Name | Douglas Turner Day [1] | |
Suffix | III | |
Birth | 1 May 1932 | Colón, Panama |
Gender | Male | |
Obituary | Obituary from the New York Times, 19 Oct. 2004: Douglas Day, a biographer and critic who won a National Book Award in 1974 for his life of the English novelist Malcolm Lowry, died on Oct. 10 in his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 72. Dr. Day, who had a debilitating stroke in February, committed suicide, his daughter, Emily Day Whitworth, said. Published by Oxford University Press in 1973, ''Malcolm Lowry: A Biography'' documented the turbulent life of the alcoholic writer, whose celebrated novel, ''Under the Volcano,'' was published in 1947. In his biography, which explored the affinity between the urge to drink and the urge to write, Dr. Day regarded his subject with detached scrutiny: ''For anyone writing about Malcolm Lowry there is (or ought to be) a small voice in the back of the mind that is always saying, Do not take me quite so seriously,'' he wrote. ''Lowry was often miserable, all right, and with ample justification; but he was also capable of watching Malcolm Lowry being miserable, and laughing at the sorry spectacle. Sometimes it is difficult to do so, but it is essential to keep in mind that Lowry was a comedian first and foremost, and a great ham actor.'' Dr. Day continued, ''On the other hand, we need also to keep before us the undeniable evidence that he was an alcoholic of Gargantuan proportions.'' Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, A. Alvarez called Dr. Day ''fair-minded and sensible to a degree quite remarkable in an academic biographer of a contemporary figure.'' Before his retirement in 2000, Dr. Day was Clifton Waller Barrett professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Virginia. He was also the editor, with Lowry's widow, Margerie, of Lowry's posthumous novel ''Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid,'' published in 1968, 11 years after Lowry's suicide in 1957. Douglas Turner Day III was born on May 1, 1932, in Colón, Panama, where his father, an admiral in the United States Navy, was stationed. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia in 1954, a master's in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1962, the year he joined the university's faculty. His other books include ''Swifter Than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves'' (1963) and two novels, ''Journey of the Wolf'' (1977) and ''The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magón'' (1991). He edited a posthumous novel by William Faulkner, ''Flags in the Dust.'' Dr. Day's first four marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his fifth wife, Sheila McMillen Day; four children from earlier marriages: Douglas Turner IV of Waynesboro, Va.; Ian, of Annapolis, Md.; Patrick, of Wewahitchka, Fla.; and his daughter, of Charlottesville; and seven grandchildren. __________________________________________________ A second obituary from the Washington Post, Saturday, October 16, 2004: Douglas Turner Day III, 72, a 1974 National Book Award winner and retired University of Virginia professor of English, died Oct. 10 at his home in Charlottesville. He died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Albemarle County police said. Mr. Day was the author of "Malcolm Lowry: A Biography," which won the National Book Award for its look at the author of "Under the Volcano," considered by many critics to be one of the finest novels of the 20th century. Mr. Day also wrote "Journey of the Wolf," a 1978 novel that won a Rosenthal Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. As an editor, in 1973 he restored William Faulkner's novel "Flags in the Dust," which had been previously published in a much-truncated form in 1929 as "Sartoris." With Lowry's widow, Mr. Day edited for posthumous publication Lowry's novel "Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid" in 1969. Gordon Braden, the English Department chairman at the university, said Mr. Day had shifted from scholarship and literary criticism to teaching creative writing in the past 15 years and was working on a novel. He was the director of the creative writing program at the time of his death. "He was an extremely popular teacher, quite striking in appearance, and he had quite a beautiful voice," Braden said. "He had been used as a model in automobile ads, and I remember seeing one in which he was posed in front of an auto with his bow and arrow." Mr. Day taught a course on the literature of the Americas, with a special focus on Latin American works, as well as courses on Faulkner and modern literature. Students liked him for his impressive presence and for the fact that he knew authors and works that others did not, Braden said. "For example, he was teaching Gabriel Garcia Marquez when nobody else around here knew him." Mr. Day was born in Colon, Panama, the son of a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. He received bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia. Mr. Day was a pilot in the Marine Corps until an auto accident in 1955. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve. He taught for 38 years at Virginia, where he was the Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and he lectured in Spain and Latin America. Over the years, he received grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the J. William Fulbright organization. He had a Fulbright lectureship, funded by Intercambio Cultural, at the University of Zaragoza, in Spain. In 1995, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His study of the poetry of Robert Graves, his first book of literary criticism, won the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for scholarly writing in 1963. He also edited a collection of plays by Federico Garcia Lorca, and published a novel, "The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon," in 1991. Mr. Day, who was fluent in Spanish, loved new and vintage sports cars, enjoyed travel, was fond of animals and engaged in photography, taking pictures of flamenco musicians and dancers in Andalusia and native residents in Central and South America. He also collected tribal artifacts. He was preceded in death by an infant daughter, Mary Forsyth Day. Survivors include his wife, Sheila McMillen Day of Charlottesville; four children, Douglas Turner Day IV of Waynesboro, Va., Ian Christopher Day of Annapolis, Emily Forsyth Day Whitworth of Crozet, Va., and Patrick Ashby Day of Wewahitchka, Fla.; and seven grandchildren. | |
Occupation | Professor of Literature, University of Virginia 1962-2000 | |
Death | 10 Oct 2004 | Charlottesville, Albemarle Co., Virginia |
Burial | Warrenton Cemetery, Warrenton, Fauquier Co., Virginia | |
Person ID | I13900 | |
Last Modified | 30 Dec 2023 |
Father | Douglas Turner Day, II b. 12 Jan 1903 d. 12 Sep 1979 (Age 76 years) | |
Family ID | F9822 | Group Sheet | Family Chart |
Spouse / Partner | Living | |||||||
Children |
|
|||||||
Family ID | F9815 | Group Sheet | Family Chart | ||||||
Last Modified | 30 Dec 2023 |
Event Map |
|
|||||||||||
Pin Legend |
Sources |
|
This site powered by The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding v. 14.0.1, written by Darrin Lythgoe © 2001-2024.
Genealogy at Pitard.net - created and maintained by D. Pitard Copyright © 2004-2024 All rights reserved. | Data Protection Policy.