A Writer's Moment: 'Find the good, and praise it'

A Writer's Moment: 'Find the good, and praise it':   “In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.”  –  Alex Haley   Born in Ithaca, NY on Aug. 11, 1921 Hal...

'Find the good, and praise it'

 

“In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.” –  Alex Haley

 

Born in Ithaca, NY on Aug. 11, 1921 Haley authored 4 award-winning books, anchored by Roots: The Saga of an American Family, continuously in print since its appearance in 1976.  A television series based on the book also set a record-breaking audience of over 130 million viewers.

 

A Coast Guard veteran from both World War II and the Korean War, Haley was self-taught as a writer in order to “report” on things to folks back home, writing both for individuals and for his community newspapers.  After his Coast Guard career, he expanded his reportorial efforts, which eventually led him to his biographical writing.  Haley's first book, which catapulted him onto the national scene, was The Autobiography of Malcolm X.   

 

In addition to his books, he authored 3 story collections and several screenplays before his death from a heart attack in 1992.    Roots raised public awareness of African American history and also inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history for all races.   Haley said that was one of his proudest accomplishments.  

”In every conceivable manner," he said, "the family is link to our past; bridge to our future.”   

A Writer's Moment: First 'doing the living'

A Writer's Moment: First 'doing the living':   “Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.”  – Philip Larkin Born in Coventry on Aug. 9, 1922, Larkin was one of post...

First 'doing the living'

 

“Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.” – Philip Larkin

Born in Coventry on Aug. 9, 1922, Larkin was one of post-war England’s most famous poets and was commonly referred to as “England’s other Poet Laureate” until his death in 1985.  His best-known and most popular collections – The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows – present “a poetry from which even people who distrust poetry . . . can take comfort and delight.”  For Saturday’s poem, here is Larkin’s,

        Summer is fading
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.

A Writer's Moment: 'Seeing what you meant'

A Writer's Moment: 'Seeing what you meant':   “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”  – E.M. Forster   Born in London in 1879, Forster, best known for his novels A Ro...

'Seeing what you meant'

 

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” – E.M. Forster

 

Born in London in 1879, Forster, is best known for his novels A Room With a View, Howards End and A Passage to India – all also made into successful films after his death in 1970.

 

A prolific notetaker, he became the author of numerous short stories, essays, speeches and plays despite the fact that he intended his career to be a historian or classicist, studying both disciplines at Cambridge University.   But writing "got in the way" and his voluminous career in that profession followed. 

 

Following the success of his bestselling novels and short stories – Forster went to work for the BBC and in the 1930s and 1940s and became one of Great Britain’s most notable broadcasters, also producing and narrating a popular weekly book review program. 

 

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned,” Forster said, “so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

A Writer's Moment: 'Words working their magic'

A Writer's Moment: 'Words working their magic':   “There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spide...