Saturday

Jul. 17, 1999

The Listeners

by Walter De La Mare

Broadcast Date: SATURDAY: July 17, 1999

Poem: "The Listeners," by Walter De La Mare, from Collected Poems of Walter De La Mare (Faber & Faber).

In 1938 on this day, an unemployed airplane mechanic (31-year-old Douglas Corrigan), took off from Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett field—but instead of flying west to Los Angeles, he turned the Curtiss Robin monoplane east. Twenty-eight hours and thirteen minutes later, he landed in Dublin, Ireland. Given a hero's reception on his return to America, he claimed to have followed the wrong end of his compass needle, and was given the nickname 'Wrong Way Corrigan.'

Today is the 64th birthday of composer and humorist Peter Schickele [SHIK-uh-lee], born in Ames, Iowa (1935), who created P.D.Q. Bach, who in turn wrote "Concerto for Horn and Hardart," the oratorio "Iphegenia in Brooklyn," and "Blaues Gras" (the Bluegrass Contata).

It's the birthday of iconoclastic American journalist Erwin Knoll, born in Vienna (1931) and brought to America as a child. He wrote for a number of newspapers before he served as the editor-in-chief (1973-94) for The Progressive magazine in Madison, Wisconsin.

It's the birthday of novelist Christina Stead, born in Sydney, Australia (1902). Her best known novel, The Man Who Loved Children, was ignored after its publication in 1940, but was reissued to great acclaim in 1965.

It's the birthday of photographer Berenice Abbott, born in Springfield, Ohio (1898). She was best known for her black and white photos of New York in the 1930s.

It's the birthday of mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, born in Malden, Massachusetts (1889), who wrote many detective novels starring the defense attorney Perry Mason.

It's the birthday of novelist and Nobel laureate S(hmuel) Y(osef) Agnon [AHG-nahn], born in Ukraine—in 1888. Moved with his family to Palestine when he was a teenager, and set out to become a novelist in a new language: Hebrew.

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