Curated playlist

Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Mark TwainMark Twain predicted he would die with Halley's Comet, and he did. He died the day after it passed closest to the Sun.
Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest, then gave a 90-minute speech. It happened in Milwaukee in October 1912.
Henry JamesNovelist Henry James was hissed at when he took a bow on his play's opening night in 1895.
William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner never told his daughter he had won the Nobel Prize. She heard it when the principal called her in.
John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
Langston HughesLangston Hughes's ashes rest beneath the floor of a Harlem research center.
Marcel DuchampIn 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a signed urinal to a New York show, and the committee turned it away.
Saul BellowSaul Bellow learned he had entered the U.S. illegally as a child when he tried to enlist. He became a citizen in 1941.
Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson ordered his own supporters to vote against his League of Nations treaty.
Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
Eugene O'NeillPlaywright Eugene O'Neill was born in a hotel room and died in one. His last words were about that coincidence.
Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died hours after reading his poems aloud in a Vienna hotel.
William JamesWilliam James argued we do not run from a bear because we are afraid. We are afraid because we run.
Ralph EllisonA 1967 fire destroyed more than 300 pages of Ralph Ellison's second novel. He never finished it.
Jonathan FranzenA gate-crasher once pulled novelist Jonathan Franzen's glasses off his face. He jokingly demanded $100,000 in 2010.
Joseph CampbellGeorge Lucas said Joseph Campbell's book helped shape Star Wars. They met only in 1984.
Joseph HellerJoseph Heller's novel Catch-22 was first called Catch-18. It was renamed to avoid confusion with Mila 18.
Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair aimed his novel The Jungle at the public's heart and hit its stomach instead. Meat sales fell by half.
Maxwell AndersonMaxwell Anderson was fired from Whittier College for backing a jailed student.
Junot DíazJunot Díaz arrived in New Jersey at six unable to speak English. He later won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
W. E. B. Du BoisW. E. B. Du Bois died in Ghana the day before the March on Washington. He was 95 and had renounced his U.S. citizenship.
C. Vann WoodwardC. Vann Woodward argued that Jim Crow was chosen late, not inherited from Southern tradition.
E. L. DoctorowE. L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle Award three times. He mixed real and invented people.
Shelby FooteShelby Foote wrote every page by hand with a nib pen, then typed up a clean copy. He thought of himself first as a novelist. Yet he is remembered for a three-volume history of the American Civil War. He expected that history to take nine…
Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt was stunned when universities sought experts in "New Historicism," a phrase he coined.
Harold BloomHarold Bloom argued that every poet struggles to escape the shadow of earlier poets.
John Stewart BellJohn Bell died in 1990 without knowing he had reportedly been nominated for a Nobel Prize.
Padraic ColumPadraic Colum was born Patrick Columb in a County Longford workhouse, where his father held a job. That was the 8th of December 1881. He died on the 11th of January 1972, aged 90. By then he had published 61 books, not counting his plays.…
Bruce CattonBruce Catton grew up in Michigan listening to Civil War veterans, and their stories shaped his writing.
Nicholas Murray ButlerA 1939 poem in Poetry secretly spelled out an insult to Nicholas Murray Butler. The magazine later apologized.