Category Archives: Paris
Children’s Books, Children’s Songs: Gertrude Stein, Paul Robeson
September 5, 2012 Last year Yale University Press brought out Gertrude Stein’s To Do: A Book for Alphabets and Birthdays, never published in her lifetime. Stein had written it as a follow-up to her first children’s book, The World is … Continue reading
Gertrude Stein: Pittsburgh to Paris
May 9, 2012 850 Beech Avenue, Allegheny West. A two-story house, 5 windows on its front facade, 3 on the second floor, 2 on the first. A modest house, middle-class, no more. I remember this, of course, from The Autobiography … Continue reading
Richard Wright’s Haiku
November 16, 2011 I never thought his career would end in this way: thousands of these 17-syllable poems, with no narrative, nothing that adds up, just a passing thought, the briefest of observations, seemingly going nowhere: Meticulously The cat licks … Continue reading
Question of scale
November 9, 2011 A great conference at the University of Maryland. “Rethinking World Literature/ Other World Literatures” — this is what a lot of us claim to be doing, but probably not with the same panache, conviction, and embarrassment about … Continue reading Continue reading
Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright
November 2, 2011 When Richard Wright applied for a passport in January 1946, he was turned down. The State Department did not look favorably on left-leaning Americans (in this case, an ex-Communist) leaving their country and maligning it from abroad. … Continue reading