Quotomania

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright, Tess Gallagher was born on July 21, 1943 in Port Angeles, Washington. She received a BA and MA from the University of Washington, where she studied creative writing with Theodore Roethke, and a MFA from the University of Iowa. Her first collection of poems, Instructions to the Double, won the 1976 Elliston Book Award for "best book of poetry published by a small press". In 1984, she published the collection Willingly, which consists of poems written to and about her third husband, author Raymond Carver, who died in 1988. Other collections include Dear Ghosts (Graywolf Press, 2006); My Black Horse: New and Selected Poems (1995); Owl-Spirit Dwelling (1994) and Moon Crossing Bridge (1992).Her honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, two National Endowment of the Arts Awards, and the Maxine Cushing Gray Foundation Award.She has taught at St. Lawrence University, Kirkland College, the University of Montana in Missoula, the University of Arizona in Tucson, Syracuse University, and Willamette University, Bucknell University, and Whitman College.From https://poets.org/poet/tess-gallagher.Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His first short stories appeared in Esquire during Gordon Lish's tenure as fiction editor in the 1970s. Carver's work began to reach a wider audience with the 1976 publication of Will You Please be Quiet, Please, but it was not until the 1981 publication of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love under Gordon Lish, then at Knopf, that he began to achieve real literary fame. This collection was edited by more than 40 per cent before publication, and Carver dedicated it to his fellow writer and future wife, Tess Gallagher, with the promise that he would one day republish his stories at full length. He went on to write two more collections of stories, Cathedral and Elephant, which moved away from the earlier minimalist style into a new expansiveness, as well as several collections of poetry. He died in 1988, aged fifty.From https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/183905/raymond-carver?tab=penguin-biography. For more information about Tess Gallagher and Raymond Carver:A New Path to the Waterfall: https://groveatlantic.com/book/a-new-path-to-the-waterfall/“Tess Gallagher”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tess-gallagher“Raymond Carver”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/raymond-carver“Regarding Tess”: https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-culture/2009/01/0508-regardingtess“Raymond Carver, The Art of Fiction No. 76”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymond-carver“Raymond Carver: the kindest cut”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/27/raymond-carver-editor-influence

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Naomi Shihab Nye is an award-winning writer and editor whose work has appeared widely. She edited the ALA Notable international poetry collection, This Same Sky, and The Tree Is Older Than You Are: Poems and Paintings from Mexico, as well as The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East. Her books of poems include Fuel, Red Suitcase, and Words Under the Words. A Guggenheim fellow, she is also the author of the young adult novel Habibi, which was named an ALA Notable Book, a Best Book for Young Adults, and winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award as well as the Book Publishers of Texas award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Naomi lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Michael, and their son, Madison.From https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Naomi-Shihab-Nye/1339809. For more information about Naomi Shihab Nye:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Naomi Shihab Nye on The Quarantine Tapes: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-073-naomi-shihab-nyeEdward Hirsch about Nye, at 18:00: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-173-edward-hirschWords Under the Words: https://www.amazon.com/Words-Under-Selected-Poems-Corner/dp/0933377290“Adios”: https://wordsfortheyear.com/2018/02/07/adios-by-naomi-shihab-nye/“Naomi Shihab Nye”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye“Naomi Shihab Nye, On Being”: ​​https://onbeing.org/programs/naomi-shihab-nye-before-you-know-kindness-as-the-deepest-thing-inside/“Naomi Shihab Nye Believes in the Found Poem”: https://miscellanynews.org/2020/10/21/arts/naomi-shihab-nye-believes-in-the-found-poem/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871 in the Paris suburb of Auteuil. His father, Dr. Adrien Proust, was one of France's most distinguished scientists. His mother, Jeanne Weil, was a well-educated woman who loved the great classic writers of the 17th century, especially Molière and Racine. Marcel's only sibling, Robert, was born in 1873. The hypersensitive Marcel suffered all his life from a number of ailments, especially asthma. Although he earned university degrees in philosophy and law, he always knew that he wanted to be a writer.In 1910, he had his bedroom lined with cork to block out the deafening noise of daytime Paris because he slept during the day and wrote through the night, after returning home from some of Paris's most exclusive salons. He was known as the city's most famous recluse, he even called himself an owl because he wrote while listening to his “nocturnal Muse.” Swann's Way, the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, was published in November 1913 and was headed for a fourth printing when World War I broke out.Proust continued to write, incorporating the unprecedented conflict into his story of contemporary French society. In 1919, Within a Budding Grove was published and won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize. The final three years of his life saw the publication of The Guermantes Way and Sodom and Gomorrah. The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained were published posthumously. The novel's main themes are time and memory and the power of art to withstand the destructive forces of time.From https://www.proust-ink.com/biography.For more information about Marcel Proust:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Sven Birkerts about Proust, at 18:00: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-181-sven-bikertsMerve Emre about Proust, at 16:46: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-170-merve-emreUsed as the epigraph by Edmund de Waal in The Hare with Amber Eyes: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250811271/theharewithambereyesIn Search of Lost Time: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/SLT/in-search-of-lost-time"Edmund de Waal on Anxiety, Silence, and the Edge of Terror and Beauty": https://lithub.com/edmund-de-waal-on-anxiety-silence-and-the-edge-of-terror-and-beauty/"Edmund de Waal and Paul Holdengräber": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXJSOL9mhRc"Edmund de Waal Live from NYPL": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4p2JdousbQ“Reading Proust's ‘In Search of Lost Time' During a Pandemic”: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/11/reading-proust-in-search-of-lost-time-during-pandemic/616850/“What We Find When We Get Lost in Proust”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/what-we-find-when-we-get-lost-in-proust

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) was born on June 10, 1928, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland. A largely self-taught artist, Sendak illustrated over one hundred-fifty books during his sixty-year career.The books he wrote as well as illustrated include Kenny's Window, Very Far Away, The Sign on Rosie's Door, Nutshell Library (consisting of Chicken Soup with Rice, Alligators All Around, One Was Johnny, and Pierre), Higglety Pigglety Pop!, Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy, Bumble-Ardy, My Brother's Book, and Presto and Zesto in Limboland (co-authored by Arthur Yorinks). He has collaborated with such celebrated authors as Meindert DeJong, Tony Kushner, Randall Jarrell, Ruth Krauss, Else Holmelund Minarik, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. And he has illustrated classics by Mother Goose, the Brothers Grimm, Herman Melville, and Leo Tolstoy.Sendak began a second career as a costume and stage designer in the late 1970s, designing operas that included Krása's Brundibar, Mozart's The Magic Flute, Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, and Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, as well as Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker. He also designed the sets and costumes, as well as wrote the book and lyrics for the musical production of Really Rosie.Maurice Sendak remains the most honored children's book artist in history. He was the recipient of the 1964 Caldecott Medal, the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 1983 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and the 2003 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. In 1996 President Bill Clinton presented him with the National Medal of Arts in recognition of his contribution to the arts in America. In 1972 Sendak moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut with his partner of fifty years, the psychiatrist Dr. Eugene Glynn (1926-2007).From https://www.sendakfoundation.org/biography. For more information about Maurice Sendak:“He saw it, he loved it, he ate it”: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/he-saw-it-he-loved-it-he-ate-it“‘Fresh Air' Remembers Author Maurice Sendak”: https://www.npr.org/2012/05/08/152248901/fresh-air-remembers-author-maurice-sendak“Transcript: ‘Fresh Air' Remembers Author Maurice Sendak”: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/152248901“Sendak's Fantastic Imagination”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/01/22/among-the-wild-things“Maurice Sendak: ‘I refuse to lie to children'”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/02/maurice-sendak-interview“An Illustrated Talk With Maurice Sendak”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH2OaaktJrw“The Wildest Rumpus: Maurice Sendak and the Art of Death”: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/maurice-sendak-art-of-death/472350/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!C.P. Cavafy is widely considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century. He was born on April 29, 1863, in Alexandria, Egypt, where his Greek parents had settled in the mid-1850s, and died on the same day in 1933. During his lifetime Cavafy was an obscure poet, living in relative seclusion and publishing little of his work. A short collection of his poetry was privately printed in the early 1900s and reprinted with new verse a few years later, but that was the extent of his published poetry. Instead, Cavafy chose to circulate his verse among friends.Cavafy is the leading poet of the periphery, writing in Greek far from Greek lands. The body of his poetry includes the 154 poems of the “canon”; 37 “repudiated poems,” most of which are juvenilia written in romantic katharevousa; 75 “hidden” poems that were found finished in his papers; and 30 “unfinished” poems. His poems often feature historical figures or creations of the poet's imagination, with frequent references to elements of Homeric, Hellenistic, and Byzantine years. Today, his poetry occupies a prominent place in both Greek and world literature.You may read the complete C. P. Cavafy bio here https://cavafy.onassis.org/creator/cavafy-c-p/and discover the digital collection of the Cavafy Archive here https://cavafy.onassis.org/.For more information about C. P. Cavafy:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Daniel Mendelsohn about Cavafy, at 11:50: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-096-daniel-mendelsohnC. P. Cavafy: Complete Poems: https://www.danielmendelsohn.com/book/c-p-cavafy-complete-poems“Cavafy Archive”: https://www.onassis.org/initiatives/cavafy-archive/“Man With a Past: Cavafy Revisited”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/23/man-with-a-past“The City”: https://www.onassis.org/initiatives/cavafy-archive/the-canon/the-city“Handwritten notes on ‘The City'”: https://cavafy.onassis.org/object/ad3m-a5bh-hs47/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!On December 4, 1875, Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague. His parents placed him in military school with the desire that he become an officer—a position Rilke was not inclined to hold. With the help of his uncle, who realized that Rilke was a highly gifted child, Rilke left the military academy and entered a German preparatory school. By the time he enrolled in Charles University in Prague in 1895, he knew that he would pursue a literary career: he had already published his first volume of poetry, Leben und Lieder, the previous year. At the turn of 1895-1896, Rilke published his second collection, Larenopfer (Sacrifice to the Lares). A third collection, Traumgekrönt (Dream-Crowned) followed in 1896. That same year, Rilke decided to leave the university for Munich, Germany, and later made his first trip to Italy.In 1897, Rilke went to Russia, a trip that would prove to be a milestone in Rilke's life, and which marked the true beginning of his early serious works. While there the young poet met Tolstoy, whose influence is seen in Das Buch vom lieben Gott und anderes (Stories of God), and Leonid Pasternak, the nine-year-old Boris's father. At Worpswede, where Rilke lived for a time, he met and married Clara Westhoff, who had been a pupil of Rodin. In 1902 he became the friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his twelve-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. His first great work, Das Stunden Buch (The Book of Hours), appeared in 1905, followed in 1907 by Neue Gedichte (New Poems) and Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge). Rilke would continue to travel throughout his lifetime; to Italy, Spain and Egypt among many other places, but Paris would serve as the geographic center of his life, where he first began to develop a new style of lyrical poetry, influenced by the visual arts.When World War I broke out, Rilke was obliged to leave France and during the war he lived in Munich. In 1919, he went to Switzerland where he spent the last years of his life. It was here that he wrote his last two works, the Duino Elegies (1923) and the Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). He died of leukemia on December 29, 1926. At the time of his death his work was intensely admired by many leading European artists, but was almost unknown to the general reading public. His reputation has grown steadily since his death, and he has come to be universally regarded as a master of verse.From https://poets.org/poet/rainer-maria-rilke. For more information about Rainer Maria Rilke:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Joy Harjo about Rilke, at 0:55: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-153-joy-harjoRosanne Cash about Rilke, at 22:35: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-015-rosanne-cashMeredith Monk about Rilke, at 09:00: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-meredith-monk-054The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393882087“Rainer Maria Rilke”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke“Reintroducing Rilke”: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703298004574459033827598594“Can Rilke Change Your Life?”: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/can-rilke-change-your-life

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!James Baldwin — the grandson of a slave — was born in Harlem in 1924. The oldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty, developing a troubled relationship with his strict, religious stepfather. In 1948, at age 24, Baldwin left for Paris, where he hoped to find enough distance from the American society he grew up in to write about it.Over the next ten years, Baldwin moved from Paris to New York to Istanbul, writing two books of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), as well as two novels, Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country (1962). In the early 1960s, overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility to the times, Baldwin returned to take part in the civil rights movement. Traveling throughout the South, he began work on an explosive work about black identity and the state of racial struggle, The Fire Next Time (1963). This, too, was a bestseller: so incendiary that it put Baldwin on the cover of TIME Magazine. For many, Baldwin's clarion call for human equality – in the essays of Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time – became an early and essential voice in the civil rights movement. By 1987, when he died of stomach cancer at age 63, James Baldwin had become one of the most important and vocal advocates for equality. From Go Tell It on the Mountain to The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), James Baldwin created works of literary beauty and depth that will remain essential parts of the American canon.From https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/james-baldwin-about-the-author/59/. Born in New York in 1923, Richard Avedon dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine's photographic section. Upon his return in 1944, he found a job as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he had been “found” by an art director at Harper's Bazaar and was producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, and a number of other magazines. During the early years, Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject.As Avedon's notoriety grew, so did the opportunities to meet and photograph celebrities from a broad range of disciplines. Avedon's ability to present personal views of public figures, who were otherwise distant and inaccessible, was immediately recognized by the public and the celebrities themselves. Many sought out Avedon for their most public images. His artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits. More than anything, it is Avedon's ability to set his subjects at ease that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs.Beyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits. In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with non-celebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans.Throughout the 1960s Avedon continued to work for Harper's Bazaar and in 1974 he collaborated with James Baldwin on the book Nothing Personal. Having met in New York in 1943, Baldwin and Avedon were friends and collaborators for more than thirty years. For all of the 1970s and 1980s Avedon continued working for Vogue magazine, where he would take some of the most famous portraits of the decades. In 1992 he became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker, and two years later the Whitney Museum brought together fifty years of his work in the retrospective, “Richard Avedon: Evidence”. He was voted one of the ten greatest photographers in the world by Popular Photography magazine, and in 1989 received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. Today, his pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. Avedon died on October 1st, 2004.From https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/richard-avedon-about-the-photographer/467/. For more information about James Baldwin and Richard Avedon:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., about Baldwin, at 03:40: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-104-eddie-s-glaude-jrNathalie Etoke about Baldwin, at 01:35: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-176-nathalie-etokeNothing Personal: https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/photography/all/66923/facts.richard_avedon_james_baldwin_nothing_personal.htmNothing Personal: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675742/nothing-personal-by-james-baldwin/“Richard Avedon and James Baldwin's Joint Examination of American Identity”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/richard-avedon-and-james-baldwins-joint-examination-of-american-identity“Everybody Knows His Name: James Baldwin and Richard Avedon's ‘Nothing Personal'”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everybody-knows-his-name-james-baldwin-and-richard-avedons-nothing-personal/“Sunday Reading: Celebrating James Baldwin”: https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/sunday-reading-celebrating-james-baldwin“James Baldwin”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-baldwin

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Appointed United States Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in 2010, William Stanley Merwin had a career that spanned seven decades. A poet, translator, gardener and environmental activist, Merwin has become one of the most widely read and honored poets in America.  He died at home at the age of 91, in the house he built, among the thousands of palms he planted, on Friday, March 15, 2019.Born September 30, 1927, in New York City, William Stanley Merwin was the son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five. He was raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and attended Princeton University on a scholarship. As a young man, Merwin went to Europe and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. Over the years, his poetic voice moved from the more formal to a more distinctly American voice. As the Atlantic Monthly said, “The intentions of Merwin's poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground.”He has lived in Majorca, London, France, Mexico and several places in the United States, as well as Boston and New York. In 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii to study with Robert Aitken, a Zen Buddhist teacher. He married Paula Dunaway, in 1983, and settled on Maui. For over 40 years, they lived in a home that William designed and helped build, surrounded by acres of land once devastated and depleted from years of erosion, logging and toxic agricultural practices. Together, the Merwins painstakingly restored the land into one of the most comprehensive palm gardens in the world. He continued to live, write and garden in Hawaii until he died at home on Friday, March 15th, 2019.From https://merwinconservancy.org/about-w-s-merwin/.For more information about W. S. Merwin:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Wayne Koestenbaum on Merwin, at 09:42: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-166-wayne-koestenbaumJoy Harjo on Merwin, at 02:52: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-153-joy-harjoEdward Hirsch on Merwin, at 19:54: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-173-edward-hirschNaomi Shihab Nye on Merwin, at 24:16: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-073-naomi-shihab-nye“Thanks”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57937/thanksMigration: New and Selected Poems: https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/migration-new-and-selected-poems-by-w-s-merwin/“W. S. Merwin”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/w-s-merwin“W. S. Merwin Interview”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSb8P5Qg5x8“The Ascetic Insight of W. S. Merwin”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-ascetic-insight-of-w-s-merwin

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Henry James, (born April 15, 1843, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 28, 1916, London, Eng.), was a U.S.-British novelist. Born to a distinguished family, the brother of William James, he was privately educated. He traveled frequently to Europe from childhood on; after 1876 he lived primarily in England. His fundamental theme was to be the innocence and exuberance of the New World in conflict with the corruption and wisdom of the Old. Daisy Miller (1879) won him international renown; it was followed by The Europeans (1879), Washington Square(1880), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). In The Bostonians (1886) and The Princess Casamassima (1886), his subjects were social reformers and revolutionaries. In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), What Maisie Knew(1897), and The Turn of the Screw (1898), he made use of complex moral and psychological ambiguity. The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904) were his great final novels. His intense concern with the novel as an art form is reflected in the essay “The Art of Fiction” (1884), his prefaces to the volumes of his collected works, and his many literary essays. Perhaps his chief technical innovation was his strong focus on the individual consciousness of his central characters, which reflected his sense of the decline of public and collective values in his time.From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Henry-James-American-writer. For more information about Henry James:The Aspern Papers: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-aspern-papers-henry-james/1116755591“A Discussion of Henry James's The Aspern Papers”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/entitled-opinions/another-look-dci-event-discussion-henry-james-aspern-papers/“Henry James”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/henry-james“Henry James and the American Idea”: https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/julyaugust/feature/henry-james-and-the-american-idea

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Born in California on September 21, 1945, Kay Ryan grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor's and master's degree from UCLA. Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press, 2010), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2011; The Niagara River (2005); Say Uncle(2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends(1983).Ryan's awards include a National Humanities Medal, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.Ryan's poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review, Parnassus, among other journals and anthologies. She was named to the “It List” by Entertainment Weekly and one of her poems has been permanently installed at New York's Central Park Zoo. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County in California.From https://poets.org/poet/kay-ryan. For more information about Kay Ryan:Erratic Facts: https://groveatlantic.com/book/erratic-facts/“New Rooms”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55648/new-rooms“Kay Ryan”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kay-ryan“Kay Ryan at 75: Surprised by Joy”: https://www.wsj.com/articles/kay-ryan-at-75-surprised-by-joy-11600466756“Kay Ryan, The Art of Poetry No. 94”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5889/the-art-of-poetry-no-94-kay-ryan“Kay Ryan Reads From Her New Book, Erratic Facts”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMYWy9WKD_k

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on October 2, 1879. He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate from 1897 to 1900. He planned to travel to Paris and work as a writer, but, after working briefly as a reporter for the New York Herald Times, he decided to study law. Stevens graduated with a degree from New York Law School in 1903 and was admitted to the bar the following year. He practiced law in New York City until 1916.Though Stevens was focused on his legal career, he was also part of New York's literary community. He had several friends among the writers and painters in Greenwich Village, including William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings. In 1914, under the pseudonym “Peter Parasol,” he sent a group of poems under the title “Phases” to Harriet Monroe as entries for a war poem competition hosted by Poetry magazine. Stevens did not win the prize, but Monroe published his work in November of that year.Stevens moved to Connecticut in 1916, having found employment at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co., where he became vice president in 1934. He had also begun to establish an identity for himself outside the worlds of law and business. His first book of poems, Harmonium (Alfred A. Knopf), published in 1923, exhibited the influences of both the English Romantics and the French Symbolists, and demonstrated a wholly original style and sensibility: exotic, whimsical, and infused with the light and color of an Impressionist painting.For the next several years, Stevens focused on his business career. He began to publish new poems in 1930, however. In the following year, Knopf released a second edition of Harmonium, which included fourteen new poems, but excluded three of the decidedly weaker ones. More than any other modern poet, Stevens was concerned with the transformative power of the imagination. Composing poems on his way to and from the office and in the evenings, Stevens spent his days behind a desk at his office, and led a quiet, relatively uneventful life.Though now considered one of the major American poets of the twentieth century, Stevens did not receive widespread recognition until the publication of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, 1954), just a year before his death. His other major works include The Necessary Angel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), a collection of essays on poetry; Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (The Cummington Press, 1942); The Man With the Blue Guitar (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937); and Ideas of Order (The Alcestis Press, 1935). Stevens died in Hartford, Connecticut on August 2, 1955.From https://poets.org/poet/wallace-stevens. For more information about Wallace Stevens:“The Plain Sense of Things”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49420/the-plain-sense-of-things“Wallace Stevens”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wallace-stevens“The Thrilling Mind of Wallace Stevens”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-thrilling-mind-of-wallace-stevensThe Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/251420/the-collected-poems-of-wallace-stevens-by-wallace-stevens-edited-by-john-n-serio-and-chris-beyers-edited-by-john-n-serio-and-chris-beyers/“The Listening Booth: Wallace Stevens”: https://library.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/static/poetry/listeningbooth/poets/stevens.html“On Wallace Stevens”: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964/06/25/on-wallace-stevens/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), born in Monemvasia, lost his mother and an older brother to tuberculosis at an early age, then contracted the disease himself and spent years in and out of sanatoriums. His first poems, published in the 1930s, were hailed with enthusiasm by Kostis Palamas. He fought in the Greek Resistance during the Axis occupation of Greece, sided with the Communists in the Greek Civil War, and subsequently spent years in prison and in detention camps. He was imprisoned again during the dictatorship of 1967-1974. One of the most prolific Greek poets, Ritsos wrote over a hundred volumes of poetry, was broadly translated, and was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1976 and the Order of the October Revolution in 1977.From The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present.For more information about Yannis Ritsos:The Greek Poets: https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Poets-Homer-Present/dp/0393060837Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691019086/yannis-ritsos“Yannis Ritsos”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/yannis-ritsos“Yannis Ritsos, a Greek Poet, 81; Wrote Verse Inspired by Politics”: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/14/obituaries/yannis-ritsos-a-greek-poet-81-wrote-verse-inspired-by-politics.html“Interview with Edmund Keeley”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkW9OuyjarI

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes's birth year was revised from 1902 to 1901 after new research from 2018 uncovered that he had been born a year earlier. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln that Hughes began writing poetry. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. He also travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926 with an introduction by Harlem Renaissance arts patron Carl Van Vechten. Criticism of the book from the time varied, with some praising the arrival of a significant new voice in poetry, while others dismissed Hughes's debut collection. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter(Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature.Hughes, who claimed Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period such as Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language itself alongside their suffering.In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1950); Simple Stakes a Claim (Rinehart, 1957); Simple Takes a Wife (Simon & Schuster, 1953); and Simple's Uncle Sam (Hill and Wang, 1965). He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography, The Big Sea (Knopf, 1940), and cowrote the play Mule Bone (HarperCollins, 1991) with Zora Neale Hurston.Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, in New York City. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”From https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes. For more information about Langston Hughes:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o about Hughes, at 16:05: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-137-ngg-wa-thiongo“Song for Billie Holiday”: http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2013/08/poem-of-day-langston-hughes-song-for.htmlSelected Poems of Langston Hughes: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/84090/selected-poems-of-langston-hughes-by-langston-hughes/“Religion ‘around' Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, and Ralph Ellison”: https://aas.princeton.edu/news/roundtable-conversation-religion-around-langston-hughes-billie-holiday-and-ralph-ellison“Langston Hughes: The People's Poet”: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/langston-hughes-peoples-poet“Langston Hughes”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/langston-hughes“Langston Hughes Papers”: https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/langston-hughes-papers

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Joan Fuster (1922-1992) was a highly influential poet, critic and thinker who wrote in both Catalan and Spanish. Born in Sueca, a village near Valencia, he grew up in a middle-class Catholic family and graduated with a law degree from the Universitat de Valencia in 1947. Renowned for his irony, and his concise, incisive style of writing, Fuster is best known as an essayist and left-wing thinker who championed Catalan language and culture in Francoist Spain. Among his most celebrated books are Nosaltres, els valencians (1962), Diccionari per a ociosos (1964), and Final Judgements (1960).From https://www.fumdestampa.com/shop/p/final-judgements.For more information about Joan Fuster:Final Judgements: https://www.fumdestampa.com/shop/p/final-judgementsFinal Judgements: https://www.umasspress.com/9781913744359/final-judgements/“Final Judgements by Joan Fuster”: https://www.lunate.co.uk/reviews/final-judgments-by-joan-fuster“A short biography - Joan Fuster”: https://espaijoanfuster.org/a-short-biography/?lang=en“Joan Fuster Museum”: https://museujoanfuster.org/en/“The Catalan Paradox, Part II: Conversation with Translator Mary Ann Newman”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-catalan-paradox-part-ii-conversation-with-translator-mary-ann-newman/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!William Kentridge uses drawings to create films. In his works, unlike in traditional animation that employs multiple drawings to denote change and movement, Kentridge erases and alters a single, stable drawing while recording the changes with stop-motion camera work. He modifies the drawing slightly, goes to the camera, and begins what he calls “the rather dumb physical activity of stalking the drawing, or walking backwards and forwards between the camera and drawing; raising, shifting, adapting the image.” The result is a hybrid of drawing and film that has been highly praised for both its innovative manipulation of media and its ability to look at troubling social issues in a way that is neither sentimental nor aggrandized.   South Africa, where Kentridge was born and continues to work, is the focal point of his studio practice. Kentridge addresses apartheid and other social wounds without tackling the issues head-on, making them susceptible either to redemption that comes too easily or to a rendering of their history that is too spectacular. He enters into historical discussions through the lives of three fictional characters: Soho Eckstein, Mrs. Eckstein, and Felix Teitelbaum. Their individual lives are set against the wide, political landscape of South Africa as well as the deeper forces of life like renewal and destruction. The various vectors of thoughts, feelings, and inner turmoil of the characters, represented sometimes by animals or lines or other markings, spill across Kentridge's images and frames. The personal and public become critically mixed, neither free of guilt nor completely capable of redemption.  In Stereoscope, 1999 Soho Eckstein is portrayed as interconnected with both images of the social injustices and upheaval of South Africa and his own sort of primal, fractured existence. The stereoscope, a device used to unite split images into the illusion of a coherent visual field, represents exactly what Kentridge does not allow in the film. He instead uses his method of erasure to move between disparate images and situations, not a presentation of a unified field but a shifting scene of energetic connections and splits. The result is a work that can face the humanity of the individual without expunging guilt and address larger issues in society without trite, easy solutions. From https://www.thebroad.org/art/william-kentridge. For more information about William Kentridge:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:William Kentridge: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-064-william-kentridge“William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows”: https://www.thebroad.org/art/special-exhibitions/william-kentridge-praise-shadowsWilliam Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows: https://www.amazon.com/William-Kentridge-Shadows-Ed-Schad/dp/1636810667“Lexus L/Studio - Conversation Portrait, William Kentridge”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNx0lH090IM“A Show About Colonial Power, Born From the Freedom to Make Mistakes”: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/theater/houseboy-kentridge-lace-phala.html“William Kentridge: ‘The history of the 20th century shows us the danger of all claims to certainty'”: https://www.ft.com/content/5589fd2b-6fb1-4d77-a90d-ac44a1d2fd52“William Kentridge wows the world”: https://mg.co.za/friday/2022-11-11-william-kentridge-wows-the-world-and-his-centenarian-father/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!On March 24, 1919, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York. After spending his early childhood in France, he received his BA from the University of North Carolina, an MA from Columbia University, and a PhD from the Sorbonne. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, including Poetry as Insurgent Art (New Directions, 2007); Americus, Book I (New Directions, 2004); A Far Rockaway of the Heart (New Directions, 1997); and A Coney Island of the Mind (New Directions, 1958). He has translated the works of a number of poets, including Nicanor Parra, Jacques Prevert, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In addition to poetry, he is also the author of more than eight plays and three novels, including Little Boy: A Novel (Doubleday, 2019), Love in the Days of Rage (Overlook, 1988), and Her (New Directions, 1966).In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin opened the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, California, helping to support their magazine, City Lights. Two years later, they launched City Lights Publishers, a book-publishing venture, which helped start the careers of many alternative local and international poets. In 1956, Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg's book Howl and Other Poems, which resulted in his being arrested by the San Francisco Police for publishing “obscene work” and a subsequent trial that gained international attention. At the end, the judge concluded that “Howl” had “some redeeming social importance” and “was not obscene”; Ferlinghetti prevailed. City Lights became known as the heart of the Beat movement, which also included the writers Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and Jack Kerouac.In 1994, San Francisco renamed a street in Ferlinghetti's honor, and in 1998, he was named the first poet laureate of San Francisco. He is the recipient of many international awards and honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, and the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award, presented for “outstanding service to the American literary community,” among others. In 2003, he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2007, he was named Commandeur of the French Order of Arts and Letters. He died on February 22, 2021, in San Francisco, California.  From https://poets.org/poet/lawrence-ferlinghetti. For more information about Lawrence Ferlinghetti:“I Am Waiting”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42869/i-am-waiting-56d22183d718aA Coney Island of the Mind: https://www.ndbooks.com/book/a-coney-island-of-the-mind1/“Lawrence Ferlinghetti”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lawrence-ferlinghetti“Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/obituaries/lawrence-ferlinghetti-dead.html“Thank You, Lawrence Ferlinghetti”: https://lithub.com/thank-you-lawrence-ferlinghetti/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Thomas Bernhard, (born Feb. 9/10, 1931, Cloister Heerland, Neth.—died Feb. 12, 1989, Gmunden, Austria), was an Austrian writer who explored death, social injustice, and human misery in controversial literature that was deeply pessimistic about modern civilization in general and Austrian culture in particular. Bernhard was born in a Holland convent; his mother, unwed at the time, had fled there from Austria to give birth. After a year, she returned to her parents in Vienna, where her father, writer Johannes Freumbichler (1881–1949), became the major influence on Bernhard. After surviving a life-threatening coma and repeated hospitalizations (1948–51) in tuberculosis sanatoriums, he studied music and drama in Salzburg and Vienna.Bernhard achieved little success with several collections of poetry in the late 1950s, but in 1963 he gained notoriety with his first novel, Frost (Eng. trans. Frost). In such novels as Verstörung (1967; “Derangement,” Eng. trans. Gargoyles), Das Kalkwerk (1970; The Lime Works), and Korrektur (1975; Corrections), he combined complex narrative structure with an increasingly misanthropic philosophy. In 1973 Bernhard withdrew his drama Die Berühmten (“The Famous”) from the prestigious Salzburg Festival because of a controversy over staging. After its publication in 1984 his novel Holzfällen(Woodcutters, or Cutting Timber: An Irritation) was seized by police for allegedly criticizing a public figure. Even before its premiere in November 1988, Bernhard's last play, Heldenplatz(“Heroes' Square”), a bleak indictment of anti-Semitism in contemporary Austria, provoked violent protests. His other plays include Ein Fest für Boris (1968; A Party for Boris), Die Jagdgesellschaft (1974; The Hunting Party), Die Macht der Gewohnheit (1974; The Force of Habit), and  Der Schein trügt(1983; Appearances Are Deceiving). Bernhard's memoirs were translated in Gathering Evidence(1985), a compilation of five German works published between 1975 and 1982.From https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Bernhard. For more information about Thomas Bernhard:Concrete: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12747/concrete-by-thomas-bernhard/“The Art of Extinction: The bleak laughter of Thomas Bernhard”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/25/the-art-of-extinction“Between the Rare Oases of Thought: On Thomas Bernhard and the Mind”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/rare-oases-thought-thomas-bernhard-mind/“Thomas Bernhard is Dead at 58”: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/17/obituaries/thomas-bernhard-is-dead-at-58-his-last-play-enraged-austrians.html

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Bessie Smith (ca. 1895–1937) was a blues and jazz singer from the Harlem Renaissance who is remembered as the Empress of the Blues. Elizabeth “Bessie” Smith was the youngest child of seven, born to Laura and William Smith in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her father was a Baptist minister and day laborer and her mother a laundress. In 1900, William Smith died in a work accident and his wife and son Bud passed away in 1906. The six remaining Smith children, including Bessie, were orphaned and left to be raised by an aunt. Living in poverty, Smith began singing as a street performer on Ninth Street, Chattanooga's center of music and dance, with her guitar-playing brother Andrew. The first published reference of a performance by Smith—when she was only 14 years old—was in the May 8, 1909, issue of the Indianapolis newspaper The Freedman. According to the review of her performance at Atlanta's 81 Theater, Smith captivated her audience through her contralto voice.Smith refined her vocal style on the Black vaudeville stage. Her brother Clarence was a comedian and dancer in the Moses Stokes Traveling Show. Bessie was hired onto the circuit but shortly after left to join the Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Smith became a mentee of Ma Rainey, learning how to command an audience and navigate the music business. By the time she was 24 years old, Smith had her own solo acts and was performing throughout the South and East Coast. In 1923, Smith signed with Columbia Records. Her first recording was “Down-hearted Blues,” written by blues singer Alberta Hunter and pianist Lovie Austin. The 1923 song was a major hit and it launched Smith into the national spotlight. Beyond blues, Smith played and recorded with jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. Her incredible talent led her to become the highest paid Black entertainer of her time.The Great Depression cut Smith's recording career short, and her last recording was in 1933. Still, Smith performed across the country. In 1937, enroute to Chattanooga, Smith suffered fatal injuries in a car accident in Mississippi. Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia, where she had been living since 1923, and was attended by more than 5,000 people.Throughout her career, Smith was unapologetically herself. She drank and was open about her romantic relationships with both men and women. Smith was married to Jack Gee from 1923 to 1929. Gee was unable to adjust to the show business life nor Smith's bisexuality. Their marriage ended in 1929 when Smith learned about an affair between Gee and singer Gertrude Saunders. Smith incorporated the hardships of being Black working class in her lyrics by singing about poverty, racism, and sexism on top of singing about love and female sexuality. While some, such as the Black Swan Records, labeled her as “rough,” Smith's ability to channel her personality and life experience into her voice is what made her stand out.From https://nmaahc.si.edu/lgbtq/bessie-smith. For more information about Bessie Smith:“Reckless Blues”: https://genius.com/Bessie-smith-reckless-blues-lyrics“Bessie Smith & Louis Armstrong - Reckless Blues, 1925”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd4_3yJD-Ds“Forebears: Bessie Smith, The Empress of The Blues”: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/05/575422226/forebears-bessie-smith-the-empress-of-the-blues“Life Story: Bessie Smith”: https://wams.nyhistory.org/confidence-and-crises/jazz-age/bessie-smith/“How Bessie Smith Influenced A Century Of Popular Music”: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/05/747738120/how-bessie-smith-influenced-a-century-of-popular-music

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!A note from the translator of this week's Quotomania, James Romm:This quote gives a good sense of why Seneca is so enjoyable to read in Latin or translate.  His short clauses fairly crackle with energy; metaphors pop in and out elusively as though playing hide and seek.  At times the language is so seductive that one hardly cares what's being said, though the message is usually, as here, a powerful and soul-searching one. Seneca lived in the Rome of the first century AD and served under emperor Nero as a kind of chief minister, even while composing works of Stoic philosophy.  The riddle of a committed moralist who abetted an immoral regime has fascinated readers for centuries, and ultimately cannot be solved except with reference to the paradoxes and contradictions of of human nature.  In the work from which this quote comes, "On the Shortness of Life," Seneca inveighs against those who waste their time on business and legal dealings, yet he certainly gave much of his own time to such occupations during his political career.  Many have accused him of hypocrisy, but when he writes as passionately as he does here, with the intensity of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, one wants to believe he's sincere. Death was a constant preoccupation for Seneca, as seen in this quote.  "We are dying every day," he said at two different points in his surviving writings (of which there are a vast number).  That is, our life is a journey toward death, from the moment we're born.  If we truly understood that, we wouldn't waste precious hours on meaningless things -- in modern terms, scrolling through social media or channel surfing.  "Life's too short" is an expression we use but we don't really grasp the problem it represents.  Life's not short in itself, writes Seneca in "On the Shortness of Life," but we make it so by the way that we live.  If we lived to the fullest at all times, we would lengthen our lives and even enjoy a kind of immortality.  His essay, retitled in my translation as "How to Have a Life," teaches us how to achieve this. Seneca addressed his essay to his father-in-law, Pompeius Paulinus, who was serving Rome as praefectus annonae, the official in charge of managing Rome's grain supply.  Though the essay is meant to reach a wide readership, he deals at one point with Paulinus's circumstances in very specific terms. How can you think about whether mice are getting into the silos, he asks, when you could be contemplating the motions of stars, the origins of the cosmos, the fate of the soul after death?  It's a wonderful passage that reminds us how we're surrounded by dross if we don't lift our minds toward the heavens.  Unfortunately Seneca never deals with the problem that mice may very well destroy the grain supply if everyone has their eyes on the Milky Way. I've translated four small volumes of selections from Seneca and have one more in the works.  In spending time with his essays I feel I'm following his most urgent advice in "On the Shortness of Life:"  "Those who make time for wisdom are the only ones truly alive," he writes there; "they not only attend to their own lifespan but add every age to their own."  That's a powerful incentive to read more Seneca.For more information about Seneca:How to Have a Life: An Ancient Guide to Using Our Time Wisely: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691219127/how-to-have-a-lifeJames Romm: http://www.jamesromm.com/books“Seneca”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/seneca/“The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long”: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/09/01/seneca-on-the-shortness-of-life/“Such a Stoic”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/stoic-2

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Sir Peter Brook, (born March 21, 1925, London, Eng.—died July 2, 2022, Paris, France), British director and producer. After directing plays in Stratford-upon-Avon, he became director of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden (1947–50). He later directed several innovative Shakespearean productions that aroused controversy, including his 1962 staging of King Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Co. During his long association with that company, he directed such other critically acclaimed productions as A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970). Brook won international fame with his avant-garde direction of Peter Weiss's play Marat/Sade (1964). His films include Lord of the Flies (1963), King Lear (1970), and the six-hour Mahabharata(1989). In 1970 he moved to Paris, where he cofounded the International Centre for Theatre Research. Brook continued to work into the early 21st century.From https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Brook. For more information about Peter Brook:The Quality of Mercy: Reflections on Shakespeare: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-quality-of-mercy-peter-brook/1114335100“Peter Brook, Celebrated Stage Director of Scale and Humanity, Dies at 97”: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/03/obituaries/peter-brook-dead.html“For Peter Brook, the Experimental Showman, ‘Nothing Is Ever Finished'”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/theater/peter-brook-interview.html“Peter Brook: ‘To give way to despair is the ultimate cop-out'”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/theater/peter-brook-interview.html

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Milan Kundera is the author of the novels The Joke, Farewell Waltz, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short-story collection Laughable Loves—all originally written in Czech. His most recent novels Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.From https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/milan-kundera-20154134342990. For more information about Milan Kundera:The Unbearable Lightness of Being: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-milan-kundera?variant=32131838115874“Milan Kundera, The Art of Fiction No. 81”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2977/the-art-of-fiction-no-81-milan-kundera“A Talk With Milan Kundera”: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/19/magazine/a-talk-with-milan-kundera.html“Why Read Milan Kundera?”: ​​https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/04/16/milan-kundera

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Albert Camus, (born Nov. 7, 1913, Mondovi, Alg.—died Jan. 4, 1960, near Sens, France), was an Algerian-French novelist, essayist, and playwright. Born into a working-class family, Camus graduated from the university in Algiers and then worked with a theatrical company, becoming associated with leftist causes. He spent the war years in Paris, and the French Resistance brought him into the circle of Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism. He became a leading literary figure with his enigmatic first novel, The Stranger (1942), a study of 20th-century alienation, and the philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), an analysis of contemporary nihilism and the concept of the absurd. The Plague (1947), his allegorical second novel, and “The Rebel” (1951), another long essay, developed related issues. Other major works include the short-story collection Exile and the Kingdom (1957) and the posthumous autobiographical novel The First Man (1994). His plays include Le Malentendu (1944) and Caligula(1944). Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He died in a car accident.From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Albert-Camus. For more information about Albert Camus:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Abraham Verghese about Camus, at 26:45: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-071-abraham-vergheseEdwidge Danticat about Camus, at 11:30: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-018-edwidge-danticatVictor Brombert about Camus, at 11:30: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-034-victor-brombertNathalie Etoke about Camus, at 04:50: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-176-nathalie-etokeThe Fall: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fall-albert-camus/1100012266“Albert Camus”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/“Camus and the Political Tests of a Pandemic”: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/camus-and-the-political-tests-of-a-pandemic“On Translating Camus”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/nov/28/translating-camus-the-outsider-sandra-smith

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate.  She is also president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation's largest funder in the arts, culture, and humanities.Dr. Alexander's most recent book, The Trayvon Generation (2022), is a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America's unresolved problem with race and the challenges facing young Black America.  Among the fifteen books she has authored or co-authored, her poetry collection American Sublime was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006, and her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015.  Other works include Crave Radiance:  New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (2010), Power and Possibility:  Essays, Reviews, Interviews (2007), The Black Interior:  Essays (2004), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990). Over the course of an esteemed career in education, Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for fifteen years and chaired the African American Studies Department.  She has been awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the George Kent Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry.  Notably, Dr. Alexander composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.  Dr. Alexander is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund.From http://www.elizabethalexander.net/about. For more information about Elizabeth Alexander:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Elizabeth Alexander: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-062-elizabeth-alexander“Elizabeth Alexander”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elizabeth-alexander“Elizabeth Alexander: The Desire to Know Each Other”: https://onbeing.org/programs/desire-know-elizabeth-alexander-2/The Trayvon Generation: https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/titles/elizabeth-alexander/the-trayvon-generation/9781538737903/“Elizabeth Alexander: ‘We Can Never Give Up Hope'”: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/elizabeth-alexander-trayvon-generation-interview/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Anne Carson was born in Toronto, Ontario on June 21, 1950. With the help of a high school Latin instructor, she learned ancient Greek, which contributed to her continuing interest in classical and Hellenic literature. She attended St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto and, despite leaving twice, received her BA in 1974, her MA in 1975 and her PhD in 1981. She also studied Greek metrics for a year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.Since bursting onto the international poetry scene in 1987 with her long poem “Kinds of Water," Carson has published numerous books of poetry, including Float (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016); Red Doc> (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013); The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry;Autobiography of Red (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); and Short Talks (Brick Books, 1992). Also a Classics scholar, Carson is the translator ofElectra (Oxford University Press, 2001), If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Knopf, 2002), and An Oresteia (Faber and Faber, 2009), among others. She is also the author of Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton University Press, 1986).Her awards and honors include the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur Fellowship. She was also the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. Carson was the Director of Graduate Studies in Classics at McGill University and taught at Princeton University from 1980-1987. She has also taught classical languages and literature at Emory University, California College of the Arts, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. She currently teaches in New York University's creative writing program.From https://poets.org/poet/anne-carson. For more information about Anne Carson:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Simon Critchley on Carson, at 12:15: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-008-simon-critchleyDecreation: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/24644/decreation-by-anne-carson/“Anne Carson”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-carson“Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry No. 88”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5420/the-art-of-poetry-no-88-anne-carson“Anne Carson Punches a Hole Through Greek Myth”: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/anne-carson-punches-a-hole-through-greek-myth

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Harold Pinter, (born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 2008, London), British playwright. Born into a working-class family, he acted with touring companies until 1959. His early one-act plays were followed by the full-length The Birthday Party (1958). His next major plays, The Caretaker (1960) and The Homecoming (1965), established his reputation as an innovative and complex dramatist, sometimes considered as belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd. He often used disjointed small talk and lengthy pauses in dialogue to convey a character's thought, which often contradicts his speech. Pinter's later plays include Old Times (1971), No Man's Land (1975), Betrayal (1978; film, 1983), Mountain Language (1988), Moonlight(1993), and Celebration (2000). He also wrote radio and television plays, as well as screenplays for The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman(1981), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), and Sleuth(2007). In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Harold-Pinter. For more information about Harold Pinter:“Harold Pinter: Nobel Lecture”: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/lecture/“Harold Pinter, Playwright of the Pause, Dies at 78”: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html“Harold Pinter, The Art of Theater No. 3”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4351/the-art-of-theater-no-3-harold-pinter“Front Row, Harold Pinter”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gy71c

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Marcus Aurelius , in full Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustusorig. Marcus Annius Verus, (born April 26, AD 121, Rome—died March 17, 180, Vindobona [Vienna] or Sirmium, Pannonia), was a Roman emperor (161–180). He was born into a wealthy and prominent family. Hadrian arranged that Marcus and Lucius Verus be adopted by the designated future emperor Antoninus Pius, who dutifully groomed Marcus as his heir. On his accession, Marcus nevertheless shared power with his adoptive brother as coemperor, though he himself remained the more dominant. His reign was marked by numerous military crises, all the major frontiers being threatened by invasion. Struggles against the Parthians (162–166) were successful, but returning troops brought a devastating plague to Rome. With a concurrent German invasion, Roman morale declined; the Germans were repulsed, but Verus died during the campaign (169). Marcus made his son Commodus coemperor in 177. Though a man of gentle character and wide learning, Marcus opposed Christianity and supported persecution of its adherents. His Meditations on Stoicism, considered one of the great books of all times, gives a full picture of his religious and moral values. His reign is often thought to mark the Golden Age of Rome.From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Marcus-Aurelius-Roman-emperor. For more information about Marcus Aurelius:Meditations: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6367/meditations-by-marcus-aurelius/“Marcus Aurelius”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/A Companion to Marcus Aurelius: https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/A+Companion+to+Marcus+Aurelius-p-9781405192859

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collections Tap Out (Mariner, 2019), a NYT New & Noteworthy pick, and Fixer, forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins in August 2023.His writing has been supported by fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Vanderbilt University, where he earned his MFA, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow.His poems appear widely, including in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.From https://www.edgarkunz.com. For more information about Edgar Kunz:“Piano”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/07/pianoTap Out: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781328518125“Conversations with Contributors: Edgar Kunz”: https://theadroitjournal.org/2020/04/20/conversations-with-contributors-edgar-kunz/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!J. A. Baker was a native of Essex, England. He wrote The Peregrine and The Hill of Summer. J. A. Baker was born on August 6, 1926, and died on December 26, 1987.From https://www.nyrb.com/collections/j-a-baker. For more information about J. A. Baker:The Peregrine: https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-peregrine?variant=1094932429“Werner Herzog on the Books Every Filmmaker Should Read”: https://lithub.com/werner-herzog-on-the-books-every-filmmaker-should-read/“Robert Macfarlane: ‘I Wanted the Reader to Undertake a Descent into the Darkness.'”: https://lithub.com/robert-macfarlane-i-wanted-the-reader-to-undertake-a-descent-into-the-darkness/“Legendary Werner Herzog talks books with author Robert Pogue Harrison”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MncnB-kofRo“The secret life behind the writer of England's greatest cult book”: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-secret-life-behind-the-writer-of-england-s-greatest-cult-book-1.3333957My House of Sky: The Life of J. A. Baker: https://www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/little-toller/my-house-of-sky-hetty-saunders/"Time Out: The Beauty of J. A. Baker's 'The Peregrine'": https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-beauty-of-j-a-bakers-the-peregrine

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in the town of Parral in southern Chile on July 12, 1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. In 1923, he sold all of his possessions to finance the publication of his first book, Crepusculario (“Twilight”). He published the volume under the pseudonym “Pablo Neruda” to avoid conflict with his family, who disapproved of his occupation. The following year, he found a publisher for Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (“Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair”). The book made a celebrity of Neruda, who gave up his studies at the age of twenty to devote himself to his craft.In 1927, Neruda began his long career as a diplomat in the Latin American tradition of honoring poets with diplomatic assignments. After serving as honorary consul in Burma, Neruda was named Chilean consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1933. While there, he began a friendship with the visiting Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. After transferring to Madrid later that year, Neruda also met Spanish writer Manuel Altolaguirre. Together, the two men founded a literary review called Caballo verde para la poesîa in 1935. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 interrupted Neruda's poetic and political development. He chronicled the horrendous years which included the execution of García Lorca in Espana en el corazon (1937), published from the war front. Neruda's outspoken sympathy for the loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War led to his recall from Madrid in 1937. He then moved to Paris and helped settle Spanish republican refugees in Chile.Neruda returned to Chile in 1938 where he renewed his political activity and wrote prolifically. Named Chilean Consul to Mexico in 1939, Neruda left Chile again for four years. Upon returning to Chile in 1943, he was elected to the Senate and joined the Communist Party. When the Chilean government moved to the right, they declared communism illegal and expelled Neruda from the Senate. He went into hiding. During those years he wrote and published Canto general (1950).In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile and married Matilde Urrutia, his third wife (his first two marriages, to Maria Antonieta Haagenar Vogelzang and Delia del Carril, both ended in divorce). For the next twenty-one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as the people's poet. During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.Diagnosed with cancer while serving a two-year term as ambassador to France, Neruda resigned his position, ending his diplomatic career. On September 23, 1973, just twelve days after the defeat of Chile's democratic regime, the man widely regarded as the greatest Latin American poet since Darío died in Santiago, Chile. From https://poets.org/poet/pablo-neruda. For more information about Pablo Neruda:“Pablo Neruda”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pablo-neruda“Pablo Neruda”: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1971/neruda/lecture/The Poetry of Pablo Neruda: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/poetry-of-pablo-neruda-pablo-neruda/1100338669

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) is one of the best-loved authors of popular fiction of her generation. Her novels established her as a master storyteller, but she also wrote plays, short stories and biographies. Haunting and atmospheric, her work occupies a unique place in 20th century literature, appealing to a broad audience yet worthy of literary merit. Daphne du Maurier's first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931 to critical acclaim. She married Major Frederick Arthur Montague ('Boy') Browning in 1932 and had her first daughter, Tessa, in 1933. Her frank biography of her father, Gerald: A Portrait (1934) shocked some of her father's admirers but also gained her recognition as a talented writer. In 1936, publication of Jamaica Inn propelled her to the top of the best-seller lists. An unhappy period in Egypt as an army wife gave rise to Daphne du Maurier's best-known novel, Rebecca (1938). An intense study of female jealousy, Rebecca was made into a successful film in 1940, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Frenchman's Creek (1941) and Hungry Hill (1943) followed, both of which were also made into successful films. She had another daughter, Flavia, in 1937, and a son, Christian, in 1940, and while her husband was away at war, she moved back to Cornwall with the children to live in 'Menabilly', a house which she had loved since her early 20s. During and after the war, the du Mauriers' marriage became strained. This prompted her to write a play, The Years Between (performed in 1944), which explored the effects of war on marriage. My Cousin Rachel (1951) was followed by two collections of short stories, The Apple Tree (1952) and The Breaking Point(1959); the latter was also influenced by her psychological stress. The Scapegoat (1957), a novel exploring themes of stolen identity and the self, is appreciated by critics as a more serious work, though at the time it was pigeonholed as another of her romantic thrillers. In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock's film version of her short story The Birds, was released and became a cult classic. The death of her husband, in 1965, affected Daphne du Maurier profoundly and her unease was compounded by a growing sense that her imaginative talent was waning. Unable to renew the lease on her treasured home, Menabilly, she moved to Kilmarth, in Par, where she wrote the well-received The House on the Strand in 1969, the same year that she was made a DBE. She subsequently entered into a period of creative and personal decline, culminating with a nervous breakdown in 1981. She died at home in Cornwall in 1989 at the age of 81.From https://www.bl.uk/people/daphne-du-maurier. For more information about Daphne du Maurier:Rebecca: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rebecca-daphne-du-maurier/1100182387?ean=9780380730407“In Praise of Daphne du Maurier”: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/books/daphne-du-maurier-enthusiast.html“Daphne du Maurier: In Rebecca's Footsteps”: ​​https://player.pbs.org/widget/partnerplayer/3051784528/?callsign=WLIW“Sex, jealousy, and gender: Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca 80 years on”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/23/olivia-laing-on-daphne-du-mauriers-rebecca-80-years-on

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Quentin Tarantino, in full Quentin Jerome Tarantino, (born March 27, 1963, Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.), is an American director and screenwriter whose films are noted for their stylized violence, razor-sharp dialogue, and fascination with film and pop culture.Tarantino worked in a video store in California before selling two screenplays that became True Romance (1993) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). In 1992 he made his directing debut with Reservoir Dogs, a violent film about a failed jewelry store robbery. Two years later he established himself as a leading director with Pulp Fiction. The provocative film, which featured intersecting crime stories, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, and Tarantino later received (with Roger Avary) an Academy Award for best original screenplay. For Jackie Brown (1997), he adapted an Elmore Leonard novel about a flight attendant entangled in criminal activities.Tarantino worked in a video store in California before selling two screenplays that became True Romance (1993) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). In 1992 he made his directing debut with Reservoir Dogs, a violent film about a failed jewelry store robbery. Two years later he established himself as a leading director with Pulp Fiction. The provocative film, which featured intersecting crime stories, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, and Tarantino later received (with Roger Avary) an Academy Award for best original screenplay. For Jackie Brown (1997), he adapted an Elmore Leonard novel about a flight attendant entangled in criminal activities. In addition to writing and directing, Tarantino also worked as an actor and producer. From https://www.britannica.com/biography/Quentin-Tarantino.  For more information about Quentin Tarantino: “Quentin Tarantino”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3712013.stm “In Conversation: Quentin Tarantino”: https://www.vulture.com/2015/08/quentin-tarantino-lane-brown-in-conversation.html “Quentin Tarantino: from the screen to the page”: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/quentin-tarantino-from-the-screen-to-the-page/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Alfred Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, England on August 13, 1899. He was the youngest of three children born to William and Emma Jane Hitchcock. After attending a technical school at 15, Hitchcock spent the first years of his career as a draftsman, advertising designer, and writer. An interest in photography led to him working in London's film industry, first as a title card designer for silent movies and, just five years later, as a director.In 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director, Alma Reville, and in 1928 they had a daughter, Patricia. Hitchcock quickly gained notoriety as a director who delivered suspense, twist endings, and dark subject matter. His own personality and gallows humor were embedded in popular culture through interviews, film trailers, and cameo appearances in his own films. He was popular with audiences at home and abroad, and in 1939 the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood. In the three decades that followed he would cement his legacy by directing and producing his most successful and enduring works. His television anthology, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, ran from 1955 to 1965 and made him a household name.During his career, he created over fifty feature films in a career that saw not only the development of Hitchcock's own distinctive directorial style, but also landmark innovations in cinema. In 1929, Blackmail was his first feature film with sound and in 1948, his first colour film was Rope. Hitchcock himself has been credited with pioneering many camera and editing techniques for peers and aspiring directors to emulate.Hitchcock collected many professional accolades including two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, and five lifetime achievement awards. He was a five-time Academy Award nominee for Best Director and in 1940, his film Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture. In 1980, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. A husband, father, director, and the Master of Suspense, Sir Alfred Hitchcock passed away on April 29, 1980.From http://www.alfredhitchcock.com/life-and-legacy/biography/. For more information about Alfred Hitchcock:“Alfred Hitchcock”: https://www.oscars.org/collection-highlights/alfred-hitchcock/?“Never Given a Close Look to Hitchcock? Start Here”: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/movies/alfred-hitchcock-rope.html“Alfred Hitchcock Papers”: https://digitalcollections.oscars.org/digital/collection/p15759coll7

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Only a handful of details are known about the life of Sappho. She was born around 615 B.C. to an aristocratic family on the Greek island of Lesbos. Evidence suggests that she had several brothers, married a wealthy man named Cercylas, and had a daughter named Cleis. She spent most of her adult life in the city of Mytilene on Lesbos where she ran an academy for unmarried young women. Sappho's school devoted itself to the cult of Aphrodite and Eros, and Sappho earned great prominence as a dedicated teacher and poet. A legend from Ovid suggests that she threw herself from a cliff when her heart was broken by Phaon, a young sailor, and died at an early age. Other historians posit that she died of old age around 550 B.C.The history of her poems is as speculative as that of her biography. She was known in antiquity as a great poet: Plato called her "the tenth Muse" and her likeness appeared on coins. It is unclear whether she invented or simply refined the meter of her day, but today it is known as "Sapphic" meter. Her poems were first collected into nine volumes around the third century B.C., but her work was lost almost entirely for many years. Merely one twenty-eight-line poem of hers has survived intact, and she was known principally through quotations found in the works of other authors until the nineteenth century. In 1898 scholars unearthed papyri that contained fragments of her poems. In 1914 in Egypt, archeologists discovered papier-mâché coffins made from scraps of paper that contained more verse fragments attributed to Sappho.Three centuries after her death the writers of the New Comedy parodied Sappho as both overly promiscuous and lesbian. This characterization held fast, so much so that the very term "lesbian" is derived from the name of her home island. Her reputation for licentiousness would cause Pope Gregory to burn her work in 1073. Because social norms in ancient Greece differed from those of today and because so little is actually known of her life, it is difficult to unequivocally answer such claims. Her poems about Eros, however, speak with equal force to men as well as to women.Sappho is not only one of the few women poets we know of from antiquity, but also is one of the greatest lyric poets from any age. Most of her poems were meant to be sung by one person to the accompaniment of the lyre (hence the name, "lyric" poetry). Rather than addressing the gods or recounting epic narratives such as those of Homer, Sappho's verses speak from one individual to another. They speak simply and directly to the "bittersweet" difficulties of love. Many critics and readers alike have responded to the personal tone and urgency of her verses, and an abundance of translations of her fragments are available today.From https://poets.org/poet/sappho. For more information about Sappho:“Sappho Fragment 16”: https://thebookbindersdaughter.com/2019/03/02/sappho-fragment-16/“Sappho”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sappho“Who Was Sappho?”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) was the Newbery Medal-winning author of more than 60 books, including the much-loved A Wrinkle in Time. Born in 1918, L'Engle grew up in New York City, Switzerland, South Carolina and Massachusetts. Her father was a reporter and her mother had studied to be a pianist, and their house was always full of musicians and theater people. L'Engle graduated cum laude from Smith College, then returned to New York to work in the theater. While touring with a play, she wrote her first book, The Small Rain, originally published in 1945. She met her future husband, Hugh Franklin, when they both appeared in The Cherry Orchard. Upon becoming Mrs. Franklin, L'Engle gave up the stage in favor of the typewriter. In the years her three children were growing up, she wrote four more novels. Hugh Franklin temporarily retired from the theater, and the family moved to western Connecticut and for ten years ran a general store. Her book Meet the Austins, an American Library Association Notable Children's Book of 1960, was based on this experience. Her science fantasy classic A Wrinkle in Time was awarded the 1963 Newbery Medal. Two companion novels, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet (a Newbery Honor book), complete what has come to be known as The Time Trilogy, a series that continues to grow in popularity with a new generation of readers. Her 1980 book A Ring of Endless Light won the Newbery Honor. L'Engle passed away in 2007 in Litchfield, Connecticut.From https://us.macmillan.com/author/madeleinelengle. For more information about Madeleine L'Engle:“New York Day by Day; Author to Readers”: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/25/nyregion/new-york-day-by-day-author-to-readers.html“Meet Madeleine L'Engle”: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/literary-arts/meet-madeleine-lengle/“Madeleine L'Engle's Inventions”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/04/12/the-storyteller-cynthia-zarin

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Born in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1942, Schjeldahl was a college dropout who fell into journalism with a job at the Jersey Journal in Jersey City at the age of 20. He spent a year in New York, befriending the poet Frank O'Hara, who was part of the New York School of experimental painters and writers.Schjeldahl once planned a biography of O'Hara, who died young in a dune buggy accident in 1966, but never completed it. The surviving interview tapes became the basis for the book Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me, a 2022 memoir by Schjeldahl and Alderson's daughter, Ada Calhoun, exploring her complex relationship with her father. After a year in Paris, Schjeldahl returned to New York, in 1965, “an ambitious poet, a jobber in journalism, and a tyro art nut,” as he put it earlier this year. Though he had no background in criticism, Thomas B. Hess hired Schjeldahl to write reviews for ARTnews, kickstarting one of the field's most storied careers.“I thought it was normal for poets to write art criticism. So I started doing that, and people liked what I did,” he told Interview magazine in 2014. Over the course of his nearly 60 years in the business, Schjeldahl won numerous accolades for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, and the Howard Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2009, the New York Review of Books called him “our best—our most perspicacious and wittiest—art critic.”From https://news.artnet.com/art-world/peter-schjeldahl-has-died-80-2197014. For more information about Peter Schjeldahl:“The New Life”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=31358“The Art of Dying”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/the-art-of-dying“Remembering Peter Schjeldahl”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/postscript/10/31/remembering-peter-schjeldahl-a-consummate-critic“Peter Schjeldahl, New York Art Critic With a Poet's Voice, Dies at 80”: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/nyregion/peter-schjeldahl-dead.html“The Thrilling Mind of Wallace Stevens”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-thrilling-mind-of-wallace-stevens

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Walter Pater, in full Walter Horatio Pater, (born August 4, 1839, Shadwell, London, England—died July 30, 1894, Oxford, Oxfordshire), was an English critic, essayist, and humanist whose advocacy of “art for art's sake” became a cardinal doctrine of the movement known as Aestheticism. Pater was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Queen's College, Oxford, where he studied Greek philosophy under Benjamin Jowett. He then settled in Oxford and read with private pupils. In 1864 he was elected to a fellowship at Brasenose College. Pater's early intention to enter the church gave way at this time to a consuming interest in classical studies. Pater then began to write for the reviews, and his essays on Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and others were collected in 1873 as Studies in the History of the Renaissance (later called simply The Renaissance). His delicate, fastidious style and sensitive appreciation of Renaissance art in these essays made his reputation as a scholar and an aesthete, and he became the centre of a small group of admirers in Oxford. In the concluding essay in The Renaissance, Pater asserted that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it acknowledges neither moral standards nor utilitarian functions in its reason for being. These views brought Pater into an association with Algernon Charles Swinburne and with the Pre-Raphaelites.Marius the Epicurean (1885) is his most substantial work. It is a philosophical romance in which Pater's ideal of an aesthetic and religious life is scrupulously and elaborately set forth. The setting is Rome in the time of Marcus Aurelius; but this is a thin disguise for the characteristically late-19th-century spiritual development of its main character. Imaginary Portraits (1887) are shorter pieces of philosophical fiction in the same mode. Appreciations (1889) is a return to the critical essay, this time largely on English subjects. In 1893 came Plato and Platonism, giving an extremely literary view of Plato and neglecting the logical and dialectical side of his philosophy. Pater's Greek Studies (1895), Miscellaneous Studies (1895), and Essays from The Guardian (privately printed, 1896; 1901) were published posthumously. Also published posthumously was his unfinished romance, Gaston de Latour (1896).The primary influence on Pater's mind was his classical studies, coloured by a highly individual view of Christian devotion and pursued largely as a source of extremely refined artistic sensations. In his later critical writings Pater continued to focus on the innate qualities of works of art, in contrast to the prevailing tendency to evaluate them on the basis of their moral and educational value. Pater's early influence was confined to a small circle in Oxford, but he came to have a widespread effect on the next literary generation. Oscar Wilde, George Moore, and the aesthetes of the 1890s were among his followers and show obvious and continual traces both of his style and of his ideas.From https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Pater. For more information about Walter Pater:The Renaissance: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520036642/the-renaissance“Art vs. aestheticism: the case of Walter Pater”: https://newcriterion.com/issues/1995/5/art-vs-aestheticism-the-case-of-walter-paterThe Renaissance: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2398/2398-h/2398-h.htm“Walter Pater”: https://campuspress.yale.edu/modernismlab/walter-pater/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!American poet, essayist, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts. After studying at Harvard and teaching for a brief time, Emerson entered the ministry. He was appointed to the Old Second Church in his native city, but soon became an unwilling preacher. Unable in conscience to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper after the death of his nineteen-year-old wife of tuberculosis, Emerson resigned his pastorate in 1831.The following year, he sailed for Europe, visiting Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Carlyle, the Scottish-born English writer, was famous for his explosive attacks on hypocrisy and materialism, his distrust of democracy, and his highly romantic belief in the power of the individual. Emerson's friendship with Carlyle was both lasting and significant; the insights of the British thinker helped Emerson formulate his own philosophy. On his return to New England, Emerson became known for challenging traditional thought. In 1835, he married his second wife, Lydia Jackson, and settled in Concord, Massachusetts. Known in the local literary circle as "The Sage of Concord," Emerson became the chief spokesman for Transcendentalism, the American philosophic and literary movement. Centered in New England during the 19th century, Transcendentalism was a reaction against scientific rationalism.Emerson's first book, Nature (1836), is perhaps the best expression of his Transcendentalism, the belief that everything in our world—even a drop of dew—is a microcosm of the universe. His concept of the Over-Soul—a Supreme Mind that every man and woman share—allowed Transcendentalists to disregard external authority and to rely instead on direct experience. "Trust thyself," Emerson's motto, became the code of Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and W. E. Channing. From 1842 to 1844, Emerson edited the Transcendentalist journal, The Dial. Emerson wrote a poetic prose, ordering his essays by recurring themes and images. His poetry, on the other hand, is often called harsh and didactic. Among Emerson's most well known works are Essays, First and Second Series (1841, 1844). The First Series includes Emerson's famous essay, "Self-Reliance," in which the writer instructs his listener to examine his relationship with Nature and God, and to trust his own judgment above all others.Emerson's other volumes include Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860), and English Traits (1865). His best-known addresses are The American Scholar (1837) and The Divinity School Address, which he delivered before the graduates of the Harvard Divinity School, shocking Boston's conservative clergymen with his descriptions of the divinity of man and the humanity of Jesus. Emerson's philosophy is characterized by its reliance on intuition as the only way to comprehend reality, and his concepts owe much to the works of Plotinus, Swedenborg, and Böhme. A believer in the "divine sufficiency of the individual," Emerson was a steady optimist. His refusal to grant the existence of evil caused Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James, Sr., among others, to doubt his judgment. In spite of their skepticism, Emerson's beliefs are of central importance in the history of American culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson died of pneumonia on April 27, 1882.From https://poets.org/poet/ralph-waldo-emerson. For more information about Ralph Waldo Emerson:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., about Emerson, at 21:55: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-104-eddie-s-glaude-jrSamantha Rose Hill about Emerson, at 17:05: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-171-samantha-rose-hill“Ralph Waldo Emerson”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ralph-waldo-emerson“Ralph Waldo Emerson”: https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/mayjune/feature/ralph-waldo-emerson“Ralph Waldo Emerson”: ​​https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Though poet and essayist Mary Ruefle was born outside Pittsburgh, she spent her youth moving around the United States and Europe with her military family. She has published over a dozen books of poetry, including Dunce (2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, My Private Property (2016), Indeed I Was Pleased with the World (2007), and The Adamant (1989), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) and the work of fiction The Most of It (2008). A Little White Shadow (2006), her book of erasures—found texts in which all but a few words have been erased from the page—reveals what Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called “haiku-like minifables, sideways aphorisms, and hauntingly perplexing koans.” Ruefle's erasures are available to view on her website; a full-color facsimile of her erasure Incarnation of Now was published in a limited edition by See Double Press.Ruefle's free-verse poetry is at once funny and dark, domestic and wild. Reviewing Post Meridian (2000), critic Lisa Beskin of the Boston Review observed, “Like John Ashbery and James Tate, Mary Ruefle investigates the multiplicities and frailties of being with an associative inventiveness and a lightness of touch; the purposefulness of her enquiry never eclipses the remarkable beauty of her work.”Ruefle earned a BA from Bennington College. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Gugg