Anne Tyler, Peter Rühmkorf, Willem Wilmink, Harold Brodkey, Jakob Hein, Daniel Mark Epstein

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Anne Tyler werd geboren op 25 oktober 1941 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Anne Tyler op dit blog.

 

Uit: Breathing Lessons

„Maggie and Ira Moran had to go to a funeral in Deer Lick, Pennsylvania. Maggie’s girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deer Lick lay on a narrow country road some ninety miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was scheduled for ten-thirty Saturday morning; so Ira figured they should start around eight. This made him grumpy. (He was not an early-morning kind of man.) Also Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one to cover for him. Also their car was in the body shop. It had needed extensive repairs and Saturday morning at opening time, eight o’clock exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Ira said maybe they’d just better not go, but Maggie said they had to. She and Serena had been friends forever. Or nearly forever: forty-two years, beginning with Miss Kimmel’s first grade.
They planned to wake up at seven, but Maggie must have set the alarm wrong and so they overslept. They had to dress in a hurry and rush through breakfast, making do with faucet coffee and cold cereal. Then Ira headed off for the store on foot to leave a note for his customers, and Maggie walked to the body shop. She was wearing her best dress—blue and white sprigged, with cape sleeves—and crisp black pumps, on account of the funeral. The pumps were only medium-heeled but slowed her down some anyway; she was more used to crepe soles. Another problem was that the crotch of her panty hose had somehow slipped to about the middle of her thighs, so she had to take shortened, unnaturally level steps like a chunky little windup toy wheeling along the sidewalk.
Luckily, the body shop was only a few blocks away. (In this part of town things were intermingled—small frame houses like theirs sitting among portrait photographers’ studios, one-woman beauty parlors, driving schools, and podiatry clinics.) And the weather was perfect—a warm, sunny day in September, with just enough breeze to cool her face. She patted down her bangs where they tended to frizz out like a forelock. She hugged her dress-up purse under her arm. She turned left at the corner and there was Harbor Body and Fender, with the peeling green garage doors already hoisted up and the cavernous interior smelling of some sharp-scented paint that made her think of nail polish.“

 

Anne Tyler (Minneapolis, 25 oktober 1941)

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John Berryman, Christine D’haen, Hélène Swarth, Karl Emil Franzos, Benjamin Henri Constant

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver John Allyn Berryman (eig. John Allyn Smith) werd geboren op 25 oktober 1914 in McAlester, Oklahoma. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2010

 

Dream Song 6: A Capital at Wells

During the father’s walking—how he look

down by now in soft boards, Henry, pass

and what he feel or no, who know?—

as during hís broad father’s, all the breaks

& ill-lucks of a thriving pioneer

back to the flying boy in mountain air,

Vermont’s child to go out, and while Keats sweat’

for hopeless inextricable lust, Henry’s fate,

and Ethan Allen was a calling man,

all through the blind one’s dream of the start,

when Day was killing Porter and had to part

lovers for ever, fancy if you can,

while the cardinals’ guile to keep Aeneas out

was failing, while in some hearts Chinese doubt

inscrutably was growing, toward its end,

and a starved lion by a water-hole

clouded with gall, while Abelard was whole,

these grapes of stone were being proffered, friend.

 

Dream Song 7: ‘The Prisoner of Shark Island’ with Paul Muni

Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers

Mr Deeds’ tuba, & the Cameo,

& the race in Ben Hur,—The Lost World, with sound,

& The Man from Blankey’s, which he did not dig,

nor did he understand one caption of,

bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed.

Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One.

Fãonnee; he don’t féel so.

He just stuck around.

The German & the Russian films into

Italian & Japanese films turned, while many

were prevented from making it.

He wishing he could squirm again where Hoot

is just ahead of rustlers, where William S

forgoes some deep advantage, & moves on,

where Hashknife Hartley having the matter taped

the rats are flying. For the rats

have moved in, mostly, and this is for real.


John Berryman (25 oktober 1914 – 7 januari 1972)

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