Fun_People Archive
25 Aug
LIT BITS V3 #239
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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 100 17:38:25 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #239
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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #239
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp
Today is Saturday, 26 August 2000; on this day,
126 years ago (1874),
American novelist and playwright, Zona Gale, is born in Portage,
Wisconsin. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning _Miss Lulu Brett_, a study of
an unmarried woman's attempts at self-assertion in the face of a
constricting social environment, will establish her as a realistic
chronicler of Midwestern village life.
120 years ago (1880),
French man of letters Guillaume Apollinaire, is born in Rome of Polish
parents.
107 years ago (1893),
Jack London, 17, returns to San Francisco after spending eight months
on a seal-hunting expedition aboard the _Sophia Sutherland_.
96 years ago (1904),
Christopher Isherwood is born in Disely, Cheshire. Three years spent
in Berlin (c.1931-34) will inspire a number of stories about the author
and Sally Bowles that provide the source for the play _I Am a Camera_,
which in turn becomes the musical and film _Cabaret_.
Today's poem:
The Credo of Jack London
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant
blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in
magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet
The purpose of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
Jack London
© 2000 Peter Langston