On a winter day in 1953, a mysterious man in a sheepskin coat stood out to Harriet Pattison, then a theater student at Yale. She would later learn he was the architect Louis Kahn. This chance encounter served as preamble to a 15-year romance, with Pattison becoming the architect’s closest
Tahar Ben Jelloun— July 16, 1966, is one of those mornings that my mother has tucked away in a corner of her memory, she says, so she can remember to tell her gravedigger all about it. A gloomy morning with a white and pitiless sky. Many words have gone missing
Karl Ove Knausgaard— I knew why Munch painted, I knew it so well that I could articulate it with a single sentence. And it resembles the sentence spoken by the author with his sweater tucked into his trousers. I write because I am going to die. I paint because I
In the past year, Patrick Modiano has been hailed by American book critics for his Nobel Prize-winning literary art, rightly described as “elegant,” “haunting,” and “urbane.” In books such as Suspended Sentences, Paris Nocturne, and After the Circus, his immense gifts as a novelist—one who melds ambiguous autobiographical and impressionistic details into narratives
Many consider Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz one of the greatest writers of the past hundred years and Danuta Borchardt is undoubtedly one of his finest translators. Her rendering of Ferdydurke won the 2001 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association, and her recent edition of Trans-Atlantyk has garnered praise as
“The subsequent failures in Iraq shouldn’t take away from what American troops accomplished during what may well be the biggest comeback ever in a guerrilla war….Mansoor provides the definitive account of how it was accomplished…Mansoor is superbly positioned to tell the story, not only because of his academic training but
In choosing Memoir & Memory as our monthly theme for September, a reflection of our year in publishing the genre was telling: A particularly monumental year for Yale University Press in its release of personal letters and correspondence, we published The Richard Burton Diaries (Oct. 2012, pbk July 2013), edited by
“This is not art history, and it is not criticism, nor is it some mixture of the two. It is not, in other words, what people expect me to be doing.”—Svetlana Alpers, Roof Life, “1 Beginning” Svetlana Alpers is one of the most influential art historians of her generation. She
Publishing this month, Rachel Adams‘s Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery gives a deeply moving and honest account of welcoming a baby born with Down syndrome. Adams, a professor of English and American studies, is also director of the Future of Disability Studies Project at Columbia University. In the interview below,
Sarah Underwood— Quite a few people, places, and things “lost it” in 2011. Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greecelost it early on this year. Osama bin Laden lost it. Multiple Arab dictators lost it. The economy never had it, but Greecemanaged to lose it again. The media keeps suggesting that even