Tuesday

Sep. 12, 2000

My Dad's Wallet

by Raymond Carver

Broadcast date: TUESDAY, 12 September 2000

Poem: "My Dad's Wallet," by Raymond Carver, from Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (Random House).

It's the birthday of Canadian poet and author Michael Ondaatje, born in Sri Lanka, 1942. His fifth novel, The English Patient, won Canada's highest literary prize, the Governor General's award, as well as Britain's Booker Prize. It was later made into a movie that won nine Academy Awards.

It's the birthday in London, 1934, of novelist Alan Isler. He was 60 years old when his first book came out: The Prince of West End Avenue (1994).

It's the birthday in 1880, in Baltimore, of H.L. Mencken, the journalist, humorist, and critic, who spent most of his career writing for the Baltimore Sun. He championed novelists like Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis before anyone had ever heard of them. Mencken coined the term "booboisie" for the middle class, adding, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

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

 

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