But everybody goes

English novelist Thomas Hardy was born on this day in 1840. In his novel Jude the Obscure, as his hero lay dying alone, Hardy wrote:

"Nobody came, because nobody does."

Pick your poison

French novelist Louise-Ferdinand Celine was born on this day in 1894. In Journey to the End of the Night, he wrote:

"For the poor of this world, two major ways of expiring are available: either by the absolute indifference of your fellow men in peace time, or by the homicidal passion of these same when war breaks out."

Oh, be quiet and leave us alone

November 3, 1901 -- French novelist and statesman Andre Malraux was born. He wrote:

"Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both of them give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness."

Saints alive!

October 2, 1869 -- Mahatma Gandhi was born.

"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi...now posing as a fakir of the type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace." -- Winston Churchill.

October 3, 1900 -- American writer Thomas Wolfe was born.

"If it must be Thomas let it be Mann, and if it must be Wolfe let it be Nero, but never let it be Thomas Wolfe." -- Peter DeVries.

That's no lie

September 29 -- Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547. He wrote:

"Everyone is as God made him, and often a good deal worse."



September 30 -- Truman Capote (pictured) born in 1924.

"Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art." -- Gore Vidal.

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

The Last of J. F. Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper, the most popular American writer of the early 19th century, died on this day in 1851, one day short of his birthday. He was born Sept. 15, 1789. He wrote:

"The tendencies of democracies are, in all things, to mediocrity."

And we're making history right now

The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was born on this day in 1828. He wrote:

"History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names."

Creeds have no credence

Novelist Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights) was born on this day in 1818. She wrote this poem:

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts;
Unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest frost amid the boundless main.

Birthdays missed

Catching up:

July 8: John D. Rockefeller (shown here) was born on this day in 1839.

"The rich are the scum of the earth in every country." -- G. K. Chesterton.



July 9: Romance novelist Barbara Cartland was born on this day in 1901.

"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves." -- Don Marquis.



And today: French novelist Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

"I think he (Proust) was mentally defective." -- Evelyn Waugh.

That's why she took a man's name

Novelist George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant) was born on July 1, 1804.

"I have had my bellyful of great men," she wrote. "In real life they are nasty creatures, persecutors, temperamental, despotic, bitter and suspicious."

And tomorrow is another day in cynicism

Margaret Mitchell's novel, Gone With the Wind, was published on this day in 1936. It became a movie in 1939.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." -- Rhett Butler.

Maybe his comment is just a monstrous joke

Birthday of novelist Joyce Carol Oates, born June 16, 1937.

"She's a joke monster." -- Truman Capote.

Capote really doesn't exist

Birthday of novelist and Nobel Prize-winner Saul Bellow, born 1915.

"Saul Bellow is a nothing writer. He doesn't exist." -- Truman Capote.





Also born on this day: Playwright Ben Jonson, born 1572. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare (and the actual author of some of his plays, some people believe. Jonson wrote:

“Fortune, that favors fools.”

Sorry I can't go with you

German writer Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain) was born on this day in 1875. He wrote:

"What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so."

For more on this subject, visit Farewells

Read, and then dead

English novelist Daphne du Maurier was born on this day in 1907. She wrote the novel Rebecca. She also wrote:

"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."

Sometimes a beast with two backs

English novelist Henry Fielding was born on this day in 1707. Fielding wrote in his novel Tom Jones of:

"That monstrous animal a husband and wife."

Fielding himself married Charlotte Cradock in 1834. She was the model for Sophia Western, the heroine of Tom Jones, written in 1749.

While spreading the pain to schoolkids forever

Author Henry James was born on this day in 1843.

"Henry James wrote fiction as if it were a duty -- a very painful duty." -- Oscar Wilde.

Rabbit, retch

This is the birthday of author John Updike, born in 1932.

"I hate him (Updike). Everything about him bores me." -- Truman Capote.