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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 25 general entries.
Special Topics
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Writers & Authors
his experiences as a hobo during the depression. The interview was given for the History Channel's special on the Great Depression, which by the way is a very well-done documentary.
| Who was such a poor public speaker that his 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech was greeted with only polite applause, because it was virtually unintelligible to the audience, but was universally acclaimed as one of the best acceptance speeches ever after it was published in the paper the following day? | Interesting Facts about World Writers
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William Faulkner. A wonderful speech about his optimism for the future and the writer's role in it.
| What book begins, 'In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen.' ? | Interesting Facts about World Writers
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A River Runs Through It. From the highly-acclaimed autobiographical novel by Norman Maclean, describing his childhood experiences growing up in early 20th-century Montana. Published in 1976, after the author had retired from his teaching career, the book was successfully made into a film in 1992 by Robert Redford.
a Mississippi riverboat phrase.
William S. Burroughs. The tragic accident happened in 1951 when Burroughs and his second wife Joan Vollmer were partying in a room above a bar in Mexico. Burroughs was never tried for the accident. Eight years later Burroughs published his modern classic, "The Naked Lunch". He once stated that 'I'm forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death.'
Burroughs lived for a time in Tangier in a male brothel. In 1959 published The Naked Lunch, which is now accepted as a modern classic.
New York (football) Giants. Winner of a National Book Award in 1968, but inexplicably, Exley never wrote anything else of consequence. He died in 1992.
Sallisaw. Sallisaw is also known for being the hometown of 1930's crime figure Baby Face Nelson.
| What writer first became famous with 'The Naked and the Dead', his World War II novel, and later ran for Mayor of New York in 1969, with Jimmy Breslin as his running mate? | Interesting Facts about World Writers
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Norman Mailer. A serious run, though he drew less than 10 percent of the vote. Joe Flaherty's book 'Managing Mailer' gives a fascinating account of the campaign, including the profanity-laced tirade against Mailer's own supporters, which doomed the campaign.
| What crusading writer ran for Governor of California in 1934, thirty years after he had become famous with a book exposing abuses in the meatpacking industry? | Interesting Facts about World Writers
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Upton Sinclair. Sinclair remained socially active after the success of 'The Jungle', which exposed the meatpacking abuses. But even though he was the Democratic candidate in the 1934 California election, President FDR refused to endorse him, and he ended up losing the race.
Insomnia. Churchill was also a lover of cats.
blind. One of Milton's best known works is "Paradise Lost".
They all wrote while imprisoned.. O. Henry was imprisoned for embezzlement.
Hemingway . Hemingway started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of 17.
Jack London. In his lifetime, Jack London was not only a hobo, but also a seaman, before educating himself and gaining admission to the University of California at Berkley. London, a noted Socialist, also once ran for mayor of Oakland California in 1901 under the Social Party ticket. He wrote `Call Of The Wild', amongst other stories.
Lucy Maud Montgomery. Born in 1874 in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery's mother died when Lucy was only two years old. Her father abandoned her to her maternal grandmother because he wanted to re-marry, move away, and begin a new family with his new wife, leaving all reminders of his first marriage behind him. Lucy Maud Montgomery was famous for writing the `Anne of Green Gables' series, stories which semi-mirrored her own life, as Anne was an orphan living on Prince Edward Island.
Robert Frost. Robert Frost, poet, was the favored writer of President John F. Kennedy. He participated in his 1961 inaugeration by reciting two of his poems. By the time Robert Frost died in 1963, he was the unofficial poet laureate of the USA.
James Joyce. In 1907, after his extremely devout Catholic mother's death, James Joyce took up with a chambermaid, Nora Barnacle. They traveled extensively and lived openly as lovers for thirty years during the prudish early part of the 20th Cenutry. They did not marry until 1931. James Joyce was famous for writing the often censured Ulysses, amongst other works of literature.
No. Stephen Crane was not born until 1871. He did, however, serve in the Spanish-American War as a news correspondent. When he died in 1900 it was from tuberculosis and the effects of malaria, which he caught in Cuba during his years as a correspondent.
Hermann Hesse. Born in Calw, Germany in 1877, Hesse was once entered in the Protestant Seminary at Maulbrann to become a minister like his father. Unfortunately, he was expelled. His later famous novel, `Siddhartha', extolled the belief in asceticism.
Mary Ann Evans. A woman, Mary Ann Evans used the name George Eliot to ease publication. An interesting tidbit of information about George Eliot - She had a romantic affair with a married man, George Henry Lewes, for over twenty years because he couldn't divorce his mentally unbalanced wife.
Louisa May Alcott. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1832, Louisa May Alcott was a suffragette. While living in Concord, New Hampshire in 1879, she registered to vote and did vote in the Concord school election. She is famous for writing, "Little Women".
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