Hustler of Culture
Today is George Orwell’s birthday. He’s one of my heroes. Animal Farm remains one of the singular influences on my writing life.
According to The Writer’s Alamanc, 1 million people read George Orwell every year for the first time, even though Orwell wasn’t published until age 30 and died at 47.
Talk about a legacy.
SF Gate: Legendary investigative journalist David Halberstam was killed today in a car accident near Menlo Park, California. He had been investigating a 1958 NFL championship game and had given at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism over the weekend.
David Halberstam was 73 and a towering figure of American journalism. His book The Fifties was one of the first I bought for myself as a young adult. Our entire profession mourns this evening.
My friend Jeff Chang had this quote from Halberstam himself.
I have what I call the backup catcher theory. Most other people doing a book want the top guy. My belief is, you probably learn more from the backup catcher on a baseball team than from the star. Because the backup catcher’s smart: He watches the game, he’s into the game, he always has to be ready, and when it’s all over, 20 years later, he has a lot of time to talk because not a lot of people come to see him. When I did ‘Summer of ’49,’ about Williams and DiMaggio on those two great teams, the Red Sox and the Yankees, no one was more fun to talk to than a guy named Matt Batts, a former Red Sox catcher down in Baton Rouge, La. He had nothing but great anecdotes.
Always look for the story behind the story. That’s a lesson to live by.
William Shakespeare and Vladimir Nabokov were both born today. During their lives, each had perhaps the largest written vocabulary in the English language.
In their honor, please use one word you would never ordinarily employ in everyday conversation. Mine is consanguineous (Via The Writer’s Almanac).
Cynthia Ozick, Thornton Wilder, Nick Hornby and Isak Dinesen. Wowee (via The Writer’s Almanac).
Today is the birthday of Tom Wolfe, John Irving and Dr. Seuss. Wow (via The Writer’s Almanac).
Happy birthdays to Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace and Ha Jin. CP and Foster Wallace are two of the only authors in recent memory to become bestsellers thanks to their young male readers (via The Writers Almanac).
Molly Ivins, the liberal political columnist who made Texas and George W. Bush her endlessly entertaining subjects, has died after a long struggle with breast cancer. She was 62.
Ivins’s column was syndicated in more than 350 newspapers. She wrote in a style I call H.L Mencken after 3 tallboys, brawling, proud, and profanely intelligent. You didn’t have to agree with her to like her because her leading agenda items was common sense and fairness. She once called Dallas a town “that would have rooted for Goliath to beat David” and a colorless politician “the pet rock of the state house.”
I only met Molly Ivins once when I lived in Austin and staffed an event for Texas Folklife Resources. She was a tall woman with a presence like an oak tree who managed to be both world weary and eager for a fight in the same breath. When an audience member told her how much they liked her work, she asked if they too lives in Austin. When the audience member said yes, Molly Ivins replied “Honey, then you know as well as I do. With Texas politics, anyone could do it. It’s all in the material.”
Molly Ivins’s best material is, in my opinion, her three collections of columns: “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”, “Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead” and “You Gotta Dance With Them That Brung You.”. I’ve read each and enjoyed every word.
Molly Ivins was a giant of journalism and the written word, a troublemaker and therefore the best kind of patriot. I will miss her and her work very much.
The Texas Observer, Ivins’s first paper, has dedicated their website this week to remembering her.
Today is the birthday of one of my heroes Martin Luther King Jr. The “I Have A Dream” speech has inspired me throughout my adult life, particularly since going into public speaking. I listen to it every Fourth of July, every year on Dr. King’s birthday and whenever I need reminding of what my country can be.
Full text and streaming of the speech at American Rhetoric.
The hits keep on comin: Today is the birthday(s) of Jay McInerney, Horatio Alger Jr., Lorrie Moore and Edmund White.
How’s that for a dinner party? (via The Writer’s Almanac)