Books & Literature

Writer Stacy Schiff. She’s the author of “Vera” (now in paperback, Modern Library), about Vera Nabokov, and her 52 year marriage to Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, the author of “Lolita”. The book is a literary story and a love story, revealing how important Vera was in shaping Nabokov’s work, and how devoted the two were to each other. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES THRU THE END OF THE SHOW)

Three veteran book editors discuss the state of publishing today. . .when mergers create mega publishing houses, the bottom-line dominates decision making, and e-technology threatens the book itself. The three are: Michael Korda, editor-in chief of Simon & Schuster, Robert Loomis, executive editor at Random House, and Jonathan Galassi, editor-in-chief at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

Professor of Architecture and Gerontolgy Victor Regnier (Ruh-NEAR) teaches at the University of Southern California. In 1997 he published a book (Assisted Living Housing for the Elderly: Design Innovations from the United States and Europe” (Wiley) comparing the Northern European and U.S. approaches to caring for the elderly. The European model helps the elderly to stay in their homes, with the help of assisted living programs. This week he is presenting a paper on the subject at the AIA (American Institute of Architects) convention in Philadelphia.

Writer Ted Conover (CON-over) spent a year as a prison guard inside New York State’s infamous Sing Sing prison. He wanted to experience first hand the conditions within a prison. He writes about it in his new book “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing” (Random House). Conover’s previous books chronicled his time spent with illegal aliens (“Coyotes”) and railroad hoboes (“Rolling Nowhere”). Conover is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.

Novelist Francine Prose. Her new book “Blue Angel” (Harper Collins) echoes the title of the film classic about a German teacher who becomes infatuated with a show girl (played by Marlene Dietrich). In Prose’s novel, a creative writing teacher falls in love with his talented student. Recently Prose wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine (Feb 13, 2000) about the problems with cultural programing ‘for women, by women.’

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz is also a poet. He reviews “The Voice of the Poet” (Random House) a collection of poets reading their own work on audio tape.

British anthropologist Tudor Parfitt. His new book is “Journey to the Vanished City: The Search for a Lost Tribe of Israel” (Vintage paperbacks). Parfitt went to southern Africa to find the Lemba people, who claim to be Jewish. Recently geneticists have found that many Lemba men carry DNA consistent with Jewish ancestry

Pro-wrestler Bret “Hitman” Hart of World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He comes from a wrestling family: his father was a wrestling promoter and ran a wrestling school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. All his brothers were wrestlers including his brother, Owen Hart, who was killed in a wrestling stunt last year. Bret Hart is the subject of a new biography, “Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart: The Best There Is, The Best There Was, The Best There Ever Will Be.”

Contributing editor for This American Life, and columnist for Salon.com, Sarah Vowell. She has a new collection of essays, “Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World” (Simon & Schuster).

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel by Saul Bellow, “Ravelstein”

Actor Sidney Poitier. He is the leading African-American actor of his generation. He was the first, and so far, the only African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor which he did in 1963 for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.” His other films include, “The Defiant Ones,” “A Patch of Blue,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and “To Sir, With Love.” He’s written a new autobiography, “The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography” (Harper).

Macabre cartoonist and illustrator Edward Gorey died on Saturday at the age of 75 of a heart attack. His illustrations are the opening credits of the PBS show "Mystery." He wrote over 100 books including “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” an alphabet book which began “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.” One of his other books “The Doubtful Guest” was a classic, about a creature who shows up uninvited at a dreary mansion and becomes a member of the family. Toward the end of his life, GOREY lived in a 200 year old house in Cape Cod, with his five or six cats. (REBROADCAST from 4/2/92)

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography about Joan of Arc.

Journalist Bill Turque is Washington correspondent for Newsweek and author of the new biography, “Inventing Al Gore” (Houghton Mifflin). Turque covered both of Gore’s vice presidential campaigns and the Clinton White House. He began work on the book in 1997

Religion scholar and former nun Karen Armstrong. She’s the author of the bestselling book, “A History of God.” Her new book, “The Battle for God” examines the fundamentalist movement in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faiths that began to emerge in the 1970s. She writes that today’s fundamentalist movements differ from previous ones, in that they are no longer throwbacks to the past, but are complex movements that are shaped by the modern culture they also decry.

Jerome Groopman, MD. His new book is "Second Opinions: Stories Of Intuition And Choice In A Changing World Of Medicine." (Viking) The Harvard Medical School doctor and researcher says patient and doctor should be working together, using intuition, cutting-edge science and personal values to make critical medical decisions. The book's case histories include Goodman’s infant son, who was misdiagnosed in a hospital emergency room and almost died.

Writer Ted Heller. His new book is “Slab Rat.” Heller was responsible for the famous “Separated at Birth” feature in Spy Magazine, a concept that has lived on long after the publication. His new book is a satire about a magazine staffer who will do just about anything to get ahead. Heller has also worked at a number of magazines, including Details, Premiere and Vanity Fair.

Writer Ernesto Quinonez His debut novel, “Bodega Dreams” (Vintage books), is set in Spanish Harlem. Like his narrator, Quinonez is half Ecuadorean, half-Puerto Rican. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes of the book, “Edgy, street-smart. . . An admirable debut, brimming with energy and refreshingly devoid of genre clichés.”

Tens of thousands of African-American men, women, and children were lynched by mobs in the United States between 1882 and 1968. Some of these lynchings were photographed, and the photos were saved as souvenirs, and were even sometimes used as postcards. Antique dealer James Allen came across these disturbing images and began to collect them. His collection is currently on display at the New York Historical Society. The book about Allen’s collection, called “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” (Twin Palms Publishers) was published earlier this year.

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel by Susan Sontag called In America (Farrar Straus & Giroux).