A Weekend in Casper
Misc.
Dan Abernathy
The Voices of Words That Never Died
The Art of Dan Abernathy
The Voices of Words That Never Died, is an ongoing and touring exhibition traveling to multiple locations throughout 2026-2027. It is an expanding collection of contemporary multimedia portraits drawn with Abernathy’s loose rendition of stippling, using Ink, acrylic paint, or watercolor. These drawings illustrate an idea of the authors, with abstract concepts to define, by engaging and showing, rather than just telling. This assemblage of drawings pays homage and praise to the writers who are no longer with us, but who’s words have never left us.
Abernathy pays tribute to these deceased authors to preserve their lasting cultural impact, acknowledging their influence on other writers, keeping their unique perspectives alive in history. He is offering a moment to recognize the authors, as well as their words, as enduring legacies that shape readers and culture long after their physical lives end. Honoring them is a way to connect with literary “ancestors,” and celebrate the art that moved them, while acknowledging their bodies of work as independent entities.
It’s important to honor these authors’ writings. Their words became a part of a shared heritage. They became iconic and influenced the future generations. Their work offers a window into their thoughts and reissuing forgotten scripts that can bring valuable history back into circulation. Engaging with a deceased author’s work provides a zone for readers to find deeper meaning and wonder. It allows us to enjoy and celebrate the core elements of their writing, even as their personal lives may have become complicated. Their words become a permanent part of our collective consciousness and can help in shaping how we understand human nature and society. This often becomes more influential after their passing as death prompts readers to re-examine a writer’s entire body of work, which sometimes uncovering controversial aspects and boosting their classic status.
Dan Abernathy Bio:
Dan Abernathy, “The Intrepid Explorer,” is described as a Renaissance man, an artist, an Outlaw Poet and a Junkyard Philosopher. Reflecting his own nomadic and unconventional lifestyle, Abernathy’s focus is on self-discovery, individuality, and challenging conventional norms. He articulates a philosophy emphasizing individualism and intentional living. He believes individuals should be free to develop their own beliefs and perspectives on life, finding their own unique path rather than conforming to societal expectations. He often uses the phrase “The B-Side of Reality” to describe his chaotic and eccentric existence.
His work, both in his words and art, is characterized as a collection of oddities and obsessions, a roadmap tracking a man who can’t and won’t fit in. Abernathy has minimized the need for the validation that our society calls for, understanding he is about 97.5% feral, making available 98% of all his perspectives. The other 2% he keeps to himself, an archived gift for the scholars and naysayers to decipher when he is gone.
Abernathy’s art traces a life lived on the edges, driven by curiosity, fueled by experience, and guided by a deep resistance to convention. Each piece offers a glimpse into how he interprets the world: untamed, imaginative and always seeking the unfamiliar. He shares reflections on life, freedom, and his unique perspective through his words, his artistic journals, social media posts, and art pieces. He encourages a spirit of non-conformity to follow your dreams and criticizes social pressures that encourage conformity and dependence on external validation. He argues that a focus on seeking approval from others can hinder personal fulfillment and lead to dissatisfaction.
Abernathy is internationally published and has published two books of poetry, Looking For Security While Wearing a Loincloth and I Don’t Shave on Sundays. He has also created the Chap Books, My Mind Has Forgotten to Age, Morning Sex and Pancakes, and Categories Beyond Classification for his continuing series of poetry.
In 2022 Abernathy was presented with the “Award of Excellence,” at the Harvest Moon Art Festival in Granbury, Texas and was also presented the “610 Arts Award,” for the most creative and innovative art at the 2022 Ridgeway Rendezvous Art Festival in Ridgeway, Colorado. In 2025 he was presented with the “The Award of Excellence” from the Western Art Collectors Magazine at the 51st Annual Phippen Western Art Museum Show in Prescott, Arizona.
Anaïs Nin
“There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.”
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin, 1903-1977, was a French-Cuban author known for her diaries, erotic literature and for her exploration of female sexuality. Her quotes often touch on themes of self-discovery, the power of imagination, and the importance of living life to the fullest.
She published her first text in 1932, because of her avant-garde philosophies, she did not achieve a wider recognition until 1966, with the publication of the first volume of her diaries. Her honest depiction and evaluation of female desire contributed to the cultural shift away from old moralities heading towards a sexual revolution.
When the first volume of her Diary was published in 1966, it was celebrated as a significant literary achievement. Readers were captivated by the vivid descriptions of intellectual life in Paris during the 1930s.
Following the publication of her Diary, Nin finally achieved the celebrity status she had long desired. She was awarded France’s prestigious Prix Sévigné in 1971 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Nin died of cervical cancer in Los Angeles in 1977. Her persona and her work continue to inspire readers and writers around the world.
Richard Brautigan
“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word ‘mayonnaise’.” Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan, (1935 – 1984) was a counterculture novelist and poet. As a prolific writer, he wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four books of poetry. He is best known for his novels Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar and The Abortion: An Historical Romance.
In 1984, at age 49, Richard Brautigan died of a self-inflicted 44 Magnum gunshot wound to the head. His decomposed body was found by a friend. His body was on the living room floor in front of a large window that looked out over the Pacific Ocean.
Charles Bukowski
“Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain from your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.” – Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski, (1920 – 1994) was a German American poet and novelist who became a cult hero for his gritty, unflinching portrayals of American life. Bukowski was a prolific writer who used his poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life and the downtrodden in American society. He relied on experience, emotion, and imagination in his work, using direct language, violence and sexual imagery. His writing style, often called “dirty realism”, is characterized by its raw language and focus on the marginalized and mundane.
Bukowski’s philosophy centers on “Don’t Try,” an encouragement to live authentically by not forcing things, whether it’s creating art, pursuing happiness, or conforming to society. His view was one of raw honesty, seeing beauty in the struggle and the “fire” of life, while remaining critical of social hypocrisy, consumerism, and the pressure to live by others’ rules. He believed in recognizing the individual’s innate strength and finding beauty in small, genuine moments, urging people to embrace their true selves rather than chasing external validation.
The result of his column in the LA underground newspaper, Open City, prompted the FBI to start keeping a file on him. This in itself, was a type of commendation to Bukowski.
Bukowski died of leukemia in San Pedro, California, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.
Ernest Hemingway
“In order to write about life first you must live it.” Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway, (1899 -1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist who was influential to many 20th-century writers. His outspoken, blunt public image and his adventurous lifestyle has been highly romanticized. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was honored with the award for “his mastery in the art of narrative,” which was highly demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea.
Near the end of his legendary life, he was admitted to the Sun Valley Hospital under sedation after his wife found him with a shotgun in the kitchen. Hemingway returned to Rochester where he underwent three electroshock treatments. He was released at the end of June and went home to Ketchum. Two days later Hemingway shot himself with his favorite shotgun in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961.
Ed Myers was an American journalist, war correspondent and author who became a close friend and confidant of Ernest Hemingway. Meyers writes that he unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, went upstairs to the front entrance foyer, “pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge shotgun, put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger, and blew out his brains.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” – Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson, (1937 – 2005) was an American journalist and author who was viewed as one of the principal pioneers of new journalism. He established his own subgenre of what he called “Gonzo,” a journalistic style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative.
Thompson rose to distinction with the 1967 publication of Hell’s Angels, a book for which he spent a year living with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences. He is also well known for an unconventional article titled, The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Deprived, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, all of which furthered his prestige as a counterculture figure.
On February 20, 2005, Thompson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Woody Creek, Colorado. The police report stated that in Thompson’s typewriter was a piece of paper with the date “Feb. 22 ’05” and a single word, “counselor.”
Louis L’Amour
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
Louis L’Amour
Louis Dearborn L’Amour, (1908–1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of western novels, though he called his work “frontier stories”. L’Amour is widely considered the best-selling author of Western fiction of all time. Still highly popular with readers around the globe, his books have been translated into ten languages. He has sold over 320 million books, with numerous film and TV adaptations of his work.
L’Amour began his life in North Dakota. He wandered the American Southwest for several years in his youth where he met the people who populated his novels. He was a self-educated man, a prizefighter and he traveled throughout the world. During World War II, he was an officer in the Army Tank Corps.
Louis L’Amour is one of America’s best storytellers who describes the history of the American West without a numbing recitation of dates, facts, names and figures. He extensively researched the areas where his stories took place. Using landscape to ground his stories, he incorporated the landscapes he had lived in or visited, to make his stories tangible. His depiction of landscapes was so accurate that fans have retraced his characters’ steps in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
L’Amour, a non-smoker, died from lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles on June 10, 1988. His autobiography detailing his years as a roaming hand in the west, Education of a Wandering Man, was published retrospectively in 1989.
Jack Kerouac
“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.” Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, was the youngest of three children of French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec, Canada. He was awarded athletic scholarships to attend Boston College, University of Notre Dame and Columbia University. Because of an injury during his freshman season at Columbia that kept him from playing and eventually led to his dropping out of school.
In1942, Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marines, and a year later joined the United States Navy. He served only eight days of active duty before being honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds. Soon after, Kerouac was involved in the murder of David Kammerer, having helped his friend Lucien Carr, dispose of evidence, and was arrested as a material witness. Unable to convince his father to pay for bail, Kerouac agreed to marry fellow writer Edie Parker in exchange for her financial support. Their marriage was quickly annulled due to infidelity.
His most famous literary work, On the Road, a largely autobiographical novel, was published in 1957. The New York Times applauded Kerouac as the voice of a new generation. The success of the novel garnered Kerouac celebrity status as a major American author and cemented his influence of what became known as the Beat Generation.
Jack Kerouac died from a chronic liver disease on October 21, 1969, at St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking.
Virginia Woolf
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” – Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf, 1882 – 1941, was a British author and central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a London-based collective of influential intellectuals. Woolf was named as one of the most influential 20th-century Modernist authors. She also helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Woolf is not only celebrated for her innovative literary techniques, but also for her contributions to early feminism.
Modernist literature is characterized by a self-conscious separation from traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Stream of consciousness is a narrative method that attempts to depict the infinite thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind of a narrator. This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of the time.
Virginia Woolf was born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family. Educated at home in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf later attended King’s Collage London, where she encountered early advocates for woman’s rights and education.
Her work became central to 1970s feminist criticism and still remains influential worldwide, having been translated into over 50 languages. Woolf’s legacy endures extensive scholarship, cultural portrayals, and tributes such as memorials, societies and university buildings bearing her name.
Virginia Woolf suffered from severe mental illness, widely believed today to be a bipolar disorder and manic depression. Her illness was characterized by extreme mood swings, depression, and psychosis, triggered by her personal traumas like her mother’s death and her incestual sexual abuse. Her illness, which included auditory hallucinations, impacted her life and work, though she often found creative expressions in writing about her experiences.
Virginia Woolf tragically ended her life by suicide on March 28, 1941, at the age of 59. Filling her overcoat pockets with stones, she walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself. Her body was not discovered for three weeks. Woolf left a handwritten and heartbreaking suicide note to her husband, Leonard, explaining she feared “going mad again.”
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So, I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
Oscar Wilde
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken,” Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde, 1854 – 1900, was an Irish author, poet and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential dramatists, a person who writes plays that primarily consists of dialogue between characters, in London in the early 1890s.
He also was a key figure in the emerging Aestheticism, which was an art movement that flourished in the late 19th century. It valued the appearance of literature, music and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson. This sentiment was expressed in the slogan “art for art’s sake.” Aestheticism challenged the values of mainstream Victorian culture.
Wilde was regarded by many as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era. He was best known for his Gothic novel and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, bedtime stories for children, as well as his criminal conviction in 1895 for gross indecency.
Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skills, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. Wilde famously wore a green carnation in his lapel and encouraged his friends to do the same. He popularized this fashion as a symbol of queer identity and camaraderie in late 19th-century London.
At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, deception and beauty into The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Wilde was also known for his epigram, a brief, surprising and satirical statement, which he revealed often. He enjoyed, and held up to ridicule follies, abuses, and shortcomings, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals or society itself.
Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Diyglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, for criminal Libel.
The Marquess was the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as “Bosie.” The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males, which in today’s vocabulary would be homosexuality. Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labor, the maximum penalty, and jailed from 1895 to 1897. After his release he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.
Wilde was impoverished and in declining health, having suffered greatly after his imprisonment. He never truly recovered from his two years in prison and died in 1900 from meningitis. Before his passing, keeping true to himself, he uttered the famous lines in his final weeks. “I am dying beyond my means. I can’t even afford to die,” reflecting his characteristic wit and unfortunate circumstances.
Edgar Allan Poe
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe, (1809-1849) is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country’s earliest authors of the short story. Poe is also credited with initiating the modern detective story and developing the gothic horror story.
In January 1845, he published his poem, The Raven, which became an instant success and to this day remains extremely popular. Poe died in Baltimore in 1849, aged 40, under mysterious circumstances. The cause of his death remains unknown and has been attributed to many causes.
Anne Sexton
I’m a collection of dismantled almosts. – Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton (1928 –1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal and confessional verse. One of the most popular poets of mid-20th century America, Sexton’s impressive body of work continues to be widely read and debated by literary scholars and cultural critics alike.
According to the literary critic, Diane Hume George, Anne Sexton’s poetry tells stories that are immensely significant for a mid-twentieth-century artistic life. Sexton understood her culture’s discontent through her own, and her skill enabled her to deploy metaphorical structures both mockingly and analytically.
Sexton explored the myths through which our culture lives and dies: the archetypal relationships among mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, gods and humans and men and women. She perceived, and consistently patterned in the images of her art, the paradoxes deeply rooted in human behavior and motivation.
Her poetry presents multiplicity and simplicity, duality and unity, the sacred and the profane, in ways that insist on their similarities and even at times, their identity. In less abstract terms, Sexton made explicit the intimacy of forces persistently treated as opposites by the society that she lived in.
Sexton’s work bravely addressed taboo subjects such as abortion and menstruation. She also drew upon myths and archetypes to explore the nature of family and intimate relationships and the paradoxes of the self.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book, Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom she physically and sexually assaulted.
Following one of many suicide attempts and manic or depressive episodes, Sexton worked with therapist Martin Orne. He diagnosed her with what is now described as bipolar disorder, but his competence to do so is called into question by his early use of allegedly unsound psychotherapeutic techniques.
Sexton’s bipolar disorder was also accompanied by addiction to alcohol and various medicines. She was unable to come to terms with the trauma she had after her continuing struggles with depression.
Sexton’s last book, which was published during her lifetime, was The Death Notebook in 1974. The same year she committed suicide in 1974 at the age of 45. She went into her garage, turned on the ignition to her car, and died by carbon monoxide poisoning. Her final collection, The Awful Rowing Toward God, was completed before her death but published posthumously in 1975.
William S. Burroughs
“What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity.” ― William S. Burroughs
Ever the rebel, 75-year-old writer William Burroughs, huddled in a raincoat and fedora, smoked weed with a small knot of fans inside a theater on the North Side of Chicago.
William Seward Burroughs II (1914 –1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and an author who not only influenced literature, but also the underground and popular culture. Burroughs is known for his groundbreaking experimental novels, which pushed the boundaries of literary convention with their explicit content and unconventional narratives.
Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), but is perhaps best known for his third novel, Naked Lunch (1959). It became the subject of one of the last major literary censorship cases in the United States after its US publisher, Grove Press was sued for violating a Massachusetts obscenity statute. Naked Lunch prevailed in trial and would establish U.S. obscenity standards. It opened the floodgates for the artistic and cultural freedom that gushed forth in the 1960s and ’70s.
Before committing exclusively to men as sexual companions, Burroughs married a woman and fathered a son. It’s well-known that in 1951 he put a bullet through his wife Joan’s forehead during a drunken William Tell routine in Mexico City, killing her instantly. He would always insist that the handgun shooting was an accident.
Burroughs seemed to understand, as did many of his readers, that freedom, artistic and otherwise, means being able to express what we perceive in the world. This also includes ideas that others are too afraid to utter or too unimaginative to think of in the first place.
Burroughs, who died in 1997 at age 83 from a heart attack, was a gay man, heroin addict and expatriate. He was an outsider in his time, but other writers, artists and intellectuals defended and promoted him. His controversial and bohemian lifestyle was deeply intertwined with his influential work in literature, art, and counterculture.
Lewis Carroll
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.” – Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll, (1832-1898) the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an English author, mathematician, theorist, and a photographer. He is best known as the author of the children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass in 1871. Two of the most popular works of fiction in the English language.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is significant for its imaginative and surreal narrative, its exploration of childhood and adulthood, and its enduring influence on literature and culture. The story’s whimsical characters, nonsensical situations, and playful use of language have captivated readers for generations, while also prompting deeper interpretations about the nature of reality, logic and social norms.
Carroll had a noticeable stutter that caused him significant distress, particularly when speaking publicly. He suffered from several ailments besides stuttering. He had migraines, experienced partial deafness and Prosopagnosia, which is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one’s own face, is impaired.
He also had what is now known as the Alice in Wonderland syndrome. AIWS is characterized by distortions in visual perception where objects may appear larger or smaller than they actually are. It has been suggested that Carroll’s experiences with AIWS influenced his writing. In 1898, not long before his 66th birthday, Carroll contracted a severe case of influenza which led to pneumonia. He died from the disease on January 14, 1898.
Henry Miller
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” – Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller, 1891-1980, was an American novelist, and is perhaps the most famous banned author in American history. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novels. His most characteristic works are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, all of which were banned in the United States until 1961.
Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer found itself in the midst of obscenity trials due to its graphic sexual content. Upon initial publication in 1934 in Paris, the novel was immediately banned from being imported into the United States. This original first edition includes a note at the back that reads: “Must not be imported into England or U.S.A.”
Miller died of circulatory complications at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, at the age of 88. His body was cremated and his ashes shared between his son Tony and daughter Val. Tony has stated that he ultimately intends to have his own ashes mixed with those of his father and scattered in Big Sur.
John Steinbeck
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.” – John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, 1902 – 1968, was an American novelist and intellectual. His realistic and imaginative writing, which often explores themes of fate and injustice, is known for combining humor and social commentary. Born in Salinas, California, Steinbeck attended Stanford University but never graduated. He worked as a manual laborer while writing, which lent authenticity to his depictions of working-class lives. Much of Steinbeck’s work employs settings in his native central California. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden heroes.
During Steinbeck’s writing career he authored 33 books, such as Tortilla Flats, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men and the Pulitzer Prize winning, The Grapes of Wrath, which is considered Steinbeck’s masterpiece.
Because of his politically charged novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and its raw portrayal of capitalism, social injustice and the depiction of exploited migrant workers, the novel led to FBI scrutiny. Steinbeck was highly controversial. His liberal stance and criticism were seen as radical, which drew accusations of communism, ignited outrage from businesses and landowners, and faced bans and backlash. He exposed harsh realities of poverty, exploitation and injustice, offending many who preferred a less critical view of America. Growers burned copies of the book, churches banned it, and he also received death threats.
He was a complicated figure, criticized by both the left and right for his radical views on economic inequality,
John Steinbeck is one of the best-known and most revered American literary figures. In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature for his, “realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception.”.
Documents released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2012 indicate that Steinbeck offered his services to the Agency in 1952. The Director of the CIA was eager to take him up on the offer. What work, if any, Steinbeck may have performed for the CIA during the Cold War is unknown. It is also unclear if Steinbeck provided any useful information to the CIA. Documents released by the Security Service of Ukraine following the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, indicated that the Soviet KGB suspected him of being an American agent when he visited locations within the USSR.
Despite the controversy, his works are continuous and long lasting. John Steinbeck died in New York City, in 1968, of congestive heart failure. He was 66 and had been a lifelong smoker. An autopsy showed nearly complete occlusion of the main coronary arteries. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated and interred at the Hamilton family gravesite in Salinas. He had written to his doctor that he felt deeply “in his flesh” and that he would not survive his physical death, and that the biological end of his life was the final end to it all.
Mark Twain
“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 -1910, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer and was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced.” Twain’s most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876 and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884, brought him international attention. Ernest Hemingway claimed that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
Twain was raised in Missouri, which later provided the setting for both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and was loosely based on Twain’s boyhood experiences.
Twain became a much sought-after speaker. His wit and satire, both in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.
His use of humor and satire to address serious issues, helped to shape American identity and establish a tradition of social commentary in American literature. Twain’s legacy is evident in the works of countless writers and the many adaptations of his works in popular culture.
Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley’s Comet and in 1909 predicted that his death would accompany it as well. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835, it’s coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It would be a great disappointment in my life if I don’t. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” He died of a heart attack the day after the comet was at its closest to the Sun.
Walter Whitman Jr.
“I exist as I am, that is enough” – Walter Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (1819 –1892) was an American poet and essayist who is often called the “father of free verse.” He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. His innovative style broke away from traditional forms, using long lines, catalogs, and a conversational tone to celebrate American individuality and diversity. Whitman’s work broke the boundaries of poetic form, and he believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society.
Whitman was controversial for his time for the openly erotic content in his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which challenged the social norms of the 19th century. The book’s graphic descriptions of sexuality and his celebration of same-sex love led to it being labeled “obscene,” causing libraries to ban it, bookstores to discourage its sale and Whitman to be fired from a job.
One critic remarked on the author’s presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of “that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians.” Though biographers continue to debate Whitman’s sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual. Whitman’s sexual orientation is generally assumed on the basis of his poetry, though this assumption has been disputed.
After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to New Jersey, where his health further declined. Walt Whitman died at his home in Camden, New Jersey at the age of 72. An autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest had eroded one of his ribs.
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