February 19, 2006

  • The Dirty Thirty

    Today's birthdays:
    • Amy Tan, born Feb. 19, 1952, in Oakland,
      California, and
    • the late Lee Marvin, born Feb. 19, 1924, in New York
      City.

    For Amy Tan:

    "Tan has a strong distaste for 'hodge-podge collections' that have no
    unifying theme. But as fate would have it, she had just recently
    recognized the common thread running through her own work.

    'It has to do with my upbringing with a father who very
    strongly believed in faith as a Baptist minister, and my mother, who
    very strongly believed in fate, and I'm trying to find things that work
    for me.'

    She proposed a collection based upon her lifelong search for a philosophical middle ground between faith and fate, to be called The Opposite of Fate. When her puzzled editor asked her what the opposite of fate might be, Tan cryptically replied, 'Exactly!'"

    -- Jay MacDonald, "Book Page"

    For Lee Marvin:

    "On Feb. 19, 1945, during World War II, some thirty thousand U.S. Marines landed
    on Iwo Jima, where they began a monthlong battle to seize control of
    the island from Japanese forces."

    -- Adapted from "Today's Highlight in History," by the Associated Press