The Writer's Almanac from Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Writer's Almanac from Wednesday, July 24, 2013

"The Russian Greatcoat" by Theodore Deppe, from Cape Clear: New and Selected Poems. © Salmon Poetry, 2003.

ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013

It's the birthday of mystery novelist John D. MacDonald, born in Sharon, Pennsylvania (1916). He's famous for his novels featuring Travis McGee, a beach-bum detective who lives on a houseboat that he won in a poker game.

MacDonald started reading when he was a kid, after he almost died of scarlet fever. He spent a year in bed. He read all the books in the library. He served in the Army during World War II, and he entertained his wife by writing her little stories in his letters, one of which she liked so much that she typed it up and sent it to the magazine Story, where it was published.

John D. MacDonald had four months of severance pay when he came home from the Army, and he spent those four months writing seven days a week, 14 hours a day. By the end of the year, he was making a living selling short stories to pulp fiction magazines.

He used his mystery novels to criticize what he called American junk culture: fast food, bad TV, and suburban development. He said, "I am wary of a lot of things, such as ... time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants ... pageants, progress, and manifest destiny."

It's the birthday of Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama (1900). She met F. Scott Fitzgerald at one of the military dances where he was stationed in Montgomery. He stood out from the crowd, wearing his Brooks Brothers uniform and his cream-colored boots. Zelda said, "He smelled like new goods." He told her that she looked like the heroine in the novel he was writing.

They went on their first date on this day, her birthday, in 1918. Years later, in a letter to Scott, she wrote: "The night you gave me my birthday party ... you were a young Lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom, wasn't I? And it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best."

It's the birthday of aviator Amelia Earhart, born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1897. She was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic (in 1932). She also flew solo on the longer flight from Hawaii to California — the first person to manage that hazardous route (in 1935). Then, in 1937, she set out to fly around the world. After making it more than two-thirds of the way, she disappeared in the central Pacific, somewhere near the international dateline.

It's the birthday of poet Robert Graves,, born in London in 1895. His passion was poetry, but he wrote novels to support himself and said: "Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat." He wrote historical novels such as I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1934), as well as his memoir about WWI, Goodbye to All That (1929).

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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