Notable Literary Deaths (November 2011)

Robert A. Scalapino (1919-2011) died on November 1st at the age of 92.  He was a scholar of Asian politics, so well-respected, that the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars created the Scalapino Prize in 2010 to honor outstanding scholars in the field of Asian studies.  An author of numerous books about Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, including Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (JQ1698 .A1 S37) and The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920-1966 (JQ1698 .K9 S27), he rose to prominence as a defender of the United States policy during the Vietnam War.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Michael Hastings (1937-2011) died on November 19th at the age of 74.  He was  a British playwright, best known for his 1984 play Tom & Viv.  The play, which Hastings later helped adapt into a critically acclaimed film, told the fictionalized story of writer T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot.  The play created a controversy over the fictionalizing of the lives of real people.  His New York Times and playbill.com obituaries can be found here and here respectively.

Ruth Stone (1915-2011) died on November 19th at the age of 96.  She was an award-winning poet and creative writing teacher.  Among the awards she won were the 2002 National Book Award for Poetry for In the Next Galaxy, the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award, the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award for Ordinary Words, and the 1965 Shelley Memorial Award.  Her 2009 collection, What Love Comes to:  New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Biographies, criticism, and examples of her work can be found at the Poetry Foundation and poetry.org sites.  Her New York Times obituary can be found here.

Shelagh Delaney (1938-2011) died on November 20th at the age of 72.  She was a British playwright, best-known for her debut work, A Taste of Honey, a play she wrote as a teenager.  While she wrote several other plays including The Lion in Love (PR6007 .E327 L5 1961), none of them ever garnered the praise that her debut did.  Her New York Times and playbill.com obituaries can be found here and here, respectively.

Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011) died on November 21st at the age of 85.  She was an award-winning American-born Irish fantasy and science fiction author, best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series.  The series, started in 1967, spans 22 novels and a number of short stories.  Beginning in 2003, McAffrey’s son Todd began writing the series, sometimes as a solo author, sometimes as a co-author with his mother.  Works from the series have won or been finalists for the most prestigious awards in the genre.  “Dragonrider” won the 1969 Nebula Award for Best Novella from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.  “Weyr Search” won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novella from the World Science Fiction Society and “Dramatic Mission” was a finalist for the same award in 1970.  Five novels from the series were finalists for Best Novel, Dragonquest in 1972, The White Dragon in 1979, Moreta:  Dragonlady of Pern in 1984, and All the Weyrs of Pern in 1992.  Additionally, in 2004 McCaffrey was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and in 2006 was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.  Her New York Times obituary can be found here.

Notable Literary Deaths (October 2011)

Charles Hamm (1925-2011) died on October 16th at the age of 86.  He was one of the first historians to seriously study the field of American popular music.  In books such as Contemporary Music and Music Cultures (ML197 .H245 C6) and Yesterdays:  Popular Song in America (ML3561 .P6 H35) he studied the history and cultural impact of contemporary music often frowned upon by his fellow musicologists.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

John Morton Blum (1921-2011) died on October 17th at the age of 90.  He was a historian who helped pioneer the study of the 20th century American presidency.  His biography, The Republican Roosevelt (E757 .B58 1962), was vital in establishing Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as a great president.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Ruby Cohn (1922-2011) died on October 18th at the age of 89.  She was a scholar who,  after seeing a performance of the play “Waiting for Godot” by a then unknown Samuel Beckett, became a leading authority on the playwright’s work.  The Library owns several titles that she either wrote or edited:

Casebook on Waiting for Godot (PQ2603 .E378 E63)

Currents in Contemporary Drama (PN1861 .C6 1969)

Dialogue in American Drama (PS351 .C6 1971)

Edward Albee (PS3551 .L25 Z6)

Samuel Beckett:  the Comic Gamut (PR6003 .E282 Z62)

Her New York Times obituary can be found here.

James Hillman (1926-2011) died on October 27th at the age of 85.  He was a psychologist, best-selling author, and popular lecturer who was influential in the field of archetypal psychology.  He is perhaps best-known for 1964′s Suicide and the Soul (RC506 .H5 1973) and 1975′s Re-Visioning Psychology, which garnered him a Pulitzer Prize nomination.  The Library owns several more of his books:  The Myth of Analysis:  Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology (BF173 .J85 H53) and The Soul’s Code:  In Search of Character and Calling (BF697 .H46 1996).  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Allen Mandelbaum (1926-2011) died on October 27th at the age of 85.  He was a poet, translator, and professor of Italian literature.  He was best known for his translation of works by Italian poets such as Salvatore Quasimodo (Selected Writings (PQ4837 .U3 A25)) and for his translations of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and Virgil’s Aeneid, for which he won the 1973 National Book Award for Translation.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Notable Literary Deaths (August & September 2011)

David Holbrook (1923-2011) died on August 11th at the age of 88.  He was a British novelist, poet, and writer of literary criticism.  He wrote prodigiously, and the Library owns several of his books:

Against the Cruel Frost:  a Second Volume of Verse (PR6058 .O4 A72)

The Case Against Pornography (HQ21 .H59 1973), editor

Dylan Thomas and Poetic Dissociation (PR6039 .H52 Z67)

Llareggub Revisited:  Dylan Thomas and the State of Modern Poetry (PR6039 .H52 Z68)

The Quest for Love (PR149 .L6 H6 1065)

His obituary from The Independent can be found here.

Samuel Menashe (1925-2011) died on August 22nd at the age of 85.  He was a poet whose work went largely unnoticed during most of his lifetime.  His career began in Britain where he gained wide acclaim, but he remained in the margins of the American poetry scene.  In 2004 he was honored with the Poetry Foundation’s first Neglected Masters Award.  His poem “Beachhead” is anthologized in Poets of World War II (PS595 .W64 P65 2003).  Biographies and examples of his work can be found at the Poetry Foundation website, poets.org, and The Poetry Archive.  An interview from 2006 can be found on NPR’s website.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (1940-2011) died on August 26th at the age of 71.  She was novelist and poet, winning, and being nominated for awards in several genres.  Her 1974 book of poetry Granite Lady was nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry, her novel Anya won the 1974 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and her short stories won O. Henry Prizes in 1978, 1997, and 2006.  Her New York Times obituary can be found here.

N.F. Simpson (1919-2011) died on August 27th at the age of 92.  He was an English playwright frequently associated with the Theatre of the Absurd.  His play “We’re Due in Eastbourne in Ten Minutes” is anthologized in The Best Short Plays, 1972 (PN6111 .B471 1972).  Obituaries from The Independent and The Telegraph can be found here and here respectively.

Oscar Handlin (1915-2011) died on September 20th at the age of 95.  He was Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, winning the 1952 Prize for History for The Uprooted:  the Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People (E184 .A1 H27 1951b).  He was a prolific author, publishing titles on a variety of topics, including immigration and race relations.  The Library owns a number of books that he authored or co-authored:

Abraham Lincoln and the Union (E457 .H238)

Al Smith and his America (E748 .S63 H16)

The American People in the Twentieth Century (E169.1 .H265)

American Principles and Issues:  the Natural Purpose (E169.1 .H266)

The Americans:  a New History of the People of the United States (E178 .H24)

Fire-bell in the Night:  the Crisis in Civil Rights (E185.61 .H23)

The Historian and the City (HT155 .H2)

John Dewey’s Challenge to Education:  Historical Perspectives on the Cultural Context (LD875 .D5 H28)

Liberty in America, 1600 to the Present (E183 .H32 1986)

A Pictorial History of Immigration (JV6450 .H34 1972)

The Wealth of the American People:  a History of American Affluence (HC103 .H2)

His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Emanuel Litvinoff (1915-2011) died on September 24th at the age of 96.  He was a British writer and poet best known for his poem “To T.S. Eliot” which was a response to the anti-Semitic elements in some of Eliot’s work.  In 1951 Litvinoff recited the poem at a reading where Eliot was present.  His obituary from The Telegraph details the incident.  In addition to his poetry, he was the author of a number of novels centering on the struggles of European Jews, along with an acclaimed memoir, Journey Through a Small Planet,  detailing his own upbringing in a Jewish community in London’s East End.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Patrick Collinson (1929-2011) died on September 28th at the age of 82.  He was an English historian who worked mostly in the area of Elizabethan Puritanism.  His  first major work, 1967′s The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, was extremely influential and laid a foundation for historians in years to come.  The Library owns his book Archbishop Grindal, 1519-1583:  the Struggle for a Reformed Church (BX5199 .G74 C64).  His obituary from The Telegraph can be found here.

Tomas Transtromer Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer has been awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.  In a press release, the Swedish Academy stated that “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.”  He is the author fifteen collections of poetry, and has been translated into more than sixty languages.  Biographies and examples of his work can be found at both poets.org and Poetry Foundation.  The New York Times Arts Beat blog has an audio clip of Transtromer reading his poem, “Schubertiana.”  A listing of the other Nobel Prizes that have been awarded this week can be found here.  The awards will culminate with the awarding of the Peace Prize tomorrow and the Prize for Economics on Monday.

New Poet Laureate

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Last week, the Library of Congress appointed Philip Levine as the 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2011-2012.  Dwight Garner writes in The New York Times that Levine’s poetry, often based in working-class Detroit, is “welcome because it radiates a heat of a sort not often felt in today’s poetry, that transmitted by grease, soil, factory light, cheap and honest food, sweat, low pay, cigarettes and second shifts. It is a plainspoken poetry ready-made, it seems, for a time of S&P downgrades, a double-dip recession and debts left unpaid.”  Among the awards he won during his 40+ year career are the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1977 for The Names of the Lost, the National Book Award for Poetry in 1980 for Ashes:  Poems New and Old and in 1991 for What Work Is, the 1987 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Simple Truth.  Selections of his work (text, audio, and video), interviews, biographies, and articles about Levine can be found on the New York Times website, the Library of Congress website, Poets.org, and the Poetry Foundation.  A Lengthy interview with Levine from 1988 can be found on the Paris Review website.  His year-long appointment will begin with a reading on October 17th.

Notable Literary Deaths (July 2011)

Edmund Carpenter (1922-2011) died on July 1st at the age of 88.  He was an anthropologist, best known for his work in anthropological filmmaking.  He and his friend Marshall McLuhan organized the influential Seminar on Culture and Communication as a forum to discuss the role of media in transforming human culture.  They later went on to edit the journal, Explorations.  His work in anthologized in several books at the Library:

“European motifs in protohistoric Iroquois art” in Anthropology, History, and American Indians (GN1 .S54 no.44)

“Ohnainewk, Eskimo hunter” in In the Company of Man:  Twenty Portraits by Anthropologists (GN4 ..C27)

“Image making in Arctic art” in Sign, Image, Symbol (N7430 .K47)

His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Anne LaBastille (1935-2011) died on July 1st at the age of 75.  She was an ecologist, and author of numerous popular and scientific articles, along with more than a dozen books.  She was best know for her four-volume autobiography, Woodswoman, chronicling her four decades living in the Adirondack Mountains.  For her conservation efforts, she was awarded the 1974 World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal for Conservation, The Citation of Merit from The Explorer’s Club in 1984, and the 1993 Gold Medal from the Society of Women Geographers.  Her New York Times obituary can be found here.

Robert Sklar (1936-2011) died on July 2nd at the age of 74.  He was a historian, writing mainly on the history of film.  With his 1975 book Movie-made America:  a Social History of American Movies (PN1993.5 .U6 S53) he became one of the first historians to place Hollywood films in  a social context.  The Library also owns his first book, F.Scott Fitzgerald:  the Last Laocoon (PS3511 .I9 Z86).  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Allan Eckert (1931-2011) died on July 7th at the age of 80.  He was a novelist, historian, and biographer.  Throughout his career, he was nominated seven times for the Pulitzer Prize in three different categories, in the History category in 1965 for A Time of Terror:  the Great Dayton Flood, in 1967 for The Frontiersman (F517 .K362), in 1969 for Wilderness Empire, and in 1970 for The Conquerors, in the Fiction category in 1965 for The Silent Sky and in 1967 for Wild Season, and in the Biography category in 1995 for A Sorrow in Our Heart:  the Life of Tecumseh.  His children’s book, Incident at Hawk’s Hill earned a 1972 Newberry Honor.

 

Notable Literary Deaths (June 2011)

Lillian Jackson Braun (1913-2011) died on June 4th at the age of 97.  She was a best-selling mystery writer, best known for her “The Cat Who…” series.  The series, starting in 1966 and ending in 2007 with the 29th volume, featured former reporter James Qwilleran and his Siamese cats KoKo and Yum Yum.  The Library owns The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts (Loft PS3552 .R354 C366 1990), the 10th volume in the series.  Her New York Times obituary can be found here.

Jorge Semprun (1923-2011) died on June 7th at the age of 87.  He was a Spanish novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who spent most of his life in France and wrote primarily in French.  His books were heavily autobiographic, often bordering on memoir.  The Long Voyage and What a Beautiful Sunday both deal with life in the Buchenwald concentration camp, while Autobiography of Federico Sanchez (winner of the 1977 Premio Planeta literary prize) told the story of life as a member of the Spanish Communist Party.  As a screenwriter, he was twice nominated for Academy Awards, in 1968 for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay-Written Directly for the Screen for The War is Over, and in 1970 for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Z.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) died on June 10th at the age of 96.  He was a British author, called  “Britain’s greatest living travel writer” in a 2007 Guardian article.  In 1933 he set out to walk across Europe, and the resulting books, 1977′s A Time of Gifts (winner of the WH Smith Literary Award) and 1986′s Between the Woods and the Water, became classic works of travel literature.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt (1913-2011) died on June 23rd at the age of 97.  She was a French Egyptologist, instrumental in the preservation of ancient temples due to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan Dam.  She was able to convince 50 countries to contribute funds for the relocation of more fourteen temples.  In 1975 she was awarded the CNRS Gold Medal by the French National Centre for Scientific Research.  The Library owns two of her many books, Tutankhamen:  Life and Death of a Pharaoh (DT87.5 .D4 1963) and Ancient Egypt:  the New Kingdom and the Amarna Period (Folio NB75 .D4).  Her Telegraph obituary can be found here.

New Books:

See the links above our photo for the latest.

Notable Literary Deaths (May 2011)

Arthur Laurents (1917-2011) died on May 5th at the age of 93.  He was an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and stage director.  He wrote the book for two Tony Award for Best Musical nominees, West Side Story in 1958 and Gypsy in 1960, and for a Tony Award for Best Musical winner, 1968′s Hallelujah, Baby!.  He also received Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical nominations for revivals of Gypsy in 1975 and 2008, and won the award in 1984 for La Cage aux Folles.  Among the screenplays he wrote were 1948′s Rope (Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay nominee), 1973′s The Way We Were, and 1977′s The Turning Point (nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay).  The Library owns his play The Time of the Cuckoo:  a Comedy (PS3523.A827 T5) as well as Anyone Can Whistle (ML50.S705 A52 1965) a musical for which he wrote the book.  His Playbill.com and New York Times obituaries can be found here and here respectively.

Doric Wilson (1939-2011) died on May 7th at the age of 72.  He was a playwright who was instrumental in the Off-off-Broadway and gay theater movements.  He was one of the first resident playwrights at Caffe Cino, and he was instrumental in making it one of the centers of the Off-off-Broadway movement with plays like And He Made a Her, Pretty People, and Now She Dances!  He was later one of the founders of TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), one of the first professional theater companies to deal openly with the gay experience.  His Playbill.com and New York Times obituaries can be found here and here respectively.

Pam Gems (1925-2011) died on May 13 at the age of 85.  She was a playwright who often dramatized the lives of historical figures.  Among her best known work were the musicals Piaf, about French singer Edith Piaf, and Marlene, about German actress and singer Marlene Dietrich, for which she received a Tony Award for Best Book (Musical) nomination in 1999.  She was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 1997 for Stanley, a play about English painter Stanley Spencer.  Her Playbill.com and New York Times obituaries can be found here and here respectively.

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky (1923-2011) died on May 14th at the age of 87.  He was one of the leading scholars of Russian history.  He was best known for his book A History of Russia (DK40 .R5 1977), which has been in publication continuously ever since it was originally published in 1963.  The Library also owns his book Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles:  a Study of Romantic Ideology (DK38 .R5).  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Edwin Honig (1919-2011) died on May 25th at the age of 91.  He was a poet, critic, and translator of  important works of Spanish and Portuguese literature.  He was instrumental in bringing the works of writers like Fernando Pessoa, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Miguel de Cervantes to an English-speaking audience.  These contributions led to his being knighted by both the governments of Portugal and Spain.  The Library owns several of his books of criticism, Dark Conceit:  the Making of Allegory (PN56 .A5 H6), Garcia Lorca (PQ6613 .A763 Z73), and Calderon and the Seizures of Honor (PQ6317 .H6 H65).  A biography and some examples of his original poetry can be found on The Poetry foundation website.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011) died on May 27th at the age of 62.  He was a poet, novelist, and musician, known primarily for his spoken word performances.  He was a notable voice of African-American culture, and his work frequently dealt with politics and racism.  On of his most acclaimed pieces, “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” was named one of the Top 20 Political Songs by the New Statesman.  His work is often considered to be one of the influences of contemporary rap and hip hop music.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Hans Keilson (1909-2011) died on May 31st at the age of 101.  He was a German-born Dutch poet and novelist.  He was a psychoanalyst who wrote a handful of novels, starting in his early 20′s, but didn’t gain worldwide recognition until writer Francine Prose called him one of  “the world’s very greatest writers” in a 2010 New York Times review of new English translations of his 1959 novel The Death of the Adversary and 1947 novella Comedy in a Minor Key.  His work dealt with life in Europe under the reign of the Nazis, from whom he hid in the Netherlands during World War II.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Notable Literary Deaths (April 2011)

Manning Marable (1950-2011) died on April 1st at the age of 60.  He was  a historian and leading scholar of black history and African-American Studies.  He authored numerous books, many dealing with African-American history and race relations.  His most recent work, Malcolm X:  A Life of Reinvention, was published mere days after his death.  The New York Times offers an excerpt of the book here.  The Library also owns W.E.B. Du Bois:  Black Radical Democrat (E185.97 .D73 M37 1986).  He was also the founder of both the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Lewis Binford (1931-2011) died on April 11th at the age of 79.  He was an influential American archaeologist, famous for his role in the founding of the “New Archaeology” movement.  He proposed that archaeologists use more scientific analysis of what excavations could tell them about ancient cultures, rather than merely cataloging artifacts.  A 1999 Scientific American articled described Binford as “quite probably the most influential archaeologist of his generation.”  The Library owns the text-book New Perspectives in Archaeology (CC65 .B5), co-authored with his wife.  His New York Times obituary can be found here.

Sidney Michaels (1927-2011) died on April 22nd at the age of 83.  He was a playwright who was nominated for Tony Awards three years in a row in the 1960s.  1963′s “Tchin-Tchin” was nominated for Best Play, as was 1964′s “Dylan.”  Michaels also received a Best Author (Musical) nomination for 1965′s “Ben Franklin in Paris” (ML50 .S1917 B52 1963).  His New York Times and Playbill.com obituaries can be found here and here, respectively.

Gonzalo Rojas (1917-2011) died on April 25th at the age of 93.  He was an award-winning Chilean poet, often considered on of the greatest modern Latin American writers.  Among the prizes he won during his career are Mexico’s Oactavio Paz Prize, the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 1992, and the 2003 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, awarded annually to honor the lifetime achievement of writers in the Spanish-speaking world.  His Washington Post and Guardian obituaries can be found here and here respectively.

Ernesto Sabato (1911-2011) died on April 30th at the age of 99.  He was an Argentine physicist who went on to become an acclaimed novelist.  He was awarded the 1984 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, considered the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world.  The Library owns two of his three novels in Spanish, El Tunel (PQ7797 .S214 T8 1965) and Sobre Heroes y Tumbas (PQ7797 .S214 S6 1970), and well as an English translation of the latter, On Heroes and Tombs (PQ7797 .S214 S613 1988).  In addition to the novels, the Library owns an English translation of Sabato’s essay The Writer in the Catastrophe of Our Time (PQ7797 .S214 A27 1990) and book of literary criticism about him, Ernesto Sabato by Harley D. Oberhelman (PQ7797 .S214 Z83).  His New York Times obituary can be found here.