from A House for Mr. Biswas

LitStaff Pick:Supporting (or Secondary) Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book

There’s nothing quite like a great character. These are the fictional folks who leave indelible impressions on readers. They are the folks we root for. And, many times, they aren’t always the hero. In many respects, great secondary characters are more beloved than the main character. After all, what would […]

Birthdays

On this day, June 16, in 1938, Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. The first of her family to graduate high school, she became an avid reader early and began writing at age 14. She won a short story contest at 19 and published her first work, the short-story collection By the North Gate, shortly after earning her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then she has published over 40 novels (including National Book Award-winners) as well as plays, novellas, short stories, poetry, and works of nonfiction. Just this year, she has published two more volumes of short stories (last year she published her 59 th novel, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.) Today she turns 83.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.