Fleming's Thunderball In honor of the genius behind an entertainment icon, today we salute Ian Fleming on what would have been his 100th birthday. After all, where would modern spy fiction or action movies be without his most famous creation, our favorite secret agent, James Bond? We'd have fewer cool gadgets, lower standards of villainy, and the numbers "007" wouldn't be the indelible digits they've become. The Bond films have made superstars out of six men and pin-ups of numerous Bond Girls. They've left us with memorable (and sometimes unshakable) musical tracks. And their impact has shaken (not stirred) the espionage genre for many generations. With plots from the Cold War through the present, many of the storylines remain timely, if sometimes tongue-in-cheek. While it's true that Fleming only penned the novels for 12 of the 22 Bond films, his fans insist the series is progressing in the same vein he created. In honor of his centenary, Sebastian Faulks has written a new James Bond novel, "Devil May Care." And with the upcoming "Quantum of Solace" movie, 007 fans will have plenty to chatter about. Personally, we're looking forward to hearing an explanation of the silly title of the next film. Suggested Sites... Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - official site for the movie -- also written by Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming Biography - by John Cork, of the Ian Fleming Foundation. Licensed to Kill - the ultimate James Bond Wiki.

Directory categories: James Bond Movies, Ian Fleming, Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig, James Bond Video Games

Archived under: Actors, Authors, Entertainment, James Bond, Literature, Movies

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Edward Lear, 1812-1888 There once was a poem from Nantucket Whose purpose had gone all amuck: It Had some lines in between, With a rhyme quite obscene, But, alas! Our editor struck it. We'd written an ode to Edward Lear, The master of limericks we hold dear, But true to his spirit, We can't engineer it, In locution mature and austere. So today, in honor of limericks, We celebrate poems with such limp shticks, As puns bold and bawdy, And subjects so naughty, They horrify readers in prim cliques. Suggested Sites... The Limerick - a detailed look at the limerick. Edward Lear Home Page - all about the man and his nonsense. 5lines - a limerick a day. The Limerick Special Interest Group - true limerick fans unite!

Directory categories: Limericks, Humorous Poetry, Edward Lear, Poetry, Words and Wordplay

Archived under: Humor, Limericks, Literature, Poetry, Puns, Sex and Sexuality, Wordplay, Writers

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Cover of The Great Gatsby Today, on the anniversary of the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic of classics, "The Great Gatsby," we, like the New York Times, feel compelled to consider what this cautionary novel's most enduring lessons really are. There seems to be only one (albeit with three parts): Breaking the law isn't really bad so long as:       1. the crime isn't totally morally reprehensible       2. you are really charming, rich, and honorable to damsels       3. you committed your crimes for the love of a woman Let us not forget that this "great" Gatsby made his fortune as a lawless bootlegger. Why would Fitzgerald have so glamourized a criminal? For the same reasons we all do. After being born into a hard-working Irish Catholic family, named after his famous relative, and then educated at fine, old, private academies, it's no wonder that Fitzgerald romanticized the family- and fancy-free, philosophizing flappers, philanderers, and bootleggers of his day. The perceived freedom and bacchic revelry afforded to the lawless have long been envied by the bow-tie wearing rest of us. So which of today's criminals will be romanticized and vindicated in the great American novels yet to be written? Perhaps a future retelling of "The Great Gatsby" will be titled "The Great Dude," and involve a happy-go-lucky dealer of unmentionables who lures an uptown girl into his van with ecstasy and techno music. Would kids still read that novel in high school? Fate, of course, gets Gatsby in the end. But in the meantime, he does live quite the lavish and sexy life, well-equipped with pools, jewels, grand pianos, and booze -- like any gangsta. Suggested Sites... F.Scott Fitzgerald: Free Web Books - read "The Great Gatsby" and other classics by F. Scott online and for free. SparkNotes.com: The Great Gatsby - the authoritative cheat notes for "The Great Gatsby," for those of us struggling with ADHD. Gold Coast Ruins - the ruins of the once very glamorous neighborhood on Long Island Sound where Jay Gatsby lived. DiscoveryEducation.com: The Great Gatsby - lesson plans for teaching the novel. Time.com: All Time 100 Novels - still a classic after all these years, Gatsby makes the list of the 100 best novels of all time.

Directory categories: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald, U.S. History in the 1920s, American Literature

Archived under: Authors, Books, Crime, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fiction, Literature, Millionaires, Prohibition, The Great Gatsby

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(Photo by J.E. Theriot) You've been there; you do all the work and someone else takes all the credit. Believe it or not, there are folks out there who are more than happy for that to happen. We refer to the ghostwriter, whose anonymous work we celebrate this week. We're not talking about Stephen King or Dean Koontz, who write stories about ghosts; we mean writers who turn out stories for other people, who then put their own names on the work. While the practice is far from a recent invention (there are well-meaning folks who think that William Shakespeare ghosted for the Earl of Oxford or Christopher Marlowe), it's most common in genre fiction and biography (where the words "with" or "as told to" are the giveaways). During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, numerous scripts were written by blacklisted writers, but credited to "fronts." There are "house names," too. Such writers as Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon never existed, but were used by publishers to give characters a brand identity. And then there's the case of Bob Kane. The "creator" of Batman was notorious for almost never writing or drawing the Caped Crusader, but for farming out the work to more talented individuals like Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and Dick Sprang. The next time you're haunting your local bookstore, check those acknowledgments; otherwise you may never know whose words you're reading. Suggested Sites... The Authors Team - home of National Ghostwriters Week. The Stratemeyer Syndicate - all about the people who brought us Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, Jr. Dial B for Blog: The Haunting of Robert Kane - Robby Reed exposes Bob Kane's literary crimes. Wikipedia: Ghostwriter - a history of writing under an assumed name. Shakespeare Authorship Page - dedicated to the proposition that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

Directory categories: Authors, Literature, Writing and Editing Services, Literary Genres, Writing Workshops and Seminars

Archived under: Authors, Batman, Books, Comic Books, Fiction, Ghosts, Literature, William Shakespeare, Writers, Writing

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Zora Neale Hurston, 1891-1960 The Harlem Renaissance had its share of interesting characters, but none of them could wow a room like Zora Neale Hurston. She wasn't just the life of the party -- she was also an active leader of the artistic and literary movement that swept through Harlem in the '20s, not to mention one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. In 1925, Hurston enrolled at New York City's Barnard College, where she studied folklore and ethnography with legendary anthropologists Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Even before Hurston earned her degree, she began to put her mark on the literary landscape, working alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman on the literary magazine Fire!!, writing plays, and winning prizes for her short stories. Meanwhile, her work in ethnography fueled her literary work: The themes she discovered in her research appeared in "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "Mules and Men." Remarkably, the importance of Hurston's work was nearly lost. When she died in 1960, she was virtually penniless and was buried in an unmarked grave. It wasn't until 1973 that Alice Walker brought Hurston's work out of obscurity and to the attention of millions of grateful readers. Today, Hurston's home town of Eatonville, Florida, hosts an annual festival in her honor. If you are unable to attend the festivities, head to your local library or book store and get to know Hurston in print. Suggested Sites... Zora Neale Hurston - official Zora Neale Hurston site with reading group information. Zora Neale Hurston Festival - come celebrate Zora. Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive - collection of the works of Hurston. The Hurston-Wright Foundation - nurturing African-American writers. Sparknotes: Their Eyes Were Watching God - read this book... then glance at the notes.

Directory categories: Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Folklore

Archived under: American History, Books, History, Literature, Writers, Zora Neale Hurston

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