Personal
Born Emmanuel Beckson and raised in East Harlem and the Bronx, son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, he obtained his first library card at the 96th Street branch of the New York Public Library. In 1943, at age 17, he volunteered for the United States Navy, serving to yeoman 2nd class aboard the destroyer, USS Ross (DD-563), the only ship in U.S. naval history to survive two underwater mine explosions (Leyte Gulf, South Pacific). He was married since February 9, 1957 to Estelle Zimmerman with whom he had two sons, Mace and Eric.
Read more about this topic: Karl Beckson
Famous quotes containing the word personal:
“A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)