Almanac of Story Tellers: Margaret Leech

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Nov. 7th

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    It is the 311th day of the year, leaving 54 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1893, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Margaret Leech was born.

    She told her stories with diligent and dedicated research with and vivid, detailed writing that pulled no punches. Her prize-winning books tackled presidents at the opposite ends of the spectrum -- the beloved Abraham Lincoln, credited with saving the country during the Civil War; and William McKinley, mostly ignored before her book, which was called "a first-rate study of a second-rate president."

    She was graduated from Vassar College in 1915, started working for Condé Nast publications, and became a member of the Algonquin Round Table.

    Her first books were novels -- The Back of the Book, published in 1924, was a semi-autobiographical tale of a woman working in New York. That and two others were praised for their detail and fine writing, but after a couple of biographies she co-wrote, and a failed play, she found Kleio and moved on to writing history.

    She spend five years reading letters and other documents in New York and Washington about life during the Civil War. The result was Reveille in Washington, 1859-1865, published in 1941. It became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1942. It was praised as showing "an implacable concern for the grim and bitter truth."

    Leech spend 12-plus years researching her next work, In the Days of McKinley. Her careful and detailed writing in the book, published in 1959, took a new look at McKinley, and actually improved his reputation. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for History, she also won the Bancroft Prize, one of the most distinguished academic awards.

    Leech died in 1974.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Harold Ross

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Nov. 6th

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    It is the 310th day of the year, leaving 55 days remaining in 2022.

 

  On this date in 1892, the editor Harold Ross was born.

    Harold let other people tell their stories, but he ensured their prose was crisp and clean and, above all else, readable.

    He spent most of his life at the New Yorker, which along with his wife, Jane Grant, he helped found in 1925, and then served as its editor for the next 26 years.

    The New Yorker, he said, was for the urbane, sophisticated, well-rounded and socially conscious reader. It was not, as he said in the first issue, for "the little old lady in Dubuque."

      He saw the New Yorker as an adjunct to the daily newspapers of the day. His magazine would not deal in sensationalism, but in interpretation. It would seek out the facts and stories that took extra effort. His magazine would be funny and interesting, he said, a dig at his own quotation that "if you can't be funny, be interesting."     

    As an editor, he insisted on writing that was clear and concise, yet precise. He appreciated wit, but eschewed sexual content. He promoted and enjoyed the single panel cartoons that soon became a trademark of the publication.

    He was always on the lookout for good writing, and cared not a whit if the writer was well-known. He was, however, a member of the writers clique known as the Algonquin Round Table, so he knew people who knew people.

    He often gave these young, then-unknown writers their first assignments and bylines in his magazine. Among those who wrote for the magazine during his years were J.D. Salinger, Dorothy Parker, E.B. White, and Ogden Nash. Artists included Charles Addams and George Price.

    Ross died in 1951 in New York. 

Book Review: Haven

 

•  Author: Emma Donoghue

• Where I bought this book: The Strand, New York City. 

• Why I bought this book:  Donoghue is one of my favorite writers, and this is her latest.

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    This slow, meandering narrative is like taking a trip down the Shannon River sometime in the Seventh Century.

    It's a meaningful ride, one of compelling stories and heartbreak, of questions of life and immortality, of whether being alone is the same as loneliness.  

    It tells of Irish history, both physical and spiritual. It tells of Christian ideology, or the desire to please that version of  god above all else, whatever that may mean. 

    It begin when Artt, a monk at a monastery on the western coast of Ireland, has a vision of himself and two other men  finding a more isolated location to better worship God. Artt feels the current monastery has too many comforts -- regular meals, a warm place to sleep, and music during the evening hours. But Artt fervently believes that only by suffering and fending for themselves -- and above all putting God at the center of their lives -- could they properly honor his will.

    So he gathers Trian, a naïve young man, and Cormac, who came to the monastery late in life, after his family died in a plague, and the trio sets off to find an isolated rock on Ireland's Atlantic coast.

    The novel continues its slow journey, as the men find Skellig Michael -- an actual place eight miles off the coast of County Kerry that was founded by monks sometime in the latter part of the First Millennium. It is what Artt wants, set off from human habitation, a windswept, rocky land that would focus their minds on worshipping, honoring, and praising God.

    The basics of this story are real. Skellig Michael, now a tourist attraction, is lonely, cold, and hard to get to. Evidence shows that monks did arrive there more than a thousand years ago, built some stone structures and attempted to open a monastery so they could worship the Christian God more than life itself.

    You know, I get the desire to live alone, on some forgotten -- or as yet unknown -- part of the world. And while it's not for me, I get the dream of making a life on one's own, to be self-sufficient, to live among nature, and to sleep under the stars. 

    But what I don't understand is the need to welcome -- even to seek -- pain and suffering and deprivation to ensure your devotion is real. Artt insists that his monks should serve their God first and foremost, and thus building shrines and worship centers must take precedence over finding shelter and supplies.

    Artt wants the days to be spent honoring God, which includes copying out, by hand, the words of the sacred text. And to do this means creating the paper, ink, and writing materials, instead of finding food, water, and other necessities of life. Artt nixes the latter, saying only that God will provide. To doubt that is to doubt God.

    Donoghue explores the questions of what is love and survival. She blends the aspirations of Trian and Cormac to serve God and keep their vow to obey and follow Artt despite his  contentions that God wants them to suffer while doing so.

    Artt sees their human needs as selfish, while they come to see his philosophy of God as rather pointless. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Walter Cronkite

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Nov. 4th

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    It is the 308th day of the year, leaving 57 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1916, the newsman Walter Cronkite was born.

    He told his stories live, mostly on television, earning himself the sobriquet "the most trusted man in America" during the turbulent and tumultuous years of the 1960s and 1970s. He covered everything from the Kennedy assassination to the moon landing to the resignation of President Nixon.

    He began his journalistic career in the 1930s at the University of Texas in Austin, where he wrote for The Daily Texan and as a correspondent for a newspaper in Houston. He never graduated, and when World War II came along, he was sent overseas to cover the war for the United Press, one of the wire services of the time.

    Returning to the United States after a stint as the Moscow correspondent, Cronkite started working for CBS in 1950, hosting a variety of news-related programs and reporting on news  events.

    In 1962, he became the anchor of the CBS Evening News, which was expanding from 15 minutes to a half hour. A year later, he was the man who choked up when he told millions of Americans glued to the CBS network that John F. Kennedy was dead from an assassin's bullet.

    He was exuberant when he described the launch of the Apollo 11 flight that put two men on the moon. He was believed when he told the American people in February 1968, after two weeks of intense reporting in Vietnam, that the country was "mired in a stalemate."

    "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America," President Johnson reportedly said after watching the program.

    Cronkite was the sole anchor on the news program from 1962 to 1981, when he retired.

    He died in 2009.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Olympe de Gouges

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Nov. 3rd

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    It is the 307th day of the year, leaving 58 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1793, the French playwright and feminist, Olympe de Gouges, was beheaded during the French revolution.

    She told her stories questioning the second-class status of women in society, the dominant role men maintain, and the evils of the slave trade in plays and in pamphlets. She argued for the abolition of slavery and for women's equality. 

    She brought those taboo subjects to the stages of  Paris in her writing and literary salons.

    He first play, L'Homme Généeux (The Generous Man) dealt with how women lack political power and how men exploit them through their sexual and physical control. It spoke about the injustice of debtors' prisons. It was published in 1785, yet never produced.

    

    She struggled to have her plays performed. The first one to be staged was L'Esclavage de Négres, which had been renamed several times and was delayed for four years after the French theater group realized a woman had written it. It was the first French play to show the inhumanity of slavery -- and the first to show it from the perspective of a slave. It was shut down after three days because of its message.

    de Gouges used the experience to argue for a second national theater for women playwrights.

    She used the French Revolution to speak out for women's rights. In 1791, she published Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the rights of woman and of the female citizen) as a reply to the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du Citoyen, (Declaration of the rights of man and of the male citizen), which was published two years earlier.

    She was the third women sent to the guillotine during the revolution, and the only one executed for her political writings. She had sided with moderates and defended King Louis XVI, and called for a vote for citizens to determine what form of government they wanted. After her allies lost support, she was arrested, tried, and executed on Nov. 3, 1793.