Tag: Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Koen Frijns, Oodgeroo Noonuccal

De Nederlandse dichter, schrijver, performer en bassist Koen Frijns werd geboren op 3 november 1993 in Eindhoven. Zie ook alle tags voor Koen Frijns op dit blog.

 

Baby Tales

Ik weet niet waar ze vandaan komen, maar ze liggen al in de modder

Dorothy en Mark stoppen allebei een euro in het open ruggetje voor het bos.
Aan de takken hangen navelstrengen met baby’s eraan.
Sommigen zijn hun slabbetje ontgroeid en dragen hemden met mayonaisevlekken.
Ze zijn hier al een tijdje.
Baby Lethal Fire zuipt alle honing op in het insectenhotel.
Baby Fitzie Fastie huilt omdat ze alleen werd gelaten toen de Sound of Silence werd gespeeld door baby Thunder.
Baby Locomotiv vraagt zich af waarom ze bomen omkappen om er ladders van te maken.
Veel baby’s hebben de naam van een tweedehands hazewindhond.
Veel baby’s zijn niet verzekerd.
Dorothy en Mark worden uitgenodigd in een huis dat uitsluitend uit melktandjes bestaat.
De baby’s begrijpen niks van klassenverschillen, maar er zijn erbij die sjekkies roken.
Er zijn foto’s tussen de tandjes vastgeklemd van paarden, ijsbergen en Audrey Hepburn.
Een muur is blauw geverfd.
Er is keuze.
Voor sommigen moet het tuinhek worden verhoogd.
Voor anderen moet een arm worden gemaakt, die uitsluitend uit sleutelhangers bestaat.
Een baby valt alleen in slaap als Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison op repeat staat.
Maar dat zijn kleine dingen.
Niemand zal ontkennen dat deze plek een blijvende indruk achterlaat op de baby’s.
Een onopgeloste moord aan de rand van het bos.
Het zoeken tussen wortels naar wormen.
Een koikarper roosteren boven het kampvuur.
Veel baby’s huilen bij volle maan en krabben de plinten los bij de deur.
Maar gelukkig is er keuze.

 

knock-out

we keken bokswedstrijden mijn vader en ik
op de duitse zender
mijn vader was om politieke redenen voor de engelsman
ik voor de belg
in een beweging draait de voet de heup de schouder tegen de wang
om één klap op te vangen
boos kijken is
lachen als je pijn hebt
en dat konden zij wel
als ze in elkaars armen door de ring dansten
voor de bel ging
“losten wij onze problemen maar zo op”
zei ik terwijl ik dacht aan hoe oud mijn vader was
toen hij slapend op de bank lag
voor de vierde ronde

 

Koen Frijns (Eindhoven, 3 november 1993)

 

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 alle tags voor Oodgeroo Noonuccal op dit blog.

 

Geschenken

‘Ik zal je liefde brengen’, zei de jonge minnaar,
‘Een blij licht om in je donkere oog te dansen.
Hangers zal ik brengen van het witte bot,
En vrolijke papegaaienveren om je haar te versieren.’

Maar ze schudde alleen maar haar hoofd.

‘Ik zal een kind in je armen leggen,’ zei hij,
‘Zal een geweldig hoofdman zijn, een geweldige regenmaker.
Ik zal onvergetelijke liedjes over jou maken
Die alle stammen in alle zwervende kampen
Voor altijd zullen zingen.’

Maar ze was niet onder de indruk.

‘Ik zal je het stille maanlicht op de lagune brengen,
En voor jou het gezang van alle vogels stelen;
Ik zal de sterren van de hemel naar je toe brengen,
En de stralende regenboog in je hand leggen.’

‘Nee’, zei ze, ‘breng me boomlarven.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (3 November 1920—16 September 1993)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 3e november ook mijn blog van 3 november 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 3 november 2018 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.

Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal

De Amerikaanse schrijver, humorist en criticus Joe Queenan werd geboren op 3 november 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Joe Queenan op dit blog.

Uit: My 6,128 Favorite Books

“During antiwar protests in the nation’s capital back in the Days of Rage, I would read officially sanctioned, counterculturally appropriate materials like Steppenwolf and Journey to the East and Siddhartha to take my mind off Pete Seeger’s banjo playing. I once read Tortilla Flats from cover to cover during a Jerry Garcia solo on “Trucicin'” at Philadelphia’s Spectrum; by the time he’d wrapped things up, I could have read As I Lay Dying. Often I have slipped away from picnics and birthday parties and children’s soccer games and awards ceremonies to squeeze in a bit of reading while concealed in a copse, a garage, a thicket, or a deserted gazebo. For me, books have always been a safety valve, and in some cases—when a book materializes out of nowhere in a situation where it is least expected—a deus ex machina. Books are a way of saying: This room seems to have more than its fair share of bozos in it. Edith Wharton may be dead, but she’s still better company than these palookas. I have never squandered an opportunity to read. There are only twenty-four hours in the day, seven of which are spent sleeping, and in my view at least four of the remaining seventeen must be devoted to reading. Of course, four hours a day does not provide me with nearly enough time to satisfy my appetites. A friend once told me that the real message Bram Stoker sought to convey in Dracula is that a human being needs to live hundreds and hundreds of years to get all his reading done; that Count Dracula, misunderstood bookworm, was draining blood from the porcelain-like necks of ten thousand hapless virgins not because he was the apotheosis of evil but because it was the only way he could live long enough to polish off his reading list. But I have no way of knowing if this is true, as I have not yet found time in my life to read Dracula. If it were possible, I would read books eight to ten hours a day, every day of the year. Perhaps more. There is nothing I would rather do than read books. This is the way I have felt since I started borrowing books from a roving Quaker City bookmobile at the tender age of seven. In the words of Francois Rabelais: I was born this way. And I know why I read so obsessively: I read because I want to be somewhere else. Yes, this is a reasonably satisfactory world that we are living in, this society in particular, but the world conjured up by books is a better one. This is especially true if you are poor or missing vital appendages. I was stranded in a housing project with substandard parents at the time I started reading as if there were no tomorrow, and I am convinced that this desire to escape from reality—on a daily, even an hourly, basis—is the main reason people read books. Intelligent people, that is. This is a category that would include people like my father, a Brand X prole who got started on the road to perdition early by dropping out of high school in ninth grade, thereby condemning himself to a lifetime of inane, soul-destroying jobs, but who was rarely seen without a book in his hands. He used books the same way he used alcohol: to pretend that he was not here, and if he was here, that he was happy for a change. I think this compulsion is fairly common.”

 

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 alle tags voor Oodgeroo Noonuccal op dit blog.

 

Integratie – Ja!

Dankbaar leren we van jullie,
Het geavanceerde ras,
Jullie met eeuwenlange kennis achter de rug.
Wij die reeds lang Australiërs waren
Voor jullie die gisteren kwamen,
Gretig moeten we leren veranderen,
Nieuwe behoeften leren kennen die we nooit wilden,
Nieuwe verplichtingen die we nooit nodig hadden,
De prijs om te overleven.
Veel waar we van hielden is weg en moest gaan
Maar niet de diepe inheemse dingen.
Het verleden is nog steeds zozeer een deel van ons,
Nog steeds rondom ons, nog steeds in ons.
We zijn het gelukkigst
Onder onze eigen mensen. We zouden graag zien
Dat onze eigen gebruiken behouden bleven, onze oude
Dansen en liederen, ambachten en corroborees.
Waarom onze heilige mythen inruilen
Tegen jullie heilige mythen?
Nee, geen assimilatie maar integratie,
Geen onderdompeling maar onze verheffing,
Zwarten en blanken mogen samen verdergaan
In harmonie en broederschap.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (3 November 1920—16 September 1993)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 3e november ook mijn blog van 3 november 2018 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.

Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, Koen Frijns, André Malraux

De Amerikaanse schrijver, humorist en criticus Joe Queenan werd geboren op 3 november 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Joe Queenan op dit blog.

Uit: My 6,128 Favorite Books

“A case can be made that people who read a preposterous number of books are not playing with a full deck. I prefer to think of us as dissatisfied customers. 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. People in the 19th century fell in love with “Ivanhoe” and “The Count of Monte Cristo” because they loathed the age they were living through. Women in our own era read “Pride and Prejudice” and “Jane Eyre” and even “The Bridges of Madison County”—a dimwit, hayseed reworking of “Madame Bovary”—because they imagine how much happier they would be if their husbands did not spend quite so much time with their drunken, illiterate golf buddies down at Myrtle Beach. A blind bigamist nobleman with a ruined castle and an insane, incinerated first wife beats those losers any day of the week. Blind, two-timing noblemen never wear belted shorts.
Similarly, finding oneself at the epicenter of a vast, global conspiracy involving both the Knights Templar and the Vatican would be a huge improvement over slaving away at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the rest of your life or being married to someone who is drowning in dunning notices from Williams-Sonoma . No matter what they may tell themselves, book lovers do not read primarily to obtain information or to while away the time. They read to escape to a more exciting, more rewarding world. A world where they do not hate their jobs, their spouses, their governments, their lives. A world where women do not constantly say things like “Have a good one!” and “Sounds like a plan!” A world where men do not wear belted shorts. Certainly not the Knights Templar.
I read books—mostly fiction—for at least two hours a day, but I also spend two hours a day reading newspapers and magazines, gathering material for my work, which consists of ridiculing idiots or, when they are not available, morons. I read books in all the obvious places—in my house and office, on trains and buses and planes—but I’ve also read them at plays and concerts and prizefights, and not just during the intermissions. I’ve read books while waiting for friends to get sprung from the drunk tank, while waiting for people to emerge from comas, while waiting for the Iceman to cometh.
In my 20s, when I worked the graveyard shift loading trucks in a charm-free Philadelphia suburb, I would read during my lunch breaks, a practice that was dimly viewed by the Teamsters I worked with. Just to be on the safe side, I never read existentialists, poetry or books like “Lettres de Madame de Sévigné” in their presence, as they would have cut me to ribbons.”

 


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 alle tags voor Oodgeroo Noonuccal op dit blog.

 

Dawn Wail for the Dead

Dim light of daybreak now
Faintly over the sleeping camp.
Old lubra first to wake remembers:
First thing every dawn
Remember the dead, cry for them.
Softly at first her wail begins,
One by one as they wake and hear
Join in the cry, and the whole camp
Wails for the dead, the poor dead
Gone from here to the Dark Place:
They are remembered.
Then it is over, life now,
Fires lit, laughter now,
And a new day calling.

 

Entombed Warriors
Xian, September 20, 1984

Qin Shi Huang
(first Emperor of China)
Plotted his burial,
With careful and clear detail.
Called in his artists
To prepare for his resurrection.
Clay warriors and horses,
A legion of foot soldiers,
Cavalry,
Archers and Generals.
Swords, lances and spears,
And battle axes in bronze,
His artists
made for him,
And
All guarded his secret
For 2,000 years
The Earth Mother
Nursed her son,
Until
By chance,
A pick and shovel,
Revealed his secret.
The earth opened up
And exposed to the world,
His fear,
His insecurity.

 

 
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 alle tags voor Jan Boerstoel op dit blog.

 

Leve de jalousie de métier

De mens is gierig, wreed en dom en daarbij nogal snel
geneigd zijn brave buurvrouw zelfs haar snorfiets te misgunnen,
al hoort zoiets sinds jaar en dag natuurlijk niet te kunnen
en kwam je vroeger om die afgunst ook nog in de hel.

Maar is de mens een kunstenaar, dan helpt de uitlaatklep
van broeders in het vak hem niet zozeer om te verheffen
als om te evenaren, sterker nog, te overtreffen,
want niets werkt inspirerender dan andermans geschep.

Ergo: wat buurmans gras aangaat, laat naijver je sieren,
als daardoor wordt bereikt, dat je nóg beter gaat tuinieren.

Uit: Acht kroegverzen

Dorst

De dorst
die voor de baat uitgaat,
maakt op den duur
dat niets meer baat.

 

Natuurliefhebber

Het mooiste uitzicht
volgens mij,
zijn veertig flessen
op een rij

 

 
Jan Boerstoel (Den Haag, 3 november 1944)

 

De Nederlandse dichter, schrijver, performer en bassist Koen Frijns werd geboren op 3 november 1993 in Eindhoven. Zie ook alle tags voor Koen Frijns op dit blog.

 

Hoe God toch De Bruin versloeg

Scootmobiels zaten vast in de modder,

vrouwen werden op de rug weggedragen
en krukken vlogen door de lucht..

Het stormde in Lourdes.

Hinkelend en proestend keken
de geredde pelgrims

naar mevrouw De Bruin die achterbleef

en rustig in haar rolstoel zat.

Het water trad buiten haar oevers en
steeg

tot een mythische hoogte.

De Bruin duwde haar arm door haar keel

en trok via haar luchtpijp een long uit haar
kas

Ze zette de long op de ventielen van haar banden

en pompte tot ze geen adem meer bezat.

De banden groeiden en groeiden

Tot een vlot geboren was.

Ze deinde mee op Gods water, zeven
dagen lang.

Tot ze strandde op een eiland in de
oceaan.

Ze teerde op het laatste beetje zuurstof

dat nog in haar bloedvaten zat.

Een engel dook op uit het water.

Ze boog zich over De Bruin en vroeg:

Was Gods woord niet voldoende?

Waarom hebt gij niet gedaan wat God u
beval? ‘

Dat heb ik niet.’ zei De Bruin

Ik wilde eigenlijk terug naar Kerkrade.’

 


Koen Frijns (Eindhoven, 3 november 1993)

 

De Franse schrijver en kunstfilosoof André Malraux werd geboren op 3 november 1901 in Parijs. Zie ook alle tags voor André Malraux op dit blog.

Uit: Antimémoires

“1965 au large de la Crète
Je me suis évadé, en 1940, avec le futur aumônier du Vercors. Nous nous retrouvâmes peu de temps après l’évasion, dans le village de la Drôme dont il était curé, et où il donnait aux israélites, à tour de bras, des certificats de baptême de toutes dates, à condition pourtant de les baptiser : « Il en restera toujours quelque chose… » Il n’était jamais venu à Paris : il avait achevé ses études au séminaire de Lyon. Nous poursuivions la conversation sans fin de ceux qui se retrouvent, dans l’odeur du village nocturne. « Vous confessez depuis combien de temps ? — Une quinzaine d’années… — Qu’est-ce que la confession vous a enseigné des hommes ? — Vous savez, la confession n’apprend rien, parce que dès que l’on confesse, on est un autre, il y a la Grâce. Et pourtant… D’abord, les gens sont beaucoup plus malheureux qu’on ne croit… et puis… » Il leva ses bras de bûcheron dans la nuit pleine d’étoiles : « Et puis, le fond de tout, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de grandes personnes… » Il est mort aux Glières. Réfléchir sur la vie — sur la vie en face de la mort — sans doute n’est-ce guère qu’approfondir son interrogation. Je ne parle pas du fait d’être tué, qui ne pose guère de question à quiconque a la chance banale d’être courageux, mais de la mort qui affleure dans tout ce qui est plus fort que l’homme, dans le vieillissement et même la métamorphose de la terre (la terre suggère la mort par sa torpeur millénaire comme par sa métamorphose, même si sa métamorphose est l’ceuvre de l’homme) et surtout l’irrémédiable, le : tu ne sauras jamais ce que tout cela voulait dire.”

 

 
André Malraux (3 november 1901 – 23 november 1976)
Cover

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 3e november ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Ann Scott, Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, William Cullen Bryant, Laura Accerboni

De Amerikaanse schrijver, humorist en criticus Joe Queenan werd geboren op 3 november 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Joe Queenan op dit blog.

Uit: Closing Time

“Next door to us lived a man my father always called Tex because he was tall, fat, blustery, and not terribly quick on the draw, though he was not actually from Texas. I suppose it was Tex who provided transport. My father’s mutilated fingers got patched up; he was given some painkillers; he returned home in great pain. He had been drinking heavily before he caught his fingers in the door, and he was certainly drinking heavily afterward.
At the time, my father was employed as a truck driver for a company called Bachman Pretzels. His job was to deliver boxes of potato chips, pretzels, and other savory snacks to supermarkets and grocery stores all over the Delaware Valley. The job didn’t pay well and wasn’t leading anywhere, but it was better than the ones he had held recently, and much better than the ones he would have later. His salary, which amounted to slightly more than the minimum wage, was not enough to support a family of six, which is why my mother, after a sixteen-year hiatus, would soon return the workforce, corralling a job as a credit manager at the hospital, where my father had been treated. This was the hospital where I had been born thirteen years earlier, the year the Reds invaded South Korea.
Every workday, my father would rise at six-thirty in the morning, shave, dress, then grab a trolley and two buses to the company warehouse several miles away. There he would load his truck and set out on his travels. His route was picturesque and varied, though not especially glamorous. A good number of his accounts were the wholesome, reliable A&P supermarkets that could then be found on half the street corners in America. He also serviced a number of tiny, not especially profitable independent grocery stores in South Philadelphia and several of the cavernous Center City automats operated by the Horn & Hardart company, an iconic chain that was once ubiquitous but is now forgotten. His job was to replace packages that had been sold since his last visit, remove merchandise that had passed its expiration date, and use guile, subterfuge, charm, or whatever delicate forms of intimidation he could muster to persuade his clients to give exotic new products a try. One of these cutting-edge novelties was the now-famous cheese curl, an audacious midcentury innovation whose triumph over entrenched municipal resistance to anything ” hoity-toity” was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time.”

 
Joe Queenan (Philadelphia, 3 november 1950)

Lees verder “Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Ann Scott, Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, William Cullen Bryant, Laura Accerboni” →

Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Ann Scott, Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, William Cullen Bryant

De Amerikaanse schrijver, humorist en criticus Joe Queenan werd geboren op 3 november 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Joe Queenan op dit blog.

Uit: Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation

“In the end, Baby Boomers didn’t deliver on any of their promises. Instead, they were a case study in false advertising. They professed to go with the flow, but it was actually the cash flow, and they most certainly did not teach their children well, as they were too busy videotaping them. Instead, they took a dive. They retreated into the deepest recesses of their surprisingly tiny inner lives. They became fakes, hypocrites, cop-outs and, in many cases, out-and-out dorks. And the worst thing was: Most of them didn’t realize it.
Certainly not Mr. Dog Guy. One day last summer I was sitting on the veranda of my elegant, well-appointed house overlooking the Hudson River when a Jeep Grand Cherokee drifted past with a twee Alaskan malamute trotting about twenty yards behind. As the Jeep inched up the street at about five miles an hour, the dog meekly scurried along in its wake, occasionally soiling people’s lawns. The dog and the vehicle soon disappeared around a bend in the road, but five minutes later they were back for the return leg of their little jaunt. When the dog attempted to do his business on my wife’s beloved flower bed, I made it my business to scare him away with a stick. The dog clambered off and that was that.
Over the course of the next three weeks, I observed the Jeep and the dog making their rounds early in the morning and late in the evening. The driver, about forty-five, was not from the neighborhood. Neither was the dog. The dog usually had the good sense to stay away from my lawn, but he invariably managed to take a dump somewhereelse. The two quickly became a kind of local legend. Everyone felt sorry for a pet unlucky enough to have an owner who was too lazy to get out of his car and actually walk the poor mutt. Everyone wondered what kind of a creep would own a beautiful dog like that and not only refuse to walk it, but refuse to clean up after it, and who would then compound that offense by driving to someone else’s neighborhood and encouraging his dog to defecate all over strangers’ properties. My neighbors proclaimed him a creep, a lowlife, a swine, not to mention a very thoughtless and insensitive human being.”

 
Joe Queenan (Philadelphia, 3 november 1950)

Lees verder “Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Ann Scott, Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, William Cullen Bryant” →

Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Ann Scott

De Amerikaanse schrijver, humorist en criticus Joe Queenan werd geboren op 3 november 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Joe Queenan op dit blog.

Uit:One For The Books

“There are many sad and beautiful stories about books. After being banished to a backwater on the edge of the Black Sea, Ovid wrote a eulogy in honor of his nemesis Augustus Caesar in the language of the barbarians that inhabited the region. Both the eulogy and the language have disappeared. Homer wrote a comic epic that has vanished. Fifteen hundred of Lope de Vega’s plays are no longer with us. Almost all of Aeschylus’s work – seventy-three plays out on loan from the Greeks — went up in flames when cultural pyromaniacs burned down the library of Alexandria in A.D. 640. Only seven plays remain.
Electronic books will ensure that these tragedies—described in Stuart Kelly’s The Book of Lost Books — never reoccur. That’s wonderful, but I’d still rather have the books. For me and for all those like me, books are sacred vessels. Postcards and photos and concert programs and theater tickets and train schedules are souvenirs; books are connective tissue. Books possess alchemical powers, imbued with the ability to turn darkness into light, ennui into ecstasy, a drab, predictable life behind the Iron Curtain into something stealthily euphoric. Or so book lovers believe. The tangible reality of books defines us, just as the handwritten scrolls of the Middle Ages defined the monks who concealed them from barbarians. We believe that the objects themselves have magical powers.
People who prefer e-books may find this baffling or silly. They think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel. A noted scientific writer recently argued that the physical copy of a book was an unimportant fetish, that books were “like the coffin at a funeral.” Despite such comments, I am not all that worried about the future of books. If books survived the Huns, the Vandals, and the Nazis, they can surely survive noted scientific writers. One friend says that in the future “books will be beautifully produced, with thick paper, and ribbons, and proper bindings.” People who treasure books will expect them to look like treasures. And so they will have ribbons. Another says, wistfully, that books will survive “as a niche, a bit like taking a carriage ride in Central Park. But more than that.”

 
Joe Queenan (Philadelphia, 3 november 1950)

Lees verder “Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Ann Scott” →

Joe Queenan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jan Boerstoel, André Malraux, Dieter Wellershoff

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)

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Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, William Cullen Bryant

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.

 

 

Namatjira

 

Aboriginal man, you walked with pride,

And painted with joy the countryside.

Original man, your fame grew fast,

Men pointed you out as you went past.

But vain the honour and tributes paid

For you strangled in rules the white man made:

You broke no law of the your own wild clan

Which says, “Share all with your fellow-man.”

What did their loud acclaim avail

Who gave you honour, then gave you jail?

Namatjira, they boomed your art,

They called you genius, then broke your heart.

 

 

The Bunyip

 

You keep quiet now, little fella,

You want big-big Bunyip get you?

You look out, no good this place.

You see that waterhole over there?

He Gooboora, Silent Pool.

Suppose-it you go close up one time

Big fella woor, he wait there,

Big fella Bunyip sit down there,

In Silent Pool many bones down there.

He come up when it is dark,

He belong the big dark, that one.

Don’t go away from camp fire, you,

Better you curl up in the gunya.

Go to sleep now, little fella,

Tonight he hungry, hear him roar,

He frighten us, the terrible woor,

He the secret thing, he Fear,

He something we don’t know.

Go to sleep now, little fella.

Curl up with the yella dingo.

 

 

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (3 November 1920—16 September 1993)

Cover 

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Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, William Cullen Bryant

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.

 

No More Boomerang

No more boomerang
No more spear;
Now all civilised —
Colour bar and beer.

No more corroboree,
Gay dance and din.
Now we got movies,
And pay to go in.

No more sharing
What the hunter brings.
Now we work for money,
Then pay it back for things.

Now we track bosses
To catch a few bob,
Now we go walkabout
On bus to the job.

One time naked,
Who never knew shame;
Now we put clothes on
To hide whatsaname.

No more gunya,
Now bungalow,
Paid by hire purchase
In twenty year or so.

Lay down the stone axe,
Take up the steel,
And work like a nigger
For a white man meal.

No more firesticks
That made the whites scoff.
Now all electric,
And no better off.

Bunyip he finish,
Now got instead
White fella Bunyip
Call him Red.

Abstract picture now —
What they coming at?
Cripes, in our caves we
Did better than that.

Black hunted wallaby,
White hunt dollar;
White fella witchdoctor
Wear dog-collar.

No more message-stick;
Lubras and lads.
Got television now,
Mostly ads.

Lay down the woomera,
Lay down the waddy.
Now we got atom-bomb,
End every-body.


Oodgeroo Noonuccal (3 November 1920—16 September 1993)

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Dieter Wellershoff, Hanns Heinz Ewers, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, William Cullen Bryant

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: Das normale Leben

„Eine Woche lang war er verschwunden, und sie hatte schon gehofft, ihn los zu sein. Doch als sie an diesem Morgen von der Straße hereinkam, sah sie ihn sofort. Er stand beim Schwarzen Brett gegenüber den Aufzügen und schien auf sie gewartet zu haben, denn er las nicht die angehefteten Bekanntmachungen, sondern blickte zum Eingang hinüber, durch den sie eben in die Halle trat. Ja, natürlich, er hatte dort gewartet, weil er wußte, daß gleich ihr Kurs begann.

Einen Moment lang trafen sich ihre Blicke, über einen weiten Abstand hinweg, so daß sie nicht erkennen konnte, wie er sie ansah, während sie, ohne ihren raschen Schritt zu ändern, zu den Aufzügen ging. Er wird es nicht wagen, mir zu folgen, dachte sie. Er wird sich nicht nähern, nicht gegen meinen Willen.

Als sie im Aufzug stand und den Knopf für den sechsten Stock drückte, hatte er sich abgewandt und tat so, als lese er die Anschläge, die alle schon wochenlang dort hingen. Sie sah seinen schmalen Rücken, das immer etwas struppige braune Haar. Sie wußte, daß seine Augen grau waren und der Mund fein gezeichnet, wie der eines Mädchens. Sie hätte ihn gern noch länger betrachtet, aber die Türen fuhren zu.

Im zweiten Stock stiegen ihre Freundin Conny und zwei Typen aus der Fotoklasse ein, die im nächsten Stock schon wieder ausstiegen. »Wann ist dein Kurs zu Ende?« fragte

Conny. »Um elf.« Nun, da hatte sie keine Zeit. Aber vielleicht traf man sich mittags in der Cafeteria. Und wenn nicht, dann doch auf alle Fälle heute abend bei der Vernissage von Ralf. Seine neuen Objekte seien phantastisch.Und natürlich ginge die ganze Clique hin.

»Ich bin mit Frank verabredet«, sagte sie, »ichweiß nicht, was er vorhat.«

 

Dieter Wellershoff (Neuss, 3 november 1925)

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