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March 11		Finnegans Wake, Chop Suey
		On this day in 1923, James Joyce wrote to his patron, Harriet Weaver, that he had just begun "Work in Progress," the book which would become Finnegans Wake sixteen years later. When Nora found out that her husband was "on another book again," she asked if, instead of "that chop suey you're writing," he might not try "sensible books that people can understand."
March 10		Scott & Zelda
		On this day in 1948, F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, and eight other patients were killed in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. This was eighteen years after Zelda's first mental breakdown and eight years after Scott's fatal heart attack -- a world away from the Jazz Age they helped to define, and which helped to defeat them.
March 9		Bukowski and the Barfly Life
		On this day in 1994 Charles Bukowski died. Though dismissed by most critics, he was the Grand Old Man of the fringe presses, publishing over fifty books in a career which spanned a half-century and brought near-celebrity status -- appearances with Allen Ginsberg, interviews in Rolling Stone, sold-out readings in Europe (to which he would be able to take not the two six-packs but four bottles of good French wine), and a movie of his earlier, Barfly life.