1.
Men's magazines
–
This is a list of magazines primarily marketed to men. The list has been split into subcategories according to the audience of the magazines. This list includes both adult pornographic magazines as well as more mainstream ones, not included here are automobile and gadget magazines, many of which are primarily aimed towards men. These publications appeal to a male audience. Some skew toward mens fashion, others to health, most are marketed to a particular age and income demographic. In the US, some are marketed mainly to an ethnic group. Oxford, UK Malden, Massachusetts, USA, Blackwell Pub. /Sociological Review, Mens magazines and ethnographies of reading, A textual culture approach. Readers responses to the use of irony in mens magazines, journalism Studies, special issue, Mapping the Magazine. Male gossip and language play in the pages of mens lifestyle magazines. Ironic discourse, evasive masculinity in mens lifestyle magazines, Health and the social construction of masculinity in Mens Health magazine. The golden age of mens magazines, 1950-1967, jackson, Peter, Stevenson, Nick, Brooks, Kate. Cambridge, UK Malden, Massachusetts, Polity Press Blackwell Publishers, Health and the social construction of masculinity in Mens Health magazine. Changing the Subject, from the Gentleman’s Magazine to GQ and Barack Obama at maglab. org. uk
2.
Playboy Enterprises
–
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. is an American privately held global media and lifestyle company headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. It was founded by Hugh Marston Hefner to initially manage the Playboy magazine empire, the company is structured with two primary business segments, Media and Licensing. Today, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development and distribution of content, products and high-profile events that embody both “eroticism and fine art. ”The Playboy rabbit logo is one of the most widely recognized and popular brands in the world. Sales of Playboy magazine peaked in 1972 at over 7 million copies, today, Playboy’s 5.6 million readers continue to rank it #1 for being one of their favorite men’s monthly magazines. The company now derives over 40 percent of its revenues from its media division, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. is based in Beverly Hills, California, having closed its former headquarters in the top office floors of 680 N. Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois in April 2012, in January 2013, the company said it employed 165. Playboy Enterprises was created in 1953 as the HMH Publishing Co. Inc. for the purpose of publishing Playboy, the business quickly expanded and began to develop and distribute a wider range of adult entertainment. Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner, was the President from 1982, in late 2015, it was announced that Playboy Magazine would drop all centerfolds in their magazines. The first magazine without centerfolds was the March,2016 edition, christie Hefner released a memo to employees about her efforts to streamline the companys operations, including eliminating its DVD division and laying off staff. Playboy operated casinos in England from the mid-1960s to 1981, when they lost their operating license, Playboy also operated a casino in Nassau, Bahamas from 1978 to 1982. From 1981 to 1984, the company was a partner in the Playboy Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Playboy Enterprises was denied a permanent New Jersey gaming license and was forced to out to its partner. The company returned to the business with the Playboy Club at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. Other Playboy Clubs opened in Cancun, Macau, and London in 2010 and 2011, meanwhile, the company says it will open at least three Playboy stores in each of the next three years. The companys Playboy Foundation provides grants to groups involved in fighting censorship. The Playboy Entertainment Group is a division of Playboy Enterprises that includes Playboy TV and Playboy Online and its programming is carried in the U. S. by all six of the major multiple system operators and both of the satellite direct-to-home, or DTH, providers. In 2005, a Playboy satellite radio station launched on Sirius Satellite Radio, the company offers multiple subscription-based Web sites and online video-on-demand theaters under the Playboy and Spice names. The Company has online operations consisting of a network of websites with an established and growing subscriber, the Company distributes its original programming domestically in DVD format
3.
Hugh Hefner
–
Hugh Marston Hefner is an American mens lifestyle magazine publisher, businessman, and a well-known playboy. Hefner is a native of Chicago, Illinois and a former journalist for Esquire and he is best known for being the founder and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises. A self-made multi-millionaire, his net worth is over $43 million due to his success as the founder of Playboy magazine, Hefner is also a political activist and philanthropist active in several causes and public issues. He is a World War II veteran, Hefner was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 9,1926. He is the first child of Grace Caroline and Glenn Lucius Hefner and he had a younger brother, Keith. Hefners mother was of Swedish descent, and his father had German, through his fathers line, Hefner has stated that he is a direct descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He has described his family as conservative, Midwestern, Methodist and he attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then during World War II, served as a writer for a military newspaper in the U. S. Army from 1944 to 1946. After graduation, he took a semester of courses in sociology at Northwestern University. While he was working as a copywriter for Esquire, Hefner left in January 1952 after being denied a $5 raise, the first issue, published in December 1953, featured Marilyn Monroe from her 1949 nude calendar shoot and sold over 50,000 copies. After the Charles Beaumont science fiction short story The Crooked Man was rejected by Esquire magazine in 1955, the story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. After the magazine received letters, Hefner wrote a response to criticism where he said, If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong. In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, based on that performance, Hefner hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club, Gregory attributes the subsequent launch of his career to that night. On June 4,1963, Hefner was arrested for promoting obscene literature after an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield was released, the case went to trial and resulted in a hung jury. In the 1993 The Simpsons episode Krusty Gets Kancelled, Hefner guest-voiced himself, in 1999, Hefner financed the Clara Bow documentary, Discovering the It Girl. She defined an era and made her mark on the nation, Hefner guest-starred as himself in a 2006 episode of Seth Greens Robot Chicken on the late-night programming block Adult Swim. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television and has several movie appearances as himself. In 2009, he received a worst supporting actor nomination for a Razzie award for his performance as himself in Miss March, on his official Twitter account he joked about this nomination, Maybe I didnt understand the character. A documentary by Brigitte Berman, Hugh Hefner, Playboy, Activist and he had previously granted full access to documentary filmmaker and television producer Kevin Burns for the A&E Biography special Hugh Hefner, American Playboy in 1996
4.
Chicago
–
Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
5.
International Standard Serial Number
–
An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title, ISSN are used in ordering, cataloging, interlibrary loans, and other practices in connection with serial literature. The ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971, ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC9 is responsible for maintaining the standard. When a serial with the content is published in more than one media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media, the ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN and electronic ISSN, respectively. The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers, as an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits. The last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows, NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character. The ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, for calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, the modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker that can validate an ISSN, ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres, usually located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris. The International Centre is an organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, at the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept, where ISBNs are assigned to individual books, an ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an identifier associated with a serial title. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change, separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. Also, a CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved, however, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial
6.
Centerfold
–
In saddle-stitched magazines, the centerfold does not have any blank space cutting through the image. The term was coined by Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, the success of the first issue of Playboy has been attributed in large part to its centerfold, a nude of Marilyn Monroe. The advent of monthly centerfolds gave the pin-up a new respectability, being featured as a centerfold could lead to film roles for models, and still occasionally does today. Should have a healthy, intelligent, American look—a young lady that looks like she might be an efficient secretary or an undergrad at Vassar. Some magazines later adopted the practice of having a trifold or quatrefold centerfold, using a sheet of paper at that spot. Some magazines will refer to their models with a specific name. Some online-only media outlets maintain a monthly designation reminiscent of a print magazine centerfold, for example, the Twistys Treat
7.
Model (person)
–
A model is a person with a role either to promote, display, or advertise commercial products or to serve as a visual aide for people who are creating works of art or to pose for photography. Modelling is considered to be different from other types of public performance, although the difference between modelling and performing is not always clear, appearing in a film or a play is not generally considered to be modelling. Types of modelling include, fashion, glamour, fitness, bikini, fine art, body-part, Models are featured in a variety of media formats including, books, magazines, films, newspapers, internet and TV. Fashion models are featured in films, reality TV shows. Celebrities, including actors, singers, sports personalities and reality TV stars, modelling as a profession was first established in 1853 by Charles Frederick Worth, the father of haute couture, when he asked his wife, Marie Vernet Worth, to model the clothes he designed. The term house model was coined to describe this type of work, eventually, this became common practice for Parisian fashion houses. There were no standard physical measurement requirements for a model, with the development of fashion photography, the modelling profession expanded to photo modelling. Models remained fairly anonymous, and relatively poorly paid, until the late 1950s, one of the first well-known models was Lisa Fonssagrives, who was very popular in the 1930s. Fonssagrives appeared on over 200 Vogue covers, and her name recognition led to the importance of Vogue in shaping the careers of fashion models. In 1946, Ford Models was established by Eileen and Gerard Ford in New York, one of the most popular models during the 1940s was Jinx Falkenburg who was paid $25 per hour, a large sum at the time. During the 1940s and 1950s, Wilhelmina Cooper, Jean Patchett, Dovima, Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker, Evelyn Tripp, Carmen DellOrefice, dorothea Church was among the first black models in the industry to gain notoriety in Paris. However, these models were unknown outside the fashion community, compared to todays models, the models of the 1950s were more voluptuous. Wilhelmina Coopers measurements were 38-24-36 whereas Chanel Imans measurements are 32-23-33, in the 1960s, the modelling world began to establish modelling agencies. Throughout Europe, secretarial services acted as models agents charging them weekly rates for their messages, for the most part, models were responsible for their own billing. In Germany, agents were not allowed to work for a percentage of a persons earnings, with the exception of a few models travelling to Paris or New York, travelling was relatively unheard of for a model. Most models only worked in one market due to different labor laws governing modelling in various countries, in the 1960s, Italy had many fashion houses and fashion magazines but was in dire need of models. Italian agencies would often coerce models to return to Italy without work visas by withholding their pay and they would also pay their models in cash, which models would have to hide from customs agents. It was not uncommon for models staying in such as La Louisiana in Paris or the Arena in Milan to have their hotel rooms raided by the police looking for their work visas
8.
Playboy Playmate
–
A Playmate is a female model featured in the centerfold/gatefold of Playboy magazine as Playmate of the Month. The PMOMs pictorial includes nude photographs and a poster, along with a pictorial biography and the Playmate Data Sheet, which lists her birthdate, measurements, turn-ons. At the end of the year, one of the twelve Playmates of the Month is named Playmate of the Year, currently, Playmates of the Month are paid US$25,000 and Playmates of the Year receive an additional US$100,000 plus a car and a motorcycle. In addition, Anniversary Playmates are usually chosen to celebrate a year of the magazine. In addition, casting calls are held regularly in major US cities to offer opportunities for women to test for Playboy, the Playboy photographers and Hugh Hefner then select which models become Playmates. The Playmate of the Year is chosen personally by Hugh Hefner, according to Playboy, there is no such thing as a former Playmate because Once a Playmate, always a Playmate. Marilyn Monroe, who was featured in the first issue, was the one to appear as Sweetheart of the Month. The first model called a Playmate of the Month was Margie Harrison, Miss January 1954, generally a woman may appear only once as a Playmate, but in the early years of the magazine, some models were featured multiple times. Marilyn Waltz and Janet Pilgrim are tied for the most appearances, Margie Harrison and Marguerite Empey are the only other women to appear more than once as Playmates. Under current law in most US jurisdictions, publishing pictures of a model younger than 18 would be a felony. However, in the years of the magazine, laws regarding corruption of a minor were less well established. Several playmates – including Nancy Crawford, Donna Michelle, Linda Moon, Patti Reynolds, Elizabeth Ann Roberts – whose pictorial was called Schoolmate Playmate – posed when she was sixteen. Hugh Hefner and Roberts mother were arrested as a result, in more recent years, Ursula Buchfellner posed for the German edition of Playboy when she was sixteen and subsequently posed for the American edition when she was eighteen. Dutch Playmate twins Karin and Mirjam van Breeschooten appeared at age seventeen in their countrys edition of Playboy in June 1988, at eighteen, the youngest – i. e. last born – Playmate, as of April 2015 is Alexandra Tyler, born May 9,1994. Some women have become Playmates in their 30s, rebecca Anne Ramos is the oldest Playmate to date, appearing in her shoot at the age of 35. First Playmate, Margie Harrison in the issue of Playboy. Marilyn Monroe, who was featured in the first issue, was the one to appear as Sweetheart of the Month. First Playmate who was not an American citizen, Elsa Sorensen was a citizen of Denmark, youngest Playmate ever featured, Elizabeth Ann Roberts appeared at age 16
9.
Arthur C. Clarke
–
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, in 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularizing science. These along with his fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker Prophet of the Space Age. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, for many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Clarke was a proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, in 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system, an idea which won him the Franklin Institutes Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963, and other honours. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–47, Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of television shows such as Arthur C. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death and he was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lankas highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard, as a boy, he grew up on a farm enjoying stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his education at Huish Grammar school in Taunton. Early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925, in his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the societys journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarkes request, she added an Astronautics Section, which featured a series of articles by him on spacecraft and he moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949 after several years of development. Clarke initially served in the ranks, and was an instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School. He was commissioned as an officer on 27 May 1943
10.
Ian Fleming
–
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva and his wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels. Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952 and it was a success, with three print runs being commissioned to cope with the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two short-story collections followed between 1953 and 1966, the novels revolved around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his number,007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the series of fictional books of all time. Fleming also wrote the childrens story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction, in 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Fleming was married to Ann Charteris, who was divorced from the second Viscount Rothermere owing to her affair with the author, Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a smoker and drinker for most of his life. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously, other writers have since produced Bond novels, Flemings creation has appeared in film twenty-six times, portrayed by seven actors. Ian Fleming was born on 28 May 1908, at 27 Green Street in the wealthy London district of Mayfair and his mother was Evelyn St Croix Rose, and his father was Valentine Fleming, the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910. As an infant he lived, with his family, at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Fleming was the grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust, in 1914, with the start of the First World War, Valentine joined C Squadron, Queens Own Oxfordshire Hussars, and rose to the rank of major. He was killed by German shelling on the Western Front on 20 May 1917, because the family owned an estate at Arnisdale, Valentines death was commemorated on the Glenelg War Memorial. Flemings elder brother Peter became a writer and married actress Celia Johnson. Fleming also had two brothers, Michael and Richard, and a younger maternal half-sister born out of wedlock, cellist Amaryllis Fleming. Amaryllis was conceived during an affair between John and Evelyn that started in 1923, some six years after the death of Valentine
11.
Vladimir Nabokov
–
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist and entomologist. His first nine novels were in Russian, and he achieved prominence after he began writing English prose. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, Nabokov was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems. Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899, in Saint Petersburg, b to a wealthy and his father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal Constitutional Democratic Party and authored numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov and his paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, had been Russias Justice Minister in the reign of Alexander II. His paternal grandmother was the Baltic German Baroness Maria von Korff, Vladimir was the familys eldest and favorite child, with four younger siblings, Sergey, Olga, Elena and Kiril. Sergey would be killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, Olga is recalled by Ayn Rand as having been a supporter of constitutional monarchy who had first awakened Rands interest in politics. Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya and his childhood, which he had called perfect and cosmopolitan, was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household and he relates that the first English book his mother read to him was Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery. In fact, much to his fathers chagrin, Nabokov could read. While the family was nominally Orthodox, they felt no religious fervor, Nabokovs adolescence was also the period in which his first serious literary endeavors were made. In 1916, Nabokov had his first collection of published, Stikhi. At the time, Nabokov was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg and they lived at a friends estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya, at the time part of the Ukrainian Republic, Nabokovs father became a minister of justice in the Crimean Regional Government. After the withdrawal of the German Army and the defeat of the White Army and they settled briefly in England and Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, first studying zoology, then Slavic and Romance languages. His examination results on the first part of the Tripos, taken at the end of year, were a starred first. He sat the second part of the exam in his third year, Nabokov feared that he might fail the exam, but his script was marked second-class. His final examination result was second-class, and his BA conferred in 1922, Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels Glory and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. In 1920, Nabokovs family moved to Berlin, where his set up the émigré newspaper Rul. Nabokov followed them to Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge
12.
Saul Bellow
–
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and he is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the National Book Foundations lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammlers Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldts Gift, widely regarded as one of the 20th centurys greatest authors, Bellow has had a huge literary influence. Bellow said that of all his characters Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself, Bellow grew up as an insolent slum kid, a thick-necked rowdy, and an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellows fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, Bellows protagonists, in one shape or another, all wrestle with what Corde called the big-scale insanities of the 20th century. This transcendence of the unutterably dismal is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a ferocious assimilation of learning and an emphasis on nobility. Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his parents, Lescha and Abraham Bellows, emigrated from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Bellows family was Lithuanian-Jewish, his father was born in Vilnius. Bellow celebrated his birthday in June, although he may have born in July. Of his familys emigration, Bellow wrote, The retrospective was strong in me because of my parents and they were both full of the notion that they were falling, falling. They had been prosperous cosmopolitans in Saint Petersburg and my mother could never stop talking about the family dacha, her privileged life, and how all that was now gone. She was working in the kitchen, there had been servants in Russia. But you could always transpose from your humiliating condition with the help of a sort of embittered irony, when Bellow was nine, his family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop of many of his novels. Bellows father, Abraham, had become an onion importer and he also worked in a bakery, as a coal delivery man, and as a bootlegger. Bellows mother, Liza, died when he was 17 and he was left with his father and brother Maurice. His mother was religious, and wanted her youngest son, Saul. But he rebelled against what he called the suffocating orthodoxy of his religious upbringing. Bellows lifelong love for the Bible began at four when he learned Hebrew, Bellow also grew up reading William Shakespeare and the great Russian novelists of the 19th century. In Chicago, he took part in studies at the Anthroposophical Society of Chicago
13.
Chuck Palahniuk
–
Charles Michael Chuck Palahniuk is an American novelist and freelance journalist, who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He is the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, which also was made into a film of the same name. Palahniuk was born in Pasco, Washington, the son of Carol Adele and he has French, Russian, and Ukrainian ancestry. His paternal grandfather was Ukrainian and migrated to New York from Canada in 1907, Palahniuk grew up living in a mobile home in Burbank, Washington. His parents separated when he was 14 and subsequently divorced, often leaving him, Palahniuk acknowledged in a 2007 interview that he is a distant nephew of actor Jack Palance, and that his family had talked of distant relations with Palance. In his 20s, Palahniuk attended the University of Oregon School of Journalism, while attending college, he worked as an intern for National Public Radio member station KLCC in Eugene, Oregon. He moved to Portland, Oregon soon after and he wrote for the local newspaper for a short while, and then began working for Freightliner as a diesel mechanic, continuing until his writing career took off. During that time, he wrote manuals on fixing trucks and had a stint as a journalist, after casually attending a seminar held by an organization called Landmark Education, Palahniuk quit his job as a journalist in 1988. He performed volunteer work for a shelter and volunteered at a hospice as an escort, providing transportation for terminally ill people. He ceased volunteering upon the death of a patient to whom he had grown attached, Palahniuk began writing fiction in his mid-30s. By his account, he started writing while attending workshops for writers that were hosted by Tom Spanbauer, Spanbauer largely inspired Palahniuks minimalistic writing style. When he attempted to publish his novel, Invisible Monsters, publishers rejected it and this led him to work on his most famous novel, Fight Club, which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him. Palahniuk wrote this story in his time while working for Freightliner. While the original edition of the book received positive reviews and some awards. Initially, Palahniuk struggled to find an agent and went without one until after the publication of Fight Club. In 1999, three years after the publication, the film adaptation by director David Fincher was released. The film was a box office disappointment and critical reaction was mixed, three editions of the novel have been published in paperback, in 1999, in 2004, and in 2005. Palahniuk was cajoled to continue Fight Club in comics form by fellow novelist Chelsea Cain and comic writers Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick
14.
P. G. Wodehouse
–
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse KBE was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. Born in Guildford, the son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy years at Dulwich College. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and his early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years. Although most of Wodehouses fiction is set in England, he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. During and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern and he began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his revelations of incompetence and extravagance at Hollywood studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his career reached a new peak. In 1934 Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons, in 1940 he was prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, the talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955 and he was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, Wodehouse worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words, after the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career he would produce a novel in three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers, the Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a collateral branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry and she was visiting one of her sisters in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely. The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, Wodehouse wrote in 1957, If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not. I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it, the first name was rapidly elided to Plum, the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends. Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah, alongside his elder brothers Peveril and Armine
15.
Roald Dahl
–
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot. His books have more than 250 million copies worldwide. He rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for children and adults and he became one of the worlds best-selling authors. He has been referred to as one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century and his awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and the British Book Awards Childrens Author of the Year in 1990. In 2008, The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945 and his books champion the kind-hearted, and feature an underlying warm sentiment. Dahls works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and his adult works include Tales of the Unexpected. Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl, Dahls father had emigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg in Norway, and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s. His mother came over and married his father in 1911, Dahl was named after the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild, Dahl and his sisters were raised in the Lutheran faith, and were baptised at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff, where their parents worshipped. In 1920, when Dahl was three years old, his sister, Astri, died from appendicitis. Weeks later, his father died of pneumonia at the age of 57, Dahl first attended the Cathedral School, Llandaff. This was known among the five boys as the Great Mouse Plot of 1924, a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars, Dahl would later refer to gobstoppers in his literary creation, Everlasting Gobstopper. Thereafter, he transferred to a school in England, St Peters in Weston-super-Mare. Roalds parents had wanted him to be educated at an English public school and, because of a regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel. His time at St Peters was an unpleasant experience for him and he was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week but never revealed to her his unhappiness. Only after her death in 1967 did he find out that she had saved every single one of his letters, in 2016, to mark the centenary of Dahls birth, his letters to his mother were abridged and broadcast as BBC Radio 4s Book of the Week. Dahl wrote about his time at St Peters in his autobiography Boy, from 1929, he attended Repton School in Derbyshire. There are echoes of these experiences in Dahls writings and his hatred of cruelty
16.
Haruki Murakami
–
Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country. The critical acclaim for his fiction and non-fiction has led to awards, in Japan and internationally, including the World Fantasy Award. His oeuvre received, for example, the Franz Kafka Prize, Murakamis most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. He has also translated into Japanese English works by writers ranging from Raymond Carver to J. D. Salinger and his fiction, still criticized by Japans literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the recurrent themes of alienation and he is also considered an important figure in postmodern literature. Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as among the worlds greatest living novelists for his works, Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, during the post–World War II baby boom and raised in Shukugawa, Ashiya and Kobe. His father was the son of a Buddhist priest, and his mother the daughter of an Osaka merchant, since childhood, Murakami similarly to Kōbō Abe has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western as well as Russian music and literature. These Western influences distinguish Murakami from the majority of other Japanese writers, Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a store, much like Toru Watanabe. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened a house and jazz bar, the Peter Cat, in Kokubunji, Tokyo. Murakami is a marathon runner and triathlon enthusiast, though he did not start running until he was 33 years old. On 23 June 1996, he completed his first ultramarathon, a 100 km race around Lake Saroma in Hokkaido and he discusses his relationship with running in his 2008 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami began to write fiction when he was 29, before that, he said, I didnt write anything. I was just one of ordinary people. I was running a club, and I didnt create anything at all. He was inspired to write his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, in 1978, Murakami was in Jingu Stadium watching a game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to a story, in the instant that Hilton hit a double
17.
Margaret Atwood
–
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C, in 2001, she was inducted into Canadas Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers Trust of Canada, among innumerable contributions to Canadian literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Atwood is also the inventor, and developer, of the LongPen and she is the Co-Founder and a Director of Syngrafii Inc. a company that she started in 2004 to develop, produce and distribute the LongPen technology. She holds various patents related to the LongPen technologies, while she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen books of poetry. Many of her poems have inspired by myths and fairy tales. Atwood has published stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harpers, CBC Anthology, Ms. Saturday Night. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of short prose works. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Atwood was the second of three children of Margaret Dorothy, a dietitian and nutritionist from Woodville, Nova Scotia and Carl Edmund Atwood. Because of her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec and travelling back and she did not attend school full-time until she was eight years old. She became a reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimms Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957, Atwood began writing plays and poems at the age of six. Atwood realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16, in 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary journal. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye and she graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in philosophy and French. In late 1961, after winning the E. J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvards Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a degree from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University for two years, but did not finish her dissertation, The English Metaphysical Romance. F. A. Chair, and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English, Atwood, who was surrounded by the intellectual dialogue of the female faculty members at Victoria College, often portrays female characters dominated by patriarchy in her novels. She also sheds light on womens oppression as a result from patriarchal ideology
18.
Harvey Kurtzman
–
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and editor. His best-known work includes writing and editing the parodic comic book Mad from 1952 until 1956 and his work is noted for its satire and parody of popular culture, social critique, and attention to detail. Kurtzmans working method has been likened to that of an auteur, Kurtzman began to work on the New Trend line of comic books at EC Comics in 1950. The comic book switched to a format in 1955. Following his departure, he did a variety of cartooning work, including editing the short-lived Trump, in 1959, he produced the first book-length work of original comics, the adult-oriented, satirical Jungle Book. He brought Help. to an end after the success of the risqué Playboy feature Little Annie Fanny began to take up his time. While Annie Fanny provided much of his income for the rest of his career, he continued to produce a body of work. In 1967 and directing, writing and designing several shorts for Sesame Street in 1969, from 1973, Kurtzman taught cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work gained greater recognition toward the end of his life, the Harvey Award was named in Kurtzmans honor in 1988. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1989, Harvey Kurtzman spoke little of his parents in interviews, and not much is known of their pre-American lives. David Kurtzman and Edith née Sherman grew up in Ukraine in Odessa and they belonged to the citys large Jewish community, one that suffered generations of antisemitic oppression, and the city had fallen into economic hardship following the Russian Revolution. Shortly after World War I David emigrated to New York and Edith soon followed in what she called a desperate journey escaping the new Soviet Union, there the non-observant pair married in a civil ceremony. The first of their two sons, Zachary, was born April 8,1923, Harvey Kurtzman was born on October 3,1924, in a tenement building on 428 East Ninety-Eighth Street in Brooklyn in New York City. David joined the Christian Science church, and when he suffered an ulcer he turned to prayer to cure it, he died from it on November 29,1928. The family was in desperate financial straits that their mother placed the Kurtzman brothers in an orphanage for three months until she secured work as a milliner. Several months later, Edith remarried to Russian-Jewish immigrant Abraham Perkes, the Kurtzman boys kept their surname, while their mother took that of Perkes. The couple had a son Daniel on February 17,1931, in 1934 the family moved to the more upscale Bronx, where the family lived at 2166 Clinton Avenue. Perkes was not wealthy, but managed to provide for his family during the Great Depression of the 1930s and he was a trade unionist, and the couple read the communist newspaper Daily Worker
19.
Jack Cole (artist)
–
Jack Ralph Cole was an American cartoonist best known for creating the comedic superhero Plastic Man, and his cartoons for Playboy magazine. He was posthumously inducted into the book industrys Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991. At age 17, he bicycled solo cross-country to Los Angeles, California, Cole recounted this adventure in an early self-illustrated professional sale A Boy and His Bike. Back home, Cole took a job at American Can and continued to draw at night, in 1936, having married childhood sweetheart Dorothy Mahoney soon after graduating high school, Cole moved with his wife to New York Citys Greenwich Village. There, Cole drew such features as TNT Todd of the FBI and Little Dynamite for Centaur Publications comics such as Funny Pages and he produced such additional features as King Koles Kourt, Officer Clancy, and Peewee Throttle, and Ima Slooth. Lev Gleason Publications hired Cole in 1939 to edit Silver Streak Comics, other characters created or worked on by the prolific tyro include MLJs The Comet in Pep Comics—who in short order became the first superhero to be killed—and his replacement, the Hangman. After becoming an editor at Lev Gleason and revamping Jack Binders original Golden Age Daredevil in 1940, at the behest of Quality publisher Everett Busy Arnold, Cole later created his own satiric, Spirit-style hero, Midnight, for Smash Comics No.18. During Eisners World War II military service, Cole and Lou Fine were the primary Spirit ghost artists,5 to 9, spanning July 1942 – Dec.1944. In addition, Cole continued to draw one and two-page filler pieces, sometimes under the pseudonym Ralph Johns, and a memorable appearance in Inki. Cole created Plastic Man for a feature in Qualitys Police Comics #1. While Timely Comics quickly forgotten Flexo the Rubber Man had preceded Plas as comics first stretching hero, Coles character became an immediate hit, Plastic Man gained his own title in 1943. By the decades end, however, Coles feature was being created entirely by anonymous ghost writers and artists—including Alex Kotzky, one last stint by Cole himself in 1949 and 1950 could not save the title. Plastic Man was cancelled in 1956 after several years of reprinting the Cole material, additionally, Cole and writer Joe Millard created the lighthearted feature The Barker, starring carnival barker Carnie Callhan. Introduced in National Comics #42, the spun off into a 15-issue comic of its own Coles career by that time had taken on another dimension. In 1954, after having drawn slightly risqué, single-panel good girl art cartoons for magazines, using the pen name Jake, under his own name, he produced full-page, watercolored gag cartoons of beautiful but dim girls and rich but equally dim old men. Coles art first appeared in the issue, he would have at least one piece published in Playboy each month for the rest of his life. So popular was his work that the item of merchandise ever licensed by Playboy was a cocktail-napkin set, Females by Cole. Cole biographer Art Spiegelman said, Coles goddesses were estrogen soufflés who mesmerized the ineffectual saps who lusted after them, in 1958, Cole created his own daily newspaper comic strip, Betsy and Me, which he sold to the Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate
20.
Jules Feiffer
–
Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist and author, who was considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 as Americas leading editorial cartoonist and he wrote the animated short, Munro, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961. The Library of Congress has recognized his remarkable legacy, from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children’s book author, illustrator, when Feiffer was 17, he became assistant to cartoonist Will Eisner in the mid-1940s. There he helped Eisner write and illustrate his comic strips, including The Spirit and he then became a staff cartoonist at The Village Voice beginning in 1956, where he produced the weekly comic strip titled Feiffer, until 1997. His cartoons became nationally syndicated in 1959 and then appeared regularly in publications including the Los Angeles Times, the London Observer, The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Nation. In 1997 he created the first op-ed page comic strip for the New York Times and he has written more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. His first of many collections of cartoons, Sick, Sick, Sick, was published in 1958, and his first novel, Harry. He wrote The Great Comic Book Heroes in 1965, the first history of the comic book superheroes of the late 1930s and early 1940s, in 1979 Feiffer created his first graphic novel, Tantrum. By 1993 he began writing and illustrating books aimed at young readers, Feiffer began writing for the theater and film in 1961, with plays including Little Murders, Feiffers People, and Knock Knock. He wrote the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge, directed by Mike Nichols, besides writing, he is currently an instructor with the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. Feiffer was born in The Bronx, New York City, on January 26,1929 and his parents were David Feiffer and Rhoda, and Feiffer was raised in a Jewish household with a younger and an older sister. His father was unemployed in his work as a salesman due to the Depression. His mother was a designer who made watercolor drawings of her designs which she sold to various clothing manufacturers in New York. Shed go door to door selling her designs for $3, recalls Feiffer, the fact that she was the breadwinner, however, created an atmosphere of silent blame in the home. Feiffer began drawing at the age of 3 and my mother always encouraged me to draw, he says. When he was 13 his mother gave him a table for his bedroom. She also enrolled him in the Art Students League of New York to study anatomy and he graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947. He won a John Wanamaker Art Contest medal for a drawing of the radio Western hero Tom Mix
21.
Shel Silverstein
–
Sheldon Allan Shel Silverstein was an American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter, and author of childrens books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in some works, translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies. He was the recipient of two Grammy Awards, as well as a Golden Globe and Academy Award nominee. Born into a Jewish family, Silverstein grew up in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, attended Roosevelt High School and, later and he then enrolled in Chicago Academy of Fine Arts where he was attending when he was drafted into the United States Army. He served in Japan and Korea and he had one daughter, Shoshanna Jordan Hastings, born June 30,1970, with Susan Taylor Hastings of Sausalito, California. Susan died on June 29,1975, one day before Shoshannas fifth birthday, and Shoshanna died April 24,1982, at age 11, of a cerebral aneurysm. He also had a son named Matthew, born November 10,1984, with Sarah Spencer of Key West, Florida, Sarah drove the conch train, on May 10,1999, Silverstein died at age 68 of a heart attack in Key West, Florida. He is buried in Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois, Silverstein began drawing at age seven by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told Publishers Weekly, When I was a kid—12 to 14, Id much rather have been a baseball player or a hit with the girls. Luckily, the didnt want me. Not much I could do about that, so I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didnt have anybody to copy, I had developed my own style, I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work til I was around 30, by the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldnt rather make love, but the work has become a habit and he was first published in the Roosevelt Torch, a student newspaper at Roosevelt University, where he studied English after leaving the Art Institute. During his time in the military, his cartoons were published in Pacific Stars and Stripes and his first book, Take Ten, a compilation of his military Take Ten cartoon series, was published by Pacific Stars and Stripes in 1955. He later said his time in college was a waste and would have been spent traveling around the world meeting people. After returning to Chicago, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks and his cartoons began appearing in Look, Sports Illustrated and This Week. Mass-market paperback readers across America were introduced to Silverstein in 1956 when Take Ten was reprinted by Ballantine Books as Grab Your Socks, the edition included a foreword by Bill Mauldin
22.
Gahan Wilson
–
Gahan Wilson is an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations. Wilson was born in Evanston, Illinois and he has been married to author Nancy Winters since 1966. It could be argued that Addams work was meant to be funny without a lot of satirical intent. Wilson was inspired by the irreverent work of the various satiric Mad and Punch cartoonists and his cartoons and prose fiction appeared regularly in Playboy, Colliers and The New Yorker for almost 50 years. In addition to his cartoons for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, he wrote movie. From 1992 through end of publication, he prepared all the front covers for the annual book Passport to World Band Radio and he has been a movie review columnist for The Twilight Zone Magazine and a book critic for Realms of Fantasy magazine. His comic strip Nuts, which appeared in National Lampoon, was a reaction against what he saw as the view of childhood in strips like Peanuts. His hero, The Kid, sees the world as dark, dangerous, Wilson wrote and illustrated a short story for Harlan Ellisons anthology Again, Dangerous Visions. The title is a blob, and the story is about an ominous black blob that appears on the page. He has contributed short stories to other publications as well, M1, Wilson created a computer game, Gahan Wilsons The Ultimate Haunted House, with Byron Preiss. The goal is to collect 13 keys in 13 hours from the 13 rooms of a house by interacting in various ways with characters, objects, Wilson wrote the 1992 animated short Diner. In 2009, Fantagraphics Books released Gahan Wilson,50 Years of Playboy Cartoons, a collection of his work, Fifty Years of Gahan Wilson, was published in 2010. Fantagraphics announced an edition of Nuts for the Spring of 2011. In 2005, Wilson was recognized with Lifetime Achievement from the World Fantasy Awards and he received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1981. He also received the National Cartoonists Societys Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, Wilson is the subject of a feature-length documentary film, Gahan Wilson, Born Dead, Still Weird, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe. He was an influence on later cartoonists, including Gary Larson, John Callahan. Gahan Wilsons Graveside Manner The Man in the Cannibal Pot I Paint What I See Playboys Gahan Wilson Gahan Wilsons Cracked Cosmos The Weird World of Gahan Wilson And Then Well Get Him, Nuts Playboys Gahan Wilson Is Nothing Sacred. Little, Wrinkled and Green, an interview with macabre cartoonist Gahan Wilson, in Boston, MA, The Lovecraft Society of New England
23.
Rowland B. Wilson
–
Rowland Bragg Wilson was an American gag cartoonist and animation production artist who did watercolor cartoon illustrations for leading magazines, notably Playboy and TV Guide and The New Yorker. Born in Dallas, Texas, the young Wilson was passionate about the funnies and he was an honors student in liberal arts at the University of Texas at Austin, where he drew cartoons for the college humor magazine, The Texas Ranger. A number of the cartoons Wilson did for The Texas Ranger were reprinted by Dells 1000 Jokes in an ongoing feature and this led to a series of caricature covers Wilson did for 1000 Jokes. Wilson did his work in art history at Columbia University. He was an art director with Young & Rubicam and moved to Weston, Wilson illustrated childrens books including Al Perkins Tubby and the Lantern, and attracted much attention with his series of cartoons for the New England Life Insurance ad campaign. He also illustrated books, including Steve Allens Bigger Than a Breadbox, as well as compiling a book of his own cartoons. His gag cartoons were published in Esquire, Playboy, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, in the early 1970s, Wilson worked in London for the Richard Williams animation studio. When he returned to the United States, he worked in New York at the Phil Kimmelman animation studio, creating two award-winning sequences for Schoolhouse Rock. After moving to California he was a concept designer at the Walt Disney studio, working on The Little Mermaid, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan and Hercules. His wife, Suzanne Lemieux Wilson, did concept art on several animated features, including Titan A. E. Wilson lived in La Costa, California. At age 74, he died of heart failure at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas and he was survived by his wife and his four daughters, Amanda, Reed, Kendra and Megan Wilson. Rowland Wilsons The Little Mermaid production designs UT Texas Ranger Magazine archive
24.
Cover art
–
Cover art it is either an artwork as illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book, magazine, comic book, video game, DVD, CD, videotape, or music album. Album cover art is created for a music album. Iconic album cover art includes Pink Floyds The Dark Side of the Moon, King Crimsons In the Court of the Crimson King, peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road and their White Album among others. Artists known for their cover art include Alex Steinweiss, an early pioneer in album cover art, Roger Dean. Some album art may cause controversy because of nudity, offending churches, there have been numerous books documenting album cover art, particularly rock and jazz album covers. Alex Steinweiss was an art director and graphic designer who brought custom artwork to record album covers, magazine cover artists include Art Spiegelman, who modernized the look of The New Yorker magazine, and his predecessor Rea Irvin, who created the Eustace Tilly iconic character for the magazine. Sheet music cover artists include Frederick S. Manning, William Austin Starmer, other prolific artists included Albert Wilfred Barbelle, André De Takacs, and Gene Buck
25.
Marilyn Monroe
–
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Famous for playing comic dumb blonde characters, she one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s. Although she was an actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962. She continues to be considered a popular culture icon. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes, while working in a factory in 1944 as part of the war effort, she was introduced to a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career. The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth Century-Fox and Columbia Pictures, after a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became an actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for photos before becoming a star, but rather than damaging her career. Although she played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was disappointed at being typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project, when the studio was still reluctant to change her contract, Monroe founded a film production company in late 1954, she named it Marilyn Monroe Productions. She dedicated 1955 to building her company and began studying acting at the Actors Studio. In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. After a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop and acting in the first independent production of MMP, The Prince and her last completed film was the drama The Misfits. Monroes troubled private life received much attention and she struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. She had two highly publicized marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, both of which ended in divorce and she died at the age of 36 on August 5,1962, from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although Monroes death was ruled a suicide, several conspiracy theories have been proposed in the decades following her death. Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1,1926, Gladys, the daughter of two poor Midwestern migrants to California, was a flapper and worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. When she was fifteen, Gladys married a man nine years her senior, John Newton Baker and she filed for divorce in 1921, and Baker took the children with him to his native Kentucky
26.
Esquire (magazine)
–
Esquire is an American mens magazine, published by the Hearst Corporation in the United States. Founded in 1933, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founders Arnold Gingrich, Esquire was first issued in October 1933. The magazine was first headquartered in Chicago and then, in New York City and it was founded and edited by David A. Smart, Henry L. Jackson and Arnold Gingrich. Jackson died in the crash of United Airlines Flight 624 in 1948, Smart died in 1952, although he left Esquire in 1936 to found a different magazine, Coronet. Additionally, Jacksons Republican political viewpoints contrasted with the liberal Democratic views of Smart, the administration alleged that Esquire had used the US Postal Service to promote lewd images. Esquire started in 1933 as a press run of a hundred thousand copies. It cost fifty cents per copy and it later transformed itself into a more refined periodical with an emphasis on mens fashion and contributions by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alberto Moravia, André Gide, and Julian Huxley. In the 1940s, the popularity of the Petty Girls and Vargas Girls provided a circulation boost. In the 1960s, Esquire helped pioneer the trend of New Journalism by publishing such writers as Norman Mailer, Tim OBrien, John Sack, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern. In August 1969, Esquire published Normand Poiriers piece, An American Atrocity, under Harold Hayes, who ran it from 1961 to 1973, it became as distinctive as its oversized pages. The magazine shrank to the conventional 8½×11 inches in 1971, the magazine was sold by the original owners to Clay Felker in 1977, who reinvented the magazine as a fortnightly in 1978, under the title of Esquire Fortnightly. However, the experiment proved to be a failure, and by the end of that year. Felker sold Esquire in 1979 to the 13-30 Corporation, a Tennessee publisher, during this time, New York Woman magazine was launched as something of a spinoff version of Esquire aimed at female audience. 13-30 split up in 1986, and Esquire was sold to Hearst at the end of the year, David M. Granger was named editor-in-chief of the magazine in June 1997. Since his arrival, the magazine has received awards, including multiple National Magazine Awards—the industrys highest honor. Prior to becoming editor-in-chief at Esquire, Granger was the editor at GQ for nearly six years. Its award-winning staff writers include Tom Chiarella, Scott Raab, Mike Sager, Chris Jones, John H. Richardson, Cal Fussman, Lisa Taddeo, famous photographers have also worked for the magazine, among which fashion photographer Gleb Derujinsky, and Richard Avedon. In January 2009 Esquire launched a new blog—the Daily Endorsement Blog, each morning the editors of the magazine recommend one thing for readers immediate enjoyment, not a political candidate or position or party, but a breakthrough idea or product or Web site
27.
Hyde Park, Chicago
–
Hyde Park is a neighborhood and community area on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan seven miles south of the Chicago Loop, Hyde Parks official boundaries are 51st Street/Hyde Park Boulevard on the north, the Midway Plaisance on the south, Washington Park on the west, and Lake Michigan on the east. The area encompassing Hyde Park and the part of Kenwood is sometimes referred to as Hyde Park-Kenwood. Hyde Park hosts the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry, in the early 21st century, Hyde Park received national attention for its association with U. S. President Barack Obama. The land was located seven miles south of Downtown Chicago in a area that enjoyed weather tempered by the lake – cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. It was conveniently located near the Illinois Central Railroad, which had constructed two years earlier. Cornell successfully negotiated land in exchange for a station at 53rd Street. Hyde Park quickly became a suburban retreat for affluent Chicagoans who wanted to escape the noise. In 1857, the Hyde Park House, an hotel, was built on the shore of Lake Michigan near the 53rd Street railroad station. For two decades, the Hyde Park House served as a point of Hyde Park social life. During this period, it was visited or lived in by many prominent guests, including Mary Todd Lincoln, the Hyde Park House burned down in an 1879 fire. The Sisson Hotel was built on the site in 1918 and was converted into a condominium building. In 1861, Hyde Park was incorporated as an independent township and its boundaries were Pershing Road on the north, 138th Street on the south, State Street on the west, and Lake Michigan and the Indiana state line on the east. The territory of the township encompassed most of what is now the South Side of Chicago, Hyde Park Township remained independent of Chicago until it was annexed to the city in 1889. In 1891, the University of Chicago was established in Hyde Park through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago eventually grew into one of the worlds most prestigious universities, and is now associated with eighty-nine Nobel Prize laureates. In 1893, Hyde Park hosted the Worlds Columbian Exposition, however, since most of the structures built for the fair were temporary, it left few direct traces in the neighborhood. The only major structure from the fair that is standing today is Charles Atwoods Palace of Fine Arts. In the early decades of the century, many upscale hotels were built in Hyde Park
28.
Fahrenheit 451
–
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, published in 1953. It is regarded as one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and firemen burn any that are found. The books tagline explains the title, Fahrenheit 451 – the temperature at which book paper catches fire, the novel has been the subject of interpretations focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury stated that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time about the threat of burning in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature, in 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal. It has since won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1984, Bradbury was honored with a Spoken Word Grammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version. Adaptations include François Truffauts 1966 film adaptation of the novel and a 1982 BBC Radio dramatization, Bradbury published a stage play version in 1979 and helped develop a 1984 interactive fiction computer game titled Fahrenheit 451, and a collection of his short stories, A Pleasure to Burn. Fahrenheit 451 is set in a city at an unspecified time in the future after the year 1960. The novel is divided into three parts, The Hearth and the Salamander, The Sieve and the Sand, and Burning Bright, Guy Montag is a fireman employed to burn the possessions of those who read outlawed books. He is married and has no children, Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. Mildred survives with no memory of what happened, over the next days, Clarisse faithfully meets Montag as he walks home. She tells him about how her interests have made her an outcast at school, Montag looks forward to these meetings, and just as he begins to expect them, Clarisse goes absent. In the following days, while at work with the other firemen ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman before the inevitable burning, the woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match and burn herself alive. Montag returns home jarred by the womans suicide, while getting ready for bed, he hides the stolen book under his pillow. Still shaken by the events, he attempts to make conversation with Mildred, conversation that only causes him to realize how little he knows her. Montag asks his wife if she has seen Clarisse recently, Mildred mutters that she believes Clarisse died after getting struck by a speeding car and that her family has moved away. Dismayed by her failure to mention this earlier, Montag uneasily tries to fall asleep, outside he suspects the presence of The Hound, an eight-legged robotic dog-like creature that resides in the firehouse and aids the firemen. Montag awakens ill the morning and stays home from work
29.
Ray Bradbury
–
Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction author and screenwriter. While most of his best known work is in speculative fiction, he wrote in other genres, such as the coming-of-age novel Dandelion Wine or the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows. Recipient of numerous awards, including a 2007 Pulitzer Citation, Bradbury also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick, many of his works were adapted to comic book, television and film formats. On his death in 2012, The New York Times called Bradbury the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream. Bradbury was born on August 22,1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, to Esther Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and he was given the middle name Douglas, after the actor Douglas Fairbanks. Bradbury was related to the American Shakespeare scholar Douglas Spaulding and was descended from Mary Bradbury, Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family during his early childhood and formative years in Waukegan, Illinois. An aunt read him stories when he was a child. This period provided foundations for both the author and his stories, in Bradburys works of fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes Green Town, Illinois. The family arrived with only US$40, which paid for rent and this meant that they could stay, however, and Bradbury—who was in love with Hollywood—was ecstatic. Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club and he often roller-skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities. Among the creative and talented people Bradbury met this way were special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, throughout his youth, Bradbury was an avid reader and writer and knew at a young age that he was going into one of the arts. Bradbury began writing his own stories at age eleven, during the Great Depression — sometimes writing on the available paper, butcher paper. In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan, reading such authors as H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, at twelve, Bradbury began writing traditional horror stories and said he tried to imitate Poe until he was about eighteen. In addition to comics, he loved Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan of the Apes, the Warlord of Mars impressed him so much that at the age of twelve he wrote his own sequel. The young Bradbury was also a cartoonist and loved to illustrate and he wrote about Tarzan and drew his own Sunday panels. He listened to the radio show Chandu the Magician, and when the show went off the air every night he would sit, as a teen in Beverly Hills, he often visited his mentor and friend, science fiction writer Bob Olsen, sharing ideas and maintaining contact. In 1936, at a bookstore in Hollywood, Bradbury discovered a handbill promoting meetings of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society. Excited to find there were others sharing his interest, Bradbury joined a weekly Thursday-night conclave at age sixteen, at age 17, Bradbury read stories published in Astounding Science Fiction, and read everything by Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C
30.
Urban legend
–
These legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as for semi-serious explanations for random events such as disappearances and strange objects. Despite its name, an urban legend does not necessarily originate in an urban area, rather, the term is used to differentiate modern legend from traditional folklore of pre-industrial times. For this reason, sociologists and folklorists prefer the contemporary legend. Because people frequently allege that such tales happened to a friend of a friend, Urban legends are spread by any media, including newspapers, e-mail and social media. In America in 1938 a radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds supposedly caused mass panic, in 2005, a widespread legend claimed that a large percentage of people have a biological father who is not their assumed father. Some urban legends have passed through the years only minor changes to suit regional variations. More recent legends tend to reflect modern circumstances, like the story of people ambushed and anesthetized, who awaken minus one kidney, the term urban legend, as used by folklorists, has appeared in print since at least 1968. Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, many urban legends are framed as complete stories with plot and characters. The compelling appeal of an urban legend is its elements of mystery, horror. Often they serve as cautionary tales, some urban legends are morality tales that depict someone, usually a child, acting in a disagreeable manner, only to wind up in trouble, hurt, or dead. As Jan Brunvand points out antecedent legends including some of the motifs, themes, the teller of an urban legend may claim it happened to a friend, which serves to personalize, authenticate and enhance the power of the narrative while distancing the teller. Many urban legends depict horrific crimes, contaminated foods, or other situations which would affect many people. Anyone believing such stories might feel compelled to warn loved ones, not seldom, news organizations, school officials and even police departments have issued warnings concerning the latest threat. A fax received at the Nassau County, Florida fire department was forwarded to police, even the Minister of Defence for Canada was taken in by the same legend, he forwarded an urgent security warning to all Ontario Members of Parliament. Many urban legends are essentially extended jokes, told as if they were true events, persistent urban legends often maintain a degree of plausibility, for instance a serial killer deliberately hiding in the back seat of a car. One such example since the 1970s has been the rumor that the Procter & Gamble Company was associated with Satan-worshippers because of details within its nineteenth-century trademark. The legend interrupted the companys business to the point that it stopped using the trademark, the coinage leads in turn to the terms FOAFlore and FOAFtale. Here the authors make a connection between urban legends and popular folklore, such as Grimms Fairy Tales where similar themes and motifs arise
31.
Robie Macauley
–
Robie Mayhew Macauley was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years. Robie Macauley was born on May 31,1919 in Grand Rapids and he was the older brother of the noted photographer and movie producer C. His uncle owned and published the Hudsonville newspaper, The Ottawa Times, at age 18 he printed and bound a limited edition of Solomons Cat, a previously unpublished poem by Walter Duranty, setting the type and engraving the illustrations. As an undergraduate at Olivet College, he was a student of Ford Madox Ford and then won a literary prize scholarship. There he lived in a house with Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa during February 1941, and he graduated summa cum laude from Kenyon in June 1941. He was drafted in March 1942 and served in World War II as an agent in the Counterintelligence Corps with the 97th Infantry Division, in the Ruhr Pocket. On April 23,1945 Macauleys division helped liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp, Macauley later said, I entered some concentration camps the day we liberated them-- the most horrifying days of my life. My job was to interview survivors, most of the bodies that I saw had been stripped and it was impossible to tell which were those of Jews and which of Christians. Nazi murder was a great leveler, fully ecumenical, Macauley wrote four autobiographical short stories based on his experiences doing intelligence work, collected in The End of Pity and Other Stories. Macauley described Beahan as a captain with a college-boy face had suffered some strange mutation of feeling so deep. He was also acquainted with former Japanese Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoe, in his capacity as CIC Station Chief he supervised the arrests, on October 30,1945 of a number of major Nazi leaders who were in hiding in Karuizawa, Dr. Most of these individuals were released by the CIC. Robie Macauley was awarded the Legion of Merit for his work in detaining members of the Gestapo in Japan, after the war he taught briefly at Bard College then worked at Gourmet Magazine and for Henry Holt and Company. He completed his MFA at the University of Iowa in 1950, Macauley received a Rockefeller Fellowship and during 1953 Cord Meyer offered him a position in the International Organizations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency. With John Crowe Ransoms encouragement, Macauley accepted and relocated to Paris where he participated in the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Macauley assisted in the publication of Quadrant Magazine, an Australian literary journal that at the time had an anticommunist thrust. He was also U. S. representative to the International PEN Congress in Tokyo, during 1958 he returned to the US to succeed John Crowe Ransom as editor of The Kenyon Review. Ransom described Macauley as wise and thorough, thoroughly experienced, an excellent critic, a pretty good fiction writer who has just begun to get a lot better, and a person universally admired and liked
32.
John Updike
–
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954 and he also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His most famous work is his Rabbit series, which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry Rabbit Angstrom over the course of several decades, both Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest were recognized with the Pulitzer Prize. Updike populated his fiction with characters who frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations and his work has attracted significant critical attention and praise, and he is widely considered one of the great American writers of his time. He described his style as an attempt to give the mundane its beautiful due, Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the only child of Linda Grace and Wesley Russell Updike, and was raised in the nearby small town of Shillington. The family later moved to the village of Plowville. His mothers attempts to become a published writer impressed the young Updike, one of my earliest memories, he later recalled, is of seeing her at her desk. I admired the writers equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper, and I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in—and come back in. These early years in Berks County, Pennsylvania, would influence the environment of the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, as well as many of his early novels, Updike graduated from Shillington High School as co-valedictorian and class president in 1950 and attended Harvard with a full scholarship. He received recognition for his writing as a teenager by winning a Scholastic Art, at Harvard, he soon became well known among his classmates as a talented and prolific contributor to the Harvard Lampoon, of which he served as president. He graduated summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, upon graduation, Updike attended The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford with the ambition of becoming a cartoonist. After returning to the United States, Updike and his moved to New York. This was the beginning of his writing career. Updike stayed at The New Yorker as a staff writer for only two years, writing Talk of the Town columns and submitting poetry and short stories to the magazine. In New York, Updike wrote the poems and stories came to fill his early books like The Carpentered Hen. These works were influenced by Updikes early engagement with The New Yorker and this early work also featured the influence of J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, and the Modernists Marcel Proust, Henry Green, James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov. During this time, Updike underwent a spiritual crisis. Suffering from a loss of faith, he began reading Søren Kierkegaard
33.
James Dickey
–
James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966 and he also received the Order of the South award. Dickey was also a novelist, known for Deliverance which was adapted into a film of the same name. James Dickey was born to lawyer Eugene Dickey and Maibelle Swift in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1942 he enrolled at Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina and played on the football team as a tailback. After one semester, he left school to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Dickey served with the U. S. Army Air Forces as an operator in a night fighter squadron during the Second World War. Between the wars, he attended Vanderbilt University, graduating cum laude with a degree in English. He also received an M. A. in English from Vanderbilt in 1950, Dickey taught as an instructor of English at Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1950 and, following his second Air Force stint, from 1952 to 1954. He once said he embarked on his career in order to make some bucks. Dickey also said I was selling my soul to the all day. And trying to buy it back at night and he was ultimately fired for shirking his work responsibilities. His first book, Into the Stone and Other Poems, was published in 1960, drowning with Others was published in 1962, which led to a Guggenheim Fellowship. Buckdancers Choice earned him a National Book Award for Poetry, among his better-known poems are The Performance, Cherrylog Road, The Firebombing, May Day Sermon, Falling, and For The Last Wolverine. He published his first volume of collected poems, Poems 1957-1967 in 1967 after being named a consultant for the Library of Congress. This publishing may represent Dickeys best work and his popularity exploded after the film version of his novel Deliverance was released in 1972. Dickey had a cameo in the film as a sheriff, the poet was invited to read his poem The Strength of Fields at President Jimmy Carters inauguration in 1977. In November 1948 he married Maxine Syerson, and three years later they had their first son, Christopher, a son, Kevin, was born in 1958. Two months after Maxine died in 1976, Dickey married Deborah Dodson and their daughter, Bronwen, was born in 1979
34.
John Cheever
–
John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called the Chekhov of the suburbs and he is now recognized as one of the most important short fiction writers of the 20th century. On April 27,1982, six weeks before his death, Cheever was awarded the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and his work has been included in the Library of America. John William Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the child of Frederick Lincoln Cheever. His father was a shoe salesman, and Cheever spent much of his childhood in a large Victorian house, at 123 Winthrop Avenue, in the then-genteel suburb of Wollaston. In the mid-1920s, however, as the New England shoe and textile industries began their decline, Frederick Cheever lost most of his money. To pay the bills, Mary Cheever opened a shop in downtown Quincy—an abysmal humiliation for the family. In 1926, Cheever began attending Thayer Academy, a day school, but he found the atmosphere stifling and performed poorly. A year later he won a short story contest sponsored by the Boston Herald and was invited back to Thayer as a student on academic probation. The 18-year-old Cheever wrote an account of this experience, titled Expelled. After the 1932 crash of Kreuger & Toll, in which Frederick Cheever had invested what was left of his money, the parents separated, while John and Fred took an apartment together on Beacon Hill, in Boston. In 1933, John wrote to Elizabeth Ames, the director of the Yaddo artists colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, The idea of leaving the city, he said, has never been so distant or desirable. Ames denied his first application but offered him a place the following year, Cheever spent the summer of 1934 at Yaddo, which would serve as a second home for much of his life. Cheever drove from one place to another in a dilapidated Model A roadster, in 1935, Katharine White of The New Yorker bought Cheevers story, Buffalo, for $45—the first of many that Cheever would publish in the magazine. Maxim Lieber became his agent, 1935-1941. In 1938, he work for the Federal Writers Project in Washington. As an editor for the WPA Guide to New York City and he quit after less than a year and a few months later he met his future wife, Mary Winternitz, seven years his junior. She was a daughter of Milton Winternitz, dean of Yale Medical School, and granddaughter of Thomas A. Watson, Cheever enlisted in the Army on May 7,1942
35.
Doris Lessing
–
Doris May Lessing, CH was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, in awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny. Lessing was the woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for an achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Iran, on 22 October 1919, to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler, both British subjects. Her father, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife, the couple moved to Iran, for Alfred to take a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia. In 1925, the moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia to farm maize. In the rough environment, his wife Emily aspired to lead an Edwardian lifestyle and it might have been possible had the family been wealthy, in reality, they were short of money and the farm delivered very little income. As a girl Doris was educated at the Dominican Convent High School and she left school at age 13 and was self-educated from then on. She left home at 15 and worked as a nursemaid and she started reading material that her employer gave her on politics and sociology and began writing around this time. In 1937, Doris moved to Salisbury to work as a telephone operator, after the divorce, Doris interest was drawn to the community around the Left Book Club, an organisation she had joined the year before. It was here that she met her second husband, Gottfried Lessing. They married shortly after she joined the group, and had a child together, Lessing also had a love affair with RAF serviceman John Whitehorn, who was stationed in Southern Rhodesia, and wrote him ninety letters between 1943 and 1949. Lessing moved to London in 1949 with her son, Peter, to pursue her writing career and communist beliefs. She later said that at the time she saw no choice, there is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. I felt I wasnt the best person to bring them up, I would have ended up an alcoholic or a frustrated intellectual like my mother. As well as campaigning against nuclear arms, she was an opponent of apartheid which led in 1956 to being banned from South Africa. In the same year, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary, in the 1980s, when Lessing was vocal in her opposition to Soviet actions in Afghanistan, she gave her views on feminism, communism and science fiction in an interview with the New York Times
36.
Joyce Carol Oates
–
Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry. She has won awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde, Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978 and is currently the Roger S. Berlind 52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. Oates was born in Lockport, New York and she is the eldest of three children of Carolina, a homemaker of Hungarian descent, and Frederic James Oates, a tool and die designer. She was raised Catholic but is now an atheist and her brother, Fred Jr. was born in 1943, and her sister, Lynn Ann, who is severely autistic, was born in 1956. Her paternal grandmother, Blanche Woodside, lived with the family and was close to Joyce. Oates attended the same school her mother attended as a child. This was love at first sight, in her early teens, she devoured the writing of Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry David Thoreau, whose influences remain very deep. Oates began writing at the age of 14, when Blanche gave her a typewriter, Oates later transferred to several bigger, suburban schools and graduated from Williamsville South High School in 1956, where she worked for her high school newspaper. She was the first in her family to complete high school, as a teen, Oates also received early recognition for her writing by winning a Scholastic Art and Writing Award. Oates earned a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she joined Phi Mu, Oates found Syracuse a very exciting place academically and intellectually, and trained herself by writing novel after novel and always throwing them out when I completed them. It was not until this point that Oates began reading the work of Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, and Flannery OConnor though, she noted, at the age of 19, she won the college short story contest sponsored by Mademoiselle. Oates graduated as valedictorian from Syracuse University with a degree in English in 1960 and she was a Ph. D. student at Rice University when she made the decision to become a full-time writer. Evelyn Shrifte, president of the Vanguard Press, met Oates soon after Oates received her masters degree and she was fresh out of school, and I thought she was a genius, Shrifte said. Vanguard published Oates first book, the short-story collection By the North Gate, the Vanguard Press published Oates first novel, With Shuddering Fall, when she was 26 years old. In 1966, she published Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, a short story dedicated to Bob Dylan and written after listening to his song Its All Over Now, Baby Blue. The story is based on the serial killer Charles Schmid
37.
Michael Crichton
–
John Michael Crichton was an American best-selling author, screenwriter, film director and producer best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films, in 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at No.1 in US television, film, and book sales. His literary works are usually within the genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. John Michael Crichton was born on October 23,1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to John Henderson Crichton, a journalist, and Zula Miller Crichton. He was raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York, Crichton had always planned on becoming a writer and began his studies at Harvard College in 1960. During his undergraduate study in literature, he conducted an experiment to expose a professor who he believed was giving him abnormally low marks, informing another professor of his suspicions, Crichton submitted an essay by George Orwell under his own name. The paper was returned by his unwitting professor with a mark of B− and he received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship from 1964 to 1965 and was a visiting lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. Crichton later enrolled at Harvard Medical School, when he began publishing work, by this time he had become exceptionally tall, by his own account he was approximately 6 feet 9 inches tall in 1997. In reference to his height, while in school, he began writing novels under the pen names John Lange. He later described his Lange books in the way, My feeling about the Lange books is that my competition is in-flight movies. One can read the books in an hour and a half, I write them fast and the reader reads them fast and I get things off my back. In Travels he recalls overhearing doctors, who were unaware that he was the author, a Case of Need, written under the Hudson pseudonym, won him his first Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1969. He also co-wrote Dealing, or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with his younger brother Douglas, the back cover of that book carried a picture, taken by their mother, of Michael and Douglas when very young. He graduated from Harvard, obtaining an MD in 1969, and undertook a fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his career instead. Reflecting on his career in medicine years later, Crichton concluded that too often shunned responsibility for their own health. He experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, in 1988, Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.jpg)
