He's too modest -- Answered Prayers was #1

American author William Golding (Lord of the Flies)was born on this day in 1911.

"Lord of the Flies was one of the great rip-offs of our time." -- Truman Capote.

No clemensy for Cooper

Birthday of James Fenimore Cooper (see yesterday's entry). Mark Twain, after taking a look into Cooper's ouevre, wrote a famous essay.

"Cooper's art has some defects," Twain wrote. "In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

"There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction -- some say twenty-two. In 'Deerslayer,' Cooper violated eighteen of them."

To read the complete essay, visit
James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Well, there are hermit crabs

American critic Cyril Connolly was born on this day in 1903. He wrote:

"What would one think of dogs' monasteries, hermit cats, vegetarian tigers?"

I knew he was going to say that

American critic and animal-rights activist Cleveland Amory was born on this day in 1917. He wrote:

"We still say ESP is spinach and stands for Essentially Silly People."

Never gone with the wind

The great movie critic Pauline Kael was born on this day in 1919. She died in 2001.

"There are so many things that we, have lived through them, or passed over them, never want to think about again," Kael wrote. "But in movies nothing is cleaned away, sorted out, purposely discarded. There's a kind of hopelessness about it: what does not deserve to last lasts, and so it all begins to seem one big pile of junk."

He said, with clouded brow

Birthday of actress Doris Day. She was born Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff in 1924.

"Her personality untouched by human emotions, her brow unclouded by human thought, her form unsmudged by the slightest evidence of femininity." -- Film critic John Simon, on Day.