May. 26, 2012: The Writer's Almanac

Saturday, May 26 2012 06:00 AM

Saturday's Poem: "Happiness" by Joyce Sutphen, from First Words. Saturday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of novelist Alan Hollinghurst, born in Stroud, England (1954). He was an only child, and Stroud was a very small, rural town. His father was a farming bank manager, and Alan accompanied him from farm to farm. When he was seven, his parents decided to send him off to boarding school. Hollinghurst loved school. He read a lot of poetry, but wasn't very interested in novels other than those of J.R.R Tolkien. He went to Oxford, and there he decided to try writing. His first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), was the story of a gay man who saves the life of an aristocrat, an older gay man. The novel is full of explicit descriptions of sex. He said: "For a shy person, it strikes me now that my first book was rather bold. But I think shy people often have a strange, compensatory impulse. When they do something, it's ridiculously outspoken." Hollinghurst had a tough time selling the paperback rights for the book. It scared off all the publishers. But then the hardcover version of The Swimming-Pool Library was extremely popular and spent months on the best-seller list, and publishers ended up in a bidding war for the paperback rights...