De Brits-Amerikaanse schrijver Alexander Stuart werd geboren op 27 januari 1955 in Brighton. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2010 en ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2011.
Uit: The War Zone
“There is a moment which is so beautiful it makes everything else worthwhile. You stand on the cliff above the village, early in the morning or late in the evening, and you gaze out at the sea – a huge, changing wash of light and movement, bigger than any of us, a joker with a patience longer than any one life and an inconceivable strength that can snap your back against the rocks as easily as you
might flick a fly off your nose.
I can feel how cold it is, even when it’s warm. Even when the water’s not skimmed with a purple film of oil, and the pebbles and seaweed are stewed in the sun, I can sense the ocean’s cold heart further out, out by the skyline. Jessie’s tried to paint it, but she can’t get close. Either the beauty is there or the darkness, but not both…
It’s not just the color, it’s the color of light, it’s the mood of the sky and your own cross-wired soul. Down on the beach, it’s the druggy thunder-hiss of the surf dragging at thousands of pebbles, as if the sea’s in training for the greatest glue-sniffing contest on earth. Up here, with a view of the sheep and the cottages and the coastline, there’s just the image, no sound, and a faint tang of brine in the air, like a taunt or a memory.”
It’s more than a moment. It’s repeatable, though it’s never the sametwice. It’s where I go to stay sane down here, it’s where I go when Imiss London, when I want to work out what the fuck I’m doing with
my life.”
Alexander Stuart (Brighton, 27 januari 1955)
De Franse schrijfster Eliette Abécassis werd geboren op 27 januari 1969 in Straatsburg. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2010 en ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2011.
Uit: Une affaire conjugale
„Le bureau était dans un désordre indescriptible. Il yrégnai t une odeur de cendre f roi de, d’ al cool , dehaschisch, et un air de fin du monde. Un bric-à-bracencombrait la pièce : ordinateurs de plusieurs générations, scanner, imprimante, chaussettes, caleçons, livres,photos, séries de câbles et de fils, vieux emballages. Partout, des cadavres de bouteilles de bière, des mégots deci garet t es. Je consul t ai à nouveau ma mont re : di xminutes avaient passé. Avec mon Iphone, je pris une
photographie de l’ensemble de la pièce, puis d’une sériede détails. J’avais préparé un sac en plastique pour collecter les pièces à conviction. À l’aide d’une spatule, j’yfis tomber les miettes de haschisch qui parsemaient sonbureau. Puis je m’installai sur son siège, devant l’ordinateur. L’écran affichait la page d’accueil de son profil surFacebook. Je me mis au travail. Tandis que je cliquais
sur la fenêtre des messages reçus, je branchai un disquedur externe pour faire une copie de ses fichiers. L’ordinateur i ndi qua que l ‘ opérati on prendrai t une heurequarante-sept minutes. Je sentis mes pupilles se dilateret de nouveau la sueur sur mes paumes : j’avais à peinele temps. Je me hâtai. J’ouvris ses tiroirs les uns après lesautres, photographiai les papiers administratifs, les rele-
vés bancaires, les feuilles de salaire et les factures. Puis jerevins devant l’écran de l’ordinateur pour consulter sesmessages.
C’est à cet instant, je crois, que ma vie bascula.“
Eliette Abécassis (Straatsburg, 27 januari 1969)
De Canadese Schrijver Mordecai Richler werd geboren op 27 januari 1931 in Montreal. Zie ook alle tags voor Mordecai Richler op dit blog.
Uit: Barney’s Version
“I understand why our most perspicacious men of letters object to the current trend in biography, its mean practitioners revelling in the carve-up of genius. But the truth is, nothing delights me more than a biography of one of the truly great that proves he or she was an absolute shit. I’m a sucker for studies of those who, in the words of that friend of Auden’s (not MacNeice, not Isherwood, the other guy) “…travelled a short while toward the sun/And left vivid air signed with honour.” But took no prisoners en route, now the facts are known. Say, the story of T.S. Eliot having his first wife locked up in the bin, possibly because she had written some of his best lines. Or a book that delivers the dirt on Thomas Jefferson, who kept slaves and provided the prettiest one with an unacknowledged child. (“How is it,” asked Dr. Johnson, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty amongst the drivers of the negroes?”) Or reveals that Martin Luther King was a plagiarist and a compulsive fucker of white women. Or that Admiral Byrd, one of my boyhood heroes, was actually a smooth-talking liar, a terrible navigator, an air traveller so frightened of flying that he was frequently drunk while others did the piloting, and a man who never hesitated to take unearned credit. Or tells how F.D.R. cheated on Eleanor. Or that J.F.K. didn’t really write Profiles in Courage. Or how Bobby Clarke slashed Kharlamov across the ankles, taking out the better player in that first thriller of a hockey series against the incredible Russians. Or that Dylan Thomas was a shnorrer born. Or that Sigmund Freud faked some of his case notes. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.”
Mordecai Richler (27 januari 1931 – 3 juli 2001)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Ethan Mordden werd geboren op 27 januari 1947 in Pennsylvania. Zie ookalle tags voor Ethan Mordden op dit blog.
Uit: The Guest List
„The whole thing got started by accident, in late 1919 or early 1920,* at a celebratory lunch more or less devoted to Alexander Woollcott. There were speeches, toasts, and insults both teasing and cutting, and everyone had a wonderful time. Someone said, “Why don’t we do this every day?,” and they began to, meeting in the Algonquin’s main dining hall at a long table, with side tables attending as needed. Then, sensing an angle for publicity, manager Case moved the gang to the smaller Rose Room, seating them at a round table right in the center of every other diner’s view. Some of the Round Table came often and some now and again, with wives, friends, or new talent ready to be Introduced and take the town. The also theres included actress beauties Margalo Gillmore, Peggy Wood, and Ina Claire; playwrights Robert E. Sherwood, Laurence Stallings, and Marc Connelly; novelist Edna Ferber; and comic Harpo Marx. But the Round Table proper counted a sextet:
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT, overbearing merrymaker. Best assault on Wooll cott, by Gertrude Stein, who keeps interrupting: Woollcott: “People don’t dispute Woollcott.” Stein: “I’m not people. I’m Gertrude Stein.”
ROBERT BENCHLEY, spokesman for the Little Fellow Eternally Puzzled By Life. Characteristic observation: “I seem to be behind on my parades …”
DOROTHY PARKER, wit, lover, and occasional failed suicide. Essential first line of a Parker short story: “Please, God, let him telephone me now.”
*The date of the first lunch is unknown; writers treating the Round Table blithely skate around it.
GEORGE S. KAUFMAN, the fastest draw in the east in sarcasm. Typical un- Algonquinlike gallantry, in a curtain speech at the first night of Once in a Lifetime, a collaboration: “I would like the audience to know that eighty percent of this play is Moss Hart.”
FRANKLIN P. ADAMS, the mentor, already famous in his late thirties when the others were more or less starting out. Another assault on Woollcott, who toys with one of his own books and sighs, “Ah, what is so rare as a Woollcott first edition?” Adams: “A Woollcott second edition.”
and HEYWOOD BROUN, the one no one remembers anything about.Typical Broun line: “ .
Ethan Mordden (Pennsylvania, 27 januari 1947)
Boekcover
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27e januari ook mijn blog van 27 januari 2011 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.