Caro and Vonnegut Barefoot at the Beach



Caro and Vonnegut in Sagaponack.
 (Photo originally appeared in Hamptons Shorts, 1999)

One sunny day in Sagaponack, renowned political biographer and seasoned interviewer Robert Caro—who comes to Albany, NY on December 5, 2011—had the tables tuned on him by none other than Kurt Vonnegut.   Their conversation, with Vonnegut posing questions to Caro (though it was supposed to be the other way around!), delves deeply into the nature of political power, the shared qualities of great fiction and non-fiction, and the pros and cons of writing with typewriters or word processors.  And, by the end, they were both barefoot!



Robert Caro, biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, will receive the 2011 Empire State Archives and History Award of the NYS Archives Partnership Trust, on Monday, December 5, 2011 at 7:30pm at the Egg at the Empire State Plaza.  The event is co-sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

P.S.  This event costs $10. (All other Institute realted events are free!)

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Writers Institute Authors dominate NYTimes Notable Books of 2011

Sixteen writers whose books were selected for the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2011 are former Visiting Writers at the New York State Writers Institute.  Among these, Karen Russell (Swamplandia!), James Gleick (The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood) and Tom Perrotta (The Leftovers) joined us during the 2011 season, while Michael Ondaatje (The Cat's Table) and Russell Banks (Lost Memory of Skin) were featured readers at the 2011 Summer Writers Institute.  And we are of course particularly thrilled that William Kennedy, Founding Director of the NYS Writers Institute, is on the list for his new novel, Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes. Check out the list for these and other great titles for gift-giving this year!

P.S. An upcoming blog post will feature more of the sixteen Visiting Writers who made the list. And three more writers will appear at the Institute in  2012...stay tuned for our full Spring schedule!

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Tom Perrotta's New Novel To Be HBO Series

HBO is developing a series based on author Tom Perrotta's upcoming novel "The Leftovers."

Hourlong drama explores the Rapture and how the sudden disappearance of loved ones in a suburban town affects everyone left behind. Perrotta, who is writing the pilot, will exec produce with Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger.

The author has Hollywood connections, having written "Little Children" and then adapting the screenplay for the Kate Winslet-Patrick Wilson starrer. Earlier in his career, Perrotta wrote the novel "Election," which was turned into Alexander Payne's feature starring Reese Witherspoon. Both pics were Oscar nominated. More in Variety.

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Not Writing What You Know

Tom Perrotta, who makes two appearances in Albany today, dispenses some free advice on the "big think" website:

Question: Should you always write what you know?

Perrotta: I’m always wary of any kind of generalization like that. There’re some people who… I think somebody once said there are two kinds of writers, you know, that there’s somebody who lives home and somebody who stays home, and I’ve always been the kind of writer who stayed home but I don’t necessarily feel like that’s going to work for everybody. I think you have to do a lot of reading and you have to do a lot of writing and if you’re lucky you’ll eventually find a voice or find a subject matter that you’re passionate about. I mean that to me is really the crucial thing, it’s somehow, you know, having your work connect with your obsessions and your passions and, you know, it’s… if you teach writing, sometimes it’s just very mysterious because you’ll see somebody, you can see that they have talent, you can see that they want very much to write but somehow there’s a kind of psychological disjunction between the work and what really matters to them and it’s scary, you know, when your work starts to interact with the unruly parts of your subconscious..... More.

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Tom Perrotta Tonight

Tom Perrotta visits the Writers Institute today for two events.

November 29 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Tom Perrotta is the author of masterpieces of satirical fiction set in the American suburbs. His new novel is The Leftovers (2011), the story of ordinary suburbanites who are forced to cope when they are left behind after “the Rapture,” the New Testament apocalypse. The Kirkus reviewer called it Perrotta’s “most ambitious book to date...,” and said, “The premise is as simple as it is startling.” His previous novels include The Abstinence Teacher (2007), and two that were adapted as major motion pictures, Little Children (2004) and Election (1998).

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Cod for Thanksgiving

Mark Kurlansky, who visited in 2004, may have started a movement with his 1997 nonfiction book, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.

Perhaps we should all be eating cod with cranberry sauce.

Jennifer Kennedy of About.com Marine Life cites and paraphrases Kurlansky on a page devoted to cod and the Pilgrims (here):

"In a move that eventually led to their displacement, local Native Americans took pity on the starving Pilgrims and assisted them, believing they would 'receive blessings' for their generosity. They showed the Pilgrims how to catch cod and use the uneaten parts as fertilizer. They also introduced the Pilgrims to quahogs, 'steamers,' and lobster.

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Tom Perrotta on Fresh Air

Tom Perrotta, who visits the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, 11/29, spoke to Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" in August about his new novel, The Leftovers....

"I spent a lot of time thinking about contemporary Christianity, and obviously the rapture kept coming up," he says. "My first impulse was ... to laugh it off — it's sort of a funny idea, people just floating away. But I kept thinking: What if it did happen? ... I thought, I'm such a skeptic that even if it did happen, I would resist the implications of it, and I also thought that three years later, everyone would have forgotten about it. No matter what horrible thing happens in the world, the culture seems to move on." More.

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