question: Which author, John Grisham or Blaise Cendrars, was born earliest?
answer: Blaise Cendrars
context: Title: The Tumor (short story)
  Passage: "The Tumor" is a short story by John Grisham, telling about the focused ultrasound process through the case of a fictional character named Paul.  This story was not released through Grisham's usual publisher, but instead was published for a free eBook on the website of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, on whose board Grisham serves.  Grisham's purpose in writing this short story was to increase awareness about the promising new medical therapy.  The use of focused ultrasound is not yet approved for use on brain tumors, but "The Tumor" takes place in a time when the therapy is in regular use.  Unlike most short stories, the story is as much informational as narrative, and includes medical illustrations and brain scan images.  The book's cover includes the subtitle "A Non-Legal Thriller". On Grisham's website, in a letter introducing "The Tumor", Grisham states "It's the most important book I've ever written."
  Title: Otto van Rees (artist)
  Passage: The Dutch artist Otto van Rees (1884-1957), son of a family of academics, started his career in Paris, where he moved in 1904.  By intermediation of Picasso, whom Van Rees met in the café Le Lapin Agile, Van Rees put up at an atelier in the Bateau Lavoir.  At the Académie Carrière he became friends with George Braque.  The Bateau Lavoir was a lively place where his contact with other artists, painters, (Picasso, Léger, Gris, Van Dongen) as well as writers (Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Apollinaire) deepened.  His wife and fellow artist, Adya van Rees-Dutilh joint him soon after.  Paris would be their winter residence on and off for over 30 years.  Some of his fellow artists became dear friends over many years: Severini, Segal, Freundlich, Mondriaan, Arp, Zadkine.  The summers were spent at Fleury-en-Bière, a little town next to Barbizon.  Kees van Dongen spent the summer of 1905 there, together with Otto and Adya van Rees in the farmhouse Van Rees rented.  They painted together in the fields around the village.  Picasso was also a visitor, as well as other artists: Otto Freundlich, Marc Chagall and Blaise Cendrars to mention a few.  After a stay in Italy his first grand exposition of 48 luministic paintings was held in 1908 in Rotterdam at the Oldenzeel gallery, gallery famous for its exhibitions (1892-1904) of works by Vincent van Gogh.  In Paris, during the early years, Otto van Rees exhibited his work at the gallery of Berthe Weil and Clovis Sagot and at the yearly Salon des Artistes Indépendants.  He also had part in the Sonderbund, Cöln in 1912 and the famous exhibition of Der Sturm in 1913.  In 1912-1916 the art of Van Rees went through changes, pointillism and luminism lost his interest.  His work evolved from physic cubism, as Apollinaire described it, to analytic cubism.  One of the first collectors of his art then was Arthur Jerôme Eddy.  During the first world war Van Rees changed his French summer residence for Ascona, little town at the Lago Maggiore.  The artistic and anarchistic colony there was inspiring.  With Arp, who later spent Christmastime 1915 at the Van Rees, Otto and Adya held the famous exposition of November 1915 at the gallery Tanner in Zürich.  This exposition is now seen as the beginning of Dada-Zürich.  The art dealer Henri Kahnweiler named Van Rees as an artist that brought the collage technique from Paris to Zürich as the start of Dada Art.  Ascona would keep Van Rees’ preference.  In 1928 Otto van Rees constructed a house on the hills there.  The house had a ground plan of a circle and a square, announcing the famous 1930 collective art show of Cercle et Carré.  After the tragic death of their oldest daughter, killed in a train accident in France, Otto van Rees spent more and more time in Holland.  He moved there in 1934.  In Holland the young painters called him their Nestor, who taught them the profound values on art.  Many public buildings in Holland: churches, railway station, courthouse, ministry, theatres were embellished by his mural paintings .
  Title: John Grisham
  Passage: John Ray Grisham Jr. ( ; born February 8, 1955) is an American bestselling writer, attorney, politician, and activist best known for his popular legal thrillers. His books have been translated into 42 languages and published worldwide.
  Title: Remy de Gourmont
  Passage: Remy de Gourmont (4 April 1858 – 27 September 1915) was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic.  He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars and Georges Bataille.  The spelling "Rémy" de Gourmont is incorrect, albeit common and used by Ezra Pound in translations of his work.
  Title: Jean Hugo
  Passage: Jean Hugo (19 November 1894 – 21 June 1984) was a painter, illustrator, theatre designer and author.  He was born in Paris and died in his home at the Mas de Fourques, near Lunel, France.  Brought up in a lively artistic environment, he began teaching himself drawing and painting and wrote essays and poetry from a very early age.  His artistic career spans the 20th century, from his early sketches of the First World War, through the creative ferment of the Parisian interwar years, and up to his death in 1984.  He was part of a number of artistic circles that included Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Pablo Picasso, Georges Auric, Erik Satie, Blaise Cendrars, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Paul Eluard, Francis Poulenc, Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet, Colette, Marcel Proust, Jacques Maritain, Max Jacob, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Marie Bell, Louise de Vilmorin, Cecil Beaton and many others.
  Title: Eric Robertson (literary critic)
  Passage: Eric Robertson is Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London.  His research focuses primarily on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism and the avant-gardes.  He is the author of "Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor" (2006), "Writing Between the Lines", a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele (1995), and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts.  He is also the co-editor of "Yvan Goll - Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts" (1997), "Robert Desnos: Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century" (2006), "Dada and Beyond Volume 1: Dada Discourses" (2011) and "Dada and Beyond Volume 2: Dada and its Legacies" (2012).  Professor Robertson recently completed a monograph exploring the writings of Blaise Cendrars in the light of his interactions with artists, photographers and filmmakers, including Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Robert Doisneau, Abel Gance, Fernand Léger and Léopold Survage.  Further ongoing projects include a study of avant-garde art and virtual technologies.
  Title: Blaise Cendrars
  Passage: Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916.  He was a writer of considerable influence in the European modernist movement.
  Title: The Legend of Novgorode
  Passage: "The Legend of Novgorode" was the first poem of Blaise Cendrars published in 1907.  This text was considered for a long time as lost, or as a product of his author's imagination, until in 1995, a copy was discovered by chance in a Bulgar bookshop.  After a raging controversy, this copy is now mostly considered as a fraud, with a very good impersonation of Cendrars' (signing at that time Frédéric Sauser) style.  This first poem would reveal the origins of the nickname that was chosen by Fréderic Sauser.  The authenticity of the document is still questionable today.
  Title: Shadow (Marcia Brown book)
  Passage: Shadow is a children's picture book created by Marcia Brown and published by Scribner in 1982.  The text is Brown's translation of the poem "La Féticheuse" by French writer Blaise Cendrars.  She won the annual Caldecott Medal for illustration of an American children's picture book in 1983, her third.
  Title: Moravagine
  Passage: Moravagine is a Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) novel, published by Grasset en 1926.
citations: Blaise Cendrars John Grisham