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

Read More......

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

Read More......

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.

Read More......

The Maldive Shark

Robert Pinsky discusses Herman Melville's brilliance as a poet last week in Slate.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pinsky will participate again this year at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs (which he does every year).

Herman Melville (1819-1891) lived at various times during his boyhood and adulthood in the Capital District, in both Albany (where he attended Albany Academy) and Lansingburgh.

Pinsky discusses "The Maldive Shark":

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be....

More.

Read More......

Poet of the Underworld

Jean-Pierre Melville (director of the police thriller, Le Cercle Rouge, to be screened Friday) said it himself: "I have a bloody awful character." In 1972, towards the end of his career, glowering at the world through smoked glasses under a Texan ten-gallon hat, the man whom some consider to be the "father of the nouvelle vague" listed the collaborators for whom he still felt gratitude after 25 years in the business. None of his stars stars got a mention.... This is as good a clue as any to the character of this provocative, morose, secretive, private and perverse man, whose life was a running battle with collaborators, former admirers and critics. He once said he was "a solitary to the power of five - myself, my wife and three cats."

So writes Peter Lennon in a 2003 article in The Guardian.

Audience members will be interested to know that Melville's cats are supporting actors in Le Cercle Rouge as the pets of cat-loving Police Inspector Mattei, who himself plays a kind of cat in the film's game of cat-and-mouse.

Read More......