The Writer's Almanac from Monday, July 29, 2013

The Writer's Almanac from Monday, July 29, 2013

"Slowly" by Donna Masini, from Turning to Fiction. © 2004, Published by W.W. Norton.

ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013

It's the birthday of Chester Himes, born in Jefferson City, Missouri (1909). Himes was serving a 20-year sentence for grand larceny when he published his first short stories in Esquire. They brought him only temporary fame; he was still forced to work as a ditchdigger when he was released. He published If He Hollers Let Him Go in 1945 to warm reviews, but the book didn't sell well. His second novel, Lonely Crusade, received universally bad reviews. In despair, Himes followed other black expatriates to Paris. There he met an editor from the French publishing house Gallimard. They had started a series of dark detective novels, and the editor told Himes: "Get an idea, start with action, somebody does something — man reaches out a hand and opens a door, light shines in his eyes, a body lies on the floor [...] We don't give a damn who's thinking what — only what they're doing [...] Don't worry about it making sense. That's for the end. Give me 220 typed pages."

Vincent van Gogh died on this date in 1890. He had shot himself in the chest in a wheat field two days before, and managed to make it home to his own bed. The doctor decided not to remove the bullet, and his brother Theo was sent for. He rushed from Paris to his brother's bedside and reported that van Gogh's last words were "The sadness will go on forever."

It's the birthday of poet Stanley Kunitz (1905), born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He published his first book of poetry, Intellectual Things, in 1930. His 1971 volume The Testing-Tree marked a shift in his work, from his early, formal style to one that was looser, more personal, and written in everyday language. He explained the shift in Publishers Weekly: "I think that as a young poet I looked for what Keats called 'a fine excess,' but as an old poet I look for spareness and rigor and a world of compassion."

He was named poet laureate in 2000, at the age of 95. He was still publishing and promoting poetry. The Wild Braid: a Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden (2005) is a collection of essays and conversations about his two loves, poetry and gardening, and was released on his 100th birthday. He died the following spring.

Today is the birthday of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns (1953). He was born in Brooklyn, New York, but he grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father was a professor at the University of Michigan. He studied film and design at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and his first major documentary film was Brooklyn Bridge in 1981.

It's his 11-hour television miniseries The Civil War (1990) that made his name. Because he used so many still photographs from the period, he came up with the idea to give a sense of movement by panning over the photos, or zooming slowly in on a particular detail. The technique has come to be known as "the Burns effect." He's since produced lengthy documentaries on jazz (2001), World War II (2007), the National Parks (2009), two series about baseball (1994 and 2010), and Prohibition (2011).

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

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