fast-breaking Literary News

This day, October 14, is the date on which Victor Hugo, in the year 1822, married Adele Foucher.  The highlight of the wedding breakfast was the sudden leap into violent insanity by Victor's older brother, Eugene, perhaps set off by a sub-standard pain au chocolat.  It was possibly the most memorable wedding reception scene until Steve Buscemi's turn in "The Wedding Singer." 

(Incidentally, Victor Hugo wants to know when the royalties from "Les Miserables" will arrive.)

Also this date, in 1919, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and Robert Sherwood, forbidden by "Vanity Fair" to discuss their wages, walked around the office wearing signs around their necks revealing their salaries.

Finally, words for writers (this writer, anyway) to cherish, from Katherine Mansfield, the superb short story writer born this date in 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand:  "I imagine I was always writing.  Twaddle it was, too.  But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all."

And if you can get paid for it, all the better.