De Amerikaanse schrijver, humorist en criticus Joe Queenan werd geboren op 3 november 1950 inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Joe Queenan op dit blog.
Uit: My 6,128 Favorite Books
“I started borrowing books from a roving Quaker City bookmobile when I was 7 years old. Things quickly got out of hand. Before I knew it I was borrowing every book about the Romans, every book about the Apaches, every book about the spindly third-string quarterback who comes off the bench in the fourth quarter to bail out his team. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but what started out as a harmless juvenile pastime soon turned into a lifelong personality disorder.
If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it’s probably because at some level you find “reality” a bit of a disappointment.
Fifty-five years later, with at least 6,128 books under my belt, I still organize my daily life—such as it is—around reading. As a result, decades go by without my windows getting washed.
My reading habits sometimes get a bit loopy. I often read dozens of books simultaneously. I start a book in 1978 and finish it 34 years later, without enjoying a single minute of the enterprise. I absolutely refuse to read books that critics describe as “luminous” or “incandescent.” I never read books in which the hero went to private school or roots for the New York Yankees. I once spent a year reading nothing but short books. I spent another year vowing to read nothing but books I picked off the library shelves with my eyes closed. The results were not pretty.
I even tried to spend an entire year reading books I had always suspected I would hate: “Middlemarch,” “Look Homeward, Angel,” “Babbitt.” Luckily, that project ran out of gas quickly, if only because I already had a 14-year-old daughter when I took a crack at “Lolita.”
Six thousand books is a lot of reading, true, but the trash like “Hell’s Belles” and “Kid Colt and the Legend of the Lost Arroyo” and even “Part-Time Harlot, Full-Time Tramp” that I devoured during my misspent teens really puff up the numbers. And in any case, it is nowhere near a record. Winston Churchill supposedly read a book every day of his life, even while he was saving Western Civilization from the Nazis. This is quite an accomplishment, because by some accounts Winston Churchill spent all of World War II completely hammered.”
Joe Queenan (Philadelphia, 3 november 1950)
De Australische dichteres en schrijfster Oodgeroo Noonuccal (eig. Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska) werd geboren op 3 november 1920 in Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) in Moreton Bay. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Oodgeroo Noonuccal op dit blog.
All One Race
Black tribe, yellow tribe, red, white or brown,
From where the sun jumps up to where it goes down,
Herrs and pukka-sahibs, demoiselles and squaws,
All one family, so why make wars?
They’re not interested in brumby runs,
We don’t hanker after Midnight Suns;
I’m for all humankind, not colour gibes;
I’m international, and never mind tribes.
Black, white or brown race, yellow race or red,
From the torrid equator to the ice-fields spread,
Monsieurs and senors, lubras and fraus,
All one family, so why family rows?
We’re not interested in their igloos,
They’re not mad about kangaroos;
I’m international, never mind place;
I’m for humanity, all one race.
God’s One Mistake
“It repenteth me that I have made man.” (Genesis 6:7)
I who am ignorant and know so little,
So little of life and less of God,
This I do know
That happiness is intended and could be,
That all wild simple things have life fulfilled
Save man.
Without books or schools, lore or philosophy
In my own heart I know
That hate is wrong,
Injustice evil.
Pain there must be and tears,
Sorrow and death, but not
Intolerance, unkindness, cruelty,
Unless men choose
The mean and base, which Nature never made,
But we alone.
And sometimes I will think that God looks down
With loving smile, saying,
‘Poor child, poor child, maybe I was wrong
In planning for you reason and free will
To fashion your own life in your own way.
For all the rest
I settled and appointed as for children
Their simple days, but you
I gave the Godlike gift to choose,
Who were not wise – for see how you have chosen,
Poor child, alone among them all now,
Unhappy on the earth.’
Oodgeroo Noonuccal (3 November 1920—16 September 1993)
De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Jan Boerstoel werd geboren in Den Haag op 3 november 1944. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Jan Boerstoel op dit blog.
Elfstedentocht
Hij komt, of niet, of wel, of… enzovoorts,
maar Friesland wrijft zich nú al in de handen,
van Snits tot Ljouwert hoor je klappertanden
van barre kou en van elfstedenkoorts.
Us heitelân is weer eens in de ban
van bloed en zweet en dichtgevroren ogen,
de supertest van menselijk vermogen
en wordt daar reuze zenuwachtig van.
Enfin, ze doen maar… Ik blijf lekker thuis,
ik bibber bijgeval wel voor de buis.
Ochtendmens
De morgen kost
normaal al strijd,
maar zeker tegen
sluitingstijd.
Filosofie
Ik ken het klappen van de zweep
Ik ken de regels van ’t spel
Ik ken de zin van het bestaan
maar als ik drink dan gaat het wel.
Jan Boerstoel (Den Haag, 3 november 1944)
De Franse schrijver en kunstfilosoof André Malraux werd geboren op 3 november 1901 in Parijs. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor André Malraux op dit blog.
Uit: Man’s Estate (Vertaald door Alastair Macdonald)
“Slowly a long siren-note swelled until it filled the wind which wafted across the faint hum coming from the besieged city, almost silent now, and the hooting of the picket-boats as they returned to the men-of-war. Wafted it across, and bore it away past the wretched electric lamps which glimmered down the side streets and the alleys which engulfed them: all around them crumbling walls stood out from the waste of shadow, laid bare in all their blotchy nakedness by that merciless un-wavering light, which seemed unearthly in its unrelieved drabness. Those walls bid half a million men: hands from the spinning-mills, men who work sixteen hours a day from early childhood, ulcerous, twisted, famine-stricken. The coverings which protected the bulbs lost their clear outline, and in a few minutes rain, rain as it only falls in China, raging, slashing down, took possession of the town.”
André Malraux (3 november 1901 – 23 november 1976)
De Duitse schrijver en essayist Dieter Wellershoff werd geboren op 3 november 1925 in Neuss. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Dieter Wellershoff op dit blog.
Uit: Der Himmel ist kein Ort
„Doch nachdem ihn am nächsten Tag eine Gemeindehelferin gefragt hatte, ob er gestern Abend eine Party gefeiert habe, hatte er das nicht wiederholt. Immer noch war er der junge Pfarrer, der unter aller Augen mit dem Schatten seines Vorgängers zu kämpfen hatte, einem Mann, der in seiner ganzen Lebensart besser in die ländliche Umgebung gepasst hatte, schon deshalb, weil er verheiratet war, als er die Pfarrstelle angetreten hatte. Er dagegen galt als Modernist, obwohl er sich selbst nicht so sah, jedenfalls nicht in einem ausgeprägten Sinn. Im Seminar hatten sie oft über die neu sich stellende Aufgabe gesprochen, in der heutigen Welt christliche Glaubensinhalte zu vermitteln.
Zeitgemäß und praxisnah sollte es geschehen.
Das waren die Leitvorstellungen seiner Studienkollegen, die sich gerne als eine Generation von Neuerern verstanden hätten, aber natürlich wussten, dass vor Ort in den Gemeinden viele fortschrittliche Neuerungen und Aktivitäten auf sie warteten, sodass nicht mehr viel Spielraum für weitere Projekte blieb. Es gab Kindergärten und Altenbetreuung, Gesprächsgruppen und Singkreise, Vorträge und Theatergemeinschaften.
Es war ein florierender Betrieb mit vielen ehrenamtlichen Helferinnen, neben denen der sonntägliche Gottesdienst eher als eine traditionelle Pflichtübung dahinkrankte. Eigentlich war dies ja das Problem. Es ging nicht um Neuerungen, sondern um Erneuerung. Daran waren alle Neuerungen zu messen.”
Dieter Wellershoff (Neuss, 3 november 1925)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 3e november ook mijn blog van 3 november 2013 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.