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Thursday, March 25, 2010
Peter Stephan Jungk
 Peter Stephan Jungk will discuss his book Inheritance. Daniel Loew, a poet based in London, has been told since childhood that one day he would become his wealthy uncle's only heir. When he learns of his uncle's death, in Caracas, a few weeks have since passed. A close friend of his uncle's tells Loew that he alone has been named executor of the will and blocks Loew from receiving his inheritance...In a harrowing chase from Venezuela to Miami, via Hamburg and Panama City, on a background of political upheavals as Hugo Chavez attempts and fails his 1992 military coup, Loew leads a desperate fight to regain his considerable inheritance. |
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Elizabeth Hawes
 Elizabeth Hawes discusses her biography of Albert Camus, Camus, A Romance. Elizabeth Hawes's passionate pursuit of Camus began with her college thesis. A biography-memoir, Camus, a Romance reveals the man behind the famous name: the French-Algerian of humble birth and Mediterranean passions; the TB-stricken exile who edited the World War II resistance newspaper Combat; the pied noir in anguish over the Algerian War; the Don Juan who loved a multitude of women; the writer in search of a truer voice. These form only the barest outlines of the rich tapestry of Camus's life, which Elizabeth Hawes chronicles alongside her own experience following in his footsteps, meeting his friends and family, and trying to enter his solitude. |
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Thursday, April 15, 2010
Jerome Charyn
 Jerome Charyn discusses his latest novel The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson. An astonishing novel that removes Emily Dickinson's own mysterious mask and reveals the passions and heartbreak of America's greatest poet. What if the old maid of Amherst wasn't an old maid at all? Her older brother, Austin, spoke of Emily as his "wild sister." Jerome Charyn, continuing his exploration of American history through fiction, has written a startling novel about Emily Dickinson in her own voice, with all its characteristic modulations that he learned from her letters and poems. The poet dons a hundred veils, alternately playing wounded lover, penitent, and female devil. We meet the significant characters of her life, including her tempestuous sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert; her brooding father, Edward; and the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who may have inspired some of her greatest letters and poems. Charyn has also invented characters, including an impoverished fellow student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, who will betray her; and a handyman named Tom, who will obsess Emily throughout her life. Charyn has written an extraordinary adventure that will disturb and delight. |
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Thursday, April 22, 2010
Joint Reading with Hilary Masters and Kathleen George
Hilary Masters discusses his recent collection of stories How the Indians Buried Their Dead and his latest book of essays In Rooms of Memory. Kathleen George will speak about her new novel The Odds. The authors will be introduced by the American poet William Jay Smith.
In Rooms of Memory: This mature, exquisite collection of personal essays by Hilary Masters offers a rare pleasure. Here are meditations and reflections distilled in fine prose from a long and varied life musings that, in the distinguished tradition of essays carried on since the days of Montaigne, articulate the piquant insights of the writer s experience. In this collection, one of the most illustrious contemporary essayists transfigures incidents and observations into something far more a finely crafted window into the workings of experience and memory. Masters makes readers privy to a youthful love affair; an adolescent s discovery in Defoe s Robinson Crusoe of the key to an immigrant grandfather s plight; and the significance of growing trees, making gravy, and playing cards. He draws intimate portraits of such characters as his famous father, Edgar Lee Masters; his literary friends Wright Morris and William Humphrey; and the strangers who both complicated and enriched his life. In glimpses of moments from naive youth through heady young adulthood to aging maturity, these essays tell the story of a life deeply, broadly, and thoroughly lived. This mature, exquisite collection of personal essays by Hilary Masters offers a rare pleasure. Here are meditations and reflections distilled in fine prose from a long and varied life musings that, in the distinguished tradition of essays carried on since the days of Montaigne, articulate the piquant insights of the writer s experience. In this collection, one of the most illustrious contemporary essayists transfigures incidents and observations into something far more a finely crafted window into the workings of experience and memory.
Masters makes readers privy to a youthful love affair; an adolescent s discovery in Defoe s Robinson Crusoe of the key to an immigrant grandfather s plight; and the significance of growing trees, making gravy, and playing cards. He draws intimate portraits of such characters as his famous father, Edgar Lee Masters; his literary friends Wright Morris and William Humphrey; and the strangers who both complicated and enriched his life. In glimpses of moments from naive youth through heady young adulthood to aging maturity, these essays tell the story of a life deeply, broadly, and thoroughly lived.
The Odds: The Homicide Department is upside down—Richard Christie is in the hospital, Artie Dolan is headed away on vacation, John Potocki's life is falling apart, and Colleen Greer is so worried about her boss's health, she can hardly think. A young boy in Pittsburgh's North Side neighborhood dies of a suspicious overdose. The Narcotics police are working on tips and they draft Colleen and Potocki to help them. In this same neighborhood, four young kids have been abandoned and are living on their own. The Philips kids, brainy in school, are reluctant to compromise themselves. But they need cash. Connecting these people and their stories is Nick Banks, just out of prison and working off a debt to an old acquaintance involved in the drug trade. Nick is a charmer, a gentle fellow who's had a lot of trouble in his life. One day he gives free food to the Philips kids, little guessing how connected their lives are about to become. |
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Thomas Venclova
 Thomas Venclova who will read from The Junction: Selected Poems - translated into English by the American poet Ellen Hinsey Other books to be discussed : Winter Dialogue Poems & Forms of Hope Essays. Lithuania's Tomas Venclova is one of Europe's greatest living poets. His work speaks with a moral depth exceptional in contemporary poetry. Venclova's poetry addresses the desolate landscape of the aftermath of totalitarianism, as well as the ethical constants that allow for hope and perseverance. The Junction brings together entirely new translations of his most recent work as well as a selection of poems from his 1997 volume Winter Dialogue. Tomas Venclova was born in 1937 in Klaipeda, Lithuania. He was one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group and his activities led to a ban on publishing, exile, and the stripping of his Soviet citizenship in 1977. Since 1985 Venclova has taught Slavic languages and literature at Yale University. |
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