Jean Genet was born on December 19, 1910 in Paris, France and soon afterwards abandoned by his unmarried mother. Raised by a family of peasants, he began stealing, and getting caught, at a young age. He became accustomed to harsh reform schools as a child and easily made the transition to prison as an adult.

The seedy life of the professional small-time criminal became his theme, and he described this life with unprecedented realism. His concept of degradation as a aesthetic life-choice anticipated …

Henry Miller was born on December 26, 1891 in the Yorkville section of Manhattan to first generation German-Americans. It was his mother, Louise, who spurned the writer and the rebel in him. She beat up his sister for the “crime” of being retarded, scolded his father for being a dreamy alcoholic, and hid Henry’s typewriter in a closet to hide the embarrassment of having a writer for a son. His childhood was not easy. He was a great reader, reciting Old Testament stories out loud …

The second daughter of renowned education reformer Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where her father was working as a teacher.

The family would soon settle in Concord, Massachusetts, where the young girl would be exposed to the brilliant company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the rest of the Transcendentalist crowd.

The Transcendentalists taught that each person must find their own peculiar way to contribute to the …

We live in a world of symbols, we humans on earth with all our languages. The fish, a live, vibrant creature of our oceans, lakes and streams is also a symbol of hope, love and community. This was true for many primary peoples, for early Christians, and for young hippies who read Richard Brautigan’s books, ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ and ‘Trout Fishing in America’. In both books trout are used extensively as symbols and realities. Ernest Hemingway of course had used trout and trout …

Recently I have been reading Richard Brautigan’s ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ in conjunction with Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Winesburg, Ohio’. I find certain similarities in the two books, the action taking place in dreamlike landscapes and characters often being types, or “grotesques” as Anderson calls them. ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ also reminds me of Carl Sandburg’s ‘Rootabaga Stories’, whimsical stories about the Potato Face Blind Man, Blue Wind Boy and others of their ilk. By way of comparison, here are the opening sections from all three …