De Amerikaanse schrijfster en journaliste Annie Proulx werd geboren op 22 augustus 1935 in Norwich, Connecticut.
Uit: The Shipping News
„Quoyle shambled, a head taller than any child around him, was soft. He knew it. “Ah, you lout,” said the father. But no pygmy himself. And brother Dick, the father’s favorite, pretended to throw up when Quoyle came into a room, hissed, “Lardass, Snotface, Ugly Pig, Warthog, Stupid, Stinkbomb, Fart-tub, Greasebag,” pummeled and kicked until Quoyle curled, hands over head, sniveling on the linoleum. All stemmed from Quoyle’s chief failure, a failure of normal appearance.
A great damp loaf of a body. At six he weighed eighty pounds. At sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face.
Some anomalous gene had fired up at the moment of his begetting as a single spark sometimes leaps from banked coals, had given him a giant’s chin. As a child he invented stratagems to deflect stares: a smile, downcast gaze, the right hand darting up to cover the chin.
His earliest sense of self was as a distant figure: there in the foreground was his family; here, at the limit of the far view, was he. Until he was fourteen he cherished the idea that he had been given to the wrong family, that somewhere his real people, saddled with the changeling of the Quoyles, longed for him. Then, foraging in a box of excursion momentoes, he found photographs of his father beside brothers and sisters at a ship’s rail. A girl, somewhat apart from the others, looked toward the sea, eyes squinted, as though she could see the port of destination a thousand miles south. Quoyle recognized himself in their hair, their legs and arms. That sly-looking lump in the shrunken sweater, hand at his crotch, his father. On the back, scribbled in blue pencil, “Leaving Home, 1946.”
At the university he took courses he couldn’t understand, humped back and forth without speaking to anyone, went home for weekends of excoriation. At last he dropped out of school and looked for a job, kept his hand over his chin.
Nothing was clear to lonesome Quoyle. His thoughts churned like the amorphous thing that ancient sailors, drifting into arctic half-light, called the Sea Lung; a heaving sludge of ice under fog where air blurred into water, where liquid was solid, where solids dissolved, where the sky froze and light and dark muddled.“
Annie Proulx (Norwich, 22 augustus 1935)
De dichteres en critica Dorothy Parker werd geboren in New York op 22 augustus 1893. Zie ook mijn blog van 7 juni 2006 en ook mijn blog van 22 augustus 2006.
A Dream Lies Dead
A dream lies dead here. May you softly go
Before this place, and turn away your eyes,
Nor seek to know the look of that which dies
Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,
But, for a little, let your step be slow.
And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise
With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.
A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:
Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-
Though white of bloom as it had been before
And proudly waitful of fecundity-
One little loveliness can be no more;
And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head
Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!
Bohemia
Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses’ necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!
Experience
Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
And that cleans up the matter.
Dorothy Parker (22 augustus 1893 – 7 juni 1967)
De Duitse dichter en schrijver Wolfdietrich Schnurre werd geboren op 22 augustus 1920 in Frankfurt am Main. Zie ook mijn blog van 22 augustus 2006.
Geschenkt
Schöne Schippe.
Nich, findste auch?
Wo hast n die her?
Geburtztach.
Is ne Gebrauchsanweisung mit bei?
Wofür n das?
Na, wo willst n buddeln mit der?
Vielleicht auf m Hof.
Is Spieln verboten.
Geh ich auffe Wiese im Park.
Darfste nich rauf.
Denn im Sandkasten eben.
Biste zu groß für.
Denn auf m Sportplatz.
Biste in n Verein?
Schipp ich eben die Hundeknödel weg vonne Straße.
Haste da ne Arbeitsbewilligung für?
Mensch, aber ich hab se doch nu mal, die Scippe!
Das isses ja, das Problem.
Kulisse
Regen-
Regen rauscht auf den Rummel.
Das Glücksrad verliert seine Farbe,
der Würfelbecher wird klebrig;
in der Schießbude schlafen die Schüsse.
Wills keiner mehr wagen?
Will keiner mehr würfeln?
Will keiner mehr drehn?
Regen-
Regen rauscht auf den Rummel.
Wolfdietrich Schnurre (22 augustus 1920 – 9 juni 1989)
De Nederlandse schrijver en beeldend kunstenaar Willem Arondéus werd op 22 augustus 1894 in Naarden geboren.
Gedicht XVI (Fragment)
“Waar schemers-wegen keeren tot de nacht,
Daar doolt ons wachten op zijn paden,
Naar hunner monden zachte daden,
Waartoe hun lach ons dwalen bracht;
Doch keert dezelfde voetstap weer; alleen
Daalt het zijn ledig woonhuis tegen,
Om waar een stem, ver als een avondregen:
‘Vergeefs, vergeefs, u wacht er geen.'”
Willem Arondéus (22 augustus 1894 – 1 juli 1943)
Zie voor bovenstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 22 augustus 2007 en ook mijn blog van 22 augustus 2008.
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 22e augustus ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.
