Here's a review and reassessment by the late Roger Ebert that appeared in May 1997:
The dinner guests arrive twice. They ascend the stairs and walk through the wide doorway, and then they arrive again--the same guests, seen from a higher camera angle. This is a joke and soon we will understand the punch line: The guests, having so thoroughly arrived, are incapable of leaving.
Luis Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel" (1962) is a macabre comedy, a mordant view of human nature that suggests we harbor savage instincts and unspeakable secrets. Take a group of prosperous dinner guests and pen them up long enough, he suggests, and they'll turn on one another like rats in an overpopulation study.
More: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-exterminating-angel-1962
More about the event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#angel
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Exterminating Angel: "Like rats in an overpopulation study"
Monday, October 28, 2013
Douglas Bauer on Marriage, Aging, Life, Death
Douglas Bauer, who visits the Writers Institute tomorrow, 10/29, to present his new book, What Happens Next, Matters of Life and Death, is interviewed by Elizabeth Floyd Mair in the Times Union.
Q: What was the most surprising thing that you learned in the course of writing this book?
A: That I could write it. Until now, all my nonfiction has been about other people. Or it's concerned itself with literary matters. And I struggled in this book to find a balance between what seemed necessary to reveal about myself and my great reluctance to reveal anything, however important to the narrative.
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Focus-on-marriage-aging-4923207.php
More about Bauer's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/bauer_douglas13.html
"Essayist Douglas Bauer examines future exquisitely"
Douglas Bauer's new collection of essays about life and death and his Iowa farm boyhood is reviewed in his hometown newspaper, the eastern Iowa Gazette, October 27, 2013:
"While it’s common to wonder what happens after we die, it’s not as common — or as pleasing a discussion at a party, say — to speculate on how we will age and eventually pass."
"However, this question posed itself quite plainly to author and essayist Douglas Bauer when, in his early sixties, he found himself needing a series of routine surgical procedures. As he was waking up from the first of two cataract surgeries, Bauer received word that his mother passed away.This experience was the catalyst for Bauer’s moving collection of personal essays, 'What Happens Next?' (University of Iowa Press)."
Read more in The Gazette: http://thegazette.com/2013/10/27/essayist-douglas-bauer-examines-future-exquisitely/
Read more about Douglas Bauer's event tomorrow, Tuesday, 10/28: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/bauer_douglas13.html
Friday, October 25, 2013
Stig Dagerman Celebration Tonight
Impressive praise blurbs grace the cover of Sleet, a new collection of stories in English translation by Swedish author Stig Dagerman, translated by former Writers Institute grad assistant Steven Hartman. The book also features an introduction by National Book Award winner Alice McDermott. The collection will be available for sale tonight at Page Hall at a celebration of Stig Dagerman's life and works, featuring films and readings, and a discussion with Steve Hartman and Lo Dagerman, Stig's daughter.
Picture: Steve Hartman
More about tonight's event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/dagerman_hartman13.html
Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion. --Graham Greene
An imagination that appeals to an unreasonable degree of sympathy is precisely what makes Dagerman s fiction so evocative. Evocative not, as one might expect, of despair, or bleakness, or existential angst, but of compassion, fellow-feeling, even love. --from the preface by Alice McDermott
Stig Dagerman writes with the tension that belongs to emergency—deliberately,
precisely, breathlessly. To read Dagerman is to read with your whole body—lungs,
heart, viscera, as well as mind. At once remote and intimate in tone, these
works by one of the great twentieth-century writers come fully to life in a
remarkable translation by Steven Hartman.
—Siri Hustvedt, author of The
Summer Without Men
Stig Dagerman s fearless, moving stories should be placed alongside the short fiction of such luminaries as James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, and Raymond Carver. You ll find yourself holding your breath in wonder as you read, grateful to Dagerman (and Steven Hartman) for the gift of these stories. --Edward Schwarzschild, author of The Family Diamond
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Goli Taraghi in the Times Union
Susan Comninos interviews Goli Taraghi, major voice in Iranian literature who visits Albany today.
"An intriguing time warp exists in the fiction of Persian expatriate author Goli Taraghi. While many fear rising nuclear capability in today's Iran, Taraghi, 74, remains gripped by her homeland's past. Decades after the 1979 revolution that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Taraghi, in her new collection of short stories, "The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons" (W.W. Norton, Oct. 23, 2013), continues to chronicle the lives of exiles like herself, who fled to Western countries from the Islamic Republic. For Taraghi, their exodus is a trauma that never ended, but keeps getting painfully re-enacted."
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Expatriate-author-feels-pull-of-home-4904546.php
More about Goli Taraghi's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/taraghi_goli13.html
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Profile of Luis Gutierrez in Rolling Stone
Congressman Luis Gutierrez, Latino civil rights leader who visits Albany tomorrow to talk about his new memoir, Still Dreaming, is profiled and interviewed by Ed Morales in a recent issue of Rolling Stone:
"I wish a had a nickel for every time I had to write 'I will not talk in class' on the blackboard in grade school," says Gutiérrez, 59, calling from his office in Washington. "Some people are born talkers, and I wrote this book as though you were having a conversation with me." Fully conversant in Spanglish, Gutiérrez switches from Chicago street mode to island Spanish easily because of his family's move back to Puerto Rico while he was still in high school. While the transition was a little awkward – island locals were quick to call him a "gringo" because of his imperfect Spanish – he learned something important about himself there.
More in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/luis-gutierrez-congress-rebel-with-a-cause-20131010
More about Gutierrez's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/gutierrez_luis13.html
National Book Award Finalists
Finalists for the 2013 National Book Award have been announced.
Among them are five past visitors to the New York State Writers Institute: James McBride and George Saunders for Fiction; Jill Lepore for Nonfiction; and Frank Bidart and Lucie Brock-Broido for Poetry.
The awards ceremony is scheduled for November 20.
Full list in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/business/media/finalists-for-national-book-awards-announced.html?_r=0
Picture: Jill Lepore.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Looking back, and ahead, at journalism
Paul Grondahl talks about Bill Kennedy's appearance at the 40th anniversary celebration of UAlbany Journalism Program founder Bill Rowley last week:
Bill Kennedy was talking last week about his late, great friend Bill Rowley founding the University at Albany journalism program in 1973 — he was Rowley's first hire — and as the newspaperman-turned-novelist assessed the current state of journalism, his mood turned dark.
"Newsweek is gone. Time magazine is just a tattered print unit of Time Warner Cable," he said. "All the TV networks seem to have slid into the swamp of celebrity. The Times seems to be surviving, but I don't know how small papers can survive."
His talk was the centerpiece of what was billed as a 40th anniversary celebration, but as a truth-teller addressing an auditorium of professional skeptics and aspiring cynics, his forecast was stormy with a chance of extinction.
Kennedy quoted the prophecy of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, new owner of the Washington Post, who once said that newspapers as we know them will be gone in 20 years. "That does not seem unreasonable to me," Kennedy added.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Looking-back-and-ahead-at-journalism-4898618.php
Picture: UAlbany undergraduate intern Michelle Checchi, a junior journalism major at UAlbany.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Grayce Burian-- Love, Europe, Stage
Bill Buell contributes an article to the Schenectady Gazette discussing Grayce Burian's book about her 54 years of marriage to the late theatre scholar Jarka Burian.
"Writing it was a kind of healing, and I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I could do it," said Burian. "Just to have if for my family was important. Originally I had no intention of publishing it."
Grayce Burian is a retired theatre scholar herself, and a key figure in the Capital Region's theatre community. Through the Jarka & Grayce Susan Burian Endowment, she supports the annual Burian Lecture Series on the Theatre, cosponsored by the NYS Writers Institute and UAlbany Department of Theatre.
Picture: Grayce with filmmaker John Sayles at the Writers Institute, February 2012.
Full article here:
http://olivedev.dailygazette.net/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMailGifMSIE&Type=text/html&Path=SCH/2013/10/13&ID=Ar04000&Locale=&ChunkNum=0
Luis Gutierrez Coming This Friday
Luis Gutierrez, Congressman and major figure in the immigration reform movement will visit the
Writers Institute on Friday, October 18, to present his new memoir, Still Dreaming (2013).
Elizabeth Floyd Mair published an interview with Gutierrez over the weekend in the Times Union.
Q: Your first successful election in Chicago as alderman helped begin to dismantle the Democratic machine that had controlled local politics for decades. We know something about political machines here in Albany, too. What are some of the key points in dismantling one?
A: Ending patronage, No. 1. And patronage comes in two types: There is the seating your unqualified buddy for a job, a buddy whose qualification is the work he does politically — not how talented he is as a carpenter or as an architect or as a city planner, but how talented he is at raising money and making sure that people vote for you. The other kind is pin-striped patronage, when it isn't the person with the lowest bid and the best product who gets the work, but the person with the closest relationship politically with those at City Hall.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Tracing-a-political-journey-4885319.php
More about the Congressman's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/gutierrez_luis13.html
Picture: House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., gives his opening remarks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013, during the committee's hearing on America's Immigration System: Opportunities for Legal Immigration and Enforcement of Laws against Illegal Immigration. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Alice Munro Wins Nobel Prize
STOCKHOLM (AP) - Alice Munro, a Canadian master of the short story revered as a thorough but forgiving chronicler of the human spirit, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.
Munro is the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious $1.2 million award from the Swedish Academy since Saul Bellow, who left for the U.S. as a boy and won in 1976.
Seen as a contemporary Chekhov for her warmth, insight and compassion, she has captured a wide range of lives and personalities without passing judgment on her characters. Unusually for Nobel winners, Munro's work consists almost entirely of short stories. "Lives of Girls and Women" is her only novel.
"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win," the 82-year-old said by telephone when contacted by The Canadian Press in Victoria, British Columbia.
Munro is beloved among her peers, from Lorrie Moore and George Saunders to Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen. She is equally admired by critics. She won a National Book Critics Circle prize for "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage," and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's prize, Canada's highest literary honor.
More from the Associated Press: http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268773/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=BFDTleAC
Monday, October 7, 2013
William Kennedy Celebrates the UAlbany Journalism Program
October 9 (Wednesday)
Lecture/Discussion by William Kennedy — 4:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
Picture: Bill as a young reporter.
More about the Journalism Program: http://www.albany.edu/journalism/about.shtml Read More......
T. C. Boyle Visits Tomorrow
Q: A lot of your stories in this volume present characters, usually men, who are so self-absorbed that they necessarily veer toward disaster. Is your view of human nature more dark than light?
A: I have lived one of the most fortunate of human lives, surrounded by light and love. I have known my closest friend since I was 3 1/2 years old, my children are slim and tall and beautiful and smarter than all the computers in the world combined, and I remain the only writer in history only to have one wife, the legendary Karen Kvashay, my college sweetheart at SUNY Potsdam.
Still, I do suspect that the universe doesn't care much about any of this or any of us and that accident rules the world. Fiction is a place for examining the darker scenarios, the ones we hope to avoid.
Read more of Elizabeth Floyd Mair's interview in Sunday's Times Union:
http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Tales-to-tell-4866512.php
October 8 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
Friday, October 4, 2013
Bill Bryson Visits Saturday
Bill Bryson, bestselling nonfiction author, to read from his new book
October 5, 2013"One Summer: America, 1927" tells the story of a pivotal time in America's national "coming of age"
Bill Bryson is one of the best-loved nonfiction writers in the English-speaking world. Laugh-out-loud funny and astonishingly scholarly, Bryson's many books on travel, history, science, culture, and the English language have earned him a large following of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Born and raised in Iowa, Bryson has spent much of his adult life in England, where he was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his contributions to British arts and letters. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and served as Chancellor of Durham University, England's third oldest university, from 2005 to 2011.
Bryson's new book, One Summer: America, 1927 (2013), tells the story of a pivotal time in America's national "coming of age," when media spectacles became the country's obsession. The book features a large cast of colorful characters including celebrity "flyboy" Charles Lindbergh, homerun king Babe Ruth, husband-killer Ruth Snyder, flagpole sitter Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly, gangster Al Capone, jazz singer Al Jolson, do-nothing president Calvin Coolidge, and Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum. In a starred review, Booklist called it, "Glorious," and said, "Bryson offers delicious detail and breathtaking suspense about events whose outcomes are already known." Kirkus called it, "A distinctively drawn time capsule from a definitive epoch."
Bryson's most recent book was the international bestseller, At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010), an epic chronicle of innovations in domestic architecture, from bathrooms to kitchens. The New York Times Book Review called it "Delightful...," and said, "Bryson's enthusiasm brightens any dull corner... He is fascinated by everything, and his curiosity is infectious." People magazine said, "If this book doesn't supply you with five years' worth of dinner conversation, you're not paying attention." The book will be reissued shortly in a new illustrated edition featuring more than 300 drawings and photographs.
Bryson's bestselling travel books include Bill Bryson's African Diary (2002), about visits to humanitarian projects sponsored by CARE International (which received all proceeds); In a Sunburned Country (2000), about Australia; A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (1998); Notes from a Small Island (1995), about Great Britain; and The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989). Notes from a Small Island was voted the book that best represented Great Britain in a 2003 poll of BBC radio listeners. The New York Times Book Review said of A Walk in the Woods, "Bryson is...great company right from the start-a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and...Dave Barry.... a satirist of the first rank, who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio."
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2004), Bryson's book on the history of science, earned the Royal Society's Aventis Prize, as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award. His books on English language and literature include Shakespeare: The World as Stage (2007), Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002), Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1994), and The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990).
For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.
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- Bestselling nonfiction author Bill Bryson Photo credit:
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Thursday, October 3, 2013
The Haunting, Friday at Page Hall
The Haunting
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