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James A. Michener
b. 2-3-1907; Doylestown, PA
d. 10-16-1997; Austin, TX
James A. Michener, who taught English and social studies before WWII, is best remembered for his historic fiction that featured a geographical locale and incorporated historic facts into the lives of generations of the people who lived there. Michener would do a great amount of research and his novels were consistent best-sellers, such as the Tales of the South Pacific which won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize in fiction and was the inspiration for the musicial South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay
b. 2-22-1892; Rockland, ME
d. 10-19-1950; Austerlitz, New York
Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to be awarded the Pulitize Prize for Poetry, in 1923. Her most memorable poem is “Renascence” (1912) with the lines ...
“I saw and heard and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.” ...
• “I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”
FYI - Millay's middle name, St. Vincent, was given to remember New York's St. Vincent Hospital, where an uncle had been treated.
• Edna St. Vincent Millay books
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Arthur Miller
b. 10-17-1915; Harlem, NYC, NY
d. 2-10-2005; CT
Playwright and essayist Arthur Miller is considered one of the finest dramatists of the 20th century.
Among his award winning plays are Death of a Salesman and The Crucible which is set in the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s. The Crucible can be seen as a commentary on the public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents as expressed by the House of Representatives Committee on UnAmerican Activities, and the Joseph McCarthy investigations, in the 1950s.
FYI - The Arthur Miller Theater at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, opened in 2007. Miller was married to actress Marilyn Monroe (1956-1961).
Arthur Miller quotes ~
• “Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.”
• “I love her too, but our neuroses just don't match.”
• “If I see an ending, I can work backward.”
• “What is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all.”
• “A playwright is the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.”
• “Nobody dast blame this man. For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.”
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Henry Miller
b. 12-26-1891; NYC
d. 6-7-1980; California
Author and painter Henry Miller is best remembered for developing a new sort of ‘novel’ that blendsstorytelling, “autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism”; most characteristic works are Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.
The 1990 movie Henry and June is based on the book Henry and June by the French author Anaïs Nin, and tells the story of Nin's relationship with Henry Miller and his wife, June.
Henry Miller quotes ~
• “Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.”
• “An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”
• “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
• “If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.”
• “Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in the order eventually to become the path himself.
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Joaquin Miller
née Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller
b. 3-10-1837; Union Co., Indiana
d. 2-17-1913; California
Poet, essaysit and fabulist Cincinnatus Miller used the pen name Joaquin Miller. Called the “Poet of the Sierras” and the “Byron of the Rockies”, Miller's poem Columbus was once one of the most memorized and recited poems by school children.
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now we must pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
“Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
Miller was also associated with Ina Coolbrith.
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