APRIL 10TH -- WATCH OUT, TWAIN! YOU'RE STEPPING ON MY CLOAK & DAGGER

 
http://www.amazon.com/UNDER-VOODOO-MOON-Legend-Standish-ebook/dp/B0064CKPJ4/



"Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us."
- Paul Theroux (author of THE MOSQUITO COAST)

Ghost of Ernest Hemingway here.

It amuses me that Roland has turned Outlaw by going his own way on this A to Z Challenge --

being held to no law but his own instincts.

So, in true Outlaw fashion, I have taken the reins on this article.



On this date in 1941, Paul Theroux was born and what was more unique ... he truly lived.


On this date in 1633, bananas went on sale for the first time in England at the shop of Thomas Johnson of Snow Hill, London. 

 And the humor of slipping on a banana peel was regretfully born.


On this date in 1827, American Civil War General, Lew Wallace, was born.  He also wrote BEN HUR, fusing life back into the historical novel.


On this date in 1829, William Booth was born.  He was the British founder of the Salvation Army.  He was the rare man who lived his religion.


On this day in 1858, the original Big Ben bell was cast.

The original bell of the iconic Big Ben clock tower in London weighed almost 15 tons, but it unfortunately cracked under testing.

It was then recast into a smaller bell, which remained in use into the 21st century.


That buffoon Clemens should consider that in regards to that colossal ego of his.

An ego that is also infantile as proved by his jest in yesterday's post that I was an agent of Hydra:

In fact I was an operative for the KGB, code name: Argo.

J. Edgard Hoover had personally placed me under survelliance.

In 2009, the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America,

revealed that the FBI was in fact right to spy on me because I really was on the KGB’s list of its agents in America.

Based on notes from a former KGB officer who was given access in the 1990s to intelligence archives in Moscow from the Stalin era,

the book reveals that I was recruited in 1941 before making a trip to China, and was given the cover name “Argo”.

According to Soviet documents, I met with Soviet agents during the 1940s in Havana and London and “repeatedly expressed my desire and willingness to help them."

 In the end, I turned out to be of little use to the Soviets however,

as it’s claimed I failed to give them any political information and was never “verified in practical work”.

By the 1950s, “Argo” was no longer an active Soviet contact.

It was all part of an elaborate charade by me to gather literary inspiration but it failed to spark a worthwhile novel.

 Read more
 

On this date in 1834, a fire at a New Orleans mansion reveals the mistress of the house, Delphine Lalaurie, and her physician husband 


to be brutal sadists who maintained a torture chamber for brutalizing and conducting gruesome experiments on them.


Paul Theroux's earlier quote is appropriate as in

UNDER A VOODOO MOON and THE RIVAL,

Victor Standish got a "second chance" to right matters at that mansion in his own distinctive way.


I need to teach that boy how to box.



The Titanic set off on its first and only voyage on this day in 1912.

  The massive luxury liner left Southampton, England, on this day, and it only sailed for four days when, in the shallows of the stars, it crashed into that iceberg.



On this date in 1906, William Sydney Porter (O Henry) published his second collection of short stories which included one of his most beloved tales, THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.


I will claim H to stand for HEMINGWAY out of order though it is --

After all, this is the Outlaw Trail:

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened

and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you:

the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” 

That last quote of mine reflects the thinking that got me so incensed at Fitzgerald --

 

His The Great Gatsby was published on this day in 1925. Like his letter to editor Maxwell Perkins:

"The books comes out today and I am overcome with fears and forebodings.

 

Supposing women didn’t like the book because it has no important woman in it,

 

and critics didn’t like it because it dealt with the rich and contained no peasants borrowed out of Tess [of the D’Urbervilles] in it and set to work in Idaho?

 

Suppose it didn’t even wipe out my debt to you—why it will have to sell 20,000 copies even to do that!"

 Fitzgerald’s letters at publication time and for several months after are often despairing — the sales too few, the critics too stupid or capricious, the only option to write more magazine trash or to go to Hollywood.

Bah!  The man was enough to make me want to punch him!

Twain just drawled that I would have if I hadn't been afraid Zelda would punch me back!

I'd punch Twain for that ... but for McCord.