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."

Not at the same time, however

French author and existentialist Albert Camus was born on this day in 1913. He said:

"A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers."

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.

And then he dies

September 21 -- Author H. G. Wells was born Sept. 21, 1866. He wrote:

"Man is a brute...a blind prey to impulses...victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a burden, and fill his life with barren toil and trouble."

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."

Sounds like he needed a pat on the back

J. B. Priestley, English novelist, critic and broadcaster, was born on this day in 1894. He wrote:

"The men who are forever slapping one on the back and saying that everything will come right are bad enough, but more intolerable are those persons who will persist in slapping humanity itself on the back and regarding all life with an unchanging grin of approval."

He wasn't the first to think of that

H. L. Mencken, one of the patron saints of cynics, was born on this day in 1880. He wrote:

"My guess is that well over fifty percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought."

That's why we can't leave them alone

Master of the short story O'Henry (William Sidney Porter) was born on this day in 1862. He wrote:

"If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry."

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?"

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."

Cynicism about cynicism

French author and statesman Francois-Rene de Chateuabriand was born on this day in 1768. He wrote:

"One is not superior merely because one sees the world in an odious light."

Her book was the talk of the town

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was born on this day in 1797. She said:

"I like a man who talks me to death, provided he is amusing; it saves so much trouble."

Or a grain of sand between a baboon's toes

Writer and poet (and father of the Supreme Court justice of the same name) Oliver Wendell Holmes was born on this day in 1809. He wrote:

"I see no reason for attributing to man a significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."



Yesterday was the birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greastest German writer of all. He was born August 28, 1749. He wrote:

"Man errs, 'til his strife is over."

Sincerely yours, Samuel Clemens

American author Bret Harte (The Outcasts of Poker Flat) was born on this day in 1836.

"He hadn't a sincere fiber in him," Mark Twain wrote of Harte. "I think his heart was merely a pump and had no other function."

Tense: past absurd

Sir Max Beerbohm, English author and caricaturist, was born on this day in 1872. A pair of his caricatures is shown here. The self-portraits "The Theft" depicts him stealing a book from the library in 1894; "The Restitution" shows him returning that book in 1920.

Beerbohm wrote:

"There is always something rather absurd about the past."

August 12-14

This week's milestones:

August 12, 1881: Movie director Cecil B. DeMille was born.

"It is my indignant opinion that 90 percent of the moving pictures exhibited in America are so vulgar, witless and dull that it preposterous to write about them in any publication not intended to be read while chewing gum." -- Woolcott Gibbs (1902-1958).



August 13, 1899: Movie director Alfred Hitchcock was born.

"Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food," Hitchcock said.



August 14, 1867: Birthdate of English author John Galsworthy, who wrote:

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."

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.

A Cynics Primer: B-C-D

Catching up again:

July 22: Poet Stephen Vincent Benet was born July 22, 1898. He wrote:

We do not fight for the real but for the shadows we make;
A flag is a piece of cloth and a words is a sound.



July 23: American mystery writer Raymond Chandler (pictured above) was born July 23, 1880. He wrote:

"Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck." And also:

"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country."



For more on Chandler, visit Today in Farewells

July 24: Alexandre Dumas pere was born July 24, 1802.

"Nobody has read everything of Dumas, not even Dumas himself." -- Anonymous.