De Amerikaanse schrijver David Benioff (pseudoniem van David Friedman) werd geboren in New York City op 25 september 1970. Zie ook alle tags voor David Benioff op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 25 september 2010.
Uit: The 25th Hour
“Monty squats near the dog and inspects him. From this angle it is clear that the pit bull has been badly abused. One ear has been chewed to mince; his hide is scored with cigaretteburns; flies crawl in his bloodied fur.
MONTY (CONT’D)
I think maybe his hip—The dog pounces, jaws snapping,; lunging for Monty’s face. Monty stumbles backwards. The dog, too badly injured to continue the attack, remains in his crouch, growling. Monty sits on the pavement, shaking his head.
MONTY (CONT’D)
Christ. (beat) He’s got some bite left.
KOSTYA
I think he does not want to play with you. Come, you want police to pull over?You want police looking through your car?
MONTY
Look what they did to him. Used him for a fucking ashtray.Monty stands and dusts his palms on the seat of his pants.
MONTY (CONT’D) Let’s get him in the trunk.
KOSTYA
What?
MONTY
There’s a vet emergency room on the EastSide. I like this guy.
KOSTYA
You like him? He tries to bite your face off. Look at him, he is meat. You want some dog, I buy you nice puppy tomorrow. Monty is not listening. He walks back to his car, opens the trunk, pulls out a soiled green army blanket. Kostya holds up his hands: stop.
KOSTYA (CONT’D) Wait one minute, please. Please stop one minute? I do not go near pit bull. Monty? I do not go near pit bull. Monty, carrying the army blanket, walks back toward the dog.
MONTY
This is a good dog. I can see it in his eyes. He’s a tough little bastard.
KOSTYA
Sometimes I think you are very stupid man.”
David Benioff (New York, 25 september 1970)
De Spaanse schrijver Carlos Ruiz Zafón werd geboren op 25 september 1964 in Barcelona. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Carlos Ruiz Zafón op dit blog.
Uit: The Prisoner Of Heaven (Vertaald door Lucia Graves)
“I thought my father would smile at Fermín’s plea, but when I noticed that he remained silent, I sneaked a glance at him. Not only did Sempere senior not appear to find the suggestion the least bit funny, but he had adopted a pensive expression, as if he were seriously considering it.
‘Well, well … perhaps Fermín has unexpectedly hit the nail on the head,’ he murmured.
I looked at him in disbelief. Maybe the customer drought that had struck in the last few weeks was finally affecting my father’s good judgement.
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to allow him to wander around the bookshop in his Y-fronts.’
‘No, of course not. It’s about the shop window. Now that you’ve mentioned it, it’s given me an idea … We may still be in time to save our Christmas after all.’
He disappeared into the back room, then emerged sporting his official winter uniform: the same coat, scarf and hat I remembered him wearing since I was a child. Bea suspected that my father hadn’t bought any new clothes since 1942 and everything seemed to indicate that my wife was right. As he slipped on his gloves, my father smiled absently, his eyes twinkling with almost childlike excitement, a look that only momentous tasks managed to bring out in him.
‘I’ll leave you on your own for a while,’ he announced. ‘I’m going out to do an errand.’
‘May I ask where you’re going?’
My father winked at me.
‘It’s a surprise. You’ll see.’
I followed him to the door and saw him set off at a brisk pace towards Puerta del Ángel, one more figure in the grey tide of pedestrians advancing through another long winter of shadows and ashes.»
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Barcelona, 25 september 1964)
De Poolse schrijver en letterkundige Andrzej Stasiuk werd geboren op 25 september 1960 in Warschau. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Andrzei Stasiuk op dit blog.
Uit:On The Road To Babadag: Travels In The Other Europe (Vertaald door Michael Kandel)
“Yes, it’s only that fear, those searchings, tracings, telling whose purpose is to hide the unreachable horizon. It’s night again, and everything departs, disappears, shrouded in black sky.
I am alone and must remember events, because the terror of the unending is upon me. The soul dissolves in space like a drop in the sea, and I am too much a coward to have faith in it, too old to accept its loss; I believe it is only through the visible that we can know relief, only in the body of the world that my body can find shelter. I would like to be buried in all those places where
I’ve been before and will be again. My head among the green hills of Zemplen, my heart somewhere in Transylvania, my right hand in Chornohora, my left in Spišska Bela, my sight in Bukovina, my sense of smell in Răşinari, my thoughts perhaps in this neighborhood … This is how I imagine the night when the current roars in the dark and the thaw wipes away the white stains of snow. I recall those days when I took to the road so often, pronouncing the names of far cities like spells: Paris, London, Berlin, New York, Sydney … places on the map for me, red or black points lost in the expanse of green and sky blue. I never asked for a pure sound. The histories that went with the cities, they were all fictions. They filled the hours and alleviated the boredom. In those distant times, every trip resembled flight. Stank of panic, desperation.
One day in the summer of ’83 or ’84, I reached Słubice by foot and saw Frankfurt across the river. It was late afternoon. Humid blue-gray air hung over the water. East German high-rises and factory stacks looked dismal and unreal. The sun was a dull smudge, a flame about to gutter. The other side — completely dead, still, as if after a great fire. Only the river had something human about it — decay, fish slime — but I was sure that over there the smell would be stopped. In any case I turned, and that same evening I headed back, east. Like a dog, I had sniff ed an unfamiliar locale, then moved on.”
Andrzej Stasiuk (Warschau, 25 september 1960)
De Amerikaanse schrijver William Faulkner werd geboren op 25 september 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor William Faulkner op dit blog.
Uit: Absalom, Absalom!
“Because you are going away to attend the college at Harvard they tell me,” she said. “So I dont imagine you will ever come back here and settle down as a country lawyer in a little town like Jefferson since Northern people have already seen to it that there is little left in the South for a young man. So maybe you will enter the literary profession as so many Southern gentlemen and gentlewomen too are doing now and maybe some day you will remember this and write about it. You will be married then I expect and perhaps your wife will want a new gown or a new chair for the house and you can write this and submit it to the magazines. Perhaps you will even remember kindly then the old woman who made you spend a whole afternoon sitting indoors and listening while she talked about people and events you were fortunate enough to escape yourself when you wanted to be out among young friends of your own age.”
“Yessum,” Quentin said. Only she dont mean that he thought. It’s because she wants it told. It was still early then. He had yet in his pocket the note which he had received by the hand of a small negro boy just before noon, asking him to call and see her-the quaint, stiffly formal request which was actually a summons, out of another world almost-the queer archaic sheet of ancient good notepaper written over with the neat faded cramped script which, due to his astonishment at the request from a woman three times his age and whom he had known all his life without having exchanged a hundred words with her or perhaps to the fact that he was only twenty years old, he did not recognise as revealing a character cold, implacable, and even ruthless.“
William Faulkner (25 september 1897 – 6 juli 1962)
Portret door Steven Sullivan
De Belgische dichteres en schrijfster Patricia Lasoen werd geboren op 25 september 1948 in Brugge. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Patricia Lasoen op dit blog.
Zomaar op een zomernacht
ach tevergeefs de slaap betrachtend –
(hoor, hoe troostend
is het tikken van de
zomerregen op het
raam in lood
en het geluid van
wind
in de bladerrijke bomen) –
denk ik: o wat dacht ik
toen de zomerstormen mij
nieuwsgierig en verschrikt
door ’t witte huis
zonder gordijnen deden dwalen
en de muren witgekalkt nog
witter ware door de bliksem.
wanneer zullen de muggen komen
en zich wreken voor de rode vlekken
bloed, zo talrijk op de muur na
onze muggenjacht met kussens
dacht ik, en ik stelde me de
donder voor: een oude man
die dorstig in de kelder doolde
rammelend met bakken bier.
ik weet het nog
hij leek op onze tuinman.
Patricia Lasoen (Brugge, 25 september 1948)
Brugge, Begijnhof
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 25e september ook mijn blog van 25 september 2012 en eveneens mijn blog van 25 september 2011 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.