Showing posts with label 1925. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1925. Show all posts

Monday, 3 October 2016

Gore Vidal...


Gore Vidal
Born: October 3rd, 1925 - New York, U.S.
Died: July 31st, 2012 - California, U.S.


novelist
playwright
essayist
non-fiction writer
screen-writer


Interesting fact: Vidal had bitter feuds with other authors, notably Truman Capote.
See HERE



We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.
- The City and the Pillar


Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.
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That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb.
- Myra Breckinridge


How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself. 
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My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top.
- Julian


I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.
- Death Before Bedtime

In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death.
- Creation

Monday, 5 September 2016

Justin (Joe) Kaplan...


Justin Kaplan
Born: September 5th, 1925 - NY, U.S.
Died: March 2nd, 2014 - Massachusetts, U.S.


biographer
- Mr Clemens and Mark Twain (1967) - Pulitzer Prize


Television, despite its enormous presence, turns out to have added pitifully few lines to the communal memory.

There ought to be something about computers and artificial intelligence. Surely somebody somewhere said something memorable.
- when general editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations - 1993 (16th edition)

For years I assumed the shape of a literary biography must imitate the shape of the subject’s life. Then I realized it was more significant to recreate the life’s density, texture, and meaning. 
- 1981 Boston Globe interview - see HERE

I really feel there’s a vaguely religious aspect to biography. Especially with creative people, you’re dealing with sort of a mystery.
- in an interview with Rob Couteau, Kaplan talks about his biography of Walt Whitman
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