In his 2005 memoir, Omaha Blues, Joseph Lelyveld (who visits Tuesday) recalls his charismatic Reform Rabbi father and his ambitious actress-scholar mother who abandoned him to be raised by other people so they could pursue their divergent ambitions. His father travelled the country in the 1940s drumming up American support for the State of Israel. His mother gratefully abandoned the duties of a clerical wife to pursue graduate studies in Shakespearean scholarship (and an extramarital affair) at Columbia University.
At various times, the boy Joseph was turned over to a Seventh Day Adventist farm family, the Jensens, in Tekamah, Nebraska, and to his Brooklyn grandparents.
An excerpt of the book's first chapter appears on the Barnes and Noble website (you'll need to scroll down).
Picture: Lelyveld (middle) with the Jensen boys.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Lelyveld-- Abandoned by Over-Achieving Parents
Gandhi-- A Tough Nut to Crack
Joseph Lelyveld, who visits the Writers Institute this coming Tuesday, April 3rd, talks about his new biography of Gandhi this week in a video interview on the New York Times blog "India Ink."
Gandhi was “a tough nut to crack,” Mr. Lelyveld said.
“I thought the book might be controversial because here is a foreigner lecturing Indians on what Gandhi might have meant for India, and telling them that India had disappointed the father of the nation,” he said.
Read more on the New York Times "India Ink" blog and watch the video clip.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Richard Selzer: Life Imitates Art
Frederic Hellwitz MD, radiology professor at Albany Medical College shared a recent article that reminded him of a short story by author and Troy native Richard Selzer MD, "Luis," about a junkyard scavenger in a Brazilian slum who discovers radioactive material, cesium, from a discarded x-ray machine in the city dump. Luis treasures his find, believing it to be a piece of a star, as it rapidly destroys him and everyone around him.
The article about a discarded, antique radiation device (pictured here) appeared in Imaging Technology News, itnonline.com.
A friend of the Writers Institute, Selzer last visited for a staged reading of a theatrical adaptation of his Doctor Stories in February 2004.
Mary Pickford: The Child-Woman
Watch a 2-minute video featuring America's first movie star "America's Sweetheart," silent actress Mary Pickford (a Canadian actually), who rose to fame portraying little girls well into her thirties.
As the YouTube poster notes, over-sized sets were built to accentuate her already petite frame in order to make her look as childlike as possible.
At the age of 26, she portrays both child and woman in the 1919 feature, Daddy-Long-Legs, to be screened this Friday, March 30, 7:30PM at Page Hall, University at Albany downtown. Free as always.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Peter Bogdanovich on "Daddy-Long-Legs"
Major Hollywood director, critic and son of Kingston, NY, Peter Bogdanovich talks about
Daddy-Long-Legs, the 1919 silent film that will be screen this Friday, March 30th, 7:30PM at Page Hall, in a piece that appeared in IndieWire, May 11, 2011:
"Neilan’s easy, casual grace, his daring, his ability to evoke extraordinarily simple yet complex reactions, his flair for human comedy, is apparent throughout. And for those who ever wondered if Mary Pickford was just a goody-two-shoes playing one childlike note, this single film—-of the scores of good ones she starred in between 1909 and 1933-–would blow that uninformed misconception away. She was brilliantly expressive, absolutely real, equally on the money at every second in comedy, drama and all points between. You want to see good modern movie acting, check out Mary Pickford in Daddy-Long-Legs."
More on IndieWire.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Not Appalled By Fairy Tales
"I just read this article in a UK paper about how appalled people are by Grimm's fairy tales, how they would never read them to their children, but I think they're marvelous. They create these worlds of horror that at the same time are containable. You get to the end of the story and it's almost always happily ever after. People can learn about a certain amount of pain, and it always ends fine in the story. They're amazing tools for children—I wouldn't give every story to a child because there are a lot of anti-Semitic and flat out bad stories, but I don't see the harm in a smart kid reading Grimm's tales."
Lauren Groff, who visits today, talks about finding inspiration in fairy tales for her new novel Acadia in Interview magazine.
Picture: An illustration by Arthur Rackham from a 1909 edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
The Beginnings of His Literary Education
Teju Cole talks about how his literary education really began when he grabbed books randomly off the shelf to read during his morning commute to a short internship as an exchange student in Boston.
The three books (The Old Man and the Sea, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and The Catcher in the Rye) that he read during this time left an impression not only on him but also on his new, award-winning novel, Open City.
See the YouTube video of Cole's archival interview at the Writers Institute, February 10, 2012.