Alexander Stuart, Guy Vaes, Bernd Jentzsch, Ilja Ehrenburg, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Balduin Möllhausen, Samuel Foote

De Brits-Amerikaanse schrijver Alexander Stuart werd geboren op 27 januari 1955 in Brighton. Zie ook alle tags voor Alexander Stuart op dit blog.

Uit: The War Zone

“I’d be there now, getting soaked, if I wasn’t so determined to speak to Jessica. If I can get her alone, there are a good few questions I’m going to ask, but it’s as if she senses this. She’s playing for time, Miss Florence Nightingale, helping Mum change the baby and scrub the vegetables for dinner. I’m in the doghouse, meanwhile, for dumping all the shopping in the rain. I watch Dad. I watch everyone. Suddenly I feel like a spy. I’m the one who’s different, I’m the one with the knowledge — I wouldn’t trust me, if I was them. What’s changed? My mind is working overtime, reassessing everything. But Dad seems the same, snapping open a beer as he dumps himself into one of the cottage’s chintzy armchairs to sort through a pile of unopened office mail. `How far would we have to go, do you think,’ he ponders aloud, screwing his face up into a mask of weariness and disgust, `to get away from all this crap?’ `Not much further,’ Mum offers from the kitchen. ‘Another phone call like yesterday’s, and they’ll probably take you at your word.’ There’s a long pause in which Dad seems to be replaying yesterday’s phone call, enjoying the recollection of what was obviously a choice exchange. `They love it,’ he says. ‘Panics the accountants. They won’t know what they’ve got unless they’re made to sweat blood for it.’ When it comes to work, Dad likes a bit of passion to enter into things. I don’t think he’s happy unless emotions are aroused, and certainly where his current scam is concerned — a bloody great steel and glass pyramid for a Korean bank in Docklands —he’s played devil’s advocate from day one. Bad enough that he has to work for these wankers, he says — no reason to make it easy for them. But I think it’s a bluff. I think his work is what drives him, and coming down here to Devon has nothing to do with getting away from it all, it’s just another way of giving them the finger. Dad peers in the direction of the kitchen, stuffing the torn envelopes he’s been opening into one of the big manila ones.”

 

 
Alexander Stuart (Brighton, 27 januari 1955)
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Ethan Mordden, Rudolf Geel, Lewis Carroll, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Neel Doff, Samuel Foote, Eliette Abécassis, Mordecai Richler

De Amerikaanse schrijver Ethan Mordden werd geboren op 27 januari 1947 in Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Ethan Mordden op dit blog.

Uit: Some Men are Lookers

“Dennis Savage faced him down.
Virgil was watching them, and Cosgrove was watching Virgil.
“Maybe you could think about it,” Virgil said suddenly to Dennis Savage, “and maybe you would change your mind.”
“And maybe I won’t.”
Lionel nodded and left.
After closing the door, Virgil stood in thought, his back to us; Dennis Savage nudged me with a glance, indicating his lover. We all know one another so well that we sometimes operate like a mime troupe, entirely in visuals.
“Can I show my movie now?” Cosgrove asked. “It’s the first videotape that I really made myself.”
“I helped him,” said Virgil, still at the door.
“Virgil always helps me.”
“I’m not sitting through another Friday the 13th sequel,” said Dennis Savage, “I’ll tell you that.”
“It’s The Lost Boys.”
“Are you undergoing a mystical out-of-life experience with that door,” Dennis Savage asked Virgil, who hadn’t yet moved, “or would you like to join us on the couch?”
Virgil coolly came over, sitting on the far side of the couch from Dennis Savage.
“Hey!”
“Easy,” I said.
“Well, what’s he supposed to be, my eighth cousin thrice removed? Come over here, you.”
“Cosgrove,” said Virgil, staying put, “it’s movie time.”
“Were they misunderstood cuties,” Cosgrove cried, jumping up to make his presentation, “or mean ghouls? A magical club, or killers on the loose?”
“Let’s skip the trailer,” said Dennis Savage. “Just run the film.”
“This is becoming a very snarky apartment,” said Virgil.
Dennis Savage leaned over me and asked Virgil, “How come I don’t know what that word means?”
“Virgil and Cosgrove Productions present,” Cosgrove began, with a—at any rate trying to—flourish, and onto the television screen came the credits of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
“Sure,” said Dennis Savage. “The three things I most wanted to do tonight were go to the dentist for an emergency root canal, trade fashion tips with Prince, and see Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. That’s one down.”

 

 
Ethan Mordden (Pennsylvania, 27 januari 1947)

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Ethan Mordden, Rudolf Geel, Lewis Carroll, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Neel Doff, Samuel Foote

De Amerikaanse schrijver Ethan Mordden werd geboren op 27 januari 1947 in Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Ethan Mordden op dit blog.

Uit: Some Men are Lookers

“Whose name is Tuffy?” asked Virgil, switching off the television. “Is he some rough boy of the streets?”
“Is he?” I asked Lionel. “He certainly puts on a hard act, as I recall. Ferocious triceps.”
“Tom always liked it down and dirty, you know.”
“I could be Tuffy,” Virgil ventured.
“And I could be Tuffy on weekends,” said Cosgrove.
“Look,” said Dennis Savage with his famous weary patience. “Tuffy and his like are for people who cannot live in reality. People who go through their time on earth like a teenager at his first fuck. People who have no sense of responsibility or fairness or loyalty. Tom Driggers is the Circuit personified—drug up, dance, screw, sleep it off, and do it again. He got rich organizing service industries for other people like himself. He ran buses to the beach, he ran whores to the closeted rich, he ran discos till you drop. He had, and he had, and he had—and when the rest of us appetitive sexboys looked around and saw that our appetites could kill us and backed away, Tom Driggers went right on having. That’s why he is on the verge of defunct. I’m sorry to say so, but if someone has to die of this cursed poison, it ought to be Tom Driggers. Because he took his choice, and this is his consequence.”
Somewhere in all that, Dennis Savage had left Virgil and Cosgrove and had resumed addressing Lionel, not gently.
“And you can stop begging me to visit that disgusting, putrid piece of Texas redneck trash, because he’s going to die with his kind around him, not with me!”
“For pity’s sake—”
Dennis Savage chopped out the following words: “He has what he created!”
There was silence.
“Someone,” said Virgil, finally, “is rather snarky today.”
“He is very desperately threatened,” Cosgrove quickly added.
“I’ll quit while I’m behind,” said Lionel, getting up to go. Virgil saw him to the door, where Lionel turned to Dennis Savage, regarding him mildly but holding it out into a stare.”

 
Ethan Mordden (Pennsylvania, 27 januari 1947)
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Samuel Foote

De Engelse acteur en toneelschrijver Samuel Foote werd geboren 27 januari 1720 in Truro, Cornwall. Foote stamde uit een rijke familie, zijn moeder was Eleanor Goodere. Na het voltooien van zijn opleiding in Worcester schreef Foote zich in aan het Worcester College, om rechten te studeren. Deze studie brak hij na een paar semesters af en hij trok naar Londen. Gedurende deze tijd kreeg hij een erfenis van zijn oom Sir John Foote Dinely Goodere, nadat deze werd vermoord door een familielid. Zodra Foote na een paar jaarde erfenis helemaal had verbrast, sloot hij zich aan bij een Londense groep toneelspelers. Op de leeftijd van 23 jaar debuteerde Foote in 1744 als acteur in William Shakespeare’s Othello, maar hij was niet helemaal succesvol. In de loop der jaren kwam het succes toch nog, wat betekende dat Foote zelfstandig kon worden. In 1747 richtte hij met zijn eigen ensemble de Royal Haymarket Theatre op en voerde daar vooral zijn eigen toneelstukken op. Vooral in zijn komedies op waren zijn rollen Foote op het lijf geschreven en de satire kwam nooit te kort. Bekende persoonlijkheden zette hij in zijn stukken vakkundig op hun plaats. Zo klaagde hij echter ook sociale misstanden aan. Na een gecompliceerde beenbreuk in zijn 45e jaar kon Foote niet meer optreden als acteur. Maar hij bleef zijn theater leiden, regisseerde en hij schreef vooral nieuwe stukken. Een totaal van 22 stuks zijn er overgeleverd, vooral komedies en kluchten, die voornamelijk worden gekenmerkt door humor en temperament. Een klein schandaal deed zich voor in 1760, toen Foote met “The minor” de kerk in het algemeen en de Methodisten in het bijzonder aanviel en in 1772, toen hij met “The Nabob” de uitbuiting van India door de Oost-Indische Compagnie aan de kaak stelde..Samuel Foote leidde zijn theater tot kort voor zijn dood op 21 oktober 1777.

Uit: The Nabob

Servant Mrs. Crocus, from Brompton, your honour.
Mite Has she brought me a bouquet?
Servant Your honour?
Mite Any nosegays, you blockhead?
Servant She has a boy with a basket.
Mite Shew her in! [Enter Mrs. Crocus.] Well, Mrs. Crocus; let us see what you have brought me. Your last bouquet was as big as a broom, with a tulip strutting up like a magistrate’s mace; and, besides, made me look like a devil.
Crocus I hope your honour could find no fault with the flowers? It is true, the polyanthuses were a little pinched by the easterly winds; but for pip, colour, and eye, I defy the whole parish of Fulham to match ‘em.
Mite Perhaps not; but it is not the flowers, but the mixture, I blame. Why, here now, Mrs. Crocus, one should think you were out of your senses, to cram in this clump of jonquils!
Crocus I thought your honour was fond of their smell.
Mite Damn their smell! It is their colour I talk of. You know my complexion has been tinged by the East, and you bring me here a blaze of yellow, that gives me the jaundice. Look! Do you see here, what a fine figure I cut? You might as well have tied me to a bundle of sunflowers!
Crocus I beg pardon, your honour!
Mite Pardon! There is no forgiving faults of this kind. Just so you served Harry Hectic; you stuck into his bosom a parcel of hyacinths, though the poor fellow’s f ace is as pale as a primrose.
Crocus I did not know—
Mite And there, at the opera, the poor creature sat in his side-box, looking like one of the figures in the glass-cases in Westminster-Abbey; dead and drest!
Crocus If gentlemen would but give directions, I would make it my study to suit ‘ em.
Mite But that your cursed climate won’t let you. Have you any pinks or carnations in bloom?”

 
Samuel Foote (27 januari 1720 – 21 oktober 1777)
Portret door Jean-François Gilles Colson, 1769