Labor Day Weekend Reading

Publishers Weekly new "Picks of the Week" include books by two past visitors to the Writers Institute who also happen to be giants of world literature, Margaret Atwood [pictured here] and J. M. Coetzee.

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (Doubleday) - The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire. The novel begins just after most of the human species has been eradicated by a man-made plague. The early books explore a world of terrifying corporate tyranny, horrifying brutality, and the relentless rape of women and the planet. In Oryx and Crake, the pandemic leaves wounded protagonist Jimmy to watch over the Crakers, a humanoid species bioengineered to replace humankind by the man responsible for unleashing the plague. In The Year of the Flood, MaddAddamites wield science to terrorize corporate villains while God’s Gardeners use prayer and devotion to the Earth to prepare for the approaching cataclysm. Toby, a God’s Gardener and key character in the second book, narrates the third installment, in which a few survivors, including MaddAddamites, God’s Gardeners, Jimmy, and the Crakers, navigate a postapocalyptic world.

The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee (Viking) - In this captivating and provocative new novel, a small boy who has been renamed David, and Simón, the man who has become David’s caretaker since David was separated from his mother, have immigrated to a nameless country. Simón soon finds work on the docks, is given an apartment for new arrivals, and sets about the impossible task of finding David’s mother, whose name they do not know and whose face the boy does not remember. Precise, rich, and wonderful.

Atwood's Albany visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/atwood.html

J. M. Coetzee's recent visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html

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Institute in the Times Union's "Year in the Arts"

"What stood out the most, though, was the New York State Writers Institute's fall season. To name just of few of the visitors from one of the best Writers Institute seasons of recent memory: Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee and novelist Paul Auster lead a seminar on Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" in the afternoon on Oct. 12 and shared a conversation that night; Pulitzer-winner Junot Diaz, who was also named a MacArthur "genius" grant winner just days before his Oct. 4 appearance, led a seminar and a reading; and National Book Award-winner Denis Johnson gave a seminar and had his new play "Des Moines" presented as a staged reading on Nov. 12."

So writes Steve Barnes in today's Times Union.  Read more in "2012: Year in the Arts"--
http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/2012-Year-in-the-arts-4146769.php#page-3

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Coetzee Event: UAlbany Photo of the Day

Nobel Visit

NYS Writers Institute Director, Donald Faulkner moderates a panel discussion with Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee from South Africa, along with novelist Paul Auster, and a select group of UAlbany students participating in a seminar discussing the work of American author Herman Melville in the Performing Arts Center.

 

Photo credit: Mark Schmidt

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Animal Rights Activist and Nobel Laureate to Speak

J. M. Coetzee is an animal rights activist and ethical vegetarian, in addition to being a Nobel Prize winning novelist.

He is a leading figure of the Australian organization, Voiceless-- The Animal Protection Institute, and co-selected the stories and essays that appear in the 2013 Voiceless Anthology, which will be published in December 2012.

Coetzee calls animal protection, "one of the more urgent social and philosophical issues of our times." His bestselling novel, Elizabeth Costello (2003), explores many of these issues.

More on the anthology:  http://www.voiceless.org.au/grants-and-prizes/writing-prize/2013anthology

Coetzee will share the share with his friend Paul Auster twice today at UAlbany.

More about the events:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html

Photo of pigs in an industrial farming facility from an op-ed piece by Coetzee in the Sydney Morning Herald decrying Biblical justifications for the eating of meat:

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/nothing-biblical-in-factory-farming-20111205-1oe2o.html

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John Malkovich in Coetzee's "Disgrace"

J. M. Coetzee's 1999 novel about racial strife and a father-daughter relationship in South Africa was adapted as a 2008 movie starring John Malkovich as a troubled college professor who resigns his position after an affair with a student and moves to his daughter's remote farm house in the South African hinterlands to make sense of his life.

See the trailer here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvIssZT6cg

Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, visits UAlbany tomorrow, Friday, 10/12:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#jm

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Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! on Friday afternoon 10/12

Two master writers will discuss "Bartleby the Scrivener," with your participation, this coming Friday afternoon in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center, free and open to the public.

You can prepare for the event by reading the story here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1479870

J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner from South Africa, and Paul Auster, bestselling author, will present a rare opportunity to discuss one of the classic and most influential short stories of modern times:

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville

"I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners."  More.

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