Once again, loyal readers, we find ourselves in the midst of the holiday season. And if you’re anything like me this time of year finds you indulging in certain annual traditions. And while I’m sure many of you share my penchant for eggnog and Die Hard, one of my more personal traditions is to re-read “The Gift of the Magi” a powerful story about love and giving that really helps me crystalize the important things in my life. And if this year someone tugs on your heartstrings the way I just did and you feel like bumming them out in…
Category: A Writer’s Tale
A Writer’s Tale- Canterbury Wine
Today’s entry in A Writer’s Tale will be shorter than our usual fare, as what I’m about to share with you is less a story and more along the lines of a hysterical, historical tidbit. But to be honest with you it was just too good a tidbit not to share. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, his Canterbury Tales being a staple of most 12th-grade literature classes. Well, modern audiences are not alone in their admiration of Chaucer, he was very much appreciated in his own time as well. In fact, to…
A Writer’s Tale- Percy Shelley’s Heart
This week’s entry of A Writer’s Tale features a story that is less quirky and more macabre. It is also a special bonus edition as it involves not one but two of my favorite writers. Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the great poets of the Romantic Age. He is known for a great many works but you’ll indulge me in recognizing one of my own personal favorites Ozymandias. Percy was married to another quite famous writer whose work is well known to all of you. Mary Shelly, who authored one of the most famous novels ever written, Frankenstein. Our…
A Writer’s Tale-Virginia Woolf
It occurred to me that I have done my readership a great disservice by somehow managing only to feature the quirky and wild tales of male authors up to this point. So in this edition, I will remedy that with a tale as amusing as it is cringe-worthy. And what literary lady will grace us with her tale this day? Why none other than the master of the modern novel herself, Miss Virginia Woolf. The year was nineteen ten, the place Dorset, England. Back before the great war, there was quite a rivalry between officers in Her Majesty’s Navy. As…
A Writer’s Tale-Jack Kerouac
Most of my entries here in A Writer’s Tale have a bit of quirkiness about them, if not downright wackiness. But today’s installment is a far more somber affair. It involves a man who is widely held as the greatest American author of his generation, a suspicious death, and a cover-up. Jack Kerouac was sometimes called the “King of the Beatniks”. A complicated fellow he was both anti-communist and a pot enthusiast, staunchly Catholic but heavily associated with the homosexual scene of the time. Living in New York City he fell in with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. These three…
A Writer’s Tale-Jonathon Swift
With it being April Fool’s Day today, I thought I would take this edition of A Writer’s Tale to feature one of the greatest April Fool’s pranks of all time. Our featured author today is that most famous English-Irish satirist Jonathon Swift, most known for his work Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships or as it is more commonly called Gulliver’s Travels. But Swift was no one-hit wonder. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest English language satirists who ever…
A Writer’s Tale- Arthur Conan Doyle
You probably remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from one of the previous installments of this series, where he featured prominently on a certain cricket team of some infamy. Or perhaps you simply know him as the creator of the most famous detective in all the world (sorry Hercule). Either way, I would wager that you do not know him from the strange tale I am about to tell. The period after the first world war was a strange one for many people. The world became a place caught between two eras; the Victorian and the modern. For Doyle, who had…
A Writer’s Tale-Stieg Larsson’s Guerrillas
The name Stieg Larsson is one you may not be familiar with. The Swedish author of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo died before his novels became a global sensation, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t experience some wild things in his life. One of the main characters in Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is a journalist for a left-wing news organization. This is very much a reflection of Larsson’s own exploits as a young man. Back in 1977, when he was just twenty-two years of age, Larsson traveled to Ethiopia under the cover of being a journalist. What his employer and…
A Writer’s Tale- Lord Byron’s Bear
We here at the Eclectic Eccentric love to buck authority as much as the next blogger, but some times thumbing your nose at the man can escalate rather quickly. Such was the case in 1805 when Lord Byron, who would later go on to become one of history’s greatest poets, enrolled in Trinity College at Cambridge University. Lord Byron, who inherited his title at the age of ten, was not accustomed to being told what he could and could not do. And so he took it rather sourly when the administration told him that he was not allowed to keep…
A Writer’s Tale- The Allahakbarries
Quick show of hands who here knows anything about cricket? Anybody? What about you in the back? Well whether you raised a hand or not you probably could handle a cricket bat as well as the subject of today’s A Writer’s Tale. I’m sure many of you are familiar with J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (or at least are familiar with Johnny Deep playing Barrie creating Peter Pan in Finding Neverland). What you are most likely not familiar with is Barrie’s lifelong obsession with the sport of cricket and the story of his amateur cricket team the Allahakbarries. Now if that…