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A Writer's Wit: George S. Kaufman

11/16/2022

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At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one. 
​George S. Kaufman
Playwright: You Can't Take It with You
Born November 16, 1889
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G. S. Kaufman
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lee Strasberg
FRI: My Book World | Elizabeth Strout's ​Oh William!
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A Writer's Wit: Wendy Wasserstein

10/18/2022

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The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.
​Wendy Wasserstein
Playwright, The Heidi Chronicles
​Born October 18, 1950
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W. Wasserstein
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores

THURS: A Writer's Wit | John Dewey
FRI: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's Hindoo 
Holiday
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A Writer's Wit: Elmer Rice

9/28/2022

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If nature had intended our skeletons to be visible it would have put them on the outside of our bodies.
​Elmer Rice
Playwright of ​The Adding Machine
​Born September 28, 1892
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E. Rice
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Gaskell
FRI: My Book World |Jennifer Egan's ​The Candy House
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A Writer's Wit: Erin Foster

8/23/2022

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I have no college education; I taught myself how to write. If you want it badly enough, you can have it. You can walk into any room and convince the person that you know what you're doing.
​Erin Foster
​Produced and Starred in Barely Famous TV Series
​Born August 23, 1982
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E. Foster
Coming Next:
​WEDS: AWW | Howard Zinn

THURS: AWW | Nadine Stair
FRI: My Book World | Heather Clark's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
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A Writer's Wit: August Wilson

4/27/2022

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All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.
​August Wilson
Playwright, Fences
​Born April 27, 1945
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A. Wilson
FRIDAY: My Book World | Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
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A Writer's Wit: Paul Reiser

3/30/2022

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Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.
​Paul Reiser
Author of Familyhood 
Born March 30, 1957
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P. Reiser
FRIDAY: My Book World | Herman Wouk's Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
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Coppola: True to His Vision

3/25/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
If birds will abandon their young rather than miss the moment to begin a flight of thousands of miles, what migratory signals might our own cells still hold?
​Gloria Steinem
Author of My Life on the Road
Born March 25, 1934
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G. Steinem

My Book World

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Schumacher, Michael. Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life. New York: Crown, 1999.

If readers are fans of both film and director Coppola, this book is an embarrassment of riches—at least as far as it takes us, through 1998 when the book comes out. One may not realize, for example, how easy the 1970s seem for Coppola, succeeding beyond his wildest dreams with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The next twenty years are more arduous, and Coppola loses his credibility at times. He wishes to be more of an artiste, making films that appeal to him but perhaps not the public at large—or the studios. Even when he makes a big-budget, mass-appeal film, he is almost always at loggerheads with studio execs over scripts and, of course, money. He is a creative man, who also finances, for a time, his own studio, and even publishes a literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story, which still exists today—not to mention a number of other enterprises including a winery. He ends the nineties having made enough money to dig himself out of debt and establish an independent life. Although he continues to make film, it is at his own pleasure. One has to admire that.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Herman Wouk's  Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author

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A Writer's Wit: Akiva Schaffer

12/1/2021

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One time, my mom told us, “No TV.” It was 3 P.M., and I was sneaking it in. She put her hand on the back of the TV to see if it was warm, and it was. So she pulled the cord out of the wall, opened the second-floor window, and just threw it out the window.
​Akiva Schaffer
Director of Michael Bolton's Big, Sexy Valentine's Day Special
Born December 1, 1977
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A. Schaffer
FRIDAY: My Book World | Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall
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A Writer's Wit: Alan Jay Lerner

8/31/2021

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Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment. It is a criticism.
​Alan Jay Lerner
Author of My Fair Lady
Born August 31, 1918
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A. Lerner
FRIDAY: My Book World | Mikita Brottman's Couple Found Slain
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A Writer's Wit: Julian Fellowes

8/17/2021

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Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they don’t, because you’re a pain the arse, you’ve lost.
​Julian Fellowes
Author of Belgravia
Born August, 17, 1949
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J. Fellowes
FRIDAY: My Book World | Hershel Parker's Herman Melville
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A Writer's Wit: Lion Feuchtwanger

7/7/2021

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In itself it is nothing. Nothing but a book: parchment, colouring, ink. Yet the most perishable material is at the same time the most durable substance in the world . . .
​Lion Feuchtwanger
Author of The Oppermanns
Born July 7, 1884
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L. Feuchtwanger
FRIDAY: My Book World | Adam Haslett's Imagine Me Gone
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A Writer's Wit: James M. Cain

7/1/2021

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I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called.
​James M. Cain
Author of The Postman Always Rings Twice
Born July 1, 1892
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J. M. Cain
TOMORROW: My Book World | Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
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A Writer's Wit: Joie Lee

6/22/2021

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I was not raised to be someone's wife. I was raised so that things should be evenly distributed.
​Joie Lee
Author of Crooklyn
Born June 22, 1962
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J. Lee
FRIDAY: My Book World | The Letters of John Cheever
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A Writer's Wit: Lorraine Hansberry

5/19/2021

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Children see things very well sometimes—and idealists even better.
​Lorraine Hansberry
Author of To Be Young, Gifted and Black
Born May 19, 1930
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L. Hansberry
FRIDAY: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow
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A Writer's Wit: Patrick Dennis

5/18/2021

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I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.
​Patrick Dennis
Author of Auntie Mame
Born May 18, 1921
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P. Dennis
FRIDAY: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow
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A Wilde Man Indeed

5/7/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?
Angela Carter
Author of Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales
Born May 7, 1940
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A. Carter

My Book World

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Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf, 1988.

This book of exhaustive research concerning Wilde’s life is a pleasure to read from his family history to his imprisonment years later and his resulting exile in France. Prior to reading this book, I had always had the impression that Oscar Wilde’s life (except for prison) was one wild ride (pardon the pun). And in some ways it was. He, even after experiencing financial success, was always in want of money, primarily because he was such a spendthrift, spending or giving away money he honestly didn’t have. He cared not about what people thought of his extravagant ideas, his extravagant living. Yet Wilde faced great public disapproval of how he lived his life. His only friends were other homosexual men or those liberal enough to accept him.

His downfall came in the package of one man, Lord Alfred Douglas, a much younger man, an aristocrat who both loved and used Wilde. If Wilde had never met him, he might have met his match with some other party, but I doubt it. The latter part of Wilde’s sad life was battling Douglas’s father in court. Lord Percy Douglas, Marquess of Queensberry, managed to have Wilde sent to prison for two years because he didn’t want Wilde near his son. Wilde did his prison time, and it broke him, both physically and emotionally. He never wrote anything substantial again, was always begging others for money, and suffered physical ailments that eventually brought on his premature death at forty-six. Ellmann’s distinguished book, more than thirty years old now, does great justice to the life of an extraordinary writer who lived, until he could no longer bear the speed of light, entirely ahead of his time.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies

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A Writer's Wit: Israel Horovitz

3/31/2021

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Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre.
​Israel Horovitz
Author of Park Your Car in Harvard Yard
Born March 31, 1939
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I. Horovitz
FRIDAY: My Book World | Matt Bell's novel Appleseed
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A Writer's Wit: Patrick Hamilton

3/17/2021

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Too much thought is bad for the soul, for art, and for crime. It is also a sign of middle age.
​Patrick Hamilton
Author of The Midnight Bell
Born March 17, 1904
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P. Hamilton
FRIDAY: My Book World | Samuel Butler's The Way of All  Flesh
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A Writer's Wit

7/25/2019

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If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.
​David Belasco
Born July 25, 1853
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D. Belasco
NEXT TIME: My Book World | Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy 
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A Writer's Wit

7/18/2019

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There are two kinds of marriages—where the husband quotes the wife and where the wife quotes the husband.
​Clifford Odets
Born July 18, 1906

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C. Odets
NEXT TIME: My Book World | Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
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A Writer's Wit

7/16/2019

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I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.
​Tony Kushner
Born July 16, 1956
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T. Kushner
NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-40  Idaho
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    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

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