June 18– Maxim Gorki
“Stormy Petrel.” Russian novelist, intellectual force.
Read works of Gorki at Project Gutenberg.
JUNE 18, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Festival of Invisible Pornography.
ALSO ON JUNE 18 IN HISTORY…
1778 — British troops evacuate Philadelphia as American Colonial forces enter.
1812 — War declared against Britain by U.S.
1914 — Red Week begins, Italy.
1936 — Russian novelist Maxim Gorki dies, Moscow, USSR.
1953 — Egypt declared a republic by the “Revolutionary Command Council.”
1983 — Sally Ride becomes first U.S. woman in space.
1989 — Muckraking journalist I. F. “Izzy” Feiinstein Stone dies, Boston, MA.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
I read Gorky to death 25 years ago. What impressed me most was not so much his affirmation of our common humanity, but his depiction of the meanness of ordinary Russian life. The serfs mimicked their masters with impossible pettiness and cruelty to one another. I saw a parallel in many canals of American life…