Word Patriots Archives - WebTalkRadio.net

Today, my father Dr. Frederick William Seinfelt again joins me on Word Patriots. We will be discussing Shakespeare on film and which cinematic versions of the plays speak most to us and why. We talk about the first three American sound films of Shakespeare: the 1929 Pickford Corporation’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” Max Reinhardt’s “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” and the 1936 Irving Thalberg produced and George Cukor directed “Romeo and Juliet.” Then we examine the strengths and shortcomings of Laurence Olivier’s and Orson Welles’ various cinematic versions of Shakespeare, John Gielgud’s many Shakespearean performances including his starring roles in two versions of “Julius Caesar,” and why most critics consider Franco Zeffirelli’s film of “Romeo and Juliet” to be the definitive cinematic version. We also examine Roman Polanski’s controversial 1971 “Macbeth.” Some feel Polanski imposed his own vision of evil and his personal despair in the face of existence upon “Macbeth” and argue, as does Charles Shattuck, that it “profits nothing to reduce Shakespeare’s tragedy to Grand Guignol, or Dachau, or the Manson murders,” but my father defends Polanski’s vision. At one point in the discussion, despite his prodigious memory, my father, who will be celebrating his eightieth birthday in August, conflates the characters of Banquo and Macduff. No doubt one reason Polanski feels Macbeth to be guilty of something akin to the crime of genocide is because the Scottish chieftain attempts to wipe out the progeny of both men. Macbeth succeeds in killing Macduff’s children. Banquo, of course, accompanies Macbeth when he meets the three witches. After first prophesying that Macbeth will become king, the witches tell Banquo that, while he will not be king himself, his descendants will rise to the crown. Macbeth in his lust for power sees Banquo as a threat and orders both Banquo and Banquo’s son Fleance murdered. Fleance, however, escapes. To conclude the program, my father recalls the high school teachers who first introduced him to Shakespeare and reads favorite passages from “The Merchant of Venice” and “Macbeth.”Subscribe with your favorite podcast playerAndroidRSS The post Word Patriots – Seinfelt and Shakespeare Filmography appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

Word Patriots often fall under the spell of the written word and find their vocation early in life. Several months ago, I celebrated my fiftieth birthday. Still it doesn’t seem very long ago since I was a high school student enrolled in Kay Hutton’s Nobel Prize authors and AP English classes or since I represented Indiana Area Senior High School at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts at Bucknell University in the summer of 1979, where I was enrolled in my first creative writing classes. It was at that time that I became convinced that it was my destiny to write books and that I found my essential self. Late adolescence is a pivotal, memorable time for most of us. To adopt the title of Thomas Rogers’ classic novel of love in America, we find ourselves “At the Shores.” We feel that we have arrived or that we are on the brink of arriving. Just round the corner new and decisive experiences await us. We have great expectations as we emerge from our cocoons and burst into the sunlight. The world is our oyster. We feel as potent, effective and forceful as Siegfried as he emerges from the magic fire to search for new adventures in the opening act of “Götterdämmerung” but as with Wagner’s hero disappointment and frustration may very well be our portion as well. My guests are two very talented young authors Samantha Schyuler and Stephen Urchick. Both are seniors in the International Baccalaureate Program at Palm Harbor University High School in coastal-central Florida. Samantha writes that she has learned nothing in her four years at Palm Harbor if not how to function on four hours of sleep. She is fond of hiking, painting, and books; the last of which drove her to write a 5,000 word extended essay on the topic of Updike’s “Rabbit, Run,” as well as become the president of her school’s Creative Writing Club. Through the club she was able to attend and speak at the Associated Writers and Writing Programs conference in Chicago this year. At the podium, she presented the paper, “Decentralizing the Creative Writing Classroom,” to an audience of thirty-five professors. She presented with confidence, clarity, and poise and will be attending the University of Florida. Stephen Urchick describes himself as an 18-year-old masochist. He looks forward to graduating this June, when (in his own words) he can atone for his sins “by savoring many half-finished novels; by eating delicious, square meals each day and by steeling himself to write for one of the University of Chicago’s literary outlets.” He regularly cannibalizes his schoolwork for essay ideas and for short fiction devices. He will be attending the University of Chicago in the fall on a full scholarship. Also with us is Elisabeth Lanser Rose, a teacher in the International Baccalaureate Program at Palm Harbor and the sponsor of the Creative Writing Club there to which both Samantha and Stephen belong. Elisabeth is no stranger to Word Patriots. Her novel “Body Sharers” published by Rutgers University in 1993 was a finalist for the Pen/ Hemingway Foundation Award for first novel. She is also the author of the memoir “For the Love of a Dog,” published in 2002 by Random House. If you would like to know more about my books, please visit my website: www.markseinfelt.com. Please also see the webpage for Palm Harbor University High School: http://www.phuhs.org/ and the Amazon page for Elisabeth Rose’s “For the Love of a Dog”: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Dog-Memoir-Elisabeth-Rose/dp/0609606921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303074639&sr=1-1Subscribe with your favorite podcast playerAndroidRSS The post Word Patriots – Samantha Schyuler and Stephen Urchick appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

Today’s program is one of our periodic shows devoted to past masters, heroic word patriots who overcame great obstacles, who wrote in new and innovative ways, or who defied convention by visiting formerly taboo topics and thereby opened new fields of exploration for literature. On this episode of Word Patriots we will be discussing the work of Flannery O’Connor. The novelist and short story writer was born and died in Georgia and studied at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. The following entry on O’Connor appears in the Avenel Companion to English and American literature: “She is usually said to be a Southern Gothic and/ or Catholic writer. Both are probably true, subject to severe qualification. Her typical characters are indeed God-ridden but not in a way that seems uniquely Catholic. Rather they seem the essence of Protestantism, seeking an individual and immediate relationship with God. They stalk him, defy him, try to trick him into some sign by doing the things ‘that people have quit doing—like boiling in oil or being a saint or walling up cats.’ Even the psychopathic murderer of ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ commits his murders in an attempt to force God to reveal himself. But grace can be arrived at only through the kind of self knowledge arrived at in ‘The Violent Bear It Away’ (1960) by Rayber, who has his eyes burned clean and is able at last to look into his own heart and recognize his real place in the world. Love, however, is not the clue to the saving communion with the world as it is with so many writers. The clue is suffering, and Hazel Motes (‘Wise Blood,’ 1952) burns out his eyes with quicklime so he can see better.” My guest today is Tawni O’Dell. She is the New York Times best-selling author of four novels. Her first, “Back Roads,” was both a Book-of-the-Month Club Main and an Oprah’s Book Club selection, and is currently in development as a major motion picture by Michael Ohoven, the producer of the Academy-Award-winning, “Capote” with a screenplay written by Tawni herself. Following the publication of “Back Roads” in 2000, Tawni has completed and published three more novels: “Coal Run,” “Sister Mine,” and “Fragile Beasts.” She is also a contributor to several anthologies including “Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female.” Her work has been translated into ten languages and been published in over forty countries. Flannery O’Connor is one of Tawni’s favorite authors, as she is also one of mine. If you would like to know more about my books, please visit my website: www.markseinfelt.com. See also Amazon’s Flannery O’Connor page: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Flannery+O%27Connorand Amazon’s author page for Tawni O’Dell: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Tawni+O%27Dell .Subscribe with your favorite podcast playerAndroidRSS The post Word Patriots – O’Dell on O’Connor appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

Rosaly DeMaios Roffman, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Professor Emerita, still teaches courses in creative writing and myth and started a myth/folklore Studies Center at IUP. She is the co-editor of “Life on the Line,” author of “Going to Bed Whole,” “Tottering Palaces,” “The Approximate Message” and most recently “In the Fall of a Sparrow,” commissioned by the Pennsylvania Governor’s Institute for the Humanities, Harrisburg. She has collaborated on twenty pieces with composers and dance/theater companies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, including “No More Masks,” a piece centering on archetypes of the feminine, “Homage to Vincent and Theo Van Gogh,” a piece for tape and voice which was also broadcast on the radio, “One Person Renga” for seven different instruments and voice, and “Clippings” a docu-theatre poetry mosaic based on George Orwell and newspaper clippings. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including “Macguffin,” “Zone 3,” “Centennial Review,” “Pittsburgh Quarterly,” “Sing Heavenly Muse,” and most recently in these anthologies “Along These Rivers,” celebrating the 250th anniversary of Pittsburgh, in “Only the Sea Keeps,” and in the books “Come Together: Imagine Peace” and “The Working Poet.” The recipient of a Distinguished Faculty Award in the Arts in Pennsylvania, and of National Endowment Grants, she was brought to England by the BBC for a broadcast (as “Writer from Abroad”) on her work as an American poet with an abiding interest in “the ordinary and the sacred.” She facilitates the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop in Pittsburgh and has read her poems in Mexico, Israel, Ireland and Greece and at three World Congresses of Poets. Her latest book of poems “I Want To Thank My Eyes” will be published by Tebot Bach this month. Joan Bauer has called the collection an engaging blend of deep reverence, compassionate vision and quirky humor … food for the soul which makes us hungry for more.” And Jim Daniels says the collection “rings with tenderness and gentle wisdom, propelled by the quiet, intense urgency of a writer familiar with life’s complex physical and emotional landscapes.” This week Rosaly and I explore her lifelong fascination with myth and folklore and how that interest has empowered her work as poet, and discuss the transformative power of words, how language anoints us and permits metamorphosis. If you would like to know more about my books, please visit my website: www.markseinfelt.com. See also the web page for Tebot Bach books: http://tebotbach.org/Subscribe with your favorite podcast playerAndroidRSS The post Word Patriots – Rosaly Roffman’s “I Want To Thank My Eyes appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

The late Stanley Elkin was a two-time recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The author of more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, including “A Bad Man,” “George Mills,” “The Rabbi of Lud” and “Mrs. Ted Bliss,” he is recognized for his humorous and satirical fiction and for the stylistic virtuosity of his ornately wrought prose. 1964 saw the publication of his first novel “Boswell: A Modern Comedy,” which relates the misfortunes of a death haunted man who lives off the reflected celebrity and fame of others, this Boswell’s Johnson a professional wrestler known as the Grim Reaper. Elkin’s second novel “A Bad Man” explores the human capacity for suffering and depicts both the absurdity and the regimentation of prison life. It established Elkin as “one of the flashiest and most exciting comic talents in view,” according to the New York Times Book Review. Department store-owner Leo Feldman’s business is illicit wish-fulfillment, but on the novel’s very first page the jig is up, and Feldman finds himself on the way to stir. Life’s manifold indignities and the human capacity for getting things wrong are subjects Elkin returns to again and again in his subsequent books. He also increasingly treats on life’s fragility. “The Franchiser” tells the tale of traveling businessman Ben Flesh who by the end of the novel creates a nationwide empire of franchises but whose body is ravaged and wracked by multiple sclerosis. “Stanley Elkin’s The Magic Kingdom” follows a group of doomed, terminally ill children on an outing to Disney World and his late novella “Her Sense of Timing” concerns a wheelchair-bound professor abandoned by his wife. As the “Cyclopedia of World Authors” points out, Elkin was an author of many facets and had “the distinction of multiple tenancy in some of the most compelling camps of contemporary fiction: He is categorized along with writers such as Joseph Heller, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth as a prominent contributor to the postwar Jewish American renaissance; he is often compared with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Bruce Jay Friedman, and other so-called black humorists; and he was allied with Robert Coover, William Gass, and John Hawkes by virtue of his self-conscious craftsmanship and postrealist sensibilities .” My guest this week is William H. Gass, a lifelong friend of Stanley Elkin and a fellow faculty member at Washington University in Saint Louis. If you would like to know more about my books, please visit my website: www.markseinfelt.com. See also the Amazon Stanley Elkin page: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AStanley+Elkin&keywords=Stanley+Elkin&ie=UTF8&qid=1331655817&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B000APUV9U and also the Amazon page for “Life Sentences”: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Sentences-Literary-Judgments-Accounts/dp/0307595846/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331655994&sr=1-1Subscribe with your favorite podcast playerAndroidRSS The post Word Patriots – William Gass remembers Stanley Elkin appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.