Roy Miller's Blog, page 246
March 14, 2017
Tell Me What You See: The Rorschach Test and Its Inventor
It is the fortunes of this humdrum test that Damion Searls charts in his impressively thorough, if somewhat dry book. “The Inkblots” is part biography of Hermann Rorschach, psychoanalytic supersleuth, and part chronicle of the test’s afterlife in clinical practice and the popular cultural imagination.
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Rorschach, a young psychiatrist with the tousled rom-com looks of Brad Pitt, was working with deeply disturbed patients in a remote Swiss asylum during the golden years of psychoanalysis. Across the Alps, Freud was busy delving into the ids of rich Viennese housewives using an early version of talk therapy. But Rorschach speculated that in understanding the human psyche, what we see might be as important as what we say. A gifted amateur artist, he created the inkblots to see if his patients’ differing styles of perception could help parse out the differences between various pathologies.
Early results were promising. Schizophrenics responded differently to the blots than manic-depressives, and both responded differently than the people who were “normal” controls. Before long, Rorschach was using the test to diagnose psychiatric illnesses and predict personality traits, claiming that he got it wrong less than 25 percent of the time.
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Rorschach died suddenly in his mid- 30s, but his inkblots had already captured the imagination of both experts and the general public. The rest of the book charts that history.
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While most of us stare at Rorschach tests and see life reflected back at us, Searls apparently looks at life and sees Rorschach tests staring back at him. His inventory of Rorschach sightings in popular culture over the last half-century is encyclopedic. But outside of journalistic cliché, many of the examples he gives feel relatively marginal, more a series of isolated occurrences than a genuine cultural pattern.
More significant was the test’s impact on clinical practice. At its peak, the Rorschach was used an estimated million times a year, in murder trials and child custody battles, psychiatric diagnoses and college admissions and job applications.
It is only toward the end of “The Inkblots” that Searls introduces research showing that when it comes to predicting human behavior, the Rorschach performs no better than chance. Up until this point, he treats the question of whether the test actually works or not as almost an incidental one, an abstract curiosity in his cultural history.
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But this is a mistake. Psychology’s reputation has suffered body blows in recent years, with an epidemic of overclaiming among psychologists, widespread lapses in scientific rigor and the suggestion that only around a third of psychological findings across the board can actually be replicated. In this context, the question of the Rorschach’s basic validity is not an interesting aside, but fundamental to the entire story.
Searls, a journalist and translator, is a nuanced and scholarly writer, at his best dealing with philosophical abstractions. His passages on the nature of empathy, for example, are genuinely fascinating. But he is less strong on the human side of storytelling. While he goes into rigorous detail about the technicalities of the Rorschach and the infighting among psychologists, his book largely ignores the people at the sharp end, the patients and ordinary folks whose lives have sometimes been cataclysmically affected by the results of the test.
Although he refers to a couple of these “case studies” in passing in the final chapters of the book, their stories are told at a remove, as examples drawn from textbooks rather than key players in the narrative. It’s not clear that he interviewed many of these people directly (or if he did, those encounters haven’t been included in the finished text). In an insightful moment, Searls acknowledges that the Rorschach encourages experts to believe that they can speak for people better than the people can speak for themselves. But he falls into the same trap.
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Prioritizing the human beings impacted by this history would have made not only for a more readable book, but also a more responsible one. But, to belabor the Rorschach metaphor one last time, Searls should take comfort in the knowledge that any small criticisms I may have almost certainly say more about me than they do about his book.
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Mixing Food and Feminism, Bloodroot Is 40 and Still Cooking
Monday is Ms. Miriam’s day off, and she continues to spend it the way she likes: researching new techniques at home and testing them in the evening on friends who serve as both guests and guinea pigs. “I like to try maybe two or three new recipes a week,” she said.
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Many of her recent tests have focused on the transformation of vegan ingredients into simulations of dairy: whipped cream, butter, cheese and ice cream. She found that adding cocoa butter was crucial to her vanilla-black pepper ice cream’s luxurious melting sensation on the tongue.
Three years ago, a regular customer brought in a copy of Miyoko Schinner’s “Artisan Vegan Cheese” for Ms. Miriam, and it sent her down a rabbit hole of nondairy cheese-making, a pursuit she had previously dismissed.
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Now Bloodroot’s take on vegan cheeses, made from cultured nut milks, are part of a new happy-hour special, served with wine alongside an intensely flavored mushroom-walnut pâté that has been on the menu since 1984.
The best of the cheeses may be a deeply flavored Cheddar-like number with a ripe, softly alcoholic aroma, named after the writer Willa Cather. And the restaurant’s whipped coconut butter, spread on thick slices of warm, tangy house-made rye, is as pale and creamy as its dairy counterpart.
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But Ms. Miriam has already moved on to her next project: finding out how that vegan butter performs in a laminated dough, like puff pastry, so she can update even more dishes.
Ms. Furie and Ms. Miriam met in 1972. They were both, as Ms. Furie put it, “dissatisfied housewives.” And at a series of chapter meetings held by the National Organization for Women, they discovered they were not alone in their dissatisfaction.
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“You have to act on what you know,” Ms. Miriam said.
One thing they knew was that they loved to cook. They began by charging $8 for a weekly buffet for women. They cooked lavish and flavorful vegetarian food — asparagus and buttery sauce Maltaise, thali platters crammed with many kinds of dals and vegetables. For dessert they made warm poppy seed strudel, or, when there was something to celebrate, Julia Child’s absurdly rich Queen of Sheba cake.
With help from Ms. Miriam’s parents, they secured a mortgage to buy the space that would become Bloodroot, for $80,000. They had looked in nearby towns and in commercial strip malls, but were won over by the old machine shop, which also had room for a garden.
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Ms. Furie and Ms. Miriam have a love for food and joy in experimentation in the kitchen.
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Gabriela Herman for The New York Times
“Being in a working-class neighborhood is a really good thing,” said Ms. Furie, who moved to Bridgeport from Westport, “and we think it’s absolutely critical to being a human being in the world, to have an intimacy with many different ways of thinking and being.”
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When the restaurant opened in 1977, the local vegetarian scene was small, and the no-tipping policy Bloodroot adopted wasn’t yet part of the national conversation about restaurant labor. But informed by their feminism and a desire to live their values, Ms. Furie and Ms. Miriam ran their restaurant their own way.
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Ms. Furie had worked unhappily as a server. She imagined a restaurant where no one “waited” on anyone else, where customers picked up their food directly from the kitchen and cleared their own plates and silverware, a bit like at home. A sense of hospitality and warmth would come from the people in Bloodroot’s kitchen.
The women who work alongside Ms. Furie and Ms. Miriam at Bloodroot are immigrants from Brazil, Congo, Haiti and Mexico, and each helps make the menu what it is: an international miscellany.
On any given day at Bloodroot, there are tender beans cooked in clay pots, tofu pockets stuffed with grilled greens, and many kinds of soups and stews. The restaurant serves eggs, but its menu has leaned more and more vegan over the years. Queen of Sheba cake has made way for vegan banoffee pie.
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From left: whipped coconut butter on house-made rye; jerk tofu and seitan; and vegan banoffee pie.Credit
Gabriela Herman for The New York Times
Carol Graham, who comes from Jamaica, has been reporting for eight years to the long, sunlit kitchen, where a framed photo of Thelma and Louise hangs over the stove. Though she hadn’t cooked vegetarian food before arriving, it didn’t take her long to improve on Bloodroot’s jerk tofu and seitan.
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If Ms. Graham’s jerk were taken off the menu, “there would be serious complaints,” said Ms. Furie, polishing off a bowl of mushroom soup. Ms. Graham, seated across from her as she ate her own lunch, acknowledged this truth with a smile. (She will teach a class on her jerk recipe at the restaurant this Sunday.)
The restaurant got its striking, witchy name from a plant, native to the Northeast, whose white flowers start to bloom in March. Over time, its rhizomes grow deeper, connecting with others nearby, getting stronger as they form an invisible network under the ground.
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This year, Ms. Furie and Ms. Miriam want to celebrate not only their own work, but also the work of those who have grown all around them.
They have invited chefs from vegetarian restaurants in other parts of the state to cook with them in a series of dinners that began on March 5 and will end in mid-April. They include two Jamaican restaurants, Fire & Spice in Hartford and Shandals in Bridgeport, and Navaratna, a South Indian restaurant in Stamford. Claire’s Corner Copia, which opened in New Haven in 1975, will also be there.
It’s nothing like their usual birthday party, a dinner on the Wednesday closest to the spring equinox. But Ms. Furie and Ms. Miriam agreed that a 40-year anniversary called for something more extravagant.
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“It’s good to explore new things,” Ms. Miriam said.
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Ebook sales continue to fall as younger generations drive appetite for print | Books
Readers committed to physical books can give a sigh of relief, as new figures reveal that ebook sales are falling while sales of paper books are growing – and the shift is being driven by younger generations.
More than 360m books were sold in 2016 – a 2% jump in a year that saw UK consumers spend an extra 6%, or £100m, on books in print and ebook formats, according to findings by the industry research group Nielsen in its annual books and consumer survey. The data also revealed good news for bricks-and-mortar bookshops, with a 4% rise in purchases across the UK.
While sales through shops increased 7% in 2016, ebook sales declined by 4%. It is the second year in a row that ebook sales have fallen, and only the second time that annual ebook sales have done so since industry bodies began monitoring sales a decade ago.
book sales
In 2015, the Publishers Association found that digital content sales had fallen from £563m in 2014 to £554m, while physical book sales HAD increased from £2.74bn to £2.76bn. The Bookseller also discovered a similar result, finding in its own report about the five biggest general trade publishers in the UK – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – that their ebook sales collectively fell 2.4% in 2015.
The shift was attributed to the explosion in adult colouring books, as well as a year of high-profile fiction releases, including The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. “Readers take a pleasure in a physical book that does not translate well on to digital,” the Publishers Association report read.
But Nielsen’s survey of 2016 attributed the increase in print sales to children’s fiction and to younger generations preferring physical books to e-readers. A 2013 survey by the youth research agency Voxburner found that 62% of 16- to 24-year-olds preferred print books to ebooks. The most popular reason given was: “I like to hold the product.” While Nielsen found that 50% of all fiction sales were in ebook format, only 4% of children’s fiction was digital.
Steve Bohme, research director at Nielsen Book Research UK, who presented the data on Monday ahead of this year’s London book fair, said young people were using books as a break from their devices or social media. “We are seeing that books are a respite, particularly for young people who are so busy digitally,” he said.
“Over the last few years we have seen a return to favouring print, partly from what is really successful, this year being non-fiction and children’s books,” he said. While adult colouring books were popular in 2015, last year saw books about healthy cooking and the latest Harry Potter sell well – which Bohme noted are “books that tend to translate better in the print form”.
The Nielsen survey contained another first: mobile phones and tablets overtook e-readers as the most common device used to read ebooks, with readers favouring multifunctional devices over dedicated e-reader brands such as Kindle and Nook.
While ebook sales had plateaued, Bohme said it was important to remember that the figures were still higher than they were five years ago, holding a 25% share in 2016, compared with 26% in 2015 and 18% in 2012. The average ebook price increased to £7.
Bohme said ebooks sales would continue to decline in 2017, barring a new development in e-reader technology. “One thing we’ve seen is that when print sales surge, industry confidence in the print increases. If publishers are confident, they can have huge success,” he said. “If we have a couple of years of that success story, print sales will keep going up.”
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John Kerry to Write Memoir for Simon & Schuster
“This is the first opportunity I’ve had in a long time to pause and look back, with an eye toward looking forward,” John Kerry said of the coming memoir.
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Alex Brandon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After leaving the office of secretary of state in January, John Kerry has a new, slightly less stressful task ahead of him: writing his memoir.
Mr. Kerry, the former Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential nominee, has signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster, the publisher told The Associated Press on Thursday. The work, which does not yet have a title or release date, will cover his life from his childhood through his role as secretary of state.
Mr. Kerry, 73, has written several books, including the 2007 work “This Moment on Earth: Today’s New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future.” In 2004, he collaborated with the biographer Douglas Brinkley on “Tour of Duty,” a chronicle of his service in the Vietnam War, during which he earned a Silver Star and Bronze Star. Yet the memoir will be his first comprehensive account of his personal and professional life.
“This is the first opportunity I’ve had in a long time to pause and look back, with an eye toward looking forward,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “I hope we can produce a good book that captures for readers not so much my story, but some of the lessons learned along the way, including lessons learned the hard way.”
Mr. Kerry’s accomplishments as secretary of state include his work on the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear agreement.
In addition to working on his memoir, and in a move away from his lengthy career in government, Mr. Kerry will return to his alma mater, Yale University, to teach a course and hold a series of presentations called “Kerry Conversations,” the university’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs announced last month. His seminar is to start in the next academic year.
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30 Books in 30 Days: Against Everything
In the 30 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 16 announcement of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Bethanne Patrick offers an appreciation of criticism finalist Mark Greif’s Against Everything: Essays (Pantheon).
Mark Greif, with his PhD from Yale and professorship at The New School, probably read Molière decades ago—and probably has a cynical take on that Gallic author. But it is impossible to read Greif’s learned and witty collection Against Everything without at least a brief thought for the man whose protagonist in “The Misanthrope” criticizes, well, everything. But while Molière’s Alceste winds up retiring from society in a fit of pique, Greif complains, analyzes, and pokes fun at the world he continues to inhabit.
The pieces in Greif’s book derive from his work at n+1, a literary magazine he helped found and thus, it’s been very much of his generation and worldview. “Against Exercise” will warm the heart of any book-smart boys and girls who hated gym class and its ridiculous apparati (why did we play “crab soccer” on those strange little wooden rolling boards?), but it also includes truly smart observations about how our culture looks at bodies. Our way of working out “makes you acknowledge the machine operating inside yourself,” he writes.
What makes Against Everything work is that Greif is worried about the soul of that machine inside our bodies. As his cranky, contrarian, and quite funny essays roll on, we find out he’s concerned about infantilization of sex, teaching himself to rap, hating hipsters (he had me at “Hipster Primitive”), and the self-referential nature of Walden Pond. He references Emerson, Flaubert, Epicurus—but he also references the Kardashians, PowerBars, the Grateful Dead, and Occupy Wall Street. Greif might pontificate as if he wishes everything would stay the same, but he writes as if he knows it can’t. The combination, reminiscent of S.J. Perelman, is irresistible: The thinking person’s catnip.
Greif has partaken of that catnip. As he worries and wonders about what makes us tick, what makes him tick is his skin in the game. He knows what it’s like to pump iron at the gym, to be nostalgic for a local historic site, to fail (and fail better) at a new skill. His essay on Radiohead might even be a case of the latter, but who cares? As Greif has said of his endeavor: “Why not start at the point where you thought you could learn something, and see how far you could go?” He’s not ashamed to be aiming for philosophical inquiry, to believe that the smallest actions—how we eat, how we move, how we listen to music—might contribute to our communal endeavors.
Many reviews have ignored two of the essays later in the collection, one on “heroes without a war” and another about the role of police in a civilized society, and that’s a shame: These pieces demonstrate where Greif might go as a thought leader, especially if he chooses to narrow his focus from “everything” to something he’s passionate about. He argues against military historians’ views as war being the same at all times and in all places: “These commentators remember the past, but they paper over the strangeness of today.” He speaks of Mogadishu and Iraq concretely, and then progresses to real philosophy, pondering the nature of “resolution” in the face of warfare that is increasingly one-sided—and increasingly not talked about. When Greif calls for a societal discussion of what war means and what war costs, he is at his most sober and also his most persuasive. His observations on how and why police were never part of democracy when conceived—and what the lowly donut contributes to the acceptance of police as part of our democracy—will send a chill down anyone’s back.
Sometimes an author aims for philosophical inquiry and winds up writing cultural criticism. That’s more than fine; that’s entertainment, and what could be more American? Nadia Suleiman, the infamous “Octomom,” “clearly belongs to the tradition of great American wrecks.” In discussing the concept of experience, Greif notes that “You are like the traveler, back from any trip, who has to ask ‘Why didn’t I take more pictures?’” In a way, these essays are Greif’s photo album, a compendium of his many stops along the way in a journey through our culture’s mores and manners. Thankfully, Greif’s journey is nowhere near its end.
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When Marilyn Took Manhattan – The New York Times
Why read an author who’s not willing to annotate her best quotations for readers who’d like to pursue them? Would it be for Winder’s prose? (“Who was this warm-blooded space creature who lugged around dictionaries, spoke like a drugged-up puppy and looked like a French pastry?”) We do not lack for writers who have enjoyed going overboard where Monroe is concerned — although Winder mostly overlooks one of the most prominent, Norman Mailer (she says she did visit the Norman Mailer collection but doesn’t make serious use of her research).
The factoids? It’s already known, to anyone who cares, that Monroe put Vaseline on her cheekbones and sewed marbles into her costumes where her nipples should be.
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The possible errors? Did Monroe really eat “lone liver chops broiled in hotel kitchenettes”? Are there liver chops or is this just chopped liver?
The questionable names? Winder has the media tycoon “Leo Lyons” holding court at the 21 Club along with his fellow gossip columnist Earl Wilson. She’s probably talking about Leonard Lyons, and the only reason this matters is that it’s more filler in a book that’s very slight to begin with.
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The bulk of what’s here is a strangely culled, often repetitive set of anecdotes from only a few easily obtainable books that most Marilyn fans probably know about. Winder leans heavily on books by Shelley Winters, Susan Strasberg, Norman Rosten and James Haspiel, as well as filmed interviews with Amy Greene (Milton Greene’s widow) and Jack Garfein of the Actors Studio.
Garfein speaks more candidly than anyone else quoted, because he addresses the elephant in the room: How did Marilyn, during this year of childlike innocence, deal with the various men whose families she had dropped into? Not as naïvely as most of “Marilyn in Manhattan” makes it sound. Winder, perhaps mad for Marilyn, doesn’t seem to want to confront the household problems she might have created.
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Garfein describes a Marilyn who never intended to make trouble but wasn’t willing to give up flirting, either. She invited him shopping, saying she’d heard he was good at choosing women’s clothes, then dared him to hold hands with her in a coffee shop. He was wary: Marilyn could go largely unnoticed or make tabloid front pages, and it was hard to predict which would happen when. She ended up walking him home, and he “had a sense that if I wanted to invite her upstairs she probably would have come.” He went upstairs alone.
“She laughed, because she knew that there was a conflict and she was enjoying it,” Garfein said. And there was a New York ambiguity, a sense of power, that she hadn’t had in Hollywood. That’s the joy and freedom this book seems to be after, and it comes through much more clearly in Garfein’s understated anecdote than in Winder’s hot air and specious detail.
Marilyn Monroe wanted to get away from her movie stardom. She managed it for a while, though not without a cadre of protective men. Then the hiatus ended, and she went back to the movie world she hated. Thanks to New York she had become a more seasoned actress and a stronger person. But by then she was doomed anyway.
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March 13, 2017
Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Children’s Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 51
“I am wrapping this up on Valentine’s Day,” she continued, “and the most genuine, non-vase-oriented gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins.”
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Her husband, interviewed by People magazine afterward, said, “When I read her words for the first time, I was shocked at the beauty, slightly surprised at the incredible prose given her condition and, of course, emotionally ripped apart.”
Since 2005, Ms. Rosenthal has written 28 spirited children’s picture books, two quirky, poignant memoirs (“Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal,” in 2016, and an alphabetized “Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life,” in 2005); delivered TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Talks and NPR commentaries; and produced short films and YouTube videos of what she called social experiments, with titles like “ATM: Always Trust Magic,” “The Money Tree” and “The Beckoning of Lovely.”
TEDxWaterloo - Amy Krouse Rosenthal - 7 Notes on Life Video by TEDx Talks
“I tend to believe whatever you decide to look for you will find, whatever you beckon will eventually beckon you,” she told one audience.
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She beckoned her readers and viewers. In a video called “17 Things I Made” — among them were her books and even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — she welcomed fans to join her at Millennium Park in Chicago, on August 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m., to make an 18th thing. Hundreds showed up.
17 things i made Video by amy krouse rosenthal
“Amy ran at life full speed and heart first,” Maria Modugno, her editor at Random House, said in a phone interview. “Her writing was who she was.”
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She started writing ad copy after graduating from Tufts University in 1987. After nine years at Foote, Cone & Belding (now FCB), Ms. Rosenthal was on maternity leave with her two toddler sons and infant daughter at McDonald’s when she experienced what she called a “McEpiphany,” deciding to become an author.
Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal - Books for kids read aloud! Video by Storytime Station and More!
What she described as her plastic fork in the road led to countless dead ends, however, until she published “Little Pea,” about a pod denied his favorite dessert (spinach) until he finished all his candy (which he detested). The book received favorable reviews, and her course was set. Her other books included “Spoon,” “Duck! Rabbit!” and “Little Oink.” Ms. Rennert said Ms. Rosenthal had completed seven more picture books before her death, including a collaboration with her daughter, “Dear Girl.”
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In The New York Times Book Review in 2009 Bruce Handy said of her work: “For all I know, she may suffer torment upon torment in front of a blank screen, but the results read as if they were a pleasure to write.” He added, “Her books radiate fun the way tulips radiate spring: they are elegant and spirit-lifting.”
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Amy Renee Krouse was born on April 29, 1965, in Chicago to Paul Krouse and the former Ann Wolk, both publishers. Both survive her.
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Besides her husband and parents, she is survived by her sons, Justin and Miles; her daughter, Paris; her sisters, Katie Froelich and Beth Kaufmann; and her brother, Joe Krouse.
Official trailer // Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal Video by amy krouse rosenthal
“I was simply born with a fondness for letters and language and predisposed to enjoy playing around with them and it,” Ms. Rosenthal wrote in a memoir.
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In her latest memoir, published as she was dying, she wrote: “Invariably, I will have to move on before I have had enough. My first word was ‘more.’ It may very well be my last.”
But even before her diagnosis, she suggested that her energy and imagination were not boundless. Her favorite line from literature, she once said, was in Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” as spoken by the character Emily as she bids the world goodbye: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”
When she reached 40, Ms. Rosenthal began calculating how many days she had left until she turned 80.
“How many more times, then, do I get to look at a tree?” she asked. “Let’s just say it’s 12,395. Absolutely, that’s a lot, but it’s not infinite, and I’m thinking anything less than infinite is too small a number and not satisfactory. At the very least, I want to look at trees a million more times. Is that too much to ask?”
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“Full Of Irrelevant Garbage — And All The Richer For It”
“A loose, baggy monster, full of irrelevant garbage and needless words — and all the richer for it — the book implicitly makes an argument for what a twenty-first-century novel might be … In Batuman’s view, integrating the new and the familiar, the personal and the canonical, is precisely what the novel ought to do. But this integration isn’t simply an intellectual process; it’s what happens in all coming-of-age stories … As idiosyncratic Hungarians continue to materialize, it begins to feel as though Batuman is giving us an object lesson in distinguishing between the tastefully modest craft of fiction and the ungainly ambition of literature … Batuman is virtuosic in articulating the internal workings of this moment. Her compassion for the agony of those attempting to forge a connection through words is perceptive, intelligent, and funny. In The Idiot, she has heeded the rallying cry she issued in n+1: ‘Write long novels, pointless novels. Do not be ashamed to grieve about personal things. Dear young writers, write with dignity, not in guilt. How you write is how you will be read.'”
–Molly Fischer, Harper’s, March 2017
Read more of Molly’s reviews here
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Fantagraphics Has Surprise Hit in Debut ‘My Favorite Thing is Monsters’
Despite the fact that it has an unknown author, and that its initial print run was stranded at sea, the debut graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters has become a bestseller. The literary work, by Emil Ferris, was published in February 2016 by Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books; the publisher has just gone back to press for a 30,000-copy second printing, which marks the biggest second printing the house has done in its 40-year history.
The book debuted last week at #5 on the NPD BookScan graphic novel bestseller list.
Fantagraphics publicity director Jacq Cohen said the graphic novel has been a “massive success” for the independent comics publisher, which is known for releasing work by such acclaimed graphic novel authors as Dan Clowes, Lucy Knisely, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, R. Crumb and Carol Tyler .
“It’s the biggest second printing we’ve ever done,” Cohen said. “And we’ve got the orders to [justify] it.”
Originally scheduled to be published in October 2016, the graphic novel became a bit of a phenomenon after all the copies in its first print run became trapped aboard a container ship seized at the Panama Canal. By the time the books in that print run finally reached the U.S. late last year, the book's planned publication date had already passed. Fantagraphics then pushed the book's release date to February 2017.
First showcased on the graphic novel buzz panel at last year’s BEA in Chicago, the book has been praised for its rich and engaging prose, as well its meticulous drawings. The book’s popularity was originally driven by word of mouth, before a surge of media attention--with much of the coverage initially coming out of the author's native Chicago--kicked in.
Since late 2016 the book has been featured in more than 30 outlets from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine and The A.V. Club to Publishers Weekly and Forbes. Most recently, Ferris has been profiled in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian and Vulture. In an interview with Ferris set to air this week on NPR’s Fresh Air, the book was described as a “tour de force.”
“I’ve never seen a debut cartoonist get such a warm welcome from the media and the comics community. They have overwhelmingly embraced this book,” Cohen said.
Ferris is a 55-year-old first-time author and My Favorite Thing is Monsters follows a 10-year-old named Karen Reyes who is growing up in Chicago in 1967. Reyes loves monster movies and the lurid horror fanzines that celebrate them. But she has also come to realize that she is gay and sees herself as a social outcast, a monster, and that's just fine with her. But that's just the beginning of her story.
The 386-page color graphic novel was originally more than 700 pages. It was initially acquired by another publisher, which eventually decided not to publish the book. Ferris’ agent, Holly Bemiss, then placed it with Fantagraphics, which decided to split the book into two volumes in order to keep the list price ($40), and the book’s considerable production requirements, at reasonable levels.
Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth said he will publish the second and concluding volume of the book in October, with a 30,000-copy first printing. He added that Ferris is currently working on a new book.
Groth praised Ferris for her "perfectly realized vision," and described the book as the real world example of "the publishing fantasy story: a debut literary novel by unknown author embraced by critics, something that never really quite happens.”
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New Literary Agent Alert: Damian McNicholl of the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency
Reminder: New literary agents (with this spotlight featuring Damian McNicholl of The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency) are golden opportunities for new writers because each one is a literary agent who is likely building his or her client list.
About Damian: Damian McNicholl grew up in Northern Ireland and moved to the US in the early nineties. A former attorney, he is also an author whose latest novel, THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, will be published by Pegasus Books in June 2017. His critically acclaimed novel A SON CALLED GABRIEL will be republished by Pegasus in Fall 2017. Damian regards himself as an agent who likes to edit and help polish a client’s work before submission.
He is Seeking: Great nonfiction and fiction that appeals to a wide audience and makes people think, laugh and sob. In fiction, his interests are compelling novels that hit the sweet spot between literary and commercial, historical and select offbeat/quirky. Nonfiction interests include memoir, biography, investigative journalism and current events, especially cultural, legal and LGBT issues that can help lead to meaningful change in society. To see the types of books he likes, please visit Damian’s agent page.
How to Submit: For fiction and memoir, please email a succinct query to damianmcnichollvarney@gmail.com with a subject line of QUERY. Include a short synopsis of the plot (think dust jacket copy), concise bio setting forth any publishing credits and the first 15 pages in the body of the email. For all other nonfiction, please attach a proposal as a Word document that includes the first chapter and your author platform.
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