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Monday May 28 |
Tuesday May 29 |
Wednesday May 30 |
Thursday May 31 |
Friday June 1 |
Saturday June 2 |
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May is
Get Caught Reading
and
Creative Beginnings
Month
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Sunday May 27
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Born May 27
Andrei Georgiyevich Bitov (Russian: Андрей Георгиевич Битов) (b. 1937) – Russian novelist, poet
John Cheever (b. 1912) – U.S. novelist, short story writer – The Stories of John Cheever (1979)
Rachel Carson (b. 1907) – U.S. marine biologist and environmentalist – Silent Spring
Dashiell Hammett (b. 1894) – U.S. detective fiction novelist – The Maltese Falcon
Monday May 28
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Born May 28
Muriel Barbery (b. 1969) – French novelist – The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006)
Patrick White (b. 1912) – Australian novelist, poet, 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature – Voss (1957)
Ian Fleming (b. 1908) – U.K. novelist (James Bond series) – From Russia With Love (1957)
John Fogerty (b. 1945) – U.S. singer/songwriter for rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Born on the Bayou”
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Tuesday May 29
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Born May 29
Leah Goldberg (לאה גולדברג; ) (b. 1911) – Israeli poet
G.K. Chesterton (b. 1874) – U.K. novelist, poet, short story writer – “The Scandal of Father Brown”
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Wednesday May 30
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Born May 30
Vizma Belševica (b. 1931) – Latvian poet, novelist – Words about Words
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Thursday May 31
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Born May 31
Judith Wright (b. 1915) – Australian poet, environmentalist, human rights activist – “Bora Ring”
Walt Whitman (b. 1819) – U.S. poet
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Friday June 1
| Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956) – Romanian poet, novelist, and essayist |
Read about Mircea Cărtărescu here
Read a profile of Mircea Carterescu here
Seven floors high, over 250 metres long, eight entrances – a great hulk of grey, weathered concrete slabs built in the early 1960s at Stefan cel Mare. “We call them matchbox flats,” says Mircea Cartarescu and holds open the door of the lift, which is just big enough for him, his wife (the poet and journalist Ioana Nicolaie) and myself to squeeze in. On the fifth floor his parents open the door, and he leads the way into his childhood bedroom. The room is furnished with a large bed, a cupboard, a table and a chair.
I have never been here before and yet I know the room. It is where Cartarescu’s novel “Die Wissenden” (or “The Knowing” - vol. 1 of the “Orbitor” trilogy) begins: the young narrator sits on the bed and looks out over Bucharest just like Victor Hugo’s chimaera looked out over Paris.
At the age of 24 he joined the legendary university “Monday circle” led by literary critic Nicolae Manolescu. “Faruri, vitrine, fotografii” (headlights, window displays, photographs) is the title of his debut work published that same year. “We moved from the European poetry tradition to the American, we wanted to be faster, harder, more powerful.” Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara were the models for the “Eighties Generation”, who dedicated themselves to the reality of here and now and survived unscathed at the university despite their dissident views. After producing three volumes of poetry as a student and while working as a primary school teacher on the outskirts of Bucharest, Cartarescu began writing prose.
Read an essay by Cartarescu “The Gypsies – a Romanian problem” here
The Romanians in Wallachia and Moldavia – alone in Europe – made the Gypsies their slaves, binding them to the soil. Torn from their nomadic way of life, the Gypsies were forced to put down roots on the land of their masters…. Paradoxically, we gave these ancient inhabitants the coup de grace in granting them their freedom. In the wake of 1848, enthusiasm gripped the new, pro-Western Romanian elite. Not for the first time, philanthropy paved the way for horrendous catastrophe. Assembled before the estates of hundreds of enlightened boyars, the Gypsy slaves were told: “Brothers, you are free! Go where your feet take you.”
This “slave liberation,” without the slightest logistical or psychological preparation, wreaked unthinkable havoc. Hundreds of thousands of Gypsies were suddenly free to die of hunger. With no money, clothing or livelihood, without a belief or a culture – with nothing but their naked humanity, they soon populated the prisons en masse. [from an English translation of an article from Neue Zürcher Zeitung November 29, 2007]
Read some of Cartarescu’s poems (in Romanian) here
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Born June 1
Casper de Vries (b. 1954) – South African (Afrikaans) comedian
Naguib Surur (b. 1932) – Egyptian playwright and poet
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Born June 2
Dorothy West (b. 1907) – U.S. novelist, short story writer (Harlem Renaissance) – The Wedding (1995)
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