Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 22

... that in 1966 American writer and folk singer Richard Fariña died in a motorcycle accident only two days after the publication of his novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me?

... that "Call the roller of big cigars, / The muscular one, and bid him whip / In kitchen cups concupiscient curds" are the first lines of Wallace Stevens's (pictured) 1922 poem, "The Emperor of Ice Cream", and that it is about a wake?

... that Ernest J. Gaines grew up as the eldest of twelve children in old slave quarters on a Louisiana plantation, and that he wrote his first novel, Catherine Carmier, at the age of 17 while babysitting his youngest brother?

... that "Exit" is a theatrical term instructing an actor to leave the scene?

... that Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley and Melanie Wilkes are the main characters in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind?

... that books do furnish a room?

... that 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, a revenge tragedy by John Ford set in Italy, is about an incestuous relationship between brother and sister?