Dark Justice
Dianne Cooper, 2015
Wild Ivy Publishing
212 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780996814003
Summary
Dark Justice, by Pamela O'Hara writing as Dianne Cooper, is a dark, gritty, and heartbreakingly honest account of one woman’s journey through the Federal Penitentiary system.
While continuously proclaiming her innocence, Cooper is manipulated by both the judicial system and street code honor to play by the rules, which leads to a forty year prison sentence.
Written in the author’s own street-wise voice, Dark Justice is the first book of a series that walks the reader through the painful experience of leaving children and family behind to begin a journey that will change her life forever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 10, 1955
• Where—Waycross, Georgia, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Rex, Georgia
Pamela O'Hara, writing under the pen name Dianne Cooper, spent more than two decades incarcerated in prisons across the country for non-violent crimes, all while proclaiming her innocence.
Pamela is an advocate for incarcerated fathers and works to help them reestablish relationships with their children. She is a motivational speaker and encourages others to make the most of their situation, overcome obstacles, and make sure that one's past does not define one's future.
Ms. O'Hara currently resides in Georgia and is the mother of three children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Dark Justice is the first book in a series that will take the reader along "Dianne's" journey through the federal prison system. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's webpage.
Follow Dianne on Twitter.
Book Reviews
To be able to capture [this story] so true and so raw takes true talent. Pate (Editor) is a voice worth listening to in the literary world.
Tamika Newhouse, Author of the Ultimate No No Series & President of AAMBC (African Americans on the Move Book Club)
Discussion Questions
1. Dianne refuses to cooperate with the authorities throughout the book. She states that she would never tell on her family, even at the risk of being incarcerated for forty years. Would you have done the same? Why or why not?
2. Dianne mentions more than once that Diamond loves her and she loves him. In light of Diamond’s actions prior to and after his subsequent arrest, such as using her car for nefarious reasons, sending her to pick up his money or drugs, and finally lying in court for his own benefit, do you believe that he truly loved her?
3. There are several instances where Dianne claims that she was "green" for example, not knowing that her son was selling drugs, not recognizing drugs, etc. Do you believe that Dianne was in fact an innocent or that naive? If so, why? If not, why not?
4. While on her cruise vacation, Dianne states that she only attracts drug dealers. Do you think this statement is a reflection of a lack of self esteem or a reason to excuse her own attraction to these types of men?
5. In Chapter 3, Dianne finds out that her son, Shon, has been selling drugs. When she asks him why, he states: "They put my daddy on crack, so I’m putting their daddy on crack." Do you think this is a valid reason to sell drugs? What would you have said to your child if you were in this situation?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Witches: Salem, 1692
Stacy Schiff, 2015
Little, Brown and Co.
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316200608
Summary
It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.
The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other.
Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.
As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story—the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 26, 1961
• Where—Adams, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Williams College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize in Biography (more below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Stacy Schiff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American nonfiction author. Born in Adams, Massachusetts, Schiff attended Phillips Andover Academy preparatory school and went on to earn her B.A. degree from Williams College in 1982. She was a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster until 1990.
Her essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times and Times Literary Supplement. She is a guest columnist at the New York Times, as well as a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, which noted that she has been "regularly praised for both her meticulous scholarship and her witty style."
In 2000, Schiff won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Vera Nabokov, wife and muse of author Vladimir Nabokov. She was also a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Saint-Exupéry: A Biography of Antoine de Saint Exupery.
Her work, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005) won a number of awards. In discussing the book, author and historican Ron Chernow wrote, "Even if forced to at gunpoint, Stacy Schiff would be incapable of writing a dull page or a lame sentence." Gordon S. Wood hailed the book as "Stunning. A remarkably subtle and penetrating portrait of Franklin and his diplomacy."
Schiff's 2010 biography Cleopatra: A Life reached number 3 on the New York Times Best Seller list and garnered extraordinary reviews. The Wall Street Journal's critic wrote, "Stacy Schiff does a rare thing; she gives us a book we'd miss if it didn't exist." Rick Riordan declared Cleopatra "impossible to put down;" Simon Winchester predicted the book would become a classic.
Witches: Salem, 1692, published in 2015, recounts the witch trials and mass hysteria in New England, as well as Europe. Harvard historian David D. Hall said the book "is as close as we will ever come to understanding what happened in and around Salem in 1692. Courtrooms, streets, churches, farm yards, taverns, bedrooms-all became theater-like places where anger, anxiety, sorrow, and tragedy are entangled. An astonishing achievement."
Schiff resides in New York City. She is a trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Award and honors
Fellowships
♦ National Endowment for the Humanities
♦ Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, New York Public Library
♦ John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Awards and honors
2000 - Pulitzer Prize, Vera
2006 - Academy Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters
2006 - Gilbert Chinard Prize, A Great Improvisation
2006 - George Washington Book Prize, A Great Improvisation
2006 - Ambassador Book Award (American Studies), A Great Improvisation
2010 - EMMA Award for journalistic excellence, "Who's Buried in Cleopatra's Tomb?"
2011 - Library Lion by the New York Public Library
2011 - PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, Cleopatra
2012 - Phillips Academy Alumni Award of Distinction
2012 - The French-American Foundation Vergennes Achievement Award
2014 - BIO Award, Biographers International Organization
2015 - Newberry Library Award
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2015.)
Book Reviews
Enchanting. Out of the shadows of the past come excitable young girls, pompous ministers, abusive judges, grieving parents, and angry neighbors, all of them caught up in a terrifying process that seemed to have no end: discovering who among them deserved death for being in league with Satan. The Witches is as close as we will ever come to understanding what happened in and around Salem in 1692. Courtrooms, streets, churches, farm yards, taverns, bedrooms-all became theater-like places where anger, anxiety, sorrow, and tragedy are entangled. An astonishing achievement.
David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History - Harvard University
Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a reliably entertaining guide...[to] one of the strangest, most fascinating chapters in American history.
Tom Beer - Newsday
Schiff, who had a hit with her biography Cleopatra, may get even more attention for her new look at America's infamous witch trials.
Jane Henderson - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A vivid picture of 1692 Massachusetts [that] brings the Salem trials to life.
Steve Bennett - San Antonio Express News
Schiff has made a career of exploring the private lives of iconic women throughout history.... Now she's expanding her focus to a group of notable women: the women in the center of the hysteria over witches that consumed the early days of the U.S. colonies.... The episode lasted only a year, but had a sizable influence on our nation's history, which Schiff's book will unpack with her elegant prose and exhaustive research.
Shelby Pope - KQED
(Best of the Fall) The Pulitzer-winning historian conjures a big year for witchcraft hysteria and hangings.
New York Magazine
Riveting nonfiction.
Entertainment Weekly
Few authors set the scene of history quite like Stacy Schiff.... The Witches brings a fresh eye to the worst misogynist atrocity in American history, tracing the complex cultural and psychological origins of the Puritan hysteria.
Megan O'Grady - Vogue.com
[Schiff] reconstructs the time and place in remarkable detail, offering portraits of the protagonists in all their poignant, if often infuriating, humanity. Through an immersive narrative involving a cast of dozens pulled from the historical record, Schiff skillfully re-creates the visceral tensions at the heart of everyday life in the Massachusetts Bay settlement.
Peter Manseau - Bookforum
No stone [is] left unturned.... Schiff recreates the most chill-inducing, finger-pointing months in American history.
Steph Opitz - Marie Claire
Schiff applies her descriptive prowess and flair for the dramatic to the Salem witch trials. The book is packed with details and delivered with a punch, but it suffers from a dearth of nuance.... This retelling succeeds as a work of gripping popular nonfiction, but for those already familiar with the subject, it will serve only as light reading.
Publishers Weekly
Schiff traces the course of the witch hunts, ... provid[ing] exciting digressions into the nature of...witchcraft, local political and social disputes, religious instruction, and Puritan life; though....the work is weak in structure and organization...[it] will find a welcome audience among readers of witchcraft or colonial histories. —Evan M. Anderson, Kirkendall P.L., Ankeny, IA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Compulsively readable.... The best-selling Schiff never disappoints, and her eagerly anticipated account of the Salem witchcraft tragedy lives up to expectations, providing a fascinating account of one of the most infamous years in American history. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist
[Shciff] ably weaves together all the assorted facts and many personalities from the 1692 Salem witch trials and provides genuine insight into a 17th-century culture that was barely a few steps away from the Dark Ages.... As history, The Witches is intelligent and reliable; as a story, it's a trudge over very well-trod ground.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
White Dresses: A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters
Mary Pflum Peterson, 2015
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062386977
Summary
In this riveting, poignant memoir of three generations of women and the white dresses that adorned them—television producer Mary Pflum Peterson recounts a journey through loss and redemption, and her battle to rescue her mother, a former nun, from compulsive hoarding.
As a successful television journalist at Good Morning America, Mary Pflum is known as a polished and highly organized producer. It’s a persona at odds with her tortured childhood, where she watched her emotionally vulnerable mother fill their house with teetering piles of assorted "treasures."
But one thing has always united mother and daughter—their love of white dresses. From the dress worn by Mary’s mother when she became a nun and married Jesus, to the wedding gown she donned years later, to the special nightshirts she gifted Mary after the birth of her children, to graduation dresses and christening gowns, these white dresses embodied hope and new beginnings.
After her mother’s sudden death in 2010, Mary digs deep to understand the events that led to Anne’s unraveling. At twenty-one, Anne entered a convent, committed to a life of prayer and helping others. But lengthy periods of enforced fasting, isolation from her beloved students, and constant humiliation eventually drove her to flee the convent almost a decade later.
Hoping to find new purpose as a wife and mother, Anne instead married an abusive, closeted gay man—their eventual divorce another sign of her failure.
Anne retreats into chaos. By the time Mary is ten, their house is cluttered with broken appliances and stacks of unopened mail. Anne promises but fails to clean up for Mary’s high school graduation party, where Mary is being honored as her school’s valedictorian, causing her perfectionist daughter’s fear and shame to grow in tandem with the heaps upon heaps of junk.
In spite of everything, their bond endures. Through the white dresses, pivotal events in their lives are celebrated, even as Mary tries in vain to save Anne from herself.
Unflinchingly honest, insightful, and compelling, White Dresses is a beautiful, powerful story—and a reminder of the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972-73
• Raised—Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Emmy Awards (TV production)
• Currently—New York, New York
Mary Pflum Peterson is a veteran multi-Emmy-Award winning producer at Good Morning America. Her work has taken her to the ravaged remains of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to the royal wedding in London and to numerous Oscar ceremonies in between. Pflum Peterson was also a producer and reporter for CNN, where, from her post in Istanbul, she traveled in and out of numerous warzones. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Dean, and their four young children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In a debut memoir, a former CNN reporter and current Emmy Award-winning Good Morning America producer recounts her family's painful history.... Peterson's generous homage to her mother offers an empathetic look at a baffling, frustrating mental illness. A candid, moving memoir about the many complexities of family.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. "I think of white dresses as a way of starting over. They’re sort of a way of wiping the whole slate clean. Just like what happens in the wintertime when the snow comes. It wipes away everything in preparation for a new year, a new spring." Anne tells a young Mary that white dresses are often worn to "start over...white is great for beginnings." In what way do each of the dresses in White Dresses signify a beginning for Anne and Mary?
2. Aurelia, Anne, and Mary all share a love for reading and writing. What role do literature and writing play in each of their lives? At what points in their lives do they turn to books for solace or escape? In what ways does their shared passion help bring them together?
3. Anne confesses that one reason for her hoarding is that she wanted to find a way to make the house into something that was truly hers, while Mary resented that the mess made her childhood home no longer feel like it belonged to her. What is the importance of having a place that belongs to you? Why is it so difficult and painful to have these places taken away?
4. Anne’s childhood blanket is described as her "one true constant," and the idea of having a constant comes up multiple times throughout White Dresses. What is the importance of having something solid you can count on during times of change? In what ways do the characters hold onto constants throughout the story?
5. "From the time she was old enough to read, Anne Diener had craved every bit as much the unconditional love of a dashing suitor as she did the affection and approval of a mother she couldn’t seem to reach." In what ways did Anne’s frayed relationship with her mother spark her desire for unconditional love? How does this desire eventually lead her to join the convent, and what effect does it have on her relationship with religion?
6. Although White Dresses focuses primarily on the relationships between parents and children; Anne, Mary, and Dale also have complicated relationships with their siblings. What are each of these relationships like, and how do they reflect or influence their family dynamics? Do the relationships continue to affect them as they grow older, and if so, how?
7. Anne sees two options for her life: join the convent, or become a wife and mother. What does this say about society’s view of women at the time? How much of this thinking stems from Anne herself, and how much is influenced by the culture she lives in?
8. "The dress was so pure. If only life could be as unblemished. How delicious that would be –to feel as perfect on the inside as this dress appeared on the outside." In what ways do the characters in White Dresses rely on creating "perfect" outsides to mask their unhappiness and troubles? How effective are they in doing so? How does this keep them from opening up to others, even to the people closest to them?
9. "Trust me on this one, sweetheart: stick with those who understand life is all gray and that most of us are, too. The people who see the gray are more fun anyway." In what way have Anne’s past experiences and family history allowed her to see past the black and white way that others see the world? How does this way of thinking help her forgive more easily and understand people better? Does Mary inherit her mother’s same ability?
10. How do different characters in White Dresses define "home," and how do their ideas on the subject differ from each other? What is the importance of home in the book?
11. "Every child reaches that point when he or she realizes the parent is fallible." Compare the two moments when Mary and Anne first come to see of the fallibility of their respective mothers. To what extent do these new realizations alter their mother-daughter relationships? Why is the realization that their parents are imperfect such a monumental event for children?
12. "Her philosophy: something good could always come out of something bad." Which characters best exemplify this life philosophy? In what ways is the very act of writing White Dresses itself an attempt to make "something good come out of something bad?"
13. For all the white dresses they own, Mary never wears any of Anne’s old dresses; even at her baptism she wears a dress passed down through her father’s side of the family. Why is it significant that although white dresses are something they have in common, they each have their own, separate dresses?
14. Why does Anne continue to have faith in the church even after it has rejected her more than once? Are we meant to respect her for her unwavering devotion or find her faith misguided? How does her faith influence other aspects of her life?
15. In what ways is Anne’s parenting style and her relationship with her daughter a response to her relationship with her own mother? How is she trying to avoid making the same mistakes her mother did? How is Anne trying to keep Mary from making the same mistakes she made?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Art of Memoir
Mary Karr, 2015
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062223067
Summary
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.
For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.)
In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and black belt sinner, providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre.
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told—and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.
Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 16, 1955
• Where—Groves, Texas, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Goddard College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—teaches English at Syracuse University.
Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist, and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University and, in 2015, was chosen to deliver the commencement speech at the university.
Memoirs
Her memoir The Liars' Club, published in 1995, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year and was named one of the year's best books. It delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply troubled childhood, most of which was spent in a gritty industrial section of Southeast Texas in the 1960s. She was encouraged to write her personal history by her friend Tobias Wolff, but has said she only took up the project when her marriage fell apart.
She followed the book with another memoir, Cherry (2000), about her late adolescence and early womanhood.
A third memoir Lit details her "journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic," came out in 2009. She writes about her time as an alcoholic and the salvation she found in her conversion to Catholicism. She does, however, describe herself as a cafeteria Catholic.
In 2015 Karr published The Art of Memoir. Based on her writing class syllabus at Syracuse, the book is aimed at novice writers yet may also appeal to the general public for its humor and for its insights into the writing process. The book includes an extensive list of Karr's recommended memoirs in the appendix.
Poetry and essays on poetry
Karr won a 1989 Whiting Award for her poetry. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and her essays. Karr has published four volumes of poetry: Abacus (1987), The Devil's Tour (1993), Viper Rum (1998), and Sinners Welcome (2006). Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, New Yorker, and Atlantic Monthly.
Karr's Pushcart Award winning essay, "Against Decoration." was published in the quarterly review Parnassus (1991). The essay argues for content over poetic style—insisting that emotions need to be expressed directly and with clarity. She criticized the use of obscure characters, imprecise or "foggy" descriptions of the physical world, and "showy, over-used references. She also holds that abstruse language—polysyllables, archaic words, intricate syntax, "yards of adjectives"—serve only as an obstacle to readers' understanding.
Karr directly criticized well-known, well-connected, and award-winning poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren). Karr favors controlled elegance to create transcendent poetic meaning out of not-quite-ordinary moments, presenting James Merrill's "Charles on Fire" as a successful example.
Another essay, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer," was published in Poetry (2005). Karr tells of her move from agnostic alcoholic to baptized Catholic of the decidedly "cafeteria" kind, yet one who prays twice daily with loud fervor from her "foxhole." In the essay Karr argues that poetry and prayer arise from the same sources within us.
Personal life
In the 90s, Karr dated David Foster Wallace, who once tried to push her out of a moving car.
Awards and honors
1989 - Whiting Award
1995 - PEN/Martha Albrand Award for The Liars' Club
2005 - Guggenheim Fellowship. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/30/2015.)
Book Reviews
There’s a textbook lurking at the heart of Mary Karr’s new book about how memoirs have and should be written. But it’s a chaotic one: Ms. Karr is, by her own admission, a passionate, messy teacher..... Ms. Karr acknowledges that this book began with the teaching syllabus she uses at Syracuse University.... She has fleshed it out with analyses of some of her favorite memoirists’ work, but she can’t help being more interesting than her lesson plans. The best parts of this book are those that veer off course and find her writing about herself again,
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The Art of Memoir is a hodgepodge of a book...[that] will appeal most to those hoping to write their own memoirs.... Though Karr’s own Texan voice strains a bit in the opening pages to achieve the swagger and folksy charm she is known for, her emphasis on finding an authentic, unpretentious voice will be useful to any novice writer.... Her close readings are full of smart insights about the problems writers overcome.... The Art of Memoir is full of Karr’s usual wit, compassion and, perhaps most reassuringly, self-doubt. Her fans should be delighted—and they can’t go wrong reading the books she discusses, including her own.
Janet Spear - Washington Post
Should be required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir, but anyone who loves literature will enjoy it too.
Wall Street Journal;
A master class on memoir, from a memoirist who pulls no punches.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Could have been called The Art of Living.
San Francisco Chronicle
A veritable blueprint for the genre…. Lovers of the form and aspiring scribblers alike will relish this comprehensive appreciation of and guide to writing the real self.
Oprah Magazine
(Starred review.) Karr write[s] exquisitely...(and without pretense, often with raw authenticity.... The text is a must-read for memoirists, but will also appeal to memoir lovers and all who are curious about how books evolve.... Karr wisely (and quite often humorously) guid[es] readers in their understanding and experience of the art.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A]n enlightening review of the memoir as a medium for communicating carnal, lived experiences. Fresh and heartfelt, Karr's analysis of the form illustrates its variety and depth, the significance of voice, and the perception of truth. [A]n excellent challenge for readers and writers alike. —Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib.
Library Journal
[A] spirited commentary about memoir, the literary form that has become synonymous with her name.... Karr's sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations ...make for lively and inspiring reading. A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. For years Mary Karr resisted writing autobiographical nonfiction and instead wrote poetry and fiction. Why was this? How is each of these genres different? What are the strengths and limitations of each?
2. What particular abilities and talents make a great memoirist?
3. Examine Karr’s emphasis on the importance of carnality in memoir writing. Why is unique, sensory detail so important? How does it have "psychological effects" on a reader?
4. Both memoir writing and psychotherapy require the act of revisiting and articulating past experience, telling the stories. In what other ways are these two complex pursuits similar or different?
5. How does revisiting and engaging with past trauma or difficulty potentially transform its effects?
6. How does the unreliability of human memory influence a person’s attempt to understand herself? In what ways might a writer bridge gaps of information on the page?
7. How much of a person’s identity is the result of arbitrary early experience? To what extent can she forge a new identity? How might this influence the writing of memoir?
8. Given that "from the second you choose one event over another, you’re shaping the past’s meaning," how should a memoir writer best think about and negotiate the truth of her experience? What is a necessary and appropriate balance of honesty and creativity in nonfiction writing?
9. Karr believes that lying is not just unethical for a writer but usually "carve[s] a lonely gap between your disguise and who you really are." What are the effects of such a personal disassociation? Karr adamantly claims "each great memoir lives or dies...on voice." What is voice? How does a writer develop it? How does "finding...inner truth about psychological conflicts" help?
10. What is the nature and importance of the "inner enemy" in a memoir? Why might a "blazing psychic struggle" be essential for the writer and the reader?
11. Karr admits that she "hid from readers on pages that sugarcoated any emotional truths," and finds many of her talented students doing the same. Why is this resistance so common even after one has decided to write memoir?
12. Karr believes that memoirs often fail because the narrator fails to change over time. Why is experiencing and articulating personal change or transformation so essential?
13. Karr says, every writer needs two selves—the generative self and the editor self. How are these essentially different? What’s the best way to balance them?
14. Considering writers like Maya Angelou, Maxine Hong Kingston and Michael Herr, in what ways can or should a memoir be a social or political act?
15. Considering G. H. Hardy’s self-evaluation in A Mathematician’s Apology, how might an earnest writer evaluate the value of her experience short of public recognition or financial success?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
Anne-Marie O'Connor, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 978110187312
Summary
Contributor to the Washington Post Anne-Marie O’Connor brilliantly regales us with the galvanizing story of Gustav Klimt’s 1907 masterpiece—the breathtaking portrait of a Viennese Jewish socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer.
The celebrated painting, stolen by Nazis during World War II, subsequently became the subject of a decade-long dispute between her heirs and the Austrian government. When the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case, its decision had profound ramifications in the art world.
Expertly researched, masterfully told, The Lady in Gold is at once a stunning depiction of fin-de siècle Vienna, a riveting tale of Nazi war crimes, and a fascinating glimpse into the high-stakes workings of the contemporary art world. (From the publisher .)
See the 2015 movie with Helen Mirren. (Retitled "Woman in Gold.")
Listen to the Screen Thoughts podcast as Hollister and O'Toole compare book and film.
Author Bio
Anne-Marie O'Connor is an American journalist and writer who authored the bestselling The Lady in Gold, The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. The book is the story of the battle by Vienna emigre Maria Altmann to reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings from her native Austria in an eight-year legal battle by Los Angeles attorney E. Randol Schoenberg. One of the paintings, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I sold for a record $135 million in 2006.
A longtime journalist in Latin America, O'Connor covered the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador as a Central America bureau chief for Reuters. She was also a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, UPI, and the Cox Newspaper chain. She has also written for Esquire, Christian Science Monitor, and The Nation. She is a speaker on the subject of the Nazi plunder of art and restitution. (From Wikipedia.)
O'Connor first became interested in Maria Altman's story almost by chance: in 2001 she noticed a piece in a Los Angeles community paper about a woman seeking the return of stolen Nazi art. Reading on, O'Connor realized the case involved one of the most famous paintings in the world, one she'd even known from her childhood. She tracked Altman down and began interviewing her. Even though O'Connor felt the case was hopeless, she told her editors at the Los Angeles Times it would make for a fascinating story. (Read the full story at Lauren Zuckerman's Paris Web.)
Book Reviews
[A] fascinating work, ambitious, exhaustively researched and profligately detailed…But the book's title does not do justice to O'Connor's scope, which includes the Viennese Belle Epoque, the Anschluss, the diaspora of Viennese Jews, the looting of their artwork and legal battles over its restitution, and thorny questions facing the heirs of reclaimed art…. O'Connor's book is a mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust, encased in a profusion of beguiling detail, much as Adele herself is encrusted in Klimt's resplendent portrait.
Kathryn Lang - Washington Post
A celebration of art and persistence.... O’Connor’s book brings Klimt’s exceptional portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer home, broadening the meaning of homeland at the same time.
Christian Science Monitor
O’Connor traces the multifaceted history of Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) in this intriguing, energetically composed, but overly episodic study of Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, and her niece, Maria Bloch-Bauer who reclaimed five Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis. 54 photos.
Publishers Weekly
This epic story of a painting begins in the late 19th century, as Gustav Klimt becomes the premier painter of the Vienna Secession and Adele Bloch-Bauer, a renowned salon hostess and patron of the arts, and ends....[when Klimt's painting is] finally won back by Bloch-Bauer’s heirs in an agonizing legal battle. —Molly McArdle
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Writing with a novelist’s dynamism, O’Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice.
Booklist
O’Connor skillfully filters Austria’s troubled twentieth century through the life of Klimt’s most beloved muse.... A nuanced view of a painting whose story transcends its own time.
Bookforum
The lusciously detailed story of Gustav Klimt’s most famous painting, detailing the relationship between the artist, the subject, their heirs and those who coveted the masterpiece.... Art-history fans will love the deep details of the painting, and history buffs will revel in the facts O’Connor includes as she exposes a deeper picture of World War II.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Lady in Gold:
1. Describe Viennese society as portrayed by Anne-Marie O'Connor in The Lady in Gold. Certainly it was "glittering," but what else was it? What role did the Jewish haute bourgeoisie play in that society? How strongly did they identify themselves as Jewish? Was there any hint of the virulent—and violent—antisemitism that was to emerge decades later?
2. Talk about the luminous figures in Vienna at the time—especially Adele Bloch-Bauer, her family, and Gustav Klimt.
3. Where did Klimt find his inspiration for his artistic style, particularly the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I? Display a copy of the painting for the group, and let members talk about its effect on them personally. What does each find most striking? What was its effect on Viennese society?
4. You might also do some research into the Secessionist movement in art and its founding by Gustav Klimt, as well as the other artists. What were they rebelling against? How would you describe their art?
5. O'Connor mentions the Viennese Academy of Arts' rejection of Adolph Hitler. What is the author's veiled implication by including that piece of information—is it merely to point out a bit of historical irony?
6. The second third of O'Connor's book covers the Nazi takeover of Austria. O'Connor places this chapter immediately after her chapter on the glory of the Viennese Belle Epoque. What effect does this juxtaposition have on your reading? Given everything you've most likely read and seen over the years, were you at all surprised by the Nazi thuggery? Is here a hint that the Nazi pillage of lavish homes and valuable art had more to do with venality than antisemitism?
7. How do you view the Austria's stance regarding the stolen artworks held in their possession well after the end of World War II? The museum claimed the paintings were part of their national heritage. Was there any validity in that claim or was it simply self-serving?
8. A Wall Street Journal review of The Lady in Gold presents an ethical conundrum regarding the return of Nazi-pilfered art, an issue not considered by the book's author. As a result of outsized bidding for the five Klimt paintings, the public has lost access to all but one—Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, now in New York. In an inflationary art market, public museums cannot compete with the wealth of individual buyers; as a result, paintings of historical significance are now held by private collectors outside the public domain. Is there middle ground, on which both heirs and museums could land, that would foster both fair restitution and public access to important works of art? (You might want to read the complete review here.)
9. What made Maria Altmann and Randol Schoenberg such a good team? What attributes did each of them bring to the partnership.
10. Were you able to follow the legal battle that Altmann and Schoenberg pursued? What legal obstacles were thrown in their path? Were you angered, even disgusted, by Austria's intransigence? Did you feel any degree of sympathy for their position? What legal strategy ultimately prevailed for Altmann/Schoenberg?
11. Many reviewers make reference to the wealth of detail the author has included in her book. Did you find the details superfluous, perhaps distracting? Or did the details enrich and deepen the story for you?
12. Watch the 2015 Helen Mirren movie Woman in Gold and discuss the book vs. film. How well does the film depict the book? Do you prefer one over the other?
16. You might also spend a separate night watching The Monuments Men (2014) with George Clooney and Matt Damon. That film provides a broad overview of the extent of Nazi art plunder.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)