Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991)

Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosinski (1933 - 1991) authored three of the most widely read novels of the 1960s and 1970s: "The Painted Bird, Steps", and "Being There", the last of which also became a hit film.

Polish-born U.S. writer. He claimed that his horrific experiences as a Jew in World War II Poland and Russia caused him to be mute for much of his childhood. He studied political science and became a professor of sociology before immigrating to the U.S. in 1957. His novel The Painted Bird (1965) is a graphic, surrealistic tale of the horrors surrounding the war. Other successful novels were Steps (1968) and the satiric fable Being There (1970; film, 1979). After his suicide, it was revealed that much of his past had been fabricated.





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Mahatma Gandhi ( 1869 - 1948 )

Born: 2 October 1869

Birthplace: Porbandar, India

Died: 30 January 1948 (assassination)

Best Known As: Non-violent leader of Indian independence - Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was an Indian revolutionary religious leader who used his religious power for political and social reform. Although he held no governmental office, he was the prime mover in the struggle for independence of the world's second-largest nation

Revered in India as the "Father of the Nation," Mohandas K. Gandhi is also a worldwide icon of non-violent political resistance. Gandhi was born in India and studied law in England, then spent 20 years defending the rights of immigrants in South Africa. He returned to India in 1914, eventually becoming the leader of the Indian National Congress. At the time, India was part of the British Empire, and Gandhi urged non-violence and civil disobedience as a means to independence. His public acts of defiance landed him in jail many times as the struggle continued through World War II. In 1947 he participated in the postwar negotiations with Britain that led to Indian independence. He was shot to death by a Hindu fanatic the next year. An advocate of simple living, Gandhi ate a vegetarian diet and made his own clothes; the spinning wheel became a symbol of his uncluttered lifestyle. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, was published in 1927. His birthday, October 2nd, is a national holiday in India.

Gandhi is often called Mahatma -- the Hindu term for "great soul"... His middle name was Karamchand... Gandhi wed Kasturba Makhanji in 1883, in an arranged marriage; he was 13 at the time. They had five children and remained married for nearly 61 years, until her death in 1944... Among his many famous quotes is the saying, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind"... Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley in the 1982 film Gandhi. The film won eight Academy Awards, including best film and best actor for Kingsley.

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John Ruskin (1819-1900)

The English critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900) more than any other man shaped the esthetic values and tastes of Victorian England. His writings combine enormous sensitivity and human compassion with a burning zeal for moral value.

Art and social critic John Ruskin was born in 1819 in London, and died at Brantwood in the Lake District on Jan. 20, 1900.

The only child of a well-to-do Scottish couple, Ruskin grew up in a cultured household in which both his father’s artistic leanings and his mother’s fervent Evangelical faith were central themes. Ruskin pere’s profitable sherry business enabled the family to make annual pilgrimages to Italy, France and the Alps where, from a young age, Ruskin’s aesthetic appetites were nourished on a broad exposure to European architecture, painting, and the watercolors and drawings of Turner his father collected.

An accomplished draftsman himself, even as a child, Ruskin recorded a lifetime of impressions in a vast output of drawings and watercolors of architecture, plant life, atmospheric effects, geological formations and other natural phenomena.

His art critical acumen was also on early display. He had published three essays – one “an inquiry into the color of the Rhine,” a spirited defense of Turner for Blackwood’s and an article on the “poetry of architecture” – before he was eighteen. While at Oxford, he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1839.

At age 24, Ruskin published the first volume of the work that would make him famous: Modern Painters, a seminal defense of Turner that, as novelist Charlotte Bronte later wrote, taught a generation how to see.

Between the years 1843 and 1860, Ruskin wrote, in addition to installments of Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice – books that influenced 19th and 20th century aesthetic trends from the Pre-Raphaelites, plein-air landscape painting, and the Arts and Crafts movement to Frank Lloyd Wright. With his championing of early Italian “primitives,” Gothic architecture, “truth” in the depiction of nature, and “organic” architecture, Ruskin, as one art critic writes, “shaped a whole sensibility.”

These years also witnessed Ruskin’s ill-fated marriage to Effie Gray, who later married the painter (and Ruskin protégé) John Everett Millais in 1854.

While Ruskin never stopped writing and lecturing about art, by 1860, his focus had shifted to social criticism. Increasingly tormented by the poverty and squalor he saw around him in Victorian Britain, Ruskin began to challenge, in vivid, passionate language, the political, economic and ethical assumptions of industrialized society, and to propose a radical link between art and social reform. In works from Unto This Last (1860) to Fors Clavigera (1871-1884), his series of ninety-six letters to the workers of Great Britain, Ruskin laid out a visionary program that would, increasingly, bewilder, and finally alienate much of his conventional audience. Ruskin’s ideas, however, would go on to animate trade unionists and labor leaders in Britain and America, leaders of the growing Arts and Crafts movement, modernist designers and prove life-changing for figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, William Morris, Leo Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw and Mahatma Gandhi.

Acting on his own critique, Ruskin taught drawing free of charge at the Working Men’s College in London, enlisted his students in building projects in slums, endowed schools and museums in working-class areas, supported a small retinue of artists and founded a craft-based community, St. George’s Guild, into which he poured his considerable fortune.

In the 1870s and ‘80s, “Ruskin societies” sprang up in Britain and America to advance the master’s vision of the unity of life and art. The Ruskin Art Club, founded in Los Angeles in 1888, is a living example of that impulse.

For Ruskin, himself, however, these were troubled years. By the 1880s, Ruskin’s life alternated between a series of mental breakdowns and lonely, desperate attempts to influence what he perceived as an increasingly indifferent public. That struggle culminated in the hauntingly beautiful, and unfinished memoir Praeterita, and, in 1889, with a mental collapse from which he never recovered.

John Ruskin died at his Brantwood estate in 1900.

Mahatma Gandhi was very much influenced by one of his book Called " Unto This Last "


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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1772-1834)

Born: 21 October 1772

Birthplace: Devonshire, England

Died: 25 July 1834 (heart attack)

Best Known As: The author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

English romantic poet, philosopher and critic. His works include Poems on Various Subjects (1796), Lyrical Ballads (1798) written with Wordsworth and which includes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, conversation poems Fears in Solitude, Frost at Midnight, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Nightingale and the "dream" poem Kubla Khan (1797-8). His love poems include Love (1799); Dejection: an Ode (1902) was about his addiction to opium. Sibylline Leaves (1817) was the first of his collected works. His major work the Biographia Literaria was written after his rediscovery of Christianity and Aids to Reflection (1825) and Church and State (1830) are religious prose. Along with Wordsworth, Coleridge was one of the founders of the Romantic movement. Other romantic poets include Byron, Keats, Burns and Wordsworth.

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Ian Fleming (1908 - 1964)

Born: 28 May 1908

Birthplace: London, England

Died: 12 August 1964 (pleurisy and internal bleeding)

Best Known As: The creator of James Bond 007

Writer Ian Fleming (1909-1964) created the character of James Bond 007, Ian Fleming is the creator of the fictional superspy James Bond. Bond is a suave, lady-killing British agent who travels the globe, battles super-villains bent on world domination, and famously prefers his vodka martinis "shaken, not stirred.". Ian Fleming debuted in the 1952 novel Casino Royale. After publishing his first Bond adventure, Casino Royale, in 1953, Fleming wrote one Bond book each year until his death. The stories spawned a highly profitable movie series which continued into the 21st century, with Sean Connery and Roger Moore the most famous actors to play Bond. Fleming also wrote a series of travel books and the popular children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. . Ian Fleming lived a remarkably uncompromising life in a world full of compromises

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, leaves a legacy as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Fleming's contribution to popular literature and post-war Western culture cannot be overstated

Fleming single-handedly transformed popular detective and spy fiction from the dark, middle-class heroes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Sapper, to the elegant world of his own, seen through the eye of James Bond, secret agent 007. Bond grew from the literary world of Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, E. Phillips Oppenheim, John Buchan and Sax Rohmer.

Fleming argued that he created Bond as "an interesting man to whom extraordinary things happen." Fleming appropriated the name "James Bond" from the author of Birds Of The West Indies because he felt the name suitably "dull" and "anonymous."

In contrast to Fleming's desire, Bond's skill at high-stakes gambling (Casino Royale), his easy of knowledge of the best wines, champagnes, automobiles, and cigarettes made 007 an icon of class. From Dom Perignon to Morland's cigarettes, from Bentleys to Aston Martins, James Bond defines a certain elegant taste (Bond's original Bentley was a nod to Bulldog Drummond's identical car).

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R. K Laxman (1924)

Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman (b. 23-10-1924) is an Indian cartoonist, illustrator and humorist. He is widely regarded as India's greatest-ever cartoonist and is best known for his creation The Common Man.

R. K. Laxman was born in Mysore, now a part of the South Indian state of Karnataka. His father was a headmaster and Laxman was the youngest of six boys. One of his elder brothers, Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami, went on to become one of India's best known English language novelists.

Laxman was engrossed by the illustrations in magazines such as Strand Magazine, Punch, Bystander, Wide World and Tit-Bits, even before he could read. Soon he was drawing on his own, on the floors, walls and doors of his house and doodling caricatures of his teachers at school; praised by a teacher for his drawing of a peepal leaf, he began to think of himself as an artist in the making. Another early influence on Laxman were the cartoons of the world-renowned British cartoonist, Sir David Low (whose signature he misread as "cow" for a long time) that appeared now and then in The Hindu.Laxman notes in his autobiography, The Tunnel of Time:

Laxman was the captain of his local "Rough and Tough and Jolly" cricket team and his antics inspired the stories "Dodu the money maker" and "The Regal Cricket Club" written by his brother, Narayan. Laxman's idyllic childhood was shaken for a while when his father suffered a paralytic stroke and died around a year later, but the elders at home bore most of the increased responsibility, while Laxman continued with his schooling.


After high school, Laxman applied to the JJ School of Arts, Bombay hoping to concenterate on his lifelong interests of drawing and painting, but the dean of the school wrote to him that his drawings lacked, "the kind of talent to qualify for enrollment in our institution as a student", and refused admission. He finally graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mysore. In the meantime he continued his freelance artistic activities and contributed cartoons to Swarajya and an animated film based on the mythological character, Narada.

Books

* The Eloquent Brush: A Selection of Cartoons from Nehru to Rajiv
* 50 Years of Independence through the eyes of R.K.Laxman
* The Best of Laxman series
* Hotel Riviera
* The Messenger
* Servants of India
* The Tunnel of Time (autobiography)


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Anita Desai (1937 )

Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, a hill station north of Delhi, as the daughter of a D.N. Mazumdar, a Bengali businessman, and the former Toni Nime, of German origin. She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English at school and in the city streets. She has said that she grew up surrounded by Western literature and music, not realizing until she was older that this was an anomaly in her world where she also learned the Eastern culture and customs. She married a businessman at twenty-one and raised several children before becoming known for her writing. Her first book, Cry,the Peacock was published in England in 1963, and her better known novels include In Custody (1984) and Baumgartner's Bombay (1988). She once wrote: "I see India through my mother's eyes, as an outsider, but my feelings for India are my father's, of someone born here" (Griffiths).

Anita Desai was born June 24, 1937 in India to a German mother and an Indian father. Although she now resides in South Hadley, Massachusetts, teaching writing at Mount Holyoke College, she is a member of the Advisory Board for English in New Delhi. Desai writes in English, saying, "I first learned English when I went to school. It was the first language that I learned to read and write, so it became my literary language. Languages tend to proliferate around one in India, and one tends to pick up and use whatever is at hand. It makes one realize each language has its own distinct genius." Her family spoke German at home and Hindi to their friends.

Desai's work is part of a new style of writing to come out of India which is not nearly as conservative as Indian writing has been in the past. One concern that is part of her work, especially the novel Baumgartner's Bombay, is that about foreignness and dividedness. Desai grew up during World War II and could see the anxiety her German mother was experiencing about the situation and her family in Germany. After the war when she realized the Germany she had known was devasted, her mother never returned there, nor had any desire to return. Anita herself did not visit until she was an adult.

She never considered trying to first publish in India because there was no publisher in India who would be interested in fiction by an Indian writer (Jussawalla) and it was first in England that her work became noticed. U.S. readers were slower to discover her, due, she believes to England's natural interest in India and the U.S.'s lack of comprehension regarding the foreignness of her subject.

But Desai only writes in English. This, she has repeatedly said,was a natural and unconscious choice for her: "I can state definitely that I did not choose English in a deliberate and conscious act and I'd say perhaps it was the language that chose me and I started writing stories in English at the age of seven, and have been doing so for thirty years now without stopping to think why "(Desai).

She is considered the writer who introduced the psychological novel in the tradition of Virginia Woolf to India. Included in this, is her pioneer status of writing of feminist issues. While many people today would not classify her work as feminist, she believes this is due to changing times: "The feminist movement in India is very new and a younger generation of readers in India tends to be rather impatient of my books and to think of them as books about completely helpless women, hopeless women. They find it somewhat unreal that the women don't fight back, but they don't seem to realize how very new this movement is" (Jussawalla).

Also, she says, her writing is realistic: "Women think I am doing a disservice to the feminist movement by writing about women who have no control over their lives. But I was trying, as every writer tries to do, even in fiction, to get at the truth, write the truth. It would have been really fanciful if I had made [for example, in Clear Light of Day] Bim and Tara modern-day feminists "(in Griffiths).

Desai considers Clear Light of Day, her most autobiographical book, because she was writing about her neighborhood in Delhi, although the characters are not based on her brothers and sisters. What she was exploring in this novel, she has said, was the importance of childhood and memories as the source of a life. She had wanted to start the book at the end and move backwards, into the characters' childhood and further, into the childhood of their parents etc., but in the end: "When I had gone as far back as their infancy the book just ground to a halt; it lost its momentum. It told me that this was done, that I couldn't carry it further. But I still have a sense of disappointment about that book, because the intention had been different" (Jussawalla). The character of Raja is identified with her in the sense that he is so immersed in all different types of literature and culture, and is so concerned with protecting the multicultural heritage of India. His worries about the Muslim neighbor family is not just about them particularly, but rather worry about the loss of all that the Muslim culture and literature contributes to India.

While Desai has taught for years at Mount Holyoke and MIT, and spends most of the year outside of India, she does not consider herself part of the Indian Diaspora. Although she does not fit in the Indian box anymore (Griffiths) as she said, she considers herself lucky for having not left India until late in her life, because she feels that she has been drifting away from it ever since: "I can't really write of it with the same intensity and familiarity that I once had." Yet she cannot feel at home in any other place or society (Griffiths).

Selected works:

* The Peacock, 1963
* Voices in the City, 1965
* Bye-Bye, Blackbird, 1971
* The Peacock Garden, 1974
* Where Shall We Go This Summer?, 1975
* Cat on a Houseboat, 1976
* Fire on the Mountain, 1977
* Games at Twilight and Other Stories, 1978
* Clear Light of Day, 1980
* Village by the Sea, 1982
* In Custody, 1984 - film 1993, dir. by Ismail Merchant, starring Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, screenplay by Anita Desai
* Baumgartner's Bombay, 1988
* Journey to Ithaca, 1996
* Fasting, Feasting, 1999
* Diamond Dust, 2000
* The Zigzag Way: A Novel, 2004


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