Judi’s Reviews > A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year > Status Update
Judi
is on page 272 of 448
August 29
1974 "It was August 29, 1974. The air smelled like somebody's arm up close." Nixon had just quit, and Dylan Ebdus, heading into fifth grad, and Mingus Rude, heading into sixth and new to the Brooklyn neighborhood—call it Boerum Hill or Gowanus, depending on whether you were trying to gentrify or not—had just met. Dylan, white, was local but uncomfortable there; Mingus, new, made himself at home, the son...
— Sep 26, 2026 03:41PM
1974 "It was August 29, 1974. The air smelled like somebody's arm up close." Nixon had just quit, and Dylan Ebdus, heading into fifth grad, and Mingus Rude, heading into sixth and new to the Brooklyn neighborhood—call it Boerum Hill or Gowanus, depending on whether you were trying to gentrify or not—had just met. Dylan, white, was local but uncomfortable there; Mingus, new, made himself at home, the son...
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Judi
is on page 271 of 448
August 28
NO YEAR It's a simple proposition at the end of a night of poker: cut the cards, and if Nashe and Pozzi get the high card, they get the $5,000 back they owe, but if Flower and Stone win then Nashe and Pozzi are down $10,000 they don't have. The result—seven of hearts for Flower, four of diamonds for Nashe—leads to another proposition:the losers can pay off their debt by building a massive wall from the...
— Sep 22, 2026 05:47AM
NO YEAR It's a simple proposition at the end of a night of poker: cut the cards, and if Nashe and Pozzi get the high card, they get the $5,000 back they owe, but if Flower and Stone win then Nashe and Pozzi are down $10,000 they don't have. The result—seven of hearts for Flower, four of diamonds for Nashe—leads to another proposition:the losers can pay off their debt by building a massive wall from the...
Judi
is on page 270 of 448
August 27
1959 Frank O'Hara was half-joking when, at lunch on this day with LeRoi Jones, he proposed a new literary movement, "Personism," and followed through a week later with "Personism: A Manifesto" for Jone's magazine, Yugen. In a tone as off-handedly and evocatively conversational as his poems, he promised nothing—"What can we expect of Personism? ... Everything , but we won't get it"—but still managed to ...
— Sep 21, 2026 06:11PM
1959 Frank O'Hara was half-joking when, at lunch on this day with LeRoi Jones, he proposed a new literary movement, "Personism," and followed through a week later with "Personism: A Manifesto" for Jone's magazine, Yugen. In a tone as off-handedly and evocatively conversational as his poems, he promised nothing—"What can we expect of Personism? ... Everything , but we won't get it"—but still managed to ...
Judi
is on page 269 of 448
August 26
1945
...in American fiction: Sonny the hothead, Freddo the dutiful coward, and Michael the sceptic independent, who sits at a far table with his future wife, Kay, and decides how much of his family's business to reveal to her while, back in his office, the Don blandly promises Johnny Fontaine that he'll take care of the studio boss who's been giving him trouble; "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.'
— Sep 20, 2026 03:22PM
1945
...in American fiction: Sonny the hothead, Freddo the dutiful coward, and Michael the sceptic independent, who sits at a far table with his future wife, Kay, and decides how much of his family's business to reveal to her while, back in his office, the Don blandly promises Johnny Fontaine that he'll take care of the studio boss who's been giving him trouble; "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.'
Judi
is on page 268 of 448
August 25
1909 Fat and thin, Catholic and skeptic, individualist and socialist, carnivore and vegetarian, tippler and teetotaler, moustachioed and bearded: G. K. Chesterton and G. B. Shaw were seen as almost comical opposites when they regularly and affectionately locked antlers at the turn of the twentieth century, a combat that culminated in Chesterton's biography of Shaw in 1909, which Shaw himself reviewed...
— Sep 19, 2026 10:08PM
1909 Fat and thin, Catholic and skeptic, individualist and socialist, carnivore and vegetarian, tippler and teetotaler, moustachioed and bearded: G. K. Chesterton and G. B. Shaw were seen as almost comical opposites when they regularly and affectionately locked antlers at the turn of the twentieth century, a combat that culminated in Chesterton's biography of Shaw in 1909, which Shaw himself reviewed...
Judi
is on page 267 of 448
1925 "The thing I think about most", Every Waugh wrote to Laura Herbert from Ethiopia, "is your eyelashes making a noise like a bat on the pillow."
— Sep 19, 2026 05:50AM
Judi
is on page 266 of 448
August 23
1956 Attacked by the Nazis in Germany and hounded out of Norway in the '30s, Wilhelm Reich, the radical psychoanalyst who claimed to have discovered a life force known as 'orgone energy," had a quieter time of it during his first eight years in the United States, where his work attracted the attention of, among others, Norman Mailer and William Steig. But after a series of articles in the New Republic ...
— Sep 18, 2026 06:37AM
1956 Attacked by the Nazis in Germany and hounded out of Norway in the '30s, Wilhelm Reich, the radical psychoanalyst who claimed to have discovered a life force known as 'orgone energy," had a quieter time of it during his first eight years in the United States, where his work attracted the attention of, among others, Norman Mailer and William Steig. But after a series of articles in the New Republic ...
Judi
is on page 265 of 448
August 22
1903 One reason William James has remained an interesting thinker is that he paired a desire to establish a Big Idea with a skepticism that such a thing was possiible or even worthwhile. "I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease,," he wrote a friend on this day while snuggling to compose a major work of philosophy. I actually dread to die until I have settled the ...
— Sep 17, 2026 08:34PM
1903 One reason William James has remained an interesting thinker is that he paired a desire to establish a Big Idea with a skepticism that such a thing was possiible or even worthwhile. "I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease,," he wrote a friend on this day while snuggling to compose a major work of philosophy. I actually dread to die until I have settled the ...
Judi
is on page 264 of 448
August 21
1921... book Winnie-the-Pooh was published with illustrations by E.H. Shepard. Shepard based his drawings of Christopher Robin on the real Christopher Milne (who like his father would later weary of the way these stories defined him to the world), but as his model for the immortal Bear of Very Little Brain Shepard used not the real "Pooh" but a teeny bear, known as "Growler," owned by his own son Graham.
— Sep 16, 2026 07:51PM
1921... book Winnie-the-Pooh was published with illustrations by E.H. Shepard. Shepard based his drawings of Christopher Robin on the real Christopher Milne (who like his father would later weary of the way these stories defined him to the world), but as his model for the immortal Bear of Very Little Brain Shepard used not the real "Pooh" but a teeny bear, known as "Growler," owned by his own son Graham.
Judi
is on page 263 of 448
August 20
1979 ... Majors—on the cover was not a statement of approval or disapproval of Farrah or her talent, as might have once been the case. Instead it was in the spirit of what Trow with grim relish called "the important moment in the history of television," when Richard Dawson asked Family Feud contestants to guess, not the correct answer to a question, but what a hundred other Americans had already guessed.
— Sep 15, 2026 07:43PM
1979 ... Majors—on the cover was not a statement of approval or disapproval of Farrah or her talent, as might have once been the case. Instead it was in the spirit of what Trow with grim relish called "the important moment in the history of television," when Richard Dawson asked Family Feud contestants to guess, not the correct answer to a question, but what a hundred other Americans had already guessed.
Judi
is on page 262 of 448
August 19
1938 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's card tricks convinced André Gide he must be clairvoyant.
— Sep 15, 2026 12:51PM
1938 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's card tricks convinced André Gide he must be clairvoyant.