Whittier College English Department

Today we celebrate the birthday of English novelist, journalist, and essayist Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 January 21, 1950), known best by his pen name George Orwell. Orwell is most famous for his dystopian novel 1984 (1949) and allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), but also for his literary non-fiction works like Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)a memoir of his experiences living in poverty in the two capitals in the early 1930sand Homage to Catalonia (1938)...a memoir of his experiences fighting for the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (i.e., the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) during the Spanish Civil Waras well as for his essays on culture and politics. As Wikipedia notes, Orwell’s work is marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic socialism. It is no doubt for these reasons (as well as the ways in which he has entered the English lexicon via words like Orwellian, Big Brother, and Cold War) that in 2008 the Times of London ranked Orwell second on a list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945. For an absolutely first-rate account of George Orwell’s life and work, see George Orwell: A Life in Pictures (2003), starring Chris Langham as Orwell and online in its entirety here: https://youtu.be/s6txpumkY5I

Happy birthday to Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947 February 24, 2010), multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winning African American science fiction writer, and the first sci-fi writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Shy, awkward, and the victim of bullying, as a child Butler sought refuge at the Pasadena Public Library, where she first discovered fantasy and science fiction and began writing her own stories. Despite the systemic racism and sexism that characterized t...he science fiction literary landscape in the 1960s and 1970s (and of course, which persists), Butler pursued her dream of becoming a writer, working odd jobs and attending writing classes at CSULA and UCLA. While attending the Open Door Workshop of the Screenwriters' Guild of America, Butler impressed sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison, who encouraged her to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania, where she befriended another sci-fi legend, Samuel Delaney. Butler herself attained sci-fi legend status in the 1980s, when in 1984 her short story Speech Sounds won the Hugo Award, and when in 1985 her novelette Bloodchild won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Novelette. During the 1980s and 1990s Butler continued to write short stories as well as novels, including the novels for which, in addition to Kindred (1979), she is best known: Parable of the Sower (1993) and the Nebula Award-winning Parable of the Talents (1998). For more on Butler, check out this Google Doodle from 2018 (http://time.com/5319643/octavia-butler-google-doodle/), but see also this first-rate summary and assessment of her books by Olivia Wilson: https://theportalist.com/octavia-butler-books

Joyeux anniversaire to Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905 April 15, 1980), French philosopher, novelist, literary critic and playwright most closely associated with existentialismin fact Wikipedia suggests Sartre's 1938 novel La Nausée (Nausea) "in some ways serves as a manifesto of existentialism"and well-known for philosophical works like L'étre et le néant (Being and Nothingness) (1943) and Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of Dialectical Reason) (1960); as well... as for plays like Huis-clos (No Exit) (1944) and Les mains sals (Dirty Hands) (1948). One of the twentieth century's most recognized and foremost public intellectuals, in 1964 Sartre famously refused the Nobel Prize in Literature, noting that "a writer should not be turned into an institution"a somewhat non-conformist line that Sartre's lifetime (though not exclusive) romantic partner Simone de Beauvoir probably would have appreciated. Politically active and radical until the end of his life (after his arrest for civil disobedience during the May 1968 Paris strikes French President Charles de Gaulle pardoned Sartre, suggesting "You don't arrest Voltaire"), beginning in the 1970s Sartre's health begin to decline, likely from a combination of a relenteless work schedule, amphetamines, and chain smoking (indeed, it seems there are as many photos of Sartre smoking as not). Sartre died in 1980 of edema of the lung and is buried in Montparnesse Cemetery in Paris. For an excellent overview of Sartre's life and work, see the episode about Sartre from the three-part BBC series Human, All Too Human (1999), online in its entirety here: http://youtu.be/PAMCZKDgL04

Happy Friday, with apologies! With all the political tumult this week, we neglected to post about an important 415-year-old manifestation of political tumult: Guy Fawkes Day! Read on: Remember, remember the Fifth of NovemberGunpowder Treason and Plot! WHAT'S GOING ON?!... On November 5 we celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, an annual event that commemorates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plotthe 1605 plan to blow up King James I and Parliament most closely associated with Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes. Primarily observed in Great Britain, every November 5 Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated with pomp, circumstance, fireworks, and little English kids asking strangers for money (today children will seek "A penny for the old Guy!" in order to fund Fawkes effigies that are set ablaze after sundown). Meanwhile, the traditional Guy Fawkes maskpopularized by the 1982-89 graphic novel (and 2005 film) V for Vendetta, the Occupy Movement, and the hacker collective Anonymoushas most recently become associated with collective resistance to oppressive government regimes. For a brief (i.e., 30-minute) but fun overview of the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes, and Guy Fawkes Day, watch this 2002 BBC documentary presented by Nick Knowles: https://youtu.be/EMLHau_rBJ8

"Would you approve of your young sons, young daughtersbecause girls can read as well as boysreading this book? Is it a book you would have lying around your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" Mervyn Griffith-Jones, from the opening address of R v. Penguin Books, Ltd. We note that 60 years ago today, on November 2, 1960, a jury at the Old Bailey found Penguin Books not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd...., a.k.a. the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case. D.H. Lawrence’s final novel had been published in Italy in the 1920s, and had elicited controversy from the first because of its strong language (i.e., Lawrence drops an F-bomb or two, not to mention the C word), as well as its graphic depictions of the sex scenes between Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper, Oliver Merrols, with whom she has an affair. However, in 1960, when Penguin Books tried to publish the book in England, they were tried under the Obscene Publications Act in a court case that garnered national attention, not least of all because of the panoply of literary and cultural figures called to give evidence that the work had literary merit. After six days and a three-hour deliberation, the jury found Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be NOT obscene. One month later the book was published, and all 200,000 copies sold out the first day; a second Penguin edition, published in 1961, bears this dedication from the publisher: For having published this book, Penguin Books were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, 1959 at the Old Bailey in London from 20 October to 2 November 1960. This edition is therefore dedicated to the twelve jurors, three women and nine men, who returned a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’ and thus made D. H. Lawrence's last novel available for the first time to the public in the United Kingdom. Many observers note that the not guilty verdict in the R v Penguin Books, Ltd. trial ushered in not only a new era of freedom for British publishers, but also a new era of permissiveness in the U.K. Consider for example the first stanza of Philip Larkin’s poem Annus Mirabilis: Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP ... To see contemporary news coverage of the trial, see the British Library’s digitization of the November 2, 1960 Evening Standard, here: http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large105907.html. And to learn more about the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, check out the BBC's excellent The Chatterley Affair (2006), a dramatization of R v Penguin Books, Ltd. available at Wardman Library, and a segment of which you can view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs8Sg2f-u1A

Today is the 135th birthday of Ezra Pound (October 30, 1885 November 1, 1972), American expatriate poet and critic. Something of a linguistic polymath and one of the founders of Imagism, Pound’s poetic works include The Cantos, an unfinished 120-section epic published between 1917 and 1969. However, his greatest contribution to literature may have been in shaping modernist aesthetics and advancing the careers of some of the most well-known modernist writers of the early 20t...h centuryindeed, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is dedicated famously, To Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro [the better craftsman]. Outraged by the waste of World War I, for which be blamed international capitalism and usury, Pound moved to Italy in 1924 and embraced fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. For his pro-fascistic, often antisemitic radio broadcasts criticizing the U.S., he was arrested for treason after the Allied victory in Europe in 1945, tried in the States, found guilty, and committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital after his lawyer was succesful in his efforts to have Pound declared insane. Although he was eventually released from the asylum and returned to Italy in 1958, his extreme political views colored critical reception and judgment of Pound and his work for the remainder of his life. For an excellent account of Pound’s biography, criticism, and poetry, once again we recommend checking out Voices and Visions by PBS; as with the other 12 poets featured in the series, the episode about Pound is available at Wardman Library but also online in its hour-long entirety here: http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=607

ht Carol Sandberg

Happy birthday to James Boswell (October 29, 1740 May 19, 1795), Scottish diarist and author so well-known for his superb Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) that the term Boswellian has come to denote an astute observer and faithful companion, just as Boswell was to Dr. Johnson for more than two decades. In addition to the Life, Boswell is probably best known for a travel narrative. Titled The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786), the work chronicles a trip Boswell and Joh...nson took to Scotland in the early 1770s, and is in many ways a precursor to the kind of modern biography more than several critics have suggested Boswell perfected in the later work, which is regarded by many as the greatest biography in the English language. These facts notwithstanding, there is some indication that in the late eighteenth century biography was reckoned as an inferior kind of writing. In the attached image of an 1803 engraving, Johnson’s ghost haunts Boswell, criticizing him with a Congreve quote: Thou art a Retailer of Phrases, And dost deal in Remnants of Remnants, Like a Maker of Pincushions. Harsh stuff. Then again, the self-effacing Johnson didn’t think much of dictionary makers like himself, either; recall his definition of a lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. To learn more about Johnson and Boswell, see the BBC’s hour-long 2011 Samuel Johnson: The Dictionary Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpVP8ezoVlM). To check out a comic (though not-entirely-accurate) film based on The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, check out Boswell and Johnson’s Tour of the Western Isles (1993), also by the BBC, and online in its entirety here: http://www.youtube.com/watch

Happy birthday to Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 February 11, 1963), American novelist, short story writer, and poet. Plath is well known for her novel The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical work published in 1963, though a confessional mode also obtains in the intimate, personal nature of the works included in the poetry collection published in her lifetime (The Colossus and Other Poems (1960)) as well as Ariel (1965), a poetry collection published two years after her death.... Plath committed suicide in London at the age of 30; in 1982, she became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for her Collected Poems. To learn more about her life and work, see the excellent episode about Plath from the PBS Voices and Visions series, available at Wardman Library but also online in its hour-long entirety here: https://www.learner.org/series/voices-visions/sylvia-plath/

ht Río Hondo College Dean of Math, Science, and Engineering (and former WC Physics Professor) Vann Priest. Now *this* is interdisciplinary.

Professor Joe Donnelly has just launched an awesome new project: check it out, and share widely!

Happy 80th birthday to Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940), essayist, literary critic, Slate poetry editor, Dante translator, and Poet Laureate of the United States from 19972000. A prolific poet and former saxophonist much of whose verse shows the influence of contemporary jazz in various ways, in interviews Pinsky has emphasized the out-loud necessity of poetry, and the role of his readers in providing meaning to his poems. In fact we are pretty certain Pinsky may hav...e talked about just these things when he visited Whittier College 22 years ago, in September 1998. You can read all about it on page 10 of this issue of the Quaker Campus from back then, online here: http://goo.gl/Wu94bz. Never one to shy away from the public eye in order to bring attention to poetry, Pinsky’s presence in print, online, and on TV has always been large. For more on the poet, including many readings and interviews, check out Pinsky’s official website: http://www.robertpinskypoet.com/. Meanwhile, for recap of that time Pinsky was on The Simpsons (briefly), see http://recapguide.com///The-Simpsons/season-13/episode-20/. And to watch when he moderated a 2007 Meta-Free-Phor-All between Sean Penn and Steven Colbert on The Colbert Report, click here: http://www.cc.com//the-colbert-report-meta-free-phor-all--

The Writing On The Wall Finds Poetry Behind Bars, Projects It Onto Buildings

Happy belated birthday to Jupiter Hammon (October 17, 1711 1806?), the first African-American writer to be published in the present-day United States, in 1761. Hammon was born into slavery in New York, where his owners, the Lloyds, had the young man attend school and learn to read and writean extremely unusual act at the time, and indeed, an extremely unusual act during the entire history of slavery in the colonies, the early republic, and the antebellum nation. Like his o...wners, Hammon was a devout Christian, and his religiosity shaped much of his thinking and writing. He neither sought nor achieved emancipation, but advocated for its gradual abolition in several poems and sermons published in his lifetime. Along with luminaries like Phyllis Wheatley, Hammon is generally accounted to be one of the founders of the African-American literary tradition. To learn more, check out Hammon’s Address to the Negroes of the State of New-York (1787, 1806), online in its entirety here at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Digital Commons: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/12/

Happy birthday to Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 November 30, 1900), Irish writer and poet best known as the sharpest wit of late Victorian Britain, Aestheticism's most famous representative and proponent, and arguably the world's first modern celebrity. Wilde found extraordinary success and fame mostly as a result of the plays he wrote for the London Stage in the 1880s and 1890s, including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895); but also for his one and only novel, The Pict...ure of Dorian Gray (1890) and the two works he wrote in the late 1890s while he was imprisoned for gross indecency (i.e., homosexuality)De Profundis (1897) and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). Following his release from prison, Wilde left for France, where he died, destitute, at the age of forty-six. Those interested in researching Wilde should make a trip down the 10 Freeway to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, which is hands down the world's most complete and comprehensive Wilde archive. Hodophobic folks who are nevertheless interested in learning more about Wilde's life and work should check out the first-rate documentary about Wilde produced for the BBC series Omnibus back in 1997, and online in its entirety here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh6ZlmRs1aw

Some of you might be interested in attending an online book fair, Rare Books Los Angeles, that’s happening now through October 18. Admission is free, and you can search by keyword or category: https://rarebooksla.getmansvirtual.com/. And it’s not just rare booksthere’s also ephemera, fine prints, maps, photography, and autographs on sale. Check it out, and if you like, share any cool finds in the comments.

Joyeux anniversaire to Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 June 25, 1984), French philosopher, historian, critic, and social and literary theorist most often associated with post-structuralism. One of the most important thinkers of the twentieth centuryand arguably the most influential theorist of the latter half of the twentieth centuryFoucault's work on especially the nature of power, the relationships between power and knowledge, and the history of sexuality had a profou...nd impact on any number of disciplines in the academy as well as on left-wing activist groups from the late 1960s to the present. There are a fair amount of interviews with Foucault online, as well as segments of his famous 1971 debate with Noam Chomsky, but for a good overview and introduction to his life, works, and legacy, check out the 1993 documentary Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil, online here in its entirety: http://goo.gl/4z3qkF