Literary Figures

In his memoir Foreskin's Lament, author Shalom Auslander writes about his attempt to break free from the strict, socially isolated Orthodox Jewish environment of his childhood.

Auslander is the author of the short-story collection Beware of God. He's contributed to The New Yorker, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine.

Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat's memoir Brother, I'm Dying details the complicated emotions surrounding the deaths of her father and uncle — and the birth of her daughter — all in the same year.

Danticat's uncle raised her in Haiti until age 12, when she moved to New York to live with her immigrant parents.

Danticat is the author of a number of novels, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, as well as the short-story collection Krik? Krak!.

Grace Paley, an iconic and idiosyncratic American literary voice, died Wednesday. She was 84, and had battled breast cancer. Paley wrote short stories and poems, and much of her writing was inspired by the people she knew growing up in New York, the daughter of Russian Jews. Her first collection of stories, The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories of Men and Women at Love, was published in 1959. Her other collections included Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and Later in the Same Day.

Poet and novelist Carol Muske-Dukes founded the University of Southern California's doctoral program in literature and creative writing; she's written three novels and seven collections of poetry, been a National Book Award finalist and received a Guggenheim fellowship.

John Ridley's comic-book series The American Way has just been collected into a graphic novel. The series takes place in 1961, when the government has created a team of super-heroes to battle foreign super-villains. But it's all just a sham — a diversion created to pacify the public.

Ridley, who co-created The American Way with Georges Jeanty and Karl Story, previously wrote the screenplay for Three Kings and the novel A Conversation with the Mann.

Underground comic book artist Robert Crumb created ZAP COMIX and is the artist behind such 1960s and 1970s icons as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and Keep-on-Truckin. His wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, was one of the earliest underground female cartoonists. Her new book, Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir, chronicles her life and career. Robert's new book is The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb.

Nicholas Proffitt, who covered the Vietnam War for Newsweek magazine and wrote the book Gardens of Stone, died Nov. 10 at age 63. Gardens of Stone was later made into a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This interview originally aired on May 25, 1987.

Comedian Harry Shearer has a new book called Not Enough Indians, a novel about Native Americans and gambling. He also has a role in the new film For Your Consideration, directed by Christopher Guest. Shearer is a voice actor on The Simpsons, playing the roles of Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner and many more characters. Shearer is also the host of the weekly public radio series Le Show.

In his new book A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization, Jonathan Kirsch explores the ways the Book of Revelation has been interpreted since its inception and how the final book of the New Testament has influenced literature, history and popular culture.

Etgar Keret, a best-selling author in Israel whose books have also been published in the United States, talks about recent events in the Middle East. Keret collaborated with Palestinian author Samir El-Youssef for the book Gaza Blues. Keret contributed a collection of short stories and El-Youssef, a novella.