Husband Interviews Wife in Daily Beast

Anthony Swofford, author of the bestselling Marine Corps memoir Jarhead, interviews his wife Christa Parravani in today's Daily Beast.  Parravani visits UAlbany and the New York State Museum downtown today.

Tony: You just said that she feared being “too much” and she’s a big figure in Her. If in your twin dynamic she was too much, were you too little? You make it clear that there were obviously competing psychologies going on from birth. Tell me more about that.
Christa: We never allowed ourselves to be the same. Identical twins are like that, always trying to carve out individuality. It was as if the world wasn’t a big enough place for us to be similar, and that forced us into trying to be opposite. We were fiercely competitive. It was simple at first when we were children. Cara liked vanilla ice cream, so I liked chocolate. I liked pink, so she liked blue. It really was that severe. Cara loved to sing, so I couldn’t sing—

Tony: She had a good point. I’ve heard you in the shower.
Christa: Ha. Ha.

More of the interview:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/07/without-her-twin-christa-parravani-s-debut-memoir.html

More about Christa's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/parravani_christa13.html

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Groff's Arcadia a Must-Read in This Week's Daily Beast-Newsweek

Chloe Schama rates Arcadia a must-read in this week's Daily Beast-Newsweek:

"I discovered Lauren Groff while I was on the elliptical machine at my gym. It was early in the morning, but I was already running late; the out-of-date magazine in front of me was one of many that had piled up in my apartment, kept in futile hopes of staying on top of material that is pertinent to my job as a magazine editor." More.

Lauren Groff visits today!
March 27 (Tuesday) Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

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Tina Brown's Must-Reads

Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek and The Daily Beast (and formerly of The New Yorker), lists The Orphan Master's Son among her three "must-read" recommendations in an NPR interview.

Johnson visits the Institute Tuesday, 2/14.

"[Johnson] vividly creates this strange, dark, twisted lifestyle of the people who are condemned to live there, who have no other way of seeing the world except through the prism of the distortions the regime has served up," Brown tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. More.

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