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Claire Harman
JANE'S FAME: HOW JANE AUSTEN CONQUERED THE WORLD
(Henry Holt 2010)
Tuesday, March 2, 7PM
“Wonderful . . . not only scholarly but indecently entertaining . . . her prose rings with good sense, affection, and humor.”—Daily Mail
Mention Jane Austen and you’ll likely incite a slew of fervent opinions from anyone within earshot. Regarded as a brilliant social satirist by scholars, Austen also enjoys the sort of popular affection usually reserved for girl-next-door movie stars, leading to the paradox of an academically revered author who has served as the inspiration for modern blockbusters. Almost two hundred years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, and the current flare in the cultural zeitgeist echoes the continuous revival of her works, from the time of original publication through the twentieth century. In Jane’s Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography—of both the author and her lasting cultural influence—making this essential reading for anyone interested in Austen’s life, works, and remarkably potent fame.
Enrique Enriquez
THE JEAN DODAL TAROT
Wednesday, March 10, 7PM
In 1973, Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a novel in which characters who cannot speak to each other recount their tales using tarot cards. The book is divided in two sections, each of them referring to a different tarot deck. The first half of the book, the ‘Castle’, is based on the Visconti Sforza tarot. The second half, called the ‘Tavern’, is based on the Marseilles tarot. In a volume that sets out to explore how narratives are created, Calvino again demonstrates his talent for depicting haunted, fantastic landscapes.
On the occasion of the re-edition of the Jean Dodal tarot, the second-oldest Marseilles tarot known, Enrique Enriquez will be re-enacting Calvino’s feat, turning 192 Books into a Bookshop of Crossed Destinies. After reading a few passages from Calvino’s book, guests will be encouraged to tell their tales using tarot cards. Working as the narrator, Enriquez will put these tales into words.
Enrique Enriquez is a tarot reader who explores the connections between medieval draftsmanship and current cognitive science. His interest focus on the dynamics of meaning-making and on our ontological need for fictions to map our reality. His interest in the tarot as a poetic device has been greatly stimulated by Calvino’s “Castle of Crossed Destinies.”
Howard Mosher
WALKING TO GATLINBURG
(Random House 2010)
Tuesday, March 16, 7PM
A stunning and lyrical Civil War thriller, Walking to Gatlinburg is a spellbinding story of survival, wilderness adventure, mystery, and love in the time of war.
Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted. The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army. But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession. It’s 1864, and the country is in the grip of the bloodiest war in American history.
Howard Mosher is the author of ten books. A recipient of the Literature Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Mosher lives in Vermont.
Fernanda Eberstadt
RAT
(Knopf 2010)
Wednesday, April 7, 7PM
In Rat, Fernanda Eberstadt creates a powerful modern legend in which a drug dealer can be a fairy godmother and the handsome prince may turn out to be your father. Fifteen-year-old Celia Bonnet, aka Rat, lives with her mother, Vanessa, in the Pyrenees, where they survive on what they can scavenge and sell at local markets. Eberstadt invokes the heroines of Charlotte Brontë and Cynthia Voigt to create Rat, who moves forward out of grim determination to protect her abused brother. Amid the thorns and crumb trails is a portrait of a childhood lived freely, the dangers weighed against its potential for adventure.
Sam Lipsyte
THE ASK
(FSG 2010)
Thursday, April 15, 7PM
Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has “not been developing”: after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor—a major “ask”—who mysteriously, has requested Milo’s involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo’s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the “give” won’t come cheap. Probing many themes—or, perhaps, anxieties—including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, The Ask is a burst of genius by a young American master who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.
Annie Cohen-Solal
LEO AND HIS CIRCLE
(Knopf 2010)
Wednesday, May 19, 7PM
Leo Castelli reigned for decades as America’s most influential art dealer. Leo and His Circle is the story of his astonishing life and career.
Arriving in New York in 1941, Castelli would not open a gallery until fifteen years later, at the age of fifty. But being first to exhibit the unknown Jasper Johns, Castelli emerged a tastemaker overnight and fast came to champion a virtual Who’s Who of twentieth-century masters: Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Twombly, among them.
Annie Cohen-Solal has taught at New York University and the Universities of Berlin, Jerusalem, and Paris XIII, and she writes frequently about French intellectuals and cultural policy for a variety of publications. Having served as the Cultural Counselor at the French embassy in the United States from 1989 to 1993, she is currently a Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
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Books purchased at the reading will be signed by the author!
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