Web artifact made of solid gold CELEBRITY LECTURES SERIES from Michigan State University. Ten years worth of lectures were posted in 1998. They are all still there-- awaiting your return.
Edward Albee ,Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Pat Conroy, Jacques d'Amboise, E.L. Doctorow, Richard Ford, Carlos Fuentes, David Halberstam,
Joseph Heller,
John Irving, Judith Jamison, William Kennedy, Norman Mailer, David McCullough, Terry McMillan, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, Amy Tan,
Paul Theroux, John Updike,
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Derek Walcott, Garry Wills, August Wilson and
Tom Wolfe.
I listened to the Vonnegut lecture. Imagine-- a whole hour and a half (Well, I skipped the first 9 minutes of introductions.) with my favorite author wheezing and sputtering. How refreshing to hear him declaim in his own voice and reveal the happiest day of his life and his own favorite from among his works -"The Sirens of Titan".
posted by notmtwain
on May 27, 2011 -
8 comments
David Halbertstam dead in tragic car accident. Experienced, eloquent, and always observant (his
dim view of Patrick Ewing being a notable exception), David Halberstam was a journalistic jack-of-all-trades who was probably best known for his stinging indictment of
Vietnam warrior
Robert McNamara,
JFK and
LBJ's secretary of defense, in the classic
The Best and the Brightest. A superior
war correspondent before the era
of
CNN-televised revolutions , Halberstam was also an excellent historian and sports writer. Halberstam's dense but
illuminating
The Fifties is an informative and tightly written study on the
Eisenhower era. And
The Children offers a compelling look at eight young leaders of the Civil Rights Revolution.
Moreover, Halberstam's many writings on
basketball (
The Breaks of the Game,
Playing for Keeps) and baseball (
Summer of '49,
October 1964) rank among the upper
echelon of sports books.
posted by psmealey
on Apr 23, 2007 -
54 comments
