Revision – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about Of Mice and Men

A short introduction to the classic novel Of Mice and Men, in the form of five interesting facts

1. John Steinbeck’s original title for his classic novella, Of Mice and Men, was ‘Something That Happened’. This deliberately nondescript title was intended to remove any sense of individual blame for the events that occur in the novella (something quite different from the ironic intention behind the similarly titled play Stuff Happens, David Hare’s recent play about the Iraq War). Of Mice and Men, as the novel came to be known, focuses on two migrant workers, George (a smart, quick-thinking man) and his friend Lennie (a simpler man, who is mentally disabled but physically big and strong – ironically, his surname is ‘Small’), who work on various farms during the Great Depression in America in the 1930s (Steinbeck was drawing on his own experiences as a ‘bindlestiff’, as he also would for his next novel, The Grapes of Wrath). Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, was possibly alluding to Steinbeck’s working title when he called one of his own later novels Something Happened.

The Best Books about Shakespeare

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

We thought it was time we offered our pick of the best books about William Shakespeare: the best introductions to his life and his work. The following is not designed to be an exhaustive list, but many of these books were written by leading Shakespeare scholars and each contains something which every fan of the Bard should know.

Five Fascinating Facts about J. D. Salinger

Five fun facts from the biography of J. D. Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye

1. At high school, J. D. Salinger was so fond of acting that he signed the yearbook with the names of the roles he’d performed. His father, however, didn’t want Salinger Jr. to go into acting, and he went to New York University for a year before dropping out. Somewhat aimless, he worked for a short time in Europe as an importer/exporter in the ham trade – an experience which converted him to vegetarianism. He had taken the job at the behest of his father.

Five Fascinating Facts about The Great Gatsby

Fun facts about The Great Gatsby and its author, F. Scott Fitzgerald

1. The Great Gatsby sold no more than 25,000 copies in Fitzgerald’s lifetime. It has now sold over 25 million copies. Fitzgerald’s third novel, The Great Gatsby was first published in 1925. It is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and WWI veteran who goes to live on Long Island, next door to Jay Gatsby, a rich tycoon known for throwing parties. The novel’s evocation of 1920s America and its critique of the American Dream has helped to ensure its place among the great American novels, but it was outsold at the time by This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald’s first novel, published in 1920.

Five Fascinating Facts about J. B. Priestley

Interesting trivia about the life of writer J. B. Priestley, author of An Inspector Calls

1. John Boynton Priestley (1894-1984) wrote the first play ever to be televised. Although he’s better known for An Inspector Calls, several of Priestley’s other plays are notable. Priestley’s romantic comedy When We Are Married was the first play to be televised unedited from a theatre, on 16 November 1938. (On the subject of romance, Priestley himself was something of a ladies’ man, despite having what one acquaintance described as a ‘potato face‘ – see the excellent David Low caricature of Priestley below for more on this.) An Inspector Calls (1945) is, however, his most popular play, centring on the titular inspector’s visit to the home of the wealthy middle-class Birling family. In the course of his interview with the family, Inspector Goole discovers that every member of the family played a part in the tragic suicide of a local working-class woman named Eva Smith.