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IN MEMORIAM: Mr Fish / “Rest in Peace, Dear Gore”
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IN MEMORIAM: Gore Vidal / “Gore Vidal, American Writer And Cultural Critic, Dies” / (AUDIO)
Gore Vidal came from a generation of novelists whose fiction gave them a political platform. Norman Mailer ran for mayor of New York City; Kurt Vonnegut became an anti-war spokesman. And Vidal was an all-around critic. His novels sometimes infuriated readers with unflattering portraits of American history.
He also wrote essays and screenplays, and his play The Best Man currently has a revival on Broadway.
Vidal died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, from complications of pneumonia. He was 86 years old.
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- US author Gore Vidal dies aged 86 (bbc.co.uk)
- Gore Vidal: a life in pictures (guardian.co.uk)
- Gore Vidal quotes: 26 of the best (guardian.co.uk)
- Hail and Farewell, Gore Vidal (truthdig.com)
- Gore Vidal: Born-again atheist (examiner.com)
- Gore Vidal Remembered: 2003 Interview With Late Iconoclastic Writer & Longtime Critic of U.S. Empire (democracynow.org)
- Democracy Now! Shows Featuring Gore Vidal (democracynow.org)
- Gore Vidal and His Reading List for America (billmoyers.com)
- Gore Vidal in ‘The Nation’ (thenation.com)
IN MEMORIAM: Ray Bradbury / “‘Fahrenheit 451’ Author Ray Bradbury Dies At 91” / (AUDIO)
Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chroniclesand Fahrenheit 451, died Tuesday. He was 91. Bradbury was known for his futuristic tales — but he never used a computer, or even drove a car.
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He said it was a time when people couldn’t imagine the future, and his active imagination made him stand out. He once told Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross about exaggerating basic childhood fears, like monsters at the top of the stairs.
“As soon as I looked up, there it was, and it was horrible,” Bradbury remembers. “And I would scream and fall back down the stairs, and my mother and father would get up and sigh and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, here we go again.’ “
Bradbury dove into books as a child. Wild tales from authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells captivated Bradbury — and made him dream of becoming a great author. So he started writing, churning out a short story every week during his teens. After his family moved to Southern California, he would escape to the basement of the UCLA library. There, he’d focus on his craft.
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A Tale Of Two Centuries: Charles Dickens Turns 200 (02.07.2012) / AUDIO
Charles Dickens — one of the most beloved storytellers in the English language — was born 200 years ago Tuesday [02.07.2012]. He was a comic genius and a social reformer whose novels made him famous in his own time, and continue as classics in ours.
[…]
Dickens began his literary career with almost no formal education. He was born in Landport, on Feb. 7, 1812, the second of eight children. When he was 12, his father was sent to debtor’s prison. Dickens was forced to quit school and work in a London blacking factory, sealing pots of shoe polish and pasting labels on them. He would rework that hellish experience into his fiction for the rest of his life.
“He was a social reformer who knew whereof he spoke,” says actor Simon Callow, author of a new biography called Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World. “He knew what poverty was. He knew what it was to be rejected, to be cast aside, to live in squalor.”
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