In My World

A bomb in her bosom: Emily Dickinson ' s secret life

This will be a must-buy. I have every biography of Dickinson, and thought I knew everything about her life. Some of her poetry I am still trying to understand. The Guardian: A bomb in her bosom: Emily Dickinson's secret life

Beneath the still surface of the poet's life lay a fiercely passionate nature and a closely guarded secret, argues her lastest biographer

I remember J D Salinger - dead at 91

A personal note:

I was in college at St John's University in 1951 when Catcher in the Rye was first published. It was the freshest, most original work I had ever read. I don't remember if our professors used it in class, but I know for sure that most of us of college age read it, quoted it, and relished every word of dialogue. Later, when I read Franny and Zooey , Franny's use of the Jesus prayer led me to the wandering Russian monks, and to the study of meditation. I still try to meditate each day, and I credit Ms. Glass with starting me on that journey.

The New Yorker this week (2/2/2010) on Salinger Lillian Ross - The New Yorker - My long friendship with J.D. Salinger NY Times: Cornish Journal: A recluse? Well, not to J.D. Salinger's neighbors The NY Times obit The Guardian: Salinger's new-look oeuvre

The Guardian: From 2002 by Anne Roiphe: The dawning of mourning -- He introduced us to phoneys - but teaching us about loss was Salinger's main aim, says Anne Roiphe

The NY Times: Of Teen Angst and an Author’s Alienation - An appraisal By MICHIKO KAKUTANI About.com: The Catcher in the Rye vocabulary The original review in the NY Times Salinger at The New Yorker And, of course, his perfect book of short stories - Nine Stories - It includes what many consider his finest work, For Esme With Love and Squalor.

Taking a Walk Through J.D. Salinger ’s New York

The NY Times: Taking a Walk Through J.D. Salinger’s New York

J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger is dead at 91. (The NY Times obit) He and his books were such a part of my young adult reading. I came to love Holden Caulfield and the whole Glass family. I became a silent prayer person thanks to Franny Glass, who recited the Jesus prayer over and over: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." That exhortation has comforted me during many stressful moments in my life.

TV page updated

I have added a link to the UK Times on my TV page - a podcast with David Simon on The Wire -- long and most interesting. You can listen or read.

Shaw and Campbell

From The Writer's Almanac Today: On this day in 1912, George Bernard Shaw (books by this author) wrote the following letter to English actress Stella Campbell: Stella, Stella Shut your ears tight against this blarneying Irish liar and actor. Read no more of his letters. He will fill his fountain pen with your heart's blood, and sell your most sacred emotions on the stage. … He is treacherous as only an Irishman can be: he adores you with one eye and sees you with the other as a calculated utility. He has been recklessly trying to please you, to delight you, to persuade you to carry him up to heaven for a moment (he is trying to do it now); and when you have done it, he will run away and give it all to the mob. … Oh dont, dont, DONT fall in love with him; but dont grudge him the joy he finds in being in love with you, and writing all sorts of wild but heartfelt exquisite lies — lies, lies, lies, lies — to you, his adoredest. G.B.S. In 1914, Stella Campbell played the role of Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's play Pygmalion when it made its London debut. He'd written the play several years earlier — for her, specifically — but the London production was held up due to injuries she sustained in a car accident. So Pygmalion first opened in Vienna in 1913, in a German version that Shaw translated himself. When Campbell played Eliza Doolittle on opening night in London, she was 49 years old. The correspondence between Stella (Mrs. Patrick Campbell) and Shaw lasted for 40 years, from 1899 to 1939.

Final paragraphs - The Dead by James Joyce

Some of the most beautifully written words in the English language -- The Dead - James Joyce:

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling. A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Hey!!

Hey, I'm Twittering these days. Fast and simple......

To Autumn By John Keats

To Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep< Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.