Judi’s Reviews > A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year > Status Update
Judi
is on page 59 of 448
February 20
1943 Beautiful, rich, and vivacious, the celebrity debutantes Oona O'Neill (daughter of the playwright)f and Carol Marcus (the original for Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's) attracted publicity and men, including, in Oona's case, the young Jerry Salinger, not yet published in The New Yorker, and in Carol's, William Saroyan. Stationed in Georgia during the war, Salinger wrote long love letters...
— Mar 26, 2026 06:21AM
1943 Beautiful, rich, and vivacious, the celebrity debutantes Oona O'Neill (daughter of the playwright)f and Carol Marcus (the original for Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's) attracted publicity and men, including, in Oona's case, the young Jerry Salinger, not yet published in The New Yorker, and in Carol's, William Saroyan. Stationed in Georgia during the war, Salinger wrote long love letters...
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Judi
is on page 62 of 448
February 23
1942 ...at the collapse or Europe and his sense that the world he knew had ended was overwhelming. Though he found Brazil peaceful and wrote an optimistic travelogue about his new home, Brazil: A Land of the Future, Zweig took a lethal dose of veronal with his wife a few days after visiting Rio for a night of Carnival. On this day, the following afternoon, their bodies were discovered in their bedroom.
— 16 hours, 26 min ago
1942 ...at the collapse or Europe and his sense that the world he knew had ended was overwhelming. Though he found Brazil peaceful and wrote an optimistic travelogue about his new home, Brazil: A Land of the Future, Zweig took a lethal dose of veronal with his wife a few days after visiting Rio for a night of Carnival. On this day, the following afternoon, their bodies were discovered in their bedroom.
Judi
is on page 61 of 448
February 22
1882 ... incest with both his sisters and his daughters—that produced some of the most memorable public sculpture in twentieth-century Britain, a swears of books of autobiography and philosophy (including Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament, which argued that pants restricted the male organ—he preferred tunics and smocks), and two of the most elegant and lasting of modern typefaces, Perpetua ...
— Mar 27, 2026 05:05PM
1882 ... incest with both his sisters and his daughters—that produced some of the most memorable public sculpture in twentieth-century Britain, a swears of books of autobiography and philosophy (including Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament, which argued that pants restricted the male organ—he preferred tunics and smocks), and two of the most elegant and lasting of modern typefaces, Perpetua ...
Judi
is on page 60 of 448
February 21
1911 Marcel Proust, a new subscriber to the "theatrophone" service that broadcast performances over telephone wires, listened to the Opéra-Comique's performance of Dubussy's Pelléas et Mélisande from his bedroom,
— Mar 27, 2026 05:08AM
1911 Marcel Proust, a new subscriber to the "theatrophone" service that broadcast performances over telephone wires, listened to the Opéra-Comique's performance of Dubussy's Pelléas et Mélisande from his bedroom,
Judi
is on page 58 of 448
February 19
1895 ... the novel he dedicated to Gates, "its Godfather and Sponsor." One of the teaching assistants in the course, though, didn't approve of Norris's vivid style. "Morbid and repulsive," he wrote about one passage, and in response to Trina McTeague's death scene—she expired 'with a rapid series of hiccoughs, that stirred the great pool of blood in which she lay"—he commented, "Not a toothsome subject."
— Mar 25, 2026 01:06PM
1895 ... the novel he dedicated to Gates, "its Godfather and Sponsor." One of the teaching assistants in the course, though, didn't approve of Norris's vivid style. "Morbid and repulsive," he wrote about one passage, and in response to Trina McTeague's death scene—she expired 'with a rapid series of hiccoughs, that stirred the great pool of blood in which she lay"—he commented, "Not a toothsome subject."
Judi
is on page 57 of 448
February 18
1949 ... In a reply on this day, she resisted further: "I am amenable to criticism but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not be persuaded to do otherwise. The finished book, though I hope less angular, will be just as odd if not odder than the nine chapters you have now." The odd book when finished, she called Wise Blood; it was published instead by Harcourt, Brace.
— Mar 25, 2026 07:35AM
1949 ... In a reply on this day, she resisted further: "I am amenable to criticism but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not be persuaded to do otherwise. The finished book, though I hope less angular, will be just as odd if not odder than the nine chapters you have now." The odd book when finished, she called Wise Blood; it was published instead by Harcourt, Brace.
Judi
is on page 56 of 448
February 17
1903. Early in a marvellously varied career that included writing The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and running the NAACP, James Weldon Johnson left his position as a grade-school principal in Jacksonville to take a chance on Broadway songwriting with his brother, Rosamund, and the performer Bob Cole. They were an immediate success (on this day, the New York Sun called them the "ebony Offenbach's")
— Mar 25, 2026 06:25AM
1903. Early in a marvellously varied career that included writing The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and running the NAACP, James Weldon Johnson left his position as a grade-school principal in Jacksonville to take a chance on Broadway songwriting with his brother, Rosamund, and the performer Bob Cole. They were an immediate success (on this day, the New York Sun called them the "ebony Offenbach's")
Judi
is on page 55 of 448
February 16
1985 There was no single day when John M. Hull went blind. From childhood, the dark shadows in his vision waxed and waned, but they finally grew until he could no longer tell day from night. His memoir, Touching the Rock, begins after that point, a record of complete blindness written by someone who once knew full sight but found himself forgetting what it was like. It's a modestly extraordinary book...
— Mar 24, 2026 10:44AM
1985 There was no single day when John M. Hull went blind. From childhood, the dark shadows in his vision waxed and waned, but they finally grew until he could no longer tell day from night. His memoir, Touching the Rock, begins after that point, a record of complete blindness written by someone who once knew full sight but found himself forgetting what it was like. It's a modestly extraordinary book...
Judi
is on page 54 of 448
February 15
2001 The wheels were already starting to loosen on the Enron juggernaut when new CEO Jeff Skilling spent an agitated twenty minutes on the phone with Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, insisting that his company's finances were "not a black box" before hanging up on her. On this morning, the next day, Enron CFO Andy Fastow flew to New York to unconvincingly address her concerns, finally ending their...
— Mar 24, 2026 08:36AM
2001 The wheels were already starting to loosen on the Enron juggernaut when new CEO Jeff Skilling spent an agitated twenty minutes on the phone with Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, insisting that his company's finances were "not a black box" before hanging up on her. On this morning, the next day, Enron CFO Andy Fastow flew to New York to unconvincingly address her concerns, finally ending their...
Judi
is on page 53 of 448
February 14
1971 In Oaxaca, Mexico, Clifford Irving got the call he had flown there to receive, from a "friend of Octavio's, "the code name for Howard Hughes, the pathologically reclusive billionaire who soon agreed—without shaking hands of course—to collaborate with Irving on an authorized biography. Or at least that's the story Irving told his editors at McGraw-Hill a few days later, leading them to eagerly...
— Mar 24, 2026 06:38AM
1971 In Oaxaca, Mexico, Clifford Irving got the call he had flown there to receive, from a "friend of Octavio's, "the code name for Howard Hughes, the pathologically reclusive billionaire who soon agreed—without shaking hands of course—to collaborate with Irving on an authorized biography. Or at least that's the story Irving told his editors at McGraw-Hill a few days later, leading them to eagerly...
Judi
is on page 52 of 448
February 13
1945 ... ABOUT IT"—before arriving at the jumbled and fragmented form of Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel that, amid its time travel and green spacemen, returns relentlessly to the inexplicable carnage of those days, echoed in the life of a time-traveling American prisoner who knows that "I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth 1976," the anniversary of the bombing.
— Mar 24, 2026 05:44AM
1945 ... ABOUT IT"—before arriving at the jumbled and fragmented form of Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel that, amid its time travel and green spacemen, returns relentlessly to the inexplicable carnage of those days, echoed in the life of a time-traveling American prisoner who knows that "I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth 1976," the anniversary of the bombing.
