Love, Sex, Death & Words: Surprising Tales From a Year in Literature
John Sutherland
Language: English
Pages: 544
ISBN: 1848312474
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Why was publication of Huckleberry Fin delayed until February 18, 1885? Which great literary love affair came to a tragic end on February 11, 1963? What effect did March 19, 2007 have on Philip Roth’s alter ego? Arranged by days of the year, Love, Sex, Death & Words provides an absorbing companion to literature’s inspiring past.
John Sutherland is a recently retired professor of English literature at University College London, and a past chairman of the Booker Prize panel.
Stephen Fender was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford and in the United Kingdom. He has taught in the United States at Santa Clara, Williams, and Dartmouth colleges.
of a king – and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms – I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns, and, we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. Famously,
concerns. Gilmore was the ideal way back into the death penalty. First, he was white. Second, he had been convicted of shooting a motel manager in Provo, Utah, on 20 July 1976, and (though the second case never came to court) a gas station attendant on the day before. Third, he wanted to die, rejecting all attempts of anti-death-sentence groups to have the sentence commuted, and attempting suicide three times while awaiting his execution. He was killed by firing squad at 8.07 in the morning on
by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (Allen Lane, 1983). Copyright Peter France, 1983. Forward copyright VAAP, 1983. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd Extract from ‘In Memory of Sigmund Freud’ by W.H. Auden copyright © 1976, 1991, The Estate of W.H. Auden. Reproduced by permission of The Wylie Agency on behalf of the estate of W.H. Auden Extract from ‘For the Union Dead’ by Robert Lowell, first published 1965, reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd Extract from
have a problem’ 1970 Along with Neil Armstrong’s famously fumbled ‘one small step’ and Gene Kranz’s ‘failure is not an option’, this is the best-remembered quote from the 1960s Apollo moonshot expeditions. The dean of SF authors, Arthur C. Clarke, claimed authorship of the phrase, as co-writer on Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke it was who came up with the line in which HAL 900 breaks into a TV transmission in which Dave Bowman (Discovery’s commander) is listening
So effective was he as a leader that he was elected its president the following year. Now he is remembered for how he wrote about the experience. Like Mourt’s Relation (see 15 November), Smith’s True Relation of the settlement (1608) was a booster’s tract, full of the natural plenty of the new country, and the tractability of the natives. Exploring the Chickahominy River, they are greeted by ‘the people in all places kindely intreating us, daunsing and feasting us with strawberries, Mulberries,