Category Archives: Writing

July 8, 2012

Thought of the Day 7.8.12

By ritalovestowrite

“He had delusions of adequacy.”

—Walter Kerr

Walter Kerr was born today in Evanston, Illinois  in 1913. He would have been 99.

Kerr was a mid 20th Century New  York theatre critic, director and author. His sharp, witty reviews could make or break a Broadway show and he won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Kerr also put his money where his mouth is– producing work for the stage as a writer and director. With his wife Jean Kerr he wrote Goldilocks, which won the 1958 Tony Award. Kerr directed the production. He also directed Touch and Go andKing of Hearts.

His books include How Not to Write a Play, Criticism and Censorship, The Theatre in Spite of Itself, and Thirty Plays Hath November.

In 1990 Broadway gave Kerr the ultimate honor. It named a theater after him. The old Ritz Theatre at 218 West 48th Street was renovated and reopened the Water Kerr Theatre. It opened to August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and has since house six Tony Award Winning Plays.

Marquee of the Walter Kerr Theatre, advertisin...

Marquee of the Walter Kerr Theatre, advertising Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens 218 West 48th Street, Manhattan, New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

2 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Broadway, Musical Theatre, postaday, Theatre, Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday, United States, Walter Kerr, Writing

July 3, 2012

Thought of the Day 7.3.12

By ritalovestowrite

“Every exit is an entrance somewhere else”

–Tom Stoppard

Tom Straussler was born this day in Zlin, Czechoslovakia in 1937. He is 75  years old.

As War World II loomed in Europe his family moved to Singapore to escape the Nazis. In 1941 as the Japanese were poised to invade Singapore he and his mother and brother fled to Darjeeling, India. (His father stayed in the city and was died in the invasion.) After the war they moved to England and his mother remarried. Kenneth Stoppard adopted Tom and his sister.

Stoppard left school when he was only 17 and began to write for local newspapers. He started writing plays and scripts and in 1963  his first television play, A Walk on the Water was produced. Success on the stage came with his hugely popular Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a play that looks at Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters. For the screen he penned Empire of the Sun, Billy Bathgate, and co-wrote Brazil and Shakespeare in Love. He won the “Best Screenplay” Oscar  for Shakespeare in Love.

His other works include: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, The Real Thing, Arcadia and Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth

Tom Stoppard on a reception in honour of the p...

Tom Stoppard on a reception in honour of the premiere of “The Coast of Utopia” in Russia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1 Comment   |  tags: | posted in Film, postaday, Theatre, Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday, Uncategorized, World War Two, Writing

July 1, 2012

Thought of the Day 7.1.12

By ritalovestowrite

“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”

—George Sand

George Sand was born Amandine Aaurore Lucile Dedvant in Paris, France in 1804. Today is the 208th anniversary of her Birth.

She grew up in the French countryside, a setting often used in her novels. After an unsatisfying early marraige Dedvant moved to Paris  where she wrote articles and developed her writing. She reveled in Parisian life and fell in love with another writer Jule Sandeau. They wrote collectively under the byline of “J. Sand.” In 1832, when her first novel, Indiana, was accepted for publication she chose the pseudonym “George Sand.”

Sand wrote at night, every night, from midnight to sunrise. Her novels, which are romanic idealism in nature, include Indiana, Valentine, Lelia, Le Compagnon du tour de France, La Mare au diable, Consuelo, La Petite Fadette, and Le Peche de Monsieur Antoine.

She wore men’s clothing in public, had affairs (most notably with Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin), smoked tobacco, and was considered a loose woman by some people in society. Yet she was admired for her spirit and frankness by countless others.

 

Image courtesy Wikipedia

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June 30, 2012

Thought of the Day 6.30.12

By ritalovestowrite

“Shadow owes its birth to light.”

John Gay

John Gay was born on this day in Barnstaple, England in 1685. We are celebrating the 327th anniversary of his birth.

Gay was a poet and dramatist. His most famous work was the Beggar’s Opera, but he wrote several other satirical plays. The Beggar’s Opera is considered the first successful ballad opera, and the predecessor of the popular operetta that would take hold on the English stage a century or so later with Gilbert and Sullivan.

He was a contemporary of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. He studied music with George Frideric Handel.

Gay died at 47 and was buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. His epitaph is from the Beggar’s Opera “Life is a jest, and all things show it: I thought so once and now I know it.”

 

John Gay

John Gay (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1 Comment   |  tags: , | posted in Musical Theatre, postaday, Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday, Writing

June 29, 2012

Thought of the Day 6.29.12

By ritalovestowrite

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in Lyons, France on this day in 1900. He would have been 112.

Saint-Exupery was an aviator, adventurer and writer. He made his first solo flight in July of 1921. By 1926 he had secured a job flying mail for Aeropstale over North Africa. His first novel, Southern Mail, was written shortly after. His move to South America and work as director of Aeroposta Argentina became the basis of his second novel, Night Flight. The book was an international best seller and was made into a movie starring Clark Gable in 1933. While recovering from two serious aviation accidents he wrote Wind, Sand and Stars.

At the outbreak of WWII he joined the French Air Force and flew reconnaissance missions. When France fell to Germany, he travelled to the United States and tried to build support for the US entering the War. While here he published Flight to Arras. After two years in the States he joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa, again flying reconnaissance missions. On July 31, 1944 he took off  from an airbase on Corsica and never returned.

The Little Prince  was written while he was in the US, and was published in 1943. It was Saint-Exupery’s best selling book. It has been translated into 250 languages and has sold 200 million copies.

Cover of "The Little Prince (Turtleback S...

Cover via Amazon

 

6 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in postaday, Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday, Writing

June 26, 2012

Thought of the Day 6.26.12

By ritalovestowrite

“You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.”

–Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker on this day in Hillsboro, West Virginia in 1892. She would have been 120.

She was one of seven children born to Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker. The Sydenstrickers were Southern Presbyterian missionaries who were stationed in China. Pearl spent much of the first half of her life in Asia and drew on her experiences there for East Wind, West Wind and The Good Earth. The latter won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938

In 1935 she moved back to the US and became active in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Woman’s Rights Movement. She also worked to bridge the cultural gap between the US and China, and she founded the Welcome House and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation.

English: Pearl Buck

English: Pearl Buck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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June 25, 2012

Thought of the Day 6.25.12

By ritalovestowrite

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

–George Orwell

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair  in Motihari, Bihar, British India today in 1903. He would have been 109.

Orwell was a writer who both drew on his own experiences and penned dystopic fantasy to skewer social injustice and totalitarianism.

Although born in India he was raised in England. He returned to the East as a member of the Indian Police Service  in 1922.  He worked there for five years until he came down with Dengue fever, at which point he came back  to Great Britain. Orwell’s novel Burmese Days and his essays “A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant” are based on his experiences in India and Burma.

Upon his return to England he took up housing on London’s Portobello Road and decided to write about the lives of the impoverished in his own country. He dressed as if he lived in the streets, took menial jobs and purposefully got himself arrested so he could write first hand accounts of society’s

underbelly.  The book Down and Out in Paris and London chronicled this time period. But he was a man living two lives, as he also held respectable jobs as a journalist and as a teacher much of that time.

Other novels include: The Clergyman’s Daughter, Coming up for Air, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia and Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Animal Farm, an allegorical take on Communism and corruption,  was published in 1945. It was a critical and financial success, but Orwell was is poor health. He published Nineteen Eighty-Four , his last novel, about a grim society  with perpetual war, thoughtcrimes, doublethink,  and Newspeak in 1949.

Category:George Orwell Category:Nineteen Eight...

Category:George Orwell Category:Nineteen Eighty Four (Original text : George Orwell, 1984. This self-made image is based on a picture that appears in an old acreditation for the BNUJ.) Picture of George Orwell taken from File:GeoreOrwell.jpg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

2 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Fiction, postaday, Thought of the Day, Writing

June 20, 2012

Thought of the Day 6.20.12

By ritalovestowrite

“I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.”

—Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman was an American writer and dramatist born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1907.  She would be 105.

She wrote for both stage and screen. In 1934 her drama, The Children’s Hour, hit Broadway. It ran for 691 performances. The Little Foxes premiered in 1939, the film version won an Academy Award. Her Watch on the Rhine followed in 1941  (it was later adapted by Dashiell Hammett for the screen in 1943). Hellman was nominated for an another Academy Award for her screen play for The North Star. Another Part of the Forest premiered on stage in 1946, the story line followed the same characters from The Little Foxes, only this time they were 20 years younger. She penned an English translation of L’Alouette Jean Anouilh’s play about Joan of Arc, called  The Lark in 1955. Toys in the Attic won a Tony Award in 1960.

Hellman published three memoirs. Her first, An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir,  won the national Book Award in 1969.

Hellman was a member of the Screen Writers Guild and one of the groups major supporters. She was also active in politics, and was especially interested in the Spanish Civil War. She wrote several anti-fascist plays and was a casual member of the Communist Party. She was blacklisted in 1947.

I found a lot of Hellman quotes to choose from for today’s thought. Here are a few others I really liked:

“Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?”
“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.”
“It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.”

Hellman, on jacket of her autobiography An Unf...

Hellman, on jacket of her autobiography An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1 Comment | posted in Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday, Writing

June 19, 2012

Thought of the Day 6.19.12

By ritalovestowrite

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”

–Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born today in Bombay, India in 1947. He is 65 years old.

Rushdie is a novelist who combines magical realism with historical fiction in his works. He is probably best known for The Satanic Verses , a novel for which he was ‘sentenced to death’ by Ayatollah Komeini. 1 He spent most of the following decade underground to avoid the fatwa.  His Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize in 1981. Other works include Shame, The Jaguar Smile, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Luka and the Fire of Life and The Enchantress of Florence.

He was appointed Commandeur dan Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1999 and dubbed a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II in 2008.  In this country he was elected to the Academy of Arts and Letters as a Foreign Honorary Member the same year.

Salman Rushdie presenting his book "Shali...

Salman Rushdie presenting his book “Shalimar the clown” at Mountain View, USA, October 2005 Polski: Salman Rushdie podczas prezentacji swojej książki Śalimar klaun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  according to Rushdie’s Official Website

1 Comment   |  tags: | posted in Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday, Writing