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"Sebold, Alice"
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Talking books. Annie Proulx
In this episode which is part of a television series that interviews authors, Caroline Baum talks to Annie Proulx author of The shipping news about a variety of topics.
Streaming Video
The lovely bones : a novel
This is the tale of family, memory, love, and living told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. Through the voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief a hopeful and joyful story.
Book
Talking books. Alice Sebold
In this episode which is part of a television series that interviews authors, Caroline Baum talks to Alice Sebold the author of The lovely bones and Lucky about various aspects of writing and fiction.
Streaming Video
A Greek Island That Resists Change
COMING upon the island of Patmos in darkness, the presence of the church is merely a whisper in the traveler's ear. There is something different about Patmos, even in the evening hours. No loud throbbing beat of American pop greets you at the dock, no desperate hotel representatives shove photographs of their accommodations in your face. Following the long boat ride from Piraeus (and it is long, 11 hours) one steps down to find a momentary rush of people greeting friends and relatives and a few cabs patiently prospecting for fares. But in the morning, when the boat-weary traveler walks outside into the peaceful streets, the power of the Greek Orthodox church on Patmos cannot be overlooked. From anywhere on the island one looks up to see the Monastery of St. John the Theologian. For a cool minute, pre-coffee, one is suddenly pitched into the storybooks of childhood. The walls of the monastery resemble a castle where kind-hearted kings waged war with villains. On Patmos the men and women still smile at visitors. They are not yet hardened to the interest in what to them is merely a hometown. Last July, during my monthlong stay, I met many residents who took pride in pointing out the monastery and also in giving directions to confused foreigners who roved over the island on rented motorcycles. (To see the island one must either love walking or overcome the particularly American fear of motorcycles.) The two main settlements are Hora, the area directly surrounding the Monastery of St. John, which circles down the hilltop for three or four miles, and [Skala], where boats arrive daily from Piraeus and the majority of all tourist-oriented business on the island takes place. Although many tourists choose to stay on the windy hilltop of Hora, Skala, which is about the same size, is much more popular with visitors. According to a guide published by the Monastery of St. John the Theologian, in his magnum opus Christodoulos wrote, ''My ardent desire was to possess this island at the edge of the world, for there were no people, all was tranquillity; no boats dropped anchor here.'' We are in the later half of the 20th century, and [Patmos] is far different than when the Holy Christodoulos first set eyes on it, but the tranquillity remains, the chance to give stray thoughts an order, to be coaxed toward peace by the wind on Hora, and lie down on quiet beaches with heads full of legends and possibilities.
Newspaper Article
WOMEN WHO CHANGED HISTORY AT THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE 20TH CENTURY
[Catherine S.] Manegold, who covered Shannon Faulkner and her case against the Citadel for The New York Times, presents a detailed account and, in some of the most gripping pages of the book, eyewitness reports of what life at the Citadel was like for Faulkner and other freshmen. Faulkner, a native of South Carolina, was referred to by one lawyer for the Citadel as a \"toxin,\" as if her presence on the campus in Charleston, S.C., would destroy the rich history of the military college. As one reads Manegold's scrupulously detailed history of the Citadel--which is, in many cases, more compelling than the pages devoted to Faulkner--it appears that Faulkner was merely the latest in a long line of \"toxins\" that this insular Southern institution has fought to keep out. Minority students (Manegold's writing about a mysterious shooting of a black cadet threatens to overwhelm the copiously reported drama of Faulkner's case) and even administrators who tried, and failed, to make the Citadel a more academic and less physically abusive place have been met with the same self-defeating pride and hostility that greeted Faulkner at the gates.
Newspaper Article
HERS; Speaking of the Unspeakable
Ignorance hurts. In the beginning, even my own father, who has spent his life working with young people, confessed to me that he did not understand how I could have been raped if I didn't ''want to'' be. In Pennsylvania recently, Stephen Freind, the Delaware County Representative to the State Legislature, repeatedly stated that rape victims rarely got pregnant because women under stress have difficulty conceiving. This misinformation supported anti-abortionists in their position that rape should not be part of the abortion controversy. In the college classrooms where I teach English, I hear naive assertions about rape. What it's like; who rapes; who gets raped. This willingness to type the victim or the attacker is dangerous. It separates us from the reality of rape's threat in our own lives. Stereotypes are attractive because if we don't fit the stereotype we create, we conclude it is impossible for us to be victims. The ''it-can't-happen-to-me'' mentality affects women of every class. Women disassociate themselves from rape because the vast majority of people still believe that a woman who has been raped is filthy, better off dead, irrational, or got what she was looking for. We must hear, not assume, the experience of rape victims because our best and only defense is knowledge. A current issue of my university's campus guide, under the description of the park where I was raped, a park heavily frequented by students, says more or less what it said in 1981. After a lengthy description of park ball fields and basketball courts, the last line reads ''watch out after dark; scary things have been known to happen.'' Rape is a nasty word. It is easier to avoid it. This degree of denial and prettification is dangerous.
Newspaper Article
For The Life Of Her
Gaseous clouds seemed to linger outside the window, enveloping everything Priscilla saw except the top of the cypress tree and the edge of the barn. Her family had left her in the house, and driven off in the car. She'd stayed behind with the animals, whom she'd eaten one by one, saying a prayer before she ate the first bite of each and cursing the lack of refrigeration. She threw the carcasses, after eating her...
Newspaper Article
Shelf Life
My summer friends are expansive and equal to any beach-to-bar evening among the living. The old reliables -- Henry James, Edith Wharton, Anthony Trollope -- have been with me for a decade or more. Five summers ago they welcomed George Eliot and always they make room for relative newcomers at the table. This past summer, in between rereadings of ''The Ambassadors'' and ''The Age of Innocence,'' Kazuo Ishiguro's novel ''The Unconsoled'' stepped in. If the phone rings between June and September, I am often jolted out of my make-believe world. I am with Henry James's Isabel Archer or the ever more poignant Strether, returning over and over again to the cruel fates they can do nothing to change. I'm with Celia and Dorothea, trying on their mother's jewels and feeling, each time I return to Eliot's amazing ''Middlemarch,'' more and more pity for Mr. Casaubon, whom I initially took to be nothing but a mean and bitter prig. In between the bounty of these larger tomes, when I have an evening to myself because my more social spouse has gone to a party or dinner with friends, I have summer flings -- J. L. Carr, Susan Minot, Francoise Sagan, Elfriede Jelinek -- and discover previously unknown gems like Julian Greene's novel ''The Other Sleep'' or Jane Gardam's delightfully titled ''Old Filth.''
Newspaper Article
Shelf Life
AS summer nears I begin to search my bookshelves for companions. Much like other people return again and again to the same small towns or sandy beaches, I return to the same novelists and with ever greater...
Newspaper Article