Status Updates From A Reader's Book of Days: Tr...

December 6

BORN: 1919 Eric Newby (A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush), London
1942 Peter Handke (The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick), Griffen, Austria

DIED: 1951 Harold Ross (editor, The New Yorker), 59, Boston
1961 Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), 35, Bethesda, Md.

December 5

BORN: 1934 Joan Division (Slouching Toward Bethlehem), Sacramento, Calif.
1935 Calvin Trillin (Killings; Alice, Let's Eat), Kansas City, Mo.

DIED: 1784 Phillis Wheatley (Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral), 31, Boston
1870 Alexandre Dumas pére (The Count of Monte Cristo), 68, Puts, France

December 4

BORN: 1795 Thomas Carlyle (Sartor Resartus), Ecclefechan, Scotland
1875 Rainer Maria Rilke (Duino Elegies), Prague

DIED: 1975 Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism), 69, New York City
1987 Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad Are Friends), 54, New York City

December 3

BORN: 1857 Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim), Berdychiv, Russian Empire
1953 Patrick Chamoiseau (Texaco, School Days), Ford-de-France, Martinique

DIED: 1910 Mary Baker Eddy (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), 89, Newton, Mass.
2000 Gwendolyn Brooks (Annie Allen, Maud Martha), 83, Chicago

December 2

BORN: 1958 George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), Amarillo, Tex.
1963 Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, State of Wonder), Los Angeles

DIED: 1814 Marquis de Sade (Justine, The 120 Days of Sodom), 74, Charenton, France
1995 Robertson Davies (Fifth Business), 82, Orangeville, Ont.

December 1

BORN: 1935 Woody Allen (Getting Even, Without Feathers), Bronx, N.Y.
1958 Candace Bushnell (Sex and the City), Glastonbury, Conn.

DIED: 1947 Aleister Crowley (The Book of the Law, The Book of Lies), 72, Hastings, England
2011 Christa Wolf (Casandra, The Quest for Christa W.), 82, Berlin

November 30

BORN: 1667 Jonathan Swift (A Tale of the Tub), Dublin
1835 Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn), Florida, Mo.

DIED: 1900 Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), 46, Paris
1997 Kathy Acker (Blood and Guts in High School), c. 50, Tijuana, Mexico

November 29

BORN: 1898 C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters), Belfast,, Ireland
1918 Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), New York City

DIED: 1980 Dorothy Day (The Long Loneliness), 83, New York City
1991 Frank Yerby (The Foxes of Harrow), 75, Madrid

November 28

BORN: 1757 William Blake (Songs of Innocence and Experience), London
1881 Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity, The World of Yesterday), Vienna

DIED: 1859 Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), 76, Tarrytown, N.Y.
1968 Enid Blyton (Five on a Treasure Island), 71, Hampstead, England

November 27

BORN: 1909 James Agee (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), Knoxville, Tenn
1964 David Rakoff (Half Empty, Don't Get Too Comfortable), Montreal

DIED: 8 B.C. Horace (Satires, Odes, Epistles)f, 56, Rome
2006 Bebe Moore Campbell (Your Blues Ain't Like Mine), 56, Los Angeles

November 26

BORN: 1922 Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts), Minneapolis
1943 Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping, Gilead, Home), Sandpoint, Idaho

DIED: 1974 Cyril Connolly (Enemies of Promise), 71, Eastbourne, England
2005 Stan Berenstain (The Berenstain Bears), 82, Solebury, Pa.

November 25

BORN: 1909 P.D. Eastman ()Go, Dog, Go!, Are You My Mother?), Amherst, Mass.
1951 Charlaine Harris (Dead Until Dark), Tunica, Miss.

DIED: 1968 Upton Sinclair (The Jungle, Oil!, King Coal), 90, Bound Brook, N.J.
1970 Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow, The Sound of Waves), 45, Tokyo

November 24

BORN: 1888 Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People), Maryville, Mo.
1961 Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things), Shillong, India

DIED: 2002 Harriet Doett (Stones for Ijbarra), 92, Pasadena, Calif.
2003 Hugh Kenner (The Pound Era), 80, Athens, Ga.

November 23

BORN: 1920 Paul Celan ("Death Fugue"), Cernauti, Romania
1949 Gail Jones (Corregidora, The Healing), Lexington, Ky.

DIED: 1976 André Malraux (Man's Fate), 75, Créteil, France
1990 Roald Dahl (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Twits), 74, Oxford, England

November 22

BORN: 1809 George Eliot (Adam Berde) The Mill on the Floss), Nuneaton, England
1969 Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, Chicken with Plums). East, Iran

DIED: 1916 Jack London (The Call of the Wild), 40, Glen Ellen, Calif.
1993 Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), 76, London

November 21

BORN: 1694 Voltaire (Candide, Philosophical Dictionary), Paris
1932 Beryl Bainbridge (An Awfully Big Adventure), Liverpool, England

DIED: 1970 Anzia Yezierska (Bread Givers, Hungry Hearts), c. 85, Ontario, Calif.
2011 Anne McCaffrey (The Dragonriders of Bern), 85, County Wicklow, Ireland

November 20

BORN: 1923 Nadine Gordimer (July's People), Springs, South Africa
1936 Don De Lillo (Libra, White Noise, Underworld), Bronx, N.Y.

DIED: 1947 Wolfgang Borchert (The Man Outside), 267, Basel, Switzerland
1995 Robie Macauley (The End of Pity, Technique in Fiction), 76, Boston

November 19

BORN: 1929 Norman Cantor (Inventing the Middle Ages), Winnipeg, Man.
1942 Sharon Olds (The Dead and the Living, The Father), San Francisco

DIED: 1974 Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy), 46, New Milford, Conn.
1975 Elizabeth Taylor (Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont), 63, Penn, England

November 18

BORN: 1939 Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye), Ottawa, Ont.
1953 Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Northampton, England

DIED: 1922 Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time), 51, Paris
1999 Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky), 88, Tangier, Morocco

November 17

BORN: 1916 Shelby Foote (The Civil War, Shiloh), Greenville, Miss.
1983 Christopher Paolini (Eragon, Eldest), Los Angeles

DIED: 1968 Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan, Gormenghast), 57, Burcot, England
1992 Audre Lorde (Sami, Siste Outsider), 58, St. Croix

November 16

BORN: 1930 China Achebe (Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease), Oxide, Nigeria
1954 Andrea Barrett (Ship Fever, The Voyage of the Narwhal), Boston

DIED: 1973 Alan Watts (The Way of Zen), 58, Druid Heights, Calif.
2006 Milton Friedman (Capitalism and Freedom), 94, San Francisco

November 15

BORN: 1920 J.G. Ballard (Crash, Empire of the Sun), Shanghai
1941 Daniel Pinkwater (The Hoboken Chicken Emergency), Memphis

DIED: 1932 Charles W. Chestnutt (The Marrow of Tradition), 74, Cleveland
1978 Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Some), 76, New York City