If I Have Made a Farthing . . .

Happy Literary Birthday to the great Washington Irving, author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving was born on this day in 1873, and was named after General George Washington, whom his parents particularly admired.

My favorite work by Irving is a story called "The Devil and Tom Walker." While it has the same folk tale tone as his other famous works, it delves more deeply into the notion of human corruption; Tom sells his soul for the sake of greed. When he famously says "The Devil take me if I have made a farthing," the Devil does.

As a morality tale, it's entirely satisfying.

Otherwise They'll Kill You

Today is the birthday of the great Oscar Wilde, who was born in 1854. Wilde would probably make fun of me for noting the date, since he once wrote "Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

However, and more in keeping with the theme of this blog, he is also quoted as saying "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." An interesting motive for murder, but not an unbelievable one. And of course Wilde knew better than most how dearly a person had to pay for his beliefs (or his preferences).

My favorite Wilde words, though, are the ones he is supposed to have said when he was dying: "This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go." (It has also been related as, "Either it goes or I do.")

Either way, Wilde, you left the world laughing, or at least making others do so.

(photo link here)

Happy 91st to My Idol, Mary Stewart

I've written many times about Mary Stewart on this blog; in my estimation she is unmatched as a writer of romantic suspense, and as a writer of the literary mystery. Stewart's writing, intelligent and exciting, has remained my favorite for thirty years, and I only hope she is celebrating this birthday with people that she loves, and that perhaps she is reading a good book at her own hearth.

Always a private person, Stewart did consent to an interview with Raymond H. Thompson in 1989, in which he asked her about the writing of suspense. Stewart claimed that it was not entirely conscious: "I've written stories since I was three and a half, and I think you're either born with the storyteller's flair or you're not. You can learn much about the craft of writing, but you either have the storyteller's flair or you don't. It's no virtue of mine. It's just there. In a story, however, each point of rest is also a point of departure; you can't help it."

For anyone who hasn't read a Mary Stewart novel, you must do yourself the favor of reading one in honor of her birthday. NINE COACHES WAITING has been re-released by Chicago Review Press(thanks for that info, Janet Reid) with a lovely, mysterious cover. I bought it for my mother for her birthday this past August, because she is the one who did me the favor of introducing me to Mary Stewart!

In any case, Mrs. Stewart, I am thinking of you today as you celebrate 91 years.

Celebrating My Little Clown

My son is nine today; he shares the birthday with Sean Connery, one of his favorite actors, who turns 77.

Einstein would tell me, I'm sure, that relativity will explain how nine years seem to have gone so quickly, how time really does fly when you're having fun, or when you're in the company of a delightful child.

Now that child is old enough to tell me that he didn't answer me because "I thought it was a rhetorical question," so I guess some of the chubby-cheeked wonder of babyhood is gone forever, but each new stage holds its fascinations.

So Happy Birthday, Graham and Sean, and may you both have a wish come true.

Happy Birthday, Arthur Conan Doyle

The great Conan Doyle was born on this day in 1859. He is most famous for creating Sherlock Holmes, a detective he eventually wanted to destroy because, as Doyle put it, "He takes my mind off better things." Doyle believed that Holmes did not represent his best work, but the public felt differently, and when Doyle killed off Holmes in 1892, there was much hue and cry. By 1901 Doyle could stand it no longer, and brought Holmes back with The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was set in a time that pre-dated Holmes' "death." (Paraphrased from The Great British Detective, Penguin Mentor, 1982).

Borntoday.com has this great quote in honor of Doyle's birthday:


Holmes: "I followed you."
Man: "I saw no one."
Holmes: "That is what you may expect to see when I follow you."

Holmes was the penultimate classical detective: superior, always successful, ever preferable to the bumbling police inspector, Lestrade. This formula, created really by Poe but expanded by Doyle, has been a classical model since the nineteenth century, and holds up well in Doyle's fiction.

While I greatly enjoy The Hound of the Baskervilles, I'm also a fan of Conan Doyle's short mysteries, and an especially good one is "Silver Blaze," in which Holmes goes to the moors to solve the mystery of an inexplicable death and a missing racehorse.

Doyle himself would have written his destiny differently, perhaps, but of course none of us can control how we will be remembered, and Doyle's name will always be synonymous with Sherlock's.

If I Have Made A Farthing . . .

Happy Literary Birthday to the great Washington Irving, author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving was born on this day in 1873, and was named after General George Washington, whom his parents particularly admired.

My favorite work by Irving is a story called "The Devil and Tom Walker." While it has the same folk tale tone as his other famous works, it delves more deeply into the notion of human corruption; Tom sells his soul for the sake of greed. When he famously says "The Devil take me if I have made a farthing," the Devil does.

As a morality tale, it's entirely satisfying.