[image: The Writer's Almanac]
<http://writersalmanac.org?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&elqTrackId=1a04335bae464b66a42e7a55b51b0423&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>
*Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016*
Whatever is too stupid to say can
be sung. -JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719) The human
voice can sing a vowel to break your heart. It trills a string of banal
words, but your blood jumps, regardless. You don’t care about the words but
only how they’re sung and the music behind-the brass, the drums. Oh the
primal, necessary drums behind the words so dumb! That power, the bang and
the boom and again the bang we cannot, need not, live without, nor without
other means to make sweet noise, the guitar or violin, the things that sing
the plaintive, joyful sounds. Which is why I like songs best when I can’t
hear the words, or, better still, when there are no words at all.
"Regarding (Most) Songs" by Thomas Lux from *The Street of Clocks*. ©
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.
------------------------------
*It's the birthday* of the playwright *John Arden*
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2004/jan/03/theatre.stage?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&elqTrackId=df233bc238554d54a245407f7e4c312e&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>
(books by this author
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&ie=UTF8&keywords=John%20Arden&tag=writal-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&elqTrackId=37d6c72f542e4a26bf1f6595d99bc764&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>),
born in Barnsley, England (1930) who was bookish and well behaved until he
joined the army, where he said, "I heard a lot of stories which I found
rather distressing and not what I thought the army was for." He came home
and started writing plays that attacked British conformity. He's best known
for his play *Serjeant Musgrave's Dance* (1959), about four deserters from
the British army who try to persuade the local people in their town that
war is pointless. John Arden said, "Theater must celebrate noise, disorder,
drunkenness, lasciviousness, nudity, generosity, corruption, fertility, and
ease."
*It was on this day in 1900* *that* *Henry James*
<http://www.henryjames.org.uk/?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&elqTrackId=12097d99dc0843a287a798135c799cf9&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>
(books by this author
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&ie=UTF8&keywords=Henry%20James&tag=writal-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&elqTrackId=df4f1028c13c484d896e57f63c19be21&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>)
*wrote his first letter to the budding novelist* *Edith Wharton*
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edith-Wharton?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&elqTrackId=48c324cb20084106b3ff9bef8431689d&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>
(books by this author
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&ie=UTF8&keywords=Edith%20Wharton&tag=writal-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&elqTrackId=2b57fb51cfef40b78a35067e45477c20&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>),
beginning a long friendship. Wharton was an admirer of James's work, and
she sent him one of the first short stories she ever wrote. He wrote back
to say that he liked the story but that she shouldn't write about Europe if
she didn't live there. He said, "Be tethered in native pastures, even if it
reduces [you] to a back-yard in New York." His advice inspired her to write
about the New York society she'd grown up in, and the result was *The House
of Mirth* (1905), which became her first big success.
They remained friends for the rest of James's life, but while Wharton
became more successful, James's novels sold less and less well. When he
learned that she'd used the proceeds from a recent book to buy herself a
new car, he joked that he hoped his next book would provide enough money
for him to buy a new wheelbarrow. But he always appreciated her friendship,
and once wrote to her, "Your letters come into my damp desert here even as
the odour of promiscuous spices ...might be wafted to some compromised
oasis from a caravan of the Arabian nights."
*Andrei Bely*
<http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/andrey-bely/?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&elqTrackId=9e78675f51dc4c3c8ad3e92e2993671a&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>
*was the pseudonym* of Russian novelist and poet, Boris Nikolayevich
Bugaev (books by this author
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&ie=UTF8&keywords=Andrei%20Bely&tag=writal-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&elqTrackId=a8ccb797b2394478a6f6aebb97b63730&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>),
who was born in Moscow on this day in 1880 to a prominent intellectual
family.
He is best remembered for his 1913 novel, *Petersburg*, the book of which
Vladimir Nabokov said, "My greatest masterpieces of twentieth-century prose
are, in this order: Joyce's *Ulysses*; Kafka's *Transformation*; Bely's
*Petersburg* ..."
*Petersburg* is a story of conspiracy and betrayal set during the 1905
Russian Revolution, when massive political and social unrest spread across
the country. In the book, a group of radicals plan to assassinate a senator
with a time bomb disguised as a can of sardines, but the bomb is lost, the
conspirators only manage to destroy someone's study, and their attempt at
revolution becomes a farce.
The language of *Petersburg* is by turns comical, poetic, and abstract, the
city in a landscape where "In this melting greyness there suddenly dimly
emerged a large number of dots, looking in astonishment: lights, lights,
tiny lights filled with intensity and rushed out of the darkness in pursuit
of the rust-red blotches, as cascades fell from above: blue, dark violent
and black."
Nothing in Russian literature up to that point had prepared Russian readers
for Bely's novel, which mixed the scientific and rational with the
intuitive and spiritual, an omniscient voice with the first person, adding
music, color, past and present, and gleeful humor to a story of impending
patricide. But although *Petersburg* is difficult to classify, critics have
remarked that Bely's novel would be strangely familiar to contemporary
readers who have seen the blend of fact and fantasy in *The Black Swan* or *A
Beautiful Mind*, and that Bely's writing foreshadows the late American
author David Foster Wallace.
Bely lived in poverty through the 1917 Russian Revolution, which led to the
end of Tsarist Russia and the beginning of the Marxist regime. He worked as
a lecturer in Moscow for a few years, traveled to Berlin for a few more,
and returned to find himself denounced in the new Marxist view of
literature.
*It's the birthday* of the early American self-help writer *Napoleon Hill*
<http://www.naphill.org/napoleon-hill/napoleon-hill-timeline/?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&elqTrackId=d366e365fc8c4c86aedab0c071d363e8&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>
(books by this author
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?utm_campaign=TWA+Newsletter+for+October+26%2c+2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=The+Writer%27s+Almanac+for+October+26%2c+2016&ie=UTF8&keywords=Napoleon%20Hill&tag=writal-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&elqTrackId=1b90308680244c738dc977b195b5838f&elq=176d4185f2bb48f985af5960b26bb6a4&elqaid=24847&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=21771>),
born in a one-room cabin in rural Wise County, Virginia (1883). His mother
died when he was young, and his father wasn't sure how to take care of his
son, so Hill he became a little terror, idolizing Jesse James and running
around the county with a gun. But his father remarried and his new
stepmother convinced Hill that he would be a good writer; she offered to
buy him a typewriter in exchange for the gun. He agreed, and when he was 13
years old, he started going around to local newspapers and offering to be
their "mountain reporter."
Hill was able to make his living as a reporter, and when he was in his
mid-20s, he was assigned to interview Andrew Carnegie, who grew up poor in
Scotland and worked his way up in the American steel industry to become one
of the richest men in the world. Carnegie told Hill that in his opinion,
there was a formula for success, and anyone could achieve it. He was in his
70s and didn't have the energy for this new project, but he liked the young
man and asked him if he would consider writing a book about this idea. So
Hill went around interviewing hundreds of successful people. 19 years after
he had first sat down to interview Andrew Carnegie, Hill published *Think
and Grow Rich* (1937), refining his early ideas into an accessible
self-help book. It was enormously successful, and still is - *Think and
Grow Rich* has sold more than 70 million copies.
In *Think and Grow Rich,* he wrote: "Do not wait: the time will never be
'just right.' Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have
at your command and better tools will be found as you go along."
------------------------------
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