New Biography Claims Emily Dickinson Had Epilepsy : NPR:
Another offering from National Public Radio, this one about the new biography of poet Emily Dickinson that opens the door on a number of skeletons in the Dickinson family closet.
Archive for the ‘Author News’ Category
The Writer Who Couldn’t Read : NPR
Sunday, June 27th, 2010The Writer Who Couldn’t Read : NPR:
This fascinating story from NPR (National Public Radio) tells the story of Howard Engel, a Canadian mystery novelist who woke up one morning and discovered that he could no longer read. His brain damaged by a stroke, Engel couldn’t make sense of written words, which looked to him like random squiggles on a page.
Through trial and error, and a lot of effort, Engel taught himself to read and write again by tracing the shape of letters onto the backs of his teeth with his tongue:
Sacks describes Engel’s struggles in a forthcoming book, The Mind’s Eye, to be published later this year. The surprise here is that brains are more plastic than one would suppose; even if one part of a brain is compromised by a stroke, a person can sometimes improvise and get another still healthy part of the brain to substitute and help out.
Twain died 100 years ago today
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010In His Private Books, Signs of Mark Twain as Critic
Monday, April 19th, 2010In His Private Books, Signs of Mark Twain as Critic – NYTimes.com:
By the end of his life, Samuel Langhorne Clemens had achieved fame as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, a globe-trotting lecturer and, of course, the literary genius who wrote ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and other works under the name Mark Twain.
He was less well-known, but no less talented, as a literary critic. Proof of it has resided, mostly unnoticed, in a small library in Redding, Conn., where hundreds of his personal books have sat in obscurity for 100 years. They are filled with notes in his own cramped, scratchy handwriting. Irrepressible when he spotted something he did not like, but also impatient with good books that he thought could be better, he was often savage in his commentary.
This article in the New York Times reports on “this little-known side of Twain’s life: “In honor of the centennial of his death on April 21, the library granted The New York Times permission to examine this trove of books and record notes and markings Twain left behind in their margins.”
Yet another example that you can tell a lot about a person by the notes in the margin.
J.K. Rowling faces another plagiarism suit
Thursday, February 18th, 2010J.K. Rowling faces another plagiarism suit / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com:
It’s not the first time that Rowling, estimated to be the world’s wealthiest author, has had to defend herself against charges of plagiarism. One prominent case involved a 2002 suit brought by American author Nancy Stouffer who claimed that her character ‘Larry Potter’ bore a striking resemblance to Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter.’ Stouffer lost her case and an appeal three years later.
Mississippi Plantation Diary That Inspired William Faulkner Discovered
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Mississippi Plantation Diary That Inspired William Faulkner Discovered – NYTimes.com:
The climactic moment in William Faulkner’s 1942 novel ‘Go Down, Moses’ comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their ‘scarred and cracked backs’ and ‘yellowed pages scrawled in fading ink’ — proof of his family’s slave-owning past. Now, what appears to be the document on which Faulkner modeled that ledger as well as the source for myriad names, incidents and details that populate his fictionalized Yoknapatawpha County has been discovered.
Book Review – ‘Get Real,’ by Donald E. Westlake
Friday, August 28th, 2009Book Review – ‘Get Real,’ by Donald E. Westlake – Review – NYTimes.com:
The New York Times offers a review of Donald Westlake’s final novel:
After watching a bare-chested dentist trekking through the jungle by torchlight to shake a spear at a sunburned accountant in a loincloth, you might think television reality shows were beyond satire. But that would be underestimating the puckish wit of Donald E. Westlake, who died of a heart attack last New Year’s Eve but still leaves us laughing with his final novel, a rollicking crime caper that pulls the pants right off the reality TV industry.
Related posts:
Nonfiction Tweets: 70+ Authors to Follow on Twitter
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Nonfiction Tweets: 70+ Authors to Follow on Twitter:
I’m so deeply entangled in preparing to do my dissertation research that I haven’t had time even to figure out exactly what Twitter does. But for those of you who are more adept at social networking than I, here’s a list of nonfiction authors who Tweet. The list includes some big names such as Deepak Chopra and David Allen (of Getting Things Done fame). This post also links to an earlier post listing fiction writers who Tweet.
Happy Tweeting!
Remembering John Updike
Friday, January 30th, 2009This week’s Scout Report has a good round-up of items about the death–and life–of John Updike:
John Updike, Critic and Author, Dies At Age 76
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author John Updike Dies at Age 76 [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99942825
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/remembering-upd/
For better or worse, John Updike produced a nearly endless stream of work
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-mew-updike-appreciate28-2009jan28,0,6965396.storyJohn Updike: This I Believe [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99919409
Invisible Cathedral: A Walk Through the New Modern
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/15/041115crat_atlarge
Updike Desert Comix
http://harvardlampoon.com/?q=node/266http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml
This Tuesday, John Updike, chronicler of the American condition in the mid and late twentieth century passed away in Danvers, Massachusetts. Throughout his six decades of writing, Updike found time to write about the world of suburban existence (and ennui), colonial Africa, a Jewish writer in Eastern Europe, and a group of women living in a small New England Town in The Witches of Eastwick, and its 2008 follow-up volume, The Widows of Eastwick. Updike was always the polymath, and during his student days at Harvard University, he found time to write and draw cartoons for the Harvard Lampoon. He continued his diverse pursuits throughout his life, as he wrote a great deal of literary criticism for publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times. In an interview, Updike remarked that his primary subject was “Protestant, small-town middle class.” Literary organizations and institutions responded positively to his various narratives, as he was the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, and three National Book Critics’ Circle awards during his lifetime. [KMG]
The first link will take users to a news story from National Public Radio this Wednesday, which reports on Updike’s passing. The second link leads to a lovely selection of Updike remembrances offered by fellow literary travelers Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux, Richard Ford, and others. Moving on, the third link leads to a reflection on Updike’s work and legacy by David L. Ulin, which appeared in this Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times. The fourth link will whisk users away Updike’s personal essay from 2005 offered as part of the “This I Believe” series. The fifth link leads to Updike’s assessment of the new Museum of Modern Art, which appeared in the November 15, 2004 edition of The New Yorker. The sixth link will take interested parties to one of the “comix” he created for the Harvard Lampoon during his stay in Cambridge. Finally, the last link leads to one of Updike’s most beloved pieces of writing (particularly for baseball fans), “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”. It’s a piece that describes the world of Ted Williams as he prepares for his last game with the Boston Red Sox, and it’s one that’s worth rereading, even if it might be the twentieth time. [KMG]
>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/
An Appraisal – Updike Made the Mundane Into a Saga
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009An Appraisal – Updike Made the Mundane Into a Saga – NYTimes.com:
Endowed with an art student’s pictorial imagination, a journalist’s sociological eye and a poet’s gift for metaphor, John Updike — who died on Tuesday at 76 — was arguably this country’s one true all-around man of letters, moving fluently from fiction to criticism, from light verse to short stories to the long-distance form of the novel: a literary decathlete in our age of electronic distraction and willful specialization, Victorian in his industriousness and almost blogger-like in his determination to turn every scrap of knowledge and experience into words.
More on this American author, who died earlier today.