Today would have been the birthday of Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar (b. 1914), known for his innovative style and jazz-like pacing. Cortazar's novel Hopscotch is often cited as an example of great modern Latin American writing, and his story "Las Babas del Diablo" ("The Devil's Drool") was the basis for Antonioni's 1960s film Blow-Up. Which was later remade by Brian DePalma (Blow-Out) and starred John Travolta, Nancy Allen, the City of Philadelphia, and John Lithgow as a really mean man.

In my Latin American Writers course in college, I had an anthology with a picture of Julio Cortazar in it and always thought he was pretty intriguing-looking. I also loved his "Letter to A Young Lady in Paris," about staying at the apartment of a woman while she's out of town. The writing is initially so beautiful in that story as he describes the essence of Andrea, the young lady presently in Paris, and the items that make up her home and decor:

the crystal ashtray that looks like a soap-bubble that’s been cut open on this exact spot on the little table, and always a perfume, a sound, a sprouting of plants, a photograph of the dead friend, the ritual of tea trays and sugar tongs…

And then things take a turn toward the surreal and the narrator begins to tell us about his strange issues with rabbits and how he's even vomiting bunnies, but we're in the hands of Cortazar so it will all be handled well.

Julio Cortazar died in Paris on February 12, 1984.

Russian author and critic Nina Berberova (1901-1993) is not particularly famous, but those who do know and read her are great fans of her beautiful prose and stories full of irony and character. This picture is of Nina in 1928 and she was clearly quite the looker.

I had a chance to meet Nina Berberova in Philadelphia right before she died but I opted to do something else that afternoon. It was one of those missed encounters that could have changed my life and I could have been like the granddaughter she'd never had and run errands for her, made sure she had enough tea and lemon, listened to her tales about traveling around the world and escaping Russia after the Revolution. Or she might have just told me to please leave her alone because I was giving her a headache with all my stupid questions, but at least I would have known otherwise.

It is painful. Sometimes we are just really scattered-brained and stupid. We meaning me.

Night passed, and the moon like an hour hand moved along, rising and falling on the celestial dial strewn with stars....

Nina Berberova, The Italics Are Mine

(Till Eulenspiegel image from answers.com)

Recently, a man died unexpectedly while running a tractor in a small Illinois town. The man was a skilled farmer and loved his land, and he was using the tractor to clear the road for his neighbors, who were having an anniversary party. He had offered to make their grounds look nice for the party, because that was the type of person he was--generous and giving of his time. Curiously enough, the man was also a lawyer who'd been raised in the city of Chicago, but he easily moved back and forth between his rural and urban identities.

Over recent years, he had managed to survive a heart attack and cancer and almost be back to his normal high energy level, but unfortunately he was not able to survive this accident. And about the only positive thing is that if there was any choice in the way to go, this man would not have wanted to have things end while wasting away in a hospital; he probably would have preferred to have it happen as it happened, while he was outdoors and active and otherwise enjoying a beautiful day. And while doing someone a favor.

The rabbi who presided over the memorial compared this man to the German folk hero Till Eulenspiegel, because he was known for his wit and many jokes. I looked up Till Eulenspiegel and found this entry in Wikipedia referring to the Richard Strauss musical piece inspired by the original stories:

The clarinet theme is heard next, suggesting Till's laughter as he plots his next prank. The music follows Till throughout the countryside, as he rides a horse through a market, upsetting the goods and wares, pokes fun at the strict Teutonic clergy, flirts and chases girls (the love theme is given to a solo violin), and mocks the serious academics. The music suggesting a horse ride returns again, with the first theme restated all over the orchestra, when the climax abruptly changes to a funeral march. Till has been captured by the authorities, and is sentenced to hang...The funeral march of the hangman begins a dialogue with the desperate Till, who tries to wheedle and joke his way out of this predicament. Unfortunately, he has no effect on the stony executioner, who pulls the lever...After a moment of silence, the 'once upon a time' theme heard at the beginning returns, suggesting that something like Till can never be destroyed, and the work ends with one last musical joke.

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Yeah, sure sounds a lot like Stephen R. Chesler to me.

My mother used to be an English teacher and generally put Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy on her syllabus, so that big fat paperback was always around the house. Eventually I picked it up and read it myself, and more recently I wrote a suite101 article on the crime that inspired Dreiser's novel, just because it's kind of haunting. The novel later became the basis for the 1950s movie A Place in the Sun, although I think A Place in the Sun was too romanticized and essentially a vehicle for Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. The real film version seems yet to be done--something that makes Roberta Alden/Grace Brown less of a harpy and captures more of the 1906 era and upstate New York backdrop.

Another book based on the Grace Brown murder is Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light, and she does a very nice job of portraying that particular time and place through the eyes of a girl working at the resort hotel where the death occurred. A Northern Light is put into the category of young adult fiction, but as one reviewer pointed out, it's definitely recommended reading for anyone interested in the case of an ambitious young man and a naive young woman, an unwanted pregnancy and a fateful boat ride....