See below, from the excellent Dale Salwak:
New Book Conjures The Literary Dead
Posted at 11:20PM Wednesday 20 Apr 2011
If you could meet one deceased literary figure, who would that be? What would you ask? What would you say, and why? In AFTERWORD: CONJURING THE LITERARY DEAD (May 1st, University of Iowa Press), edited by Dale Salwak, eighteen distinguished authors respond to this challenge by creating imagined conversations with a constellation of British and American authors, from Samuel Johnson to Jane Austen to Samuel Beckett to Edith Wharton.
Each chapter embarks on an intellectual, emotional, and often humorous voyage as the layers of time are peeled away, letting readers experience authors as they really were in their own era or, on occasion, transported to the present. As eccentric as it is eclectic, this collection takes the audience on a dizzying descent into a literary Inferno where biographers, novelists, and critics eat the food of the dead and return to tell the tale. Readers will take great pleasure in seeing what happens when scholars are loosed from the chains of fact and conduct imaginary interviews with deceased authors.
Covering 200 years of literary history, the essays in AFTERWORD draw upon the lifelong, consuming interest of the contributors, each fashioning a vivid, credible portrait of a vulnerable, driven, fully human character. As contributors appeal to what Margaret Atwood calls the deep human desire to "go to the land of the dead, to bring back to the living someone who has gone there," readers are privy to questions that have seldom been asked, to incidents that have been suppressed, to some of the secrets that have puzzled readers for years, and to novel literary truths about the essential nature of each author.
Contributors:
Catherine Aird (on Rudyard Kipling), Brian Aldiss (on Thomas Hardy), Margaret Atwood (on negotiating with the dead), William M. Chace (on Ezra Pound), Nora Crook (on the Shelleys), Paul Delany (on George Gissing), Colin Dexter (on Alfred Edward Housman), Margaret Drabble (on Arnold Bennett), Peter Firchow (on George Orwell), Alan W. Friedman (on Samuel Beckett), Eugene Goodheart (on Jane Austen), John Halperin (on Edith Wharton), Francis King (on Oscar Wilde), Jeffrey Meyers (on Samuel Johnson), Cynthia Ozick (on Henry James), Jay Parini (on Robert Frost), Carl Rollyson (on William Faulkner), Dale Salwak and Laura Nagy (on literary imagination), Alan Sillitoe (on Joseph Conrad), and Ann Thwaite (on Frances Hodgson Burnett, Edmund Gosse, A. A. Milne, and Emily Tennyson).
Miss Pym and a Friend
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Subversion of Romance in the Novels of Barbara Pym
Available from the author at etsag1998@aol.com. Also, in the true spirit of Pymian indexers and proofreaders comes A Bibliography of Doll and Toy Sources, Mixed Media, Electronic, Musical, Artistic, and a new Poetry Chapbook, Sappho, I should Have Listened.
Fragment by Sappho:
Sappho,
When some fool
Explodes rage in your breast,
Sappho,
Stop that yapping tongue!
Fragment by Sappho:
Sappho,
When some fool
Explodes rage in your breast,
Sappho,
Stop that yapping tongue!
Barbara Pym Society on Facebook
Pym on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Barbara-Pym-Society/326965535031?sk=wall#!/pages/Barbara-Pym-Society/326965535031?sk=wall#!/photo.php?fbid=10150529901870032&set=pu.326965535031&type=1&theater
Pym Conference on line
See below and enjoy! I will also post some photos.
Photos from the 2011 North American Conference have just been posted on our Facebook page, and the papers are on our web site.
Remember, BPS memberships expire on March 31 every year. To renew for 2011, click here. You can now renew online and pay by credit card if you wish.
We will be having a Summer Garden Fête on Sunday June 26 at 3:00 p.m. at the home of Denise Marois-Wolf in Acton, Massachusetts. Details will be forthcoming soon.
Best wishes,
Tom Sopko
North American Organizer
The Barbara Pym Society
Photos from the 2011 North American Conference have just been posted on our Facebook page, and the papers are on our web site.
Remember, BPS memberships expire on March 31 every year. To renew for 2011, click here. You can now renew online and pay by credit card if you wish.
We will be having a Summer Garden Fête on Sunday June 26 at 3:00 p.m. at the home of Denise Marois-Wolf in Acton, Massachusetts. Details will be forthcoming soon.
Best wishes,
Tom Sopko
North American Organizer
The Barbara Pym Society
Thursday, April 7, 2011
DarkCreation.com
Visit this site for the most wonderful depictions of ghostly and vampyre dolls I've ever seen. Also, visit Uneek designs on Etsy for Jane Eyre, Bertha Rochester, and Bronte sister dolls. These are dolls by various talented artists for the literary minded. Enjoy.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte
Well, I don't know about this book. It is a fascinating story, but the implication that Charlotte and Arthur Bell Nichols were serial killers who murdered her family is disturbing, too disturbing. I fell in love with Charlotte's work early on, and with her after I read her letters and Gaskell's biography. Unquiet soul she was, but a murderer? I wonder how anyone can imply it.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
New Jane Eyre and Pym News
Check out the new JE film, and Bronte Sisters action figures on YouTube. Below, some oldies, but goodies from the Barbara Pym Society:
AGM Dates: The dates for the 2011 Annual General Meeting and conference at St Hilda's College in Oxford have just been finalized. The AGM will be held on 26-28 August, which is the Summer Bank Holiday weekend. The conference theme is Crampton Hodnet.
Calls for Papers: Proposals for papers to be presented at the March 2011 North American Conference at Harvard are due by 1 December 2010. Preference will be given to papers related in some way to No Fond Return of Love, but all topics are welcome. Registration and meals fees are waived for North American conference speakers and there is a small honorarium. Please send a 100-150 word proposal to barbarapymsociety@gmail.com.
Proposals for papers to be presented at the August 2011 Annual General Meeting in Oxford are due by 14 January 2011. Preference will be given to papers related in some way to Crampton Hodnet. Please send a 100-150 word proposal to barbarapymsociety@gmail.com.
Finally, this Saturday 6 November is the fall tea in Boston. The reply deadline has passed, but we can always put a little more hot water in the pot; if you would like to attend and are not already on our guest list, please let us know immediately.
And finally, I had to share this Pym sighting: New York jazz musician Rob Price, who entitled one of his tracks "Dashiell Hammett and Barbara Pym," found this in Richard Davenport-Hines's review of Paul Willetts's Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, which appeared in the TLS (22 October 2010):
"… In 1952, he started the Paul Raymond Variety Agency, based in three attic rooms above Ferrari's coffee bar in Charing Cross Road, and staged such shows as 'We Strip Tonight' and "Folies Parisienne', advertised as including "The Banned Reefer Dance, performed by the Dangerous Girl with the Low Neckline'. Soon he had made enough money to move in with his wife, who choreographed the shows, to the London suburbs, where he lived next door to Barbara Pym."
D.J. Taylor also mentioned the Pym connection when he reviewed the book for The Independent.
Best wishes,
Tom Sopko, North American Organizer
Dec. 2010:
Greetings! The program for the 2011 North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society, focused on No Fond Return of Love, has been finalized. The speakers include returning favorites Gloria Nakamura, Sandra Goldstein, and BPS Archivist Yvonne Cocking, as well as newcomers Thad Cockrill, Associate Professor of English at Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis, and journalist Martha Wilson, who writes a weekly column for Nova Scotia’s main daily newspaper.
We will return to last year's highly suitable venues. On Friday evening March 18 we will meet at the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill for a buffet Candlelight Super and Hymn Sing, and on Saturday and Sunday March 19-20 we'll be back at Harvard University's Barker Center for the conference. The group dinner on Saturday evening and post-conference lunch on Sunday will be at the Grafton Street Pub, which is less than a block from the Barker Center. We have tried to keep costs as low as possible, and have actually reduced the registration fees by $5 from last year. Also, for the first time we are able to take credit and debit cards for payment; we are using PayPal to process the transactions, but you do not need a PayPal account to pay by credit card.
The complete conference schedule, registration forms and details about venues and accommodations are available on the Society web site. The deadline for registration is March 11, but the Barker Center cannot accommodate more than 95 people, so please don't wait until the last minute and risk being turned away.
Other new additions to the web site include Barbara's radio talk Finding a Voice, which is posted with the kind permission of the BBC and Hazel Holt, and the archives of Green Leaves from 1999 through 2008. Volumes 1 through 4 are being scanned and will be added soon, but newer issues will not be posted online for two years after publication. When combined with Hazel Bell's updated Green Leaves index, this provides a wonderful trove of information for Pym scholars and fans alike.
Best regards and Season's Greetings,
Tom Sopko
North American Organizer
AGM Dates: The dates for the 2011 Annual General Meeting and conference at St Hilda's College in Oxford have just been finalized. The AGM will be held on 26-28 August, which is the Summer Bank Holiday weekend. The conference theme is Crampton Hodnet.
Calls for Papers: Proposals for papers to be presented at the March 2011 North American Conference at Harvard are due by 1 December 2010. Preference will be given to papers related in some way to No Fond Return of Love, but all topics are welcome. Registration and meals fees are waived for North American conference speakers and there is a small honorarium. Please send a 100-150 word proposal to barbarapymsociety@gmail.com.
Proposals for papers to be presented at the August 2011 Annual General Meeting in Oxford are due by 14 January 2011. Preference will be given to papers related in some way to Crampton Hodnet. Please send a 100-150 word proposal to barbarapymsociety@gmail.com.
Finally, this Saturday 6 November is the fall tea in Boston. The reply deadline has passed, but we can always put a little more hot water in the pot; if you would like to attend and are not already on our guest list, please let us know immediately.
And finally, I had to share this Pym sighting: New York jazz musician Rob Price, who entitled one of his tracks "Dashiell Hammett and Barbara Pym," found this in Richard Davenport-Hines's review of Paul Willetts's Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, which appeared in the TLS (22 October 2010):
"… In 1952, he started the Paul Raymond Variety Agency, based in three attic rooms above Ferrari's coffee bar in Charing Cross Road, and staged such shows as 'We Strip Tonight' and "Folies Parisienne', advertised as including "The Banned Reefer Dance, performed by the Dangerous Girl with the Low Neckline'. Soon he had made enough money to move in with his wife, who choreographed the shows, to the London suburbs, where he lived next door to Barbara Pym."
D.J. Taylor also mentioned the Pym connection when he reviewed the book for The Independent.
Best wishes,
Tom Sopko, North American Organizer
Dec. 2010:
Greetings! The program for the 2011 North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society, focused on No Fond Return of Love, has been finalized. The speakers include returning favorites Gloria Nakamura, Sandra Goldstein, and BPS Archivist Yvonne Cocking, as well as newcomers Thad Cockrill, Associate Professor of English at Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis, and journalist Martha Wilson, who writes a weekly column for Nova Scotia’s main daily newspaper.
We will return to last year's highly suitable venues. On Friday evening March 18 we will meet at the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill for a buffet Candlelight Super and Hymn Sing, and on Saturday and Sunday March 19-20 we'll be back at Harvard University's Barker Center for the conference. The group dinner on Saturday evening and post-conference lunch on Sunday will be at the Grafton Street Pub, which is less than a block from the Barker Center. We have tried to keep costs as low as possible, and have actually reduced the registration fees by $5 from last year. Also, for the first time we are able to take credit and debit cards for payment; we are using PayPal to process the transactions, but you do not need a PayPal account to pay by credit card.
The complete conference schedule, registration forms and details about venues and accommodations are available on the Society web site. The deadline for registration is March 11, but the Barker Center cannot accommodate more than 95 people, so please don't wait until the last minute and risk being turned away.
Other new additions to the web site include Barbara's radio talk Finding a Voice, which is posted with the kind permission of the BBC and Hazel Holt, and the archives of Green Leaves from 1999 through 2008. Volumes 1 through 4 are being scanned and will be added soon, but newer issues will not be posted online for two years after publication. When combined with Hazel Bell's updated Green Leaves index, this provides a wonderful trove of information for Pym scholars and fans alike.
Best regards and Season's Greetings,
Tom Sopko
North American Organizer
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