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 370 of 448
November 25
1862 "I had a real funny interview" with President Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe reported to her husband, "the particulars of which I will tell you." The particulars, though, have been lost to history, including whether he greeted her with the words that have since become attached to her name, "So this is the little woman who made the great war?"
— Nov 26, 2023 03:52PM
1862 "I had a real funny interview" with President Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe reported to her husband, "the particulars of which I will tell you." The particulars, though, have been lost to history, including whether he greeted her with the words that have since become attached to her name, "So this is the little woman who made the great war?"
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Judi
is on page 334 of 448
October 23
1869 "I shall have no memoirs," promised Isidore Ducasse, and he kept his word. Few writers left less for biographers than Ducasse, who wrote for a short, furious time as the Comte de Lautréamont, died of unknown causes in Paris at twenty-four, and left behind a poetic novel, The Songs of Maldoror, later embraced by the Surrealists. Maldoror breathes fire, clearing ash unless the reader is "as fierce ...
— 8 hours, 30 min ago
1869 "I shall have no memoirs," promised Isidore Ducasse, and he kept his word. Few writers left less for biographers than Ducasse, who wrote for a short, furious time as the Comte de Lautréamont, died of unknown causes in Paris at twenty-four, and left behind a poetic novel, The Songs of Maldoror, later embraced by the Surrealists. Maldoror breathes fire, clearing ash unless the reader is "as fierce ...
Judi
is on page 333 of 448
October 22
1961 Richard Stern, in the New York Times, on Catch-22: "Its author, Joseph Heller, is like a brilliant painter who decides to throw all the ideas in his sketchbooks onto one canvas, relying on their charm and shock to compensate for the lack of design."
— 18 hours, 19 min ago
1961 Richard Stern, in the New York Times, on Catch-22: "Its author, Joseph Heller, is like a brilliant painter who decides to throw all the ideas in his sketchbooks onto one canvas, relying on their charm and shock to compensate for the lack of design."
Judi
is on page 332 of 448
October 21
1967 "How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?" The critical tide had already turned in favor of Bonnie and Clyde when on this day The New Yorker published Pauline Kael's 7,000-word defence of the movie, which began with the plea above. Lively and combative, Kael's review ended up being an audition for the regular reviewing gig she dept at the magazine for the next ...
— Oct 22, 2025 01:50PM
1967 "How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?" The critical tide had already turned in favor of Bonnie and Clyde when on this day The New Yorker published Pauline Kael's 7,000-word defence of the movie, which began with the plea above. Lively and combative, Kael's review ended up being an audition for the regular reviewing gig she dept at the magazine for the next ...
Judi
is on page 331 of 448
October 20
1854 Not long after they honeymoon, Brontë's new husband, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, took hold of the reins of her correspondence, telling his wife that letters like hers, which comment so freely about their acquaintances, "are dangerous as lucifer matches." She must refrain from writing her opinions to her good friend Ellen Nussey, he declared, or Ellen must burn her letters after reading.
— Oct 22, 2025 06:07AM
1854 Not long after they honeymoon, Brontë's new husband, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, took hold of the reins of her correspondence, telling his wife that letters like hers, which comment so freely about their acquaintances, "are dangerous as lucifer matches." She must refrain from writing her opinions to her good friend Ellen Nussey, he declared, or Ellen must burn her letters after reading.
Judi
is on page 330 of 448
October 19
1908 ... —other side of the mountains. For the young novelist, given puzzling pieces of the story as a child, it was "the first incident from real life that stirred my writer's instincts," and one he was never "able to exorcise," even after he transformed it, in One Hundred Years of Solitude, into the moment when José Arcadio Buendía hurls a spear "with the strength of a bull" into the neck of his rival.
— Oct 21, 2025 01:54PM
1908 ... —other side of the mountains. For the young novelist, given puzzling pieces of the story as a child, it was "the first incident from real life that stirred my writer's instincts," and one he was never "able to exorcise," even after he transformed it, in One Hundred Years of Solitude, into the moment when José Arcadio Buendía hurls a spear "with the strength of a bull" into the neck of his rival.
Judi
is on page 329 of 448
October 18
1917 Virginia Woolf, in the TLS, on Henry James's last memoir, The Middle Years: "He comes to his task with an indescribable air of one so charged and laden with precious stuff that he hardly knows how to divest himself of it all."
— Oct 21, 2025 12:48PM
1917 Virginia Woolf, in the TLS, on Henry James's last memoir, The Middle Years: "He comes to his task with an indescribable air of one so charged and laden with precious stuff that he hardly knows how to divest himself of it all."
Judi
is on page 328 of 448
October 17
1945 ...the story Gardner later loved to tell, that he mocked her when he caught her reading Kathleen Winsor's bodice-ripping bestseller Forever Amber. No doubt Gardner liked to tell it because just a few days after Shaw divorced her, hr rushed down to Mexico, where Kathleen Winsor herself, sultry enough that some thought she should star in the movie of her own book, became Mrs. Artie Shaw number six.
— Oct 21, 2025 04:58AM
1945 ...the story Gardner later loved to tell, that he mocked her when he caught her reading Kathleen Winsor's bodice-ripping bestseller Forever Amber. No doubt Gardner liked to tell it because just a few days after Shaw divorced her, hr rushed down to Mexico, where Kathleen Winsor herself, sultry enough that some thought she should star in the movie of her own book, became Mrs. Artie Shaw number six.
Judi
is on page 327 of 448
October 16
1935 Dismissed on this day by the Nazi regime from his position at the University of Marburg because he was a Jew, Erich Auerbach arranged to resume his career in exile at Istanbul University, where he continued his labor on one of the monumental works of literary analysis. Mimesis, an imaginative and approachable multilingual survey of the literary representation of reality from Date to Virginia Wolfe.
— Oct 20, 2025 03:06PM
1935 Dismissed on this day by the Nazi regime from his position at the University of Marburg because he was a Jew, Erich Auerbach arranged to resume his career in exile at Istanbul University, where he continued his labor on one of the monumental works of literary analysis. Mimesis, an imaginative and approachable multilingual survey of the literary representation of reality from Date to Virginia Wolfe.
Judi
is on page 326 of 448
October 15
1920 Katherine Mansfield, in the Athenaeum, on Gertrude Stein's Three Lives: "Miss Gertrude Stein has discovered a new way of writing stories. It is just to keep right on writing them. Don't mind how often you go back to the beginning, don't hesitate to say the same thing over and over again—people are always repeating themselves—don't be put off if the words sound funny at times: just keep right on, ...
— Oct 20, 2025 06:33AM
1920 Katherine Mansfield, in the Athenaeum, on Gertrude Stein's Three Lives: "Miss Gertrude Stein has discovered a new way of writing stories. It is just to keep right on writing them. Don't mind how often you go back to the beginning, don't hesitate to say the same thing over and over again—people are always repeating themselves—don't be put off if the words sound funny at times: just keep right on, ...
