Birthdays for Lomax, Mailer and O’Hara

I’ve been writing about birthdays with a slow sort of regularity for January Magazine for many years. One of the things that’s struck me about this exercise is the discovery, very early on, that big talent tends to run in clumps.

For instance today, the 31st of January, is the birthday of three writers with very big shoes: Alan Lomax (Cowboy Songs and Frontier Ballads, Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp) was born on this day in 1915; Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner's Song) in 1915 and John O’Hara (Appointment in Samarra, A Rage to Live) in 1905.

Each of this trio are very well known, but if you’d like to know more about them, follow the link from their name.