By David Ellis (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) Originally published in 1998, the final volume of the Cambridge Biography of D. H. Lawrence chronicles his progress from leaving Europe in 1922 to his death in Venice in 1930. Based on much previously unfamiliar material, it describes his travels in Ceylon, Australia, the USA and Mexico in an … Continued
By Lawrence Lipking (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) He was a servant to the public, a writer for hire. He was a hero, an author adding to the glory of his nation. But can a writer be both hack and hero? The career of Samuel Johnson, recounted here by Lawrence Lipking, proves that the two can be one. … Continued
By James Knowlson (NHC Fellow, 2002–03) Damned to Fame is the brilliant and insightful portrait of Nobel Prize–winning author Samuel Beckett, mysterious and reclusive master of twentieth-century literature. Professor James Knowlson, Beckett’s chosen biographer and a leading authority on Beckett, vividly re-creates Beckett’s life from his birth in a rural suburb of Dublin in 1906 to … Continued
By Margreta de Grazia (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) This study challenges traditional treatments of Shakespeare through a study of their textual imperatives in the late eighteenth century. The examination of earlier treatments demonstrates that concepts now basic to Shakespeare were once largely irrelevant. Only with Edmond Malone's 1790 Shakespeare edition do such criteria as authenticity, historical … Continued
Ernest Hemingway may no longer be revered as he once was, but he remains among the most influential of twentieth-century American writers. In this seminar, we will try to rediscover the qualities that made Hemingway so important. What was it about his prose and narrative style, his ideas about art and experience, his view of … Continued
I was first introduced to David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” in a Language and Composition class. Our textbook was full of examples of rhetoric, categorized by topic. “This is Water” was originally a Commencement speech given at Kenyon College in 2005. A shortened version was transcribed in my textbook which I had to analyze … Continued
Charles Frazier recalls when the North Carolina Symphony traveled to the small towns of western NC on their annual state tour. The symphony’s visit to the rural and relatively isolated communities exposed Frazier and his classmates to a bold new type of sound—and a new way of thinking about art.
In this excerpt from a conversation with William Ferris, former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, he shares how he came to see himself in Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, who declares that he will fly from the nets of “nationality, language, … Continued
In this podcast excerpt with National Humanities Center Director Robert D. Newman, award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem discusses how he came to understand of the power of fiction in our lives through the short-lived Marvel comic book series Omega The Unknown. Lethem describes how the unconventional storytelling in this comic book, focusing on the ways that … Continued
Ina Dixon explains how a letter from her grandfather to her grandmother, written just before the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, reconnects her to her grandfather and the hardships he suffered at the time. Transcript Andy Mink: My name is Andy Mink, I’m the vice president for education at the National Humanities Center. I’m … Continued