On December 7, 1929 Hart Crane threw a grand party in his Brooklyn home near the great bridge of his most famous (at the time, unpublished) work. It was a farewell party for his publishers-to-be, Harry & Caresse Crosby of the Black Sun Press. The Crosbys were due to sail back to France on the 13th and Crane wanted to send them off with a lively & memorable event. By all accounts it was a terrific party and in attendance were William Carlos Williams, …

As with many writers, the seeds that bear the fruit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ fiction are found to have been planted in his childhood. Born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, a coastal town in northern Colombia, he was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandparents were perhaps the most important people in his life. García Márquez would write: “I feel that all my writing has been about the experiences of the time I spent with my grandparents.” Both were excellent story …

“People within the science fiction world never regarded me as one of them in the first place. They saw me as the enemy. I was the one who wanted to subvert everything they believed. I wanted to kill outer space stone dead. I wanted to kill the far future and focus on inner space and the next five minutes. And sci-fi’ers to this day don’t regard me as one of them. I’m some sort of virus who got aboard and penetrated the virtue of science …

Christened Albert Achebe in homage to Prince Albert, husband of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria, Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi, located in Eastern Nigeria, on November 16, 1930. Igbo, formerly called Ibo, is the language of Ogidi and serves as the cultural identifier to Igbo speakers. Achebe has become one of the most well-known contemporary authors from the African continent. His first novel placed Achebe in the literary spotlight immediately following its release. The novel was a departure from colonialist …

Of all the literary movements of the 20th century the Beat Generation occupies the most untouchable position. They are still so hip that any criticism takes on the form of heresy. For fear of appearing square they are allowed to get away with murder.

The movement was never quite a movement to begin with; more a ragged group of hopeless romantics and scoundrels united by vague quasi-Buddhistic concepts, potent sexism, Rimbaud-esque spontaneity, intellectual snobbery and a jazz tinged bohemianism.

Undoubtedly there are glimpses of utter …

He fell as fall the mighty ones
Nobly undaunted to the last
And death has now united him
With … heroes of the past

No sound of strife disturb his sleep!
Calmly he rests: no human pain
Or high ambition spurs him now
The peaks of glory to attain
(James Joyce – Ivy Day in the Committee Room)

November 22nd, 2002 marks the 9th anniversary of the death of British writer and composer Anthony Burgess. He died on that date, of lung cancer, in a London hospital, leaving behind an output of …

“I know nothing more stupid than to die in an automobile accident.”
–Albert Camus
The last thing in the world Albert Camus wanted was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. “I’m castrated,” the mortified Algerian-born French writer complained upon hearing that he’d won the greatest honor any writer could ever hope for. At that moment in his life, Camus was depressed, ill, and suffering from an enormous writer’s block. Now he would be subject to the torture of public exposure, spectacle, and solemnities. …

Diane DiPrima Interview

9/22/92

Since I was young I’ve admired beat literature and it’s developers. My young mind was taken with the romantic image of Kerouac roaming the interior of the body politic, a mad sweating virus on the loose in the highwayvein of Amerika, Ginsberg holy maniac,chanting, praying, exorcising a generation ruined by madness, Burroughs and Gysin, pushing the envelope, rubbing out the word, and DiPrima, conjuring, stradling the magick/dream line, throwing us bits of tasty …

Atmospheric depiction’s and impressionistic wanderings run through the nocturnal urban labyrinth of the novella A Spy in the House of Love in the ‘continuous novel’ Cities of the Interior by Anaïs Nin. These are my own observations and interpretations of the text. Some embellishments added. “Quotes” are not official, and be warned of spoilers!

Nin’s Sabina is a beautiful woman lost in the labyrinth of her own lies. One desperate evening she calls a random number and begins to confess her crimes. The man …

For many, the name Sylvia Plath immediately brings to mind images of suicide. While Plath’s untimely death may have contributed to her achieving a sort of cult status, much of her writing is only recently being discovered and appreciated.

Plath was born October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts to Otto (a professor of biology and German) and Aurelia Plath. After Plath’s father died in 1940, the family moved to Wellesley where Plath’s mother took a teaching position at Boston University. …