David Denby reviews Detropia, which will be screened on Friday, 9/25, followed by commentary
and Q&A with director Rachel Grady.
"Detropia, a lyrical film about the destruction of a great American city, is the most moving documentary I’ve seen in years. The city is Detroit, and the film, made by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (who is a native), is both an ardent love letter to past vitality and a grateful salute to those who remain in place—the survivors, utterly without illusions, who refuse to leave. “Detropia” has its share of forlorn images: office buildings with empty eye sockets for windows; idle, rotting factories, with fantastic networks of chutes, pipes, and stacks; a lone lit tavern on a dark block. Yet the filmmakers are so attuned to color and to shape that I was amazed by the handsomeness of what I was seeing. I’m not being perverse: this is a beautiful film."
More in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/10/good-fights-3
More about the event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/grady_rachel15.html
Friday, September 25, 2015
David Denby's Superlative Review of Detropia in the New Yorker
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Mary Norris, Queen of Proofreaders, in the New York Times
Mary Norris, who visits us on Thursday, April 9, is reviewed in the New York Times:
More: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/books/mary-norris-muses-on-a-lifetime-of-literary-vigilance-in-between-you-me.html?referrer&_r=0
More about her upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/norris_mary15.html Read More......
Friday, October 3, 2014
Our John Lahr Event in the Times Union
In case you missed it, Paul Grondahl writes about our wonderful event on Wednesday 10/1 with John Lahr in the Times Union:
Biographer John Lahr Dishes on Tennessee Williams at the Writers Institute
Tennessee Williams once drew a pie chart depicting how he divided his time: 90 percent working, 9 percent fighting against lunacy and 1 percent socializing with friends.
The former New Yorker chief drama critic, John Lahr, dissects the workaholic and celebrated playwright in a monumental new biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh," a 784-page volume published on Sept. 22 by W.W. Norton.
It has received enthusiastic reviews. The Wall Street Journal called it "by far the best book ever written about America's greatest playwright" and literary insiders have already placed it on a list for National Book Award consideration.
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Biographer-John-Lahr-dishes-on-Tennessee-Williams-5797788.php
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Lydia Davis profiled in this week's New Yorker
"Somewhere in the files of General Mills is a letter from the very-short-story writer Lydia Davis. In it, Davis, who is widely considered one of the most original minds in American fiction today, expresses dismay at the packaging of the frozen peas sold by the company’s subsidiary Cascadian Farm. The letter, like many things that Davis writes, had started out sincere and then turned weird. Details grew overly specific; a narrative, however spare, emerged. “The peas are a dull yellow green, more the color of pea soup than fresh peas and nothing like the actual color of your peas, which are a nice bright dark green,” she wrote. “We have compared your depiction of peas to that of the other frozen peas packages and yours is by far the least appealing. . . . We enjoy your peas and do not want your business to suffer. Please reconsider your art.” Rather than address her complaint, the company sent her a coupon for Green Giant."
More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_goodyear
Davis (who poses frequently with cats) speaks on Wednesday, April 16 at Rensselaer (RPI):
Lydia Davis, short story author and translator
April 16 (Wednesday)
Reading and McKinney Writing Contest Award Ceremony — 8:00 p.m., Biotech Auditorium, Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer (RPI), Troy
Sponsored in conjunction with RPI’s Vollmer W. Fries Lecture and the 73rd McKinney Writing Contest and Reading
For directions see: http://www.rpi.edu/tour/index.html
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Author Joe McGinniss Dies
McGinniss visited the Writers Institute at UAlbany in November 2007 to present his true crime book, Never Enough.
Obituary in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/books/joe-mcginniss-71-dies-wrote-about-politics.html?_r=0
A remembrance in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/03/postscript-joe-mcginniss-1942-2014.html
McGinniss also wrote the major nonfiction bestseller, The Selling of the President, 1968 (1969), a pioneering study of the role of marketing in Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign.
More about his visit to Albany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/jmcginniss.html Read More......
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
New Yorker's Best Books of 2013
The New Yorker asked its critics to pick the best 3 or 4 books they read this year (not necessarily new books). Part one of the list appeared December 10th.
Among the books by past visitors to the Writers Institute who appear on the various lists so far are Seeing Things by the late Seamus Heaney (pictured here), Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart, Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido, Chasing Utopia by Nikki Giovanni, My Education by Susan Choi and A Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks.
Article in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/12/best-books-of-2013-part-one.html
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Alison Lurie on the Magic of Knitting in the New Yorker
Alison Lurie, New York State Author (2012-14) by appointment of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, under the auspices of the NYS Writers Institute, contributes a piece on knitting to the New Yorker blog:
"As a child, I thought of knitting as a kind of magic, in which a one-dimensional object became two-dimensional or even three-dimensional. While you watched, a very long piece of string somehow turned into a hat or a sock or a mitten, something with shape and weight, an inside and an outside. Appropriately, this transformation was accomplished with long shiny sticks, like the magic wands in fairy tales. "
"It wasn’t only the materials that, for me, were transformed. The people who could perform this magic seemed, in everyday life, to be everyday humans. But when they picked up their wands they turned into sorceresses or fairy godmothers, mistresses of a secret art."
More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/08/history-of-knitting-in-literature-sweater-curse.html
More on Alison Lurie: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lurie_alison12.html
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Sasha Weiss on Henri Cole
Sasha Weiss of the New Yorker's Culture Desk gave a boost last summer to poet Henri Cole (who shares the stage tonight with Jamaica Kincaid in Saratoga).
In the "What We're Reading" feature she talked about Cole's 2011 book, Touch:
His latest book... is a collection of poems (mostly sonnets) that take up a mother’s slow death and a son’s mourning her, a cruel relationship with an addict and his subsequent overdose, sexual longing and degradation, family dysfunction, the killing of soldiers, loneliness, and the desire to escape from one’s life. Yet these are poems of inveterate gentleness (the word “soft” is repeated again and again) and “Touch” is a book one reads with dream-like urgency, as if “drinking water right out of the tap … lips on the faucet” as Cole writes in the poem “Shrike.” Why do we want to linger here, in Cole’s unsettled world? From what source do these poems draw their magnetic power?
More: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/what-were-reading-henri-cole.html
Full schedule of readings: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html
Friday, July 5, 2013
Joyce Carol Oates in a New Yorker video interview
"I'm not sure that I really have a personality...."
Joyce Carol Oates, who presents a free reading in Saratoga on July 12, gives an intimate video interview to the New Yorker on June 23, 2013.
All Readings are at 8:00 p.m. in Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall
Free and open to the public
Full schedule of free readings: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html
New Yorker interview: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/video-joyce-carol-oates.html
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Kennedy Novel to Become an Opera
"William Kennedy finds it fitting that his novel Roscoe, a fictional reconstitution of Albany's legendary Democratic political machine, is going to be turned into an opera by local composer Evan Mack."
"'I think Roscoe would approve because he led a grand, operatic life,' Kennedy said of the title character, Roscoe Conway, the machine's fixer and bagman who wants to quit politics after 26 years of carrying out its chicanery."
"The novel is set in Albany on V-J Day, 1945. The New Yorker praised it for being 'thick with crime, passion and backroom banter.' The novel was published in 2002 and reached the New York Times bestseller list."
Read Paul Grondahl's article in th Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kennedy-novel-to-become-an-opera-4580309.php#ixzz2VSxVbCpw
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Eerie Similarities of Life and Novel
NYS Writers Institute Fellow James Lasdun is the subject of a New Yorker blog piece about the eerie similarities between his new memoir of being stalked, Give Me Everything You Have (2013) and his earlier novel, The Horned Man (2002).
“The fact that I had written a novel, The Horned Man, in which a college instructor believes he is being framed for a series of sex crimes, gave the situation a piquancy that didn’t escape me,” Lasdun writes, “though I was in no condition to enjoy it.”
We, however, are in a condition to “enjoy” such ironies, if only because we have the luxury of observing them from a safe distance. Well, relatively safe. It is a peculiarly arresting aspect of this exquisitely written memoir that much of its horror derives from how easily we can see ourselves (or anyone) falling prey to just the kind of harassment he suffers.
More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/04/what-has-he-done-on-james-lasduns-memoir.html
Lasdun currently leads two free community workshops for the Institute, one on fiction and one on memoir:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/workshop.html
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Atheist Loves Christian Writer
Robinson visits RPI tomorrow: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/robinson_marilynne13.html
"When I say that I love Marilynne Robinson’s work, I’m not talking about half of it; I’m talking about every word of it."
More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/marilynne-robinson.html
Monday, April 8, 2013
James Salter Profiled in next week's New Yorker
James Salter, who visited us on April 4th, is profiled at length in the forthcoming April 15th issue ofNew Yorker:
The Last Book
James Salter is a revered writer. Can he become a famous one?
by Nick Paumgarten April 15, 2013http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/15/130415fa_fact_paumgarten Read More......
Monday, September 24, 2012
Anatomy of a Short Story
We posted a link last week to "Another Life," a story of marital infidelity that appeared in the New Yorker in July. Link here.
La Farge: I knew roughly what was going to happen in “Another Life” before I began, but I didn’t know that it would be divided into two parts, and I didn’t see it until I had written the sentence, “I want another life,” which is what the husband thinks just before he goes off on his adventure.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/this-week-in-fiction-paul-la-farge.html#ixzz27OYZ1ZpC Read More......
Friday, September 21, 2012
Paul La Farge's short story in the New Yorker
ANOTHER LIFE
by Paul La Farge
A husband and wife drive to Boston. The husband is sick. He takes extra-strong cold medication just before getting into the car, and all the way to Boston he worries that he is going to fall asleep at the wheel and crash into the median. Or maybe the husband secretly wants to crash rather than go to his father-in-law’s birthday party, which is what he and his wife are driving to Boston for....
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2012/07/02/120702fi_fiction_lafarge#ixzz278PqXYc0 Read More......
Friday, August 31, 2012
Marie Howe, New NY State Poet, reads a poem
The poem was first published in the New Yorker in January 2008.
The Star Market
The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday.
An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout
breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.
Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and
hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:
shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if the Star Market
had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in
with the rest of them—sour milk, bad meat—
looking for cereal and spring water.
Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car
in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have
been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept
out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands
and knees begging for mercy.
If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought,
could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/01/14/080114po_poem_howe#ixzz259WQ51xu Read More......
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Teju Cole visits W. G. Sebald's grave in the New Yorker
"Finally, coming around the chancel, I saw S.’s gravestone: a slab of dark marble, a slender marker shaded by a large green bush. There he is, I thought. The teacher I never knew, the friend I met only posthumously. Some water had trickled down the face of the slab, making the “S” of his name temporarily invisible, as well as the second “4” in 1944 and the “1” in 2001. The erasures put him into a peculiar timelessness. Along the top of the gravestone was a row of smooth small stones in different shades of brown and gray. There was a little space on the left. I picked up a stone from the ground and added it to the row. Then I knelt down." More.
More about Teju Cole here. Read More......
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
On Men and Violence
"My son, Douglas, loves to play with toy guns. He is thirteen. He loves video games in which people get killed. He loves violence on TV, especially if it’s funny. How did this happen? The way everything does, of course. One thing follows another, naturally."
More.
Gaitskill will share the stage with poet Tom Healy, tonight, Wednesday, July 25th, 8PM, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga. Free.
Click here for more events in the series. All are free and open to the general public.
Read More......
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Gandhi: Was He a Spectacular Political Failure?
In a New Yorker review of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India (2011), by Joseph Lelyveld (who visits today), Pankaj Mishra says:
"Mohandas Gandhi was the twentieth century’s most famous advocate of nonviolent politics. But was he also its most spectacular political failure? The possibility is usually overshadowed by his immense and immensely elastic appeal.... And yet the Indian leader failed to achieve his most important aims, and was widely disliked and resented during his lifetime." Read more.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The New Yorker's Favorite Books of 2011
Writers Insititute visitors who appear on the New Yorker's "Best of" list include Russell Banks, Julian Barnes, Don DeLillo, and Anne Enright.
An author above, plus two others on the New Yorker list will be featured in our upcoming Spring 2012 Visiting Writers Series.... not to be coy, but we can't announce them yet!
Read the list here.