Friday

Jul. 9, 1999

Recension Day

by Duncan Forbes

Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: July 9, 1999

Poem: "Recension Day," by Duncan Forbes, from Taking Liberties (Dufour Editions).

On this day in 1942, Anne Frank went into hiding with her parents and sister Margot—who had just been ordered to report to the Dutch Nazi organization—in the attic above her father's Amsterdam office. Soon they were joined by two other adults and their son, then by an elderly dentist.

It's the birthday of artist David Hockney, born in Bradford, England (1937)—who grew up in a working-class Yorkshire family, and studied at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1978 he settled in Los Angeles and started painting a series of California swimming pools, which established his international reputation.

It's the birthday of poet June Jordan, born in Harlem (1936), author of the collections Who Look at Me (1969), and Things that I Do in the Dark: Selected Poetry (1977).

Today is the 66th birthday of neurologist Oliver Sacks, born in London to physician parents (1933). In 1966 he came across a group of invalids who had been stricken, between 1917 and 1926, with "sleeping sickness," encephalitis lethargica. When he tried an experimental treatment for Parkinson's victims—the drug L-Dopa—for a miraculous period his zombie-like patients came to life, after 40 or 50 years of passivity, before lapsing back into their waking 'sleep.' But when Sacks offered his findings to medical journals he was simply not believed. Reaching out to a wider audience, he wrote Awakenings (1973), which, 17 years later, with the success of the movie, became a bestseller. He also wrote several books on curious neurological phenomena including The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1985).

It's the birthday of illustrator Warren Chappell, born in Richmond, Virginia (1904).

It's the birthday of journalist Dorothy Thompson, born in Lancaster, New York (1894), the first journalist to be expelled from Germany by Hitler's Nazi regime.

It's the birthday of historian Samuel Eliot Morison, born in Boston (1887)—a Harvard scholar who recreated, in vivid prose, the nautical adventures of Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and Sir Francis Drake, as well as exploits of the U.S. Navy during World War Two. He made numerous voyages himself, sailing the routes taken by Columbus, and during the war served on 12 different ships in the Naval Reserve. Some of his books include Admiral of the Ocean Sea (about Columbus—Pultizer Prize for History, 1942); John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (Pulitzer, 1959)—plus his 15-volume History of the United States Naval Operations in World War Two (1947-62).

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

«

»

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show