John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931) is an American writer.  He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction.  He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists).  In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career".  Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee  

John McPhee has said that the lead of an article serves as a searchlight that shines down into the body of a piece—which is a good enough description for a work of nonfiction, where story is already formed, has already happened, and needs only to be reported—but the first sentence of a piece of fiction serves as much more than searchlight or hook or even lure to the reluctant reader.  The first sentence in a work of fiction places the first limitation on the utterly limitless world of the author’s imagination.  Before that first sentence is composed, anything is possible.  The novelist Gloria Naylor called the first sentence of a piece of fiction the story’s DNA, for out of it, she said, arises the second sentence and the third, the fourth—all the way, I would add, to the very last.  For if the writer’s any good, the first sentence will strike a chord, a tone, a mood, a music that will reverberate throughout the story or the novel, resounding in all kinds of ways through every sentence, all the way to the end.  Excerpted from What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction by Alice McDermott  Copyright © 2021 by Alice McDermott   https://lithub.com/what-makes-a-great-first-sentence/  

Possum v. opossum  One of these was discovered before the other—and on completely different continents.  In the 17th century, Captain John Smith who was one of the colonists in the Jamestown colony in Virginia named the opossum based on an Algonquian word meaning “white beast.” And thus, the opossum we know today got its name.  Over one hundred years later in the late 1700s, different explorers traveled to Australia and New Guinea.  There, one of the explorers—a naturalist by the name of Sir Joseph Banks— saw a creature he determined to be part of the “Opossum tribe” described in America.  The name that this creature was given?  Possum.  As you can tell from the history of each animals’ origin, the opossum and possum are in fact very different animals altogether (even if they are related).  Though “opossum” is sometimes shortened to “possum” in North America, with the two words often being used synonymously, this is technically a misnomer.  The proper name for the scaly-tailed creature with a pointed head (that may be baring its teeth) is opossum.  Opossums are the only native marsupials found in North America.  This means that like other marsupials, they possess pouches with which to carry their young.  Opossums are roughly the size of raccoons, so about two to three feet long, and usually have grayish fur.  They are also recognizable from their long, pointed snouts and sharp teeth.  The young can use their tail to hang upside, although adults are too heavy to continue this behavior.  Opossums are omnivores, feeding on many things including fruits, plants, insects, snakes, and small mammals such as mice and rats.  The brushtail possum is also a marsupial, like the opossums found in North America.  But unlike opossums, possums have furry tails—which is how they got the name brushtail possums—and are found throughout Australia.  Brushtail possums look fairly different from the opossum, with shorter and less pointed snouts.  Possums typically give birth to one young at a time compared to the many young that opossums give birth to at once; and, newborn possums are called joeys while opossum young are not.  https://www.terminix.com/blog/home-garden/possum-vs-opossum-differences/    

2023 is the 400^th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first collected edition of his works, and the first publication ever of plays including Macbeth and The Tempest.  Jane Smiley’s novel A Thousand Acres is an adaption of King Lear.  

Jane Smiley (born 1949) is an American novelist.  She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2724  September 27, 2023