A very happy birthday to Quetin Tarantino, who was born on this day in 1963.  Sure, he’s a filmmaker, but his scripts—like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs—are literary as hell. They’re dialogue-driven gut punches, drenched in pop culture and violence, with a rhythm that’s more poetic than most novels. While typical script writers write scenes, Tarantino crafts chaos you can’t look away from. His work’s influenced a generation of writers to ditch the polite and get messy, and strive for badassery.

For the English majors, on March 27, 1964, Arthur Miller’s After the Fall opened in New York. This play’s a brutal, semi-autobiographical gut-spill—Miller wrestling with his marriage to Marilyn Monroe and the fallout of McCarthyism. It’s not subtle; it’s a man staring down his own flaws and society’s hypocrisy, no punches pulled. Critics were split, but Miller didn’t give a shit—he kept digging into the human mess, cementing his rep as a playwright with steel in his spine.

N.P.: “Waffen Waffen Waffen” – Eisbrecher