John Lahr, who visits the Writers Institute this Wednesday, Oct. 1st, receives high praise from some notable admirers for his new biography, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (2014).
More about Lahr's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lahr_john14.html
‘Splendid beyond words. It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying biography.’Bill Bryson
‘Could this be the best theater book I’ve ever read? It just might be. Tennessee Williams had two great pieces of luck. Elia Kazan to direct his work and now John Lahr to make thrilling sense of his life’John Guare, author of Six Degrees of Separation, House of Blue Leaves, Atlantic City
This is a masterpiece about a genius. Only John Lahr, with his perceptions about the theater, about writers, about poetry and about people could have written this book. What a marvelous read, with brilliantly detailed research.’Helen Mirren
‘John Lahr’s magnificent biography…gathers material from a vast array of sources, including Williams’s diaries, poems, letters and the recollections of countless friends and colleagues,to trace how the personal and the creative lives interweave throughout the whole span of Williams’s oeuvre. The result is at once sensitive and magisterial, and it fulfils the ultimate test for a literary biography by convincing you that the works cannot be understood without it. Once you have read it, it becomes part of their meaning.’John Carey, lead review, Sunday London Times
‘This is by far the best book ever written about America’s greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for the New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate… Hebrings us as close to Williams as we are ever likely to get.’J.D. McClatchy,Wall Street Journal
Monday, September 29, 2014
Praise for John Lahr's new book
Gillibrand's Event on Saturday
Here's Dennis Yusko's article in the Times Union on this past weekend's wonderful event with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the Ballroom of the UAlbany Campus Center:
Speaking at a book-signing in the University of Albany's Campus Center Ballroom, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand received hardy applause Saturday when she pledged to keep fighting to have military lawyers — not superiors — hear allegations of sexual abuse among service members. The author of "Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World" told nearly 300 people who bought her book that some victims of sexual assault in the military don't report the crimes because they do not trust military brass to properly investigate and punish suspects.
Gillibrand, 47, said removing military leaders from decision-making roles was crucial for objective investigations. She said she is committed to ensuring victims weren't blamed.
"That second betrayal is the thing they cannot overcome," the senator said.
Gillibrand spent more than an hour at the book signing and reading, which was sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza. She answered questions from Marion Roach Smith, author of "The Memoir Project, A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text on Writing & Life." Seated and separated by a coffee table, the women discussed some of the major themes from "Off the Sidelines": female empowerment, politics, family.
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Gillibrand-Military-sex-abuse-bill-will-pass-5785655.php
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
The House Tour
Alison Lurie, who visits us on Thursday, September 18, is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who applies her wit and insight to the meaning of ordinary architecture in her new book, The Language of Houses (2014).
The book is reviewed by Kathleen Hirsch in the Boston Globe:
Lurie serves as able guide on an opening overview of basic architectural themes: style, scale, materials. Concepts such as formal and informal, open and shut, darkness and light, as well as the influences of foreign and regional idioms, become the building blocks on which she proceeds into her discussion of dwellings. We learn that the simple, unadorned, home intended to convey “green” values, often uses “old bricks and boards that in fact cost more than new ones,” while a suburban McMansion’s pricey entrance is coupled with cheap siding and exposed ductwork out back. She chronicles the evolution of the Colonial meeting house into Gothic worship sites that are mini-theaters with their raised altars, lavish pipe organs, and stage lighting. Gender differences abound: In homes and offices, men prefer what she calls “prospects”; women, “refuge.”
More in the Globe: http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2014/08/30/book-review-the-language-houses-alison-lurie/yySBJHfY7IjpAFCT60gU0L/story.html
More about Lurie and upcoming events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#lurie
Alison Lurie's new book in the Wall St. Journal
The Language of Houses by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and reigning NYS Author Alison Lurie (who visits us on Thurs. 9/18) is reviewed in the Wall St. Journal:
Le Corbusier may have decreed that the house should be "a machine for living," but Alison Lurie knows architecture carries a far greater moral charge than such minimalist efficiency implies. In "The Language of Houses," she takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the social and psychological significance of private and public structures: schools, churches, government buildings, museums, prisons, hospitals, hotels, restaurants and of course homes. She makes a powerful argument that how we choose to order the space we live and work in reveals far more about us, our place in the world and our preoccupations than we know. Architectural design is both a mirror and molder of human experience.... The Language of
Houses is a mine of adroit observation, uncovering apparently humdrum
details to reveal their unexpected, and occasionally poignant, human meaning.
More in the Wall St. Journal: http://online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-language-of-houses-by-alison-lurie-1409345436
More about Lurie's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lurie_alison14.html
More on the upcoming Visiting Writers Series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html
Author Sherry Lee Mueller presents "Working World" 9/19
The University at Albany School of Public Health will host Sherry Lee Mueller, coauthor of Working World, 2nd edition (2014). The book explores "how the idea of an international career has shifted: nearly every industry taking on more and more international dimensions, while international skills -- linguistic ability, intercultural management, and sensitivity -- become ever more highly prized by potential employers."
Date: Friday, September 19, 2014
Time: 12:00 noon – 1:15 PM
Location: School of Public Health Auditorium
George Education Center
UAlbany East Campus
1 University Place
Rensselaer, NY 12144
RSVP: Please register and confirm your attendance by emailing sph07@albany.edu by Monday, September 15th Read More......
"I, the Worst of All," Opens Classic Film Series
"Engrossing, enriching, and elegant!" - Boston GlobeSeptember 19 (Friday)
Film screening — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
Based on a biography by Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, this film tells the story of the embattled 17th century nun, Sor Juana, who would come to be regarded as the mother of Mexican literature.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Edith Grossman
Here is an excerpt from Edith Grossman's speech about translating Marquez at the 2003 PEN Tribute to the late Columbian author (1927-2014) whose work had a transformative impact on global literature:
"Ralph Maheim, the great translator from the German, compared the translator to an actor who speaks as the author would if the author spoke English. A sophisticated and provocative analogy, for it takes into account something that is not always as clear as it should be, at least to many reviewers, whose highest endorsement for a translation tends to be that it is “seamless.” If I may attempt to translate the damnation barely concealed in their faint praise, I think they really mean that the translator has, with proper humility, made herself or himself “invisible,” a punishing goal that is desirable only if we are held personally responsible for the Tower of Babel and all its dire consequences for our species."
Full text here: http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_PEN_grossman.html
More about Grossman's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/grossman_edith14.html
Complete schedule of events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#.VBBgU1_D_s0
Read More......
Monday, September 8, 2014
William Gibson, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, coming to Troy, NY
The Guardian celebrates the 30th birthday of the science fiction novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, scifi author and technology prophet (according to many). Gibson visits RPI under the cosponsorship of the New York State Writers Institute, on Sunday, November 9th.
More about Gibson's upcoming event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#Gibson
From the Guardian:
On its release, Neuromancer won the "big three" for science fiction: the Nebula, Philip K Dick and Hugo awards. It sold more than 6m copies and launched an entire aesthetic: cyberpunk. In predicting this future, Gibson can be said to have helped shape our conception of the internet. Other novelists are held in higher esteem by literary critics, but few can claim to have had such a wide-ranging influence. The Wachowskis made The Matrix by mashing Gibson's vision together with that of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander is a facsimile of Molly Millions, the femme fatale in Neuromancer. Every social network, online game or hacking scandal takes us a step closer to the universe Gibson imagined in 1984.
More in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/28/william-gibson-neuromancer-cyberpunk-books
Full schedule of upcoming events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#lurie
NYS Poet Marie Howe in the Huffington Post
"This morning I stumbled upon the poetry of Marie Howe, and once again I'm humbled by the power of words on a page, and a writer's ability to bestow meaning to feelings that would otherwise remain forever trapped inside me. In a recent podcast interview, the poet Marie Howe was speaking of the power of words to reveal the human condition, and how the older she gets, the more of herself she unmasks through her writing. She later said, 'to be able to move through your life transparently would be a relief.'"
More in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeanpaul-bedard/in-the-company-of-words-and-strangers_b_5762190.html
Reigning New York State Poet Marie Howe visits the Writers Institute on Tuesday, October 21st with fellow poets Edward Hirsch and Kimiko Hahn.
For a full schedule of events, visit our webpage: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/#.VA26El_D_s1
For more about NY State Poet Marie Howe: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/howe_marie12.html
Friday, September 5, 2014
Alison Lurie in National Geographic
Acclaimed novelist Alison Lurie, who opens our Fall 2014 Visiting Writers Series, is interviewed in the August 17 issue of National Geographic:
Acclaimed Novelist Alison Lurie Thinks Buildings Say a Whole Lot About Us
A critic once remarked that Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie writes so simply that a cat or a dog can understand her. It was meant as a compliment and taken as such. In her new book she turns her lucid gaze on a subject baffling to many of us: architecture.
In this candid interview she talks about what buildings tell us about their owners' aspirations and politics, why she built houses for fairies as a child, how she feels about being compared to Balzac and Jane Austen, and what her own home in upstate New York reveals about her.
More in National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140817-alison-lurie-architecture-cornell-spoils-of-poynton-great-expectations-booktalk/
More about Alison Lurie's events in Albany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lurie_alison14.html
More about the Fall 2014 Visiting Writers Series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#lurie Read More......
Visiting Writers: Kirsten Gillibrand! William Gibson! Richard Norton Smith!
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Colin Powell recalls Joe Persico in today's Gazette
Gloversville native Persico's work, friendship recalled
Author died Saturday at 84
More in the Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/sep/04/gloversville-native-persicos-work-friendship-fondl/
Joe Persico on YouTube at the NYS Writers Institute
Watch an interview with Joe Persico at the Writers Institute in 2004 on our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5gbTLDeLEo&feature=youtu.be
Best-selling nonfiction writer Joseph Persico authored 11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 (2004, Random House), which recounts the final bloody days and hours of the First World War. The book details how Allied commanders, in pursuit of military glory, sacrificed the lives of thousands of soldiers in senseless attacks on German positions, though fully aware that nation had already surrendered. Persico's books, some of them bestsellers, have included My Enemy, My Brother: Men and Days of Gettysburg (1977), Piercing the Reich: The Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret Agents during World War II (1979), The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller (1982), Murrow: An American Original (1988), Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey from OSS to CIA (1990); Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (1994), and Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage (2001). Persico collaborated with General Colin Powell on My American Journey (1996), which follows Powell's life from his birth in Harlem through his distinguished career in the U.S. Military, including his rise to influence at the Pentagon, as well as his role in the Vietnamese, Panamanian and Iraqi conflicts. A graduate of UAlbany and Guilderland resident, Persico served on the commission that oversaw the design of the new National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, and penned the words that appear on the monument, "Here we mark the price of freedom."
More on Joe Persico in the Times Union
Two community treasures lost: An appreciation
Paul Grondahl, Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Joe was an acclaimed historian and the author of 12 books. You may have seen him as a "talking head" expert in History Channel documentaries or as a guest on "Face the Nation" and "Morning Joe." His books had reached the best-seller list and "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial" was made into a TV movie. The Gloversville native was among a troika of the region's most famous authors alongside Albany natives Andy Rooney and Bill Kennedy.Yet he was always willing to write a blurb, celebrate literary successes of friends and offer pragmatic advice to writers like myself. He called me "young fella" even after I turned 55 this summer. He said there were no shortcuts to success. He had a small sign in a book-lined study at his Guilderland apartment that was a kind of mantra: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."
He worked hard to the end.
More: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Two-community-treasures-lost-An-appreciation-5729437.php Read More......
Mourning Joe Persico, One of the Finest Writers in the Region
Joseph E. Persico, acclaimed historian and biographer, dies at 84
Ex-Rockefeller aide's work noted for its humanity
By Paul Grondahl
Joseph E. Persico of Guilderland, an acclaimed historian and biographer and former chief speechwriter for Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, who published 12 books, including the autobiography of Gen. Colin Powell for which he was the ghost writer, died Saturday at St. Peter's Hospital after a long illness. He was 84.
Persico, son of glove makers, rose from a blue-collar upbringing in Gloversville. He graduated with a bachelor's degree and a double major in English and political science from the New York State College for Teachers in 1952 (now the University at Albany).
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Joseph-Persico-acclaimed-historian-biographer-5724215.php
Read More......