the following eight famous hoosiers are well known in the literary world. familiarize yourself with...
TRANSCRIPT
INDIANA AUTHORSThe following eight famous Hoosiers are well known in the literary world. Familiarize yourself with each author. Remember exact dates are less important to remember than the era. I have provided examples for four of the eight famous Hoosiers. It is your responsibility to bring to class sample writings of the other four famous Hoosiers.
INDIANA AUTHORS
An introduction to eight famous Hoosiers
Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)
Born November 22, 1899, in Bloomington, Ind.; died of a heart attack, December 27, 1981, in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Attorney, musician, and composer-lyricist of popular songs. Carmichael began writing songs while attending law school at Indiana University. Following his graduation, Carmichael made several attempts to start a law practice, but was unable to break free of the lure of a career in music. His big break came in 1931, when the Isham Jones Orchestra recorded a wistful version of "Stardust," a song Carmichael had originally written while on a visit to the spooning wall at the University of Indiana in 1927. His music, which is characterized by slow, dreamy melodies, includes such hits as "Georgia on My Mind," "Lazy Bones" (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer), "Heart and Soul" (with lyrics by Frank Loesset), "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," and "Ole Buttermilk Sky." Carmichael also wrote music for motion pictures, including "Anything Goes," "Topper," and "St. Louis Blues," and appeared in several films as an actor. A tribute to Carmichael and his music was performed at the 1979 Newport Jazz Festival. Click to hear
Stardust
ERNEST TAYLOR PYLE(1900 – 1945)
Pyle studied journalism at Indiana University and left school to become a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Later, after various editorial jobs, he acquired a roving assignment for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain; his daily experiences furnished him material for a column that eventually appeared in as many as 200 newspapers before World War II. His coverage of the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France brought him a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1944, as well as several other awards. The motion picture G. I. Joe (1945) was about Pyle's coverage of the Italian campaign. He was with the U.S. forces in the Pacific on Iwo Jima, and during the Okinawa campaign he visited the nearby island of Ie Shima, where he was killed by Japanese.
Click to learn more about Pyle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v96LKYSvNUE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMb3o6VPbUs&feature=related
Booth Tarkington (1869-1946)Tarkington, [Newton] Booth (1869-1946), novelist and playwright, spent his first two years of college at Purdue, his last two at Princeton. He was a founder of the Triangle Club, and editor of the Nassau Literary Magazine, a contributor of humorous drawings and literary wit to The Tiger, and the most popular man in his class. Bliss Perry said he was ``the only Princeton man who had ever been known to play poker (with his left hand), write a story for the Nassau Lit (with his right hand), and lead the singing in a crowded room, performing these three acts simultaneously.'' These pleasurable activities Tarkington carried on at some expense to his studies, and when his class graduated in 1893 he lacked sufficient credits for a degree. His later achievements, however, won him an honorary A.M. in 1899 and an honorary Litt.D. in 1918. Tarkington's singing of Kipling's ballad, ``The Hanging of Danny Deever'' was a highlight of student life in his time. Sooner or later, when the seniors gathered on the steps of Nassau Hall for their singing, the call would go up ``Tark! Tark! Danny Deever!'' and although he would always protest and suggest another song -- and sometimes even try to slink away – his classmates would call for him until he had performed. In later years at class reunions the cry continued, and as one of his classmates related in the Alumni Weekly, Tarkington continued to respond reluctantly: ``The same old Tark -- just watch him shy Like hunted thing, and hide, if let, Away behind his cigarette When `Danny Deever!' is the cry. Keep up the call and, by and by We'll make him sing, and find he's yet The same old Tark.''Tarkington wrote a series of cheerful, realistic novels about life in the Middle West, beginning with The Gentleman from Indiana (1899) and including two Pulitzer Prize winners, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He also, as Dean West said in presenting him for his second honorary degree, ``rediscovered the American boy and wrote the idyll of his life'' in Penrod (1914) and its sequels. He dramatized several of his novels, wrote other plays, short stories, essays, and The World Does Move (1928), a book of reminiscences.
The Magnificent Ambersons
To read The Magnificent Ambersons, please visit this link. (This is not required for this assignment.)
LEWIS WALLACE (1849-1916)
Although he would have much preferred to be remembered as a highly successful military hero, Lew Wallace has been thwarted in this ambition and is best known as an author. Born in Indiana, he had worked as a clerk and early displayed a fascination for Mexico which would affect him in later years. During the Mexican War he served as a second lieutenant in the lst Indiana but saw only minor action. In 1849 he was admitted to the bar in his native state and seven years later entered the state senate. With the outbreak of the Civil War he offered his services.His career got off to a promising start when he routed an inferior Confederate force at Romney, Virginia. Promoted to brigadier general, he was given charge of a newly organized division in the midst of the operations against Fort Donelson and was soon rewarded with a second star. However, that spring his reputation plummeted after the battle of Shiloh. On the first day his division was stationed north of the main army at Crump's Landing, and a series of contradictory orders from Grant forced him to countermarch his command and delayed his arrival on the main battlefield until the fighting was nearly over. He redeemed himself on the second day, but a scapegoat was needed for the near disaster the day before and this was Wallace. Sent home to await further orders, he offered his services to Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton and, despite his high rank, took temporary command of a regiment during the emergency posed by Kirby Smith's invasion of Kentucky. With Cincinnati threatened, Wallace was placed in charge of a mostly civilian defense force. Through a show of tremendous energy he was able to save the city without a major fight. He was then head of the commission which examined Buell's handling of the invasion and other boards until placed in charge in Maryland in early 1864. There he bought valuable time for the defenders of Washington during Early's drive into the state when he made a stand at Monocacy with an inferior scratch force. At the close of the war he sat on the court-martial which tried the Lincoln conspirators and presided over that which sent Andersonville chief Henry Wirz to the gallows.. In later years he was governor of the New Mexico Territory and a diplomat to Turkey. As a prolific writer, who often drew upon his own experiences, he is best remembered for Ben Hur.- A Tale of the Cbrist, one of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century.
KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007)
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922, the son and grandson of Indiana architects. He studied chemistry at Cornell, served in the infantry during World War II, and earned an MA in anthropology at the University of Chicago afterward. He was a police reporter in Chicago and then a public relations man for General Electric in Schenectady before becoming a full time writer in 1950.Vonnegut combines science fiction, social satire, and black comedy in his novels, which won a wide following during the 1960s. Vonnegut's themes spring from his contemplation of 20th-century horrors: dehumanization in a technological society in Player Piano (1952) and Cat's Cradle (1963), and the random destructiveness of modern war in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969; film, 1972).More recent works include Galapagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and the autobiographical Fates Worse than Death (1991). Although his work has been criticized as simplistic, it has equally often been praised for its comic creativity.
Bibliography: Klinkowitz, J., Kurt Vonnegut (1982); Merrill, R., Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut (1989); Morse, D., Kurt Vonnegut (1991; repr. 1992); Schatt, S., Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1976).Text Copyright © 1995 Grolier Incorporated
GENE STRATTON-PORTER (1863–1924)
Gene (born Geneva) Stratton-Porter is one of Indiana's most famous female authors. Her life and intellect are fascinating. She was a prime example of an independent woman, an accomplished naturalist, a perfectionist extraordinaire and a born story-teller. Born near Wabash, Indiana in 1863, she lived until 1924. A streetcar accident claimed her life in Los Angeles at the height of her movie production career. Source: http://our.tentativetimes.net/porter/limber2a.htmlSeventy-five years after her death in California, Hoosier writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter has finally been laid to rest under the boughs of her favorite oak tree. Stratton-Porter's remains were interred over the weekend at the state historic site that bears her name. Born on a farm in Wabash County, Stratton-Porter had written that she wished to be laid to rest under a large oak tree near the Noble County home where she studied plants and animals and wrote 12 novels. Eight of the novels, the best-known of which is "Girl of the Limberlost" [sic], were made into films. They were based on her explorations of northern Indiana's once-vast wetlands, areas where she roamed in hip boots and photographed the plants and animals that lived there. The branches of the large oak tree she yearned to buried under now shade a marble tomb. A statue of a sitting woman holding a wreath rests on the tomb. A nearby orchard contains various kinds of plants, flowers, and trees Stratton-Porter cultivated on the one-150-acre property.(From the Assciated Press)Source: http://www.asle.umn.edu/archive/readings/porter.txt
GEORGE ADE (1866-1944)
Born in Kentland, Indiana on February 9, 1866, George Ade was best known for his humorous Fables in Slang. Published first in his newspaper column, “Stories of the Streets and of the Town," at the Chicago Daily News the stories eventually were syndicated and then collected in several books. He achieved international fame as well with his musical comedies and plays, with further recognition when some were produced in motion pictures. In 1903, he built his summer home near Brook, Indiana, with a private golf course for entertaining friends and political associates. December to May each year was spent at his home in Miami Beach, Florida. George never married but kept in touch with a multitude of friends up to his death on May 16, 1944. He is buried in Fairlawn Cemetery in Kentland, Indiana.
James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)
James Whitcomb Riley (October 7, 1849 – July 22, 1916) was an American writer, poet, and best selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the Hoosier Poet and Children's Poet for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. His famous works include "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man".Riley began his career writing verses as a sign maker and submitting poetry to newspapers. Thanks in part to an endorsement from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he eventually earned successive jobs at Indiana newspaper publishers during the latter 1870s. Riley gradually rose in prominence during the 1880s through his poetry reading tours.
Little Orphant Annie Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away, An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep, An' make the fire, an' bake the
bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep; An' all us other children, when the supper-things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about, An' the Gobble-uns
'at gits you Ef you Don't Watch Out!
Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,-- An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs, His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't
there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess; But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:-- An' the Gobble-
uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out!
An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin, An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin; An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there, She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care! An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide, They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side, An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about! An' the
Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue, An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray, An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,-- You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear, An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear, An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about, Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch
Out!
Quiz Time!!!!You must complete this quiz by answering all the questions correctly. These questions may appear on your final exam. If you feel you need to review this material before the quiz, click on the home icon below. If you feel you are ready for the quiz, click next. Good Luck.
Question #1Which author was most noted for his illustration of the battlefield during World War II?A. VonnegutB. RileyC. WallaceD. Pyle
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Question #2This author is credited with creating the character portrayed in the musical Annie.A. VonnegutB. RileyC. WallaceD. Pyle
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Question #3This author was born in Crawfordsville and wrote a book that was made into a movie featuring Charleton Heston.A. VonnegutB. RileyC. WallaceD. Pyle
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Question #4This author died in 2007 and was from Indianapolis, Indiana. A. VonnegutB. RileyC. WallaceD. Pyle
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Congratulations!Remember, you are responsible for bringing sample works for Porter, Vonnegut, Wallace and Ade. This is due for class on Monday.