This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 24, 2023. All of the seasons of the year have their special charms (yes, even winter), but none engenders my personal excitement like spring. The earth is coming back to life. Trees and flowers are beginning to bud and bloom, and • Read More »
Archives: writing
Josephine Baker, Handel’s comeback, and baseball’s pitch clock: newsletter, March 17, 2023
March 17, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 17, 2023. Old time baseball aficionados like me used to be able to brag that, unlike basketball and football, baseball was not governed by any kind of a time clock. The pace of the game could be fast, or it could • Read More »
Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Chesterton’s definition of a detective story, and a new approach to beekeeping: newsletter, March 10, 2023
March 10, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 10, 2023. My efforts at beekeeping in the last few years have been largely unsuccessful (not much honey harvested and hives dying in the fall or winter), so it is time to try a different approach. I have been reading some • Read More »
Charles Henry Turner, G.K. Chesterton, public shame, and the upcoming baseball season: newsletter, March 3, 2023
March 3, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, newsletter, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 3, 2023. If you pay attention to these things, you hear a lot these days about “public shaming,” and its subsidiary concept, “body shaming.” These two activities are generally thought to be bad, if not evil. I would agree. Holding people • Read More »
The espionage activities of Graham Greene, the literary merits of Spare, and the last of February’s giveaways: newsletter, February 24, 2023
February 24, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, First Amendment, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 24, 2023. Attempts to silence writers are as eternal, and as futile, as attempts to ban books themselves. In a couple of recent high-profile instances, we have seen author Salman Rushdie physically attacked and Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling become • Read More »
Burt Bacharach, a 14-year old assassin, Women With Words nearing completion: newsletter, February 17, 2023
February 17, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 17, 2023. Ever since the Super Bowl ended, nearly a week ago, we have been treated to an endless number of stories about what happened during the last few minutes of the game and how a referee’s questionable call might • Read More »
Feisty librarians and female baseball players, Robert Harris, and the American mystery writer who predated Agatha Christie:newsletter, February 10, 2023
February 10, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 10, 2023. Sadly, attacks on libraries and librarians continue, and recently they have reached my own area. A group from a coalition of churches in my county showed up at a county school board meeting to offer some less-than-friendly instruction to • Read More »
The end of education as we know it? Probably not
February 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: writing.During the past few weeks, artificial intelligence (AI) writing software programs, led by something inharmoniously called ChatGPT, have gained the attention of reporters and editors around the country and thus generated headlines that are scary and puzzling, particularly to those of us deeply invested in teaching writing to young people. As Hetal Thaker writes on • Read More »
The late editor of The Nation, the dangers of alcohol, the novel of a friend, and the improbable end of education as we know it: newsletter, February 3, 2023
February 3, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, First Amendment, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 3, 2023. During my academic career, I was fortunate enough to be able to write and publish several textbooks. Writing textbooks was a central focus of many of my efforts, and I enjoyed it immensely. One of the things I enjoyed • Read More »
The disappearance of an MP, keys to college success, how we got the First Amendment, and more:newsletter, January 27, 2023
January 27, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, journalism, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 27, 2023. My tour of news sites that attempt to avoid the “bad news bias” continues with a site that is not exactly “good news” but is filled with good information—and probably the kind of information that you can apply directly • Read More »
Setting a standard for the police procedural, how we got the Smithsonian, and the love of American football: newsletter, January 20, 2023
January 20, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, journalism, newsletter, sports, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,829) on Friday, January 20, 2023. As promised in last week’s newsletter, I continue to present websites that attempt to avoid, as best they can, the “bad news bias” of many of the mainstream media. This week’s entry is YES! magazine. YES! emphasizes what it • Read More »
Bat Masterson: gun-slinger turned sports reporter
January 17, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: reporters, reporting, sports, writers, writing.The world today knows him as one of the Old West’s most famous gunslingers, fearless associate of the famous lawman, Wyatt Earp. But in 1921, the world knew Bat Masterson as a world-class sports writer for the New York Morning Telegraph and one of the foremost experts on the second most popular sport of the • Read More »
Harriet Preston Spofford and the first female-authored detective series
January 14, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.Her work had been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, but most of them were low circulation periodicals. Harriet wrote incessantly, sometimes as much as 15 hours a day, because the money that she received from her publications barely covered the family’s expenses. In 1859 she wrote a story that she believed was • Read More »
The first female-authored detective series, the gun-slinger who became a sports reporter, and the Tylenol murders: newsletter, January 13, 2023
January 13, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, history, journalism, newsletter, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 13, 2023. The “bad news bias” of the news outlet that I regularly visit has been all too obvious lately. I know enough about journalism not to blame the messenger. There’s plenty of bad stuff out there that we need to • Read More »
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor and the first American detective novel
January 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.You have probably never heard the unusual name Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, but from now on whenever you hear the name Edgar Allan Poe, you should try to remember Metta’s name. Poe is the undisputed (mostly) father of American detective fiction. He wrote three short stories featuring Inspector Auguste Dupin, and he wrote about detective • Read More »
The first American detective novel, an ode to libraries, and the first published poet in American newsletter, January 6, 2023
January 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, libraries, newsletter, watercolor, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 6, 2023. Some people blanche at the word “resolution” especially at this time of year. They believe, often rightly, that New Year’s resolutions are meaningless if not harmful because they raise expectations and often result in frustration. I don’t really subscribe • Read More »
Jonathan Swift, Andrew Greeley, and things about good and bad book reviews: newsletter, December 30, 2022
December 30, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 30, 2022. As with most authors, I am of two minds when it comes to reviews of anything I have written. Reviewers who are kind are obvious geniuses able to perceive the many profundities—written with the appropriate amount of self-effacing • Read More »
George Smalley, JFK on open government, sports writing, and Safire on words: newsletter, December 23, 2022
December 23, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 23, 2022. In order to give myself a couple of weeks off, the newsletter this week and next week will be populated mostly by material from the JPROF.com archives. Much of this was originally posted a decade or more ago, • Read More »
Constance Garnett and the translator’s dilemma
December 16, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.When we read a book or see a play that has been written in another language and translated into English, what exactly are we reading or hearing? Are they the words of the author or the words of the translator? This is the eternal dilemma of translation. Each language has its own words, phrases, structure, • Read More »
The translator’s dilemma, advance copy readers, and General Grant as public writer: newsletter, December 16, 2022
December 16, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, history, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 16, 2022. This month brings to a close my four-and-a-half-year tenure as the writer-in-residence for the Blount County Public Library. This association with what has to be one of the best local libraries in the nation has been one • Read More »