studied jazz piano trying to build on the forced musical training of her childhood. This was when she started writing fiction. Her first story “Endgame” earned her a place in the Squaw Valley writer’s workshop taught by novelist Oakley Hall. The story was printed in FM (a literary magazine) and Seventeen. With the completion of her second story, “Waiting Between the Trees”, literary agent Sandra Dijkstra took her on as a client.

After Amy’s mother had recovered from an illness, she took her to China to visit with the daughter she had left behind. This trip brought mother and daughter closer together and inspired Amy to finish the book of stories as her agent had encouraged. The completed stories and an outline of the remaining stories would be turned into the best selling book, “The Joy Luck Club”. She had received a $50,000 advance from G.P. Putnam’s Sons which allowed her to stop her business writing and finish the book. It was on the NY Times best seller list for 8 months. The paperback rights went for 1.23 million. It has been translated into 17 languages. She has since written “The Kitchen God’s Wife”, “The Hundred Secret Senses” and the “Bonesetter’s Daughter” plus 2 children’s books, “The Moon Lady” and “The Chinese Siamese Cat”. She also wrote “The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings”. She has received numerous awards for her writing.

She is still married to Lou DeMattei, still residing in San Francisco and New York with their Yorkshire terriers Bubba and Lilli. In 1999 Amy contracted Lyme disease, probably while hiking. It was debilitating and hindered her ability to write. She has worked to bring awareness to the disease, supported research efforts and helped to found LymeAid 4 Kids.

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. Her father, John Hurston was a Baptist preacher, carpenter and tenant farmer practicing each as the need arose. Her mother, Lucy Ann Potts Hurston was a school teacher. When Zora was three, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida, which was the first all black town to be incorporated in the United States. Her father eventually became mayor of the town and Zora later wrote that it was a place that black Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. In 1904 Lucy died and John soon married again. Zora was sent away to school in Jacksonville, Florida and worked part time as a maid.

In 1917, Zora began studying at the high school division of Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland. In order to qualify for a free education Zora claimed her birth year was 1901. She graduated from high school at the age of 27. She started her undergraduate studies at Howard University that same year. She was co-founder of The Hilltop, the student newspaper. She left Howard in 1924 and was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she would be the only black student. While here she conducted ethnographic research with Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. In 1927 she received a B.A. in anthropology and spent the next 2 years as a graduate student at Columbia University.

Zora had arrived in New York City at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925. Before she entered Barnard her short story Spunk was selected for The New Negro, a landmark anthology of fiction, poetry and essays focusing on African and African American art and literature. The following year a group of young black writers (calling themselves the “Niggerati”), including Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman and Zora, produced a literary magazine called Fire!!. Many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance had their work featured in the magazine.

Zora continued her writing career and had several of her short stories published. Her first 3 novels, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Moses, Man of the Mountain were published during the mid to late 30’s. During the 40’s she had work published in the Saturday Evening Post and The American Mercury periodical. Her last published novel was Seraph on the Suwanee, printed in 1948. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was considered her masterwork and had been completed during her fieldwork in Haiti.

Zora’s outspoken beliefs caused her nothing but grief. When the battle of desegregation was being fought she let it be known that black children did not have to go to school with whites in order to receive an education. She had the black community supporting this movement up in arms. She also wrote an article attacking the rights of the blacks to vote in the South by stating that their votes were being bought and therefore were not their own.

Her last years were lived in poverty with no one knowing or caring where she was. She ended her working career as domestic help, the same way she started. She was working on another book, The Life of Herod the Great but died before it was finished. She suffered a severe stroke in 1959 and was committed to the Saint Lucie County Welfare Home in Fort Pierce, Florida to live out her days. She died on January 28, 1960 of hypertensive heart disease.

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born January 25, 1882 in London. Her mother, Julia Prinsep Jackson Stephen was a famous model for Pre-Raphaelite painters. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen was a notable scholar, author and critic. Virginia was home schooled by her parents. Her parents had each been married and widowed and had children from their previous marriages. Julia had Herbert, George and Stella. Leslie had a daughter who was mentally disabled and lived with the family until she was 21 and then institutionalized. Leslie and Julia had 4 children together (Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrian).

Their children were raised in an environment filled with Victorian literary society influences. Visitors in their home included Henry James, G. E. Moore, E. M. Forster, George Henry Lewes, Julia Margaret Cameron and James Russell Lowell who was Virginia’s honorary godfather. The girls of the family were taught the classics and English literature while the boys received a formal education.

Julia died suddenly in 1895 when Virginia was just 13 years old. She lost her half-sister Stella 2 years later. These deaths were the prelude to Virginia’s first nervous breakdown. Seven years later, in 1904, her father died and she was plunged into the depths of despair suffering a collapse so severe that she was institutionalized for a short period. Her breakdowns, mood swings and recurring depression were fueled by the sexual abuse committed against her and her sister Vanessa by their half brothers George and Gerald Duckworth. These maladies would torment her for the rest of her life.

Although Virginia’s instability often affected her social life, her writing continued with few breaks until the end of her life. She began her professional writing in 1905 for the Times Literary Supplement. She attained both critical and popular success for her writings.

In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf who was a brilliant writer and critic. She often referred to as a ‘penniless Jew” but they enjoyed a close and loving bond. They often worked together professionally and opened the Hogarth Press which subsequently published Virginia’s novels. They also published works by T. S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post and others. In 1922 Virginia entered a long lasting sexual relationship with Vita Sackville-West. The women remained friends even after the affair ended.

The destruction of her London home during the Blitz at the onset of WW II worsened her already tentative condition until she was unable to work. On March 28, 1941 she put on her coat, filled the pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned. Her body was found 3 weeks later and her husband had her cremated and then buried her under a tree in the garden of their home in Rodmell, Sussex.

Virginia wrote several novels, short story collections, biographies, non-fiction books, autobiographical writings and diaries, 3 letters, 1 drama and 1 introduction preface.

Literary Giants - Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932, during the Great Depression, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her Father, Otto Emile Plath, was an immigrant from Germany and a professor of apiology and German at Boston University. Her mother was Aurelia Schober Plath.

In April of 1935, Warren was born into the family and they moved to Winthrop Massachusetts the following year. Otto died suddenly shortly after Sylvia turned 8. Plath’s poem Daddy would later be put on his tombstone. She was a sensitive child and greatly affected by his death. The grief, guilt and angry despair she felt stayed with her for her entire life and would ultimately show through in her writing. Plath’s first poem was published in the Boston Herald’s children’s section when she was 8 ½ years old.

In 1942 Aurelia moved with her children and parents to Wellesley, Massachusetts. Even though Plath was troubled, she excelled in school for her superior academic skills and writing abilities. Some of her poems and stories were published in Seventeen magazine. In august of 1950, her first story, And Summer Will Not Come Again was published.

That September Plath entered Smith College in Northampton, New York on a scholarship. She did extremely well there also, academically and socially. Her teachers and peers called her the golden girl. Plath was adamant about her career and filled endless notebooks with her writings. In her junior year
she won Mademoiselle’s fiction contest and was given a guest editorship for the magazine for June of 1953.

Plath went home depressed and conflicted with the All-American girl image
that she had fought so hard to achieve. She suffered a serious mental breakdown and attempted suicide. She was given shock treatments and eventually returned to Smith College. She graduated summa cum laude and went to Cambridge on a Fulbright fellowship that she had won. It was there that she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (a poet). They were married in London in June of 1956.

Plath returned to America, with a graduate degree, to teach at Smith in 1957. After one year she quit to devote all of her time to writing. Plath and Ted spent time in Saratoga Springs as writers-in-residence to Yaddo. Their first child Frieda was born and Plath completed many of the poems printed in The Colossus. Their son Nicholas was born 2 years later. Some critics considered her radio play Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices a transitional piece of work. After that her writing style changed and became more spontaneous and less narrative and less expository.

As her poetry developed it became more autobiographical and private. Most of the poems in Ariel were written during the last months of her life and were a personal testimony to all the negative feelings she had locked inside. In her writing she found the voice that she had sought for so long. Since it was not the norm, it offended many people with its directness and use of startling metaphors. Her writing took on the darkness that she felt was her life. It talked of suicide, death, mutilation and brutality. She had found herself at last and was no longer plagued with the All-American girl image.

Her marriage had ended by 1963, she was ill and on the verge of another mental breakdown. Caring for two small children in a cramped London flat, she hit the depths of despair. On February 11, 1963, after making sure her children were safe, she stuck her head in the oven and turned on the gas. Some believe that she had not intended to kill herself but her death was ruled a suicide. Plath was an American poet, novelist, children’s author, short story author and author of the journals that she had started at age 11 and continued until her death.

Literary Giants - Robertson Davies

William Robertson Davies was born August 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario. His father, Senator William Rupert Davies was also a newspaperman. His mother was Florence Sheppard McKay. Davies was the youngest of three boys. Both of his parents were avid readers and he read everything he could get his hands on. At age 3 he appeared in the opera Queen Esther which would spark a life long interest in drama.

In 1918 the family moved to Renfrew, Ontario where he lived the life of the typical country boy attending country schools. When he was 12 the family moved to Kingston and with all of the moves came the knowledge of life in urban and rural areas. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto and was involved in music, theater and editing the school newspaper. He went on to the Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1932 where he wrote for the school newspaper, The Queen’s Journal. He left Canada to attend Balliol College, Oxford and in 1938 he received a Bachelor of Literature degree. In 1939 he published his thesis, Shakespeare’s Boy Actors.

In 1940 he began an acting career near London. He met and married Brenda Mathews who worked as stage manager for the theater in Oxford. They returned to Canada and he became editor for the Saturday Night magazine. Two years later he moved to the Peterborough Examiner as editor and then publisher and stayed for more than 20 years. During his time with the Examiner Davies published 18 of his books, produced a number of his own plays and wrote articles for various journals.

Davies first love was always drama, but he became frustrated by his inability to get his plays accepted outside of Canada. From that point on he would turn more and more to his writing. In 1960 Davies started teaching literature at Trinity College at the University of Toronto. In 1963 he became Master of Massey College, the new graduate college of the University of Toronto. He continued with his writing and it was during this period of time that he finished Fifth Business, a novel that many considered his best. He eventually retired from teaching but never from writing. He was also a sought after public speaker. He won several awards and recognition for his works.

Davies wrote numerous novels (often favoring trilogies), short stories, essays, letters, criticisms, plays and opera’s. There are 2 collections of conversations with Davies and quotes attributed to him that have been turned into books.

On December 2, 1995, Davies died of a stroke. He had lived a good life and had a distinguished career as a journalist, playwright and novelist.

Literary Giants - Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He was the oldest of five children born to Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova. His father was a lawyer, politician and journalist. The family was wealthy and prominent and a member of the untitled nobility. Nabokov was a multilingual (Russian, French and English) novelist and short story writer. His first 9 novels were written in Russian but his international fame did not come until he became a master of the English prose style.

Nabokov considered his childhood to have been perfect. After the 1917 February Revolution, the family was forced to flee the city. They did not expect to be away for very long, but the forced exit turned out to be a permanent exile. In April, 1919, the family left on the last ship and stayed briefly in England. While there Nabokov went to Trinity College, Cambridge and studied Slavic and Romance languages. In 1922 after his studies were done he followed his family to Berlin where his father was assassinated by Russian monarchists as he fought to protect a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. This mistaken, violet death would appear several times in Nabokov’s writing. He stayed working under the pen name V. Sirin. He was forced to supplement his writing income by teaching languages and giving tennis and boxing lessons.

He met and married Vera Evseyevna Slonim in Berlin and they had one child, Dmitri, born in 1934. In 1937 he left Germany for France. In 1940 the family fled the advancing German troops and sailed to the U.S. aboard the Champlain. They settled in Manhattan and he worked at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1941, at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, he was a resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position was created just for him and it gave him time to pursue his writing while still supporting his family. They moved to Cambridge in 1942 and stayed until 1948. After a lecture tour through the U.S. he returned to teaching. His classes were popular due to his teaching style. He was also curator of lepidoptery at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1948 went to Cornell University to teach Russian and European literature. In 1945 he became a naturalized citizen of the U.S.

Nabokov wrote Lolita while traveling through the western U.S. looking for butterflies. He never learned to drive so his wife acted as his chauffeur. He considered her the best humored woman he had ever known. In June of 1953 the family moved to Ashland, Oregon. While there he finished Lolita. Four months later they left for Ithaca, N.Y.

With the financial success of Lolita, Nabokov returned to Europe and spent all of his time writing. On October 1, 1961, he and Vera moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland and he lived there for the rest of his life. He continued to hunt butterflies on excursions to the Alps, Corsica and Sicily. In 1976 he was hospitalized with an undiagnosed fever. In Lausanne in 1977 he was again hospitalized with severe bronchial congestion. He died on July 2. He was cremated and is buried at the Clarens cemetery in Montreux.

When he died, he left an unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. Several short excerpts have been made public. In July of 2009, Playboy Magazine acquired the rights to print an excerpt that will be published in the December issue.

Nabokov wrote 19 novels (10 in Russian, 9 in English). He wrote 68 short stories (56 in Russian, 11 in English and 1 in French). He wrote 7 plays in Russian. In the non-fiction category he wrote 4 memoirs and letters and 6 criticisms. He wrote 6 miscellaneous works including the screenplay for Lolita.

Literary Giants - Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was born November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., was a successful architect and his mother, Edith Lieber was a homemaker. On Mother’s Day in 1944, Edith took her own life. Vonnegut would himself attempt suicide in 1982.

Vonnegut attended Cornell University where he majored in chemistry and biology. While there he was a member of the fraternity Delta Upsilon, as was his father before him. He served as assistant managing editor and associate editor for the Cornell Daily Sun which was the student newspaper.

When he left Cornell he enlisted in the United States Army and went to Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering. His experiences while in the army, especially his time as a prisoner of war, had a profound effect on his life and was a major influence in his later writing. Vonnegut was imprisoned in Dresden and was a witness to the fire bombing which destroyed most of the city. He was part of a group of prisoners who survived the attack because they were locked up in an underground slaughter house that the Germans had turned into a detention facility. The building was referred to as Schlachthof Funf (Slaughterhouse Five). His experience in this building was the basis for that novel.

After the war Vonnegut married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Cox. They had three children and separated in 1970. After his sister Alice died from cancer, Vonnegut adopted her three boys. He divorced Jane in 1979 and married Jill Krementz, a photographer. They adopted Lily in 1982, the seventh child in the family.

Vonnegut went to the University of Chicago as a graduate student. His novel Cat’s Cradle was accepted as his thesis and he was awarded the M.A. degree in 1971. He taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Cat’s Cradle had become a best seller and he began writing Slaughterhouse Five which is now considered one of the 20th Century’s best American novels.

He was known for his humanist beliefs and for a time was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

Some of his works were a blend of satire, black comedy, and science fiction. Vonnegut wrote fourteen novels, short stories, essays, articles and a screen play. Among his best known works are Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Welcome to the Monkey House, Slapstick and Breakfast of Champions. There are several famous quotes attributed to him. He continued to write for the magazine In These Times until his death. He was affectionately called the modern day Mark Twain.

Vonnegut died on April 11, 2007 from brain injuries sustained several weeks earlier in a fall at his Manhattan home.

Literary Giants - James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born February 2, 1882 in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. His parents, John Joyce and Mary Murphy had 12 children, losing two of them to typhoid. When James was 5 they moved to Bray because his father was appointed as a local property tax collector.

When James was 9 he wrote the poem, “Et Tu Healy,” about the death of Charles Parnell. His father was angry about the treatment of Parnell and the failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. He had the poem printed and sent a copy to the Vatican Library. Because of that he was suspended from work, began drinking and the family ended up in poverty.

James had been educated at a boarding school by Jesuits until his father could no longer pay the fees. He studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers school until he was offered a place in the Jesuits’ Belvedere College in 1893. The Jesuits hoped he would join the order but he rejected Catholicism at 16. Even then, he was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and it would remain so throughout his life. In 1898 he started at the University College Dublin and studied the modern languages of English, French and Italian. He became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. His first published work was an article on Ibsen’s New Drama.

After graduating he began to drink heavily. He eked out a living by reviewing books, teaching and singing as he was an accomplished tenor. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle and would eventually elope with her. He spent 12 years teaching English, the last 10 were in Trieste. His son Giorgio was born there. They moved to Rome but ended up back in Trieste where his daughter Lucia was born in 1907. Here he had his first eye problems and went through more than a dozen surgeries for glaucoma.

In 1915 James moved to Zurich because he was a British Subject living in Austria-Hungary during WWI. It was here that he met Harriet Shaw Weaver who would become his patron. Over the next 25 years she gave him thousands of pounds so he could write instead of teaching.

In 1920 James went to Paris to see Ezra Pound for a week and ended up living there for 20 years. He went to Switzerland for more eye surgeries and his daughter Lucia was treated for schizophrenia. Lucia died in 1982. He was taken care of by Maria and Eugene Jolas. If it were not for their care and the financial support from Weaver he might never had finished his works and had them published. He returned to Zurich in late 1940, to get away from the Nazi occupation of France. January 11, 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. He improved the first day and then got worse despite several transfusions and fell into a coma. He woke up at 2 in the morning on the 13th and asked a nurse to call his wife and son and then slipped back into the coma. He died 15 minutes later without having seen them. He is buried in Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich. Nora died 10 years later and is buried at his side.

Among the works of James Joyce are; 3 novels including A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man , Ulysses and his most famous Finnegan’s Wake; 1 play Exiles; 16 short stories; and 1 book of poetry, Chamber Music.

Literary Giants - Ken Kesey

Kenneth Elton Kesey was born September 17, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. His parents, Frederick Kesey and Geneva Smith were dairy farmers and had one other son. His best known work was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestfinished in 1962 and later made into a motion picture with Jack Nicholson playing the lead role of R.P. McMurphy.

In 1946 the family moved to Springfield, Oregon and he attended Springfield High School and the University of Oregon. He was a champion wrestler in high school and college where he set long standing state records. In his junior year of college he eloped with his high school sweetheart and over the years they had three children. Kesey had another child with Carolyn Adams in 1966.

After college Kesey attended the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism. He graduated with a degree in speech and communication in 1957. In 1959 at Stanford University he enrolled in a creative writing program funded by a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship that he was awarded at the School of Journalism.

Kesey volunteered to take part in a drug study that was financed by the CIA and carried out at Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. They studied the effects of psychoactive drugs on people. The drugs included LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT. He continued to experiment with the drugs even after the study was completed. He wrote detailed accounts of the experiences throughout his use of the drugs. It was his role as a ‘guinea pig’ that inspired him to begin writing the manuscript that would eventually become One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

He worked the night shift at the hospital and spent time talking to the patients. Often, he was under the influence of drugs. He didn’t believe the patients were insane, only that they did not fit the mold as society expected. The book was an immediate success when it was published in 1962. The following year it was adapted into a successful stage play. In 1975 the screen adaptation was completed. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won 5 academy awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Director, and Writing Adapted Screenplay.

During this time Kesey was known for throwing frequent parties and invariably some type of drug would find its way into the punch. Kesey had a run in with the law when he was arrested for possession of marijuana in 1965. He faked a suicide and fled to Mexico. When he returned 8 months later he was arrested and spent 5 months in the San Mateo County Jail. After he was released he returned to the family farm and spent the rest of his life there.

In 1997 Kesey suffered a stroke. He developed Diabetes and then had to have surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his liver in October, 2001. He never recovered from the operation and finally died on November 10, 2001. He was 66 years old.

He wrote several novels, collections of essays, collections of short stories, magazine articles and a couple of plays but none that were as successful as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Literary Giants - Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His parents, Edward Fitzgerald and Mollie McQuillan were middle class Irish Catholics. He went by Scott, the first of his two middle names. He was named after his famous uncle, Francis Scott Key who wrote the words to the US anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. The family spent time in Syracuse and Buffalo, New York but returned to St. Paul in 1908.

He attended St. Paul Academy until 1911. His first writing effort, a detective story, was published in the school newspaper when he was 12. He moved to Newman School in Hackensack, New Jersey until 1913 when he entered Princeton University. He wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club which was a kind of musical-comedy society. He submitted his first novel, and while the editor praised the writing, it was rejected. Fitzgerald was a poor student and ended up leaving Princeton to enlist in the US Army to fight in WWI, but the war ended shortly after that.

He met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre while he was at Camp Sheridan. They were engaged in 1919 and he moved to New York City to find work and start his life with Zelda. He was working at an advertising firm and writing short stories but Zelda didn’t feel that he would be able to support her so she broke off the engagement. He returned to St. Paul and finished This Side of Paradise about the post WWI flapper generation. It was accepted and published on March 26, 1920 and became one of the most popular books of the year. Scott and Zelda resumed their relationship and were married in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Their only child, Frances Scott, was born on October 26, 1921 and was lovingly called Scottie.

Writing novels was Fitzgerald’s passion but after his first book was published he turned to writing short stories for The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s Weekly and Esquire magazines to supplement his income. Because of their luxurious lifestyle and Zelda’s medical care for schizophrenia, they were often in financial straits. He borrowed money from his editor and his longtime friend and agent Harold Ober. Further advances were refused and Fitzgerald severed ties with Ober and wrote an apologetic tribute to his support in the short story Financing Finnegan. On going financial problems interrupted the writing of his fourth novel and he started writing commercial short stories. Zelda’s fragile health continued to decline and in 1932 she was hospitalized. They eventually became estranged and she lived in mental institutions on the east coast. He was living with Hollywood gossip columnist, Sheilah Graham.

An alcoholic since his college days, Fitzgerald’s health was poor. He was believed to be bi-polar which was made worse by his drug use. In late 1940 he had two heart attacks. The second was a massive heart attack that took place in Sheilah Graham’s apartment while she watched over him. Fitzgerald died before he could finish The Love of the Last Tycoon. The manuscript, along with the notes and an outline for the remainder of the story, was edited by literary critic and friend, Edmund Wilson. It was published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994 the book was reissued under its intended title.

Fitzgerald wrote five novels, the most popular being The Great Gatsby. He also wrote 8 Short Story Collections, 17 Short Stories (including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which was recently made into a movie starring Brad Pitt as the adult Benjamin), 1 play and essays. Zelda died in a hospital fire in 1948. The two are buried in the family plot in Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland.

Literary Giants - Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899. His father, Clarence was a physician and his mother, Grace, gave voice and music lessons. Hemingway’s father instilled in him a love of the outdoor sports; camping in remote or isolated areas, hunting and fishing. These early experiences would always have a place in his heart and bring him comfort.

Hemingway graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1917. He showed superior skills both academically and athletically. He showed a particular talent in English classes and gained his first writing experience with the school’s newspaper and yearbook, later serving as editor. He boxed and played American football. He graduated in June, 1917, marking the end of his formal education.

He began his literary career as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star. It was a job he would give up after 6 months but the experience he gained with their writing style would influence him throughout his life.

Hemingway tried to join the army but his poor vision kept him out. He joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. The brutalities of war affected him deeply. He was wounded on July 8, 1918 ending that career. He was treated in Milan where he met and fell in love with his nurse. She was older and the relationship ended when he returned to the US and she stayed, getting involved with another soldier. It left an enduring mark on his psyche and provided inspiration for, and was fictionalized in, A Farewell to Arms.

Back in Oak Park Hemingway worked as a freelancer for the Toronto Star and married Hadley Richards. In December, 1921, they moved to Paris for the next 2 years. He would become involved in the American expatriate circle known as the Lost Generation. After a successful stint as a foreign correspondent he returned to Toronto, Canada where his first son Jack was born. Most of his work for the Star was published in the 1985 collection Dateline: Toronto.

In April, 1925 he met F. Scott Fitzgerald and they became close friends. It was rumored that they had an affair but there was never any evidence that either of them was homosexual. In 1927 he was divorced and married Pauline Pfeiffer and they moved to Key West, Florida. The following year his father committed suicide. In that same year his second son, Patrick, was born followed a few years later by Gregory, his third child.

A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929 and its success made Hemingway financially independent. He returned to Key West, Florida establishing his first American home. In his den on the upper floor of the converted garage he completed an estimated 70% of his life’s writing. The roller coaster of his life influenced and was often depicted in his stories. In 1940 he was divorced again and lost his beloved Key West home. A few weeks later he married Martha Gellhorn, a woman he had met and lived with while in Spain.

Hemingway took part in naval warfare in World War II. That was cut short and he went to Europe as a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine. After the war he spent time in Italy writing. Newly divorced, he married war correspondent Mary Welsh, whom he had met in 1944 while overseas.

The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 and was very successful. He earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. These awards took him to international recognition. Around this time Hemingway was on a safari and was involved in two successive plane crashes. He sustained multiple injuries including a major concussion causing a temporary loss of vision in one eye and hearing in one ear, paralysis of the spine, a crushed vertebra, ruptured liver, spleen and kidney, and first degree burns on his face, arm and leg. The extent of his injuries had some American newspapers reporting his death. The next month he sustained second degree burns on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm leaving him in agony. After these injuries, he started drinking heavily which impeded his recovery. His blood pressure and cholesterol were extremely high and he suffered from aortal inflammation and depression.

Hemingway was given ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy), better known as shock treatments which caused memory loss and made his depression worse. In the spring of 1961 he attempted suicide and received ECT again. In a family sporadically plagued by suicide, Hemingway took his own life just three weeks before his 62nd birthday. On July 2, 1961, he put the butt of a shotgun on the floor, centered his forehead over it, and pulled both triggers.

During his life and after, he received many honors and tributes, writing numerous books, short stories, poems, papers and articles of which several were not published until after his death. Some of his best known works include The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Seas, In our Time, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.