In an interview published in American Literary History, Kingston disclosed her admiration for Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, and William Carlos Williams, who were inspirational influences for her work, shaping her analysis of gender studies. Kingston said of Walt Whitman’s work,
I like the rhythm of his language and the freedom and the wildness of it. It’s so American. And also his vision of a new kind of human being that was going to be formed in this country—although he never specifically said Chinese—ethnic Chinese also—I’d like to think he meant all kinds of people. And also I love that throughout Leaves of Grass he always says ‘men and women,’ ‘male and female.’ He’s so different from other writers of his time, and even of this time. Even a hundred years ago he included women and he always used [those phrases], ‘men and women,’ ‘male and female.’
Kingston named the main character of Tripmaster Monkey (1989) Wittman Ah Sing, after Walt Whitman
Similarly, Kingston’s praise of William Carlos Williams expresses her appreciation of his seemingly genderless work:
I love In the American Grain because it does the same thing. Abraham Lincoln is a ‘mother’ of our country. He talks about this wonderful woman walking through the battlefields with her beard and shawl. I find that so freeing, that we don’t have to be constrained to being just one ethnic group or one gender– both [Woolf and Williams] make me feel that I can now write as a man, I can write as a black person, as a white person; I don’t have to be restricted by time and physicality.
In 1975, Kundera moved to France where The Book of Laughter and Forgetting was published in 1979. An unusual mixture of novel, short story collection, and authorial musings which came to characterize his works in exile, the book dealt with how Czechs opposed the communist regime in various ways. (via wiki)
In his first novel, The Joke (1967), he satirizes the totalitarianism of the Communist era. His criticism of the Soviet invasion in 1968 led to his blacklisting in Czechoslovakia and the banning of his books. (via his wiki)
Jacques Barzun and Friend (American Scholar)
What did a distinguished historian, and possibly a great man, see in an unkempt young would-be writer?
By Arthur Krystal | March 23, 2021
More important, he had a soothing effect on me. I was calmer in his presence, as if the world wasn’t all about struggle, competition, and jockeying for position. Somehow he seemed detached from such things, and it was a detachment that subtly transferred to me. And when I think back on how little I knew then and how well I thought of myself (the two obviously went hand-in-hand), I see that he came along at a moment when I needed someone who represented what adulthood could be like, even if I sensed that my own would be very different. And so, for 40 years, whenever I heard his distinct but slightly throaty voice, the world made a little bit more sense, and it was a pleasure to make him laugh.
Jacques Barzun, 30 Nov 1907 – 25 Oct 2012
Historian & Scholar dies at 104 (NYtimes)
Cynthia Ozick – “the last of the thoroughgoing generalists,”
My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don’t need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let’s play him more.
— Jacques Barzun, in an interview with John C. Tibbetts
Carrière was born in Colombières-sur-Orb, France, the son of Alice and Felix Carrière, a farmer.[2] He published his first novel, Lézard, in 1957. He was introduced to Jacques Tati, who had him write short novels based on his films. Through Tati, he met Pierre Étaix, with whom Carrière wrote and directed several films, including Heureux Anniversaire, which won them the Academy Award for Best Short Subject. His nineteen-year collaboration with Buñuel began with the film Diary of a Chambermaid (1964); he co-wrote the screenplay with Buñuel and also played the part of a village priest. Carrière and the director would collaborate on the scripts of nearly all Buñuel’s later films, including Belle de Jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).
He also wrote screenplays for The Tin Drum (1979), Danton (1983), The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), La dernière image (1986), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), Valmont (1989), Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), Birth (2004), and Goya’s Ghosts (2006), and co-wrote Max, Mon Amour (1986) with director Nagisa Oshima. He also collaborated with Peter Brook on a nine-hour stage version of the ancient Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata, and a five-hour film version. In 1998 he provided the libretto for Hans Gefors’ fifth opera Clara, which was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.[3]
His work in television includes the series Les aventures de Robinson Crusoë (1964), a French-West German production much seen overseas.
It’s difficult to find quotes from David Goodis about his own approach to writing, but the accolades and insights of others help fill the gap. Ed Gorman once said that “David Goodis didn’t write novels, he wrote suicide notes,” and if we think of the literature of the suicide note, filled with equal parts anguish, guilt, love, and attempts to understand, then David Goodis’ work would easily fit within these bounds. His characters are broken down shadows of their former selves, worried more about damaging those they love then worrying about damage to themselves; as full of weaknesses, contradictions, and surprising resistances as Goodis himself.
Actor Ralph Fiennes and author John Le Carre pose for photographs at an auction in aid of The Constant Gardeners’ Trust, at the Soho Hotel in London, Sunday March 12, 2006. The trust was set up to help the people of Kenya, where the book and film The Constant Gardener, was set. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Photo credit should read: Ian West/PA
Ralph Fiennes, actor
When I was approached by [producer] Simon Channing Williams in 2003 about making The Constant Gardener, I was already an enormous fan of le Carré’s books. I loved the world he created. And then I met the man, and he was so charming and generous of spirit and immediately available for conversation about the novel and the character. I must have fired all sorts of spurious questions at him but I just remember how he was very gregarious and excited about the project. (viaread more)
(Ralph Fiennes and Pete Postlethwaite from the Constant Gardner) The Constant Gardner
One of his beloved books “Coming Through Slaughter” is a fictional story of New Orleans, Louisiana about 1900, very loosely based on the lives of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and photographer E. J. Bellocq. Winner of the 1976 Books in Canada First Novel Award.
New Orleans and vicinity at the turn of the century is the setting for the novel. Consider the places where the action occurs: N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor, the river, Shell Beach, the Brewitts, Webb’s cottage, the streets of Storyville, Bellocq’s studio, Bolden’s home with Nora and the children, the mental hospital.
Willem Dafoe interviewed Michael Ondaatjie
He has given many interviews but the interview with William Dafoe, Michael became more open and revealing. He said, “I went into a tailspin after The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. I won an award for it in Canada and I went into this hole. So I wrote Coming Through Slaughter, which was a huge fury about fame. It was on a very small scale, but it was big enough. I mean, the thing is to continue to avoid being self-conscious. To write and forget that you wrote other books.”
“I have a tendency to remove more and more in the process of editing. Often I’ll write the first chapter last, because it sets up the story. The last thing I wrote in Coming Through Slaughter was “His geography,” almost like a big landscape shot, with buried clues you can pick up later. ”
On the genesis of plane crash image for English Patient:
“WD: Where did you get the central image of the plane crash, do you even remember?
MO: I just got the image and it was there. The artist, Joseph Beuys, was in a plane crash in the far north, not in the desert, but I already had this image in my head. It was one of those things where I’d heard about Beuys and his obsession with felt and that worked its way in too. That was enough. I didn’t need to know anymore. The medicine man… ”
He then continues to talk about Herodotus, Charles Olson and Robert Creeley.
“MO: I had already read some of him. Then there was a reference to him in one of the explorer’s desert journals; one guy who said, “I was responsible for our library on one of our expeditions. But our library was only one book, Herodotus” And I thought that was great, because he was an historian writing about a place where these guys are many hundreds of years later. The idea of a contemporary history and an ancient history that links up… These explorers in the 1930s were out of time. I love the idea of them checking out sand dune formations. I love historical obsessives. And I kept thinking of writers like Charles Olson and Robert Creeley in some odd way. Creeley in his toughness, brittleness and lovely guarded lyricism was a clue for me about the patient, Almasy. And this wonderful, heroic era of exploration that was then ignored, while the twentieth century became more mercenary or mercantile. Also Herodotus’ sense of history is great because it’s very much based on rumor. “
The End Judges Everything by Herodotus (with original greek text)
The world according to Herodotus
Herodotus’ Histories
Michael O. shares birthday with these two historical figures.
Lorenzo di Medici
9/12/1492 – 5/4/1519
Florentine ruler (1513-9)
Francis I
9/12/1494 – 3/31/1547
French king and patron of the arts and scholarship (1515-47 )
Deirdre Bair (21 June, 1935 – 17 April, 2020) was an American writer and biographer. She was the author of six works of nonfiction.
Bair received a National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography (1978).[1][a] Her biographies of Simone de Beauvoir and Carl Jung[2] were finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her biographies of Anaïs Nin and Simone de Beauvoir were chosen by The New York Times as “Best Books of the Year”,
Page 93 from the Screenplay of Jojo Rabbit
(Rilke was born in Prague. Jojo Rabbit was filmed in historical towns and villages in the Czech Republic. The interiors were built in the Barrandov Studios in Prague.)
from 
